Table of Contents

- Table of Contents

- Sector General 1—Hospital Station

- Sector General 2—Star Surgeon

- Sector General 3—Major Operation

- Sector General 4—Ambulance Ship

- Sector General 5—Sector General

- Sector General 6—Star Healer

- Sector General 7—Code Blue Emergency

- Sector General 8—The Genocidal Healer

- Sector General 9—The Galactic Gourmet

- Sector General 10—Final Diagnosis

- Sector General 11—Mind Changer

- Sector General 12—Double Contact

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Sector General 1—Hospital Station

Sector General 2—Star Surgeon

Sector General 3—Major Operation

Sector General 4—Ambulance Ship

Sector General 5—Sector General

Sector General 6—Star Healer

Sector General 7—Code Blue Emergency

Sector General 8—The Genocidal Healer

Sector General 9—The Galactic Gourmet

Sector General 10—Final Diagnosis

Sector General 11—Mind Changer

Sector General 12—Double Contact

Sector General 1—Hospital Station

James White

Chapter 1

MEDIC

The alien occupying O’Mara’s sleeping compartment weighed roughly half a ton, possessed six short, thick appendages which served both as arms or legs and had a hide like a flexible armor plate. Coming as it did from Hudlar, a four-G world with an atmospheric pressure nearly seven times Earth normal, such ruggedness of physique was to be expected. But despite its enormous strength the being was helpless, O’Mara knew, because it was barely six months old, it had just seen its parents die in a construction accident, and its brain was sufficiently well developed for the sight to have frightened it badly.

“I’ve b-b-brought the kid,” said Waring, one of the section’s tractorbeam operators. He hated O’Mara, and with good reason, but he was trying not to gloat. “C-C-Caxton sent me. He says your leg makes you unfit for normal duty, so you can look after the young one until somebody arrives from its home planet. He’s on his way over n-now . . .

Waring trailed off. He began checking the seals of his spacesuit, obviously in a hurry to get out before O’Mara could mention the accident. “I brought some of its food with me,” he ended quickly. “It’s in the airlock.”

O’Mara nodded without speaking. He was a young man cursed with the kind of physique which ensured him winning every fight he had ever been in, and there had been a great many of them recently, and a face which was as square, heavy and roughly formed as was his over-muscled body. He knew that if he allowed himself to show how much that accident had affected him, Waring would think that he was simply putting on an act. Men who were put together as he was, O’Mara had long ago discovered, were not supposed to have any of the softer emotions.

Immediately Waring departed he went to the airlock for the glorified paint-sprayer with which Hudlarians away from their home planet were fed. While checking the gadget and its spare food tanks he tried to go over the story he would have to tell Caxton when the section chief arrived. Staring moodily through the airlock port at the bits and pieces of the gigantic jigsaw puzzle spread across fifty cubic miles of space outside, he tried to think. But his mind kept ducking away from the accident and slipping instead into generalities and events which were in the far past or future.

The vast structure which was slowly taking shape in Galactic Sector Twelve, midway between the rim of the parent galaxy and the densely populated systems of the Greater Magellan Cloud, was to be a hospital—a hospital to end all hospitals. Hundreds of different environments would be accurately reproduced here, any extreme of heat, cold, pressure, gravity, radiation or atmosphere necessary for the patients and staff it y would contain. Such a tremendous and complex structure was far beyond the resources of any one planet, so that hundreds of worlds had each fabricated sections of it and transported them to the assembly point.

But fitting the jigsaw together was no easy job.

Each of the worlds concerned had their copies of the master plan. But errors occurred despite this—probably through the plan having to be translated into so many different languages and systems of measurement. Sections which should have fitted snugly together very often had to be modified to make them join properly, and this necessitated moving the sections together and apart several times with massed tractor and pressor beams. This was very tricky work for the beam operators, because while the weight of the sections out in space was nil, their mass and inertia was tremendous.

And anyone unlucky enough to be caught between the joining faces of two sections in the process of being fitted became, no matter how tough a life-form they happened to be, an almost perfect representation of a two-dimensional body.

The beings who had died belonged to a tough species, physiological classification FROB to be exact. Adult Hudlarians weighed in the region of two Earth tons, possessed an incredibly hard but flexible tegument which, as well as protecting them from their own native and external pressures, allowed them to live and work comfortably in any atmosphere of lesser pressure down to and including the vacuum of space. In addition they had the highest radiation tolerance level known, which made them particularly invaluable during power pile assembly.

The loss of two such valuable beings from his section would, in any case, have made Caxton mad, quite apart from other considerations. O’Mara sighed heavily, decided that his nervous system demanded a more positive release than that, and swore. Then he picked up the feeder and returned to the bedroom.

Normally the Hudlarians absorbed food directly through their skin from the thick, soupy atmosphere of their planet, but on any other world or in space a concentrated food compound had to be sprayed onto the absorbent hides at certain intervals. The young e-t was showing large bare patches and in other places the previous food coating had worn very thin. Definitely, thought O’Mara, the infant was due for another feed. He moved as close as seemed safe and began to spray carefully.

The process of being painted with food seemed to be a pleasant one ( for the young FROB. It ceased to cower in the corner and began blundering excitedly about the small bedroom. For O’Mara it became a matter of trying to hit a rapidly moving object while practicing violent evasive maneuvers himself, which set his injured leg throbbing more painfully than ever. His furniture suffered, too.

Practically the whole interior surface of his sleeping compartment was covered with the sticky, sharp-smelling food compound, and also the exterior of the now-quiescent young alien, when Caxton arrived.

“What’s going on?” said the Section Chief.

Space construction men as a class were simple, uncomplicated personalities whose reactions were easily predictable. Caxton was the type who always asked what was going on even when, as now, he knew-and especially when such unnecessary questions were meant simply to needle somebody. In the proper circumstances the section chief was probably a quite likeable individual, O’Mara thought, but between Caxton and himself those circumstances had yet to come about.

O’Mara answered the question without showing the anger he felt, and ended, “. . . After this I think I’ll keep the kid in space, and feed it there . . .

“You will not!” Caxton snapped. “You’ll keep it here with you, all the time. But more about that later. At the moment I want to know about the accident. Your side of it, that is.”

His expression said that he was prepared to listen, but that he already doubted every word that O’Mara would say in advance.

“Before you go any further,” Caxton broke in after O’Mara had completed two sentences, “you know that this project is under Monitor Corps jurisdiction. Usually the Monitors let us settle any trouble that crops up in our own way, but this case involves extra-terrestrials and they’ll have to be brought in on it. There’ll be an investigation.” He tapped the small, flat box hanging from his chest. “It’s only fair to warn you that I’m taping everything you say.

O’Mara nodded and began giving his account of the accident in a low monotone. It was a very weak story, he knew, and stressing any particular incident so as to point it up in his favor would make it sound even more artificial. Several times Caxton opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Finally he said:

“But did anyone see you doing these things? Or even see the two e-ts moving about in the danger area while the warning lights were burning? You have a neat little story to explain this madness on their part—which, incidentally, makes you quite a hero—but it could be that you switched on the lights after the accident, that it was your negligence regarding the lights which caused it, and that all this about the straying youngster is a pack of lies designed to get you out of a very serious charge—”

“Waring saw me,” O’Mara cut in.

Caxton stared at him intently, his expression changing from suppressed anger to one of utter disgust and scorn. Despite himself O’Mara felt his face heating up.

“Waring eh?” said the section chief tonelessly. “A nice touch, that. You know, and we all know, that you have been riding Waring constantly, needling him and playing on his disability to such an extent that he must hate you like poison. Even if he did see you, the court would expect him to keep quiet about it. And if he did not see you, they would think that he had and was keeping quiet about it anyway. O’Mara, you make me sick.”

Caxton wheeled and stamped toward the airlock. With one foot through the inner seal he turned again.

“You’re nothing but a troublemaker, O’Mara,” he said angrily, “a surly, quarrelsome lump of bone and muscle with just enough skill to make you worth keeping. You may think that it was technical ability which got you these quarters on your own. It wasn’t, you’re good but not that good! The truth is that nobody else in my section would share accommodation with you . . .”

The section chief’s hand moved to the cut-off switch on his recorder. His voice, as he ended, became a quiet, deadly thing.

. . . And O’Mara if you let any harm come to that youngster, if anything happens to it at all, the Monitors won’t even get the chance to try you.

The implications behind those final words were clear, O’Mara thought angrily as the section chief left; he was sentenced to live with this organic half-ton tank for a period that would feel like eternity no matter how short it was. Everybody knew that exposing Hudlarians to space was like putting a dog out for the night—there were no harmful effects at all. But what some people knew and what they felt were two vastly different things and O’Mara was dealing here with the personalities of simple, uncomplicated, over-sentimental and very angry construction men.

When he had joined the project six months before, O’Mara found that he was doomed again to the performance of a job which, while important in itself, gave him no satisfaction and was far below his capabilities. Since school his life had been a series of such frustrations. Personnel officers could not believe that a young man with such square, ugly features and shoulders so huge that his head looked moronically small by comparison could be interested in subtle subjects like psychology or electronics. He had gone into space in the hope of finding things different, but no. Despite constant efforts during interviews to impress people with his quite considerable knowledge, they were too dazzled by his muscle-power to listen, and his applications were invariably stamped “Approved Suitable for Heavy, Sustained Labor.”

On joining this project he had decided to make the best of what promised to be another boring, frustrating job—he decided to become an unpopular character. As a result his life had been anything but boring. But now he was wishing that he had not been so successful at making himself disliked.

What he needed most at this moment was friends, and he hadn’t a single one.

O’Mara’s mind was dragged back from the dismal past to the even less pleasant present by the sharp all-pervading odor of the Hudlarian’s food compound. Something would have to be done about that, and quickly. He hurriedly got into his lightweight suit and went through the lock.

II

His living quarters were in a tiny sub-assembly which would one day form the theater surgical ward and adjoining storage compartments of the hospital’s low-gravity MSVK section. Two small rooms with a connecting section of corridor had been pressurized and fitted with artificial gravity grids for O’Mara’s benefit, the rest of the structure remaining both airless and weightless. He drifted along short, unfinished corridors whose ends were open to space, staring into the bare, angular compartments which slid past. They were all full of trailing plumbing and half-built machinery the purpose of which it was impossible to guess without actually taking an MSVK educator tape. But all the compartments he examined were either too small to hold the alien or they were open in one direction to space. O’Mara swore with restraint but great feeling, pushed himself out to one of the ragged edges of his tiny domain and glared around him.

Above, below and all around him out to a distance of ten miles floated pieces of hospital, invisible except for the bright blue lights scattered over them as a warning to ship traffic in the area. It was a little like being at the center of a dense globular star cluster, O’Mara thought, and rather beautiful if you were in a mood to appreciate it. He wasn’t, because on most of these floating sub-assemblies there were pressor-beam men on watch, placed there to fend off sections which threatened to collide. These men would see and report it to Caxton if O’Mara took his baby alien outside even for feeding.

The only answer apparently, he told himself disgustedly as he retraced his way, was nose-plugs.

Inside the lock he was greeted by a noise like a tinny foghorn. It blared out in long, discordant blasts with just enough interval in between to make him dread the arrival of the next one. Investigation revealed bare patches of hide showing through the last coat of food, so presumably his little darling was hungry again. O’Mara went for the sprayer.

When he had about three square yards covered there was an interruption. Dr. Pelling arrived.

The project doctor took off his helmet and gauntlets only, flexed the stiffness out of his fingers and growled, “I believe you hurt your leg. Let’s have a look.”

Pelling could not have been more gentle as he explored O’Mara’s injured leg, but what he was doing was plainly a duty rather than an act of friendship. His voice was reserved as he said, “Severe bruising and a couple of pulled tendons is all—you were lucky. Rest. I’ll give you some stuff to rub on it. Have you been redecorating?”

“What . . . ?” began O’Mara, then saw where the doctor was looking. “That’s food compound. The little so-and-so kept moving while I was spraying it. But speaking of the youngster, can you tell me—”

“No, I can’t,” said Pelling. “My brain is overloaded enough with the ills and remedies of my own species without my trying to stuff it with FROB physiology tapes. Besides, they’re tough-nothing can happen to them!” He sniffed loudly and made a face. “Why don’t you keep it outside?”

“Certain people are too soft—hearted,” O’Mara replied bitterly. “They are horrified by such apparent cruelties as lifting kittens by the scruff of the neck . . .

“Humph,” said the doctor, looking almost sympathetic. “Well, that’s your problem. See you in a couple of weeks.”

“Wait!” O’Mara called urgently, hobbling after the doctor with one empty trouser leg flapping. “What if something does happen? And there has to be rules about the care and feeding of these things, simple rules. You can’t just leave me to . . . to . . .

“I see what you mean,” said Pelling. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then went on, “There’s a book kicking around my place somewhere, a sort of Hudlarian first aid handbook. But it’s printed in Universal

“I read Universal,” said O’Mara.

Pelling looked surprised. “Bright boy. All right, I’ll send it over.” He nodded curtly and left.

O’Mara closed the bedroom door in the hope that this might cut down the intensity of the food smell, then lowered himself carefully into the living room couch for what he told himself was a well-deserved rest. He settled his leg so that it ached almost comfortably and began trying to talk himself into an acceptance of the situation. The best he could achieve was a seething, philosophical calm.

But he was so weary that even the effort of feeling angry became too much for him. His eyelids dropped and a warm deadness began creeping up from his hands and feet. O’Mara sighed, wriggled and prepared to sleep . . .

The sound which blasted him out of his couch had the strident, authoritative urgency of all the alarm sirens that ever were and a volume which threatened to blow the bedroom door off its runners. O’Mara grabbed instinctively for his spacesuit, dropped it with a curse as he realized what was happening, then went for the sprayer.

Junior was hungry again . . . !

During the eighteen hours which followed it was brought home to O’Mara how much he did not know about infant Hudlarians. He had spoken many times to its parents via Translator, and the baby had been mentioned often, but somehow they had not spoken of the important things. Sleep, for instance.

Judging from recent observation and experience, infant FROBs did not sleep. In the all too short intervals between feeds they blundered around the bedroom smashing all items of furniture which were not metal and bolted down—and these they bent beyond recognition or usefulness—or they huddled in a corner knotting and unknotting their tentacles. Probably this sight of a baby doing the equivalent of playing with its fingers would have brought coos of delight from an adult Hudlarian, but it merely made O’Mara sick and cross-eyed.

And every two hours, plus or minus a few minutes, he had to feed the brute. If he was lucky it lay quiet, but more often he had to chase it around with the sprayer. Normally FROBs of this age were too weak to move about—but that was under Hudlar’s crushing gravity-pull and pressure. Here in conditions which were to it less than one quarter-G, the infant Hudlarian could move. And it was having fun.

O’Mara wasn’t: his body felt like a thick, clumsy sponge saturated with fatigue. After each feed he dropped onto the couch and let his bone-weary body dive blindly into unconsciousness. He was so utterly and completely spent, he told himself after every spraying, that he could not possibly hear the brute the next time it complained—he would be too deeply out. But always that blaring, discordant foghorn jerked him at least half awake and sent him staggering like a drunken puppet through the motions which would end that horrible, mind-wrecking din.

After nearly thirty hours of it O’Mara knew he couldn’t take much more. Whether the infant was collected in two days or two months the result as far as he was concerned would be the same; he would be a raving lunatic. Unless in a weak moment he took a walk outside without his suit. Pelling would never have allowed him to be subjected to this sort of punishment, he knew, but the doctor was an ignoramus where the FROB life-form was concerned. And Caxton, only a little less ignorant, was the simple, direct type who delighted in this sort of violent practical joke, especially when he considered that the victim deserved everything he got.

But just suppose the section chief was a more devious character than O’Mara had suspected? Suppose he knew exactly what he was sentencing him to by leaving the infant Hudlarian in his charge? O’Mara cursed tiredly, but he had been at it so constantly for the last ten or twelve hours that bad language had ceased to be an emotional safety valve. He shook his head angrily in a vain attempt to dispel the weariness which clogged his brain.

Caxton wasn’t going to get away with it.

He was the strongest man on the whole project, O’Mara knew, and his reserves of strength must be considerable. All this fatigue and nervous twitching was simply in his mind, he told himself insistently, and a couple of days with practically no sleep meant nothing to his tremendous physique—even after the shaking up he’d received in the accident. And anyway, the present situation with the infant couldn’t get any worse, so it must soon begin to improve. He would beat them yet, he swore. Caxton would not drive him mad, or even to the point of calling for help.

This was a challenge, he insisted with weary determination. Up to now he had bemoaned the fact that no job had fully exploited his capabilities. Well, this was a problem which would tax both his physical stamina and deductive processes to the limit. An infant had been placed in his charge and he intended taking care of it whether it was here for two weeks or two months. What was more, he was going to see that the kid was a credit to him when its foster parents arrived . . .

After the forty-eighth hour of the infant FROB’s company and the fiftyseventh since he had had a good sleep, such illogical and somewhat maudlin thinking did not seem strange to O’Mara at all.

Then abruptly there came a change in what O’Mara had accepted as the order of things. The FROB after complaining, was fed and refused to shut up!

O’Mara’s first reaction was a feeling of hurt surprise; this was against the rules. They cried, you fed them, they stopped crying—at least for a while. This was so unfair that it left him too shocked and helpless to react.

The noise was bedlam, with variations. Long, discordant blasts of sound beat over him. Sometimes the pitch and volume varied in an insanely arbitrary manner and at others it had a grinding, staccato quality as if broken glass had got into its vocal gears. There were intervals of quiet, varying between two seconds and half a minute, during which O’Mara cringed waiting for the next blast. He struck it out for as long as he could—a matter of ten minutes or so—then he dragged his leaden body off the couch again.

“What the blazes is wrong with you?” O’Mara roared against the din. The FROB was thoroughly covered by food compound so it couldn’t be hungry.

Now that the infant had seen him the volume and urgency of its cries increased. The external, bellows—like flap of muscle on the infant’s back—used for sound production only, the FROBs being non-breathers—continued swelling and deflating rapidly. O’Mara jammed the palms of his hands against his ears, an action which did no good at all, and yelled, “Shut up!”

He knew that the recently orphaned Hudlarian must still be feeling confused and frightened, that the mere process of feeding it could not possibly fulfill all of its emotional needs—he knew all this and felt a deep pity for the being. But these feelings were in some quiet, sane and civilized portion of his mind and divorced from all the pain and weariness and frightful onslaughts of sound currently torturing his body. He was really two people, and while one of him knew the reason for the noise and accepted it, the other-the purely physical O’Mara-reacted instinctively and viciously to stop it.

“Shut up! SHUT UP!” screamed O’Mara, and started swinging with his fists and feet.

Miraculously after about ten minutes of it, the Hudlarian stopped crying.

O’Mara returned to the couch shaking. For those ten minutes he had been in the grip of a murderous, uncontrollable rage. He had punched and kicked savagely until the pains from his hands and injured leg forced him to stop using those members, but he had gone on kicking and screeching invective with the only other weapons left to him, his good leg and tongue. The sheer viciousness of what he had done shocked and sickened him.

It was no good telling himself that the Hudlarian was tough and might not have felt the beating; the infant had stopped crying so he must have got through to it somehow. Admittedly Hudlarians were hard and tough, but this was a baby and babies had weak spots. Human babies, for instance, had a very soft spot on the top of their heads..

When O’Mara’s utterly exhausted body plunged into sleep his last coherent thought was that he was the dirtiest, lowest louse that had ever been born.

Sixteen hours later he awoke. It was a slow, natural process which brought him barely above the level of unconsciousness. He had a brief feeling of wonder at the fact that the infant was not responsible for waking him before he drifted back to sleep again. The next time he wakened was five hours later and to the sound of Waring coming through the airlock.

“Dr. P-Pelling asked me to bring this,” he said, tossing O’Mara a small book. “And I’m not doing you a favor, understand—it’s just that he said it was for the good of the youngster. How is it doing?”

“Sleeping,” said O’Mara.

Waring moistened his lips. “I’m—I’m supposed to check. C-C-Caxton says so.

“Ca-Ca-Caxton would,” mimicked O’Mara.

He watched the other silently as Waring’s face grew a deeper red. Waring was a thin young man, sensitive, not very strong, and the stuff of which heroes were made. On his arrival O’Mara had been overwhelmed with stories about this tractor-beam operator. There had been an accident during the fitting of a power pile and Waring had been trapped in a section which was inadequately shielded. But he had kept his head and, following instructions radioed to him from an engineer outside, had managed to avert a slow atomic explosion which nevertheless would have taken the lives of everyone in his section. He had done this while all the time fully convinced that the level of radiation in which he worked would, in a few hours time, certainly cause his death.

But the shielding had been more effective than had been thought and Waring did not die. The accident had left its mark on him, however, they told O’Mara. He had blackouts, he stuttered, his nervous system had been subtly affected, they said, and there were other things which O’Mara himself would see and was urged to ignore. Because Waring had saved all their lives and for that he deserved special treatment. That was why they made way for him wherever he went, let him win all fights, arguments and games of skill or chance, and generally kept him wrapped in a swathe of sentimental cottonwool.

And that was why Waring was a spoiled, insufferable, simpering brat.

Watching his white-lipped face and clenched fists, O’Mara smiled. He had never let Waring win at anything if he could possibly help it, and the first time the tractor-beam man had started a fight with him had also been the last. Not that he had hurt him, he had been just tough enough to demonstrate that fighting O’Mara was not a good idea.

“Go in and have a look,” O’Mara said eventually. “Do what Ca-Ca Caxton says.

They went in, observed the gently twitching infant briefly and came out. Stammering, Waring said that he had to go and headed for the airlock. He didn’t often stutter these days, O’Mara knew; probably he was scared the subject of the accident would be brought up.

“Just a minute,” said O’Mara. “I’m running out of food compound, will you bring—”

“G-get it yourself!”

O’Mara stared at him until Waring looked away, then he said quietly, “Caxton can’t have it both ways. If this infant has to be cared for so thoroughly that I’m not allowed to either feed or keep it in airless conditions, it would be negligence on my part to go away and leave it for a couple of hours to get food. Surely you see that. The Lord alone knows what harm the kid might come to if it was left alone. I’ve been made responsible for this infant’s welfare so I insist . . .

“B-b—but it won’t—”

“It only means an hour or so of your rest period every second or third day,” said O’Mara sharply. “Cut the bellyaching. And stop sputtering at me, you’re old enough to talk properly.”

Waring’s teeth came together with a click. He took a deep, shuddering breath then with his jaws still clenched furiously together he exhaled. The sound was like an airlock valve being cracked. He said:

“It . . . will . . . take . . . all of . . . my next two rest periods. The FROB quarters . . . where the food is kept . . . are being fitted to the main assembly the day after tomorrow. The food compound will have to be transferred before then.”

“See how easy it is when you try,” said O’Mara, grinning. “You were a bit jerky at first there, but I understood every word. You’re doing fine. And by the way, when you’re stacking the food tanks outside the airlock will you try not to make too much noise in case you wake the baby?”

For the next two minutes Waring called O’Mara dirty names without repeating himself or stuttering once.

“I said you were doing fine,” said O’Mara reprovingly. “You don’t have to show off.”

III

After Waring left, O’Mara thought about the dismantling of the Hudlarian’s quarters. With gravity grids set to four Gs and what few other amenities they required the FROBs had been living in one of the key sections. If it was about to be fitted to the main assembly then the completion of the hospital structure itself could only be five or six weeks off. The final stages, he knew, would be exciting. Tractor men at their safe positions—depressions actually on the joining faces-tossing thousand-ton loads about the sky, bringing them together gently while fitters checked alignment or adjusted or prepared the slowly closing faces for joining. Many of them would disregard the warning lights until the last possible moment, and take the most hair-raising risks imaginable, just to save the time and trouble of having their sections pulled apart and rejoined again for a possible re-fitting.

O’Mara would have liked to be in on the finish, instead of babysitting!

Thought of the infant brought back the worry he had been concealing from Waring. It had never slept this long before—it must be twenty hours since it had gone to sleep or he had kicked it to sleep. FROBs were tough, of course, but wasn’t it possible that the infant was not simply asleep but unconscious through concussion . . . ?

O’Mara reached for the book which Pelting had sent and began to read.

It was slow, heavy going, but at the end of two hours O’Mara knew a little about the handling of Hudlarian babies, and the knowledge brought both relief and despair. Apparently his fit of temper and subsequent kicking had been a good thing-FROB babies needed constant petting and a quick calculation of the amount of force used by an adult of the species administering a gentle pat to its offspring showed that O’Mara’s furious attack had been a very weak pat indeed. But the book warned against the dangers of over-feeding, and O’Mara was definitely guilty on this count. Seemingly the proper thing to do was to feed it every five or six hours during its waking period and use physical methods of soothing-patting, that was—if it appeared restless or still hungry. Also it appeared that FROB infants required, at fairly frequent intervals, a bath.

On the home planet this involved something like a major sandblasting operation, but O’Mara thought that this was probably due to the pressure and stickiness of the atmosphere. Another problem which he would have to solve was how to administer a hard enough consoling pat. He doubted very much if he could fly into a temper every time the baby needed its equivalent of a nursing.

But at least he would have plenty of time to work out something, because one of the things he had found out about them was that they were wakeful for two full days at a stretch, and slept for five.

During the first five-day period of sleep O’Mara was able to devise methods of petting and bathing his charge, and even had a couple of days free to relax and gather his strength for the two days of hard labor ahead when the infant woke up. It would have been a killing routine for a man of ordinary strength, but O’Mara discovered that after the first two weeks of it he seemed to make the necessary physical and mental adjustment to it. And at the end of four weeks the pain and stiffness had gone out of his leg and he had no worries regarding the baby at all.

Outside, the project neared completion. The vast, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle was finished except for a few unimportant pieces around the edges. A Monitor Corps investigator had arrived and was asking questions—of everybody, apparently, except O’Mara.

He couldn’t help wondering if Waring had been questioned yet, and if he had, what the tractor man had said. The investigator was a psychologist, unlike the mere Engineer officers already on the project, and very likely no fool. O’Mara thought that he, himself, was no fool either; he had worked things out and by rights he should feel no anxiety over the outcome of the Monitor’s investigations. O’Mara had sized up the situation here and the people in it, and the reactions of everyone were predictable. But it all depended on what Waring told that Monitor.

You’re turning yellow! O’Mara thought in angry self-disgust. Now that your pet theories are being put to the test you’re scared silly they won’t work. You want to crawl to Waring and lick his boots!

And that course, O’Mara knew, would be introducing a wild variable into what should be a predictable situation, and it would almost certainly wreck everything. Yet the temptation was strong nevertheless.

It was at the beginning of the sixth week of his enforced guardianship of the infant, while he was reading up on some of the weird and wonderful diseases to which baby FROBs were prone, his airlock telltale indicated a visitor. He got off the couch quickly and faced the opening seal, trying hard to look as if he hadn’t a worry in the world.

But it was only Caxton.

“I was expecting the Monitor,” said O’Mara.

Caxton grunted. “Hasn’t seen you yet, eh? Maybe he figures it would be a waste of time. After what we’ve told him he probably thinks the case is open and shut. He’ll have cuffs with him when he comes.”

O’Mara just looked at him. He was tempted to ask Caxton if the Corpsman had questioned Waring yet, but it was only a small temptation.

“My reason for coming,” said Caxton harshly, “is to find out about the water. Stores department tells me you’ve been requisitioning treble the amount of water that you could conceivably use. You starting an aquarium or something?”

Deliberately O’Mara avoided giving a direct answer. He said, “It’s time for the baby’s bath, would you like to watch?”

He bent down, deftly removed a section of floor plating and reached inside.

“What are you doing?” Caxton burst out. “Those are the gravity grids, you’re not allowed to touch—”

Suddenly the floor took on a thirty degree list. Caxton staggered against a wall, swearing. O’Mara straightened up, opened the inner seal of the airlock, then started up what was now a stiff gradient toward the bedroom. Still insisting loudly that O’Mara was neither allowed nor qualified to alter the artificial gravity settings, Caxton followed.

Inside, O’Mara said, “This is the spare food sprayer with the nozzle modified to project a high pressure jet of water.” He pointed the instrument and began to demonstrate, playing the jet against a small area of the infant’s hide. The subject of the demonstration was engaged in pushing what was left of one of O’Mara’s chairs into even more unrecognizable shapes, and ignored them.

“You can see,” O’Mara went on, “the area of skin where the food compound has hardened. This has to be washed at intervals because it clogs the being’s absorption mechanism in those areas, causing the food intake to drop. This makes a young Hudlarian very unhappy and, ah, noisy . . .

O’Mara trailed off into silence. He saw that Caxton wasn’t looking at the infant but was watching the water which rebounded from its hide streaming along the now steeply slanted bedroom door, across the living room and into the open airlock. Which was just as well, because O’Mara’s sprayer had uncovered a patch of the youngster’s hide which had a texture and color he had never seen before. Probably there was nothing to worry about, but it was better not to have Caxton see it and ask questions.

“What’s that up there?” said Caxton, pointing toward the bedroom ceiling.

In order to give the infant the petting it deserved O’Mara had had to knock together a system of levers, pulleys and counterweights and suspend the whole ungainly mass from the ceiling. He was rather proud of the gadget; it enabled him to administer a good, solid pat-a blow which would have instantly killed a human being-anywhere on that half ton carcass. But he doubted if Caxton would appreciate the gadget. Probably the section chief would swear that he was torturing the baby and forbid its use.

O’Mara started out of the bedroom. Over his shoulder he said, “Just lifting tackle.”

He dried up the wet patches of floor with a cloth which he threw into the now partly water filled airlock. His sandals and coveralls were wet so he threw them in, also, then he closed the inner seal and opened the outer. While the water was boiling off into the vacuum outside he readjusted the gravity grids so that the floor was flat and the wails vertical again, then he retrieved his sandals, coveralls and cloth which were now bone dry.

“You seem to have everything well organized,” said Caxton grudgingly as he fastened his helmet. “At least you’re looking after the youngster better than you did its parents. See it stays that way.

“The Monitor will be along to see you at hour nine tomorrow,” he added, and left.

O’Mara returned quickly to the bedroom for a closer look at the colored patch. It was a pale bluish gray and in that area the smooth, almost steel-hard surface of the skin had taken on a sort of crackle finish. O’Mara rubbed the patch gently and the FROB wriggled and gave a blast of sound that was vaguely interrogatory.

“You and me both,” said O’Mara absently. He couldn’t remember reading about anything like this, but then he had not read all the book yet. The sooner he did so the better.

The chief method of communicating between beings of different species was by means of a Translator, which electronically sorted and classified all sense-bearing sounds and reproduced them in the native language of its user. Another method, used when large amounts of accurate data of a more subjective nature had to be passed on, was the Educator tape system. This transferred bodily all the sensory impressions, knowledge and personality of one being into the mind of another. Coming a long way third both in popularity and accuracy was the written language which was somewhat extravagantly called Universal.

Universal was of use only to beings who possessed brains linked to optical receptors capable of abstracting knowledge from patterns of markings on a flat surface—in short, the printed page. While there were many species with this ability, the response to color in each species was very rarely matched. What appeared to be a bluish-gray patch to O’Mara might look like anything from yellow-gray to dirty purple to another being, and the trouble was that the other being might have been the author of the book.

One of the appendices gave a rough color-equivalent chart, but it was a tedious, time-consuming job checking back on it, and his knowledge of Universal was not perfect anyway.

Five hours later he was still no nearer diagnosing the FROB’s ailment, and the single blue-gray patch on its hide had grown to twice its original size and been joined by three more. He fed the infant, wondering anxiously whether that was the right thing to do in a case like this, then returned quickly to his studies.

According to the handbook there were literally hundreds of mild, short-lived diseases to which young Hudlarians were subject. This youngster had escaped them solely because it had been fed on tanked food compound and had avoided the air-borne bacteria so prevalent on its home planet. Probably this disease was nothing worse than the Hudlarian equivalent of a dose of measles, O’Mara told himself reassuringly, but it looked serious. At the next feeding the number of patches had grown to seven and they were a deeper, angrier blue, also the baby was continually slapping at itself with its appendages. Obviously the colored patches itched badly. Armed with this new datum O’Mara returned to the book.

And suddenly he found it. The symptoms were given as rough, discolored patches on the tegument with severe itching due to unabsorbed food particles. Treatment was to cleanse the irritated patches after each feed so as to kill the itching and let nature take care of the rest. The disease was a very rare one on Hudlar these days, the symptoms appeared with dramatic suddenness and it ran its course and disappeared equally quickly. Provided ordinary care was taken of the patient, the book stated, the disease was not dangerous.

O’Mara began converting the figures into his own time and size scale. As accurately as he could come to it the colored patches should grow t about eighteen inches across and he could expect anything up to twelve of them before they began to fade. This would occur, calculating from the time he had noticed the first spot, in approximately six hours.

He hadn’t a thing to worry about.

IV

At the conclusion of the next feeding O’Mara carefully sprayed the blue patches clean, but still the young FROB kept slapping furiously at itself and quivering ponderously. Like a kneeling elephant with six angrily waving trunks, he thought. O’Mara had another look at the book, but it still maintained that under ordinary conditions the disease was mild and short-lived, and that the only palliative treatment possible was rest and seeing that the affected areas were kept clean.

Kids, thought O’Mara distractedly, were a blasted worrisome thing . . . ! All that quivering and slapping looked wrong, common sense told him, and should be stopped. Maybe the infant was scratching through sheer force of habit, though the violence of the process made this seem doubtful, and a distraction of some kind would make it stop. Quickly O’Mara chose a fifty-pound weight and used his lifting tackle to swing it to the ceiling. He began raising and dropping it rhythmically over the spot which he had discovered gave the infant the most pleasure—an area two feet back of the hard, transparent membrane which protected its eyes. Fifty pounds dropping from a height of eight feet was a nice gentle pat to a Hudlarian.

Under the patting the FROB grew less violent in its movements. But as soon as O’Mara stopped it began lashing at itself worse than ever, and even running full tilt into walls and what was left of the furniture. During one frenzied charge it nearly escaped into the living room, and the only thing which stopped it was the fact that it was too big to go through the door. Up to that moment O’Mara did not realize how much weight the FROB had put on in five weeks.

Finally sheer fatigue made him give up. He left the FROB threshing and blundering about in the bedroom and threw himself onto the couch outside to try to think.

According to the book it was now time for the blue patches to begin to fade. But they weren’t fading—they had reached the maximum number of twelve and instead of being eighteen or less inches across they were nearly double that size. They were so large that at the next feeding the absorption area of the infant would have shrunk by a half, which meant that it would be further weakened by not getting enough food. And everyone knew that itchy spots should not be scratched if the condition was not to spread and become more serious . . .

A raucous foghorn note interrupted his thoughts. O’Mara had experience enough to know by the sound that the infant was badly frightened, and by the relative decrease in volume that it was growing weak as well.

He needed help badly, but O’Mara doubted very much if there was anyone available who could furnish it. Telling Caxton about it would be useless—the section chief would only call in Pelling and Pelling was much less informed on the subject of Hudlarian children than was O’Mara, who had been specializing in the subject for the past five weeks. That course would only waste time and not help the kid at all, and there was a strong possibility that—despite the presence of a Monitor investigator—Caxton would see to it that something pretty violent happened to O’Mara for allowing the infant to take sick, for that was the way the section chief would look at it.

Caxton didn’t like O’Mara. Nobody liked O’Mara.

If he had been well-liked on the project nobody would have thought of blaming him for the infant’s sickness, or immediately and unanimously assuming that he was the one responsible for the death of its parents. But he had made the decision to appear a pretty lousy character, and he had been too damned successful.

Maybe he really was a despicable person and that was why the role had come so easy to him. Perhaps the constant frustration of never having the chance to really use the brain which was buried in his ugly, muscle-bound body had gradually soured him, and the part he thought he was playing was the real O’Mara.

If only he had stayed clear of the Waring business. That was what had them really mad at him.

But this sort of thinking was getting him nowhere. The solution of his own problems lay-in part, at least-in showing that he was responsible, patient, kind and possessed the various other attributes which his fellow men looked on with respect. To do that he must first show that he could be trusted with the care of a baby.

He wondered suddenly if the Monitor could help. Not personally; a Corps psychologist officer could hardly be expected to know about obscure diseases of Hudlar children, but through his organization. As the Galaxy’s police, maid-of-all-work and supreme authority generally, the Monitor Corps would be able to find at short notice a being who would know the necessary answers. But again, that being would almost certainly be found on Hudlar itself, and the authorities there already knew of the orphaned infant’s position and help had probably been on the way for weeks. It would certainly arrive sooner than the Monitor could bring it. Help might arrive in time to save the infant. But again maybe it might not.

The problem was still O’Mara’s.

About as serious as a dose of measles.

But measles, in a human baby, could be very serious if the patient was kept in a cold room or in some other environment which, although not deadly in itself, could become lethal to an organism whose resistance was lowered by disease or lack of food. The handbook had prescribed rest, cleansing and nothing else. Or had it? There might be a large and well hidden assumption there. The kicker was that the patient under discussion was residing on its home world at the time of the illness. Under ordinary conditions like that the disease probably was mild and short-lived.

But O’Mara’s bedroom was not, for a Hudlarian baby with the disease, anything like normal conditions.

With that thought came the answer, if only he wasn’t too late to apply it. Abruptly O’Mara pushed himself out of the couch and hurried to the spacesuit locker. He was climbing into the heavy duty model when the communicator beeped at him.

“O’Mara,” Caxton’s voice brayed at him when he had acknowledged, “the Monitor wants to talk to you. It wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow but—”

“Thank you, Mr. Caxton,” broke in a quiet, firmer voice. There was a pause, then, “My name is Craythorne, Mr. O’Mara. I had planned to see you tomorrow as you know, but I managed to clear up some other work which left me time for a preliminary chat..

What, thought O’Mara fulminatingly, a damned awkward time you had to pick! He finished putting on the suit but left the gauntlets and helmet off. He began tearing into the panel which covered the air-supply controls.

To tell you the truth,” the quiet voice of the Monitor went on, your case is incidental to my main work here. My job is to arrange accommodation and so on for the various life-forms who will shortly be arriving to staff this hospital, and to do everything possible to avoid friction developing between them when they do come. There are a lot of finicky details to attend to, but at the moment I’m free. And I’m curious about you, O’Mara. I’d like to ask some questions.”

This is one smooth operator! thought one half of O’Mara’s mind. The other half noted that the air-supply controls were set to suit the conditions he had in mind. He left the panel hanging loose and began pulling up a floor section to get at the artificial gravity grid underneath. A little absently he said, “You’ll have to excuse me if I work while we talk. Caxton will explain—”

“I’ve told him about the kid,” Caxton broke in, “and if you think you’re fooling him by pretending to be the harassed mother type . . .

“I understand,” said the Monitor. “I’d also like to say that forcing you to live with an FROB infant when such a course was unnecessary comes under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment, and that about ten years should be knocked off your sentence for what you’ve taken this past five weeks—that is, of course, if you’re found guilty. And now, I always think it’s better to see who one is talking to. Can we have vision, please?”

The suddenness with which the artificial gravity grids switched from one to two Gs caught O’Mara by surprise. His arms folded under him and his chest thumped the floor. A frightened bawl from his patient in the next room must have disguised the noise he made from his listeners because they didn’t mention it. He did the great-grand-daddy of all pressups and heaved himself to his knees.

He fought to keep from gasping. “Sorry, my vision transmitter is on the blink.”

The Monitor was silent just long enough to let O’Mara know that he knew he was lying, and that he would disregard the lie for the moment. He said finally, “Well, at least you can see me,” and O’Mara’s vision plate

lit up.(

It showed a youngish man with close-cropped hair whose eyes seemed twenty years older than the rest of his features. The shoulder tabs of a Major were visible on the trim, dark-green tunic and the collar bone bore a caduceus. O’Mara thought that in different circumstances he would have liked this man.

“I’ve something to do in the next room,” O’Mara lied again. “Be with you in a minute.”

He began the job of setting the anti-gravity belt on his suit to two Gs repulsion, which would exactly counteract the floor’s present attraction and allow him to increase the pull to four Gs without too much discomfort to himself. He would then reset the belt for three Gs, and that would give him back a normal gravity apparent of one G.

At least that was what should have happened.

Instead the G-belt or the floor grids or both started producing half-G fluctuations, and the room went mad. It was like being in an express elevator which was constantly being started and stopped. The frequency of the surges built up rapidly until O’Mara was being shaken up and down so hard his teeth rattled. Before he could react to this a new and more devastating complication occurred. As well as variations in strength the floor grids were no longer acting at right angles to their surface, but yawed erratically from ten to thirty degrees from the vertical. No storm tossed ship had ever pitched and rolled as viciously as this. O’Mara staggered, grabbed frantically for the couch, missed and was flung heavily against the wall. The next surge sent him skidding against the opposite wall before he was able to switch off the G-belt.

The room settled down to a steady gravity-pull of two Gs again.

“Will this take long?” asked the Monitor suddenly.

O’Mara had almost forgotten the Major during the past hectic seconds. He did his best to make his voice sound both natural and as if it was coming from the next room as he replied, “It might. Could you call back later?”

“I’ll wait,” said the Monitor.

For the next few minutes O’Mara tried to forget the bruising he had received despite the protection given him by the heavy spacesuit, and concentrate on thinking his way out of this latest mess. He was beginning to see what must have happened.

When two anti-gravity generators of the same power and frequency were used close together, a pattern of interference was set up which affected the stability of both. The grids in O’Mara’s quarters were merely a temporary job and powered by a generator similar to the one used in his suit, though normally a difference in frequency was built in against the chance of such instability occurring. But O’Mara had been fiddling with the grid settings constantly for the past five weeks—every time the infant had a bath, to be exact-so that he must have unknowingly altered the frequency.

He didn’t know what he had done wrong and there wasn’t enough time to try fixing it if he had known. Gingerly, O’Mara switched on his G-belt again and slowly began increasing power. It registered over three quarters of a G before the first signs of instability appeared.

Four Gs less three-quarters made a little over three Gs. It looked, O’Mara thought grimly, like he was going to have to do this the hard way . . .

V

O’Mara closed his helmet quickly, then strung a cable from his suit mike to the communicator so that he would be able to talk without Caxton or the Monitor realizing that he was sealed inside his suit. If he was to have time to complete the treatment they must not suspect that there was anything out of the ordinary going on here. Next came the final adjustments to the air-pressure regulator and gravity grids.

Inside two minutes the atmosphere pressure in the two rooms had multiplied six times and the gravity apparent was four Gs-the nearest, in fact, that O’Mara could get to “ordinary conditions” for a Hudlarian. With shoulder muscles straining and cracking with the effort-for his under-powered G-belt took only three-quarters of a gravity off the four-G pull in the room—he withdrew the incredibly awkward and ponderous thing which his arm had become from the grid servicing space and rolled heavily onto his back.

He felt as if his baby was sitting on his chest, and large, black blotches hung throbbing before his eyes. Through them he could see a section of ceiling and, at a crazy angle, the vision panel. The face in it was becoming impatient.

“I’m back, Major,” gasped O’Mara. He fought to control his breathing so that the words would not be squeezed out too fast. “I suppose you want to hear my side of the accident?”

“No,” said the Monitor. “I’ve heard the tape Caxton made. What I’m curious about is your background prior to coming here. I’ve checked up and there is something which doesn’t quite fit..

A thunderous eruption of noise blasted into the conversation. Despite the deeper note caused by the increased air pressure O’Mara recognized the signal for what it was; the FROB was angry and hungry.

With a mighty effort O’Mara rolled onto his side, then propped himself up on his elbows. He stayed that way for a while gathering strength to roll over onto his hands and knees. But when he finally accomplished this he found that his arms and legs were swelling and felt as if they would burst from the pressure of blood piling up in them. Gasping, he eased himself down flat onto his chest. Immediately the blood rushed to the front of his body and his vision began to red out.

He couldn’t crawl on hands and knees nor wriggle on his stomach. Most certainly, under three Gs, he could not stand up and walk. What else was there?

O’Mara struggled onto his side again and rolled back, but this time with his elbows propping him up. The neck-rest of his suit supported his head, but the insides of the sleeves were very lightly padded and his elbows hurt. And the strain of holding up even part of his three times heavier than normal body made his heart pound. Worst of all, he was beginning to black out again.

Surely there must be some way to equalize, or at least distribute, the pressures in his body so that he could stay conscious and move. O’Mara tried to visualize the layout of the acceleration chairs which had been used in ships before artificial gravity came along. It had been a not-quite prone position, he remembered suddenly, with the knees drawn up . . .

Inching along on his elbows, bottom and feet, O’Mara progressed snail-like toward the bedroom. His embarrassment of riches where muscles were concerned was certainly of use now-in these conditions any ordinary man would have been plastered helplessly against the floor. Even so it took him fifteen minutes to reach the food sprayer in the bedroom, and during practically every second of the way the baby kept up its earsplitting racket. With the increased pressure the noise was so tremendously loud and deep that every bone in O’Mara’s body seemed to vibrate to it.

“I’m trying to talk to you!” the Monitor yelled during a lull. “Can’t you keep that blasted kid shut up!”

“It’s hungry,” said O’Mara. “It’ll quiet down when it’s fed . . .

The food sprayer was mounted on a trolley and O’Mara had fitted a pedal control so as to leave both hands free for aiming. Now that his patient was immobilized by four gravities he didn’t have to use his hands. Instead he was able to nudge the trolley into position with his shoulders and depress the pedal with his elbow. The high-pressure jet ten4ed to bend floorward owing to the extra gravity but he did finally manage to cover the infant with food. But cleaning the affected areas of food compound was another matter. The water jet, which handled very awkwardly from floor level, had no accuracy at all. The best he could manage was to wash down the wide, vivid blue patch-formed from three separate patches which had grown together—which covered nearly one quarter of its total skin area.

After that O’Mara straightened out his legs and lowered his back gently to the floor. Despite the three Gs acting on him, the strain of maintaining that half-sitting position for the last half hour made him feel almost comfortable.

The baby had stopped crying.

“What I was about to say,” said the Monitor heavily when the silence looked like lasting for a few minutes, “was that your record on previous jobs does not fit what I find here. Previously you were, as you are now, a restless, discontented type, but you were invariably popular with your colleagues and only a little less so with your superiors-this last being because your superiors were sometimes wrong and you never were . . .

“I was every bit as smart as they were,” said O’Mara tiredly, “and proved it often. But I didn’t look intelligent, I had mucker written all over me!”

It was strange, O’Mara thought, but he felt almost disinterested in his own personal trouble now. He couldn’t take his eyes off the angry blue patch on the infant’s side. The color had deepened and also the center of the patch seemed to have swelled. It was as if the super-hard tegument had softened and the FROB’s enormous internal pressure had produced a swelling. Increasing the gravity and pressure to the Hudlarian normal should, he hoped, halt that particular development—if it wasn’t a symptom of something else entirely.

O’Mara had thought of carrying his idea a step further and spraying the air around the patient with food compound. On Hudlar the natives’ food was comprised of tiny organisms floating in their super-thick atmosphere, but then again the handbook expressly stated that food particles must be kept away from the affected areas of tegument, so that the extra gravity and pressure should be enough . . .

Nevertheless,” the Monitor was saying, “if a similar accident had happened on one of your previous jobs, your story would have been believed. Even if it had been your fault they would have rallied around to defend you from outsiders like myself.

“What caused you to change from a friendly, likeable type of personality to this . . .

“I was bored,” said O’Mara shortly.

There had been no sound from the infant yet, but he had seen the characteristic movements of the FROB’s appendages which foretold of an outburst shortly to come. And it came. For the next ten minutes speech was, of course, impossible.

O’Mara heaved himself onto his side and rolled back onto his now raw and bleeding elbows. He knew what was wrong; the infant had missed its usual after-feed nursing. O’Mara humped his way slowly across to the two counterweight ropes of the gadget he had devised for petting the infant and prepared to remedy this omission. But the ends of the ropes hung four feet above the floor.

Lying propped by one elbow and straining to raise the dead weight of his other arm, O’Mara thought that the rope could just as easily have been four miles away. Sweat poured off his face and body with the intensity of the effort and slowly, trembling and wobbling so much that his gauntleted hand went past it first time, he reached up and grabbed hold. Still gripping it tightly he lowered himself gently back bringing the rope with him.

The gadget operated on a system of counterweights, so that there was no extra pull needed on the controlling ropes. A heavy weight dropped neatly onto the infant’s back, administering a reassuring pat. O’Mara rested for a few minutes, then struggled up to repeat the process with the other rope, the pull on which would also wind up the first weight ready for use again.

After about the eighth pat he found that he couldn’t see the end of the rope he was reaching for, though he managed to find it all the same. His head was being kept too high above the level of the rest of his body for too long a time and he was constantly on the point of blacking out. The diminished flow of blood to his brain was having other effects, too . . .

. . . There, there,” O’Mara heard himself saying in a definitely maudlin voice. “You’re all right now, pappy will take care of you. There now, shush . . .

The funny thing about it was that he really did feel a responsibility and a sort of angry concern for the infant. He had saved it once only to let this happen! Maybe the three Gs which jammed him against the floor, making every breath a day’s work and the smallest movement an operation which called for all the reserves of strength he possessed, was bringing back the memory of another kind of pressure—the slow, inexorable movement together of two large, inanimate and uncaring masses of metal.

The accident.

As fitter-in-charge of that particular shift O’Mara had just switched on the warning lights when he had seen the two adult Hudlarians chasing after their offspring on one of the faces being joined. He had called them through his translator, urging them to get to safety and leave him to chase the youngster clear-being much smaller than its parents the slowly closing faces would take longer to reach it, and during those extra few minutes O’Mara would have been able to herd it out of danger. But either their translators were switched off or they were reluctant to trust the safety of their child to a diminutive human being. Whatever the reason, they remained between the faces until it was too late. O’Mara had to watch helplessly as they were trapped and crushed by the joining structures.

The sight of the young one, still unharmed because of its smaller girth, floundering about between the bodies of its late parents sent O’Mara into belated action. He was able to chase it out of danger before the sections came close enough to trap it, and had just barely made it himself. For a few heart-stopping seconds back there O’Mara had thought he would have to leave a leg behind.

This was no place for kids anyway, he told himself angrily as he looked at the quivering, twitching body with the patches of vivid, scabrous blue. People shouldn’t be allowed to bring kids out here, even tough people like the Hudlarians.

But Major Craythorne was speaking again.

“. . . Judging by what I hear going on over there,” said the Monitor acidly, “you’re taking very good care of your charge. Keeping the youngster happy and healthy will definitely be a point in your favor . . .

Happy and healthy, thought O’Mara as he reached toward the rope yet again. Healthy . . .

But there are other considerations,” the quiet voice went on.

“Were you guilty of negligence in not switching on the warning lights until after the accident occurred, which is what you are alleged to have done? And your previous record notwithstanding, here you have been a surly, quarrelsome bully and your behavior toward Waring especially . . .

The Monitor broke off, looked faintly disapproving, then went on, “A few minutes ago you said that you did all these things because you were bored. Explain that.”

“Wait a minute, Major,” Caxton broke in, his face appearing suddenly behind Craythorne’s on the screen. “He’s stalling for some reason, I’m sure of it. All those interruptions, this gasping voice he’s using and this shush-a-bye-baby stuff is just an act to show what a great little nursemaid he is. I think I’ll go over and bring him back here to answer you face to face—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said O’Mara quickly. “I’ll answer any questions you want, right now.

He had a horrible picture of Caxton’s reaction if the other saw the infant in its present state; the sight of it made O’Mara feel queasy and he was used to it now. Caxton wouldn’t stop to think, or wait for explanations, or ask himself if it was fair to place an e-t in charge of a human who was completely ignorant of its physiology or weaknesses. He would just react. Violently.

And as for the Monitor . . .

O’Mara thought that he might get out of the accident part, but if the kid died as well he hadn’t a hope. The infant had had a mild though uncommon disease which should have responded to treatment days ago, and instead had become progressively worse, so it would die anyway if O’Mara’s last desperate try at reproducing its home planet’s conditions did not come off. What he needed now was time. According to the book, about four to six hours of it.

Suddenly the futility of it all hit him. The infant’s condition had not improved—it heaved and twitched and generally looked to be the most desperately ill and pitiable creature that had ever been born. O’Mara swore helplessly. What he was trying to do now should have been tried days ago, his baby was as good as dead, and continuing this treatment for another five or six hours would probably kill or cripple him for life. And it would serve him right!

VI

The infant’s appendages curled in the way O’Mara knew meant that it was going to cry again, and grimly he began pushing himself onto his elbows for another patting session. That was the very least he could do. And even though he was convinced that going on was useless, the kid had to be given the chance. O’Mara had to have time to finish the treatment without interruptions, and to insure that he would have to answer this Monitor’s questions in a full and satisfactory manner. If the kid started crying again he wouldn’t be able to do that.

For your kind cooperation,” the Major was saying dryly. “First off, I want an explanation for your sudden change of personality.”

“I was bored,” said O’Mara. “Hadn’t enough to do. Maybe I’d become a bit of a sorehead, too. But the main reason for setting out to be a lousy character was that there was a job I could do here which could not be done by a nice guy. I’ve studied a lot and think of myself as a pretty good rule-of-thumb psychologist . . .

Suddenly came disaster. O’Mara’s supporting elbow slipped as he was reaching for the counterweight rope and he crashed back to the floor from a distance of two-and-a-half feet. At three Gs this was equivalent to a fall of seven feet. Luckily he was in a heavy duty suit with a padded helmet so he did not lose consciousness. But he did cry out, and instinctively held onto the rope as he fell.

That was his mistake.

One weight dropped, the other swung up too far. It hit the ceiling with a crash and loosened the bracket which supported the light metal girder which carried it. The whole structure began to sag, and slip, then was suddenly yanked floorward by four Gs onto the infant below. In his dazed state O’Mara could not guess at the amount of force expended on the infant-whether it was a harder than usual pat, the equivalent of a sharp smack on the bottom, or something very much more serious. The baby was very quiet afterward, which worried him.

For the third time,” shouted the Monitor, “what the blazes is going on in there?”

O’Mara muttered something which was unintelligible even to himself. Then Caxton joined in.

“There’s something fishy going on, and I bet it involves the kid! I’m going over to see—” “No wait!” said O’Mara desperately. “Give me six hours . . .” “I’ll see you,” said Caxton, “in ten minutes.” “Caxton!” O’Mara shouted, “if you come through my airlock you’ll kill me! I’ll have the inner seal jammed open and if you open the outer one you’ll evacuate the place. Then the Major will lose his prisoner.”

There was a sudden silence, then:

“What,” asked the Monitor quietly, “do you want the six hours for?”

O’Mara tried to shake his head to clear it, but now that it weighed three times heavier than normal he only hurt his neck. What did he want six hours for? Looking around him he began to wonder, because both the food sprayer and its connecting water tank had been wrecked by the fall of tackle from the ceiling. He could neither feed, wash, nor scarcely see his patient for fallen wreckage, so all he could do for six hours was watch and wait for a miracle.

“I’m going over,” said Caxton doggedly.

“You’re not,” said the Major, still polite but with a no-nonsense tone. “I want to get to the bottom of this. You’ll wait outside until I’ve spoken with O’Mara alone. Now O’Mara, what . . . is . . . happening?”

Flat on his back again O’Mara fought to gain enough breath to carry on an extended conversation. He had decided that the best thing to do would be to tell the Monitor the exact truth, and then appeal to him to back O’Mara up in the only way possible which might save the infant—by leaving him alone for six hours. But O’Mara was feeling very low as he talked, and his vision was so poor that he couldn’t tell sometimes whether his eyelids were open or shut. He did see someone hand the Major a note, but Craythorne didn’t read it until O’Mara had finished speaking.

“You are in a mess,” Craythorne said finally. He briefly looked sympathetic, then his tone hardened again. “And ordinarily I should be forced to do as you suggest and give you that six hours. After all, you have the book and so you know more than we do. But the situation has changed in the last few minutes. I’ve just had word that two Hudlarians have arrived, one of them a doctor. You had better step down, O’Mara. You tried, but now let some skilled help salvage what they can from the situation. For the kid’s sake,” he added.

It was three hours later. Caxton, Waring and O’Mara were facing the Major across the Monitor’s desk. Craythorne had just come in.

He said briskly, “I’m going to be busy for the next few days so we’ll get this business settled quickly. First, the accident. O’Mara, your case depends entirely on Waring’s corroboration for your story. Now there seems to be some pretty devious thinking here on your part. I’ve already heard Waring’s evidence, but to satisfy my own curiosity I’d like to know what you think he said?”

“He backed up my story,” said O’Mara wearily. “He had no choice.”

He looked down at his hands, still thinking about the desperate sick infant he had left in his quarters. He told himself again that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened, but deep inside he felt that if he had shown more flexibility of mind and had started the pressure treatment sooner the kid would have been all right now. But the result of the accident enquiry didn’t seem to matter now, one way or the other, and neither did the Waring business.

“Why do you think he had no choice?” prodded the Monitor sharply.

Caxton had his mouth open, looking confused. Waring would not meet O’Mara’s eyes and he was beginning to blush.

“When I came here,” O’Mara said dully, “I was looking out for a secondary job to fill my spare time, and hounding Waring was it. He is the reason for my being an obnoxious type, that was the only way I could go to work on him. But to understand that you have to go a bit further back. Because of that power pile accident,” O’Mara went on, “all the men of his section were very much in Waring’s debt—you’ve probably heard the details by now. Waring himself was a mess. Physically he was below par—had to get shots to keep his blood-count up, was just about strong enough to work his control console, and was fairly wallowing in self-pity. Psychologically he was a wreck. Despite all Pelling’s assurances that the shots would only be necessary for a few more months he was convinced that he had pernicious anemia. He also believed that he had been made sterile, again despite everything the doctor told him, and this conviction made him act and talk in a way which would give any normal man the creeps—because that sort of thing is pathological and there wasn’t anything like that wrong with him. When I saw how things were I started to ridicule him every chance I got. I hounded him unmercifully. So the way I see it he had no other choice but to support my story. Simple gratitude demanded it.”

“I begin to see the light,” said the Major. “Go on.”

“The men around him were very much in his debt,” O’Mara continued. “But instead of putting the brakes on, or giving him a good talking to, they smothered him with sympathy. They let him win all fights, card games or whatever, and generally treated him like a little tin god. I did none of these things. Whenever he lisped or stuttered or was awkward about anything,” O’Mara went on, “whether it was due to one of his mental and self-inflicted disabilities or a physical one which he honestly couldn’t help, I jumped on him hard with both feet. Maybe I was too hard sometimes, but remember that I was one man trying to undo the harm that was being done by fifty. Naturally he hated my guts, but he always knew exactly where he was with me. And I never pulled punches. On the very few occasions when he was able to get the better of me, he knew that he had won despite everything I could do to stop him—unlike his friends who let him beat them at everything and in so doing made his winning meaningless. That was exactly what he needed for what ailed him, somebody to treat him as an equal and made no allowances at all. So when this trouble came,” O’Mara ended, “I was pretty sure he would begin to see what I’d been doing for him—consciously as well as subconsciously—and that simple gratitude plus the fact that basically he is a decent type would keep him from withholding the evidence which would clear me. Was I right?”

“You were,” said the Major. He paused to quell Caxton who had jumped to his feet, protesting, then continued, “Which brings us to the FROB infant.

“Apparently your baby caught one of the mild but rare diseases which can only be treated successfully on the home planet,” Craythorne went on. He smiled suddenly. “At least, that was what they thought until a few hours ago. Now our Hudlarian friends state that the proper treatment has already been initiated by you and that all they have to do is wait for a couple of days and the infant will be as good as new. But they’re very annoyed with you, O’Mara,” the Monitor continued. “They say that you’ve rigged special equipment for petting and soothing the kid and that you’ve done this much more often than is desirable. The baby has been overfed and spoiled shamelessly, they say, so much so that at the moment it prefers human beings to members of its own species—”

Suddenly Caxton banged the desk. “You’re not going to let him get away with this,” he shouted, red-faced. “Waring doesn’t know what he’s saying sometimes..

“Mr. Caxton,” said the Monitor sharply, “All the evidence available proves that Mr. O’Mara is blameless, both at the time of the accident and while he was looking after the infant later. However, I am not quite finished with him here, so perhaps you two would be good enough to leave . . .

Caxton stormed out, followed more slowly by Waring. At the door the tractor-beam man paused, addressed one printable and three unprintable words to O’Mara, grinned suddenly and left. The Major sighed.

“O’Mara,” he said sternly, “you’re out of a job again, and while I don’t as a rule give unasked for advice I would like to remind you of a few facts. In a few weeks time the staff and maintenance engineers for this hospital will be arriving and they will be comprised of practically every known species in the galaxy. My job is to settle them in and keep friction from developing between them so that eventually they will work together as a team. No text-book rules have been written to cover this sort of thing yet, but before they sent me here my superiors said that it would require a good rule-of-thumb psychologist with plenty of common sense who was not afraid to take calculated risks. I think it goes without saying that two such psychologists would be even better . . .”

O’Mara was listening to him all right, but he was thinking of that grin he’d got from Waring. Both the infant and Waring were going to be all right now, he knew, and in his present happy state of mind he could refuse nothing to anybody. But apparently the Major had mistaken his abstraction for something else.

“. . .Dammit I’m offering you a job! You fit here, can’t you see that? This is a hospital, man, and you’ve cured our first patient . . .

Chapter 2

SECTOR GENERAL

Like a sprawling, misshapen Christmas tree the lights of SectorTwelveGeneralHospital blazed against the misty backdrop of the stars. From its view-ports shone lights that were yellow and red-orange and soft, liquid green, and others which were a searing actinic blue. There was darkness in places also. Behind these areas of opaque metal plating lay sections wherein the lighting was so viciously incandescent that the eyes of approaching ships’ pilots had to be protected from it, or compartments which were so dark and cold that not even the light which filtered in from the stars could be allowed to penetrate to their inhabitants.

To the occupants of the Telfi ship which slid out of hyper-space to hang some twenty miles from this mighty structure, the garish display of visual radiation was too dim to be detected without the use of instruments. The Telfi were energy-eaters. Their ship’s hull shone with a crawling blue glow of radioactivity and its interior was awash with a high level of hard radiation which was also in all respects normal. Only in the stern section of the tiny ship were the conditions not normal. Here the active core of a power pile lay scattered in small, sub critical and unshielded masses throughout the ship’s Planetary Engines room, and here it was too hot even for the Telfi.

The group-mind entity that was the Telfi spaceship Captain-and Crew-energized its short-range communicator and spoke in the staccato clicking and buzzing language used to converse with those benighted beings who were unable to merge into a Telfi gestalt.

“This is a Telfi hundred-unit gestalt,” it said slowly and distinctly.

“We have casualties and require assistance. Our Classification to one group is VTXM, repeat VTXM . . .

“Details, please, and degree of urgency,” said a voice briskly as the Telfi was about to repeat the message. It was translated into the same language used by the Captain. The Telfi gave details quickly, then waited. Around it and through it lay the hundred specialized units that were both its mind and multiple body. Some of the units were blind, deaf and perhaps even dead cells that received or recorded no sensory impressions whatever, but there were others who radiated waves of such sheer, excruciating agony that the group-mind writhed and twisted silently in sympathy. Would that voice never reply, they wondered, and if it did, would it be able to help them . . . ?

“You must not approach the Hospital nearer than a distance of five miles,” said the voice suddenly. “Otherwise there will be danger to unshielded traffic in the vicinity, or to beings within the establishment with low radiation tolerance.”

“We understand,” said the Telfi.

“Very well,” said the voice. “You must also realize that your race is too hot for us to handle directly. Remote controlled mechanisms are already on the way to you, and it would ease the problem of evacuation if you arranged to have your casualties brought as closely as possible to the ship’s largest entry port. If this cannot be done, do not worry—we have mechanisms capable of entering your vessel and removing them.”

The voice ended by saying that while they hoped to be able to help the patients, any sort of accurate prognosis was impossible at the present time.

The Telfi gestalt thought that soon the agony that tortured its mind and wide-flung multiple body would be gone, but so also would nearly one quarter of that body . . .

With that feeling of happiness possible only with eight hours sleep behind, a comfortable breakfast within and an interesting job in front of one, Conway stepped out briskly for his wards. They were not really his wards, of course—if anything went seriously wrong in one of them the most he would be expected to do would be to scream for help. But considering the fact that he had been here only two months he did not mind that, or knowing that it would be a long time before he could be trusted to deal with cases requiring other than mechanical methods of treatment.

Complete knowledge of any alien physiology could be obtained within minutes by Educator tape, but the skill to use that knowledge—especially in surgery—came only with time. Conway was looking forward with conscious pride to spending his life acquiring that skill.

At an intersection Conway saw an FGLJ he knew-a Tralthan intern who was humping his elephantine body along on six spongy feet. The stubby legs seemed even more rubbery than usual and the little OTSB who lived in symbiosis with it was practically comatose. Conway said brightly, “Good morning,” and received a translated—and therefore necessarily emotionless-reply of “Drop dead.” Conway grinned.

There had been considerable activity in and about Reception last evening. Conway had not been called, but it looked as though the Tralthan had missed both his recreation and rest periods.

A few yards beyond the Tralthan he met another who was walking slowly alongside a small DBDG like himself. Not entirely like himself, though—DBDG was the one-group classification which gave the grosser physical attributes, the number of arms, heads, legs, etc., and their placement. The fact that the being had seven-fingered hands, stood only four feet tall and looked like a very cuddly teddy bear—Conway had forgotten the being’s system of origin, but remembered being told that it came from a world which had suffered a sudden bout of glaciation which had caused its highest life-form to develop intelligence and a thick red fur coat—would not have shown up unless the Classification were taken to two or three groups. The DBDG had his hands clasped behind his back and was staring with vacant intensity at the floor. His hulking companion showed similar concentration, but favored the ceiling because of the different position of his visual organs. Both wore their professional insignia on golden armbands, which meant that they were lordly Diagnosticians, no less. Conway refrained from saying good morning to them as he passed, or from making undue noise with his feet.

Possibly they were deeply immersed in some medical problem, Conway thought, or equally likely, they had just had a tiff and were pointedly ignoring each other’s existence. Diagnosticians were peculiar people. It wasn’t that they were insane to begin with, but their job forced a form of insanity onto them.

At each corridor intersection annunciators had been pouring out an alien gabble which he had only half heard in passing, but when it switched suddenly to Terran English and Conway heard his own name being called, surprise halted him dead in his tracks.

To Admittance Lock Twelve at once,” the voice was repeating monotonously. “Classification VTXM-23. Dr. Conway, please go to Admittance Lock Twelve at once. A VTXM-23 . . .

Conway’s first thought was that they could not possibly mean him. This looked as if he was being asked to deal with a case-a big one, too, because the “23” after the classification code referred to the number of patients to be treated. And that Classification, VTXM, was completely new to him. Conway knew what the letters stood for, of course, but he had never thought that they could exist in that combination. The nearest he could make of them was some form of telepathic species-the V prefixing the classification showed this as their most important attribute, and that mere physical equipment was secondary—who existed by the direct conversion of radiant energy, and usually as a closely cooperative group or gestalt. While he was still wondering if he was ready to cope with a case like this, his feet had turned and were taking him toward Lock Twelve.

His patients were waiting for him at the lock, in a small metal box heaped around with lead bricks and already loaded onto a power stretcher carrier. The orderly told him briefly that the beings called themselves the Telfi, that preliminary diagnosis indicated the use of the Radiation Theater, which was being readied for him, and that owing to the portability of his patients he could save time by calling with them to the Educator room and leaving them outside while he took his Telfi physiology tape.

Conway nodded thanks, hopped onto the carrier and set it moving, trying to give the impression that he did this sort of thing every day.

In Conway’s pleasurable but busy life with the high unusual establishment that was Sector General there was only one sour note, and he met it again when he entered the Educator room: there was a Monitor in charge. Conway disliked Monitors. The presence of one affected him rather like the close proximity of a carrier of a contagious disease. And while Conway was proud of the fact that as a sane, civilized and ethical being he could never bring himself actually to hate anybody or anything, he disliked Monitors intensely. He knew, of course, that there were people who went off the beam sometimes, and that there had to be somebody who could take the action necessary to preserve the peace. But with his abhorrence of violence in any form, Conway could not like the men who took that action.

And what were Monitors doing in a hospital anyway?

The figure in neat, dark green coveralls seated before the Educator control console turned quickly at his entrance and Conway got another shock. As well as a Major’s insignia on his shoulder, the Monitor wore the Staff and Serpents emblem of a Doctor!

“My name is O’Mara,” said the Major in a pleasant voice. “I’m the Chief Psychologist of this madhouse. You, I take it, are Dr. Conway.” He smiled.

Conway made himself smile in return, knowing that it looked forced, and that the other knew it also.

“You want the Telfi tape,” O’Mara said, a trifle less warmly. “Well, Doctor, you’ve picked a real weirdie this time. Be sure you get it erased as soon as possible after the job is done-believe me, this isn’t one you’ll want to keep. Thumb-print this and sit over there.”

While the Educator head-band and electrodes were being fitted, Conway tried to keep his face neutral, and keep from flinching away from the Major’s hard, capable hands. O’Mara’s hair was a dull, metallic gray in color, cut short, and his eyes also had the piercing qualities of metal. Those eyes had observed his reactions, Conway knew, and now an equally sharp mind was forming conclusions regarding them.

“Well, that’s it,” said O’Mara when finally it was all over. “But before you go, Doctor, I think you and I should have a little chat; a re-orientation talk, let’s call it. Not now, though, you’ve got a case—but very soon.

Conway felt the eyes boring into his back as he left.

He should have been trying to make his mind a blank as he had been told to do, so the knowledge newly impressed there could bed down comfortably, but all Conway could think about was the fact that a Monitor was a high member of the hospital’s permanent staff-and a doctor, to boot. How could the two professions mix? Conway thought of the armband he wore which bore the Tralthan Black and Red Circle, the Flaming Sun of the chlorine-breathing Illensa and intertwining Serpents and Staff of Earth—all the honored symbols of Medicine of the three chief races of the Galactic Union. And here was this Dr. O’Mara whose collar said he was a healer and whose shoulder tabs said he was something else entirely.

One thing was now sure: Conway would never feel really content here again until he discovered why the Chief Psychologist of the hospital was a Monitor.

II

This was Conway’s first experience of an alien physiology tape, and he noted with interest the mental double vision which had increasingly begun to affect his mind—a sure sign that the tape had “taken.” By the time he had reached the Radiation Theater, he felt himself to be two people—an Earth-human called Conway and the great, five-hundred unit Telfi gestalt which had been formed to prepare a mental record of all that was known regarding the physiology of that race. That was the only disadvantage—if it was a disadvantage—of the Educator Tape system. Not only was knowledge impressed on the mind undergoing “tuition,” the personalities of the entities who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. Small wonder then that the Diagnosticians, who held in their mind sometimes as many as ten different tapes, were a little bit queer.

A Diagnostician had the most important job in the hospital, Conway thought, as he donned radiation armor and readied his patients for the preliminary examination. He had sometimes thought in his more self-confident moments of becoming one himself. Their chief purpose was to perform original work in xenological medicine and surgery, using their tape-stuffed brains as a jumping-off ground, and to rally round, when a case arrived for which there was no physiology tape available, to diagnose and prescribe treatment.

Not for them were the simple, mundane injuries and diseases. For a Diagnostician to look at a patient that patient had to be unique, hopeless and at least three-quarters dead. When one did take charge of a case though, the patient was as good as cured—they achieved miracles with monotonous regularity.

With the lower orders of doctor there was always the temptation, Conway knew, to keep the contents of a tape rather than have it erased, in the hope of making some original discovery that would bring them fame. In practical, level—headed men like himself, however, it remained just that, a temptation.

Conway did not see his tiny patients even though he examined them individually. He couldn’t unless he went to a lot of unnecessary trouble with shielding and mirrors to do so. But he knew what they were like, both inside and out, because the tape had practically made him one of them. That knowledge, taken together with the results of his examinations and the case history supplied him, told Conway everything he wanted to know to begin treatment.

His patients had been part of a Telfi gestalt engaged in operating an interstellar cruiser when there had been an accident in one of the power piles. The small, beetle-like and—individually—very stupid beings were radiation eaters, but that flare-up had been too much even for them. Their trouble could be classed as an extremely severe case of over-eating coupled with prolonged over-stimulation of their sensory equipment, especially of the pain centers. If he simply kept them in a shielded container and starved them of radiation-a course of treatment impossible on their highly radioactive ship—about seventy percent of them could be expected to cure themselves in a few hours. They would be the lucky ones, and Conway could even tell which of them came into that category. Those remaining would be a tragedy because if they did not suffer actual physical death their fate would be very much worse: they would lose the ability to join minds, and that in a Telfi was tantamount to being a hopeless cripple.

Only someone who shared the mind, personality and instincts of a Telfi, could appreciate the tragedy it was.

It was a great pity, especially as the case history showed that it was these individuals who had forced themselves to adapt and remain operative during that sudden flare of radiation for the few seconds necessary to scatter the pile and so save their ship from complete destruction. Now their metabolism had found a precarious balance based on three times the Telfi normal energy intake. If this intake of energy was interrupted for any lengthy period of time, say a few more hours, the communications centers of their brains would suffer. They would be left like so many dismembered hands and feet, with just enough intelligence to know that they had been cut off. On the other hand, if their upped energy-intake was continued they would literally burn themselves out within a week.

But there was a line of treatment indicated for these unfortunates, the only one, in fact. As Conway prepared his servos for the work ahead he felt that it was a highly unsatisfactory line—a matter of calculated risks, of cold, medical statistics which nothing he could do would influence. He felt himself to be little more than a mechanic.

Working quickly, he ascertained that sixteen of his patients were suffering from the Telfi equivalent of acute indigestion. These he separated into shielded, absorbent bottles so that re-radiation from their still “hot” bodies would not slow the “starving” process. The bottles he placed in a small pile furnace set to radiate at Telfi normal, with a detector in each which would cause the shielding to fall away from them as soon as their excess radioactivity had gone. The remaining seven would require special treatment. He had placed them in another pile, and was setting the controls to simulate as closely as possible the conditions which had obtained during the accident in their ship, when the nearby communicator beeped at him. Conway finished what he was doing, checked it, then said “Yes?”

“This is Enquiries, Dr. Conway. We’ve had a signal from the Telfi ship asking about their casualties. Have you any news for them yet?”

Conway knew that his news was not too bad, considering, but he wished intensely that it could be better. The breaking up or modification of a Telfi gestalt once formed could only be likened to a death trauma to the entities concerned, and with the empathy which came as a result of absorbing their physiology tape Conway felt for them. He said carefully, “Sixteen of them will be good as new in roughly four hours time. The other seven will be fifty percent fatalities, I’m afraid, but we won’t know which for another few days. I have them baking in a pile at over double their normal radiation requirements, and this will gradually be reduced to normal. Half of them should live through it. Do you understand?”

“Got you.” After a few minutes the voice returned. It said, “The Telfi say that is very good, and thank you. Out.”

He should have been pleased at dealing successfully with his first case, but Conway somehow felt let down. Now that it was over his mind felt strangely confused. He kept thinking that fifty percent of seven was three and a half, and what would they do with the odd half Telfi? He hoped that four would pull through instead of three, and that they would not be mental cripples. He thought that it must be nice to be a Telfi, to soak up radiation all the time, and the rich and varied impressions of a corporate body numbering perhaps hundreds of individuals. It made his body feel somehow cold and alone. It was an effort to drag himself away from the warmth of the Radiation Theater.

Outside he mounted the carrier and left it back at the admittance lock. The right thing to do now was to report to the Educator room and have the Telfi tape erased—he had been ordered to do that, in fact. But he did not want to go; the thought of O’Mara made him intensely uncomfortable, even a little afraid. Conway knew that all Monitors made him feel uncomfortable, but this was different. It was O’Mara’s attitude, and that little chat he had mentioned. Conway had felt small, as if the Monitor was his superior in some fashion, and for the life of him Conway could not understand how he could feel small before a lousy Monitor!

The intensity of his feelings shocked him; as a civilized, well integrated being he should be incapable of thinking such thoughts. His emotions had verged upon actual hatred. Frightened of himself this time, Conway brought his mind under a semblance of control. He decided to side-step the question and not report to the Educator room until after he had done the rounds of his wards. It was a legitimate excuse if O’Mara should query the delay, and the Chief Psychologist might leave or be called away in the meantime. Conway hoped so.

His first call was on an AUGL from Chalderescol II, the sole occupant of the ward reserved for that species. Conway climbed into the appropriate protective garment-a simple diving suit in this instance—and went through the lock into the tank of green, tepid water which reproduced the being’s living conditions. He collected the instruments from the locker inside, then loudly signaled his presence. If the Chalder was really asleep down there and he startled it the results could be serious. One accidental flick of that tail and the ward would contain two patients instead of one.

The Chalder was heavily plated and scaled, and slightly resembled a forty-foot-long crocodile except that instead of legs there was an apparently haphazard arrangement of stubby fins and a fringe of ribbon-like tentacles encircling its middle. It drifted limply near the bottom of the huge tank, the only sign of life being the periodic fogging of the water around its gills. Conway gave it a perfunctory examination—he was way behind time due to the Telfi job—and asked the usual question. The answer came through the water in some unimaginable form to Conway’s translator attachment and into his phones as slow, toneless speech.

“I am grievously ill,” said the Chalder, “I suffer.”

You lie, thought Conway silently, in all six rows of your teeth! Dr. Lister, Sector General’s Director and probably the foremost Diagnostician of the day, had practically taken this Chalder apart. His diagnosis had been hypochondria and the condition incurable. He had further stated that the signs of strain in certain sections of the patient’s body plating, and its discomfort in those areas, were due simply to the big so-and-so’s laziness and gluttony. Anybody knew that an exoskeletal life-form could not put on weight except from inside! Diagnosticians were not noted for their bedside manners.

The Chalder became really ill only when it was in danger of being sent home, so the Hospital had acquired a permanent patient. But it did not mind. Visiting as well as Staff medics and psychologists had given it a going over, and continued to do so; also all the interns and nurses of all the multitudinous races represented on the hospital’s staff. Regularly and at short intervals it was probed, pried into and unmercifully pounded by trainees of varying degrees of gentleness, and it loved every minute of it. The hospital was happy with the arrangement and so was the Chalder. Nobody mentioned going home to it anymore.

III

Conway paused for a moment as he swam to the top of the great tank; he felt peculiar. His next call was supposed to be on two methane breathing life-forms in the lower temperature ward of his section, and he felt strongly loath to go. Despite the warmth of the water and the heat of his exertions while swimming around his massive patient he felt cold, and he would have given anything to have a bunch of students come flapping into the tank just for the company. Usually Conway did not like company, especially that of trainees, but now he felt cut-off, alone and friendless. The feelings were so strong they frightened him. A talk with a psychologist was definitely indicated, he thought, though not necessarily with O’Mara.

The construction of the hospital in this section resembled a heap of spaghetti-straight, bent and indescribably curved pieces of spaghetti. Each corridor containing an Earth-type atmosphere, for instance, was paralleled above, below and on each side—as well as being crossed above and below at frequent intervals—by others having different and mutually deadly variations of atmosphere, pressure and temperature. This was to facilitate the visiting of any given patient-species by any other species of doctor in the shortest possible time in case of emergency, because traveling the length of the hospital in a suit designed to protect a doctor against his patient’s environment on arrival was both uncomfortable and slow. It had been found more efficient to change into the necessary protective suit outside the wards being visited, as Conway had done.

Remembering the geography of this section Conway knew that there was a shortcut he could use to get to his frigid-blooded patients—along the water filled corridor which led to the Chalder operating theater, through the lock into the chlorine atmosphere of the Illensan PVSJs and up two levels to the methane ward. This way would mean his staying in warm water for a little longer, and he was definitely feeling cold.

A convalescent PVSJ rustled past him on spiny, membranous appendages in the chlorine section and Conway found himself wanting desperately to talk to it, about anything. He had to force himself to go on.

The protective suit worn by DBDGs like himself while visiting the methane ward was in reality a small mobile tank. It was fitted with heaters inside to keep its occupant alive and refrigerators outside so that the leakage of heat would not immediately shrivel the patients to whom the slightest glow of radiant heat—or even light—was lethal. Conway had no idea how the scanner he used in the examinations worked-only those gadget-mad beings with the Engineering armbands knew that-except that it wasn’t by infrared. That also was too hot for them.

As he worked Conway turned the heaters up until the sweat rolled off him and still he felt cold. He was suddenly afraid. Suppose he had caught something? When he was outside in air again he looked at the tiny tell-tale that was surgically embedded on the inner surface of his forearm. His pulse, respiration and endocrine balance were normal except for the minor irregularities caused by his worrying, and there was nothing foreign in his bloodstream. What was wrong with him?

Conway finished his rounds as quickly as possible. He felt confused again. If his mind was playing tricks on him he was going to take the necessary steps to rectify the matter. It must be something to do with the Telfi tape he had absorbed. O’Mara had said something about it, though he could not remember exactly what at the moment. But he would go to the Educator room right away, O’Mara or no O’Mara.

Two Monitors passed him while he was on the way, both armed. Conway knew that he should feel his usual hostility toward them, also shock that they were armed inside a hospital, and he did, but he also wanted to slap their backs or even hug them: he desperately wanted to have people around, talking and exchanging ideas and impressions so that he would not feel so terribly alone. As they drew level with him Conway managed to get out a shaky “Hello.” It was the first time he had spoken to a Monitor in his life.

One of the Monitors smiled slightly, the other nodded. Both gave him odd looks over their shoulders as they passed because his teeth were chattering so much.

His intention of going to the Educator room had been clearly formed, but now it did not seem to be such a good idea. It was cold and dark there with all those machines and shaded lighting, and the only company might be O’Mara. Conway wanted to lose himself in a crowd, and the bigger the better. He thought of the nearby dining hall and turned toward it. Then at an intersection he saw a sign reading “Diet Kitchen, Wards 52 to 68, Species DBDG, DBLF & FGLI.” That made him remember how terribly cold he felt . . .

The Dietitians were too busy to notice him. Conway picked an oven which was fairly glowing with heat and lay down against it, letting the germ-killing ultraviolet which flooded the place bathe him and ignoring the charred smell given off by his light clothing. He felt warmer now, a little warmer, but the awful sense of being utterly and completely alone would not leave him. He was cut off, unloved and unwanted. He wished that he had never been born.

When a Monitor-one of the two he had recently passed whose curiosity had been aroused by Conway’s strange behavior—wearing a hastily borrowed heat suit belonging to one of the Cook-Dietitians got to him a few minutes later, the big, slow tears were running down Conway’s cheeks . . .

“You,” said a well-remembered voice, “are a very lucky and very stupid young man.”

Conway opened his eyes to find that he was on the Erasure couch and that O’Mara and another Monitor were looking down at him. His back felt as though it had been cooked medium rare and his whole body stung as if with a bad dose of sunburn. O’Mara was glaring furiously at him, he spoke again.

“Lucky not to be seriously burned and blinded, and stupid because you forgot to inform me on one very important point, namely that this was your first experience with the Educator . . .”

O’Mara’s tone became faintly self-accusatory at this point, but only faintly. He went onto say that had he been thus informed he would have given Conway a hypno-treatment which would have enabled the doctor to differentiate between his own needs and those of the Telfi sharing his mind. He only realized that Conway was a first-timer when he filed the thumb-printed slip, and dammit how was he to know who was new and who wasn’t in a place this size! And anyway, if Conway had thought more of his job and less of the fact that a Monitor was giving him the tape, this would never have happened.

Conway, O’Mara continued bitingly, appeared to be a self-righteous bigot who made no pretense at hiding his feelings of defilement at the touch of an uncivilized brute of a Monitor. How a person intelligent enough to gain appointment to this hospital could also hold those sort of feelings was beyond O’Mara’s understanding.

Conway felt his face burning. It had been stupid of him to forget to tell the psychologist that he was a first-timer. O’Mara could easily bring charges of personal negligence against him-a charge almost as serious as carelessness with a patient in a multi-environment hospital-and have Conway kicked out. But that possibility did not weigh too heavily with him at the moment, terrible though it was. What got him was the fact that he was being told off by a Monitor, and before another Monitor!

The man who must have carried him here was gazing down at him, a look of half-humorous concern in his steady brown eyes. Conway found that harder to take even than O’Mara’s abusiveness. How dare a Monitor feel sorry for him!

. . . And if you’re still wondering what happened,” O’Mara was saying in withering tones, “you allowed—through inexperience, I admit—the Telfi personality contained in the tape to temporarily overcome your own. Its need for hard radiation, intense heat and light and above all the mental fusion necessary to a group-mind entity, became your needs—transferred into their nearest human equivalents, of course. For a while you were experiencing life as a single Telfi being, and an individual Telfi—cut off from all mental contact with the others of its group—is an unhappy beastie indeed.”

O’Mara had cooled somewhat as his explanation proceeded. His voice was almost impersonal as he went on, “You’re suffering from little more than a bad case of sunburn. Your back will be tender for a while and later it will itch. Serves you right. Now go away. I don’t want to see you again until hour nine the day after tomorrow. Keep that hour free. That’s an order—we have to have a little talk, remember?”

Outside in the corridor Conway had a feeling of complete deflation coupled with an anger that threatened to burst out of all control—an intensely frustrating combination. In all his twenty-three years of life he

could not remember being subjected to such extreme mental discomfort. f He had been made to feel like a small boy—a bad, maladjusted small

boy. Conway had always been a very good, well-mannered boy. It hurt.

He had not noticed that his rescuer was still beside him until the other spoke.

“Don’t go worrying yourself about the Major,” the Monitor said sympathetically. “He’s really a nice man, and when you see him again you’ll find out for yourself. At the moment he’s tired and a bit touchy. You see, there are three companies just arrived and more coming. But they won’t be much use to us in their present state—they’re in a bad way with combat fatigue, most of ’em. Major O’Mara and his staff have to give them some psychological first aid before—”

“Combat fatigue,” said Conway in the most insulting tone of which he was capable. He was heartily sick of people he considered his intellectual and moral inferiors either ranting at him or sympathizing with him. “I suppose,” he added, “that means they’ve grown tired of killing people?”

He saw the Monitor’s young-old face stiffen and something that was both hurt and anger burn in his eyes. He stopped. He opened his mouth for an O’Mara-type blast of invective, then thought better of it. He said quietly, “For someone who has been here for two months you have, to put it mildly, a very unrealistic attitude toward the Monitor Corps. I can’t understand that. Have you been too busy to talk to people or something?”

“No,” replied Conway coldly, “but where I come from we do not discuss persons of your type, we prefer pleasanter topics.”

“I hope,” said the Monitor, “that all your friends—if you have friends, that is—indulge in backslapping.” He turned and marched off.

Conway winced in spite of himself at the thought of anything heavier than a feather hitting his scorched and tender back. But he was thinking of the other’s earlier words, too. So his attitude toward Monitors was unrealistic? Did they want him, then, to condone violence and murder and befriend those who were responsible for it? And he had also mentioned the arrival of several companies of Monitors. Why? What for? Anxiety began to eat at the edges of his hitherto solid block of self-confidence. There was something here that he was missing, something important.

When he had first arrived at Sector General the being who had given

Conway his original instructions and assignments had added a little pep talk. It had said that Dr. Conway had passed a great many tests to come here and that they welcomed him and hoped he would be happy enough in his work to stay. The period of trial was now over, and henceforth nobody would be trying to catch him out, but if for any reason-friction with his own or any other species, or the appearance of some xenological psychosis—he became so distressed that he could no longer stay, then with great reluctance he would be allowed to leave.

He had also been advised to meet as many different entities as possible and try to gain mutual understanding, if not their friendship. Finally he had been told that if he should get into trouble through ignorance or any other reason, he should contact either of two Earth-human beings who were called O’Mara and Bryson, depending on the nature of his trouble, though a qualified being of any species would, of course, help him on request.

Immediately afterward he had met the Surgeon-in-Charge of the wards to which he had been posted, a very able Earth-human called Mannon. Dr. Mannon was not yet a Diagnostician, though he was trying hard, and was therefore still quite human for long periods during the day. He was the proud possessor of a small dog which stuck so close to him that visiting extra-terrestrials were inclined to assume a symbolic relationship. Conway liked Dr. Mannon a lot, but now he was beginning to realize that his superior was the only being of his own species toward whom he had any feeling of friendship.

That was a bit strange, surely. It made Conway begin to wonder about himself.

After that reassuring pep-talk Conway had thought he was all set—especially when he found how easy it was to make friends with the e-t members of the Staff. He had not warmed to his human colleagues—with the one exception—because of their tendency to be flippant or cynical regarding the very important and worthwhile work he, and they, were doing. But the idea of friction developing was laughable.

That was before today, though, when O’Mara had made him feel small and stupid, accused him of bigotry and intolerance, and generally cut his ego to pieces. This, quite definitely, was friction developing, and if such treatment at the hands of Monitors continued Conway knew that he would be driven to leave. He was a civilized and ethical human being-why were the Monitors in a position to tell him off? Conway just could not understand it at all. Two things he did know, however; he wanted to remain at the hospital, and to do that he needed help.

IV

The name “Bryson” popped into his mind suddenly, one of the names he had been given should he get into trouble. O’Mara, the other name, was out, but this Bryson now . . .

Conway had never met anyone with that name, but by asking a passing Tralthan he received directions for finding him. He got only as far as the door, which bore the legend, “Captain Bryson, Monitor Corps, Chaplain,” then he turned angrily away. Another Monitor! There was just one person left who might help him: Dr. Mannon. He should have tried him first.

But his superior, when Conway ran him down, was sealed in the LSVO theater where he was assisting a Tralthan Surgeon-Diagnostician in a very tricky piece of work. He went up to the observation gallery to wait until Mannon had finished.

The LSVO came from a planet of dense atmosphere and negligible gravity. It was a winged life-form of extreme fragility, which necessitated the theater being at almost zero gravity and the surgeons strapped to their position around the table. The little OTSB who lived in symbiosis with the elephantine Tralthan was not strapped down, but held securely above the operative field by one of its host’s secondary tentacles-the OTSB life-form, Conway knew, could not lose physical contact with its host for more than a few minutes without suffering severe mental damage. Interested despite his own troubles, he began to concentrate on what they were doing.

A section of the patient’s digestive tract had been bared, revealing a spongy, bluish growth adhering to it. Without the LSVO physiology tape Conway could not tell whether the patient’s condition was serious or not, but the operation was certainly a technically difficult one. He could tell by the way Mannon hunched forward over it and by the tightly-coiled tentacles of the Tralthan not then in use. As was normal, the little OTSB with its cluster of wire-thin, eye—and sucker-tipped tentacles was doing the fine, exploratory work-sending infinitely detailed visual information of the field to its giant host, and receiving back instructions based on that data. The Tralthan and Dr. Mannon attended to the relatively crude work of clamping, tying-off and swabbing out.

Dr. Mannon had little to do but watch as the super-sensitive tentacles of the Tralthan’s parasite were guided in their work by the host, but Conway knew that the other was proud of the chance to do even that. The Tralthan combination were the greatest surgeons the Galaxy had ever known. All surgeons would have been Tralthans had not their bulk and operating procedure made it impossible to treat certain forms of life.

Conway was waiting when they came out of the theater. One of the Tralthan’s tentacles flicked out and tapped Dr. Mannon sharply on the head—a gesture which was a high compliment—and immediately a small bundle of fur and teeth streaked from behind a locker toward the great being who was apparently attacking its master. Conway had seen this game played out many times and it still seemed wildly ludicrous to him. As Mannon’s dog barked furiously at the creature towering above both itself and its master, challenging it to a duel to the death, the Tralthan shrank back in mock terror and cried, “Save me from this fearsome beast!” The dog, still barking furiously, circled it, snapping at the leathery tegument protecting the Tralthan’s six, blocky legs. The Tralthan retreated precipitously, the while calling loudly for aid and being very careful that its tiny attacker was not splattered under one of its elephantine feet. And so the sounds of battle receded down the corridor.

When the noise had diminished sufficiently for him to be heard, Conway said, “Doctor, I wonder if you could help me. I need advice, or at least information. But it’s a rather delicate matter.

Conway saw Dr. Mannon’s eyebrows go up and a smile quirk the corners of his mouth. He said, “I’d be glad to help you, of course, but I’m afraid any advice I could give you at the moment would be pretty poor stuff.” He made a disgusted face and flapped his arms up and down. “I’ve still got an LSVO tape working on me. You know how it is-half of me thinks I’m a bird and the other half is a little confused about it. But what sort of advice do you need?” he went on, his head perking to one side in an oddly bird-like manner. “If it’s that peculiar form of madness called young love, or any other psychological disturbance, I’d suggest you see O’Mara.”

Conway shook his head quickly; anybody but O’Mara. He said, “No. It’s more of a philosophical nature, a matter of ethics, maybe..

“Is that all!” Mannon burst out. He was about to say something more when his face took on a fixed, listening expression. With a sudden jerk of his thumb he indicated a nearby wall annunciator. He said quietly, “The solution to your weighty problems will have to wait—you’re wanted.”

. . . Dr. Conway,” the annunciator was saying briskly, “Go to room 87 and administer pep-shots . . .

“But 87 isn’t even in our section!” Conway protested. “What’s going on here . . .

Dr. Mannon had become suddenly grim. “I think I know,” he said, “and I advise you to keep a few of those shots for yourself because you are going to need them.” He turned abruptly and hurried off, muttering something about getting a fast erasure before they started screaming for him, too.

Room 87 was the Casualty Section’s staff recreation room, and when Conway arrived its tables, chairs and even parts of its floor were asprawl with green-clad Monitors, some of whom had not the energy to lift their heads when he came in. One figure pushed itself out of a chair with extreme difficulty and weaved toward him. It was another Monitor with a Major’s insignia on his shoulders and the Staff and Serpents on his collar. He said, “Maximum dosage. Start with me,” and began shrugging out of his tunic.

Conway looked around the room. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, all in stages of advanced exhaustion and their faces showing that tell-tale gray coloration. He still did not feel well disposed toward Monitors, but these were, after a fashion, patients, and his duty was clear.

“As a doctor I advise strongly against this,” Conway said gravely. “It’s obvious that you’ve had pep-shots already—far too many of them. What you need is sleep—”

“Sleep?” said a voice somewhere. “What’s that?”

“Quiet, Teirnan,” said the Major tiredly, then to Conway; “And as a doctor I understand the risks. I suggest we waste no more time.”

Rapidly and expertly Conway set about administering the shots. Dull eyed, bone-weary men lined up before him and five minutes later left the room with a spring in their step and their eyes too bright with artificial vitality. He had just finished when he heard his name over the annunciator again, ordering him to Lock Six to await instructions there. Lock Six, Conway knew, was one of the subsidiary entrances to the Casualty section.

While he was hurrying in that direction Conway realized suddenly that he was tired and hungry, but he did not get the chance to think about it for long. The annunciators were giving out a call for all junior interns to report to Casualty, and directions for adjacent wards to be evacuated where possible to other accommodation. An alien gabble interspersed these messages as other species received similar instructions.

Obviously the Casualty section was being extended. But why, and where were all the casualties coming from? Conway’s mind was a confused and rather tired question mark.

V

At Lock Six a Tralthan Diagnostician was deep in conversation with two Monitors. Conway felt a sense of outrage at the sight of the highest and the lowest being so chummy together, then reflected with a touch of bitterness that nothing about this place could surprise him anymore. There were two more Monitors beside the Lock’s direct vision panel.

“Hello, Doctor,” one of them said pleasantly. He nodded toward the view port. “They’re unloading at Locks Eight, Nine and Eleven. We’ll be getting our quota any minute now.

The big transparent panel framed an awesome sight: Conway had never seen so many ships together at one time. More than thirty sleek, silver needles, ranging from ten-man pleasure yachts to the gargantuan transports of the Monitor Corps wove a slowly, complicated pattern in and around each other as they waited permission to lock-on and unload.

“Tricky work, that,” the Monitor observed.

Conway agreed. The repulsion fields which protected ships against collision with the various forms of cosmic detritus required plenty of space. Meteorite screens had to be set up a minimum of five miles away from the ship they protected if heavenly bodies large and small were to be successfully deflected from them—further away if it was a bigger ship. But the ships outside were a mere matter of hundreds of yards apart, and had no collision protection except the skill of their pilots. The pilots would be having a trying time at the moment.

But Conway had little time for sight-seeing before three Earth-human interns arrived. They were followed quickly by two of the red-furred DBDGs and a caterpillar-like DBLF, all wearing medical insignia. There came a heavy scrape of metal against metal, the lock tell-tales turned from red to green indicating that a ship was properly connected up, and the patients began to stream through.

Carried in stretchers by Monitors they were of two kinds only:

DBDGs of the Earth-human type and DBLF caterpillars. Conway’s job, and that of the other doctors present, was to examine them and route them through to the proper department of Casualty for treatment. He got down to work, assisted by a Monitor who possessed all the attributes of a trained nurse except the insignia. He said his name was Williamson.

The sight of the first case gave Conway a shock—not because it was serious, but because of the nature of the injuries. The third made him stop so that his Monitor assistant looked at him questioningly.

“What sort of accident was this?” Conway burst out. “Multiple punctures, but the edge of the wounds cauterized. Lacerated punctures, as if from fragments thrown out by an explosion. How . . .

The Monitor said, “We kept it quiet, of course, but I thought here at least the rumor would have got to everybody.” His lips tightened and the look that identified all Monitors to Conway deepened in his eyes. “They decided to have a war,” he went on, nodding at the Earth-human and DBLF patients around them. “I’m afraid it got a little out of control before we were able to clamp down.”

Conway thought sickly, A war . . . ! Human beings from Earth, or an Earth-seeded planet, trying to kill members of the species that had so much in common with them. He had heard that there were such things occasionally, but had never really believed any intelligent species could go insane on such a large scale. So many casualties . . .

He was not so bound up in his thoughts of loathing and disgust at this frightful business that he missed noticing a very strange fact—that the Monitor’s expression mirrored his own! If Williamson thought that way about war, too, maybe it was time he revised his thinking about the Monitor Corps in general.

A sudden commotion a few yards to his right drew Conway’s attention. An Earth-human patient was objecting strenuously to the DBLF intern trying to examine him, and the language he was using was not nice. The DBLF was registering hurt bewilderment, though possibly the human had not sufficient knowledge of its physiognomy to know that, and trying to reassure the patient in flat, Translated tones.

It was Williamson who settled the business. He swung around on the loudly protesting patient, bent forward until their faces were only inches apart, and spoke in a low, almost conversational tone which nevertheless sent shivers along Conway’s spine.

Listen, friend,” he said. “You say you object to one of the stinking crawlers that tried to kill you trying to patch you up, right? Well, get this into your head, and keep it there—this particular crawler is a doctor here. Also, in this establishment there are no wars. You all belong to the same army and the uniform is a nightshirt, so lay still, shut up and behave. Otherwise I’ll clip you one.

Conway returned to work underlining his mental note about revising his thinking regarding Monitors. As the torn, battered and burnt life forms flowed past under his hands his mind seemed strangely detached from it all. He kept surprising Williamson with expressions on his face that seemed to give the lie to some of the things he had been told about Monitors. This tireless, quiet man with the rock-steady hands—was he a killer, a sadist of low intelligence and nonexistent morals? It was hard to believe. As he watched the Monitor covertly between patients, Conway gradually came to a decision. It was a very difficult decision. If he wasn’t careful he would very likely get clipped.

O’Mara had been impossible, so had Bryson and Mannon for various reasons, but Williamson now . . .

“Ah . . . er, Williamson,” Conway began hesitantly, then finished with a rush, “have you ever killed anybody?”

The Monitor straightened suddenly, his lips a thin, bloodless line. He said tonelessly, “You should know better than to ask a Monitor that question, Doctor. Or should you?” He hesitated, his curiosity keeping check on the anger growing in him because of the tangle of emotion which must have been mirrored on Conway’s face, then said heavily, “What’s eating you, Doc?”

Conway wished fervently that he had never asked the question, but it was too late to back out now. Stammering at first, he began to tell of his ideals of service and of his alarm and confusion on discovering that Sector General—an establishment which he had thought embodied all his high ideals-employed a Monitor as its Chief Psychologist, and probably other members of the Corps in positions of responsibility. Conway knew now that the Corps was not all bad, that they had rushed units of their Medical Division here to aid them during the present emergency. But even so, Monitors . . . !

“I’ll give you another shock,” Williamson said dryly, “by telling you something that is so widely known that nobody thinks to mention it. Dr. Lister, the Director, also belongs to the Monitor Corps.

“He doesn’t wear uniform, of course,” the Monitor added quickly, “because Diagnosticians grow forgetful and are careless about small things. The Corps frowns on untidiness, even in a Lieutenant-General.”

Lister, a Monitor! “But, why?” Conway burst out in spite of himself. “Everybody knows what you are. How did you gain power here in the first place . . .

“Everybody does not know, obviously,” Williamson cut in, “because you don’t, for one.

VI

The Monitor was no longer angry, Conway saw as they finished with their current patient and moved onto the next. Instead there was an expression on the other’s face oddly reminiscent of a parent about to lecture an offspring on some of the unpleasant facts of life.

“Basically,” said Williamson as he gently peeled back a field dressing of a wounded DBLF, “your trouble is that you, and your whole social group, are a protected species.”

Conway said, “What?”

“A protected species,” he repeated. “Shielded from the crudities of present-day life. From your social strata-on all the worlds of the Union, not only on Earth—come practically all the great artists, musicians and professional men. Most of you live out your lives in ignorance of the fact that you are protected, that you are insulated from childhood against the grosser realities of our interstellar so-called civilization, and that your ideas of pacifism and ethical behavior are a luxury which a great many of us simply cannot afford. You are allowed this luxury in the hope that from it may come a philosophy which may one day make every being in the Galaxy truly civilized, truly good.”

“I didn’t know,” Conway stammered. “And.., and you make us—me, I mean—look so useless . . .”

“Of course you didn’t know,” said Williamson gently. Conway wondered why it was that such a young man could talk down to him without giving offense; he seemed to possess authority somehow. Continuing, he said, “You were probably reserved, untalkative and all wrapped up in your high ideals. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, understand, it’s just that you have to allow for a little gray with the black and white. Our present culture,” he went on, returning to the main line of discussion,

“is based on maximum freedom for the individual. An entity may do anything he likes provided it is not injurious to others. Only Monitors forgo this freedom.”

“What about the 'Normals’ reservations?” Conway broke in. At last the Monitor had made a statement which he could definitely contradict. “Being policed by Monitors and confined to certain areas of country is not what I’d call freedom.”

“If you think back carefully,” Williamson replied, “I think you will find that the Normals—that is, the group on nearly every planet which thinks that, unlike the brutish Monitors and the spineless aesthetes of your own strata, it is truly representative of its species—are not confined. Instead they have naturally drawn together into communities, and it is in these communities of self-styled Normals that the Monitors have to be most active. The Normals possess all the freedom including the right to kill each other if that is what they desire, the Monitors being present only to see that any Normal not sharing this desire will not suffer in the process.

“We also, when a sufficiently high pitch of mass insanity overtakes one or more of these worlds, allow a war to be fought on a planet set aside for that purpose, generally arranging things so that the war is neither long nor too bloody.” Williamson sighed. In tones of bitter self-accusation he concluded, “We underestimated them. This one was both.”

Conway’s mind was still balking at this radically new slant on things. Before coming to the hospital he’d had no direct contact with Monitors, why should he? And the Normals of Earth he had found to be rather romantic figures, inclined to strut and swagger a bit, that was all. Of course, most of the bad things he had heard about Monitors had come from them. Maybe the Normals had not been as truthful or objective as they could have been . . .

“This is all too hard to believe,” Conway protested. “You’re suggesting that the Monitor Corps is greater in the scheme of things than either the Normals or ourselves, the professional class!” He shook his head angrily. “And anyway, this is a fine time for a philosophical discussion!”

“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 view port. “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 whisflings, rustlings and guttural jabbering 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 hail. 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 they 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, space suited 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 still 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 Cs 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.

He saw PVSJs in balloon-like chlorine envelopes being pinned against the floor, flattened like specimens pressed under glass, then bounced into the air again. And Tralthan patients in their massive, unwieldy harness—Tralthans were prone to injury internally despite their great strength being dragged along. There were DBDGs, DBLFs and CLSRs, also unidentifiable something’s in spherical, wheeled containers that radiated cold almost visibly. Strung out in a line, being pushed, dragged or manfully inching along on their own, the beings crept past, bowing and straightening up again like wheat in a strong wind as the gravity grids pulled at them.

Conway could almost imagine he felt those fluctuations where he stood, but knew that the crashing ship must have destroyed the grid circuits in its path. He dragged his eyes away from that grim procession and headed downward again.

“Conway!” Mannon’s voice barked at him a few minutes later. “That survivor down there is responsible for as many casualties now as the crashed ship! A ward of convalescent LSVOs are dead due to a threesecond surge from one-eighth to four gravities. What’s happening now?”

The tunnel of wreckage was steadily narrowing, Conway reported, the hull and lighter machinery of the ship having been peeled away by the time it had reached their present level. All that could remain ahead was the massive stuff like hyperdrive generators and so on. He thought he must be very near the end of the line now, and the being who was the unknowing cause of the devastation around them.

“Good,” said Mannon, “but hurry it up!”

“But can’t the Engineers get through? Surely—”

“They can’t,” broke in Dr. Lister’s voice. “In the area surrounding the gravity grid controls there are fluctuations of up to ten Cs. It’s impossible. And joining up with your route from inside the hospital is out, too. It would mean evacuating corridors in the neighboring area, and the corridors are all filled with patients . . .” The voice dropped in volume as Dr. Lister apparently turned away from the mike, and Conway overhead him saying, “Surely an intelligent being could not be so panic-stricken that it . . . it . . . Oh, when I get my hands on it—”

“It may not be intelligent,” put in another voice. “Maybe it’s a cub, from the FGLI maternity unit . . .

“If it is I’ll tan its little—”

A sharp click ended the conversation at that point as the transmitter was switched off. Conway, suddenly realizing what a very important man he had become, tried to hurry it up as best he could.

They dropped another level into a ward in which four MSVKs-fragile, tn-pedal stork like beings-drifted lifeless among loose items of ward equipment. Movements of the bodies and objects in the room seemed a little unnatural, as if they had been recently disturbed. It was the first sign of the enigmatic survivor they were seeking. Then they were in a great, metal-walled compartment surrounded by a maze of plumbing and unshielded machinery. On the floor in a bulge it had created for itself, the ship’s massive hyper-drive generator lay with some shreds of control room equipment strewn around it. Underneath was the remains of a life form that was now unclassifiable. Beside the generator another hole had been torn in the severely weakened floor by some other piece of the ship’s heavy equipment.

Conway hurried over to it, looked down, then called excitedly, “There it is!”

They were looking into a vast room which could only be the grid control center. Rank upon rank of squat, metal cabinets covered the floor, walls and ceiling—this compartment was always kept airless and at zero gravity—with barely room for even Earth-human Engineers to move between them. But Engineers were seldom needed here because the devices in this all—important compartment were self-repairing. At the moment this ability was being put to a severe test.

A being which Conway classified tentatively as AACL sprawled across three of the delicate control cabinets. Nine other cabinets, all winking with red distress signals, were within range of its six, python-like tentacles which poked through seals in the cloudy plastic of its suit. The tentacles were at least twenty feet long and tipped with a horny substance which must have been steel-hard considering the damage the being had caused.

Conway had been prepared to feel pity for this hapless survivor, he had expected to find an entity injured, panic-stricken and crazed with pain. Instead there was a being who appeared unhurt and who was viciously smashing up gravity-grid controls as fast as the built-in self repairing robots tried to fix them.

Conway swore and began hunting for the frequency of the other’s suit radio. Suddenly there was a harsh, high-pitched cheeping sound in his ear-phones. “Got you!” Conway said grimly.

The cheeping sounds ceased abruptly as the other heard his voice and so did all movement of those highly destructive tentacles. Conway noted the wavelength, then switched back to the band used by the PVSJ and himself.

“It seems to me,” said the chlorine-breather when he had told it what he had heard, “that the being is deeply afraid, and the noises it made were of fear—otherwise your Translator would have made you receive them as words in your own language. The fact that these noises and its destructive activity stopped when it heard your voice is promising, but I think that we should approach slowly and reassure it constantly that we are bringing help. Its activity down there gives me the impression that it has been hitting out at anything which moves, so a certain amount of caution is indicated, I think.”

“Yes, Padre,” said Conway with great feeling.

“We do not know in what direction the being’s visual organs are directed,” the PVSJ went on, “so I suggest we approach from opposite sides.”

Conway nodded. They set their radios to the new band and climbed carefully down onto the ceiling of the compartment below. With just enough power in their gravity neutralizers to keep them pressing gently against the metal surface they moved away from each other onto opposite walls, down them, then onto the floor. With the being between them now, they moved slowly toward it.

The robot repair devices were busy making good the damage wrecked by those six anacondas it used for limbs but the being continued to lie quiescent. Neither did it speak. Conway kept thinking of the havoc this entity had caused with its senseless threshing about. The things he felt like saying to it were anything but reassuring, so he let the PSVJ padre do the talking.

“Do not be afraid,” the other was saying for the twentieth time. “If you are injured, tell us. We are here to help you . . .

But there was neither movement nor reply from the being.

On a sudden impulse Conway switched to Dr. Mannon’s band. He said quickly, “The survivor seems to be an AACL. Can you tell me what it’s here for, or any reason why it should refuse or be unable to talk to us?”

“I’ll check with Reception,” said Mannon after a short pause. “But are you sure of that classification? I can’t remember seeing an AACL here, sure it isn’t a Creppelian—”

“It isn’t a Creppelian octopoid,” Conway cut in. “There are six main appendages, and it is just lying here doing nothing . . .

Conway stopped suddenly, shocked into silence, because it was no longer true that the being under discussion was doing nothing. It had launched itself toward the ceiling, moving so fast that it seemed to land in the same instant that it had taken off. Above him now, Conway saw another control unit pulverized as the being struck and others torn from their mounts as its tentacles sought anchorage. In his phones Mannon was shouting about gravity fluctuations in a hitherto stable section of the hospital, and mounting casualty figures, but Conway was unable to reply.

He was watching helplessly as the AACL prepared to launch itself again.

. . . We are here to help you,” the PVSJ was saying as the being landed with a soundless crash four yards from the padre. Five great tentacles anchored themselves firmly, and a sixth lashed out in a great, curving blur of motion that caught the PVSJ and smashed it against the wall. Life-giving chlorine spurted from the PVSJ’s suit, momentarily hiding in mist the shapeless, pathetic thing which rebounded slowly into the middle of the room. The AACL began making cheeping noises again.

Conway heard himself babbling out a report to Mannon, then Mannon shouting for Lister. Finally the Director’s voice came in to him. It said thickly, “You’ve got to kill it, Conway.”

You’ve got to kill it, Conway!

It was those words which shocked Conway back to a state of normality as nothing else could have done. How very like a Monitor, he thought bitterly, to solve a problem with a murder. And to ask a doctor, a person dedicated to the preserving of life, to do the killing. It did not matter that the being was insane with fear, it had caused a lot of trouble in the hospital, so kill it.

Conway had been afraid, he still was. In his recent state of mind he might have been panicked into using this kill-or-be-killed law of the jungle. Not now, though. No matter what happened to him or the hospital he would not kill an intelligent fellow being, and Lister could shout himself blue in the face . . .

It was with a start of surprise that Conway realized that both Lister and Mannon were shouting at him, and trying to counter his arguments. He must have been doing his thinking aloud without knowing it. Angrily he tuned them out.

But there was still another voice gibbering at him, a slow, whispering, unutterably weary voice that frequently broke off to gasp in pain. For a wild moment Conway thought that the ghost of the dead PVSJ was continuing Lister’s arguments, then he caught sight of movement above him.

Drifting gently through the hole in the ceiling was the space suited figure of Williamson. How the badly injured Monitor had got there at all was beyond Conway’s understanding—his broken arms made control of his gravity pack impossible, so that he must have come all the way by kicking with his feet and trusting that a still-active gravity grid would not pull him in a second time. At the thought of how many times those multiple fractured members must have collided with obstacles on the way down, Conway cringed. And yet all the Monitor was concerned with was trying to coax Conway into killing the AACL below him.

Close below him, with the distance lessening every second . . .

Conway felt the cold sweat break out on his back. Helpless to stop himself, the injured Monitor had cleared the rent in the ceiling and was drifting slowly floorward, directly on top of the crouching AACL! As Conway stared fascinated one of the steel-hard tentacles began to uncurl preparatory to making a death-dealing swipe.

Instinctively Conway launched himself in the direction of the floating Monitor, there was no time for him to feel consciously brave—or stupid—about the action. He connected with a muffled crash and hung on, wrapping his legs around Williamson’s waist to leave his hands free for the gravity pack controls. They spun furiously around their common center of gravity, walls, ceilings and floor with its deadly occupant whirling around so fast that Conway could barely focus his eyes on the controls. It seemed years before he finally had the spin checked and he had them headed for the hole in the ceiling and safety. They had almost reached it when Conway saw the hawser-like tentacle come sweeping up at him . . .

X

Something smashed into his back with a force that knocked the breath out of him. For a heart-freezing moment he thought his air-tanks had gone, his suit torn open and that he was already sucking frenziedly at vacuum. But his gasp of pure terror brought air rushing into his lungs. Conway had never known canned air to taste so good.

The AACL’s tentacle had only caught him a glancing blow—his back wasn’t broken—and the only damage was a wrecked suit radio.

“Are you all right?” Conway asked anxiously when he had Williamson settled in the compartment above. He had to press his helmet against the other’s—that was the only way he could make himself heard now.

For several minutes there was no reply, then the weary, pain-wrecked near-whisper returned.

“My arms hurt. I’m tired,” it said haltingly. “But I’ll be OK when . . . they take me . . . inside.” Williamson paused, his voice seemed to gather strength from somewhere and he went on, “That is if there is anybody left alive in the hospital to treat me. If you don’t stop our friend down there . . .”

Sudden anger flared in Conway. “Dammit, do you never give up?” he burst out. “Get this, I’m not going to kill an intelligent being! My radio’s gone so I don’t have to listen to Lister and Mannon yammering at me, and all I’ve got to do to shut you up is pull my helmet away from yours. —

The Monitor’s voice had weakened again. He said, “I can still hear Mannon and Lister. They say the wards in Section Eight have been hit now—that’s the other low-gravity section. Patients and doctors are pinned flat to the floor under three Cs. A few more minutes like that and they’ll never get up—MSVKs aren’t at all sturdy, you know . . .

“Shut up!” yelled Conway. Furiously, he pulled away from contact.

When his anger had abated enough for him to see again, Conway observed that the Monitor’s lips were no longer moving. Williamson’s eyes were closed, his face gray and sweaty with shock and he did not seem to be breathing. The drying chemicals in his helmet kept the faceplate from fogging, so that Conway could not tell for sure but the Monitor could very easily be dead. With exhaustion held off by repeated pep-shots, then his injuries on top of that, Conway had expected him to be dead long since. For some peculiar reason Conway felt his eyes stinging.

He had seen so much death and dismemberment over the last few hours that his sensitivity to suffering in others had been blunted to the point where he reacted to it merely as a medical machine. This feeling of loss, of bereavement, for the Monitor must be simply a resurgence of that sensitivity, and temporary. Of one thing he was sure, however, nobody was going to make this medical machine commit a murder. The Monitor Corps, Conway now knew, was responsible for a lot more good than bad, but he was not a Monitor.

Yet O’Mara and Lister were both Monitors and Doctors, one of them renowned throughout the Galaxy. “Are you better than they are?” a little voice nagged in his mind somewhere. And you’re all alone now, it went on, with the hospital disorganized and people dying all over the place because of that being down there. What do you think your chances of survival are? The way you came is plugged with wreckage and nobody can come to your aid, so you’re going to die, too. Isn’t that so?

Desperately Conway tried to hang on to his resolution, to draw it tightly around him like a shell. But that insistent, that cowardly voice in his brain was putting cracks in it. It was with a sense of pure relief that he saw the Monitor’s lips moving again. He touched helmets quickly.

. . . Hard for you, a Doctor,” the voice came faintly, “but you’ve got to. Just suppose you were that being down below, driven mad with fear and pain maybe, and for a moment you became sane and somebody told you what you had done—what you were doing, and the deaths you had caused . . .” The voice wavered, sank, then returned. “Wouldn’t you want to die rather than go on killing . . .

“But I can’t . . .

“Wouldn’t you want to die, in its place?”

Conway felt the defensive shell of his resolution begin to disintegrate around him. He said desperately, in a last attempt to hold firm, to stave off the awful decision, “Well, maybe, but I couldn’t kill it even if I tried—it would tear me to pieces before I got near it . . .

“I’ve got a gun,” said the Monitor.

Conway could not remember adjusting the firing controls, or even taking the weapon from the Monitor’s holster. It was in his hand and trained on the AACL below, and Conway felt sick and cold. But he had not given in to Williamson completely. Near at hand was a sprayer of the fast-setting plastic which, when used quickly enough, could sometimes save a person whose suit had been holed. Conway planned to wound the being, immobilize it, then re-seal its suit with cement. It would be a close thing and risky to himself, but he could not deliberately kill the being.

Carefully he brought his other hand up to steady the gun and took aim. He fired.

When he lowered it there was not much left except shredded twitching pieces of tentacles scattered all over the room. Conway wished now that he had known more about guns, known that this one shot explosive bullets, and that it had been set for continuous automatic fire . . .

Williamson’s lips were moving again. Conway touched helmets out of pure reflex. He was past caring about anything anymore.

It’s all right, Doctor,” the Monitor was saying. “It isn’t anybody..

“It isn’t anybody now,” Conway agreed. He went back to examining the Monitor’s gun and wished that it wasn’t empty. If there had been one bullet left, just one, he knew how he would have used it.

“It was hard, we know that,” said Major O’Mara. The rasp was no longer in his voice and the iron-gray eyes were soft with sympathy, and something akin to pride. “A doctor doesn’t have to make a decision like that usually until he’s older, more balanced, mature, if ever. You are, or were, just an over-idealistic kid—a bit on the smug and self-righteous side maybe—who didn’t even know what a Monitor really was.”

O’Mara smiled. His two big, hard hands rested on Conway’s shoulders in an oddly fatherly gesture. He went on, “Doing what you forced yourself to do could have ruined both your career and your mental stability. But it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to feel guilty about a thing. Everything’s all right.”

Conway wished dully that he had opened his face-plate and ended it all before those Engineers had swarmed into the gravity grid control room and carried Williamson and himself off to O’Mara. O’Mara must be mad. He, Conway, had violated the prime ethic of his profession and killed an intelligent being. Everything most definitely was not all right.

“Listen to me,” O’Mara said seriously. “The Communications boys managed to get a picture of the crashed ship’s control room, with the occupant in it, before it hit. The occupant was not your AACL, understand? It was an AMSO, one of the bigger life-forms who are in the habit of keeping a non-intelligent AACL-type creature as pets. Also, there are no AACLs listed in the hospital, so the beastie you killed was simply the equivalent of a fear-maddened dog in a protective suit.” O’Mara shook Conway’s shoulder until his head wobbled. “Now do you feel better?”

Conway felt himself coming alive again. He nodded wordlessly.

“You can go,” said O’Mara, smiling, “and catch up on your sleep. As for the reorientation talk, I’m afraid I haven’t the time to spare. Remind me about it sometime, if you still think you need it . . .

During the fourteen hours in which Conway slept, the intake of wounded dropped to a manageable trickle, and news came that the war was over. Monitor engineers and maintenance men succeeded in clearing the wreckage and repairing the damaged outer hull. With pressure restored, the internal repair work proceeded rapidly, so that when Conway awoke and went in search of Dr. Mannon he found patients being moved into a section which only hours ago had been a dark, airless tangle of wreckage.

He tracked his superior down in a side ward off the main FGLI Casualty section. Mannon was working over a badly burned DBLF whose caterpillar-like body was dwarfed by a table which was designed to take the more massive Tralthan FGLIs. Two other DBLFs, under sedation, showed as white mounds on a similarly outsize bed against the wall, and another lay twitching slightly on a stretcher-carrier near the door.

“Where the blazes have you been?” Mannon said in a voice too tired to be angry. Before Conway could reply he went on impatiently, “Oh, don’t tell me. Everybody is grabbing everybody else’s staff, and junior interns have to do as they’re told . . .

Conway felt his face going red. Suddenly he was ashamed of that fourteen hours sleep, but was too much of a coward to correct Mannon’s wrong assumption. Instead he said, “Can I help, sir?”

“Yes,” said Mannon, waving toward his patients. “But these are going to be tricky. Punctured and incised wounds, deep. Metallic fragments still within the body, abdominal damage and severe internal hemorrhage. You won’t be able to do much without a tape. Go get it. And come straight back, mind!”

A few minutes later he was in O’Mara’s office absorbing the DBLF physiology tape. This time he didn’t flinch from the Major’s hands. While the headband was being removed he asked, “How is Corpsman Williamson?”

“He’ll live,” said O’Mara dryly. “The bones were set by a Diagnostician. Williamson won’t dare die . . .

Conway rejoined Mannon as quickly as possible. He was experiencing the characteristic mental double-vision and had to resist the urge to crawl on his stomach, so he knew that the DBLF tape was taking. The caterpillar-like inhabitants of Kelgia were very close to Earth-humans both in basic metabolism and temperament, so there was less of the confusion he had encountered with the earlier Telfi tape. But it gave him an affinity for the beings he was treating which was actually painful.

The concept of gun, bullet and target was a very simple one-just point, pull the trigger, and the target is dead or disabled. The bullet didn’t think at all, the pointer didn’t think enough, and the target . . . suffered.

Conway had seen too many disabled targets recently, and lumps of metal which had plowed their way into them leaving red craters in torn flesh, bone splinters and ruptured blood vessels. In addition there was the long, painful process of recovery. Anyone who would inflict such damage on a thinking, feeling entity deserved something much more painful than the Monitor corrective psychiatry.

A few days previously Conway would have been ashamed of such thoughts-and he was now, a little. He wondered if recent events had initiated in him a process of moral degeneration, or was it that he was merely beginning to grow up?

Five hours later they were through. Mannon gave his nurse instructions to keep the four patients under observation, but told her to get something to eat first. She was back within minutes carrying a large pack of sandwiches and bearing the news that their dining hall had been taken over by Tralthan Male Medical. Shortly after that Dr. Mannon went to sleep in the middle of his second sandwich. Conway loaded him onto the stretcher-carrier and took him to his room. On the way out he was collared by a Tralthan Diagnostician who ordered him to a DBDG casualty section.

This time Conway found himself working on targets of his own species and his maturing, or moral degeneration, increased. He had begun to think that the Monitor Corps was too damned soft with some people.

Three weeks later Sector General was back to normal. All but the most seriously wounded patients had been transferred to their local planetary hospitals. The damage caused by the colliding spaceship had been repaired. Tralthan Male Medical had vacated the dining hall, and Conway no longer had to snatch his meals off assorted instrument trolleys. But if things were back to normal for the hospital as a whole, such was not the case with Conway personally.

He was taken off ward duty completely and transferred to a mixed group of Earth-humans and e-ts—most of whom were senior to himself—taking a course of lectures in Ship Rescue. Some of the difficulties experienced in fishing survivors out of wrecked ships, especially those which contained still-functioning power sources, made Conway open his eyes. The course ended with an interesting, if back-breaking, practical which he managed to pass, and was followed by a more cerebral course in e-t comparative philosophy. Running at the same time was a series on contamination emergencies: what to do if the methane section sprung a leak and the temperature threatened to rise above minus one-forty, what to do if a chlorine-breather was exposed to oxygen, or a water-breather was strangling in air, or vice-versa. Conway had shuddered at the idea of some of his fellow students trying to give him artificial respiration—some of whom weighed half a ton!—but luckily there was no practical at the end of that course.

Every one of the lecturers stressed the importance of rapid and accurate classification of incoming patients, who very often were in no condition to give this information themselves. In the four-letter classification system the first letter was a guide to the general metabolism, the second to the number and distribution of limbs and sense organs, and the rest to a combination of pressure and gravity requirements, which also gave an indication of the physical mass and form of protective tegument a being possessed. A, B and C first letters were water-breathers. D and F warm-blooded oxygen-breathers into which classification most of the intelligent races fell. C to K were also oxygen-breathing, but insectile, light-gravity beings. L and M were also light-gravity, but bird-like. The chlorine-breathers were contained in the 0 and P classifications. After that came the weirdies-radiation-eaters, frigid-blooded or crystalline beings, entities capable of changing physical shape at will, and those possessing various forms of extra-sensory powers. Telepathic species such as the Telfi were given the prefix V. The lecturers would flash a three-second picture of an e-t foot or a section of tegument onto the screen, and if Conway could not rattle off an accurate classification from this glimpse, sarcastic words would be said.

It was all very interesting stuff, but Conway began to worry a little when he realized that six weeks had passed without him even seeing a patient. He decided to call O’Mara and ask what for-in a respectful, roundabout way, of course.

“Naturally you want back to the wards,” O’Mara said, when Conway finally arrived at the point. “Dr. Mannon would like you back, too. But I may have a job for you and don’t want you tied up anywhere else. But don’t feel that you are simply marking time. You are learning some useful stuff, Doctor. At least, I hope you are. Off.”

HOSPITAL STATION 93

As Conway replaced the intercom mike he was thinking that a lot of the things he was learning had regard to Major O’Mara himself. There wasn’t a course of lectures on the Chief Psychologist, but there might well have been, because every lecture had O’Mara creeping into it somewhere. And he was only beginning to realize how close he had come to being kicked out of the hospital for his behavior during the Telfi episode.

O’Mara bore the rank of Major in the Monitor Corps, but Conway had learned that within the hospital it was difficult to draw a limiting line to his authority. As Chief Psychologist he was responsible for the mental health of all the widely varied individuals and species on the staff, and the avoidance of friction between them.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect in its personnel, there were still occasions when friction occurred. Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop a xenophobic neurosis which might affect its efficiency, or mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on an Illensan patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. So it was O’Mara’s job to detect and eradicate such signs of trouble—or if all else failed-remove the potentially dangerous individual before such friction became open conflict. This guarding against wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking was a duty which he performed with such zeal that Conway had heard him likened to a latter-day Torquemada.

E-ts on the staff whose home-planet histories did not contain an equivalent of the Inquisition likened him to other things, and often called him them to his face. But in O’Mara’s book Justifiable Invective was not indicative of wrong thinking, so there were no serious repercussions.

O’Mara was not responsible for the psychological shortcomings of patients in the hospital, but because it was so often impossible to tell when a purely physical pain left off and a psychosomatic one began, he was consulted in these cases also.

The fact that the Major had detached him from ward duty could mean either promotion or demotion. If Mannon wanted him back, however, then the job which O’Mara had in mind for him must be of greater importance. So Conway was pretty certain that he was not in any trouble with O’Mara, which was a very nice way to feel. But curiosity was killing him.

Then next morning he received orders to present himself at the office of the Chief Psychologist . . .

Chapter 3

TROUBLE WITH EMILY

It must have been one of the big colonial transports of the type which carried four generations of colonists between the stars before the hyper-drive made such gargantuan ships obsolete, Conway thought, as he stared at the great tear-drop shape framed in the direct vision port beside O’Mara’s desk. With the exception of the pilot’s greenhouse, its banks of observation galleries and view ports were blocked off by thick metal plating, and braced solidly from the outside to withstand considerable internal pressure. Even beside the tremendous bulk of Sector General it looked huge.

“You are to act as liaison between the hospital here and the doctor and patient from that ship,” said Chief Psychologist O’Mara, watching him closely. “The doctor is quite a small life-form. The patient is a dinosaur.

Conway tried to keep the astonishment he felt from showing in his face. O’Mara was analyzing his reactions, he knew, and perversely he wanted to make the other’s job as difficult as possible. He said simply, “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” said O’Mara.

“It must be psychological, then . . .

O’Mara shook his head.

“Then what is a healthy, sane and intelligent being doing in a hos—”

“It isn’t intelligent.”

Conway breathed slowly in and out. O’Mara was obviously playing guessing games with him again-not that Conway minded that, provided he was given a sporting chance to guess the right answers. He looked again at the great mass of the converted transport, and meditated.

Putting hyper-drive engines into that great sow of a ship had cost money, and the extensive structural alterations to the hull a great deal more. It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go to for a . . .

“I’ve got it!” said Conway grinning. “It’s a new specimen for us to take apart and investigate . . .

“Good Lord, no!” cried O’Mara, horrified. He shot a quick, almost frightened look at a small sphere of plastic which was half hidden by some books on his desk, then went on seriously, “This whole business has been arranged at the highest level—a sub—assembly of the Galactic Council, no less. As to what exactly it is all about neither I nor anyone else in Sector General knows. Possibly the doctor who accompanied the patient and who has charge of it may tell you sometime . . .

O’Mara’s tone at that point implied that he very much doubted it.

However, all that the hospital and yourself are required to do is cooperate.

Apparently the being who was the doctor in the case came from a race which had been only recently discovered, O’Mara went on to explain, which had tentatively been given the classification VUXG: that was, they were a life-form possessing certain psi faculties, had the ability to convert practically any substance into energy for their physical needs and could adapt to virtually any environment. They were small and well-nigh indestructible.

The VUXG doctor was telepathic, but ethics and the privacy taboo forbade it using this faculty to communicate with a non-telepathic life form, even if its range included the Earth-human frequency. For that reason the Translator would be used exclusively. This doctor belonged to a species long-lived both as individuals and in recorded history, and in all that vast sweep of time there had been no war.

They were an old, wise and humble race, O’Mara concluded; intensely humble. So much so that they tended to look down on other races who were not so humble as they. Conway would have to be very tactful because this extreme, this almost overbearing humility might easily be mistaken for something else.

Conway looked closely at O’Mara. Was there not a faintly sardonic glean in those keen, iron-gray eyes and a too carefully neutral expression on that square-chiseled competent face? Then with a feeling of complete bafflement he saw O’Mara wink.

Ignoring it, Conway said, “This race, they sound stuck up to me.”

He saw O’Mara’s lips twitch, then a new voice broke in on the proceedings with dramatic suddenness. It was a flat, toneless, Translated voice which boomed, “The sense of the preceding remark is not clear to me. We are stuck-adhering-up where?” There was a short pause, then, “While I admit that my own mental capabilities are very low, at the same time I would suggest in all humility that the fault may not altogether lie with me, but be due in part to the lamentable tendency for you younger and more impractical races to make sense-free noises when there is no necessity for a noise to be made at all.”

It was then that Conway’s wildly searching eyes lit on the transparent plastic globe on O’Mara’s desk. Now that he was really looking at it he could see several lengths of strapping attached to it, together with the unmistakable shape of a Translator pack. Inside the container there floated a something . . .

“Dr. Conway,” said O’Mara dryly, “meet Dr. Arretapec, your new boss.” Mouthing silently, he added, “You and your big mouth!”

The thing in the plastic globe, which resembled nothing so much as a withered prune floating in a spherical gob of syrup, was the VUXG doctor! Conway felt his face burning. It was a good thing that the Translator dealt only with words and did not also transfer their emotional—in this instance sarcastic-connotations, otherwise he would have been in a most embarrassing position.

“As the closest cooperation is required,” O’Mara went on quickly, and the mass of the being Arretapec is slight, you will wear it while on duty.” O’Mara deftly suited actions to his words and strapped the container onto Conway’s shoulder. When he had finished he added, “You can go, Dr. Conway. Detailed orders, when and where necessary, will be given to you direct by Dr. Arretapec.”

It could only happen here, Conway thought wryly as they left. Here he was with an e-t doctor riding on his shoulder like a quivering, transparent dumpling, their patient a healthy and husky dinosaur, and the purpose of the whole business was something which his colleague was reluctant to clarify. Conway had heard of blind obedience but blind cooperation was a new—and he thought, rather stupid—concept.

On the way to Lock Seventeen, the point where the hospital was joined to the ship containing their patient, Conway tried to explain the organization of SectorTwelveGeneralHospital to the extra-terrestrial doctor. Dr. Arretapec asked some pertinent questions from time to time, so presumably he was interested.

Even though he had been expecting it, the sheer size of the converted transport’s interior shocked Conway. With the exception of the two levels nearest the ship’s outer skin, which at the moment housed the artificial gravity generators, the Monitor Corps engineer had cut away everything to leave a great sphere of emptiness some two thousand feet in diameter. The inner surface of this sphere was a wet and muddy shambles. Great untidy heaps of uprooted vegetation were piled indiscriminately about, most of it partially trampled into the mud. Conway also noticed that quite a lot of it was withered and dying.

After the gleaming, aseptic cleanliness which he was used to Conway found that the sight was doing peculiar things to his nervous system. He began looking around for the patient.

His gaze moved out and upward across the acres of mud and tumbled vegetation until, high above his head on the opposite side of the sphere the swamp merged into a small, deep lake. There were shadowy movements and swirling below its surface. Suddenly a tiny head mounted on a great sinuous neck broke the surface, looked around, then submerged again with a tremendous splash.

Conway surveyed the distance to the lake and the quality of the terrain between it and himself. He said, “It’s a long way to walk, I’ll get an antigravity belt . . .

“That will not be necessary,” said Arretapec. The ground abruptly flung itself away from them and they were hurtling toward the distant lake.

Classification VUXG, Conway reminded himself when he got his breath back; possessing certain psi faculties.

They landed gently near the edge of the lake. Arretapec told Conway that it wanted to concentrate its thinking processes for a few minutes and requested him to keep both quiet and still. A few seconds later an itching started deep inside his ear somewhere. Conway manfully refrained from poking at it with his finger and instead kept all his attention on the surface of the lake.

Suddenly a great gray-brown, mountainous body broke the surface, a long tapering neck and tail slapping the water with explosive violence. For an instant Conway thought that the great beast had simply bobbed to the surface like a rubber ball but then he told himself that the bed of the lake must have shelved suddenly under the monster, giving an optically similar effect. Still threshing madly with neck, tail and four massive columnar legs the giant reptile gained the lake’s edge and floundered onto, or rather into, the mud, because it sank over its knee joints. Conway estimated that the said knee-joints were at least ten feet from ground level, that the thickest diameter of the great body was about eighteen feet and that from head to tail the brute measured well over one hundred feet. He guessed its weight at about 80,000 pounds. It possessed no natural body armor but the extreme end of its tail, which showed surprising mobility for such a heavy member, had an osseous bulge from which spouted two wicked, forward-curving bony spikes.

As Conway watched, the great reptile continued to churn up the mud in obvious agitation. Then abruptly it fell onto its knees and its great neck curved around and inward until its head muzzled underneath its own underbelly. It was a ridiculous but oddly pathetic posture.

“It is badly frightened,” said Arretapec. “These conditions do not adequately simulate its true environment.”

Conway could understand and sympathize with the beast. The ingredients of its environment were no doubt accurately reproduced but rather than being arranged in a lifelike manner they had just been thrown together into a large muddy stew. Probably not deliberately, he thought, there must have been some trouble with the artificial gravity grids on the way out to account for this jumbled landscape. He said:

“Is the mental state of the patient of importance to the purpose of your work?”

“Very much so,” said Arretapec.

“Then the first step is to make it a little more happy with its lot,” said Conway, and went down on his haunches. He took a sample of the lake water, the mud and several of the varieties of vegetation nearby. Finally he straightened up and said, “Is there anything else we have to do here?”

“I can do nothing at present,” Arretapec replied. The Translated voice was toneless and utterly without emotion, naturally, but from the spacing of the words Conway thought that the other sounded deeply disappointed.

Back at the entry lock Conway made determined tracks toward the dining hall reserved for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms. He was hungry.

Many of his colleagues were in the hall-DBLF caterpillars who were slow everywhere but in the operating theater, Earth-human DBDGs like himself and the great, elephantine Tralthan-classification FGLI-who, with the little OTSB life-form who lived in symbiosis with it, was well on the way to joining the ranks of the lordly Diagnosticians. But instead of engaging in conversation all around, Conway concentrated on gaining all the data possible on the planet of origin of the reptilian patient.

For greater ease of conversation he had taken Arretapec out of its plastic container and placed it on the table in a space between the potatoes and gravy dish. At the end of the meal Conway was startled to find that the being had dissolved—ingested—a two inch hole in the table!

“When in deep cogitation,” Arretapec replied when Conway rather exasperatedly wanted to know why, “the process of food-gathering and ingestion is automatic and unconscious with us. We do not indulge in eating as a pleasure as you obviously do, it dilutes the quality of our thinking. However, if I have caused damage . . .

Conway hastily reassured him that a plastic tablecloth was relatively valueless in the present circumstances, and beat a quick retreat from the place. He did not try to explain how catering officers could feel rather peeved over their relatively valueless property.

After lunch Conway picked up the analysis of his test samples, then headed for the Maintenance Chief’s office. This was occupied by one of the Nidian teddy bears wearing an armband with gold edging, and an Earth-human in Monitor green whose collar bore a Colonel’s insignia over an Engineering flash. Conway described the situation and what he wanted done, if such a thing was possible.

“It is possible,” said the red teddy bear after they had gone into a huddle of Conway’s data sheets, “but—”

“O’Mara told me expense is no object,” Conway interrupted, nodding toward the tiny being on his shoulder. “Maximum cooperation, he said.”

“In that case we can do it,” the Monitor Colonel put in briskly. He was regarding Arretapec with an expression close to awe. “Let’s see, transports to bring the stuff from its home planet-quicker and cheaper in the long run than synthesizing its food here. And we’ll need two full companies of the Engineers’ Division with their robots to make its house a happy home, instead of the twenty-odd men responsible for bringing it here.” His eyes became unfocused as rapid calculations went on behind them, then: “Three days.”

Even allowing for the fact that hyper-drive travel was instantaneous, Conway thought that that was very fast indeed. He said so.

The Colonel acknowledged the compliment with the thinnest of smiles. He said, “What is all this in aid of, you haven’t told us yet?”

Conway waited for a full minute to give Arretapec plenty of time to answer the question, but the VUXG kept silent. He could only mumble “I don’t know” and leave quickly.

The next door they entered was boldly labeled “Dietitian-in-Chief—Species DBDG, DBLF and FGLJ. Dr. K. W. HARDIN.” Inside, the white-haired and distinguished head of Dr. Hardin raised itself from some charts he was studying and bawled, “And what’s biting you . . .

While Conway was impressed by and greatly respected Dr. Hardin, he was no longer afraid of him. The Chief Dietitian was a man who was quite charming to strangers, Conway had learned; with acquaintances he tended to be a little on the abrupt side, and toward his friends he was downright rude. As briefly as possible Conway tried to explain what was biting him.

“You mean I have to go around replanting the stuff it’s eaten, so that it doesn’t know but that it grew naturally?” Hardin interrupted at one point. “Who the blazes do you think I am? And how much does this dirty great cow eat, anyway?”

Conway gave him the figures he had worked out.

“Three and a half tons of palm fronds a day!” Hardin roared, practically climbing his desk. “And tender green shoots of . . . Ye Gods! And they tell me dietetics is an exact science. Three and a half tons of shrubbery, exact! Hah . . . !”

They left Hardin at that point. Conway knew that everything would be all right because the dietitian had shown no signs of becoming charming.

To the VUXG Conway explained that Hardin had not been non cooperative, but had just sounded that way. He was keen to help as had been the other two. Arretapec replied to the effect that members of such immature and short-lived races could not help behaving in an insane fashion.

A second visit to their patient followed. Conway brought a C-belt along with him this time and so was independent of Arretapec’s telejortive ability. They drifted around and above the great, ambulating mountain of flesh and bone, but not once did Arretapec so much as touch the creature. Nothing whatever happened except that the patient once again showed signs of agitation and Conway suffered a periodic itch deep inside his ear. He sneaked a quick look at the tell-tale which was surgically embedded in his forearm to see if there was anything foreign in his bloodstream, but everything was normal. Maybe he was just allergic to dinosaurs.

Back in the hospital proper Conway found that the frequency and violence of his yawns was threatening to dislocate his jaw, and he realized that he had had a hard day. The concept of sleep was completely strange to Arretapec, but the being raised no objections to Conway indulging in it if it was necessary to his physical well-being. Conway gravely assured it that it was, and headed for his room by the shortest route.

What to do with Dr. Arretapec bothered him for a while. The VUXG was an important personage; he could not very well leave it in a storage closet or in a corner somewhere, even though the being was tough enough to be comfortable in much more rugged surroundings. Nor could he simply put it out for the night without gravely hurting its feelings-at least, if the positions had been reversed his feelings would have been hurt. He wished O’Mara had given instructions to cover this contingency. Finally he placed the being on top of his writing desk and forgot about it.

Arretapec must have thought deeply during the night, because there was a three inch hole in the desktop next morning.

III

During the afternoon of the second day a row started between the two doctors. At least Conway considered it a row; what an entirely alien mind like Arretapec’s chose to think of it was anybody’s guess.

It started when the VUXG requested Conway to be quiet and still while it went into one of its silences. The being had gone back to the old position on Conway’s shoulder, explaining that it could concentrate more effectively while at rest rather than with part of its mind engaged in levitating. Conway had done as he was told without comment though there were several things he would have liked to say: What was wrong with the patient? What was Arretapec doing about it? And how was it being done when neither of them so much as touched the creature? Conway was in the intensely frustrating position of a doctor confronted with a patient on whom he is not allowed to practice his craft: he was eaten up with curiosity and it was bothering him. Yet he did his best to stand still.

But the itching started inside his ear again, worse than ever before. He barely noticed the geysers of mud and water flung up by the dinosaur as it threshed its way out of the shallows and onto the bank. The gnawing, unlocalized itch built up remorselessly until with a sudden yell of fright he slapped at the side of his head and began poking frantically at his ear. The action brought immediate and blessed relief, but . . .

“I cannot work if you fidget,” said Arretapec, the rapidity of the words the only indication of their emotional content. “You will therefore leave me at once.

“I wasn’t fidgeting,” Conway protested angrily. “My ear itched and

I—”

“An itch, especially one capable of making you move as this one has done, is a symptom of a physical disorder which should be treated,” the VUXG interrupted. “Or it is caused by a parasitic or symbiotic life-form dwelling, perhaps unknown to you, on your body.

“Now, I expressly stated that my assistant should be in perfect physical health and not a member of a species who either consciously or unconsciously harbored parasites-a type, you must understand, which are particularly prone to fidget—so that you can understand my displeasure. Had it not been for your sudden movement I might have accomplished something, therefore go.

“Why you supercilious—”

The dinosaur chose that moment to stagger into the shallow water again, lose its footing and come the great grand-daddy of all bellyflops. Falling mud and spray drenched Conway and a small tidal wave surged over his feet. The distraction was enough to make him pause, and the pause gave him time to realize that he had not been personally insulted. There were many intelligent species who harbored parasites—some of them actually necessary to the health of the host body, so that in their case the slang expression being lousy also meant being in tiptop condition. Maybe Arretapec had meant to be insulting, but he could not be sure. And the VUXG was, after all, a very important person . . .

“What exactly might you have accomplished?” Conway asked sarcastically. He was still angry, but had decided to fight on the professional rather than the personal level. Besides, he knew that the Translator would take the insulting edge off his words. “What are you trying to accomplish, and how do you expect to do it merely by—from what I can see, anyway—just looking at the patient?”

“I cannot tell you,” Arretapec replied after a few seconds. “My purpose is . . . is vast. It is for the future. You would not understand.”

“How do you know? If you told me what you were doing maybe I could help.”

“You cannot help.”

“Look,” said Conway exasperated, “you haven’t even tried to use the full facilities of the hospital yet. No matter what you are trying to do for your patient, the first step should have been a thorough examination—immobilization, followed by X rays, biopsies, the lot. This would have given you valuable physiological data upon which to work—”

“To state the matter simply,” Arretapec broke in, “you are saying that in order to understand a complicated organism or mechanism, one must first be broken down into its component parts that they might be understood individually. My race does not believe that an object must be destroyed—even in part—before it can be understood. Your crude methods of investigation are therefore worthless to me. I suggest that you leave.”

Seething, Conway left.

His first impulse was to storm into O’Mara’s office and tell the Chief Psychologist to find somebody else to run errands for the VUXG. But O’Mara had told him that his present assignment was important, and O’Mara would have unkind things to say if he thought that Conway was throwing his hand in simply out of pique because his curiosity had not been satisfied or his pride hurt. There were lots of doctors-the assistants to Diagnosticians, particularly—who were not allowed to touch their superior’s patients, or was it just that Conway resented a being like Arretapec being his superior . . . ?

If Conway went to O’Mara in his present frame of mind there was real danger of the psychologist deciding that he was temperamentally unsuited for his position. Quite apart from the prestige attached to a post at Sector General, the work performed in it was both stimulating and very much worthwhile. Should O’Mara decide that he was unfit to remain here and pack him off to some planetary hospital, it would be the greatest tragedy of Conway’s life.

But if he could not go to O’Mara, where could he go? Ordered off one job and not having another, Conway was at loose ends. He stood at a corridor intersection for several minutes thinking, while beings representing a cross-section of all the intelligent races of the galaxy strode undulated or skittered past him, then suddenly he had it. There was something he could do, something which he would have done anyway if everything had not happened with such a rush.

The hospital library had several items on the prehistoric periods of Earth, both taped and in the old-fashioned and more cumbersome book form. Conway heaped them on a reading desk and prepared to make an attempt to satisfy his professional curiosity about the patient in this roundabout fashion.

The time passed very quickly.

Dinosaur, Conway discovered at once, was simply a general term applied to the giant reptiles. The patient, except for its larger size and bony enlargement of the tip of the tail, was identical in outward physical characteristics to the brontosaurus which lived among the swamps of the Jurassic Period. It also was herbivorous, but unlike their patient had no means of defense against the carnivorous reptiles of its time. There was a surprising amount of physiological data available as well, which Conway absorbed greedily.

The spinal column was composed of huge vertebrae, and with the exception of the caudal vertebrae all were hollow-this saving of osseous material making possible a relatively low body weight in comparison with its tremendous size. It was oviparous. The head was small, the brain case one of the smallest found among the vertebrates. But in addition to this brain there was a well-developed nerve center in the region of the sacral vertebrae which was several times as large as the brain proper. It was thought that the brontosaur grew slowly, their great size being explained by the fact that they could live two hundred or more years.

Their only defense against contemporary rivals was to take to and remain in the water—they could pasture under water and required only brief mouthfuls of air, apparently. They became extinct when geologic changes caused their swampy habitats to dry up and leave them at the mercy of their natural enemies.

One authority stated that these saurians were nature’s biggest failure. Yet they had flourished, said another, through three geologic periods—the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous—which totaled 140 million years, a long time indeed for a “failure” to be around, considering the fact that Man had existed only for approximately half a million years . . . !

Conway left the library with the conviction that he had discovered something important, but what exactly it was he could not say; it was an intensely frustrated feeling. Over a hurried meal he decided that he badly needed more information and there was only one person who might be able to give it to him. He would see O’Mara again.

“Where is our small friend?” said the psychologist sharply when Conway entered his office a few minutes later. “Have you had a fight or something?”

Conway gulped and tried to keep his voice steady as he replied, “Dr. Arretapec wished to work with the patient alone for a while, and I’ve been doing some research on dinosaurs in the library. I wondered if you had anymore information for me?”

“A little,” O’Mara said. He looked steadily at Conway for several very uncomfortable seconds, then grunted, “Here it is . . .

The Monitor Corps survey vessel which had discovered Arretapec’s home planet had, after realizing the high stage of civilization reached by the inhabitants, given them the hyper-drive. One of the first planets visited had been a raw, young world devoid of intelligent life, but one of its life-forms had interested them—the giant saurian. They had told the Galactic powers—that—be that given the proper assistance they might be able to do something which would benefit civilization as a whole, and as it was impossible for any telepathic race to tell a lie or even understand what a lie is, they were given the assistance asked for and Arretapec and his patient had come to Sector General. There was one other small item as well, O’Mara told Conway. Apparently the VUXG’s psi faculties included a sort of precognitive ability. This latter did not appear to be of much use because it did not work with individuals but only with populations, and then so far in the future and in such a haphazard manner that it was practically useless.

Conway left O’Mara feeling more confused than ever.

He was still trying to make the odd bits and pieces of information add up to something which made sense, but either he was too tired or too stupid. And definitely he was tired; these past two days his brain had been just so much thick, weary fog . . .

There must be an association between the two factors, Arretapec’s coming and this unaccountable weariness, Conway thought: he was in good physical condition and no amount of muscular or mental exertion had left him feeling this way before. And had not Arretapec said something about the itching sensations he had felt being symptomatic of a disorder?

All of a sudden his job with the VUXG doctor was no longer merely frustrating or annoying. Conway was beginning to feel anxiety for his own personal safety. Suppose the itching was due to some new type of bacteria which did not show up on his personal tell-tale? He had thought something like this when his fidgeting had caused Arretapec to send him away, but for the rest of the day he had been subconsciously trying to convince himself that it was nothing because the intensity of the sensations had diminished to practically zero. Now he knew that he should have had one of the senior physicians look into it. He should, in fact, do it now.

But Conway was very tired. He promised himself that he would get Dr. Mannon, his previous superior, to give him a going over in the morning. And in the morning he would have to get on the right side of Arretapec again. He was still worrying about the strange new disease he might have caught and the correct method of apologizing to a VUXG life-form when he fell asleep.

IV

Next morning there was another two-inch hollow eaten in the top of his desk and Arretapec was nestling inside it. As soon as Conway demonstrated that he was awake by sitting up, the being spoke:

“It had occurred to me since yesterday,” the VUXG said, “that I have perhaps been expecting too much in the way of self-control, emotional stability, and the ability to endure or to discount minor physical irritants in a member of a species which is—relatively, you understand—of low mentality. I will therefore do my utmost to bear these points in mind during our future relations together.”

It took a few seconds for Conway to realize that Arretapec had apologized to him. When he did he thought that it was the most insulting apology he had ever had tendered to him, and that it spoke well for his self-control that he did not tell the other so. Instead he smiled and insisted that it was all his fault. They left to see their patient again.

The interior of the converted transport had changed out of all recognition. Instead of a hollow sphere covered with a muddy shambles of soil, water and foliage, three-quarters of the available surface was now a perfect representation of a Mesozoic landscape. Yet it was not exactly the same as the pictures Conway had studied yesterday, because they had been of a distant age of Earth and this flora had been transplanted from the patient’s own world, but the differences were surprisingly small. The greatest change was in the sky.

Where previously it had been possible to look up at the opposite side of the hollow sphere, now one looked up into a blue-white mist in which burned a very lifelike sun. The hollow center of the ship had been almost filled with this semi-opaque gas so that now it would take a keen eye and a mind armed with foreknowledge for a person to know that he was not standing on a real planet with a real sun in the foggy sky above him. The engineers had done a fine job.

“I had not thought such an elaborate and lifelike reconstruction possible here,” said Arretapec suddenly. “You are to be commended. This should have a very good effect on the patient.”

The life-form under discussion—for some peculiar reason the engineers insisted on calling it Emily—was contentedly shredding the fronds from the top of a thirty foot high palm-like growth. The fact of its being on dry land instead of pasturing under water was indicative of its state of mind, Conway knew, because the old-time brontosaur invariably took to the water when threatened by enemies, that being its only defense. Apparently this neo-brontosaurus hadn’t a care in the world.

“Essentially it is the same as fitting up a new ward for the treatment of any extra-terrestrial patient,” said Conway modestly, “the chief difference here being the scale of the work undertaken.”

“I am nevertheless impressed,” said Arretapec.

First apologies and now compliments, Conway thought wryly. As they moved closer and Arretapec once again warned him to keep quiet and still, Conway guessed that the VUXG’s change of manner was due to the work of the engineers. With the patient now in ideal surroundings the treatment, whatever form it was taking, might have an increased chance of success .

Suddenly Conway began to itch again. It started in the usual place deep inside his right ear, but this time it spread and built up in intensity until his whole brain seemed to be crawling with viciously biting insects. He felt cold sweat break on him, and remembered his fears of the previous evening when he had resolved to go to Mannon. This wasn’t imagination, this was serious, perhaps deadly serious. His hands flew to his head with a panicky, involuntary motion, knocking the container holding Arretapec to the ground.

“You are fidgeting again . . .” began the VUXG.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” Conway stammered. He mumbled something incoherent about having to leave, that it was important and couldn’t wait, then fled in disorder.

Three hours later he was sitting in Dr. Mannon’s DBDG examination room while Mannon’s dog alternately growled fiercely at him or rolled on its back and looked appealing in vain attempts to entice him to play with it. But Conway had no inclination for the ritual pummeling and wrestling that the dog and himself enjoyed when he had the time for it. All his attention was focused on the bent head of his former superior and on the charts lying on Mannon’s desk. Suddenly the other looked up.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said in the peremptory manner reserved for students and patients suspected of malingering. A few seconds later he added, “Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ve felt these sensations—tiredness, itching, and so on—but what sort of case are you working on at the moment?”

Conway told him. A few times during the narration Mannon grinned.

“I take it this is your first long-term-er-exposure to a telepathic life-form and that I am the first you’ve mentioned this trouble to?” Mannon s tone was of one making a statement rather than of asking a question. “And, of course, although you feel this itching sensation intensely when close to the VUXG and the patient, it continues in a weaker form at other times.”

Conway nodded. “I felt it for a while just five minutes ago.

“Naturally, there is attenuation with distance,” Mannon said. “But as regards yourself, you have nothing to worry about. Arretapec is—all unknowingly, you understand—simply trying to make a telepath out of you. I’ll explain..

Apparently prolonged contact with some telepathic life-forms stimulated a certain area in the human brain which was either the beginnings of a telepathic function that would evolve in the future, or the atrophied remnant of something possessed in the primitive past and since lost.

The result was troublesome but a quite harmless irritation. On very rare occasions however, Mannon added, this proximity produced in the human a sort of artificial telepathic faculty—that was, he could sometimes receive thoughts from the telepath to whom he had been exposed, but of no other being. The faculty was in all cases strictly temporary, and disappeared when the being responsible for bringing it about left the human.

“But these cases of induced telepathy are extremely rare,” Mannon concluded, “and obviously you are getting only the irritant by—product, otherwise you might know what Arretapec is playing at simply by reading his mind . . .

While Dr. Mannon had been talking, and relieved of the worry that he had caught some strange new disease, Conway’s mind had been working furiously. Vaguely, as odd events with Arretapec and the brontosaurus returned to his mind and were added to scraps of the VUXG’s conversations and his own studying of the life—and extinction—of Earth’s long gone race of giant reptiles, a picture was forming in his mind. It was a crazy—or at least cockeyed-picture, and it was still incomplete, but what else could a being like Arretapec be doing to a patient like the brontosaurus, a patient who had nothing at all wrong with it?

“Pardon?” Conway said. He had become aware that Mannon had said something which he had not caught.

“I said if you find out what Arretapec is doing, let me know,” Mannon repeated.

“Oh, I know what it’s doing,” said Conway. “At least I think I do—and I understand why Arretapec does not want to talk about it. The ridicule if it tried and failed, why even the idea of its trying is ridiculous. What I don’t know is why it is doing it..

“Dr. Conway,” said Mannon in a deceptively mild voice, “if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about I will, as our cruder-minded interns so succinctly put it, have your guts for garters.”

Conway stood up quickly. He had to get back to Arretapec without further delay. Now that he had a rough idea of what was going on there were things he must see to-urgent safety precautions that a being such as the VUXG might not think of. Absently, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you. You see, from what you’ve told me there is a possibility that my knowledge derives directly from Arretapec’s mind, telepathically, and is therefore privileged information. I’ve got to rush now, but thanks very much.”

Once outside Conway practically ran to the nearest communicator and called Maintenance. The voice which answered he recognized as belonging to the engineer Colonel he had met earlier. He said quickly, “Is the hull of that converted transport strong enough to take the shock of a body of approximately eight thousand pounds moving at, uh, anything between twenty and one hundred miles an hour, and what safety measures can you take against such an occurrence?”

There was a long, loaded silence, then, “Are you kidding? It would go through the hull like so much plywood. But in the event of a major puncture like that the volume of air inside the ship is such that there would be plenty of time for the maintenance people to get into suits. Why do you ask?”

Conway thought quickly. He wanted a job done but did not want to tell why. He told the Colonel that he was worried about the gravity grids which maintained the artificial gravity inside the ship. There were so many of them that if one section should accidentally reverse its polarity and fling the brontosaurus away from it instead of holding it down . . .

Rather testily the Colonel agreed that the gravity grids could be switched to repulsion, also focused into pressor or attractor beams, but that the changeover did not occur simply because somebody breathed on them. There were safety devices incorporated which . . .

“All the same,” Conway broke in, “I would feel much safer about things if you could fix all the gravity grids so that at the approach of a heavy falling body they would automatically switch over to repulsion—just in case the worst happens. Is that possible?”

“Is this an order?” said the Colonel, “or are you just the worrying type?”

“It’s an order, I’m afraid,” said Conway.

“Then it’s possible.” A sharp click put a full stop to the conversation.

Conway set out to rejoin Arretapec again to become an ideal assistant to his chief in that he would have answers ready before the questions were asked. Also, he thought wryly, he would have to maneuver the VUXG into asking the proper questions so that he could answer them.

On the fifth day of their association, Conway said to Arretapec, “I have been assured that your patient is not suffering from either a physical condition or one requiring psychiatric correction, so that I am led to the conclusion that you are trying to effect some change in the brain structure by telepathic, or some related means. If my conclusions are correct, I have information which might aid or at least interest you:

“There was a giant reptile similar to the patient which lived on my own planet in primitive times. From remains unearthed by archaeologists we know that it possessed, or required, a second nerve center several times as big as the brain proper in the region of the sacral vertebrae, presumably to handle movements of the hind legs, tail and so on. If such was the case here you might have two brains to deal with instead of one.”

As he waited for Arretapec to reply Conway gave thanks that the VUXG belonged to a highly ethical species which did not hold with using their telepathy on non-telepaths, otherwise the being would have known that Conway knew that their patient had two nerve-centers—that he knew because while Arretapec had been slowly eating another hole in his desk one night and Conway and the patient had been asleep, a colleague of Conway’s had surreptitiously used an X-ray scanner and camera on the unsuspecting dinosaur.

“Your conclusions are correct,” said Arretapec at last, “and your information is interesting. I had not thought it possible for one entity to possess two brains. However this would explain the unusual difficulty of communication I have with this creature. I will investigate.”

Conway felt the itching start inside his head again, but now that he knew what it was he was able to take it without “fidgeting.” The itch died away and Arretapec said, “I am getting a response. For the first time I am getting a response.” The itching sensation began inside his skull again and slowly built up, and up . . .

It wasn’t just like ants with red-hot pincers chewing at his brain cells, Conway thought agonizedly as he fought to keep from moving and distracting Arretapec now that the being appeared to be getting somewhere; it felt as though somebody was punching holes in his poor, quivering brain with a rusty nail. It had never been like this before, this was sheer torture.

Then suddenly there was a subtle change in the sensations. Not a lessening, but of something added. Conway had a brief, blinding glimpse of something—it was like a phrase of great music played on a damaged recording, or the beauty of a masterpiece that is cracked and disfigured almost beyond recognition. He knew that for an instant, through the distorting waves of pain, he had actually seen into Arretapec’s mind.

Now he knew everything . . .

The VUXG continued to have responses all that day, but they were erratic, violent and uncontrolled. After one particular dramatic response had caused the panicky dinosaur to level a couple of acres of trees, then sent it charging into the lake in terror, Arretapec called a halt.

“It is useless,” said the doctor. “The being will not use what I am trying to teach it for itself, and when I force the process it becomes afraid.”

There was no emotion in the flat, Translated tones, but Conway who had had a glimpse of Arretapec’s mind knew the bitter disappointment that the other felt. He wished desperately that he could help, but he knew that he could do nothing directly of assistance-Arretapec was the one who had to do the real work in this case, he could only prod things along now and then. He was still wracking his brain for an answer to the problem when he turned in that night, and just before he went to sleep he thought he found it.

Next morning they tracked down Dr. Mannon just as he was entering the DBLF operating theater. Conway said, “Sir, can we borrow your dog?”

“Business or pleasure?” said Mannon suspiciously. He was very attached to his dog, so much so that non-human members of the staff suspected a symbiotic relationship.

“We won’t hurt it at all,” said Conway reassuringly.

“Thanks.” He took the lead from the appendage of the Tralthan intern holding it, then said to Arretapec, “Now back to my room . . .

Ten minutes later the dog, barking furiously, was dashing around Conway’s room while Conway himself hurled cushions and pillows at it. Suddenly one connected fairly, bowling it over. Paws scrabbling and skidding on the plastic flooring it erupted into frantic burst of high-pitched yelps and snarls.

Conway found himself whipped off his feet and suspended eight feet up in mid-air.

“I did not realize,” boomed the voice of Arretapec from his position on the desk, “that you had intended this to be a demonstration of Earth human sadism. I am shocked, horrified. You will release this unfortunate animal at once.”

Conway said, “Put me down and I’ll explain . . .

On the eighth day they returned the dog to Dr. Mannon and went back to work on the dinosaur. At the end of the second week they were still working and Arretapec, Conway and their patient were being talked, whistled, cheeped and grunted about in every language in use at the hospital. They were in the dining hall one day when Conway became aware that the annunciator which had been droning out messages in the background was now calling his name.

O’Mara on the intercom,” it was saying monotonously, “Doctor Conway, please. Would you contact Major O’Mara on the intercom as soon as possible . . .

“Excuse me,” Conway said to Arretapec, who was nestling on the plastic block which the catering superintendent had rather pointedly placed at Conway’s table, and headed for the nearest communicator.

“It isn’t a life-and-death matter,” said O’Mara when he called and asked what was wrong. “I would like to have some things explained to me. For instance:

“Dr. Hardin is practically frothing at the mouth because the food vegetation which he plants and replenishes so carefully has now got to be sprayed with some chemical which will render it less pleasant to taste, and why is a certain amount of the vegetation kept at its full flavor but in storage? What are you doing with a tri-di projector? And where does Mannon’s dog fit into this?” O’Mara paused, reluctantly, for breath, then went on, “And Colonel Skempton says that his engineers are run ragged setting up tractor and pressor beam mounts for you two-not that he minds that so much, but he says that if all that gadgetry was pointed outward instead of inward that hulk you’re messing around in could take on and lick a Federation cruiser.

“And his men, well . . .” O’Mara was holding his tone to a conversational level, but it was obvious that he was having trouble doing so. Quite a few of them are having to consult me professionally. Some

of them, the lucky ones perhaps, just don’t believe their eyes. The others would much prefer pink elephants.”

There was a short silence, then O’Mara said, “Mannon tells me that you climbed onto your ethical high horse and wouldn’t say a thing when he asked you. I was wondering—”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Conway awkwardly.

“But what the blinding blue blazes are you doing?” O’Mara erupted, then, “Well, good luck with it anyway. Off.”

Conway hurried to rejoin Arretapec and take up the conversation where it had been left off. As they were leaving a little later, Conway said, “It was stupid of me not to take the size factor into consideration. But now that we have—”

“Stupid of us, friend Conway,” Arretapec corrected in its toneless voice. “Most of your ideas have worked out successfully so far. You have been of invaluable assistance to me, so that I sometimes think that you have guessed my purpose. I am hoping that this idea, also, will work.”

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

On this occasion Arretapec did not, as it usually did, point out that firstly it did not believe in luck and secondly that it possessed no fingers. Arretapec was definitely growing more understanding of the ways of humans. And Conway now wished that the high-minded VUXG would read his mind, just so that the being would know how much he was with it in this, how much he wanted Arretapec’s experiment to succeed this afternoon.

Conway could feel the tension mounting in him all the way to the ship. When he was giving the engineers and maintenance men their final instructions and making sure that they knew what to do in any emergency, he knew that he was joking a bit too much and laughing a little too heartily. But then everyone was showing signs of strain. A little later, however, as he stood less than fifty yards from the patient and with equipment festooning him like a Christmas tree—an anti-gravity pack belted around his waist, a tri-di projector locus and viewer strapped to his chest and his shoulders hung with a heavy radio pack—his tension had reached the point of immobility and outward calm of the spring which can be wound no tighter.

“Projector crew ready,” said a voice.

“The food’s in place,” came another.

“All tractor and pressor beam men on top line,” reported a third.

“Right, Doctor,” Conway said to the hovering Arretapec, and ran a suddenly dry tongue around drier lips. “Do your stuff.”

He pressed a stud on the locus mechanism on his chest and immediately there sprang into being around and above him the immaterial image of a Conway who was fifty feet high. He saw the patient’s head go up, heard the low-pitched whinnying sound that it made when agitated or afraid and which contrasted so oddly with its bulk, and saw it backing ponderously toward the water’s edge. But Arretapec was radiating furiously at the brontosaur’s two small, almost rudimentary brains—sending out great waves of calm and reassurance—and the great reptile grew quiet. Very slowly so as not to alarm it, Conway went through the motions of reaching behind him, picking something up and placing it well in front of him. Above and around him his fifty-foot image did the same.

But where the image’s great hand came down there was a bundle of greenery, and when the solid-seeming but immaterial hand moved upward the bundle followed it, kept in position at the apex of three delicately manipulated pressor beams. The fresh, moist bundle of plants and palm fronds was placed close to the still uneasy dinosaur, apparently by the hand which then withdrew. After what seemed like an eternity to the waiting Conway the massive, sinuous neck arched downward. It began poking at the greenery. It began to nibble . . .

Conway went through the same motions again, and again. All the time he and his fifty-foot image kept edging closer.

The brontosaur, he knew, could at a pinch eat the vegetation which grew around it, but since Dr. Hardin’s sprayer had gone into operation it wasn’t very nice stuff. But it could tell that these tidbits were the real, old stuff; the fresh, juicy, sweet-smelling food that it used to know which had so unaccountably disappeared of late. Its nibbles became hungry gobbling.

Conway said, “All right. Stage Two..

Using the tiny viewer which showed his image’s relationship to the dinosaur as a guide, Conway reached forward again. High up and invisible on the opposite wall of the hull another pressor beam went into operation, synchronizing its movements with the hand which was now apparently stroking the patient’s great neck, and administering a firm but gentle pressure. After an initial instant of panic the patient went back to eating, and occasionally shuddering a little. Arretapec reported that it was enjoying the sensation.

“Now,” said Conway, “We’ll start playing rough.”

Two great hands were placed against its side and massed pressors toppled it over with a ground-shaking crash. In real terror now it threshed and heaved madly in a vain attempt to get its ponderous and ungainly body upright on its feet. But instead of inflicting mortal damage, the great hands continued only to stroke and pat. The brontosaur had quieted and was showing signs of enjoying itself again when the hands moved to a new position. Tractor and pressor beams both seized the recumbent body, yanked it upright and toppled it onto the opposite side.

Using the anti-gravity belt to increase his mobility, Conway began hopping over and around the brontosaur, with Arretapec, who was in rapport with the patient, reporting constantly on the effects of the various stimuli. He stroked, patted, pummeled and pushed at the giant reptile with blown-up, immaterial hands and feet. He yanked its tail and he slapped its neck, and all the time the tractor and pressor crews kept perfect time with him . . .

Something like this had occurred before, not to mention other things which, it was rumored, had driven one engineer to drink and at least four off it. But it was not until the size factor had been taken into consideration as it had today with this monster tri-di projection that there had been such promising results. Previously it had been as if a mouse were manhandling a St. Bernard during the past week or so—no wonder the brontosaurus had been in a frenzy of panic when all sorts of inexplicable things had been happening to it and the only reason it could see for them was two tiny creatures that were just barely visible to it!

But the patient’s species had roamed its home planet for a hundred million years, and it personally was immensely long-lived. Although its two brains were tiny it was really much smarter than a dog, so that very soon Conway had it trying to sit and beg.

And two hours later the brontosaurus took off.

It rose rapidly from the ground, a monstrous, ungainly and indescribable object with its massive legs making involuntary walking movements and the great neck and tail hanging down and waving slowly. Obviously it was the brain in the sacral area and not the cranium which was handling the levitation, Conway thought, as the great reptile approached the bunch of palm fronds which were balanced tantalizingly two hundred feet above its head. But that was a detail, it was levitating, that was the main thing. Unless—“Are you helping?” Conway said sharply to Arretapec.

The reply was flat and emotionless by necessity, but had the VUXG been human it would have been a yell of sheer triumph.

“Good old Emily!” somebody shouted in Conway’s phones, probably one of the beam operators, then, “Look, she’s passing it!”

The brontosaur had missed the suspended bundle of foliage and was still rising fast. It made a clumsy, convulsive attempt to reach it in passing, which had set up a definite spin. Further wild movements of neck and tail were aggravating it.

“Better get her down out of there,” said a second voice urgently. “That artificial sun could scorch her tail off.”

And that spin is making it panicky,” agreed Conway. “Tractor beam men . . . !”

But he was too late. Sun, earth and sky were careening in wild, twisting loops around a being which had been hitherto accustomed to solid ground under its feet. It wanted down or up, or somewhere. Despite Arretapec’s frantic attempts to soothe it, it teleported again.

Conway saw the great mountain of flesh and bone go hurtling off at a tangent, at least four times faster than its original speed. He yelled, “H sector men! Cushion it down, gently.”

But there was neither time nor space for the pressor beam men to slow it down gently. To keep it from crashing fatally to the surface—also through the underlying plating and out into space outside—they had to slow it down steadily but firmly, and to the brontosaurus that necessarily sharp braking must have felt like a physical blow. It teleported again.

“C-sector, it’s coming at you!”

But at C it was a repetition of what happened with H, the beast panicked and shot off in another direction. And so it went on, with the great reptile rocketing from one side of the ship’s interior to the other until . . .

“Skempton here,” said a brisk authoritative voice. “My men say the pressor beam mounts were not designed to stand this sort of thing. Insufficiently braced. The hull plating has sprung in eight places.”

“Can’t you—”

“We’re sealing the leaks as fast as we can, Skempton cut in, answering Conway’s question before he could ask it. “But this battering is shaking the ship apart . . .

Dr. Arretapec joined in at that point.

“Doctor Conway,” the being said, “while it is obvious that the patient has shown a surprising aptitude with its new talent, its use is uncontrolled because of its fear and confusion. This traumatic experience will cause irreparable damage, I am convinced, to the being’s thinking processes . . .

“Conway, look out!”

The reptile had come to a halt near ground level a few hundred yards away, then shot off at right angles toward Conway’s position. But it was traveling a straight line inside a hollow sphere, and the surface was curving up to meet it. Conway saw the hurtling body lurch and spin as the beam operators sought desperately to check its velocity. Then suddenly the mighty body was ripping through the low, thickly-growing trees, then it was plowing a wide, shallow furrow through the soft, swampy ground and with a small mountain of earth-uprooted vegetation piling up in front of it, Conway was right in its path.

Before he could adjust the control of his anti-gravity pack the ground came up and fell on him. For a few minutes he was too dazed to realize why it was he couldn’t move, then he saw that he was buried to the waist in a sticky cement of splintered branches and muddy earth. The heavings and shudderings he felt in the ground were the brontosaurus climbing to its feet. He looked up to see the great mass towering over him, saw it turn awkwardly and heard the sucking and crackling noises as the massive, pile-driver legs drove almost knee deep into the soil and underbrush.

Emily was heading for the lake again, and between the water and it was Conway . . .

He shouted and struggled in a frenzied attempt to attract attention, because the anti-gray and radio were smashed and he was stuck fast. The great reptilian mountain rolled up to him, the immense, slowly-waving neck was cutting off the light and one gigantic forefoot was poised to both kill and bury him in one operation, then Conway was yanked suddenly upward and to the side to where a prune in a gob of syrup was floating in the air.

“In the excitement of the moment,” Arretapec said, “I had forgotten that you require a mechanical device to teleport. Please accept my apologies.”

“Q-quite all right,” said Conway shakily. He made an effort to steady his jumping nerves, then caught sight of a pressor beam crew on the surface below him. He called suddenly, “Get another radio and projector locus here, quick!”

Ten minutes later he was bruised, battered but ready to continue again. He stood at the water’s edge with Arretapec hovering at his shoulder and his fifty-foot image again rising above him. The VUXG doctor, in rapport with the brontosaur under the surface of the lake, reported that success or failure hung in the balance. The patient had gone through what was to it a mind-wrecking experience, but the fact that it was now in what it felt to be the safety of underwater-where it had hitherto sought refuge from hunger and attacks of its enemies-was, together with the mental reassurances of Arretapec, exerting a steadying influence.

At times hopefully, at others in utter despair, Conway waited. Sometimes the strength of his feelings made him swear. It would not have been so bad, meant so much to him, if he hadn’t caught that glimpse of what Arretapec’s purpose had been, or if he had not grown to like the rather prim and over-condescending ball of goo so much. But any being with a mind like that who intended doing what it hoped to do had a right to be condescending.

Abruptly the huge head broke surface and the enormous body heaved itself onto the bank. Slowly, ponderously, the hind legs bent double and the long, tapering neck stretched upward. The brontosaurus wanted to play again.

Something caught in Conway’s throat. He looked to where a dozen bundles of succulent greenery lay ready for use, with one already being maneuvered toward him. He waved his arm abruptly and said, “Oh, give it the whole lot, it deserves them . . .

. . . So that when Arretapec saw the conditions on the patient’s world,” Conway said a little stiffly, “and its precognitive faculty told him what the brontosaur’s most likely future would be, it just had to try to change it.”

Conway was in the Chief Psychologist’s office making a preliminary, verbal report and the intent faces of O’Mara, Hardin, Skempton and the hospital’s Director encircled him. He felt anything but comfortable as, clearing his throat, he went on, “But Arretapec belongs to an old, proud race, and being telepathic added to its sensitivity-telepaths really feel what others think about them. What Arretapec proposed doing was so radical, it would leave itself and its race open to such ridicule if it failed, that it just had to be secretive. Conditions on the brontosaur’s planet indicated that there would be no rise of an intelligent life-form after the great reptiles became extinct, and geologically speaking that extinction would not be long delayed. The patient’s species had been around for a long time—that armored tail and amphibious nature had allowed it to survive more predatory and specialized contemporaries—but climatic changes were imminent and it could not follow the sun toward the equator because the planetary surface was composed of a large number of island continents. A brontosaurus could not cross an ocean. But if these giant reptiles could be made to develop the psi faculty of teleportation, the ocean barrier would disappear and with it the danger from the encroaching cold and shortage of food. It was this which Dr. Arretapec succeeded in doing.”

O’Mara broke in at that point: “If Arretapec gave the brontosaurus the teleportive ability by working directly on its brain, why can’t the same be done for us?”

“Probably because we’ve managed fine without it,” replied Conway. “The patient, on the other hand, was shown and made to understand that this faculty was necessary for its survival. Once this is realized the ability will be used and passed on, because it is latent in nearly all species. Now that Arretapec has proved the idea possible his whole race will want to get in on it. Fostering intelligence on what would otherwise be a dead planet is the sort of big project which appeals to those high-minded types . . .

Conway was thinking of that single, precognitive glimpse he had had into Arretapec’s mind, of the civilization which would develop on the brontosaur’s world and the monstrous yet strangely graceful beings that it would contain in some far, far, future day. But he did not mention these thoughts aloud. Instead he said, “Like most telepaths Arretapec was both squeamish and inclined to discount purely physical methods of investigation. It was not until I introduced him to Dr. Mannon’s dog, and pointed out that a good way to get an animal to use a new ability was to teach it tricks with it, that we got anywhere. I showed that trick where I throw cushions at the dog and after wrestling with them for a while it arranges them in a heap and lets me throw it on top of them, thus demonstrating that simple-minded creatures don’t mind-within limits, that is-a little roughhousing—”

“So that,” said O’Mara, gazing reflectively at the ceiling, “is what you do in your spare time..

Colonel Skempton coughed. He said, “You’re playing down your own part in this. Your foresight in stuffing that hulk with tractor and pressor beams . . .

“There’s just one other thing before I see it off,” Conway broke in hastily. “Arretapec heard some of the men calling the patient Emily. It would like to know why.”

“It would,” said O’Mara disgustedly. He pursed his lips then went on, “Apparently one of the maintenance men with an appetite for early fiction—the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne to be exact—dubbed our patient Emily Brontosaurus. I must say that I feel a pathological interest in a mind which thinks like that. . .” O’Mara looked as though there was a bad smell in the room.

Conway groaned in sympathy. As he turned to go, he thought that his last and hardest job might be in explaining what a pun was to the high-minded Dr. Arretapec.

Next day Arretapec and the dinosaur left, the Monitor transport officer whose job it was to keep the hospital supplied heaved a great sigh of relief, and Conway found himself on ward duty again. But this time he was something more than a medical mechanic. He had been placed in charge of a section of the Nursery, and although he had to use data, drugs and case-histories supplied by Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, there was nobody breathing directly down his neck. He could walk through his section and tell himself that these were his wards. And O’Mara had even promised him an assistant . . . !

It has been apparent since you first arrived here,” the Major had told him, “that you mix more readily with e-ts than with members of your own species. Saddling you with Dr. Arretapec was a test, which you passed with honors, and the assistant I’ll be giving you in a few days might be another.”

O’Mara had paused then, shook his head wonderingly and went on, “Not only do you get on exceptionally well with e-ts, but I don’t hear a single whisper on the grapevine of you chasing the females of our species . . .

“I don’t have the time,” said Conway seriously. “I doubt if I ever will.”

“Oh, well, misogyny is an allowable neurosis,” O’Mara had replied, then had gone onto discuss the new assistant. Subsequently Conway had returned to his wards and worked much harder than if there had been a Senior Physician breathing down his neck. He was too busy to hear the rumors which began to go around regarding the odd patient who had been admitted to Observation Ward Three.

Chapter 4

VISITOR AT LARGE

Despite the vast resources of medical and surgical skill available, resources which were acknowledged second to none anywhere in the civilized Galaxy, there had to be times when a case arrived in Sector General for which nothing whatever could be done. This particular patient was of classification SRTT, which was a physiological type never before encountered in the hospital. It was amoebic, possessed the ability to extrude any limbs, sensory organs or protective tegument necessary to the environment in which it found itself, and was so fantastically adaptable that it was difficult to imagine how one of these beings could ever fall sick in the first place.

The lack of symptoms was the most baffling aspect of the case. There was in evidence none of the visually alarming growths of malfunctionings to which so many of the extraterrestrial species were prone, nor were there any bacteria present in what could be considered harmful quantities. Instead the patient was simply melting—quietly, cleanly and without fuss or bother, like a piece of ice left in a warm room, its body was literally turning to water. Nothing that was tried had any effect in halting the process and, while they continued their attempts at finding a cure with even greater intensity, the Diagnosticians and lesser doctors in attendance had begun to realize a little sadly that the run of medical miracles produced with such monotonous regularity by Sector Twelve General Hospital was due to be broken.

And it was for that reason alone that one of the strictest rules of the hospital was temporarily relaxed.

“I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning,” said Dr. Conway, trying hard not to stare at the iridescent and not quite atrophied wings of his new assistant. “At Reception, where the problems of admittance are dealt with.”

Conway waited to see if the other had any comments, and continuing to walk in the direction of the stated objective while doing so. Rather than walk beside his companion he maintained a two—yard lead—not out of any wish to give offense but for the simple reason that he was afraid of inflicting severe physical damage on his assistant if he strayed any closer than that.

The new assistant was a GLNO-six-legged, exoskeletal and insect like, with the empathic faculty-from the planet Cinruss. The gravity pull of its home world was less than one-twelfth Earth-normal, which was the reason for an insect species growing to such size and becoming dominant, so that it wore two anti-G belts to neutralize the attraction which would otherwise have mashed it into ruin against the corridor floor. One neutralizer belt would have been adequate for this purpose, but Conway did not blame the being one bit for wanting to play safe. It was a spindly, awkward-looking and incredibly fragile life-form, and its name was Dr. Prilicla.

Prilicla had previous experience both in planetary and in the smaller multi-environment hospitals and so was not completely green, Conway had been told, but it would naturally feel at a loss before the size and complexity of Sector General. Conway was to be its guide and mentor for a while and then, when his present period of duty in charge of the nursery was complete, he would hand over Prilicla. Apparently the hospital’s Director had decided that light-gravity life-forms with their extreme sensitivity and delicacy of touch would be particularly suited to the care and handling of the more fragile e-t embryos.

It was a good idea, Conway thought as he hastily interposed himself between Prilicla and a Tralthan intern who lumbered past on six elephantine feet, if the low-gravity life-form in question could survive the association with its more massive and clumsy colleagues.

“You understand,” said Conway as he guided the GLNO toward Reception’s control room, “that getting some of the patients into the place is a problem in itself. It isn’t so bad with the small ones, but Tralthans, or a forty-foot-long AUGL from Chalderescol. . .” Conway broke off suddenly and said, “Here we are.

Through a wide, transparent wall section could be seen a room containing three massive control desks, only one of which was currently occupied. The being before it was a Nidian, and a group of indicator lights showed that it had just made contact with a ship approaching the hospital.

Conway said, “Listen . . .”

“Identify yourself, please,” said the red teddy bear in its staccato, barking speech, which was filtered through Conway’s Translator as flat and toneless English and which came to Prilicla as equally unemotionless Cinrusskin. “Patient, visitor or Staff, and species?”

“Visitor,” came the reply, “and Human.”

There was a second’s pause, then: “Give your physiological classification please,” said the red-furred receptionist with a wink toward the two watchers. “All intelligent races refer to their own species as human and think of all others as being nonhuman, so that what you call yourself has no meaning . . .

Conway only half heard the conversation after that because he was so engrossed in trying to visualize what a being with that classification could look like. The double-T meant that both its shape and physical characteristics were variable, R that it had high heat and pressure tolerance, and the S in that combination . . . If there had not actually been one waiting outside, Conway would not have believed such a weird beastie could exist.

And the visitor was an important person, apparently, because the receptionist was now busily engaged in passing on the news of its arrival to various beings within the hospital-most of whom were Diagnosticians, no less. All at once Conway was intensely curious to see this highly unusual being, but thought that he would not be showing a very good example to Prilicla if he dashed off on a rubbernecking expedition when they had work to do elsewhere. Also, his assistant was still very much an unknown quantity where Conway was concerned-Prilicla might be one of those touchy individuals who held that to look at a member of another species for no other reason than to satisfy mere curiosity was a grievous insult . . .

“If it would not interfere with more urgent duties,” broke in the flat, translated voice of Prilicla, “I would very much like to see this visitor.”

Bless you! thought Conway, but outwardly pretended to mull over the latter. Finally he said, “Normally I could not allow that, but as the lock where the SRTT is entering is not far from here and there is some time to spare before we are due at our wards, I expect it will be all right to indulge your curiosity just this once. Please follow me, Doctor.”

As he waved goodbye to the furry receptionist, Conway thought that it was a very good thing that Pricilla’s Translator was incapable of transferring the strongly ironic content of those last words, so that the other was not aware what a rise Conway was taking out of him. And then suddenly he stopped in his mental tracks. Prilicla, he realized uncomfortably, was an empath. The being had not said very much since they had met a short time ago, but everything that it had said had backed up Conway’s feelings in the particular matter under discussion. His new assistant was not a telepath—it could not read thoughts—but it was sensitive to feelings and emotions and would therefore have been aware of Conway’s curiosity.

Conway felt like kicking himself for forgetting that empathic faculty, and wryly wondered just who had been taking the rise out of which.

He had to console himself with the thought that at least he was agreeable, and not like some of the people he had been attached to recently like Dr. Arretapec.

Lock Six, where the SRTT was to be admitted, could have been reached in a few minutes if Conway had used the shortcut through the water filled corridor leading to the AUGL operating room and across the surgical ward of the chlorine-breathing PVSJs. But it would have meant donning one of the lightweight diving suits for protection, and while he could climb in and out of such a suit in no time at all, he very much doubted if the ultra-leggy Prilicla could do so. They therefore had to take the long way round, and hurry.

At one point a Tralthan wearing the gold-edged armband of a Diagnostician and an Earth-human maintenance engineer overtook them, the FGLI charging along like a runaway tank and the Earthman having to trot to keep up. Conway and Prilicla stood aside respectfully to allow the Diagnostician to pass—as well as to avoid being flattened-and then continued. A scrap of overheard conversation identified the two beings as part of the arriving SRTT’s reception committee, and from the somewhat caustic tone of the Earth-human’s remarks it was obvious that the visitor had arrived earlier than expected.

When they turned a corner a few seconds later and came within sight of the great entry lock Conway saw a sight which made him smile in spite of himself. Three corridors converged on the antechamber of Lock Six on this level as well as two others on upper and lower levels which reached it via sloping ramps, and figures were hurrying along each one. As well as the Tralthan and Earthman who had just passed them there was another Tralthan, two of the DBLF caterpillars and a spiny, membranous Illensan in a transparent protective suit—who had just emerged from the adjacent chlorine-filled corridor of the PVSJ section—all heading for the inner seal of the big Lock, already swinging open on the expected visitor. To Conway it seemed to be a wildly ludicrous situation, and he had a sudden mental picture of the whole crazy menagerie of them coming together with a crash in the same spot at the same time.

Then while he was still smiling at the thought, comedy changed swiftly and without warning to tragedy.

As the visitor entered the antechamber and the seal closed behind it Conway saw something that was a little like a crocodile with horn-tipped tentacles and a lot like nothing he had ever seen before. He saw the being shrink away from the figures hurrying to meet it, then suddenly dart toward the PVSJ—who was, Conway was to remember later, both the nearest and the smallest. Everybody seemed to be shouting at once then, so much so that Conway’s and presumably everyone else’s Translators went into an ear-piercing squeal of oscillation through sheer overload.

Faced by the teeth and hard-tipped tentacles of the charging visitor the Illensan PVSJ, no doubt thinking of the flimsiness of the envelope which held its life-saving chlorine around it, fled back into the intercorridor lock for the safety of its own section. The visitor, its way suddenly blocked by a Tralthan booming unheard reassurances at it, turned suddenly and scuttled for the same airlock.

All such locks were fitted with rapid action controls in case of emergency, controls which caused one door to open and the other to shut simultaneously instead of waiting for the chamber to be evacuated and refilled with the required atmosphere. The PVSJ, with the berserk visitor close behind it and its suit already torn by the SRTT’s teeth so that it was in imminent danger of dying from oxygen poisoning, rightly considered his case to be an emergency and activated the rapid-action controls. It was perhaps too frightened to notice that the visitor was not completely into the lock, and that when the inner door opened the outer one would neatly cut the visitor in two . . .

There was so much shouting and confusion around the lock that Conway did not see who the quick-thinking person was who saved the visitor’s life by pressing yet another emergency button, the one which caused both doors to open together. This action kept the SRTT from being cut in two, but there was now a direct opening into the PVSJ section from which billowed thick, yellow clouds of chlorine gas. Before Conway could react, contamination detectors in the corridor walls touched off the alarm siren and simultaneously closed the air-tight doors in the immediate vicinity, and they were all neatly trapped.

For a wild moment Conway fought the urge to run to the air-tight doors and beat on them with his fists. Then he thought of plunging through that poisonous fog to another intersection lock which was on the other side of it. But he could see a maintenance man and one of the DBLF caterpillars in it already, both so overcome with chlorine that Conway doubted if they could live long enough to put on the suits. Could he, he wondered sickly, get over there? The lock chamber also contained helmets good for ten minutes or so—that was demanded by the safety regulations—but to do it he would have to hold his breath for at least three minutes and keep his eyes jammed shut, because if he got a single whiff of that gas or it got at his eyes he would be helplessly disabled. But how could he pass that heaving, struggling mass of Tralthan legs and tentacles spread across the corridor floor while groping about with his eyes shut . . .

The fear-filled chaos of his thoughts was interrupted by Prilicla, who said, “Chlorine is lethal to my species. Please excuse me.

Prilicla was doing something peculiar to itself. The long, many jointed legs were waving and jerking about as though performing some weird ritual dance and two of the four manipulatory appendages—whose possession was the reason for its species’ fame as surgeons—were doing complicated things with what looked like rolls of transparent plastic sheeting. Conway did not see exactly how it happened but suddenly his GLNO assistant was swathed in a loose, transparent cover through which protruded its six legs and two manipulators—its body, wings and other two members, which were busily engaged in spraying sealing solution on the leg openings, were completely covered by it. The loose covering bellied out and became taut, proving that it was air-tight.

“I didn’t know you had . . .” Conway began, then with a surge of hope bursting up within him he gabbled, “Listen. Do exactly as I tell you. You’ve got to get me a helmet, quickly..

But the hope died just as suddenly before he finished giving the GLNO his instructions. Prilicla could doubtless find a helmet for him, but how could the being ever hope to make it to the lock where they were kept through that struggling mass on the floor between. One blow could tear off a leg or cave in that flimsy exoskeleton like an eggshell. He couldn’t ask the GLNO to do it, it would be murder.

He was about to cancel all previous instructions and tell the GLNO to stay put and save itself when Prilicla dashed across the corridor floor, ran diagonally up the wall and disappeared into the chlorine fog traveling along the ceiling. Conway reminded himself that many insect life-forms possessed sucker-tipped feet and began to feel hopeful again, so much so that other sensations began to register.

Close beside him the wall annunciator was informing everyone in the hospital that there was contamination in the region of Lock Six, while below it the intercom unit was emitting red light and harsh buzzing sounds as somebody in Maintenance Division tried to find out whether or not the contaminated area was occupied. The drifting gas was almost on him as Conway snatched at the intercom mike.

“Quiet and listen!” he shouted. “Conway here, at Lock Six. Two FGLIs, two DBLFs, one DBDG all with chlorine poisoning not yet fatal. One PVSJ in damaged protective suit with oxy-poisoning and possibly other injuries, and one up there—”

A sudden stinging sensation in the eyes made Conway drop the mike hurriedly. He backed away until stopped by the airtight door and watched the yellow mist creep nearer. He could see practically nothing of what was going on down the corridor now, and an agonizing eternity seemed to go by before the spindly shape of Prilicla came swinging along the ceiling above him.

The helmet which Prilicla brought was in a reality a mask, a mask with a self-contained air supply which, when in position, adhered firmly along the edge of the hair line, cheeks and lower jaw. Its air was good only for a very limited time-ten minutes or so—but with it on and the danger of death temporarily removed, Conway discovered that he could think much more clearly.

His first action was to go through the still open intersection lock. The PVSJ inside it was motionless and with the gray blush, the beginning of a type of skin cancer, spreading over its body. To the PVSJ life-form oxygen was vicious stuff. As gently as possible he dragged the Illensan into its own section and to a nearby storage compartment which he remembered being there. Pressure in this section was slightly greater than that maintained for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers so that where the PVSJ was concerned the air here was reasonably pure. Conway shut it in the compartment, after first grabbing an armful of the woven plastic sheets, in this section the equivalent of bed linen. There was no sign of the SRTT.

Back in the other corridor he explained to Prilicla what he wanted done-the Earth-human he had seen earlier had succeeded in donning his suit, but was blundering about, eyes streaming and coughing violently and was obviously incapable of giving any assistance. Conway picked his way around the weakly moving or unconscious bodies to the seal of Lock Six and opened it. There was a neatly racked row of air-bottles on the wall inside. He lifted down two of them and staggered out.

Prilicla had one unconscious form already covered with a sheet. Conway cracked the valve of an air-bottle and slid it under the covering, then watched as the plastic sheet bellied and rippled slightly with the air being released underneath it. It was the crudest possible form of oxygen tent, Conway thought, but the best that could be done at the moment. He left for more bottles.

After the third trip Conway began to notice the warning signs. He was sweating profusely, his head was splitting and big black splotches were beginning to blot out his vision-his air supply was running out. It was high time he took off the emergency helmet, stuck his own head under a sheet like the others and waited for the rescuers to arrive. He took a few steps toward the nearest sheeted figure, and the floor hit him. His heart was banging thunderously in his chest, his lungs were on fire and all at once he didn’t even have the strength to pull off the helmet . . .

Conway was forced from his state of deep and oddly comfortable unconsciousness by pain: something was making strong and repeated attempts to cave in his chest. He stuck it just as long as he could, then opened his eyes and said, “Get off me, dammit, I’m all right!”

The hefty intern who had been enthusiastically engaged in giving Conway artificial respiration climbed to his feet. He said, “When we arrived, daddy-longlegs here said you had ceased to emote. I was worried about you for a moment—well, slightly worried.” He grinned and added, “If you can walk and talk, O’Mara wants to see you.

Conway grunted and rose to his feet. Blowers and filtering apparatus had been set up in the corridor and were rapidly clearing the air of the last vestiges of chlorine and the casualties were being removed, some on tented stretcher-carriers and others being assisted by their rescuers. He fingered the raw area of forehead caused by the hurried removal of his helmet and took a few great gulps of air just to reassure himself that the nightmare of a few minutes ago was really over.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said feelingly.

“Don’t mention it, Doctor,” said the intern.

They found O’Mara in the Educator Room. The Chief Psychologist wasted no time on preliminaries. He pointed to a chair for Conway and indicated a sort of surrealistic wastepaper basket to Prilicla and barked, “What happened?”

The room was in shadow except for the glow of indicator lights on the Educator equipment and a single lamp on O’Mara’s desk. All Conway could see of the psychologist as he began his story was two hard, competent hands projecting from the sleeves of a dark green uniform and a pair of steady gray eyes in a shadowed face. The hands did not move and the eyes never left him while Conway was speaking.

When he was finished O’Mara sighed and was silent for several seconds, then he said, “There were four of our top Diagnosticians at Lock Six just then, beings this hospital could ill afford to lose. The prompt action you took certainly saved at least three of their lives, so you’re a couple of heroes. But I’ll spare your blushes and not belabor that point. Neither,” he added dryly, “will I embarrass you by asking what you were doing there in the first place.”

Conway coughed. He said, “What I’d like to know is why the SRTT ran amok like that. Because of the crowd running to meet it, I’d say, except that no intelligent, civilized being would behave like that. The only visitors we allow here are either government people or visiting specialists, neither of which are the type to be scared at the sight of an alien life form. And why so many Diagnosticians to meet it in the first place?”

“They were there,” replied O’Mara, “because they were anxious to see what an SRTT looked like when it was not trying to look like something else. This data might have aided them in a case they are working on. Also, with a hitherto unknown life-form like that it is impossible to guess at what made it act as it did. And finally, it is not the type of visitor which we allow here, but we had to break the rules this time because its parent is in the hospital, a terminal case.

Conway said softly, “I see.

A Monitor Lieutenant came into the room at that point and hurried across to O’Mara. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’ve been able to find one item which may help us with the search for the visitor. A DBLF nurse reports seeing a PVSJ moving away from the area of the accident at about the right time. To one of the DBLF caterpillars the PVSJs are anything but pretty, as you know, but the nurse says that this one looked worse than usual, a real freak. So much so that the DBLF was sure that it was a patient suffering from something pretty terrible—”

“You checked that we have no PVSJ suffering from the malady described?”

“Yes, sir. There is no such case.”

O’Mara looked suddenly grim. He said, “Very good, Carson, you know what to do next,” and nodded dismissal.

Conway had been finding it hard to contain himself during the conversation, and with the departure of the Lieutenant he burst out, “The thing I saw come out of the air-lock had tentacles and . . . and . . . Well, it wasn’t anything like a PVSJ. I know that an SRTT is able to modify its physical structure, of course, but so radically and in such a short time . . .

Abruptly O’Mara stood up. He said, “We know practically nothing about this life-form—its needs, capabilities or emotional response patterns—and it is high time we found out. I’m going to build a fire under Colinson in Communications to see what he can dig up; environment, evolutionary background, cultural and social influences and so on. We can’t have a visitor running around loose like this, it’s bound to make a nuisance of itself through sheer ignorance.

“But what I want you two to do is this,” he went on. “Keep an eye open for any odd-looking patients or embryos in the Nursery sections. Lieutenant Carson has just left to get on the PA and make these instructions general. If you do find somebody who may be our SRTT approach them gently. Be reassuring, make no sudden moves and be sure to avoid confusing it, that only one of you talks at once. And contact me immediately.”

When they were outside again Conway decided that nothing further could be done in the current work period, and postponing the rounds of their wards for another hour, led the way to the vast room which served as a dining hall for all the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers on the hospital’s Staff. The place was, as usual, crowded, and although it was divided up into sections for the widely variant life-forms present, Conway could see many tables where three or four different classifications had come together—with extreme discomfort for some-to talk shop.

Conway pointed out a vacant table to Prilicla and began working toward it, only to have his assistant—aided by its still functional wings—get there before him and in time to foil two maintenance men making for the same spot. A few heads turned during this fifty yard flight, but only briefly—the diners were used to much stranger sights than that.

“I expect most of our food is suited to your metabolism,” said Conway when he was seated, “but do you have any special preferences?”

Prilicla had, and Conway nearly choked when he heard them. But it was not the combination of well-cooked spaghetti and raw carrots that was so bad, it was the way the GLNO set about eating the spaghetti when it arrived. With all four eating appendages working furiously Prilicla wove it into a sort of rope which was passed into the being’s beak-like mouth. Conway was not usually affected by this sort of thing, but the sight was definitely doing things to his stomach.

Suddenly Prilicla stopped. “My method of ingestion is disturbing you,” it said. “I will go to another table—”

“No, no,” said Conway quickly, realizing that his feelings had been picked up by the empath. “That won’t be necessary, I assure you. But it is a point of etiquette here that, whenever it is possible, a being dining in mixed company uses the same eating tools as its host or senior at the table. Er, do you think you could manage a fork?”

Prilicla could manage a fork. Conway had never seen spaghetti disappear so fast.

From the subject of food the talk drifted not too unnaturally to the hospital’s Diagnosticians and the Educator Tape system without which these august beings-and indeed the whole hospital-could not function.

Diagnosticians deservedly had the respect and admiration of everyone in the hospital-and a certain amount of the pity as well. For it was not simply knowledge which the Educator gave them, the whole personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on their brains as well. In effect the Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic type of multiple schizophrenia, and with the alien other components sharing their minds so utterly different in every respect that they often did not even share the same system of logic.

Their one and only common denominator was the need of all doctors, regardless of size, shape or number of legs, to cure the sick.

There was a DBDG Earth-human Diagnostician at a table nearby who was visibly having to force himself to eat a perfectly ordinary steak. Conway happened to know that this man was engaged on a case which necessitated using a large amount of the knowledge contained in the Tralthan physiology tape which he had been given. The use of this knowledge had brought into prominence within his mind the personality of the Tralthan who had furnished the brain record, and Tralthans abhorred meat in all its forms..

IV

After lunch Conway took Prilicla to the first of the wards to which they were assigned, and on the way continued to reel off more statistics and background information. The Hospital comprised three hundred and eighty-four levels and accurately reproduced the environments of the sixty-eight different forms of intelligent life currently known to the Galactic Federation. Conway was not trying to cow Prilicla with the vastness of the great hospital nor to boast, although he was intensely proud of the fact that he had gained a post in this very famous establishment. It was simply that he was uneasy about his assistant’s means of protecting itself against the conditions it would shortly meet, and this was his way of working around to the subject.

But he need not have worried, for Prilicla demonstrated how the light, almost diaphanous, suit which had saved it at Lock Six could be strengthened from inside by a scaled-down adaptation of the type of force-field used as meteorite protection of interstellar ships. When necessary its legs could be folded so as to be within the protective covering as well, instead of projecting outside it as they had done at the lock.

While they were changing prior to entering the AUGL Nursery Ward, which was their first call, Conway began filling in his assistant on the case history of the occupants.

The fully-grown physiological type AUGL was a forty foot long, oviparous, armored fish-like life-form native of Chalderescol II, but the beings now in the ward for observation had been hatched only six weeks ago and measured only three feet. Two previous hatchings by the same mother had, as had this one, been in all respects normal and with the offspring seemingly in perfect health, yet two months later they had all died. A PM performed on their home world gave the cause of death as extreme calcification of the articular cartilage in practically every joint in the body, but had been unable to shed any light on the cause of death. Now Sector General was keeping a watchful eye on the latest hatching, and Conway was hoping that it would be a case of third time lucky.

“At present I look them over every day,” Conway went on, “and on every third day take an AUGL tape and give them a thorough checkup. Now that you are assisting me this will also apply to you. But when you take this tape I’d advise you to have it erased immediately after the examination, unless you would like to wander around for the rest of the day with half of your brain convinced that you are a fish and wanting to act accordingly . . .”

“That would be an intriguing but no doubt confusing hybrid,” agreed Prilicla. The GLNO was now enclosed completely—with the exception of two manipulators—in the bubble of its protective suit, which it had weighted sufficiently for it not to be hampered by too much buoyancy. Seeing that Conway was also ready, it operated the lock controls, and as they entered the great tank of warm, greenish water that was the AUGL ward it added, “Are the patients responding to treatment?”

Conway shook his head. Then realizing that the gesture probably meant nothing to the GLNO he said, “We are still at the exploratory stage-treatment has not yet begun. But I’ve had a few ideas, which I can’t properly discuss with you until we both take the AUGL tape tomorrow and am fairly certain that two of our three patients will come through-in effect, one of them will have to be used as a guinea-pig in order to save the others. The symptoms appear and develop very quickly,” he continued, “which is why I want such a close watch kept on them. Now that the danger point is so close I think I’ll make it three-hourly, and we’ll work out a timetable so’s neither of us will miss too much sleep. You see, the quicker we spot the first symptoms the more time we have to act and the greater the possibility of saving all three of them. I’m very keen to do the hat-trick.”

Prilicla wouldn’t know what a hat-trick was either, Conway thought, but the being would quickly learn how to interpret his nods, gestures and figures of speech—Conway had had to do the same in his early days with e-t superiors, sometimes wondering fulminating why somebody did not make a tape on Alien Esoterics to aid junior interns in his position. But these were only surface thoughts. At the back of his mind, so steady and so sharp that it might have been painted there, was the picture of a young, almost embryonic life-form whose developing exoskeleton-the hundred or so flat, bony plates normally free to slide or move on flexible hinges of cartilage so as to allow mobility and breathing—was about to become a petrified fossil imprisoning, for a very short time, the frantic consciousness within . . .

“How can I assist you at the moment?” asked Prilicla, bringing Conway’s mind back from near future to present time with a rush. The GLNO was eyeing the three thin, streamlined shapes darting about the great tank and obviously wondering how it was going to stop one long enough to examine it. It added, “They’re fast, aren’t they?”

“Yes, and very fragile,” said Conway. “Also they are so young that for present purposes they can be considered mindless. They frighten easily and any attempt to approach them closely sends them into such a panic that they swim madly about until exhausted or injure themselves against the tank walls. What we have to do is lay a minefield . . .

Quickly Conway explained and demonstrated how to place a pattern of anesthetic bulbs which dissolved in the water and how, gently and at a distance, to maneuver their elusive patients through it. Later, while they were examining the three small, unconscious forms and Conway saw how sensitive and precise was the touch of Prilicla’s manipulators and the corresponding sharpness of the GLNQ’s mind, his hopes for all three of the infant AUGLs increased.

They left the warm and to Conway rather pleasant environment of the AUGLs for the “hot” ward of their section. This time the checking of the occupants was done with the aid of remote-controlled mechanisms from behind twenty feet of shielding. There was nothing of an urgent nature in this ward, and before leaving Conway pointed out the complicated masses of plumbing surrounding it. The maintenance division he explained, used the “hot” ward as a stand—by power pile to light and heat the hospital.

Constantly in the background the wall annunciators kept droning out the progress of the search for the SRTT visitor. It had not been found yet, and cases of mistaken identity and of beings seeing things were mounting steadily. Conway had not thought much about the SRTT since leaving O’Mara, but now he was beginning to feel a little anxious at the thought of what the runaway visitor might do in this section especially—not to mention what some of the infant patients might do to it. If only he knew more about it, had some idea of its militations. He decided to call O’Mara.

In reply to Conway’s request the Chief Psychologist said, “Our latest information is that the SRTT life-form evolved on a planet with an eccentric orbit around its primary. Geologic, climatic and temperature changes were such that a high degree of adaptability was necessary for survival. Before they attained a civilization their means of defense was either to assume as frightening an aspect as possible or to copy the physical form of their attackers in the hope that they would escape detection in this way-protective mimicry being the favorite method of avoiding danger, and so often used that the process had become almost involuntary. There are some other items regarding mass and dimensions at different ages. They are a very long-lived species—and this not particularly helpful collection of data, which was digested from the report of the survey ship which discovered the planet, ends by saying that all the foregoing is for our information only and that these beings do not take sick.”

O’Mara paused briefly, then added, “Hah!”

“I agree,” said Conway.

“One item we have which might explain its panicking on arrival,” O’Mara went on, “is that it is their custom for the very youngest to be present at the death of a parent rather than the eldest—there is an unusually strong emotional bond between parent and last-born. Estimates of mass place our runaway as being very young. Not a baby, of course, but definitely nowhere near maturity.”

Conway was still digesting this when the Major continued, “As to its limitations, I’d say that the Methane section is too cold for it and the radioactive wards too hot-also that glorified turkish bath on level Eighteen where they breathe super—heated steam. Apart from those, your guess is as good as mine where it may turn up.

“It might help a little if I could see this SRTT’s parent,” Conway said. “Is that possible?”

There was a lengthy pause, then: “Just barely,” said O’Mara dryly. “The immediate vicinity of that patient is literally crawling with Diagnosticians and other high-powered talent . . . But come up after you’ve finished your rounds and I’ll try to fix it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Conway and broke the circuit.

He still felt a vague uneasiness about the SRTT visitor, a dark premonition that he had not yet finished with this e-t juvenile delinquent who was the ultimate in quick-change artists. Maybe, he thought sourly, his current duties had brought out the mother in him, but at the thought of the havoc which that SRTT could cause—the damage to equipment and fittings, the interruption of important and closely-timed courses of treatment and the physical injury, perhaps even death, to the more fragile life-forms through its ignorant blundering about—Conway felt himself go a little sick.

For the failure to capture the runaway had made plain one very disquieting fact, and that was that the SRTT was not too young and immature not to know how to work the intersection locks . . .

Half angrily, Conway pushed these useless anxieties to the back of his mind and began explaining to Prilicla about the patients in the ward they were going to visit next, and the protective measures and examinative procedures necessary when handling them.

This ward contained twenty-eight infants of the FROB classification—low, squat, immensely strong beings with a horny covering that was like flexible armor plate. Adults of the species with their increased mass tended to be slow and ponderous, but the infants could move surprisingly fast despite the condition of four times Earth-normal gravity and pressure in which they lived. Heavy-duty suits were called for in these conditions and the floor level of the ward was never used by visiting physicians or nursing staff except in cases of the gravest emergency. Patients for examination were raised from the floor by a grab and lifting apparatus to the cupola set in the ceiling for this purpose, where they were anesthetized before the grab was released. This was done with a long, extremely strong needle which was inserted at the point where the inner side of the foreleg joined the trunk—one of the very few soft spots on the FROB’s body.

. . . I expect you to break a lot of needles before you get the hang of it,” Conway added, “but don’t worry about that, or think that you are hurting them. These little darlings are so tough that if a bomb went off beside them they would hardly blink.”

Conway was silent for a few seconds while they walked briskly toward the FROB ward-Prilicla’s six, multi-jointed and pencil-thin legs seeming to spread out all over the place, but somehow never actually getting underfoot. He no longer felt that he was walking on eggs when he was near the GLNO, or that the other would crumple up and blow away if he so much as brushed against it. Prilicla had demonstrated its ability to avoid all contacts likely to be physically harmful to it in a way which, now that Conway was becoming accustomed to it, was both dexterous and strangely graceful.

A man, he thought, could get used to working with anything.

“But to get back to our thick-skinned little friends,” Conway resumed, “physical toughness in that species—especially in the younger age groups—is not accompanied by resistance to germ or virus infections. Later they develop the necessary antibodies and as adults are disgustingly healthy, but in the infant stage..

“They catch everything,” Prilicla put in. “And as soon as a new disease is discovered they get that, too.”

Conway laughed. “I was forgetting that most e-t hospitals have their quota of FROBs and that you may already have had experience with them. You will know also that these diseases are rarely fatal to the infants, but that their cure is long, complicated, and not very rewarding, because they straightaway catch something else. None of our twenty-eight cases here are serious, and the reason that they are here rather than at a local hospital is that we are trying to produce a sort of shotgun serum which will artificially induce in them the immunity to infection which will eventually be theirs in later life and so . . . Stop!”

The word was sharp, low and urgent, a shouted whisper. Prilicla froze, its sucker-tipped legs gripping the corridor floor, and stared along with Conway at the being who had just appeared at the intersection ahead of them.

At first glance it looked like an Illensan. The shapeless, spiny body with the dry, rustling membrane joining upper and lower appendages belonged unmistakably to the PVSJ chlorine-breathers. But there were two eating tentacles which seemed to have been transplanted from an FGLI, a furry breast pad which was pure DBLF and it was breathing, as they were, an atmosphere rich in oxygen.

It could only be the runaway.

All the laws of physiology to the contrary Conway felt his heart battering at the back of his throat somewhere as, remembering O’Mara’s strict orders not to frighten the being, he tried to think of something friendly and reassuring to say. But the SRTT took off immediately it caught sign of them, and all Conway could find to say was, “Quick, after it!”

At a dead run they reached the intersection and turned into the corridor taken by the fleeing SRTT, Prilicla scuttling along the ceiling again to keep out of the way of Conway’s pounding feet. But the sight in front of them caused Conway to forget all about being gentle and reassuring, and he yelled, “Stop, you fool! Don’t go in there . . . !”

The runaway was at the entrance to the FROB ward.

They reached the entry lock just too late and watched helplessly through the port as the SRTT opened the inner seal and, gripped by the four times normal gravity pull of the ward, was flung down out of sight. The inner door closed automatically then, allowing Prilicla and Conway to enter the lock and prepare for the environment within the ward.

Conway struggled frantically into the heavy duty suit which he kept in the lock chamber and quickly set the repulsion of its anti-gravity belt to compensate for the conditions inside. Prilicla, meanwhile, was doing similar things to its own equipment. While checking the seals and fastenings of the suit, and swearing at this very necessary waste of time, Conway could see through the inner inspection window a sight which made him shudder.

The pseudo-Illensan shape of the SRTT lay plastered against the floor. It was twitching slightly, and already one of the larger FROB infants was coming pounding up to investigate this odd-looking object. One of the great, spatulate feet must have trod on the recumbent SRTT, because it jerked away and began rapidly and incredibly to change. The weak, membranous appendages of the PVSJ seemed to dissolve into the main body which became the bony, lizard-like form with the wicked, horn-tipped tentacles which they had seen first at Lock Six. This was obviously the SRTT’s most frightening manifestation.

But the infant FROB possessed nearly five times the other’s mass and so could hardly be expected to be frightened. It put down its massive head and butted, sending the SRTT crashing against the wall plating twenty feet across the ward. The FROB wanted to play.

Both doctors were out of the lock and onto the ceiling catwalk now, where the view was much clearer. The SRTT was changing again, fast. The tentacled lizard shape had not worked at all well for it in four-C conditions against these infant behemoths and it was trying something else.

The FROB had closed in on it again and was watching fascinated.

V

Conway said urgently, “Doctor, can you handle the grab apparatus? Good! Then go to it . . .” As Prilicla scurried along the catwalk to the control cupola Conway set his anti-gravity controls to zero and called, “I’ll direct you from below.” Weightless now, he kicked himself toward the floor.

But Conway was no stranger to the FROB infant—very probably it disliked or was bored by this diminutive figure whose only game was that of sticking big needles in it while something big and strong held it still, and despite all of Conway’s frantic shouting and arm-waving he found himself being ignored. But the other occupants of the ward were taking an interest, and their attention was being drawn to the still-changing SRTT . . .

“No!” Conway shouted, aghast at what the visitor was changing into. “No! Stop! Change back . . .

But it was too late. The whole ward seemed to be stampeding toward the SRTT, giving vent to a thunderous bedlam of excited growls and yelps which, from the older infants, were Translated into shouts of “Dolly! Dolly! Nice dolly “'

Springing upward to avoid being trampled, Conway looked down on the milling mass of FROBs and felt the strong and sickening conviction that the luckless SRTT had departed this life. But no. The being had somehow managed to run—or squeeze—the gauntlet of stamping feet and eager, bludgeoning heads by keeping low and tightly pressed against the wall. It emerged battered but still in the shape which it had, chameleon-like, adopted in the mistaken idea that a tiny version of an FROB would be safe.

Conway called, “Quickly! Grab!”

But Prilicla was not sleeping on its job. The massive jaws of the grab were already hanging open above the dazed and slow-moving SRTT, and as Conway shouted they dropped and crashed shut. Conway sprang for one of the lifting cables and as they rose from the floor together he said hurriedly, “You’re safe now. Relax. I’m here to help you..

His reply was a sharp convulsion of the SRTT which nearly shook him loose, and suddenly the being had become a thing of lithe, oily convolutions which slipped between the fingers of the grab and slapped onto the floor. The FROBs hooted excitedly and charged again.

It could not possibly survive this time, Conway thought with a mixture of horror, pity and impatience; this being who had had one fright on arrival and who had not stopped running since, and who was still too utterly terrified even to be helped. The grab was useless but there was one other possibility. O’Mara would probably skin him alive for it, but he would at least be saving SRTT’s life for the time being if he allowed it to escape.

On the wall opposite the entry lock which Prilicla and himself had used was the door through which the FROB patients were brought to the ward. It was a simple door because the corridor outside it, which led to the FROB operating theater, was maintained at the same level of gravity and pressure as was the ward. Conway dived across the intervening space to the controls and slid it open, watching the SRTT—who was not so insensible with fear that it missed seeing this way of escape—as it slithered through. He closed it again just in time to prevent some of the patients from getting out as well, then made for the control cupola to report the whole ghastly mess to O’Mara.

For the situation was now much worse than they all had thought. While he had been at the other end of the ward he had seen something which increased the difficulties of catching and pacifying the runaway many, many times, and which explained the visitor’s lack of response to him while in the grab. It had been the shattered, trampled ruin of the SRTT’s Translator pack.

Conway’s hand was on the intercom switch when Prilicla said, “Excuse me, sir, but does my ability to detect your emotions cause you mental distress? Or does mentioning aloud what I may have found trouble you?”

“Eh? What?” said Conway. He thought that he must be radiating impatience at a furious rate at the moment, because his assistant had picked a great time to start asking questions like that! His first impulse was to cut the other off, but then he decided that delaying his report to O’Mara by a few seconds would not make any difference, and possibly Prilicla considered the matter important. Aliens were funny.

“No to both questions,” Conway replied shortly. “Though in the second instance I might be embarrassed if you made known your findings to a third party in certain circumstances. Why do you ask?”

“Because I have been aware of your deep anxiety regarding the possible depredations of this SRTT among your patients,” Prilicla said, “and I am loath to further increase that anxiety by telling you of the type and intensity of the emotions which I detected just now in the being’s mind.”

Conway sighed. “Spit it out, things couldn’t be much worse than they are now . . .

But they could and were.

When Prilicla finished speaking Conway pulled his hand away from the intercom switch as though it had grown teeth and bit him. “I can’t tell him that over the intercom!” he burst out. “It would be sure to leak to the patients and if they, or even some of the Staff knew about it, there would be a panic.” He dithered for a moment, then cried, “Come on, we’ve got to see O’Mara!”

But the Chief Psychologist was not in his office or in the nearby Educator room. However, information supplied by one of his assistants sent them hurrying to the forty-seventh level and Observation Ward Three.

This was a vast, high-ceilinged room maintained at a pressure and temperature suited to warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. DBDG, DBLF and FGLI doctors carried out preliminary examinations here on the more puzzling or exotic cases—the patients, if these atmospheric conditions did not suit them, being housed in large, transparent cubicles spaced at intervals around the walls and floor. It was known irreverently as the Punch and Ponder department and Conway could see a group of medics of all shapes and species gathered around a glass-walled tank in the middle of the ward. This must be the older and dying SRTT he had heard about, but he had no attention to spare for anything until he had spoken to O’Mara.

He caught sight of the psychologist at a communications desk beside the wall and hurried over.

While he talked O’Mara listened stolidly, several times opening his mouth as though to interrupt, then each time closing it in a grimmer, tighter line. But when Conway reached the point where he had seen the broken Translator, O’Mara waved him to silence and hit the intercom switch with the same jerky motion of his hand.

“Get me Engineering Division, Colonel Skempton,” he barked. Then:

“Colonel, our runaway is in the FROB nursery area. But there is a complication, I’m afraid—it has lost its Translator. . .” There was a short pause, then: “Neither do I know how I expect you to pacify it when you can’t communicate, but do what you can in the meantime-I’m going to work on the communication angle now.

He snapped the switch off and then on again, and said, “Colinson, in Communications.., hello, Major. I want a relay between here and the Monitor Survey team on the SRTT’s home planet—yes, the one I had you collecting about a few hours ago. Will you arrange that? And have them prepare a sound tape in the SRTT native language—I’ll give you the wording I want in a moment-and have them relay it here. The substance of the speech, which must be obtained from an adult SRTT, will have to be roughly as follows—”

He broke off as Major Colinson’s voice erupted from the speaker. The communications man was reminding a certain desk-bound headshrinker that the SRTT planet was halfway across the Galaxy, that subspace radio was susceptible to interference just like any other kind and that by the time every sun in the intervening distance had splattered the signal with their share of static it would be virtually unintelligible.

“Have them repeat the signal,” O’Mara said. “There are sure to be usable words and phrases which we can piece together to reconstruct the original message. We need this thing badly, and I’ll tell you why . . .

The SRTT species were an extremely long-lived race, O’Mara explained quickly, who reproduced hermaphroditically at very great intervals and with great pain and effort. There was therefore a bond of great affection and—what was more important in the present circumstances—discipline between the adults and children of the species. There was also the belief, so strong as to be almost a certainty, that no matter what changes a member of this species worked it would always try to retain the vocal and aural organs which allowed it to communicate with its fellows.

Now if one of the adults on the home planet could prepare a few general remarks directed toward youths who misbehaved when they ought to have known better, and these were relayed to Sector General and in turn played over the PA to their runaway visitor, then the young SRTT’s ingrained obedience to its elders would do the rest.

And that,” said O’Mara to Conway as he switched off, “should take care of that little crisis. With any luck we’ll have our visitor quieted down within a few hours. So your troubles are over, you can relax..

The psychologist broke off at the expression on Conway’s face, then he said softly, “There’s more?”

Conway nodded. Indicating his assistant he said, “Dr. Prilicla detected it, by empathy. You must understand that the runaway is in a very bad way psychologically-grief for its dying parent, the fright it received at Lock Six when everyone came charging at it, and now the mauling it has undergone in the FROB nursery. It is young, immature, and these experiences have thrown it back to the stage where its responses are purely animal and.., well . . .” Conway licked dry lips . . . has anyone calculated how long it has been since that SRTT has eaten?”

The implications of the question were not lost on O’Mara either. He paled suddenly and snatched up the mike again. “Get me Skempton again, quickly! . . . Skempton? . . . Colonel, I am not trying to sound melodramatic but would you use the scrambler attached to your set, there is another complication . . .

Turning away, Conway debated with himself whether to go over for a brief look at the dying SRTT or hurry back to his section. Back in the FROB nursery Prilicla had detected in the runaway’s mind strong hunger radiation as well as the expected fear and confusion, and it had been the communication of these findings which had caused first Conway, then O’Mara and Skempton to realize just what a deadly menace the visitor had become. The youths of any species are notoriously selfish, cruel and uncivilized, Conway knew, and driven by steadily increasing pangs of hunger this one would certainly turn cannibal. In its present confused mental state the young SRTT would probably not know that it had done so, but that fact would make no difference at all to the patients concerned.

If only the majority of Conway’s charges were not so small, defenseless and.., tasty.

On the other hand a look at the elder being might suggest some method of dealing with the younger-his curiosity regarding the SRTT terminal case having nothing to do with it, of course . . .

He was maneuvering for a closer look at the patient inside the tank and at the same time trying not to jostle the Earth-human doctor who was blocking his view, when the man turned irritably and asked, “Why the blazes don’t you climb up my back? . . . Oh, hello, Conway. Here to contribute another uninformed wild guess, I suppose?”

It was Mannon, the doctor who had at one time been Conway’s superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving Diagnostician status. He had befriended Conway on his arrival at the hospital, Mannon had several times explained within Conway’s hearing, because he had a soft spot for stray dogs, cats and interns. Currently he was allowed to retain permanently in his brain just three Educator tapes—that of a Tralthan specialist in micro-surgery and two belonging to surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species—so that for long periods of each day his reactions were quite human. At the moment he was eyeing Prilicla, who was skittering about on the fringe of the crowd, with raised eyebrows.

Conway began to give details regarding the character and accomplishments of his new assistant, but was interrupted by Mannon saying loudly, “That’s enough, lad, you’re beginning to sound like an unsolicited testimonial. A light touch and the empathic faculty will be a big help in your current line of work. I grant that. But then you always did pick odd associates; levitating balls of goo, insects, dinosaurs, and such like—all pretty peculiar people, you must admit. Except for that nurse on the twenty-third level, now I admire your taste there—”

“Are they making any headway with this case, sir?” Conway said, determinedly shunting the conversation back onto the main track again. Mannon was the best in the world, but he had the painful habit sometimes of pulling a person’s leg until it threatened to come off at the hip.

“None,” said Mannon. “And what I said about wild guesses is a fact. We’re all making them here, and getting nowhere—ordinary diagnostic techniques are completely useless. Just look at the thing!”

Mannon moved aside for Conway, and a sensation as of a pencil being laid across his shoulder told him that Prilicla was behind him craning to see, too.

VI

The being in the tank was indescribable for the simple reason that it had obviously been trying to become several different things at once when the dissolution had begun. There were appendages both jointed and tentacular, patches of scales, spines and leathery, wrinkled tegument together with the suggestion of mouth and gill openings, all thrown together in a gruesome hodge-podge. Yet none of the physiological details were clear because the whole flaccid mass was softened, eroded away, like a wax model left too long in the heat. Moisture oozed from the patient’s body continuously and trickled to the floor of the tank, where the water level was nearly six inches deep.

Conway swallowed and said, “Bearing in mind the adaptability of this species, its immunity to physical damage and so on, and considering the wildly mixed-up state of its body, I should say that there may be a strong possibility that the trouble stems from psychological causes.”

Mannon looked him up and down slowly with an expression of awe on his face, then said, witheringly, “Psychological causes, hey? Amazing! Well, what else could cause a being who is immune both to physical damage and bacterial infection to get into this state except something wrong with its think tank? But perhaps you were going to be more specific?”

Conway felt his neck and ears getting warm. He said nothing.

Mannon grunted, then went on, “The water that it is melting into is just that, plus a few harmless organisms which are suspended in it. We’ve tried every method of physical and psychological treatment that we could think of, without results. At the moment someone is suggesting that we quick-freeze the patient, both to halt the melting and to give us more time to think of something else. This has been vetoed because in its present state such a course might kill the patient outright. We’ve had a couple of our telepathic life-forms try to tune to its mind with a view to straightening it out that way, and O’Mara has gone back to the dark ages to such a point that he has tried crude electro-shock therapy, but nothing works. Altogether we have brought, singly and acting in concert, the viewpoints of very nearly every species in the Galaxy, and still we can’t get a line on what ails it.

“If the trouble was psychological,” put in Conway, “I should have thought that the telepaths—”

“No,” said Mannon. “In this life-form the mind and memory function is evenly distributed throughout the whole body and not housed in a permanent brain casing, otherwise it could not accomplish such marked changes in its physical structure. At present the being’s mind is withdrawing, draining away, into smaller and smaller units-so small that the telepaths cannot work them.

“This SRTT is a real weirdie,” Mannon continued thoughtfully. “It evolved out of the sea, of course, but later its world saw outbreaks of volcanic activity, earthquakes—the surface being coated with sulfur and who knows what else—and finally a minor instability in their sun converted the planet into the desert which it now is. They had to be adaptable to survive all that. And their method of reproduction—a budding and splitting-off process which causes the loss of a sizable portion of the parent’s mass—is interesting, too, because it means that the embryo is born with part of the body-and-brain cell structure of the parent. No conscious memories are passed to the newly-born but it retains unconsciously the memories which enable it to adapt—”

“But that means,” Conway burst out, “that if the parent transfers a section of its body-and-mind to the offspring, then each individual’s unconscious memory must go back—”

“And it is the unconscious which is the seat of all psychoses,” interrupted O’Mara, who had come up behind them at that point. “Don’t say any more, I have nightmares at the very idea. Imagine trying to analyze a patient whose subconscious mind goes back fifty thousand years. . .

The conversation dried up quickly after that and Conway, still anxious about the younger SRTT’s activities, hurried back to the nursery section. The whole area was infested with maintenance men and green-uniformed Monitors, but the runaway had not been sighted again. Conway placed a DBDG nurse-the one Mannon was so fond of pulling his leg about, strangely enough—on duty in a diving suit at the AUGL ward, because he was expecting developments there at any time, and prepared with Prilicla to pay a call on the methane nursery.

Their work among the frigid-blooded beings in that ward was also routine, and during it Conway pestered Prilicla with questions about the emotional state of the elder SRTT they had just left. But the GLNO was very little help; all it would say was that it had detected an urge toward dissolution which it could not describe more fully to Conway because there was nothing in its own previous experience which it could relate the feeling to.

Outside again they discovered that Colinson had wasted no time. From the wall annunciators there poured out a staccato howl of static through which could be dimly heard an alien gobbling which was presumably the SRTT sound tape. Conway thought that if positions were reversed and he was a frightened small boy listening to a voice striving to speak to him through that incredible uproar, he would feel anything but reassured. And the atmosphere of the SRTT’s home planet would almost certainly be of a different density to this one, which would further increase the distortion of the voice. He did not say anything to Prilicla, but Conway thought that it would be nothing less than a miracle if this cacophony produced the result which O’Mara had intended.

The racket cut off suddenly, was replaced by a voice in English which droned out, “Would Dr. Conway please go to the intercom,” then it returned unabated. Conway hurried to the nearest set.

“This is Murchison in the AUGL lock, Doctor,” said a worried female voice. “Somebody—I mean something—just went past me into the main ward. I thought it was you at first until it began opening the inner seal without putting on a suit, then I knew it must be the runaway SRTT.” She hesitated, then said, “Considering the state of the patients inside I didn’t give the alarm until checking with you, but I can call—”

“No, you did quite right, Nurse,” Conway said quickly. “We’ll be down at once.

When they arrived at the lock five minutes later, the nurse had a suit ready for Conway, and the combination of physiological features which made it impossible for the Earth-human members of the Staff to regard Murchison with anything like a clinical detachment were rendered slightly less distracting by her own protective suit. But Conway had eyes at the moment only for the inner inspection window and the thing which floated just inside it.

It was, or had been, very like Conway. The hair coloring was right, also the complexion, and it was in whites. But the features were out of proportion and ran together in a way that was quite horrible, and the neck and hands did not go into the tunic, they became the collar and sleeves of the garment. Conway was reminded of a lead figure that had been crudely fashioned and carelessly painted.

At the moment Conway knew that it was not a threat to the lives of the ward’s tiny patients, but it was changing. There was a slow growing together of the arms and legs, a lengthening out and the sprouting of long, narrow protuberances which could only be the beginnings of fins. The AUGL patients might be difficult for an Earth-human DBDG to catch, but the SRTT was adapting to water also, and speed.

“Inside!” said Conway urgently. “We’ve got to herd it out of here before it—”

But Prilicla was making no attempt to begin the bodily contortions which would bring it inside its protective envelope. “I have detected an interesting change in the quality of its emotional radiation,” the GLNO said suddenly. “There is still fear and confusion present, and an overriding hunger . . .

“Hunger . . . !” Murchison had not realized until then just what deadly danger the patients were in.

But there is something else,” Prilicla continued, disregarding the interruption. “I can only describe it as a background pleasure sensation coupled with that same urge toward dissolution which I detected a short time ago in its parent. But I am puzzled to account for this sudden change.——

Conway’s mind was on his three tiny patients, and the predatory form the SRTT was beginning to take. He said impatiently, “Probably because recent events have affected its sanity also, the pleasure trace being due possibly to a liking for the water—”

Abruptly he stopped, his mind racing too fast for words or even ordered logical thought. Rather it was a feverish jumble of facts, experiences and wild guesswork which boiled chaotically through his brain, then incredibly became still and cool and very, very clear as.. the answer.

And yet none of the tremendous intellects in the observation ward could have found it, Conway was sure, because they were not present with an empathic assistant when a young SRTT close to insanity through fear and grief had been immersed suddenly in the tepid, yellow depths of the AUGL tank . . .

When an intelligent, mature and mentally complex being encounters unpleasant and hurtful facts of sufficient numbers and severity the result is a retreat from reality. First a striving to return to the simple, unworrisome days of childhood and then, when that period turns out to be not nearly so carefree and uncomplicated as remembered, the ultimate retreat into the womb and the motionless, mindless condition of the catatonic. But to a mature SRTT the fetal position of catatonia could not be simple to attain, because its reproductive system was such that instead of the unborn offspring being in a state of warm, mindless comfort, it found itself part of its parent’s mature adult body and called upon to share in the decisions and adjustments its parent had to make. Because the SRTT body, every single cell of it, was the mind and any sort of separation was impossible to a life-form whose every cell was interchangeable.

How divide a glass of water without pouring some off into another container?

The diseased intellect would be forced to retreat again and again, only to find that it had become involved in endless changes and adaptations in its efforts to return to this nonexistent womb. It would go back—far, far back—until it eventually did find the mindless state which it craved and its mind, which was inseparable from its body, became the warm water teeming with unicellular life from which it had originally evolved.

Now Conway knew the reason for the slow, melting dissolution of the terminal case upstairs. More, he thought he saw a way of solving the whole horrible mess. If he could only bank on the fact that, as was the case with most other species, a complex, mature mind tended to go insane faster than an undeveloped and youthful one . . .

He was only vaguely aware of going to the intercom again and calling O’Mara, and of Murchison and Prilicla drawing closer to him as he talked. Then he was waiting for what seemed like hours for the Chief Psychologist to absorb the information and react. Finally:

“An ingenious theory, Doctor,” said O’Mara warmly. “More than that—I would say that that is exactly what has happened here, and no theorizing about it. The only pity is the understanding what has happened does nothing to aid the patient—”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Conway broke in eagerly, “and the way I see it the runaway is the most urgent problem now—if it isn’t caught and pacified soon there are going to be serious casualties among the Staff and patients, in my section anyway, if nowhere else. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, your idea of calming it by means of a sound tape in its own language is not very successful up to now . . .

“That’s putting it kindly,” said O’Mara dryly.

But,” went on Conway, “if this idea was modified so that the runaway was spoken to, reassured, by its parent upstairs. If we first cured the elder SRTT—”

“Cured the elder! What the blazes do you think we’ve been trying to do this past three weeks?” O’Mara demanded angrily. Then as the realization came that Conway was not trying to be funny or willfully stupid, that he sounded in deadly earnest, he said flatly, “Keep talking, Doctor.”

Conway kept talking. When he had finished the intercom speaker registered the sound of a great, explosive sigh, then; “I think you’ve got the answer all right, and we’ve certainly got to try it despite the risks you mentioned,” O’Mara said excitedly. Then abruptly his tones became clipped and efficient. “Take charge down there, Doctor. You know what you want done better than anyone else does. And use the DBLF recreation room on level fifty-nine—it’s close to your section and can be evacuated quickly. We’re going to tap in on the existing communications circuits so there will be no delay here, and the special equipment you want will be in the DBLF recreation room inside fifteen minutes. So you can start anytime, Conway . . .

Before he was cut off he heard Q'Mara begin issuing instructions to the effect that all Monitor Corps personnel and Staff in the nursery section were to be placed at the disposal of Doctors Conway and Prilicla, and he had barely turned away from the set before green-uniformed Monitors began crowding into the lock.

VII

The SRTT youth had somehow to be forced into the DBLF recreation room which was rapidly being booby-trapped for its benefit, and the first step was to get it out of the AUGL ward. This was accomplished by twelve Monitors swimming, sweating and cursing furiously in their heavy issue suits who chased awkwardly after it until they had it hemmed in at the point where the entry lock gave it the only avenue of escape.

Conway, Prilicla and another bunch of Monitors were waiting in the corridor outside when it came through, all garbed against any one of half a dozen environments through which the chase might lead them. Murchison had wanted to go, too—she had wanted to be in at the kill, she had stated—but Conway had told her sharply that her job was watching over the three AUGL patients and that she had better do just that.

He had not meant to lose his temper with Murchison like that, but he was on edge. If the idea he had been so enthusiastic about to O’Mara did not pan out there was a very good chance that there would be two incurable SRTT patients instead of one, and “in at the kill” had been an unfortunate choice of words.

The runaway had changed again—a semi-involuntary defense mechanism triggered off by the shapes of its pursuers—into a vaguely Earth human form. It ran soggily along the corridor on legs which were too rubbery and which bent in the wrong places, and the scaly, dun-colored tegument it had worn in the AUGL tank was twitching and writhing and smoothing out into the pink and white of flesh and medical tunic. Conway could look on the most alien beings imaginable suffering from the most horrible maladies without inward distress, but the sight of the SRTT trying to become a human being as it ran made him fight to retain his lunch.

A sudden sideways dash into an MSVK corridor took them unawares and resulted in a kicking, floundering pile-up of pursuers beyond the inner seal of the connecting lock. The MSVK life-forms were bi-pedal, vaguely stork-like beings who required an extremely low gravity pull, and the DBDGs like Conway could not adjust to it immediately. But while Conway was still slowly falling all over the place the Monitors’ space training enabled them to find their feet quickly. The SRTT was headed off into the oxygen section again.

It had been a bad few minutes while it lasted, Conway thought with relief, because the dim lighting and the opacity of the fog which the MSVKs called an atmosphere would have made the SRTT difficult to find if it had been lost to sight. If that had happened at this stage. . . Well, Conway preferred not to think about that.

But the DBLF recreation room was only minutes away now, and the SRTT was heading straight for it. The being was changing again, into something low and heavy which was moving on all fours. It seemed to be drawing itself in, condensing, and there was a suggestion of a carapace forming. It was still in that condition when two Monitors, yelling and waving their arms wildly, dashed suddenly out of an intersection and stampeded it into the corridor which contained the recreation room .

. . . And found it empty!

Conway swore luridly. There should have been half a dozen Monitors strung across that corridor to bar its way, but he had made such good time getting here that they were not in position yet. They were probably still inside the rec room placing their equipment, and the SRTT would go right past the doorway.

But he had not counted on the quick mind and even more agile body of Prilicla. His assistant must have realized the position in the same instant that he did. The little GLNO ran clicking down the corridor, rapidly overtaking the SRTT, then swinging up onto the ceiling until it had passed the runaway before dropping back. Conway tried to yell a warning, tried to shout that a fragile GLNO had no chance of heading off a being who was now the characteristics of an outsize and highly mobile armored crab, and that Prilicla was committing suicide. Then he saw what his assistant was aiming at.

There was a powered stretcher-carrier in its alcove about thirty feet ahead of the fleeing SRTT. He saw Prilicla skid to a halt beside it, hit the starter, then charge on. Prilicla was not being stupidly brave, it was being brainy and fast which was much better in these circumstances.

The stretcher-carrier, uncontrolled, lurched into motion and went wobbling across the corridor-right into the path of the charging SRTT. There was a metallic crash and a burst of dense yellow and black smoke as its heavy batteries shattered and shorted across. Before the fans could quite clear the air the Corpsmen were able to work around the stunned and nearly motionless runaway and herd it into the recreation room.

A few minutes later a Monitor officer approached Conway. He gave a jerk of his head which indicated the weird assortment of gadgetry which had been rushed to the compartment only minutes ago and which lay in neat piles around the room, and included the green-clad men ranged solidly against the walls-all facing toward the center of the big compartment where the SRTT rotated slowly in the exact center of the floor, seeking a way of escape. Quite obviously he was eaten up with curiosity, but his tone was carefully casual as he said, “Dr. Conway, I believe? Well, Doctor, what do you want us to do now?”

Conway moistened his lips. Up to now he had not thought much about this moment—he had thought that it would be easy to do this because the young SRTT had been such a menace to the hospital in general and caused so much trouble in his own section in particular. But now he was beginning to feel sorry for it. It was, after all, only a kid who had been sent out of control by a combination of grief, ignorance and panic. If this thing did not turn out right . . .

He shook off the feelings of doubt and inadequacy and said harshly, “You see that beastie in the middle of the room. I want it scared to death.”

He had to elaborate, of course, but the Monitors got the idea very quickly and began using the equipment which had been sent them with great fervor and enthusiasm. Watching grimly, Conway identified items from Air Supply, Communications and the various diet kitchens, all being used for a purpose for which they had never been designed. There were things which emitted shrill whistles, siren howls of tremendous volumes and others which consisted simply of banging two metal trays together. To this fearful racket was added the whoops of the men wielding those noisemakers.

And there was no doubt that the SRTT was scared—Prilicla reported its emotional reactions constantly. But it was not scared enough.

“Quiet!” yelled Conway suddenly. “Start using the silent stuff!”

The preceding din had only been a primer. Now would come the really vicious stuff—but silent, because any noise made by the SRTT had to be heard.

Flares burst around the shaking figure in the middle of the floor, blindingly incandescent but of negligible heat. Simultaneously tractor and pressor beams pushed and pulled at it, sliding it back and forth across the floor, occasionally tossing it into mid-air or flattening it against the ceiling. The beams worked on the same principle as the gravity neutralizer belts, but were capable of much finer control and focus. Other beam operators began flinging lighted flares at the suspended, wildly struggling figure, only yanking them back or turning them aside at the last possible moment.

The SRTT was really frightened now, so frightened that even non empaths could feel it. The shapes it was taking were going to give Conway nightmares for many weeks to come.

Conway lifted a hand mike to his lips and flicked the switch. “Any reaction up there yet?”

“Nothing yet,” O’Mara’s voice boomed from the speakers which had been set up around the room. “Whatever you’re doing at the moment you’ll have to step it up.”

“But the being is in a condition of extreme distress . . .” began Priicla.

Conway rounded on his assistant. “If you can’t take it, leave!” he snapped.

“Steady, Conway,” O’Mara’s voice came sharply. “I know how you must feel, but remember that the end result will cancel all this out . . .

“But if it doesn’t work.” Conway protested, then: “Oh never mind.” To Prilicla he said, “I’m sorry.” To the officer beside him he asked, “Can you think of any way of putting on more pressure?”

“I’d hate anything like that being done to me,” said the Monitor tightly, “but I would suggest adding spin. Some species are utterly demoralized by spin when they can take practically anything else . . .

Spin was added to the pummeling which the SRTT was already undergoing with the pressors-not a simple spin, but a wild, rolling, pitching movement which made Conway’s stomach feel queasy just by looking at it, and the flares dived and swooped around it like insane moons around their primary. Quite a few of the men had lost their first enthusiasm, and Prilicla swayed and shook on its six pipe-stem legs, in the grip of an emotional gale which threatened to blow it away.

It had been wrong to bring Prilicla in on this, Conway told himself angrily; no empath should have to go through this sort of hell by proxy. He had made a mistake from the very first, because the whole idea was cruel and sadistic and wrong. He was worse than a monster.

High in the center of the room the twisting, spinning blur that was the younger SRTT began to emit a high-pitched and terrified gobbling noise.

A crashing bedlam erupted from the wall speakers; shouts, cries, breaking noises and the sounds of running feet over-laying that of something slower and infinitely heavier. They could hear O’Mara’s voice shouting out some sort of explanation to somebody at the top of his lungs, then an unidentified voice yelled at them, “For Pete’s sake stop it down there! Buster’s papa has woke up and is wrecking the joint . . .

Quickly but gently they checked the spinning SRTT and lowered it to the floor, then they waited tensely while the shouting and crashing being relayed to them from Observation Ward Three reached a crescendo and began gradually to die down. Around the room men stood motionless watching each other, or the whimpering being on the floor, or the wall speakers, waiting. And then it came.

The sound was similar to the alien gobbling which had been relayed through the annunciators some hours previously, but without the accompanying roar of static, and because everyone had their Translators switched on the words also came through as English.

It was the elder SRTT, incurable no longer because it was physically whole again, speaking both reassuringly and chidingly to its erring offspring. In effect it was saying that junior had been a bad boy, that he must cease forthwith running around and getting himself and everyone else into a state, and that nothing else unpleasant would happen to him if he did as he was told by the beings now surrounding him. The sooner it did these things, the elder SRTT ended, the sooner they could both go home.

Mentally, the runaway had taken a terrible beating, Conway knew. Maybe it had taken too much. Tense with anxiety he watched it—still in a shape that was neither fish, flesh or fowl—begin humping its way across the floor. When it began gently and submissively to butt one of the watching Monitors in the knees, the cheer that went up very nearly gave it a relapse.

“When Prilicla here gave me the clue to what was troubling the elder SRTT, I was sure that the cure would have to be drastic,” Conway said to the Diagnosticians and Senior Physicians ranged around and behind O’Mara’s desk.

The fact that he was seated in such august company was a sure sign of the approval in which he was held, but despite that he still felt nervous as he went on. “Its regression toward the—to it—fetal state—complete dissolution into individual and unthinking cells floating in the primeval ocean—was far advanced, perhaps too far judging by its physical state. Major O’Mara had already tried various shock treatments which it, with its fantastically adaptable cell structure, was able to negate or ignore. My idea was to use the close physical and emotional bond which I discovered existed between the SRTT adult and its last-born offspring, and get at it that way.”

Conway paused, his eyes drifting sideways briefly to take in the shambles around them. Observation Ward Three looked as though a bomb had hit it, and Conway knew that there had been a rather hectic few minutes here between the time the elder SRTT had come out of its catatonic state and explanations had been given it. He cleared his throat and went on:

“So we trapped the young one in the DBLF recreation room and tried to frighten it as much as possible, piping the sounds it made up here to the parent. It worked. The elder SRTT could not lie doing nothing while its latest and most loved offspring was apparently in frightful danger, and parental concern and affection overcame and destroyed the psychosis and forced it back to present time and reality. It was able to pacify the young one, and so all concerned were left happy.”

“A nice piece of deductive reasoning on your part, Doctor,” O’Mara said warmly. “You are to be commended.”

At that moment the intercom interrupted him. It was Murchison reporting that the three AUGLs were showing the first signs of stiffening up, and would he come at once. Conway requested an AUGL tape for Prilicla and himself, and explained the urgency of the matter. While they were taking them the Diagnosticians and Senior Physicians began to leave. A little disappointedly Conway thought that Murchison’s call had spoiled what might have been his greatest moment.

“Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” O’Mara said cheerfully, reading his mind again. “If that call had come five minutes later your head would have been too swollen to take a physiology tape . . .

Two days later Conway had his first and only disagreement with Dr. Prilicla. He insisted that without the aid of Prilicla’s empathic faculty—an incredibly accurate and useful diagnostic tool—and Murchison’s vigilance, the cure of all three AUGLs would not have been possible. The GLNO stated that, much as it was against its nature to oppose his superior’s wishes, on this occasion Dr. Conway was completely mistaken. Murchison said that she was glad that she had been able to help, and could she please have some leave?

Conway said yes, then continued the argument with Prilicla, even though he knew he had no hope of winning it.

Conway honestly knew that he would not have been able to save the infant AUGLs without the little empath’s help—he might not have saved any of them, in fact. But he was the Boss, and when a Boss and his assistants accomplish something the credit invariably goes to the Boss.

The argument, if that was the proper word for such an essentially friendly disagreement, raged for days. Things were going well in the Nursery and they hadn’t anything of a serious nature to think about. They were not aware of the wreck which was then on its way to the hospital, or of the survivor it contained.

Nor did Conway know that within the next two weeks the whole Staff of the hospital would be despising him.

Chapter 5

OUT-PATIENT

The Monitor Corps cruiser Sheldon flicked into normal space some I five hundred miles from SectorTwelveGeneralHospital, the wreck

which was its reason for coming held gently against the hull within the field of its hyperdrive generators. At this distance the vast, brilliantly lit structure which floated in interstellar space at the galactic rim was only a dim blur of light, but that was because the Monitor Captain had had a close decision to make. Buried somewhere inside the wreck which he had brought in was a survivor urgently in need of medical attention. But like any good policeman his actions were constrained by possible effects on innocent bystanders-in this case the Staff and patients of the Galaxy’s largest multi-environment hospital.

Hurriedly contacting Reception he explained the situation, and received their reassurances that the matter would be taken care of at once. Now that the welfare of the survivor was in competent hands, the Captain decided that he could return with a clear conscience to his examination of the wreck, which just might blow up in his face at any moment.

In the office of the hospital’s Chief Psychologist, Dr. Conway sat uneasily on a very easy chair and watched the square, craggy features of O’Mara across an expanse of cluttered desk.

“Relax, Doctor,” O’Mara said suddenly, obviously reading his thoughts. “If you were here for a carpeting I’d have given you a harder chair. On the contrary, I’ve been instructed to administer a hefty pat on the back. You’ve been up-graded, Doctor. Congratulations. You are now, Heaven help us all, a Senior Physician.”

Before Conway could react to the news, the psychologist held up a large, square hand.

“In my own opinion a ghastly mistake has been made,” he went on, “but seemingly your success with that dissolving SRTT and your part in the levitating dinosaur business has impressed the people upstairs—they think it was due to ability instead of sheer luck. As for me,” he ended, grinning, “I wouldn’t trust you with my appendix.”

“You’re too kind, sir,” said Conway dryly.

O’Mara smiled again. “What do you expect, praise? My job is to shrink heads, not swell ’em. And now I suppose I’ll have to give you a minute to adjust to your new glory..

Conway was not slow in appreciating what this advance in status was going to mean to him. It pleased him, definitely—he had expected to do another two years before making Senior Physician. But he was a little frightened, too.

Henceforth he would wear an armband trimmed with red, have the right-of-way in corridors and dining halls over everyone other than fellow Seniors and Diagnosticians, and all the equipment or assistance he might need would be his for the asking. He would bear full responsibility for any patient left in his charge, with no possibility of ducking it or passing the buck. His personal freedom would be more constrained. He would have to lecture nurses, train junior interns, and almost certainly take part in one of the long-term research programs. These duties would necessitate his being in permanent possession of at least one physiology tape, probably two. That side of it, he knew, was not going to be pleasant.

Senior Physicians with permanent teaching duties were called on to retain one or two of these tapes continuously. That, Conway had heard, was no fun. The only thing which could be said for it was that he would be better off that a Diagnostician, the hospital’s elite, one of the rare beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently six, seven or even ten Educator tapes simultaneously. To their data crammed minds were given the job of original research in xenological medicine, and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in the hitherto unknown life-forms.

There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with the Chief Psychologist himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.

For it was not only physiological data which the Educator tapes imparted, but the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on their brains as well. In effect, a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia . . .

Suddenly O’Mara’s voice broke in on his thoughts . . . And now that you feel three feet taller and are no doubt raring to go,” the psychologist said, “I have a job for you. A wreck has been brought in which contains a survivor. Apparently the usual procedures for extricating it cannot be used. Physiological classification unknown—we haven’t been able to identify the ship so have no idea what it eats, breathes or looks like. I want you to go over there and sort things out, with a view to transferring the being here as quickly as possible for treatment. We’re told that its movements inside the wreckage are growing weaker,” he ended briskly, “so treat the matter as urgent.”

“Yes, sir,” said Conway, rising quickly. At the door he paused. Later he was to wonder at his temerity in saying what he did to the Chief Psychologist, and decided that promotion must have gone to his head. As a parting shot he said exultantly, “I’ve got your lousy appendix. Kellerman took it out three years ago. He pickled it and put it up as a chess trophy. It’s on my bookcase . . .”

O’Mara’s only reaction was to incline his head, as if receiving a compliment.

Outside in the corridor Conway went to the nearest communicator and called Transport. He said, “This is Dr. Conway. I have an urgent outpatient case and need a tender. Also a nurse able to use an analyzer and with experience of fishing people out of wrecks, if possible. I’ll be at Admission Lock Eight in a few minutes . . .

Conway made good time to the lock, all things considered. Once he had to flatten himself against a corridor wall as a Tralthan Diagnostician lumbered absently past on its six, elephantine feet, the diminutive and nearly mindless OTSB life-form which lived in symbiosis with it clinging to its leathery back. Conway didn’t mind giving way to a Diagnostician, and the Tralthan FGLI-OTSB combination were the finest surgeons in the Galaxy. Generally, however, the people he encountered-nurses of the DBLF classification mostly, and a few of the low-gravity, bird-like LSVOs-made way for him. Which showed what a very efficient grapevine the hospital possessed, because he was still wearing his old armband.

His swelling head was rapidly shrunk back to size by the entity waiting for him at Lock Eight. It was another of the furry, multi-pedal DBLF nurses, and it began hooting and whining immediately when he came into sight. The DBLF’s own language was unintelligible, but Conway’s Translator pack converted the sounds which it made—as it did all the other grunts, chirps and gobblings heard in the hospital—into English.

“I have been awaiting you for over seven minutes,” it said. “They told me this was an emergency, yet I find you ambling along as if you had all the time in the world . . .

Like all Translated speech the words had been flat and strained free of all emotional content. So the DBLF could have been joking, or half joking, or even making a simple statement of fact as it saw them with no disrespect intended. Conway doubted the last very strongly, but knew that losing his temper at this stage would be futile.

He took a deep breath and said, “I might have shortened your waiting period if I had run all the way. But I am against running for the reason that undue haste in a being in my position gives a bad impression—people tend to think I am in a panic over something and so feel unsure of my capabilities. So for the record,” he ended dryly, “I wasn’t ambling, I was walking with a confident, unhurried tread.”

The sound which the DBLF made in reply was not Translatable.

Conway went through the boarding tube ahead of the nurse,, and seconds later they shot away from the lock. In the tender’s rear vision screen the sprawling mass of lights which was Sector General began to crawl together and shrink, and Conway started worrying.

This was not the first time he had been called to a wreck, and he knew the drill. But suddenly it was brought home to him that he would be solely responsible for what was to happen—he couldn’t scream for help if something went wrong. Not that he had ever done that, but it had been comforting to know that he could have done so if necessary. He had an urgent desire to share some of his newly-acquired responsibility with someone—Dr. Prilicla, for instance, the gentle, spidery, emotion sensitive who had been his assistant in the Nursery, or any of his other human and non-human colleagues.

During the trip to the wreck the DBLF, who told him that its name was Kursedd, tried Conway’s patience sorely. The nurse was completely without tact, and although Conway knew the reason for this failing, it was still a little hard to take.

As a race Kursedd’s species were not telepathic, but among themselves they could read each other’s thoughts with a high degree of accuracy by the observation of expression. With four extensible eyes, two hearing antenna, a coat of fur which could lie silky smooth or stick out in spikes like a newly-bathed dog, plus various other highly flexible and expressive features—all of which they had very little control over—it was understandable that this caterpillar-like race had never learned diplomacy. Invariably they said exactly what they thought, because to another member of their race those thoughts were already plain anyhow, so that saying something different would have been stupid.

Then all at once they were sliding up to the Monitor cruiser and the wreck which hung beside it.

Apart from the bright orange coloring it looked pretty much like any other wreck he had seen, Conway thought; ships resembled people in that respect—a violent end stripped them of all individuality. He directed Kursedd to circle a few times, and moved to the forward observation panel.

At close range the internal structure of the wreck was revealed by the mishap which had practically sheered it in two, it was of dark and fairly normal-looking metal, so that the garish coloration of the hull must be due simply to paint. Conway filed that datum away carefully in his mind, because the shade of paint a being used could give an accurate guide to the range of its visual equipment, and the opacity or otherwise of its atmosphere. A few minutes later he decided that nothing further could be abstracted from an external examination of the ship, and signaled Kursedd to lock onto Sheldon.

The lock antechamber of the cruiser was small and made even more cramped by the crowd of green-uniformed Corpsmen staring, discussing and cautiously poking at an odd-looking mechanism—obviously something salvaged from the wreck—which was lying on the deck. The compartment buzzed with the technical jargon of half a dozen specialties and nobody paid any attention to the doctor and nurse until Conway cleared his throat loudly twice. Then an officer with Major’s insignia, a thin faced, graying man, detached himself from the crowd, and came toward them.

“Summerfield, Captain,” he said crisply, giving the thing on the floor a fond backward glance as he spoke. “You, I take it, will be the high-powered medical types from the hospital?”

Conway felt irritated. He could understand these people’s feelings, of course-a wrecked interstellar ship belonging to an unknown alien culture was a rare find indeed, a technological treasure trove on whose value no limit could be set. But Conway’s mind was oriented differently; alien artifacts came a long way second in importance to the study, investigation and eventual restoration of alien life. That was why he got right down to business.

“Captain Summerfield,” he said sharply, “we must ascertain and reproduce this survivor’s living conditions as quickly as possible, both at the hospital and in the tender which will take it there. Could we have someone to show us over the wreck please. A fairly responsible officer, if possible, with a knowledge of—”

“Surely,” Summerfield interrupted. He looked as if he was going to say something else, then he shrugged, turned, and barked, “Hendricks!” A Lieutenant wearing the bottom half of a spacesuit and a rather harassed expression joined them. The Captain performed brief introductions, then returned to the enigma on the floor.

Hendricks said, “We’ll need heavy-duty suits. I can fit you Dr. Conway, but Dr. Kursedd is a DBLF..

“There is no problem,” Kursedd put in. “I have a suit in the tender. Give me five minutes.”

The nurse wheeled and undulated toward the airlock, its fur rising and falling in slow waves which ran from the sparse hair at its neck to the bushier growth on the tail. Conway had been on the point of correcting Hendrick’s mistake regarding Kursedd’s status, but he suddenly realized that being called “Doctor” had elicited an intense emotional response from the DBLF—that rippling fur was certainly an expression of something! Not being a DBLF himself Conway could not tell whether the expression registered was one of pleasure or pride at being mistaken for a Doctor, or if the being was simply laughing one of its thirty-four legs off at the error. It wasn’t a vital matter, so Conway decided to say nothing.

II

The next occasion that Hendricks addressed “Doctor” Kursedd was when they were entering the wreck, but this time the DBLF’s expression was hidden by the casing of its spacesuit.

“What happened here?” Conway asked as he looked around curiously. “Accident, collision or what?”

“Our theory,” Lieutenant Hendricks replied, “is that one of the two pairs of generators which maintained the ship in hyperspace during faster than-light velocities failed for some reason. One half of the vessel was suddenly returned to normal space, which automatically meant that it was braked to a velocity far below that of light. The result was that the ship was ripped in two. The section containing the faulty generators was left behind,” Hendricks went on, “because after the accident the remaining pair of generators must have remained functional for a second or so. Various safety devices must have gone into operation to seal off the damage, but the shock had practically shaken the whole ship to pieces so they weren’t very successful. But an automatic distress signal was emitted which we were fortunate enough to hear, and obviously there is still pressure somewhere inside because we heard the survivor moving about. But the thing I can’t help wondering about,” he ended soberly, “is the condition of the other half of the wreck. It didn’t, or couldn’t, send out a distress signal or we would have heard it also. Someone might have survived in that section, too.”

“A pity if they did,” said Conway. Then, in a firmer voice, “But we’re going to save this one. How do I get close to it?”

Hendricks checked their suits’ anti-gravity belts and air tanks, then said, “You can’t, at least not for some time. Follow me and I’ll show you why.

O’Mara had made reference to difficulties in reaching the alien, Conway remembered, and he had assumed it was the normal trouble of wreckage blocking the way. But from the competent look of this Lieutenant in particular and the known efficiency of the Corps in general, he was sure that their troubles would not be ordinary.

Yet when they penetrated further into the wreck the ship’s interior seemed remarkably clear. There was the usual loose stuff floating about, but no solid blockage. It was only when Conway looked closely at his surroundings that he was able to see the full extent of the damage. There was not one fitting, wall support or section of plating which was not either loose, cracked or sprung at the seams. And at the other end of the compartment they had just entered he could see where a heavy door had been burned through, with traces of the rapid-sealing goo used in setting up a temporary airlock showing all around it.

“That is our problem,” Hendricks said, as Conway looked questioningly at him. “The disaster very nearly shook the ship apart. If we weren’t in weightless conditions it would fall to pieces around us.”

He broke off to go to the aid of Kursedd, who was having trouble getting through the hole in the door, then resumed, “All the air-tight doors must be closed automatically, but with the ship in this condition the fact of an air-tight door being closed does not necessarily mean that there is pressure on the other side of it. And while we think we have figured out the manual controls, we cannot be absolutely sure that opening one by this method will not cause every other door in the ship to open at the same time, with lethal results for the survivor.”

In Conway’s phones there was the sound of a short, heavy sigh, then the Lieutenant went on;

“We’ve been forced to set up locks outside every bulkhead we came to so that if there should be an atmosphere on the other side when we burn through, the pressure drop will be only fractional. But it’s a very time-wasting business, and no short cuts are possible which would not risk the safety of the alien.”

“Surely more rescue teams would be the answer,” Conway said. “If there aren’t enough on your ship we can bring them from the hospital. That would cut down the time required—”

“No, Doctor!” Hendricks said emphatically. “Why do you think we parked five hundred miles out? There is evidence of considerable power storage in this wreck and until we know exactly how and where, we have to go easy. We want to save the alien, you understand, but we don’t want to blow it and ourselves up. Didn’t they tell you about this at the hospital?”

Conway shook his head “Maybe they didn’t want me to worry.

Hendricks laughed. “Neither do I. Seriously, the chance of a blowup is vanishingly small provided we take proper precautions. But with men swarming all over the wreck, burning and pulling it apart, it would be a near-certainty.”

While the Lieutenant had been talking they passed through two other compartments and along a short corridor. Conway noticed that the interior of each room had a different color scheme. The survivor’s race, he thought, must have highly individual notions regarding interior decoration.

He said, “When do you expect to get through to it?”

This was a simple question which required a long, complicated answer, Hendricks explained ruefully. The alien had made its presence known by noise—or more accurately, by the vibrations set up in the fabric of the ship by its movements. But the condition of the wreck plus the fact that its movements were of irregular duration and weakening made it impossible to judge its position with certainty. They were cutting a way toward the center of the wreck on the assumption that that was where an undamaged, air-tight compartment was most likely to be. Also, they were missing any later movements it made, which might have given them a fix on its position, because of the noise and vibration set up by the rescue team.

Boiled down, the answer was between three and seven hours.

And after they made contact with it, thought Conway, he had to sample, analyze and reproduce its atmosphere, ascertain its pressure and gravity requirements, prepare it for transfer to the hospital and do whatever he could for its injuries until it could be treated properly.

“Far too long,” said Conway, aghast. The survivor could not be expected, in its steadily weakening state, to survive indefinitely. “We’ll have to prepare accommodation without actually seeing our patient—there’s nothing else for it. Now this is what we’ll do . . .

Rapidly, Conway gave instruction for tearing up sections of floor plating so as to bare the artificial gravity grids beneath. This sort of thing was not in his line, he told Hendricks, but no doubt the Lieutenant could make a fair guess at their output. There was only one known way of neutralizing gravity used by all the space-going races of the Galaxy; if the survivor’s species had a different way of doing it then they might as well give up there and then.

The physical characteristics of any life-form,” he went on, “can be deduced from specimens of their food supply, the size and power demands of their artificial gravity grids, and air trapped in odd sections of piping. Enough data of this sort would enable us to reproduce its living conditions—”

“Some of the loose objects floating around must be food containers,” Kursedd put in suddenly.

“That’s the idea,” Conway agreed. “But obtaining and analyzing a sample of air must come first. That way we’ll have a rough idea of its metabolism, which should help you to tell which cans hold paint and which syrup . . .

Seconds later the search to detect and isolate the wreck’s air-supply system was under way. The quantity of plumbing in any compartment of a spaceship was necessarily large, Conway knew, but the amount of piping which ran through even the smallest rooms in this ship left him feeling astonished by its complexity. The sight caused a vague stirring at the back of his mind, but either his association centers were not working properly or the stimulus was too weak for him to make anything out of it.

Conway and the others were working on the assumption that if a compartment could be sealed by air-tight bulkheads, then the pipelines supplying air to that section would be interrupted by cut-off valves where they entered and left it. The finding of a section of piping containing atmosphere was therefore only a matter of time. But the maze of plumbing all around them included control and power lines, some of which must still be live. So each section of piping had to be traced back to a break or other damage which allowed them to identify it as not belonging to the air-supply system. It was a long, exhausting process of elimination, and Conway raged inwardly at this shearly mechanical puzzle on whose quick solution depended his patient’s life. Furiously he wished that the team cutting into the wreck would contact the survivor, just so he could go back to being a fairly capable doctor instead of acting like an engineer with ten thumbs.

Two hours slipped by and they had the possibilities narrowed down to a single heavy pipe which was obviously the outlet, and a thick bundle of metal tubing which just had to bring the air in.

Apparently there were seven air inlets!

“A being that needs seven different chemical . . .” began Hendricks, and lapsed into a baffled silence.

“Only one line carries the main constituent,” Conway said. “The others must contain necessary trace elements or inert components, such as the nitrogen in our own air. If those regulator valves you can see on each tube had not closed when the compartment lost pressure we could tell by the settings the proportions involved.”

He spoke confidently, but Conway was not feeling that way. He had premonitions.

Kursedd moved forward. From its kit the nurse produced a small cutting torch, focused the flame to a six-inch, incandescent needle, then gently brought it into contact with one of the seven inlet pipes. Conway moved closer, an open sample flask held at the ready.

Yellowish vapor spurted suddenly and Conway pounced. His flask now held little more than a slightly soft vacuum, but there was enough of the gas caught inside for analysis purposes. Kursedd attacked another section of tubing.

“Judging by sight alone I would say that is chlorine,” the DBLF said as it worked. “And if chlorine is the main constituent of its atmosphere then a modified PVSJ ward could take the survivor.”

“Somehow,” said Conway, “I don’t think it will be as simple as that.”

He had barely finished speaking when a high-pressure jet-white vapor filled the room with fog. Kursedd jerked back instinctively, pulling the flame away from the holed pipe, and the vapor changed to a clear liquid which bubbled out to hang as shrinking, furiously steaming globes all around them. They looked and acted like water, Conway thought, as he collected another sample.

With the third puncture the cutting flame, held momentarily in the jet of escaping gas, swelled and brightened visibly. That reaction was unmistakable.

“Oxygen,” said Kursedd, putting Conway’s thoughts into words, “or a high oxygen content.——

“The water doesn’t bother me,” Hendricks put in, “but chlorine and oxy is a pretty unbreathable mixture.”

“I agree,” said Conway. “Any being who breathes chlorine finds oxygen lethal in a matter of seconds, and vice versa. But one of the gases might form a very small percentage of the whole, a mere trace. It is also possible that both gases are trace constituents and the main component hasn’t turned up yet.”

The four remaining lines were pierced and samples taken within a few minutes, during which Kursedd had obviously been pondering over Conway’s statement. Just before it left for the tender and the analysis equipment therein the nurse paused.

“If these gases are in trace quantity only,” it said in its toneless, Translated voice, “why are not all the trace and inert elements, even the oxidizer or its equivalent, pre-mixed and pumped in together as we and most other races do it? They all leave by one pipe.”

Conway harrumphed. Precisely the same question had been bothering him, and he couldn’t even begin to answer it. He said sharply, “Right now I want those samples analyzed, get moving on that. Lieutenant Hendricks and I will try to work out the physical size and pressure requirements of the being. And don’t worry,” he ended dryly, “all things will eventually become plain.”

“Let us hope the answers come during curative surgery,” Kursedd gave out as a parting shot, “and not at the post-mortem.”

Without further urging Hendricks began lifting aside the buckled floor plating to get at the artificial gravity grids. Conway thought that he looked like a man who knew exactly what he was doing, so he left him to it and went looking for furniture.

III

The disaster had not been as other shipwrecks, where all movable objects together with a large number normally supposed to be immovable were lifted and hurled toward the point of impact. Here, instead, there had been a brief, savage shock which had disrupted the binding powers of practically every bolt, rivet and weld in the ship. Furniture, which was about the most easily damaged item in any ship, had suffered worst.

From a chair or bed could be told the shape, carriage and number of limbs of its user with fair accuracy, or if it possessed a hard tegument or required artificial padding for comfort. And a study of materials and design could give the gravity-pull which the being considered normal. But Conway was dead out of luck.

Some of the bits and pieces floating weightless in every compartment were almost certainly furniture, but they were so thoroughly mixed together that it was like trying to make sense of the scrambled parts of sixteen jigsaw puzzles. He thought of calling O’Mara, then decided against it. The Major would not be interested in how well he wasn’t getting on.

He was searching the ruins of what might have been a row of lockers, hoping wistfully to strike a bonanza in the shape of clothing or an e-t pin-up picture, when Kursedd called.

“The analysis is complete,” the nurse reported. “There is nothing unusual about the samples when considered separately. As a mixture they would be lethal to any species possessing a respiratory system. Mix them any way you want the result is a sludgy, poisonous mess.

“Be more explicit,” said Conway sharply. “I want data, not opinions.”

“As well as the gases already identified,” Kursedd replied, “there is ammonia, CO2, and two inerts. Together, and in any combination of which I can conceive, they form an atmosphere which is heavy, poisonous and highly opaque . . .

“It can’t be!” Conway snapped back. “You saw their interior paintwork, they used pastels a lot. Races living in an opaque atmosphere would not be sensitive to subtle variations of color—”

“Doctor Conway,” Hendricks’ voice broke in apologetically, “I’ve finished checking that grid. So far as I can tell it’s rigged to pull five Gs.”

A pull of five times Earth-normal gravity meant a proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The being must breathe a thick, poisonous soup—but a clear soup, he added hastily to himself. And there were other more immediate, and perhaps deadly, implications as well.

To Hendricks he said quickly, “Tell the rescue team to watch their step-without slowing down, if possible. Any beastie living under five Gs is apt to have muscles, and people in the survivor’s position have been known to run amuck.”

“I see what you mean,” said Hendricks worriedly, and signed off. Conway returned to Kursedd.

“You heard the Lieutenant’s report,” he resumed in a quieter voice. “Try combinations under high pressure. And remember, we want a clear atmosphere!”

There was a long pause, then: “Very well. But I must add that I dislike wasting time, even when I am ordered to do so.”

For several seconds Conway practiced savage self-restraint until a click in his phones told him that the DBLF had broken contact. Then he said a few words which, even had they been subjected to the emotion filtering process of Translation, would have left no doubt in any e-t’s mind that he was angry.

But slowly his rage toward this stupid, conceited, downright impertinent nurse he had been given began to fade. Perhaps Kursedd wasn’t stupid, no matter what else it might be. Suppose it was right about the opacity of that atmosphere, where did that leave them? The answer was with yet another piece of contradictory evidence.

The whole wreck was stuffed with contradictions, Conway thought wearily. The design and construction did not suggest a high-G species, yet the artificial gravity grids could produce up to five Gs. And the interior color schemes pointed to a race possessing a visual range close to Conway’s own. But the air they lived in, according to Kursedd, would need radar to see through. Not to mention a needlessly complex air-supply system and a bright orange outer hull . . .

For the twentieth time Conway tried to form a meaningful picture from the data at his disposal, in vain. Maybe if he attacked the' problem from a different direction..

Abruptly he snapped on his radio’s transmit switch and said, “Lieutenant Hendricks, will you connect me with the hospital, please. I want to talk to O’Mara. And I would like Captain Summerfield, yourself and Kursedd in on it, too. Can you arrange that?”

Hendricks made an affirmative noise and said, “Hang on a minute.”

Interspersed by clicks, buzzes and bleeps, Conway heard the chopped-up voices of Hendricks, a Monitor radio officer on Sheldon calling up the hospital and requesting Summerfield to come to the radio room, and the flat, Translated tones of an e-t operator in the hospital itself. In a little under the stipulated minute the babble subsided and the stern, familiar voice of O’Mara barked, “Chief Psychologist here. Go ahead.”

As briefly as possible Conway outlined the situation at the wreck, his lack of progress to date and the contradictory data they had uncovered. Then he went on . . . The rescue team is working toward the center of the wreck because that is the most likely place for the survivor to be. But it may be in a pocket off to one side somewhere and we may have to search every compartment in the ship to be sure of finding it. This could take many days. The survivor,” he went on grimly, “if not already dead must be in a very bad way. We don’t have that much time.”

“You have a problem, Doctor. What are you going to do about it?”

“Well,” Conway replied evasively, “a more general picture of the situation might help. If Captain Summerfield could tell me about the finding of the wreck—its position, course, or any personal impressions he can remember. For instance, would the extension each way of its direction of flight help us find its planet of origin? That would solve—”

“I’m afraid not, Doctor,” Summerfield’s voice came in. “Sighting backward we found that its course passed through a not-too-distant solar system. But this system had been mapped by us over a century previous and listed as a future possibility for colonization, which as you know means that it was devoid of intelligent life. No race can rise from nothing to a spaceship technology in one hundred years, so the wreck could not have originated in that system. Extending the line forward led nowhere—into intergalactic space, to be exact. In my opinion, the accident must have caused a violent change in course, so that the wreck’s position and course when found will tell you nothing.

“So much for that idea,” said Conway sadly, then in a more determined voice he went on, “But the other half of the wreck is out there somewhere. If we could find that, especially if it contained the body or bodies of other members of its crew, that would solve everything! I admit that it’s a roundabout way to do it, but judging by our present rate of progress it might be the fastest way. I want a search made for the other half of the wreck,” Conway ended, and waited for the storm to break.

Captain Summerfield demonstrated that he had the fastest reaction time by getting in the first blast.

“Impossible! You don’t know what you’re asking! It would take two hundred units or more-a whole Sector sub-fleet! —to cover that area in the time necessary to do you any good. And all this is just to find a dead specimen so you can analyze it and maybe help another specimen, which by that time might be dead as well. I know that life is more valuable in your book than any material considerations,” Summerfield continued in a somewhat quieter voice, “but this verges on the ridiculous. Besides, I haven’t the authority to order, or even suggest, such an operation—”

“The Hospital has,” O’Mara broke in gruffly, then to Conway: “You’re sticking your neck out, Doctor. If as a result of the search the survivor is saved, I don’t think much will be said regarding the fuss and expense caused. The Corps might even give you a pat on the back for putting them on to another intelligent species. But if this alien dies, or it turns out that it was already dead before the search was begun, you, Doctor, are for it.”

Looking at the thing honestly, Conway could not say that he was more than normally concerned about his patient, and definitely not enough to want to throw away his career in the faint hope of saving the being. It was more an angry curiosity which drove him, and a vague feeling that the conflicting data they possessed formed part of a picture which included much more than just a wreck and its lone survivor. Aliens did not build ships for the sole purpose of bewildering Earth-human doctors, so the apparently contradictory evidence had to mean something.

For a moment Conway thought he had the answer. Growing at the fringes of his mind was a dim, still-formless picture . . . which was obliterated, violently and completely, by the excited voice of Hendricks in his phones:

“Doctor, we’ve found the alien!”

When Conway joined him a few minutes later he found a portable airlock in position. Hendricks and the men of the rescue team had their helmets together talking, so as not to tie up the radio circuit. But the most wonderful sight of all to Conway was the tightly-stretched fabric of the lock.

There was pressure inside.

Hendricks switched suddenly to radio and said, “You can go in, Doctor. Now that we’ve found it we can open the door instead of melting through.” He indicated the taut fabric beside him and added, “Pressure in there is about twelve pounds.”

That wasn’t a lot, thought Conway soberly, considering that the survivor’s normal environment was supposed to be five-Gs, with the tremendous air-pressure which went with such a killing gravity. He hoped that it was enough to sustain life. There must have been a slow leakage of air since the accident, he thought. Maybe the being’s internal pressure had equalized sufficiently to save it.

“Get an air sample to Kursedd, quickly!” Conway said. Once they knew the composition it used it would be a simple matter to increase pressure when they had the being in the tender. He added quickly, “And I want four men to stand by at the tender. We’ll need special equipment to get the survivor out of here and I might need it in a hurry.”

With Hendricks he entered the tiny lock. The Lieutenant checked the seals, worked the manual control beside the door, and straightened up. A creaking in Conway’s suit told of mounting pressure as air from the compartment beyond rushed in. It was clear air, he noted with some satisfaction, and not the super-thick fog which Kursedd had predicted. The air-tight door slid aside, hesitated as the still-hot section moved into its recess, then came fully open with a rush.

“Don’t come in unless I call you,” Conway said quietly, and stepped through. In his phones there was a grunt of assent from Hendricks, followed closely by the voice of Kursedd announcing that it was recording.

The first glimpse of the new physiological type was always a confused blur to Conway. His mind insisted on trying to relate its physical features to others in his experience, and whether it was successful or not in this the process took a little time.

“Conway!” O’Mara’s voice came sharply. “Have you gone to sleep?”

Conway had forgotten about O’Mara, Summerfield and the assorted radio operators who were still linked up with him. He cleared his throat and hastily began to talk:

“The being is ring-shaped, rather like a large balloon tire. Overall diameter of the ring is about nine feet, with the thickness between two and three feet. Mass appears to be about four times my own. I can see no movements, nor indications of gross physical injury.”

He took a deep breath and went on, “Tegument is smooth, shiny and gray in color where it is not covered with a thick, brownish encrustation. The brown stuff, which covers more than half of the total skin area, looks cancerous but may be some type of natural camouflage. Or it might be the result of severe decompression.

“The outer surface of the ring contains a double row of short, tentacular limbs at present folded flat against the body. There are five pairs, and no evidence of specialization. Neither can I see any visual organs or means of ingestion. I’m going to have a closer look.”

There was no visible reaction as he approached the creature, and he began to wonder if they had reached it too late. There was still no sign of eyes or mouth, but he could see small gill-like openings and something which looked like an ear. He reached out and gently touched one of the tightly-folded limbs.

The being seemed to explode.

Conway was sent spinning backward against the floor, his whole right arm numb from the blow which, had he not been wearing a heavy-duty suit, would have smashed his wrist. Frantically he worked the G-belt controls to hold him against the deck, then began inching backward toward the door. The babble of questions in his phones gradually sorted itself into two main ones: Why had he shouted, and what were the banging noises currently going on?

Conway said shakily, “Uh . . . I have established that the survivor is alive . . .

The watching Hendricks made a choking sound. “I don’t believe,” said the Lieutenant in an awed voice, “that I have ever seen anything more so.

“Talk sense, you two!” O’Mara snapped. “What is happening?”

That was a difficult question to answer, Conway thought as he watched the tire-like being half-rolling, half-bouncing about the compartment. Physical contact with the survivor had triggered off a panic reaction, and while Conway had without doubt been the cause the first time, now contact with anything—walls, floor, or loose debris floating about the room—had the same result. Five pairs of strong, flexible limbs lashed out in a vicious, two-foot radius arc, the force of which sent the being skidding across the room again. And no matter which part of the massive ring body it was it struck out blindly in all directions at once.

Conway made it to the shelter of the portable lock just as a fortunate combination of circumstances left the alien floating helpless in the middle of the compartment, spinning slowly and bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of the old-time space stations. But it was drifting toward one of the walls again, and he had to get things organized before it started bouncing around a second time.

Ignoring O’Mara for the moment, Conway said quickly, “We’ll need a fine-mesh net, size five, a plastic envelope to go over it, and a set of pumps. In its present state we can expect no cooperation from the being. When it is under restraint and encased in the envelope we can pump in its own air, which should keep it going until it reaches the tender. By that time Kursedd should be ready for it. But hurry with that net!”

How a high-pressure life-form could display such violent activity in what must be to it extremely rarified air was something Conway could not understand.

“Kursedd, how is the analysis going?” he asked suddenly.

The answer was so long in coming that Conway had almost decided that the nurse had broken contact, but eventually the slow, necessarily emotionless voice replied, “It is complete. The composition of the air in the survivor’s compartment is such that, if you were to take off your helmet, Doctor, you could breathe it yourself.”

And that, thought Conway, stunned, was the wildest contradiction of all. Kursedd must be equally flabbergasted, he knew. Suddenly he laughed, thinking of what the nurse’s fur must be doing now . . .

IV

Six hours later, after struggling furiously for every minute of the way, the survivor had been transferred to Ward 31 OB, a small observation room with theater off the main DBLF Surgical ward. By now Conway wasn’t sure whether he wanted to restore the alien to health or murder it, and judging by the comments, during the transfer, of Kursedd and the Corpsmen, they were similarly confused. Conway made a preliminary examination as thorough as possible considering the restraining net-and finished off by taking blood and skin samples. These he sent to Pathology, plastered with red Most Urgent labels. Kursedd took them up personally rather than commit them to the pneumo tube, because the pathological staff were notoriously color blind where priority labels were concerned. Finally he ordered X rays to be taken, left Kursedd to keep the patient under observation, then went to see O’Mara.

When he had finished, O’Mara said, “The hardest part is over now. But I expect you want to follow through on this case?”

“I . . . I don’t think so,” Conway replied.

O’Mara frowned heavily. “If you don’t want to go on with it, say so. I don’t approve of dithering.”

Conway breathed through his nose, then slowly and with exaggerated distinctness said, “I want to continue with the case. The doubt which I expressed was not due to an inability to make up my mind on this point, but was with regard to your mistaken assumption that the hardest part is over. It isn’t. I have made a preliminary examination and when the results of the tests are in I intend making a more detailed one tomorrow. When I do so, I would like to have present, if it is possible, Doctors Mannon and Prilicla, Colonel Skempton and yourself.”

O’Mara’s eyebrows went up. He said, “An odd selection of talent, Doctor. Mind telling me what you need us for?”

Conway shook his head. “I’d rather not, just yet.”

“Very well, we’ll be there,” O’Mara said with forced gentleness. “And I apologize for suggesting that you were a ditherer, when all you did was mumble and yawn in my face so much that I could only make out one word in three. Now go away and get some sleep, Doctor, before I brain you with something.”

It was only then that Conway realized how tired he was. His gait on the way to his room must be closer to a weary shuffle, he thought, than an unhurried, confident tread.

Next morning Conway spent two hours with his patient before calling for the consultation he had requested from O’Mara. Everything which he had discovered, and that wasn’t a great deal, made it plain that nothing constructive could be done for the being without bringing in some highly specialized help.

Dr. Prilicla, the spidery, low-gravity and extremely fragile being of physiological classification GLNO, arrived first. O’Mara and Colonel Skempton, the hospital’s senior engineering officer, came together. Dr. Mannon, because of a job in the DBLF theater, arrived late at a near run, braked, then walked slowly around the patient twice.

“Looks like a doughnut,” he said, “with barnacles.”

Everyone looked at him.

“They aren’t anything so simple and harmless,” Conway said, wheeling the X-ray scanner forward, “but a growth which the pathological boys say shows every indication of being malignant. And if you’ll look through here you’ll see that it isn’t a doughnut, but possesses a fairly normal anatomy of the DBLF type-a cylindrical, lightly-boned body with heavy musculature. The being is not ring-shaped, but gives that impression because for some reason known best to itself it has been trying to swallow its tail.”

Mannon stared intently into the scanner, gave an incredulous grunt, then straightened up. “A vicious circle if ever I saw one,” he muttered, then added: “Is this why O’Mara is here? You suspect marbles missing?”

Conway did not think the question serious, and ignored it. He went on, “The growth is thickest where the mouth and tail of the patient come together, in fact it is so widespread in that area that it is nearly impossible to see the joint. Presumably this growth is painful or at least highly irritant, and an intolerable itch might explain why it is apparently biting its own tail. Alternatively, its present physical posture might be due to an involuntary muscular contraction brought about by the growth, a type of epileptic spasm . . .

“I like the second idea best,” Mannon broke in. “For the condition to spread from mouth to tail, or vice-versa, the jaws must have locked in that position for a considerable time.”

Conway nodded. He said, “Despite the artificial gravity equipment in the wreck I’ve established that the patient’s air, pressure and gravity requirements are very similar to our own. Those gill openings back of the head and not yet reached by the growth are breathing orifices. The smaller openings, partly covered by flaps of muscle, are ears. So the patient can hear and breathe, but not eat. You all agree that freeing the mouth would be the first step?”

Mannon and O’Mara nodded. Prilicla spread four manipulators in a gesture which meant the same thing, and Colonel Skempton stared woodenly at the ceiling, very obviously wondering what he was doing here? Without further delay, Conway began to tell him.

While Mannon and he decided on the operative procedure, the Colonel and Dr. Prilicla were to handle the communications angle. By using its empathic faculty the GLNO could listen for a reaction while a couple of Skempton’s Translator technicians ran sound tests. Once the patient’s audio range was known a Translator could be modified to suit it, and the being would be able to help them in the diagnosis and treatment of its complaint.

“This place is crowded enough already,” the Colonel said stiffly. “I’ll handle this myself.” He strode across to the intercom to order the equipment he needed. Conway turned to O’Mara.

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” the psychologist began before Conway could speak. “I’m to have the easiest bit—that of reassuring the patient once we’re able to talk to it, and convincing it that your pair of butchers mean it no harm.”

“That’s it exactly,” Conway said, grinning, and returned all his attention to the patient.

Prilicla reported that the survivor was unaware of them and that the emotional radiation was so slight that it suggested the being was both unconscious and close to physical exhaustion. Despite this, Conway warned them all against touching the patient.

Conway had seen malignant growths in his time, both terrestrial and otherwise, but this one took a lot of beating.

Like a tough, fibrous bark of a tree it completely covered the joint between the patient’s mouth and tail. And to add to their trouble the bone structure of the jaw, with which they would be chiefly concerned during the operation, could not be seen plainly with the scanner because of the fact that the growth itself was nearly opaque to X rays. The being’s eyes were also somewhere under the thick, obscuring shell, which was another reason for going carefully.

Mannon indicated the blurred picture in the scanner and said vehemently, “It wasn’t scratching to relieve an itch. Those teeth are really locked on, it has practically bitten its tail off! Definitely an epileptic condition, I’d say. Or such self-inflicted punishment could mean mental unbalance

“Oh, great!” said O’Mara disgustedly from behind them.

Skempton’s equipment arrived then, and Prilicla and the Colonel began calibrating a Translator for the patient. Being practically unconscious, the test sounds had to be of a mind-wrecking intensity to get through to it, and Mannon and Conway were driven out to the main ward to finish their discussion.

Half an hour later Prilicla came out to tell them that they could talk to the patient, but that the being’s mind still seemed to be only partly conscious. They hurried in.

O’Mara was saying that they were all friends, that they liked and felt sympathy for the patient, and that they would do everything in their power to help it. He spoke quietly into his own Translator, and a series of alien clicks and gobbles roared out from the other which had been placed near the patient’s head. In the pauses between sentences Prilicla reported on the being’s mental state.

“Confusion, anger, great fear,” the GLNO’s voice came tonelessly through its own Translator. And for several minutes the intensity and type of emotional radiation remained constant. Conway decided to take the next step.

“Tell it I am going to make physical contact,” he said to O’Mara. “That I apologize for any discomfort this may cause, but that I intend no harm.”

He took a long, needle-pointed probe and gently touched the area where the growth was thickest. The GLNO reported no reaction. Apparently it was only on an area unaffected by the growth where a touch could send the patient wild. Conway felt that at least he was beginning to get somewhere.

Switching off the patient’s Translator, he said, “I was hoping for this. If the affected areas are dead to pain we should be able, with the patient’s cooperation, to cut the mouth free without using an anesthetic. As yet we don’t know enough about its metabolism to anesthetize without risk of killing the patient. Are you sure,” he asked Prilicla suddenly, “that it hears and understands what we’re saying?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the GLNO replied, “so long as you speak slowly and without ambiguity.”

Conway switched the Translator on again and said quietly. “We are going to help you. First we will enable you to resume your natural posture by freeing your mouth, and then we will remove this growth . . .”

Abruptly the restraining net bulged as five pairs of tentacles whipped furiously back and forward. Conway jumped away cursing, angry with the patient and angrier with himself for having rushed things too much.

“Fear and anger,” said Prilicla, and added: “The being.., it seems to have reasons for these emotions.”

“But why? I’m trying to help it . . .

The patient’s struggles increased to a violence that was incredible. Prilicla’s fragile, pipe stem body trembled under the impact of the emotional gale from the survivor’s mind. One of its tentacles, a member which projected from the growth area, became entangled in a fold of net and was torn off.

Such blind, unreasoning panic, Conway thought sickly. But Prilicla had said that there were reasons for this reaction on the alien’s part. Conway swore: even the workings of the survivor’s mind were contradictory.

“Well!” said Mannon explosively, when the patient had quietened down again.

“Fear, anger, hatred,” the GLNO reported. “I would say, most definitely, that it does not want your help.”

“We have here,” O’Mara put in grimly, “a very sick beastie indeed.”

The words seemed to echo back and forth in Conway’s brain, growing louder and more insistent every time. They had significance. O’Mara had, of course, been alluding to the mental condition of the patient, but that didn’t matter. A very sick beastie—that was the key—piece of the puzzle, and the picture was beginning to fall into place around it. As yet it was incomplete, but there was enough of it there to make Conway feel more horribly afraid than he had ever been before in his life.

When he spoke he hardly recognized his own voice.

“Thank you, gentlemen. I’ll have to think of another approach. When I do I’ll let you know . . .

Conway wished that they would all go away and let him think this thing out. He also wanted to run away and hide somewhere, except that there was probably nowhere in the whole Galaxy safe from what he was afraid.

They were all staring at him now, their expressions reflecting a mixture of surprise, concern and embarrassment. Lots of patients resisted treatment aimed at helping them, but that didn’t mean the doctor ceased treating such a case at the first sign of resistance. Obviously they thought he had taken cold feet over what promised to be a highly unpleasant and technically strenuous operation, and in their various ways they tried to reassure him. Even Skempton was offering suggestions.

If a safe anesthetic is your chief problem,” the Colonel was saying, “isn’t it possible for Pathology to develop one, from a dead or damaged, er, specimen. I have in mind the search you requested earlier. It seems to me you have ample reason to order it now. Shall I—”

“No!”

They were really staring at him now. O’Mara in particular wore a decidedly clinical expression. Conway said hurriedly, “I forgot to tell you that Summerfield contacted me again. He says that current investigations now show that the wreck, instead of being the most nearly intact half of the original ship, is the half which came off worst in the accident. The other part, he says, instead of being scattered all over space, was probably in good enough shape to make it home under its own steam. So you can see that the search would be pointless.”

Conway hoped desperately that Skempton was not going to be difficult about this, or insist on checking the information himself. Summerfield had reported again from the wreck, but the Captain’s findings had not been nearly so definite as Conway had just made out. The thought of a Monitor search force blundering about in that area of space, in the light of what he knew now, made Conway break into a cold sweat.

But the Colonel merely nodded and dropped the subject. Conway relaxed, a little, and said quickly, “Dr. Prilicla, I would like a discussion with you on the patient’s emotional state during the past few minutes, but later. Thank you again, gentlemen, for your advice and assistance . . .

He was practically kicking them out, and their expressions told him that they knew it-there was going to be some very searching questions asked about his behavior in this affair by O’Mara, but at the moment Conway didn’t care. When they had gone he told Kursedd to make a visual check on the patient’s condition every half-hour, and to call him if there was any change. Then he headed for his room.

V

Conway often groused at the tininess of the place where he slept, kept his few personal possessions, and infrequently entertained colleagues, but now its very smallness was comforting. He sat down as there was no room to pace about. He began to extend and fill in the picture which had come in a single flash of insight back in the ward.

Really, the thing had been staring him in the face from the very beginning. First there had been the wreck’s artificial gravity grids—Conway had stupidly overlooked the fact that they did not have to be operated at full power, but could be turned to any point between zero and five-Gs. Then there had been the air-supply layout—confusing only because he had not realized that it had been designed to many different forms of life instead of only one. And there had been the physical condition of the survivor, and the color of the outer hull—a nice, urgent, dramatic orange. Earth ships of that type, even surface vessels, were traditionally painted white.

The wreck was an ambulance ship.

But interstellar vessels of any kind were products of an advanced technical culture which must cover, or shortly hope to cover, many solar systems. And when a culture progressed to the point where such ships reached the stage of simplification and specialization which had been reached here, then that race was highly advanced indeed. In the Galactic Federation only the cultures of Illensa, Traltha and Earth had reached that stage, and their spheres of influence were tremendous. How could a culture of that size have remained hidden for so long?

Conway squirmed uneasily in his couch: he had the answer to that question, too.

Summerfield had said that the wreck was the worst damaged section of a ship, the other half of which could be presumed to have continued under its own power to the nearest repair base. So the section containing the survivor had been torn from the ship during the original accident, which meant that the course constants of this unpowered fragment had to be the same as that of the ship as a whole before the disaster.

The ship had been coming, then, from a planet which was listed as uninhabited. But in a hundred years someone could have set up a base there, or even a colony. And the ambulance ship had been heading away from that world and into intergalactic space . . .

A culture which had crossed from one Galaxy to plant a colony on the fringes of this one, Conway thought grimly, had to be treated with great respect. And caution. Especially since its only representative so far could not, by any stretch of toleration or semantic work—juggling, be considered nice. And the survivor’s race, probably highly advanced medically might not take kindly to news that someone was botching the treatment of one of their sick. On the present evidence Conway thought that they would not take kindly to anything or anybody.

Interstellar wars of conquest were logistically impossible, Conway knew. But the same did not apply to simple wars of annihilation, where planetary atmospheres were exploded or otherwise rendered useless forever with no thought of eventual occupation or assimilation. Remembering his last contact with the patient, Conway wondered if at last they had encountered a completely vicious and inimical race.

The communicator buzzed suddenly. It was Kursedd reporting that the patient had been quiet for the last hour, but that the growth seemed to be spreading rapidly and threatened to cover one of the being’s breathing openings. Conway said he would be along presently. He put out a call for Dr. Prilicla, then sat down again.

He dare not tell anyone of his discovery, Conway told himself as he resumed his interrupted thought. To do so would mean a force of Monitors swarming out there to make premature contact-premature, that was, so far as Conway was concerned. For he was afraid that that first meeting between cultures would be in the nature of an ideological head-on collision, and the only possibility of cushioning the shock would be if the Federation could show that they had rescued, taken care of, and cured one of the intergalactic colonists.

Of course there was the possibility that the patient was atypical of its race, that it was mentally ill as O’Mara had suggested. But Conway doubted if the aliens would consider that an excuse for not curing it. And against that idea was the fact that the patient had had logical-to it-reasons for being afraid and hating the person trying to help it. For a moment Conway wondered wildly if there was such a thing as a contra terrene mind, a mentality wherein assistance produced feelings of hate instead of gratitude. Even the fact of its being found in an ambulance was no reassurance. To people like himself the concept of an ambulance had altruistic implications, errands of mercy, and so on. But many races, even within the Federation, tended to look upon illness as mere physical inefficiency and corrected it as such.

As he left his room Conway did not have the faintest idea of how to go about curing his patient. Neither, he knew, did he have much time to do it in. At the moment, Captain Summerfield, Hendricks and the others investigating the wreck were too dazzled by a multiplicity of puzzles to think about anything else. But it was only a matter of time before they got around to it, a matter of days or even hours, and then they would come to the same conclusions as had Conway.

Shortly thereafter the Monitor Corps would make contact with the aliens, who would naturally want to know about their ailing brother, who by that time would have to be either cured or well on the way to recovery.

Or else.

The thought which Conway tried desperately to keep from thinking was: What if the patient died . . .

Before beginning the next examination he questioned Prilicla regarding the patient’s emotional state, but learned nothing new. The being was now motionless and practically unconscious. When Conway spoke to it via the Translator it emoted fear, even when Prilicla assured him that it understood what he was saying.

“I will not harm you,” Conway said slowly and distinctly into the Translator, moving closer as he spoke, “but it is necessary that I touch you. Please believe me, I mean no harm . . .” He looked enquiringly at Prilicla.

The GLNO said, “Fear and . . . and helplessness. Also acceptance mixed with threats . . . no, warnings. Apparently it believes what you say, but is trying to warn you about something.”

This was more promising, Conway thought. It was warning him, but it didn’t mind him touching it. He moved closer and gently touched the being with his gloved hand on one of the unaffected areas of tegument.

He grunted with the violence of the blow which knocked his arm aside. He backed away hurriedly, rubbing his arm, then switched off the Translator so as to give vent to his feelings.

After a respectful pause, the GLNO said, “We have obtained a very important datum, Dr. Conway. Despite the physical reaction, the patient’s feelings toward you are exactly the same as they were before you touched it.”

“So what?” said Conway irritably.

“So that the reaction must be involuntary.”

Conway digested that for a moment, then said disgustedly, “It also means we can’t risk a general anesthetic, even if we had one, because the heart and lungs use involuntary muscles, too. That’s another complication. We can’t knock it out and it won’t cooperate . . .” He moved to the ward control panel and pushed buttons. The clamps holding the net opened and the net itself was whisked away by a grab. He went on, “It keeps injuring itself on that net, you can see where it has nearly lost another appendage.”

Prilicla objected to the removal of the net, saying that if the patient was free to move about it was more likely than ever to injure itself. Conway pointed out that in its present posture—head to tail and underbelly, which contained its five sets of tentacles, facing outward—it could do little moving about. And now that he thought of it, that position looked like the perfect defensive stance for the creature. It reminded him of the way an Earth cat lies on its side during a fight, so as to bring all four of its claws to bear. This was a ten-legged cat who could defend itself from all directions at once.

Built-in involuntary reactions of that order were the product of evolution. But why should the being adopt this defensive position and make itself completely unapproachable at the time when it needed help the most . . . ?

Suddenly, like a great light bursting in his mind, Conway knew the answer. Or, he amended with cautious excitement, he was near ninety percent sure that he did.

They had all been making wrong assumptions about this case from the start. His new theory hinged on the fact that they had made a further wrong assumption, single, simple and basic. Given that then the patient’s hostility, physical posture and mental state could all be explained. It even indicated the only possible line of treatment to be taken. Best of all, it gave Conway reason for thinking that the patient might not belong to the type of vicious and implacably hostile race which its behavior had led him to believe.

The only trouble with the new theory was that it, also, might be wrong.

His first wild enthusiasm waned and his degree of certainty dropped to the mid-eighties. Another trouble was that he could not possibly discuss his intended line of treatment with anyone. To do so might mean demotion, and to insist on carrying through with it would mean his dismissal from the hospital should the patient die. What he contemplated was as serious as that.

Conway approached the patient again and switched on the Translator. He knew before he spoke what the reaction would be so it was probably an act of wanton cruelty to say the words, but he had to test this theory once more for his own reassurance. He said, “Don’t worry, young fellow, we’ll have you back the way you were in no time . . .

The reaction was so violent that Dr. Prilicla, whose empathic faculty made it feel everything which the patient felt at full intensity, had to leave the ward.

It was only then that Conway finally made his decision.

During the three days which followed, Conway visited the ward regularly. He took careful notes on the rate of growth of the thick, fibrous encrustation which now covered two thirds of the patient’s body. There could be no doubt that it was both accelerating and growing thicker. He sent specimens to Pathology, which reported that the patient appeared to be suffering from a peculiar and particularly virulent form of skin cancer and asked if curative radiation or surgery was possible. Conway replied that in this opinion neither were possible without grave danger to the patient.

About the most constructive thing he did during that time was to post instructions that anyone contacting the patient via Translator was to avoid trying to reassure it at all costs. The being had suffered too much already from that form of well-meaning stupidity. If Conway could have forbidden entrance to the ward to everyone but Kursedd, Prilicla and himself he would have done so.

But the greater part of his time was spent in trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.

Conway had been deliberately avoiding Dr. Mannon since the original examination. He did not want his old friend discussing the case with him, because Mannon was too smart to be foisted off with double talk, and Conway could not tell even him the truth. He thought longingly that the ideal situation would be for Captain Summerfield to be kept too busy at the wreck to put two and two together, for O’Mara and Skempton to forget his existence, and for Mannon to keep his nose completely out of the affair.

But that was not to be.

Dr. Mannon was waiting for him in the ward when he made his second morning visit on the fifth day. Properly he requested Conway’s permission to look at the patient. Then with this polite formality over he said,

Listen, you young squirt, I’m getting fed up with you gazing abstractedly at your boots or the ceiling every time I come near you—if I hadn’t got the hide of a Tralthan I’d feel slighted. I know, of course, that newly-appointed Seniors take their responsibilities very heavily for the first few weeks, but your recent behavior has been downright rude.”

He held up his hand before Conway could speak, and went on, “I accept your apology, and now to business. I’ve been talking to Prilicla and the people up in Pathology. They tell me that the growth now completely covers the body, that it is opaque to X rays of safe intensities and that the replacement and workings of the patient’s internal organs can now only be guessed at. You can’t cut the stuff away under anesthetic because paralyzing the appendages might knock out the heart, too. Yet an operation is impossible with those limbs whipping about. At the same time the patient is weakening and will continue to do so unless given food, which can’t be done unless its mouth is freed. To complicate matters further your later specimens show that the growth is extending inward rapidly as well, and there are indications that if the operation isn’t done quickly the mouth and tail will have fused together. Is that, in a rather large nutshell, it?”

Conway nodded.

Mannon took a deep breath, then plunged on, “Suppose you amputate the limbs and remove the covering growth from head and tail, replacing the tegument with a suitable synthetic. With the patient able to take nourishment it would shortly be strong enough for the process to be repeated over the rest of its body. It is a drastic procedure, I admit. But in the circumstances it seems to be the only one which could save the patient’s life. And there is always the possibility of successful grafting or artificial members—”

“No!” said Conway violently, and he knew from the way Mannon looked at him that he had gone pale. If his theory concerning the patient was correct, then any sort of operation at this stage would prove fatal. And if not, and the patient was the type of entity which it appeared to be—vicious, warped, and implacably hostile—and its friends came looking for it . . .

In a quieter voice Conway said, “Suppose a friend of yours with a bad skin condition was picked up by an e-t doctor, and the only thing it could think of doing was to skin him alive and lop his arms and legs off. If or when you found him you would be annoyed. Even taking into account the fact that you are civilized, tolerant and prepared to make allowances—qualities which we cannot safely ascribe to the patient as yet—I would venture to suggest that there would be merry hell to play.”

“That’s not a true analogy and you know it!” Mannon said heatedly. “Sometimes you have to take chances. This is one of those times.”

“No,” said Conway again.

“Maybe you have a better suggestion?”

Conway was silent for a moment, then he said carefully, “I do have an idea which I’m trying out, but I don’t want to discuss it just yet. If it works out you’ll be the first to know, and if it doesn’t you’ll know anyhow. Everybody will.”

Mannon shrugged and turned away. At the door he paused to say awkwardly, “Whatever you’re doing it must be pretty hair-brained for you to be so secretive about it. But remember that if you call me in and the thing goes sour on us, the blame gets halved . . .

And there speaks a true friend, thought Conway. He was tempted to unburden himself completely to Mannon then. But Dr. Mannon was a nosy, kindly and very able Senior Physician who always had, and always would, take his profession as a healer very seriously, despite the cracks he often made about it. He might not be able to do what Conway would ask, or keep his mouth shut while Conway was doing it.

Regretfully, Conway shook his head.

When Mannon had gone, Conway returned to his patient. Visually it still resembled a doughnut, he thought, but a doughnut which had become wrinkled and fossilized with the passage of eons. He had to remind himself that only a week had passed since the patient had been admitted. The five pairs of limbs, all beginning to show signs of being affected by the growth, projected stiffly and at odd angles from the body, like petrified twigs on a rotten tree. Realizing that the growth would cover the breathing openings, Conway had inserted tubes to keep the respiratory passages clear. The tubes were having the desired effect, but despite this the respiration had slowed and become shallow. The stethoscope indicated that the heartbeats were fainter but had increased in frequency.

Sheer indecision made Conway sweat.

If only it was an ordinary patient, Conway thought angrily; one that could be treated openly and its treatment discussed freely. But this one was complicated by the fact that it was a member of a highly advanced and possibly inimical race, and he could not confide in anyone lest he be pulled off the case before his theory was proven. And the trouble was that the theory might be all wrong. It was quite possible that he was engaged in slowly killing his patient.

Noting the heart and respiration rates on the chart, Conway decided that it was time he increased the periodicity of his visits, and also arranged the times so that Prilicla, who was busy these days in the Nursery, could accompany him.

Kursedd was watching him intently as he left the ward, and its fur was doing peculiar things. Conway did not waste his breath telling the nurse to keep quiet about what he was doing to his patient because that would have made the being gossip even more. It was he who was being talked about already by the nursing staff, and he had begun to detect a certain coldness toward him from some of the senior nurses in this section. But with any luck, word of what he was doing would not filter up to his seniors for several days.

Three hours later he was back in 31 OB with Dr. Prilicla. He checked heart and respiration again while the GLNO probed for emotional radiation.

“It is very weak,” Prilicla reported slowly. “Life is present, but so faintly that it is not even conscious of itself. Considering the almost nonexistent respiration and weak, rapid pulse-rate . . .” The thought of death was particularly distressing to an empath, and the sensitive little being could not bring itself to finish the sentence.

“All these scares we gave it, trying to reassure it, didn’t help,” Conway said, half to himself. “It hadn’t been able to eat and we caused it to use up reserves of energy which it badly needed to keep. But it had to protect itself . . .

“But why? We were helping the patient.”

“Of course we were,” Conway said in a bitingly sarcastic tone which he knew would not carry through the other’s Translator. He was about to continue with the examination when there was a sudden interruption.

The being whose vast bulk scraped both sides and the top of the ward door on its way in was a Tralthan, physiological classification FGLI. To Conway the natives of Traltha were as hard to tell apart as sheep, but he knew this one. This was no less than Thornnastor, Diagnostician-in Charge of Pathology.

The Diagnostician curled two of its eyes in Prilicla’s direction and boomed, “Get out of here, please. You too, Nurse.” Then it turned all four of them on Conway.

“I am speaking to you alone,” Thornnastor said when they had gone,

“because some of my remarks have bearing on your professional conduct during this case, and I have no wish to increase your discomfort by public censure. However, I will begin by giving you the good news that we have produced a specific against this growth. Not only does it inhibit the condition spreading but it softens up the areas already affected and regenerates the tissues and blood-supply network involved.”

Oh, blast! thought Conway. Aloud he said, “A splendid accomplishment.” Because it really was.

“It would not have been possible had we not sent out a doctor to the wreck with instructions to send us anything which might throw light on the patient’s metabolism,” the Diagnostician continued. “Apparently you overlooked this source of data completely, Doctor, because the only specimens you furnished were those taken from the wreck during the time you were there, a very small fraction indeed of the quantity which was available. This was sheer negligence, Doctor, and only your previous good record has kept you from being demoted and taken off this case . . .

“But our success was due mainly to the finding of what appears to be a very well-equipped medical chest,” Thornnastor continued. “Study of the contents together with other information regarding the fittings in the wreck led to the conclusion that it must have been some kind of ambulance ship. The Monitor Corps officers were very excited when we told them—”

“When?” said Conway sharply. The bottom had dropped out of everything and he felt so cold that he might have been in shock. But there might be a chance to make Skempton delay making contact. “When did you tell them about it being an ambulance ship?”

“That information can be only of secondary interest to you,” said Thornnastor, removing a large, padded flask from its satchel. “Your primary concern is, or should be, the patient. You will need a lot of this stuff, and we are synthesizing it as quickly as we can, but there is enough here to free the head and mouth area. Inject according to instructions. It takes about an hour to show effect.”

Conway lifted the flask carefully. Stalling for time, he said, “'What about long-term effects? I wouldn’t like to risk—”

“Doctor,” Thornnastor interrupted, “it seems to me that you are taking caution to foolish, even criminal lengths.” The Diagnostician’s voice in Conway’s Translator was emotionless, but he did not have to be an empath to know that the other was extremely angry. The way Thornnastor charged out the door made that more than plain.

Conway swore luridly. The Monitors were about to contact the alien colony, if they had not done so already, and very soon the aliens would be swarming all over the hospital demanding to know what he was doing for the patient. If it wasn’t doing well by that time there would be trouble, no matter what sort of people they were. And much sooner than that would come trouble from inside the hospital, because he had not impressed Thornnastor with his professional ability at all.

In his hand was the flask whose contents would certainly do all that the Head Pathologist claimed—in short, cure what seemed to ail the patient. Conway dithered for a moment, then stuck grimly to the decision which he had made several days back. He managed to hide the flask before Prilicla returned.

“Listen to me carefully,” Conway said savagely, “before you say anything at all. I don’t want any arguments regarding the conduct of this case, Doctor. I think I know what I’m doing, but if I should be wrong and you were in on it, your professional reputation would suffer. Understand?”

Prilicla’s six, pipe-stem legs had been quivering as he talked, but it was not the words which were affecting the little creature, it was the feelings behind them. Conway knew that his emotional radiation just then was not a pleasant thing.

“I understand,” said Prilicla.

“Very well,” Conway said. “Now we’ll get back to work. I want you to check me with the pulse and respiration, as well as the emotional radiation. There should be a variation soon and I don’t want to miss it.”

For two hours they listened and observed closely with no detectable change in the patient. At one point Conway left the being with Prilicla and Kursedd while he tried to contact Colonel Skempton. But he was told that the Colonel had left the hospital hurriedly three days ago, that he had given the spatial coordinates of his destination, but that it was impossible to contact a ship over interstellar distances while it was in motion. They were sorry but the Doctor’s message would have to wait until the Colonel got where he was going.

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?”

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 resume‚ 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 iridescent 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 strangulation. 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 exultation, 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.

THE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

by Gary Louie

James White’s Sector General stories used a unique four letter classification system that helped describe the species quickly and effectivly, as one would require when the hospitol is a multi species enviroment. Gary Louie was working on a James White concordance. As part of that he completed a classification system, for the sector general series which covers all characters up to Final Diagnosis. This article appeared in the White Papers. Unfortunatly Gary Louie passed away, before the concordance was completed.

Classification:AACL

Planet:Unknown

Species:Crepellian Pet No Individual Names Known

A non-intelligent pet kept by AMSOs. It has six python-like ten-tacles which poke though seals in the cloudy plastic of its suit. The tentacles are each at least twenty feet long and tipped with a horny substance which must be steel-hard.

Classification:AACP

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown No Individual Names Known

A race whose remote ancestors were a species of mobile vegetable. They are slow moving, but the carbon dioxide tanks which they wear seem to be the only protection they need. AACPs do not eat in the normal manner but plant themselves in specially prepared soil during their sleep period, and absorb nutriment in that way.

Classification:AMSL

Planet:Unknown

Species:Creppelian, Crepellian

Individuals:Nurse Towan, Diagnostician Vosan

A species of water breathing octopoids.

Classification:AMSO

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

A larger life-form, in the habit of keeping non-intelligent AACL-type creatures as pets.

Classification:AUGL

Planet:Chalderescol IT

Species:Chaldor, Chalder

Individuals:Patient AUGL-1 13, Patient AUGL-1 16, Patient AUGL-122, Patient AUGL-126, Patient AUGL-187, Patient AUGL-193, Patient AUGL-211, Patient AUGL-218, Patient AUGL-22 1, Patient AUGL-233, Muromeshomon

The denizens of Chalderescol, an armored fish-like species are water-breathers who can not live in any other medium for more than a few seconds. A heavily plated and scaled being, slightly re-sembling a forty-foot long armour-plated crocodile, except that instead of legs there is an apparently haphazard arrangement of stubby fins, and a heavy knife-edged tail. A fringe of ribbon-like tentacles encircles its middle, projecting through some of the only openings visible in its organic armor. Chaldors have six rows of teeth in an over-large mouth. The Chalders are one of the frw in-telligent species whose personal names are used only between mates, members of the immediate family, or very special friends.

Classification:BLSU

Planet:Groalter

Species:Groalterri

Individual:Hellishomar the Cutter

The Groalterri overall body configuration is that of a squat octopoid with short, thick tentacular limbs. Its central torso and head seem disproportionately large. The eight limbs terminate alternately in four sets of claws (that will with maturity evolve into manipula-tory digits) and four flat, sharp-edged, osseous blades. The organ of speech and hearing is centered above the four heavily lidded eye that are equally spaced around the cranium. A macrospecies, there is an element of risk involved to any life-form of more or less nor-mal body mass which approaches it too closely.

Classification:BRLH

Planet:Tarla

Species:Tarlan

Individuals:Surgeon-Captain/Trainee/Padre Lioren, Sedith and Wrethrin the Healers

Tarlans are an erect quadrupedal life-form with its for short-legs supporting a tapering, cone-shaped body. Four long, multi-jointed, medial arms for heavy lifting and handling sprout from waist-level. Another four that are suited for more delicate work encircle the base of the neck. Equally spaced around the head are four eyes whose stalks are capable of independent motion. Tarlans have very large teeth. An adult Tarlan stands eight feet tall.

Classification:CLCH

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

Apparent typographical error for Classification CLHG.

Classification:CLHG

Planet:Drambo

Species:Roller

Individuals:Camsaug, Surreshun

The Rollers resemble animated donuts rolling on their outer edge, with manipulatory appendages in the form of a fringe ofshort ten-tacles sprouting from the inner circumference between the series of gill mouths and eyes. Its visual equipment must operate like a coeleostat since the contents of its field of vision are constantly rotating. The Rollers must roll to stay alive-there is an ingenious method of shifting its center of gravity while keeping itself upright by partially inflating the section of its body which is on top at any given moment. The continual rolling causes blood to circulate—it uses a form of gravity feed system instead of a muscular pump. The species reproduce hermaphroditically. Each parent after mating grows twin offspring, one on each side of its bodies like continu-ous blisters encircling the side walls of a tire. Injury, disease or the mental confusion immediately following birth could cause the parent to lose balance, roll on to its side, stop and die. The points where the children eventually detach themselves from their par-ents remain very sensitive areas to both generations and their posi-tions are governed by hereditary factors. The result is that any close blood relation trying to make mating contact causes itself and the other being considerable pain. The rollers really do hate their fathers and every other relative. The species is water-breathing with a warm-blooded oxygen-based metabolism. The lifesupport mechanism for the species is physically complicated, to allow the occupant to roll naturally within it. The concept of modesty is com-pletely alien to this race. This species does not know the meaning of sleep. There is no such thing as sleeping, pretending to be dead or unconsciousness. A Roller is either moving and alive or still and dead.

Classification:CLSR

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

Apparent typographical error for Classification CPSD.

Classification:CPSD

Planet:Unknown

Species:The Blind Ones

No Individual Names Known

These beings are roughly circular, just over a meter in diameter and, in cross section, a slim oval flattened slightly on the under-side. In shape they very much resemble their ship, except that the ship does not have a long, thin horn or sting projecting aft or a wide, narrow slit on the opposite side which is obviously a mouth. The upper lip of the mouth is wider and thicker than the lower, and can be curled over the lower lip, apparently sealing the mout shut. The beings are covered, on their upper and lower surfaces and around the rim, by some kind of organic stubble which varies in thickness from pin-size to the width of a small finger. The stubble on the underside is much coarser than that on the upper surface, and it is plain that parts of it are designed for ambulation. The Blind Ones evolved underground, and have no organs for sight. They formed an alliance with the Protectors of the Unborn, each species providing something that other lacked.

Classification:CRLT

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

Senior Physician Conway was unable to classi— this life-form with complete certainty. The initial analysis was performed on a cadaver, an independent portion of a larger composite being. The compos—ite is a warm-blooded oxygen breather with the type of basic me-tabolism associated with the physiological grouping CRLT. Even a segment is massive, measuring approximately twenty meters in length and three meters in diameter, excluding projecting append-ages. Physically it resembles the DBLF Kelgian life-form, but it is many times larger and possesses a leathery tegument rather than the silver fur of the Kelgians. Like the DBLF’s it is multipedal, but the manipulatory appendages are positioned in a single row along the back. There are twenty-one of these dorsal limbs, all showing evidence of early evolutionary specialization. Six of them are long, heavy, and claw-tipped and are obviously evolved for defense since the being is a herbivore. The other fifteen are in five groups of three, spaced between the six heavier tentacles, which terminate in four digits, two of which are opposable. These thinner limbs are manipulatory appendages originally evolved for gathering and trans-ferring food \to the mouths-three on each flank opening into three stomachs. Two additional orifices on each side open into a very large and complex lung. The structure inside these breathing ori-fices suggests that expelled air could be interrupted and modulated to produce intelligence-bearing sounds. On the underside are three openings used for the elimination of wastes. The mechanism of reproduction is unclear and the specimen shows evidence of p05-sessing both male and female genitalia on the forward and rear extremities respectively The brain, if it is a brain, takes the form of a cable of nerve ganglia with localized swellings in three places, running longitudinally through the cadaver like a central core. There is another and much thinner nerve cable running parallel to the thicker core, but below it and about twenty-five centimeters from the underside. Positioned close to each extremity are two sets of three eyes. Two are mounted dorsally and two on each of the forward and rear flanks. They are recessed but capable of limited extension; together they give the being complete and continuous vision vertically and horizontally. The type and positioning of the visual equipment and appendages suggest that it evolved on a very unfriendly world. The tentative Classification is an incomplete CRLT

Classification:DBDG

Planets:Earth, Gregory (Colony)

Species:Earth-human, Gregorian

Individuals:Theologian Augustine, Lieutenant Braithwaite, Sur-geon-Lieutenant Brenner, Corpsman Briggs, Lieutenant Briggs, Captain Chaplain Bryson, Lieutenant Carrington, Lieutenant Chen, Major Chiang, Clarke, Lieutenant Clifton, Junior Intern/Senior PhysicianlDiagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery Peter Conway, Sergeant Davis, Major/Colonel Jonathan Dermod, Fleet Commander Dermod, Lieutenant Dodds, Lieutenant Dowling, Major-Captain Fletcher, Fox, Trainee Hadley, Harmon, Lieuten-ant Haslam, Patient Hewlitt, Tailor George L Hewlitt, Mrs. George L Hewlitt, Captain Hokasuri, Major Holyrod, OR Nurse Hudson, Lieutenant-General Lister, MacEwan, Major Madden, Captain Mallon, Senior Physician/Diagnostician/Patient Mannen/Man non, Nurse/Pathologist Murchison, Major Nelson, Mister/Major/Chief Psychologist O’Mara, Captain Sigvard Nyberg, Doctor Pelling, General Prentiss, Reviora, Lieutenant-Colonel Simmons, Colonel Skempton, Surgeon-Lieutenant/Major Stillman, Lieutenant-Sur-geon Sutherland, Corpsman Timmins, Lieutenant Wainright, Waring, Corpsman/Colonel-Captain Williamson

Probable Individuals:Lieutenant Carmody, Lieutenant Carson, Section Chief Caxton, Major Colinson, Major Craythorne, Major Edwards, Doctor Hamilton, Dietician-in-ChiefKW Hardin, Lieu-tenant Harrison, Lieutenant Hendricks, Kellerman, Colonel Okaussie, Captain Stillson, Captain Summerfield, TrooperTeirnan, Surgeon-Captain Telford

This species shows their teeth in a silent snarl when displaying amusement or friendship and make an unpleasant barking sound that denotes amusement. The sound, called laughing, in most cases a psychophysical mechanism for the release of minor degrees of tension. An Earth-human laughs because of sudden relief from worry or fear, or to express scorn or disbelief or sarcasm, or in response to words or a situation that is ridiculous, illogical or funny, or out of politeness when the situation or words are not funny but the person responsible is of high rank. The Earth-human voice is reputed to be one of the most versatile instruments in the Galaxy. The Earth-human DBDGs are the only race in the Galactic Federation with a nudity taboo, and one of the very few member species with an aversion to making love in public. The Earth-human DBDGs make up the majority of the Monitor Corps forces.

Classification:DBDG

Planets:Etlan Empire, Central World (Capital), Imperial Etla (Capital), Etla, Etla the Sick (Colony)

Species:Etlan, Imperial

Individuals:Heraltnor, Imperial Representative Teltrenn

The physiology of the citizens of the Empire is the same as the population of their colony Etla. The physiological resemblance is so close to Earth-human DBDGs that no other disguise other than native language and dress is needed. There are theories about a prehistoric colonization program by common, star-travelling an-cestors. Attempts at procreation between Earth-human DBDGs and Etlans have been unsuccessful.

Classification:DBDG

Planet:Nidia

Species:Nidian

Individuals:Chief of Procurement Creon-Emesh, Senior Physi-cian and Tutor Cresk-Sar, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur, Lieu-tenant-Colonel Dragh-Nin, Senior Physician Lesk-Murog, Senior Food Technician Sarnyagh-Sa, Yoragh-Kar

Probable Individual:Surgeon-Lieutenant Krack-Yar

The Nidians have seven-fingered hands, stand only four feet tall. They have a thick red fur coat, and look like a very cuddly teddy-bear.

Classification:DBDG

Planet:Orligia

Species:Orlig, Orligian

Individuals:Grawlya-Ki/Grulyaw—Ki, Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul,

Major Sachan-Li, Colonel Shech-Rar, Surgeon-Lieutenant Turragh-Mar

Like the neighboring Nidians, Orligians resemble an Earth-human child’s first non-adult friend’s teddy bear.

Classification:DBLF

Planet:Ia

Species:Ian (pre-adolescent)

No Individual Narnes Known

The being appears ring-shaped, rather like a large balloon tire. Overall diameter of the ring is about nine feet, with the thickness between two and three feet. The tegument is smooth, shiny and grey in color where it is not covered with a thick, brownish incrustation. The brown stuff, which covers more than half of the total skin area, looks cancerous, but may be some type of natural camouflage. There are five pairs of limbs, and no evidence ofspecial-ization. No visual organs or means of ingestion can be seen. The being isn’t a doughnut, but possesses a fairly normal anatomy of the DBLF type—a cylindrical, lightly-boned body with heavy musculature. The being is not ring-shaped, but gives that impression because for some reason, known best to itself, it has been trying to swallow its tail. Senior Physician Conway, convinced all along that the patient is undergoing a natural metamorphosis, observes that the new patient, after the process is complete, is of classification GKNM.

Classification:DBLF

Planet:Kelgia

Species:Kelgian

Individuals:Patient Henredth, Senior Physician Karthad, Charge Nurse Kursedd, Diagnostician Kursedth, Patient Morredeth, Charge Nurse Naydrad, Fleet Commander Roonardth, Charge Nurse Segroth, Diagnostician Suggrod, Student Nurse Tarsedth, Diagnostician Towan, Senior Physician Yarrence

Probable Individual:Charge Nurse Kursenneth

Kelgians are warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, multipedal, and with a long, flexible cylindrical body covered overall by highly mobile, silvery fur. The Kelgian forelimbs have three digits. There are twenty sets of short, thin, and not heavily muscled walking limbs. The feet, which have no toenails or other terminations, are like small, hard sponges.The fur moves continually in slow ripples from the conical head right down to the tail. These are completely involuntary movements triggered by its emotional reactions to outside stimuli. The evolutionary reasons for this mechanism are not clearly understood, not even by the Kelgians themselves, but it is generally believed that the emotionally expressive fur complements the Kelgian vocal equipment, which lacks emotional flex-ibility of tone.The movements of the fur make it absolutely clear to another Kelgian-what a Kelgian feels about the subject under discussion. As a result they always say exactly what they mean because what they think is plainly obvious-at least to another Kelgian.They can not do otherwise. Kelgians have an intense aver-sion towards any surgical procedure which would damage or disfigure its most treasured possession, its furs. To a Kelgian the removal of a strip or patch of fur, which in their species represents a means of communication equal to the spoken word, is a personal tragedy which all too often results in permanent psychological damage. A Kelgian’s fur does not grow again and one whose pelt is damaged can rarely find a mate because it is unable to fully display its feelings. Kelgians are very close to Earth-humans in both basic metabolism and temperament. Except for the thinwalled, narrow casing which houses the brain, the DBLF species has no boney structure. Their bodies are composed of an outer cylinder of mus-culature which, in addition to be being its primary means of loco-motion, serves to protect the vital organs within it. To the mind of a being more generously reinforced with bones, this protection is far from adequate. Another severe disadvantage in the event of in-jury is its complex and extremely vulnerable circulation system; the blood-supply network which has to feed the tremendous bands of muscle encircling its body runs close under the skin, as does the nerve network that controls the mobile fur. The thick fur of the pelt gives some protection here, but not against chunks of jagged-edged, flying metal. An injury which many other species would consider superficial could cause a DBLF to bleed to death in minutes. Kelgians are herbivorous.

Classification:DBPK

Planet:Dwerla

Species:Dwerlan

No Individual Names Known

A warm-blooded oxygen-breathing herbivore that does not walk upright. Judging by the shape of the spacesuits, the beings are flattened cylinders about six feet long with four sets of manipulatory appendages behind a conical section which is probably the head, and another four locomotor appendages. Apart from the smaller size and number of appendages, the beings physically resemble the Kelgian race. The pointed, fox-like head and the thick, broad-striped coat make it look like a furry, short-legged zebra with an enormous tail. These beings seem not to possess natural weapons of offrnce or defense, or any signs of having had any in the past. Even their limbs are not built for speed, so they can not run from danger. The set used for walking are too short and are padded, while the fotward set are more slender, less well-muscled and end in four highly flexible digits which don’t possess so much as a fingernail among them. There are the fur markings, of course, but it is rare that a life-form rises to the top of its evolutionary tree by camouflage alone, or by being nice and cuddly. The species has two sexes, male and female, and the reproductive system seems relatively normal. Both sexes use a water soluble dye to enhance artificially the bands of color on their body fur clearly the dyes are for cosmetic reasons. The immature do not use dyes, but use a brownish pigment on a bare patch above the tail.

Classification:DCNF

Planet:Sommaradva

Species:Sommaradvan

Individual:Trainee Cha Th rat

Four Ambulatory limbs; Four waist-level heavy manipulators; and a set of manipulators for food provisions and fine work encircling the neck. This being has two stomachs. Sommaradvan society is stratified into three levels—serviles, warriors, and rulers—which strictly govern how an individual acts within the society.

Classification:DCSL

Planet:Cromsag

Species:Cromsaggar

No Individual Names Known

This species has three sets of limbs: two ambulators, two medial heavy manipulators, and two more at neck level for eating and to perform more delicate work. It has a cranium covered by thick, blue fur that continues in a narrow strip along the spine to the vestigial tail.

Classification:DHCG

Planet:Wemar

Species:Wem

Individuals:First Hunter Creethar, Hunter Druuth, Youth Evemth,

First Cook Remrath, First Teacher Tawsar

The Wem life-form is a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species with an adult body mass just under three times that of an Earth-human and, since Wermar’s surface gravity is one point three eight standard G’s, a healthy specimen is proportionately well-muscled. It resembles the rare Earth beast called a kangaroo. The differences are that the head is larger and fitted with a really ferocious set of teeth; each of the two short forelimbs terminate in six-fingered hands possessing two opposable thumbs, and the tail is more massive and tapered to a wide, flat triangular tip composed of immobile osseous material enclosed by a thick, muscular sheath. The flattening at the end of tail serves a threefold purpose: as its principal natural weapon, as an emergency method of fast locomotion while hunting or being hunted, and as a means of transporting infant Wem who are too small to walk. The Wem hunt by adopting an awkward, almost ridiculous stance with their forelimbs tightly folded, their chins touching the ground, and their long legs spread so as to allow the tail to curve sharply downwards and forwards between the limbs so that the flat tip is at their center of balance. When the tail is straightened suddenly to full extension, it acts as a powerful third leg ca-pable of hurling the Wem forward for a distance of five or six body lengths. If the hunter does not land on top of its prey, kicking the creature senseless with the feet before disabling it with a deep bite through the cervical vertebrae and underlying nerve trunks, it pivots rapidly on one leg so that the flattened edge of the tail strikes its victim like a blunt, organic axe. While the tail is highly flexible where downward and forward movement is concerned, it cannot be elevated above the horizontal line of the spinal column.The back and upper flanks are, therefore, the Wem’s only body areas that are vulnerable to attack by natural enemies, who must also possess the element of surprise if they are not to become the victim.

Classification:DRVJ

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Doctor Yeppha

Planet:Unknown

A small, tripedal, fragile being. From the furry dome of its head there sprout singly and in small clusters, at least twenty eyes.

Classification:DTRC

Species:Rhum

Planet:Unknown

Individual:Crelyarrel

Flat, roughly circular beings, dark gray and wrinkled on one surface, and with a paler, mottled appearance on the other, smooth, surface. The beings attach to their FGHJ hosts with thick tendrils growing from the edge of the disk. The tendrils penetrate into their FGHJ hosts’ spinal columns and rear craniums. The DTRCs have their own special needs that in no way resemble those of their hosts, whose animal habits and undirected behavior are highly repugnant to them. It is vital to the DTRCs continued mental well-being that the masters escape periodically from their hosts to lead their own lives—usually during the hours of darkness when the tools are no longer in use and can be quartered where they can not harm themselves.

Classification:DTSB

Planet:Traltha

Species:Tralthan

No Individual Names Known

Apparent typographical error for Classification OTSB.

Classification:EGCL

Planet:Duwetz

Species:Dewatti

No Individual Names Known

A warm-blooded, oyxgen-breathing lifeform of approximately twice the body weight of an adult Earth-human. Visually it resembles an outsize snail with a high, conical shell which is pierced around the tip where its four extensible eyes are located. Equally spaced around the base of the shell are eight triangular slots from which project the manipulatory appendages. The carapace rests on a thick, circular pad of muscle which is the locomotor system. Around the circumference of the pad are a number of fleshy projections, hollows and slits associated with its systems of ingestion, respiration, elimination, reproduction, and nonvisual sensors. The EGCLs are organic empaths. They are organic transmitters, reflectors and focusers and magnifiers of their own feelings and those of the beings around them. The faculty has evolved to the stage where they have no conscious control over the process.

Classification:ELNT

Planet:Melf Four

Species:Melfan

Individuals:Maintenance Technician Dremon, Senior Physician Edanelt, Diagnostician Ergandhir, Patient Kennonalt, Patient KIetilt, Maintenance Technician Kiedath, Nurse Lontallet, Senior Physician Medalont, Senreth

Melfans are large, low slung crab-like crustaceans. The six thin, bony, tubular, multi-jointed legs project from slits where the bony carapace and underside join. The legs and all of the body are exoskeletal. The head has large, protruding, vertically-lidded eyes, enormous mandibles, and pincers projecting forward from the place where ears should be. Two long, thin and fragile feelers grow from the sides of the mouth. The species is amphibious.

Classification:EPLA

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Lonvellin

Apparent typographical error for Classification EPLH.

Classification:EPLH

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Lonvellin

The being is large, about one thousand pounds mass, and resembles a giant, upright pear. Five thick, tentacular appendages grow from the narrow head section and a heavy apron of muscle at its base gives evidence of a snaillike, although not necessarily slow, method of locomotion. The being is warm-blooded and has fairly normal gravity requirements. Five large mouths are situated below the root of each tentacle, four being plentifully supplied with teeth and the fifth housing the vocal apparatus. The tentacles themselves show a high degree of specialization at their extremities: three of them are plainly manipulatory, one bears the patient’s visual equipment, and the remaining member terminates in a horn-tipped, boney mace. The head is featureless, being simply an osseous dome housing the brain. The cranium is pierced at regular intervals for visual, aural and olfactory sensors. Their life-span, lengthy to begin with, is artificially extended. Because they have tremendous minds, they have plenty of time, but they constantly have to fight against boredom. Because part of the price of such longevity is an evergrowing fear of death, they need to have their own personal physicians no doubt the most efficient practitioners of medicine known to them-constantly in attendance.

Classification:FGHJ

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

The being has six limbs, four legs and two arms, all very heavily muscled, and is hairless except for a narrow band of stiff bristles running from the top of the head along the spine to the tail, which seems to have been surgically shortened at an early age. The body configuration is a thick cylinder of uniform girth between the fore and rear legs, but the forward torso narrows towards the shoulders and is carried erect. The neck is very thick and the head small. There are two eyes, recessed and looking forward, a mouth with very large teeth, and other openings that are probably aural or olfactory sense organs. The legs terminate in large, reddish-brown hooves. Each hoof has four digits and does not appear particularly dexterous. This creature serves as a host to beings of Classification DTRC.

Classification:FGLI

Planet:Traltha

Species:Tralthan

Individuals:Patient Cossunallen, Crajarron, Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas, Patient Horrantor, Senior Physician Hossantir, Surriltor, Senior Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology Thorn-nastor

A massive entity with an osseous dome housing its brain, six elephantine feet connected to its triple massive shoulders, and four extensible eyes on an immobile head. Its six stubby legs normally give the Tralthan species such a stable base they frequently go to sleep standing up. Even healthy Tralthans have great difficulty getting up again if they fall onto their sides. Tralthans must not be rolled onto their backs under normal gravity conditions since this causes organic displacement which would increase their respira-tory difficulties. Standard gravity at Sector General is just over half Tralthan normal. Tralthans are vegetarians.

Classification:FOKT

Planet:Goglesk

Species:Gogleskan

Individuals:Healer '(hone and child

The Gogleskan FOKT resembles a large, dumpy cactuslike plant whose spikes and hair are richly colored in a pattern which seems less random the more you look at it. A faint smell comes from the entity, a combination of musk and peppermint. The mass of un-ruly hair and spikes covering its erect, ovoid body are less irregular in their size and placing than is at first apparent. The body hair has mobility, though not the high degree of flexibility and rapid mobility of the Kelgian fur, and the spikes, some of which are extremely flexible and grouped together to form a digital cluster, give evidence of specialization. The other spikes are longer and stiffer, and some of them seem to be partially atrophied, as if they were evolved for natural defense, but the reason for their presence has long since gone. There are also a number of long, pale tendrils lying amid the multicolored hair covering the cranial area, used for contact telepathy. Its voice seems to come from a number of small, vertical breathing orifices which encircles its waist. The being sits on a flat, muscular pad, and it has legs as well. These members are stubby and concertina-like, and when the four of them are in use they increase the height of the being by several inches. The being al50 has two additional eyes at the back of its head—obviously this species has had to be very watchful in prehistoric times.

Classification:FROB

Planet:Hudlar

Species:Hudlar, Hudlarian

Individuals:Patient FROB-3, Patient FROB-lO, Patient FROB-18, Patient FROB-43, Patient FROB-1 132, Trainee FROB-61, Trainee FROB-73, Senior Physician Garoth, Infant Patient Metiglesh

Hudlars are blocky, pear-shaped beings whose home planet pulls four Earth gravities and has a high-density atmosphere so rich in suspended animal and vegetable nutrients that it resembles thick soup. Although the FROB lifeform is warm-blooded and techni-cally an oxygen-breather, it can go for long periods without air if its food supply, which it absorbs directly through its thick but highly porous tegument, is adequate. Hudlars are massive six legged beings. Each leg is an immensely strong tapering tentacle, which terminates in a cluster of flexible digits, curled inward so that the weight is born on heavy knuckles and the fingers remain clear of the floor. The two lidless, recessed eyes are protected by hard, transparent and featureless casings. Hudlars communicate using a speaking membrane, which grows like a cock’s comb from the top of the head. The speaking membrane also serves as a sound sensor. The skin resembles a seamless covering of flexible armor in appearance and texture. Food is ingested through organs of absorption that cover both flanks and the wastes are eliminated by a similar mechanism on the underside. Both systems are under voluntary control. Because of the physiological necessity for avoiding further sexual contact with its life-mate, a gravid Hudlar female changes gradually into male mode and, concurrently, its life-mate slowly becomes female. A Hudlar year after partuition the changes to both are complete.The Hudlar FROBs are acknowledged to be, physically, strongest life-forms of the Galactic Federation and to have the least-pervious body tegument. Contact with chlorine is instantly lethal to them. Hudlar blood is yellow and circulates under great pressure and pulse rate. Hudlars consider their names to be their most private and personal possession, and do not give or use their names in the presence of anyone who is not a member of the family or a close friend.

Classification:FSOJ

Planet:Unknown

Species:Protectors of the Unborn

No Individual Names Known

The Protector of the Unborn is a large, immensely strong lifeform that resembles aTralthan, but is less massive with stubbier legs projecting from a hemispherical carapace flared out slightly around the lower edges. The deployment of the legs and tentacles is similar to the Hudlar FROB life-form, but the carapace is a thicker ELNT Melfan shell without markings, and the FSOJ is plainly not herbivorous. From openings high on the carapace sprout four tentacles. Two different types of tentacles have been observed on different beings: long and particularly thin tentacles which terminate in flat, spear-like tips with serrated boney edges, and thick tentacles terminating in a cluster ofsharp, bony projections which make them resemble spiked clubs. The four stubby legs also have osseous pro-jections which enable them to be used as weapons as well. Midway between two of the tentacle openings there is a larger gap in the carapace from which protrudes a head, all mouth and teeth. The large upper and lower mandibles are capable of deforming all but the strongest metal alloys. A little space is reserved for two well-protected eyes at the bottom of deep, boney craters. A serrated tail also protrudes from the heavily slitted carapace. While the under-side is not armored, as is the carapace, this area is rarely open to attack, and it is covered by a thick tegument which apparently gives sufficient protection. In the center of this area is a thin, longitudinal fissure which opens into the birth canal. It will not open, however, until a few minutes before giving birth. The FSOJ brain is not in its skull, but deep inside the torso with the rest of the other vital organs. It is positioned just under the womb and surrounding the beginning of the birth canal. As a result, the brain is compressed as the embryo grows. If it is a difficult birth, the parent’s brain is destroyed and junior comes out fighting, with a convenient food supply available until it can kill something for itself Senior Physicians Conway’s first impression was that the entity was little more than an organic killing machine. Considering the fact that it is warm-blooded and oxygen-breathing, and its appendages show no evidence of the ability to manipulate tools or materials, Patholo-gist Murchison tentatively classified it as FSOJ and probably nonintelligent. The Unborn young of the bisexual FSOJ is retained in the womb until it is well-grown and fully equipped to survive. The Unborn is an intelligent and telepathic being, but loses these faculties at birth.

Classification:GKNM

Planet:Ia

Species:Ian (adult)

Individual:Patient Makolli

The metamorphosed form of the adolescent DBLF lifeform. The species created a colony in this galaxy, coming from an adjoining one. The race is oxygen-breathing and oviparous, having a long, rodlike but flexible body, and possessing four insectile legs, ma-nipulators, the usual sense organs, and three tremendous sets of wings. The lifeform looks something like a large dragonfly.

Classification:GLNO

Planet:Cinruss

Species:Cinrusskin

Individual:Senior Physician Prilicla

Cinrusskins are enormous, incredibly fragile flying insects, with a tubular exoskeletal body. Six sucker-tipped pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned, tiny, precise manipulators, and four sets ofwide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings project form the body. The head is a convoluted eggshell, so finely structured that the sensory and manipulatory organs that it supports seem ready to fall off at the first sudden movement. The eyes are large and triple-lidded. The Cinrusskin are the Federation’s only empathic race. Cinruss has a dense atmosphere and one-eighth gravity. Cinrusskins are sexless.

Classification:LSVO

Planet:Nallaji

Species:Nallajim

Individuals:Kytili, Senior Physician Seldal

The species has a birdlike, fragile, low-gravity physiology, with three legs, two not-quite-atrophied wings, and no hands at all. When LSVOs eat, they are sickened by anything which doesn’t look like bird seed.

Classification:MSVK

Planet:Euril

Species:Eurils

No Individual Names Known

Fragile, bipedal, stork-like beings from a low gravity world. The MSVK environment has dim lighting and a opaque fog for an atmosphere. The race is driven by an intense curiosity and hampered by extreme caution. They are the galaxy’s prime observers, and are content to look and learn and record through their long-probes and sensors without making their presence known. MSVKs have a low tolerance to radiation.

Classification:OTSB

Planet:Traltha

Species:Tralthan

No Individual Names Known

Tralthan Surgeons are really two beings instead of one, a combination of FGLI and OTSB.The OTSB is a nearly mindless symbiont which lives with its FGLI host. At first glance the OTSB looks like a furry ball sprouting a long ponytail, but a closer look shows that the ponytail is composed of scores of fine manipulators, most of which incorporate sensitive visual organs. A cluster of wire-thin, eye and sucker tipped tentacles sends infinitely detailed visual information to its giant host and receives instructions from the host. The Tralthan combinations are the best surgeons the Galaxy has ever known. Not all Tralthans choose to link up with a symbiote, but FGLI medics wear them like a badge of office.

Classification:PVGJ

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Doctor Fremvessith

Apparent typographical error for Classification PVSJ.

Classification:PVSJ

Planet:Illensa

Species:Illensan

Individuals:Senior Physician Gilvesh, Charge Nurse Hredlichi, Diagnostician Lachlichi, Charge Nurse Leethveeschi

Probable Individual:Charge Nurse Lentilatsar

Illensans are chlorine breathers with shapeless spiny bodies and dry, rustling membranes joining the upper and lower appendages. The body resembles a haphazard collection of oily, yellow-green, unhealthy vegetation. The two stubby legs are covered by what look like oily blisters. Their loose protective suits are transparent except for the faint yellow fog of chlorine contained within. The Illensans are generally held to be the most visually repulsive beings in the Federation, as well as the most vain regarding their own physical appearance. Illensans suffer digestive upsets if they exercise after meals. Contact with water is instantly lethal to chlorine-breathers. PVSJs are not physiologically suited to the use of stairs and have very sensitive hearing.

Classification:QCQL

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

Apparent typographical error for Classification QLCL. Senior Physician Mannen did not know there was any such beastie, but Major O’Mara had a tape. There were two casualties of this classification at Sector General. The operations were suit jobs, since the gunk that the QCQLs breath would kill anything that walks, crawls or flies, excluding them.

Classification:QLCL

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

Recent, and very enthusiastic, members of the Federation, this species had never been to Sector General until the war with the Empire. Then a small ward was prepared to receive possible QLCL casualties. The ward was filled with the horribly corrosive fog the QLCLs used for an atmosphere, and the lighting was stepped up to the harsh, actinic blue which the they consider restful.

Classification:SNLU

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name: Vosan

Individual:Diagnostician Semlic

The SNLU life form requires a refrigerated life-support system for its ultra-low-temperature environment while on the Chlorine and Oxygen levels. A frigid-blooded methane-breather, it is most comfortable in an environment only a few degrees above absolute zero. The SNLUs have a complex mineral and liquid crystalline structure. The species evolved on the perpetually dark worlds which detached from their original solar systems and now drift through the interstellar spaces. Physically they are quite small, averaging one-third the body mass of a being like a Kelgian. In order to allow contact with other, warmer, species, the SN LUs are required to wear a large, complex, highly refrigerated life-support and sensor translation system, which requires frequent power recharge. The scales covering the SNLU’s eight-limbed, starfish-shaped body shine coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, mak-ing it resemble some wondrous, heraldic beast. The SNLUs live and work in the almost total silence of beings with a hypersensitivity to audible vibrations. These fragile, crystalline, methane-based lifeforms would decompose at temperatures in excess of eighteen degrees above absolute zero and be instantly cremated if the temperature rose above minus one-twenty on the temperature scale in use in the Federation.

Classification:SRJH

Planet:Drambo

Species:Healers or Physicians or Protectors

No Individual Names Known

The Drambon Physicians are glorified leucocytes to the Drambon Strata Creatures, treating the many independent organisms living in and around those immense living carpets. The stupid, slow moving Drambon Physicians stay close to the most active and dan-gerous stretches of the Drambon shoreline. They resemble jelly-fish, so transparent that only their internal organs are visible. A leech-like form of life, the SRJHs seem comfortable in either air or water. Their reactions in the presence of severe illness or injury are instinctive. Using their spines or stings, they practice their profession by withdrawing the blood of their patients and pun fying it of any infection or toxic substances before returning it to the patients’ bodies. (The process repairs simple physical damage as well.) However, not all the withdrawn blood is returned. It has not been established whether it is physiologically impossible for the SRJH to return it all or whether the Physician retains a few ounces as payment for services rendered. A Physicians can kill as well as cure. It can barely touch a beast, causing a predator to go into a muscular spasm so violent that parts of its skeleton pop through the skin. There is no evidence that they communicate verbally, visually, tactually, telepathically, by smell or by any other system known to Sector General. The quality of their emotional radiation suggests that they do not communicate at all in the accepted sense. The Physicians are simply aware ofother beings and objects around them and, by using their eyes and a mechanism similar to the empathic faculty, they are able to identi— friend and foe.

Classification:SRTT

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

This physiological type is amoebic, possessing the ability to extrude any limbs, sensory organs or protective tegument necessary to the environment in which it finds itself. It is so fantastically adaptable that it is difficult to imagine how one of these beings could ever fall sick in the first place.

Classification:TLTU

Planet:Threcald 5

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:TLTU Diagnostician

A TLTU doctor breathes superheated steam and has pressure and gravity requirements three times greater than the environment of the oxygen levels. The local protection needed by a TLTU doctor is a great, clanking juggernaut which hisses continually as if it is about to spring a leak. The large protective suit resembles a spherical pressure boiler bristling with remote handling devices and mounted on caterpillar treads, and has to be avoided at all costs. The large size is needed to allow for heaters to render the occupant comfortable, and surface insulation and refrigerators to keep the vicinity habitable by other life-forms. The small TLTU lifeform inhabits a heavy-gravity, watery planet with edible minerals, which circles very close to its parent sun. The TLTU’s blood consists of superheated liquid metal. TLTU patients are transported in their protective spheres anchored to stretcher carriers. These spheres emit a high-pitched, shuddering whine as their generators labor to main-tain the internal temperature at a comfortable, for their occupants, five hundred degrees.

Classification:TOBS

Planet:Fotawn

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Trainee/Doctor Danalta

This being can extrude any limbs, sense organs, or protective tegument necessary to the environment or situation in which it finds itself. It evolved on a planet with a highly eccentric orbit, and with climatic changes so severe that an incredible degree of physical adapt-ability was necessary for survival. It became dominant on its world, and developed intelligence and a civilization, not by competing in the matter of natural weapons but by refining and perfecting its adaptive capability. When it is faced by natural enemies, the options are flight, protective mimicry, or the assumption of a shape frightening to the attacker. The speed and accuracy of the mimicry, particularly in the almost perfect reproduction ofbehavior patterns, suggests that the entity may be a receptive empath. The empathic faculty is under voluntary control, so that the level of emotional radiation reaching its receptors can be reduced, or even cut off at will, should it become too distressing. With such effective means of self-protection available, the species is impervious to physical damage other than by complete annihilation or application of ultrahigh temperatures.The concept of curative surgery would be a strange one indeed to members of that race. They do not require mechanisms for self-protection, so they are likely to be advanced in the philosophical sciences but back-ward in developing technology. When not trying to look like something else, TOBSs take the configuration of a large, dark-green, uneven ball.

Classification:TRLH

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

No Individual Names Known

The TRLH casualty was an ally of the Empire during that war. Classification was aided by the fact that the patient’s spacesuit was transparent as well as flexible. The atmosphere the being breathes is as exotic as that of the QCQLs, but can be reproduced. The TRLH has a thin carapace which covers its back and curves down and inwards to protect the central area of its underside. Four thick, single-jointed legs project from the uncovered sections. It has a large but lightly boned head, four manipulatory appendages, two recessed but extensible eyes, and two mouths.

Classification:VTXM

Planet:Telf

Species:Telfi, Telphi

Individual:Astrogator-part Cheixic

A group-mind species whose small beetle-like bodies live by the direct conversion of various combinations and intensities of hard radiation. Mthough individually the beings are quite stupid, the gestalt entities are highly intelligent. The Telfi operate in groups as contact telepaths to pool their mental and physical abilities. The Telfi have a spoken language as well as the telepathic faculty used between individuals, especially members of a family gestalt. Another variant of the species resembles a large, terrestrial lizard, just under five feet long from the bulbous head to vestigial tail, with an extra set of forelimbs growing from the base of the neck. The only visible features are two tiny, lidless eyes and the mouth. The four stubby walking limbs can be bent double to lie flat against the body while the two, longer forward manipulators can stretch forward and cross so as to allow the chin to rest on the crossover point. The skin of a dead Telfi is pale gray with a mottled and veined effect that resembles unpolished marble. The color is a symptom of advanced radiation starvation and a lethal failure of the absorption mechanism. A healthy Telfi reflects no light at all, looking like liz-ard-shaped black holes. A healthyTelfi’s temperature is below room temperature. Investigating their ultra-hot metabolism closely is to risk radiation poisoning. There is a fallacy among non-medics that the Telfi cannot be closely approached or touched without the use of remotely controlled manipulators. To live they must absorb the radiation normally provided by their natural environment but when, for clinical reasons, the radiation is withdrawn for several days and they are week from their equivalent of hunger, their radioactive emissions drop to a harmless level.

Classification:VUXG

Planet:Unknown

Species:Name Unknown

Individual:Dr. Arretapec

The VUXG resembles nothing so much as a withered prune float-mg in a spherical gob of syrup. The species has telepathic, teleportive, and—sort of precognitive abilities. The precognitive ability does not appear to be of much use because it does not work with individuals but only with populations, and so far in the future and in such a haphazard manner that it is practically useless.

Classification:Unknown

Planet:Drambo

Species:Farmer Fish

No Individual Names Known

The large—headed Farmer Fish are responsible for cultivating and protecting benign growth and destroying all other growth in the Drambon Strata Creature. Farmer Fish have stubby arms sprout-ing from the base of their enlarged heads.

Classification:Unknown

Planet:Drambo

Species:Strata Creatures

No Individual Names Known

The largest creature on the planet Drambo—so large that at a scoutship’s suborbital velocity of six thousand plus miles per hour it takes just over nine minutes to travel from one side of the patient to the other. The creature is so vast that it has many independent parts performing specialized functions, such as the eye plants, air renewal plants, Farmer Fish, Thought Controlled Tools, and vegetable teeth. The parts can communicate via a mineral-rich sap. The creature uses water instead of blood as its working fluid. It is not clear if the entire creature is an animal or a plant, there being components of both in its immense expanse. There is only one intelligent Strata Creature on Drambo, and it is being treated for radiation poisoning.

Classification:Unknown

Planet:Drambo

Species:Thought Controlled Tools

No Individual Names Known

Under the mental control of its user, a “tool” can assume any useful shape imagined. At Sector General, one appeared as a Hudlar type six scalpel, a medium-sized box spanner, a metallic sphere, a miniature bust of Beethoven, a set of Tralthan dentures, and a Hudlar food sprayer, among other things. The tools belong to the only sentient Strata Creature on Drambo, and were used to attack the medical and military forces attempting to treat the Strata Creature for radiation poisoning.

Classification:Unknown

Planet:Dutha

Species:Duthan

Individuals:Patient Bowab, His Excellency the Lord Scrennagle of

Dutha

Duthans have a centaur-like body. The torso from the waist up resembles that of an Earth-human, but the musculature of the arms, shoulders and chest are subtly different. The hands are five-digited, each comprised of three fingers and two opposable thumbs. The head is carried erect above a very thick neck, which seems disproportionately small.The face is dominated by two large, soft, brown eyes that somehow make the slits, pro tuberan ces, and fleshy petals which comprise the other features visually acceptable.

Classification:Unknowm

Planet:Keran

Species:Keranni

No Individual Names Known

No description given.

Classification:Unknown

Planet:Unknown

Species:Kreglinni

No Individual Names Known

No description given.

Classification:Various

Planet:Meatball

Species:CLCH/CLHG Drambon Rollers, Drambon Farmer Fish, Drambon Strata Creatures, Drambon Thought Controlled Tools, SRJH Drambon Healers or Physicians or Protectors

The planet was originally named by the crew of Descartes, but the name was considered derogatory by one of the native intelligent species. The planet is now referred to as Drambo.

Sector General 2—Star Surgeon

James White

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, SectorTwelveGeneralHospital 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 view ports 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 insane 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 GeneralHospital 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.

Five large mouths were situated below the root of each tentacle, four being plentifully supplied with teeth and the fifth housing the vocal apparatus. The tentacles themselves showed a high degree of specialization at their extremities; three of them were plainly manipulatory, one bore the patient’s visual equipment and the remaining member terminated in a horn-tipped, honey mace. The head was featureless, being simply an osseous dome housing the patient’s brain.

There wasn’t much else to he seen from a superficial examination. Conway turned to get his deep probe gear, and walked on the Monitor officer’s feet.

“Have you ever considered taking up medicine seriously, Lieutenant?” he said irritably.

The lieutenant reddened, his face making a horrible clash of color against the dark green of his uniform collar. He said stiffly, “This patient is a criminal. It was found in circumstances which indicate that it killed and ate the other member of its ship’s crew. It has been unconscious during the trip here, but I’ve been ordered to stand guard on it just in case. I’ll try to stay out of your way, Doctor.”

Conway swallowed, his eyes going to the vicious-looking, horny bludgeon with which, he had no doubt, the patient’s species had battered their way to the top of their evolutionary tree. He said dryly, “Don’t try too hard, Lieutenant.”

Using his eyes and a portable X-ray scanner Conway examined his patient thoroughly inside and out. He took several specimens, including sections of the affected skin, and sent them off to Pathology with three closely written pages of covering notes. Then he stood back and scratched his head.

The patient was warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, and had fairly normal gravity and pressure requirements which, when considered with the general shape of the beastie, put its physiological classification as EPLH. It seemed to be suffering from a well-developed and widespread epithelioma, the symptoms being so plain that he really should have begun treatment without waiting for the Path report. But a cancerous skin condition did not, ordinarily, render a patient deeply unconscious.

That could point to psychological complications, he knew, and in that case he would have to call in some specialized help. One of his telepathic colleagues was the obvious choice, if it hadn’t been for the fact that telepaths could only rarely work minds that were not already telepathic and of the same species as themselves. Except for the very odd instance, telepathy had been found to be a strictly closed circuit form of communication. Which left his GLNO friend, the empath Dr. Prilicla . . .

Behind him the Lieutenant coughed gently and said, “When you’ve finished the examination, Doctor, O’Mara would like to see you.”

Conway nodded. “I’m going to send someone to keep an eye on the patient,” he said, grinning, “guard them as well as you’ve guarded me.”

Going through to the main ward Conway detailed an Earth-human nurse—a very good-looking Earth-human nurse—to duty in the observation ward. He could have sent in one of the Tralthan FGLIs, who belonged to a species with six legs and so built that beside one of them an Earthly elephant would have seemed a fragile, sylph-like creature, but he felt that he owed the Lieutenant something for his earlier bad manners.

Twenty minutes later, after three changes of protective armor and a trip through the chlorine section, a corridor belonging to the AUGL water breathers and the ultra-refrigerated wards of the methane life-forms, Conway presented himself at the office of Major O’Mara.

As Chief Psychologist of a multi-environment hospital hanging in frigid blackness at the Galactic rim, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a Staff of ten thousand entities who were composed of eighty-seven different species. O’Mara was a very important man at Sector General. He was also, on his own admission, the most approachable man in the hospital. O’Mara was fond of saying that he didn’t care who approached him or when, but if they hadn’t a very good reason for pestering him with their silly little problems then they needn’t expect to get away from him again unscathed. To O’Mara the medical staff were patients, and it was the generally held belief that the high level of stability among that variegated and often touchy bunch of e-ts was due to them being too scared of O’Mara to go mad. But today he was in an almost sociable mood.

“This will take more than five minutes so you’d better sit down, Doctor,” he said sourly when Conway stopped before his desk. “I take it you’ve had a look at our cannibal?”

Conway nodded and sat down. Briefly he outlined his findings with regard to the EPLH patient, including his suspicion that there might be complications of a psychological nature. Ending, he asked, “Do you have any other information on its background, apart from the cannibalism?”

“Very little,” said O’Mara. “It was found by a Monitor patrol vessel in a ship which, although undamaged, was broadcasting distress signals. Obviously it became too sick to operate the vessel. There was no other occupant, but because the EPLH was a new species to the rescue party they went over its ship with a fine-tooth comb, and found that there should have been another person aboard. They discovered this through a sort of ship’s log cum personal diary kept on tape by the EPLH, and by study of the airlock tell-tales and similar protective gadgetry the details of which don’t concern us at the moment. However, all the facts point to there being two entities aboard the ship, and the log tape suggests pretty strongly that the other one came to a sticky end at the hands, and teeth, of your patient.”

O’Mara paused to toss a slim sheaf of papers onto his lap and Conway saw that it was a typescript of the relevant sections of the log. He had time only to discover that the EPLH’s victim had been the ship’s doctor, then O’Mara was talking again.

“We know nothing about its planet of origin,” he said morosely, “except that it is somewhere in the other galaxy.” However, with only one quarter of our own Galaxy explored, our chances of finding its home world are negligible—”

“How about the Ians,” said Conway, “maybe they could help?”

The Ians belonged to a culture originating in the other galaxy which had planted a colony in the same sector of the home galaxy which contained the Hospital. They were an unusual species-classification GKNM—which went into a chrysalis stage at adolescence and metamorphosized from a ten-legged crawler into a beautiful, winged life-form. Conway had had one of them as a patient three months ago. The patient had been long since discharged, but the two GKNM doctors, who had originally come to help Conway with the patient, had remained at Sector General to study and teach.

“A Galaxy’s a big place,” said O’Mara with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, “but try them by all means. However, to get back to your patient, the biggest problem is going to come after you’ve cured it.

“You see, Doctor,” he went on, “this particular beastie was found in circumstances which show pretty conclusively that it is guilty of an act which every intelligent species we know of considers a crime. As the Federation’s police force among other things the Monitor Corps is supposed to take certain measures against criminals like this one. They are supposed to be tried, rehabilitated or punished as seems fit. But how can we give this criminal a fair trial when we know nothing at all about its background, a background which just might contain the possibility of extenuating circumstances? At the same time we can’t just let it go free . . .”

“Why not?” said Conway. “Why not point it in the general direction from whence it came and administer a judicial kick in the pants?”

“Or why not let the patient die,” O’Mara replied, smiling, “and save trouble all around?”

Conway didn’t speak. O’Mara was using an unfair argument and they both knew it, but they also knew that nobody would be able to convince the Monitor enforcement section that curing the sick and punishing the malefactor were not of equal importance in the Scheme of Things.

“What I want you to do,” O’Mara resumed, “is to find out all you can about the patient and its background after it comes to and during treatment. Knowing how soft-hearted, or soft-headed you are, I expect you will side with the patient during the cure and appoint yourself an unofficial counsel for the defense. Well, I won’t mind that if in so doing you obtain the information which will enable us to summon a jury of its peers. Understood?”

Conway nodded.

O’Mara waited precisely three seconds, then said, “If you’ve nothing better to do than laze about in that chair . . .

Immediately on leaving O’Mara’s office Conway got in touch with Pathology and asked for the EPLA report to be sent to him before lunch. Then he invited the two Ian GKNMs to lunch and arranged for a consultation with Prilicla regarding the patient shortly afterward. With these arrangements made he felt free to begin his rounds.

During the two hours which followed Conway had no time to think about his newest patient. He had fifty-three patients currently in his charge together with six doctors in various stages of training and a supporting staff of nurses, the patients and medical staff comprising eleven different physiological types. There were special instruments and procedures for examining these extra-terrestrial patients, and when he was accompanied by a trainee whose pressure and gravity requirements differed both from those of the patient to be examined and himself, then the “routine” of his rounds could become an extraordinarily complicated business.

But Conway looked at all his patients, even those whose convalescence was well advanced or whose treatment could have been handled by a subordinate. He was well aware that this was a stupid practice which only served to give him a lot of unnecessary work, but the truth was promotion to a resident Senior Physician was still too recent for him to have become used to the large-scale delegation of responsibility. He foolishly kept on trying to do everything himself.

After rounds he was scheduled to give an initial midwifery lecture to a class of DBLF nurses. The DBLFs were furry, multipedal beings resembling outsize caterpillars and were native to the planet Kelgia. They also breathed the same atmospheric mixture as himself, which meant that he was able to do without a pressure suit. To this purely physical comfort was added the fact that talking about such elementary stuff as the reason for Kelgian females conceiving only once in their lifetime and then producing quads who were invariably divided equally in sex, did not call for great concentration on his part. It left a large section of his mind free to worry about the alleged cannibal in his observation ward.

CHAPTER 2

Half an hour later he was with the two Ian doctors in the Hospital’s main dining hall—the one which catered for Tralthan, Kelgian, human and the various other warm-blooded, oxygen-breathers on the Staff-eating the inevitable salad. This in itself did not bother Conway unduly, in fact, lettuce was downright appetizing compared with some of the things he had had to eat while playing host to other e-t colleagues, but he did not think that he would ever get used to the gale they created during lunch.

The GKNM denizens of Ia were a large, delicate, winged life-form who looked something like a dragonfly. To their rod-like but flexible bodies were attached four insectile legs, manipulators, the usual sensory organs and three tremendous sets of wings. Their table manners were not actually unpleasant-it was just that they did not sit down to dine, they hovered. Apparently eating while in flight aided their digestions as well as being pretty much a conditioned reflex with them.

Conway set the Path report on the table and placed the sugar bowl on top of it to keep it from blowing away. He said, “. . . You’ll see from what I’ve just been reading to you that this appears to be a fairly simple case. Unusually so, I’d say, because the patient is remarkably clear of harmful bacteria of any type. Its symptoms indicate a form of epithelioma, that and nothing else, which makes its unconsciousness rather puzzling. But maybe some information on its planetary environment, sleeping periods and so on, would clarify things, and that is why I wanted to talk to you.

“We know that the patient comes from your galaxy. Can you tell me anything at all about its background?”

The GKNM on Conway’s right drifted a few inches back from the table and said through its Translator, “I’m afraid I have not yet mastered the intricacies of your physiological classification system, Doctor. What does the patient look like?”

“Sorry, I forgot,” said Conway. He was about to explain in detail what an EPLH was, then he began sketching on the back of the Path report instead. A few minutes later he held up the result and said, “It looks something like that.”

Both Ians dropped to the floor.

Conway who had never known the GKNMs to stop either eating or flying during a meal was impressed by the reaction.

He said, “You know about them, then?”

The GKNM on the right made noises which Conway’s Translator reproduced as a series of barks, the e-t equivalent of an attack of stuttering. Finally it said, “We know of them. We have never seen one of them, we do not know their planet of origin, and before this moment we were not sure that they had actual physical existence. They . . . they are gods, Doctor.”

Another VIP  . . . ! thought Conway, with a sudden sinking feeling. His experience with VIP patients was that their cases were never simple. Even if the patient’s condition was nothing serious there were invariably complications, none of which were medical.

“My colleague is being a little too emotional,” the other GKNM broke in. Conway had never been able to see any physical difference between the two Ians, but somehow this one had the air of being a more cynical, world-weary dragonfly. “Perhaps I can tell you what little is known, and deduced, about them rather than enumerate all the things which are not .

The species to which the patient belonged was not a numerous one, the Ian doctor went onto explain, but their sphere of influence in the other galaxy was tremendous. In the social and psychological sciences they were very well advanced, and individually their intelligence and mental capacity was enormous. For reasons known only to themselves they did not seek each other’s company very often, and it was unheard of for more than one of them to be found on any planet at the same time for any lengthy period.

They were always the supreme ruler on the worlds they occupied.

Sometimes it was a beneficent rule, sometimes harsh-but the harshness, when viewed with a century or so’s hindsight, usually turned out to be beneficence in disguise. They used people, whole planetary populations, and even interplanetary cultures, purely as a means to solve the problems which they set themselves, and when the problem was solved they left. At least this was the impression received by not quite unbiased observers.

In a voice made flat and emotionless only because of the process of Translation the Ian went on, “. . . Legends seem to agree that one of them will land on a planet with nothing but its ship and a companion who is always of a different species. By using a combination of defensive science, psychology and sheer business acumen they overcome local prejudice and begin to amass wealth and power. The transition from local authority to absolute planetary rule is gradual, but then they have plenty of time. They are, of course, immortal.”

Faintly, Conway heard his fork clattering onto the floor. It was a few minutes before he could steady either his hands or his mind.

There were a few extra-terrestrial species in the Federation who possessed very long life spans, and most of the medically advanced cultures- Earth’s included-had the means of extending life considerably with rejuvenation treatments. Immortality, however, was something they did not have, nor had they ever had the chance to study anyone who possessed it. Until now, that was. Now Conway had a patient to care for, and cure and, most of all, investigate. Unless . . . but the GKNM was a doctor, and a doctor would not say immortal if he merely meant long-lived.

“Are you sure?” croaked Conway.

The Ian’s answer took a long time because it included the detailing of a great many facts, theories and legends concerning these beings who were satisfied to rule nothing less than a planet apiece. At the end of it Conway was still not sure that his patient was immortal, but everything he had heard seemed to point that way.

Hesitantly, he said, “After what I’ve just heard perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but in your opinion are these beings capable of committing an act of murder and cannibalism—”

“No!” said one Ian.

“Never!” said the other.

There was, of course, no hint of emotion in the Translated replies, but their sheer volume was enough to make everyone in the dining hail look up.

A few minutes later Conway was alone. The Ians had requested permission to see the legendary EPLH and then dashed off full of awe and eagerness. Ians were nice people, Conway thought, but at the same time it was his considered opinion that lettuce was fit only for rabbits. With great firmness he pushed his slightly mussed salad away from him and dialed for steak with double the usual accessories.

This promised to be a long, hard day.

When Conway returned to the observation ward the Ians had gone and the patient’s condition was unchanged. The Lieutenant was still guarding the nurse on duty-closely-and was beginning to blush for some reason. Conway nodded gravely, dismissed the nurse and was giving the Path report a rereading when Dr. Prilicla arrived.

Prilicla was a spidery, fragile, low-gravity being of classification GLNO who had to wear G-nullifiers constantly to keep from being mashed flat by a gravity which most other species considered normal. Besides being a very competent doctor Prilicla was the most popular person in the hospital, because its empathic faculty made it nearly impossible for the little being to be disagreeable to anyone. And, although it also possessed a set of large, iridescent wings it sat down at mealtimes and ate spaghetti with a fork. Conway liked Prilicla a lot.

Conway briefly described the EPLH’s condition and background as he saw it, then ended . . . I know you can’t get much from an unconscious patient, but it would help me if you could—”

“There appears to be a misunderstanding here, Doctor,” Prilicla broke in, using the form of words which was the nearest it ever came to telling someone they were wrong. The patient is conscious . . .

“Get back!”

Warned as much by Conway’s emotional radiation at the thought of what the patient’s honey club could do to Prilicla’s eggshell body as his words, the little GLNO skittered backward out of range. The Lieutenant edged closer, his eyes on the still motionless tentacle which ended in that monstrous bludgeon. For several seconds nobody moved or spoke, while outwardly the patient remained unconscious. Finally Conway looked at Prilicla. He did not have to speak.

Prilicla said, “I detect emotional radiation of a type which emanates only from a mind which is consciously aware of itself. The mental processes themselves seem slow and, considering the physical size of the patient, weak. In detail, it is radiating feelings of danger, helplessness and confusion. There is also an indication of some overall sense of purpose.”

Conway sighed.

“So it’s playing 'possum,” said the Lieutenant grimly, talking mostly to himself.

The fact that the patient was feigning unconsciousness worried Conway less than it did the Corpsman. In spite of the mass of diagnostic equipment available to him he subscribed firmly to the belief that a doctor’s best guide to any malfunction was a communicative and cooperative patient. But how did one open a conversation with a being who was a near deity . . . ?

“We . . . we are going to help you,” he said awkwardly. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

The patient remained motionless as before.

Prilicla said, “There is no indication that it heard you, Doctor.”

“But if it’s conscious . . .” Conway began, and ended the sentence with a helpless shrug.

He began assembling his instruments again and with Prilicla’s help examined the EPLH again, paying special attention to the organs of sight and hearing. But there was no physical or emotional reaction while the examination was in progress, despite the flashing lights and a considerable amount of ungentle probing. Conway could see no evidence of physical malfunction in any of the sensory organs, yet the patient remained completely unaware of all outside stimulus. Physically it was unconscious, insensible to everything going on around it, except that Prilicla insisted that it wasn’t.

What a crazy, mixed-up demi-god, thought Conway. Trust O’Mara to send him the weirdies. Aloud he said, “The only explanation I can see for this peculiar state of affairs is that the mind you are receiving has severed or blocked off contact with all its sensory equipment. The patient’s condition is not the cause of this, therefore the trouble must have a psychological basis. I’d say the beastie is urgently in need of psychiatric assistance.

“However,” he ended, “the head-shrinkers can operate more effectively on a patient who is physically well, so I think we should concentrate on clearing up this skin condition first . . .

A specific had been developed at the hospital against epithelioma of the type affecting the patient, and Pathology had already stated that it was suited to the EPLH’s metabolism and would produce no harmful side-effects. It took only a few minutes for Conway to measure out a test dosage and inject subcutaneously. Prilicla moved up beside him quickly to see the effect. This, they both knew, was one of the rare, rapid-action miracles of medicine-its effect would be apparent in a matter of seconds rather than hours or days.

Ten minutes later nothing at all had happened.

“A tough guy,” said Conway, and injected the maximum safe dose.

Almost at once the skin in the area darkened and lost its dry, cracked look. The dark area widened perceptibly as they watched, and one of the tentacles twitched slightly.

“What’s its mind doing?” said Conway.

“Much the same as before,” Prilicla replied, “but with mounting anxiety apparent since the last injection. I detect feelings of a mind trying to make a decision . . . of making a decision . . .

Prilicla began to tremble violently, a clear sign that the emotional radiation of the patient had intensified. Conway had his mouth open to put a question when a sharp, tearing sound dragged his attention back to the patient. The EPLH was heaving and throwing itself against its restraining harness. Two of the anchoring straps had parted and it had worked a tentacle free. The one with the club.

Conway ducked frantically, and avoided having his head knocked off by a fraction of an inch-he felt that ultimate in blunt instruments actually touch his hair. But the Lieutenant was not so lucky. At almost the end of its swing the bony mace thudded into his shoulder, throwing him across the tiny ward so hard that he almost bounced off the wall. Prilicla, with whom cowardice was a prime survival characteristic, was already clinging with its sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, which was the only safe spot in the room.

From his position flat on the floor Conway heard other straps go and saw two more tentacles begin feeling about. He knew that in a few minutes the patient would be completely free of the harness and able to move about the room at will. He scrambled quickly to his knees, crouched, then dived for the berserk EPLH. As he hung on tightly with his arms around its body just below the roots of the tentacles Conway was nearly deafened by a series of barking roars coming from the speaking orifice beside his ear. The noise translated as “Help me! Help me!” Simultaneously he saw the tentacle with the great, bony bludgeon at its tip swing downward. There was a crash and a three inch hollow appeared on the floor at the point where he had been lying a few seconds previously.

Tackling the patient the way he had done might have seemed foolhardy, but Conway had been trying to keep his head in more ways than one. Clinging tightly to the EPLH’s body below the level of those madly swinging tentacles, Conway knew, was the next safest place in the room.

Then he saw the Lieutenant . . .

The Lieutenant had his back to the wall, half lying and half sitting up. One arm hung loosely at his side and in the other hand he held his gun, steadying it between his knees, and one eye was closed in a diabolical wink while the other sighted along the barrel. Conway shouted desperately for him to wait, but the noise from the patient drowned him out. At every instant Conway expected the flash and shock of exploding bullets. He felt paralyzed with fear, he couldn’t even let go.

Then suddenly it was all over. The patient slumped onto its side, twitched and became motionless. Holstering his unfired weapon the Lieutenant struggled to his feet. Conway extricated himself and Prilicla came down off the ceiling.

Awkwardly, Conway said, “Uh, I suppose you couldn’t shoot with me hanging on there?”

The Lieutenant shook his head. “I’m a good shot, Doctor, I could have hit it and missed you all right. But it kept shouting ‘Help me’ all the time. That sort of thing cramps a man’s style.

CHAPTER 3

It was some twenty minutes later, after Prilicla had sent the Lieutenant away to have a cracked humerus set and Conway and the GLNO were fitting the patient with a much stronger harness, that they noticed the absence of the darker patch of skin. The patient’s condition was now exactly the same as it had been before undergoing treatment. Apparently the hefty shot which Conway had administered had had only a temporary effect, and that was decidedly peculiar. It was in fact downright impossible.

From the moment Prilicla’s empathetic faculty had been brought to bear on the case Conway had been sure that the root of the trouble was psychological. He also knew that a severely warped mind could do tremendous damage to the body which housed it. But this damage was on a purely physical level and its method of repair—the treatment developed and proved time and time again by Pathology—was a hard, physical fact also. And no mind, regardless of its power or degree of malfunction, should be able to ignore, to completely negate, a physical fact. The Universe had, after all, certain fixed laws.

So far as Conway could see there were only two possible explanations. Either the rules were being ignored because the Being who had made them had also the right to ignore them or somehow, someone—or some combination of circumstances or misread data-was pulling a fast one. Conway infinitely preferred the second theory because the first one was altogether too shattering to consider seriously. He desperately wanted to go on thinking of his patient with a small P . . .

Nevertheless, when he left the ward Conway paid a visit to the office of Captain Bryson, the Monitor Corps Chaplain, and consulted that officer at some length in a semi-professional capacity-Conway believed in carrying plenty of insurance. His next call was on Colonel Skempton, the officer in charge of Supply, Maintenance and Communications at the Hospital. There he requested complete copies of the patient’s log-not just the sections relevant to the murder-together with any other background data available to be sent to his room. Then he went to the AUGL theater to demonstrate operative techniques on submarine life-forms, and before dinner he was able to work in two hours in the Pathology department during which he discovered quite a lot about his patient’s immortality.

When he returned to his room there was a pile of typescript on his desk that was nearly two inches thick. Conway groaned, thinking of his six-hour recreation period and how he was going to spend it. The thought obtruded of how he would have liked to spend it, bringing with it a vivid picture of the very efficient and impossibly beautiful Nurse Murchison whom he had been dating regularly of late. But Murchison was currently with the FGLI Maternity Section and their free periods would not coincide for another two weeks.

In the present circumstances perhaps it was just as well, Conway thought, as he settled down for a good long read.

The Corpsmen who had examined the patient’s ship had been unable to convert the EPLH’s time units into the Earth-human scale with any accuracy, but they had been able to state quite definitely that many of the taped logs were several centuries old and a few of them dated back to two thousand years or more. Conway began with the oldest and sifted carefully through them until he came to the most recent. He discovered almost at once that they were not so much a series of taped diaries—the references to personal items were relatively rare—as a catalog of memoranda, most of which was highly technical and very heavy going. The data relevant to the murder, which he studied last, was much more dramatic.

. . . My physician is making me sick, the final entry read, it is killing me. I must do something. It is a bad physician for allowing me to become ill. Somehow I must get rid of it . . .

Conway replaced the last sheet on its pile, sighed, and prepared to adopt a position more conducive to creative thinking; i.e. with his chair tipped far back, feet on desk and practically sitting on the back of his neck.

What a mess, he thought.

The separate pieces of the puzzle—or most of them, anyway-were available to him now and required only to be fitted together. There was the patient’s condition, not serious so far as the Hospital was concerned but definitely lethal if not treated. Then there was the data supplied by the two Ians regarding this God-like, power-hungry but essentially beneficent race and the companions—who were never of the same species- who always traveled or lived with them. These companions were subject to replacement because they grew old and died while the EPLHs did not. There were also the Path reports, both the first written one he had received before lunch and the later verbal one furnished during his two hours with Thornnastor, the FGLI Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology. It was Thornnastor’s considered opinion that the EPLH patient was not a true immortal, and the Considered Opinion of a Diagnostician was as near to being a rock-hard certainty as made no difference. But while immortality had been ruled out for various physiological reasons, the tests had shown evidence of longevity or rejuvenation treatments of the unselective type.

Finally there had been the emotion readings furnished by Prilicla before and during their attempted treatment of the patient’s skin condition. Prilida had reported a steady radiation pattern of confusion, anxiety and helplessness. But when the EPLH had received its second injection it had gone berserk, and the blast of emotion exploding from its mind had, in Prilicla’s own words, nearly fried the little empath’s brains in their own ichor. Prilicla had been unable to get a detailed reading on such a violent eruption of emotion, mainly because it had been tuned to the earlier and more gentle level on which the patient had been radiating, but it agreed that there was evidence of instability of the schizoid type.

Conway wriggled deeper into his chair, closed his eyes and let the pieces of the puzzle slide gently into place.

It had begun on the planet where the EPLHs had been the dominant life-form. In the course of time they had achieved civilization which included interstellar flight and an advanced medical science. Their life span, lengthy to begin with, was artificially extended so that a relatively short-lived species like the Ians could be forgiven for believing them to be immortal. But a high pride had had to be paid for their longevity: reproduction of their kind, the normal urge toward immortality of race in a species of mortal individuals, would have been the first thing to go; then their civilization would have dissolved-been forced apart, rather-into a mass of star-traveling, rugged individualists; and finally there would have been the psychological rot which set in when the risk of purely physical deterioration had gone.

Poor demi-gods, thought Conway.

They avoided each other’s company for the simple reason that they’d already had too much of it—century after century of each other’s mannerisms, habits of speech, opinions and the sheer, utter boredom of looking at each other. They had set themselves vast, sociological problems—taking charge of backward or errant planetary cultures and dragging them up by their bootstraps, and similar large-scale philanthropies-because they had tremendous minds, they had plenty of time, they had constantly to fight against boredom and because basically they must have been nice people. And because part of the price of such longevity was an ever-growing fear of death, they had to have their own personal physicians—no doubt the most efficient practitioners of medicine known to them—constantly in attendance.

Only one piece of the puzzle refused to fit and that was the odd way in which the EPLH had negated his attempts to treat it, but Conway had no doubt that that was a physiological detail which would soon become clear as well. The important thing was that he now knew how to proceed.

Not every condition responded to medication, despite Thornnastor’s claims to the contrary, and he would have seen that surgery was indicated in the EPLH’s case if the whole business had not been so be-fogged with considerations of who and what the patient was and what it was supposed to have done. The fact that the patient was a near-deity, a murderer and generally the type of being not to be trifled with were details which should not have concerned him.

Conway sighed and swung his feet to the floor. He was beginning to feel so comfortable that he decided he had better go to bed before he fell asleep.

Immediately after breakfast next day Conway began setting up things for the EPLH’s operation. He ordered the necessary instruments and equipment sent to the observation ward, gave detailed instructions regarding its sterilization—the patient was supposed to have killed one doctor already for allowing it to become sick, and a dim view would be taken if another one was the cause of it catching something else because of faulty aseptic procedures—and requested the assistance of a Tralthan surgeon to help with the fine work. Then half an hour before he was due to start Conway called on O’Mara.

The Chief Psychologist listened to his report and intended course of action without comment until he had finished, then he said, “Conway, do you realize what could happen to this hospital if that thing got loose? And not just physically loose, I mean. It is seriously disturbed mentally, you say, if not downright psychotic. At the moment it is unconscious, but from what you tell me its grasp of the psychological sciences is such that it could have us eating out of its manipulatory appendage just by talking at us.

“I’m concerned as to what may happen when it wakes up.”

It was the first time Conway had heard O’Mara confess to being worried about anything. Several years back when a runaway spaceship had crashed into the hospital, spreading havoc and confusion through sixteen levels, it was said that Major O’Mara had expressed a feeling of concern on that occasion also.

“I’m trying not to think about that,” said Conway apologetically. “It just confuses the issue.”

O’Mara took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose, a mannerism of his which could convey more than twenty scathing sentences. He said coldly, “Somebody should think about these things, Doctor. I trust you will have no objection to me observing the coming operation . . .

To what was nothing less than a politely worded order there could be no reply other than an equally polite, “Glad to have you, sir.”

When they arrived in the observation ward the patient’s “bed” had been raised to a comfortable operating height and the EPLH itself was strapped securely into position. The Tralthan had taken its place beside the recording and anesthetizing gear and had one eye on the patient, one on its equipment and the other two directed toward Prilicla with whom it was discussing a particularly juicy piece of scandal which had come to light the previous day. As the two beings concerned were PVSJ chlorine breathers the affair could have only an academic interest for them, but apparently their academic interest was intense. At the sight of O’Mara, however, the scandal-mongering ceased forthwith. Conway gave the signal to begin.

The anesthetic was one of several which Pathology had pronounced safe for the EPLH life-form, and while it was being administered Conway found his mind going off at a tangent toward his Tralthan assistant.

Surgeons of that species were really two beings instead of one, a combination of FGLI and OTSB. Clinging to the leathery back of the lumbering, elephantine Tralthan was a diminutive and nearly mindless being who lived in symbiosis with it. At first glance the OTSB looked like a furry ball with a long ponytail sprouting from it, but a closer look showed that the ponytail was composed of scores of fine manipulators most of which incorporated sensitive visual organs. Because of the rapport which existed between the Tralthan and its symbiote the FGLI-OTSB combination were the finest surgeons in the Galaxy. Not all Tralthans chose to link up with a symbiote, but FGLI medics wore them like a badge of office.

Suddenly the OTSB scurried along its host’s back and huddled atop the dome-like head between the eye-stalks, its tail hanging down toward the patient and fanning out stiffly. The Tralthan was ready to begin.

“You will observe that this is a surface condition only,” Conway said, for the benefit of the recording equipment, “and that the whole skin area looks dead, dried-up and on the point of flaking off. During the removal of the first skin samples no difficulty was encountered, but later specimens resisted removal to a certain extent and the reason was discovered to be a tiny rootlet, approximately one quarter of an inch long and invisible to the naked eye. My naked eye, that is. So it seems clear that the condition is about to enter a new phase. The disease is beginning to dig in rather than remain on the surface, and the more promptly we act the better.”

Conway gave the reference numbers of the Path reports and his own preliminary notes on the case, then went on . . . As the patient, for reasons which are at the moment unclear, does not respond to medication I propose surgical removal of the affected tissue, irrigation, cleansing and replacement with surrogate skin. A Tralthan-guided OTSB will be used to ensure that the rootlets are also excised. Except for the considerable area to be covered, which will make this a long job, the procedure is straightforward—”

“Excuse me, Doctors,” Prilicla broke in, “the patient is still conscious.”

An argument, polite only on Prilicla’s side, broke out between the Tralthan and the little empath. Prilicla held that the EPLH was thinking thoughts and radiating emotions and the other maintained that it had enough of the anesthetic in its system to render it completely insensible to everything for at least six hours. Conway broke in just as the argument was becoming personal.

“We’ve had this trouble before,” he said irritably. “The patient has been physically unconscious except for a few minutes yesterday, since its arrival, yet Prilicla detected the presence of rational thought processes. Now the same effect is present while it is under anesthetic. I don’t know how to explain this, it will probably require a surgical investigation of its brain structure to do so, and that is something which will have to wait. The important thing at the moment is that it is physically incapable of movement or of feeling pain. Now shall we begin?”

To Prilicla he added, “Keep listening just in case . . .

CHAPTER 4

For about twenty minutes they worked in silence, although the procedure did not require a high degree of concentration. It was rather like weeding a garden, except that everything which grew was a weed and had to be removed one plant at a time. He would peel back an affected area of skin, the OTSB’s hair-thin appendages would investigate, probe and detach the rootlets, and he would peel back another tiny segment. Conway was looking forward to the most tedious operation of his career.

Prilicla said, “I detect increasing anxiety linked with a strengthening sense of purpose. The anxiety is becoming intense . . .

Conway grunted. He could think of no other comment to make.

Five minutes later the Tralthan said, “We will have to slow down, Doctor. We are at a section where the roots are much deeper . . .

Two minutes later Conway said, “But I can see them! How deep are they now?”

“Four inches,” replied the Tralthan. “And Doctor, they are visibly lengthening as we work.”

“But that’s impossible!” Conway burst out; then, “We’ll move to another area.

He felt the sweat begin to trickle down his forehead and just beside him Prilicla’s gangling, fragile body began to quiver—but not at anything the patient was thinking. Conway’s own emotional radiation just then was not a pleasant thing, because in the new area and in the two chosen at random after that the result was the same. Roots from the flaking pieces of skin were burrowing deeper as they watched.

“Withdraw,” said Conway harshly.

For a long time nobody spoke. Prilicla was shaking as if a high wind was blowing in the ward. The Tralthan was fussing with its equipment, all four of its eyes focused on one unimportant knob. O’Mara was looking intently at Conway, also calculatingly and with a large amount of sympathy in his steady gray eyes. The sympathy was because he could recognize when a man was genuinely in a spot and the calculation was due to his trying to work out whether the trouble was Conway’s fault or not.

“What happened, Doctor?” he said gently.

Conway shook his head angrily. “I don’t know. Yesterday the patient did not respond to medication, today it won’t respond to surgery. Its reactions to anything we try to do for it are crazy, impossible! And now our attempt to relieve its condition surgically has triggered off—something—which will send those roots deep enough to penetrate vital organs in a matter of minutes if their present rate of growth is maintained, and you know what that means

“The patient’s sense of anxiety is diminishing,” Prilicla reported. “It is still engaged in purposeful thinking.”

The Tralthan joined in then. It said, “I have noticed a peculiar fact about those root-like tendrils which join the diseased flakes of skin with the body. My symbiote has extremely sensitive vision, you will understand, and it reports that the tendrils seem to be rooted at each end, so that it is impossible to tell whether the growth is attacking the body or the body is deliberately holding onto the growth.”

Conway shook his head distractedly. The case was full of mad contradictions and outright impossibilities. To begin with no patient, no matter how fouled up mentally, should be able to negate the effects of a drug powerful enough to bring about a complete cure within half an hour, and all within a few minutes. And the natural order of things was for a being with a diseased area of skin to slough it off and replace it with new tissue, not hang onto it grimly no matter what. It was a baffling, hopeless case.

Yet when the patient had arrived it had seemed a simple, straightforward case-Conway had felt more concern regarding the patient’s background than its condition, whose cure he had considered a routine matter. But somewhere along the way he had missed something, Conway was sure, and because of this sin of omission the patient would probably die during the next few hours. Maybe he had made a snap diagnosis, been too sure of himself, been criminally careless.

It was pretty horrible to lose a patient at any time, and at Sector General losing a patient was an extremely rare occurrence. But to lose one whose condition no hospital anywhere in the civilized galaxy would have considered as being serious . . . Conway swore luridly, but stopped because he hadn’t the words to describe how he felt about himself.

“Take it easy, son.

That was O’Mara, squeezing his arm and talking like a father. Normally O’Mara was a bad-tempered, bull-voiced and unapproachable tyrant who, when one went to him for help, sat making sarcastic remarks while the person concerned squirmed and shamefacedly solved his own problems. His present uncharacteristic behavior proved something, Conway thought bitterly. It proved that Conway had a problem which Conway could not solve himself.

But in O’Mara’s expression there was something more than just concern for Conway, and it was probably that deep down the psychologist was a little glad that things had turned out as they did. Conway meant no reflection on O’Mara’s character, because he knew that if the Major had been in his position he would have tried as hard if not harder to cure the patient, and would have felt just as badly about the outcome. But at the same time the Chief Psychologist must have been desperately worried about the possibility of a being of great and unknown powers, who was also mentally unbalanced, being turned loose on the Hospital. In addition O’Mara might also be wondering if, beside a conscious and alive EPLH, he would look like a small and untutored boy . . .

“Let’s try taking it from the top again,” O’Mara said, breaking in on his thoughts. “Is there anything you’ve found in the patient’s background that might point to it wanting to destroy itself?”

“No!” said Conway vehemently. “To the contrary! It would want desperately to live. It was taking unselective rejuvenation treatments, which means that the complete cell-structure of its body was regenerated periodically. As the process of storing memory is a product of aging in the brain cells, this would practically wipe its mind clean after every treatment.

“That’s why those taped logs resembled technical memoranda,” O’Mara put in. “That’s exactly what they were. Still, I prefer our own method of rejuvenation even though we won’t live so long, regenerating damaged organs only and allowing the brain to remain untouched . . .”

“I know,” Conway broke in, wondering why the usually taciturn O’Mara had become so talkative. Was he trying to simplify the problem by making him state it in non-professional terms? “But the effect of continued longevity treatments, as you know yourself, is to give the possessor an increasing fear of dying. Despite loneliness, boredom and an altogether unnatural existence, the fear grows steadily with the passage of time. That is why it always traveled with its own private physician, it was desperately afraid of sickness or an accident befalling it between treatments, and that is why I can sympathize to a certain extent with its feelings when the doctor who was supposed to keep it well allowed it to get sick, although the business of eating it afterward—”

“So you are on its side,” said O’Mara dryly.

“It could make a good plea of self-defense,” Conway retorted. “But I was saying that it was desperately afraid of dying, so that it would be constantly trying to get a better, more efficient doctor for itself . . . Oh!”

“Oh, what?” said O’Mara.

It was Prilicla, the emotion sensitive who replied. It said, “Doctor Conway has just had an idea.”

“What is it, you young whelp? There’s no need to be so damn secretive . . . !” O’Mara’s voice had lost its gentle fatherly tone, and there was a gleam in his eye which said that he was glad that gentleness was no longer necessary. “What is wrong with the patient?”

Feeling happy and excited and at the same time very much unsure of himself, Conway stumbled across to the intercom and ordered some very unusual equipment, checked again that the patient was so thoroughly strapped down that it would be unable to move a muscle, then he said, “My guess is that the patient is perfectly sane and we’ve been blinding ourselves with psychological red herrings. Basically, the trouble is something it ate.”

“I had a bet with myself you would say that sometime during this case,” said O’Mara. He looked sick.

The equipment arrived-a slender, pointed wooden stake and a mechanism which would drive it downward at any required angle and controlled speeds. With the Tralthan’s help Conway set it up and moved it into position. He chose a part of the patient’s body which contained several vital organs which were, however, protected by nearly six inches of musculature and adipose, then he set the stake in motion. It was just touching the skin and descending at the rate of approximately two inches per hour.

“What the blazes is going on?” stormed O’Mara. “Do you think the patient is a vampire or something!”

“Of course not,” Conway replied. “I’m using a wooden stake to give the patient a better chance of defending itself. You wouldn’t expect it to stop a steel one, would you.” He motioned the Tralthan forward and together they watched the area where the stake was entering the EPLH’s body. Every few minutes Prilicla reported on the emotional radiation. O’Mara paced up and down, occasionally muttering to himself.

The point had penetrated almost a quarter of an inch when Conway noticed the first coarsening and thickening of the skin. It was taking place in a roughly circular area, about four inches in diameter, whose center was the wound created by the stake. Conway’s scanner showed a spongy, fibrous growth forming under the skin to a depth of half an inch. Visibly the growth thickened and grew opaque to his scanner’s current setting, and within ten minutes it had become a hard, bony plate. The stake had begun to bend alarmingly and was on the point of snapping.

“I’d say the defenses are now concentrated at this one point,” Conway said, trying to keep his voice steady, “so we’d better have it out.”

Conway and the Tralthan rapidly incised around and undercut the newly-formed bony plate, which was immediately transferred into a sterile, covered receptacle. Quickly preparing a shot-a not quite maximum dose of the specific he had tried the previous day-Conway injected, then went back to helping the Tralthan with the repair work on the wound. This was routine work and took about fifteen minutes, and when it was finished there could be no doubt at all that the patient was responding favorably to treatment.

Over the congratulations of the Tralthan and the horrible threats of O’Mara—the Chief Psychologist wanted some questions answered, fast- Prilicla said, “You have effected a cure, Doctor, but the patient’s anxiety level has markedly increased. It is almost frantic.”

Conway shook his head, grinning. “The patient is heavily anestheticized and cannot feel anything. However, I agree that at this present moment . . .” He nodded toward the sterile container . . . its personal physician must be feeling pretty bad.”

In the container the excised bone had begun to soften and leak a faintly purplish liquid. The liquid was rippling and sloshing gently about at the bottom of the container as if it had a mind of its own. Which was, in fact, the case.

Conway was in O’Mara’s office winding up his report on the EPLH and the Major was being highly complimentary in a language which at times made the compliments indistinguishable from insults. But this was O’Mara’s way, Conway was beginning to realize, and the Chief Psychologist was polite and sympathetic only when he was professionally concerned about a person.

He was still asking questions.

An intelligent, amoebic life-form, a organized collection of submicroscopic, virus-type cells, would make the most efficient doctor obtainable,” said Conway in reply to one of them. “It would reside within its patient and, given the necessary data, control any disease or organic malfunction from the inside. To a being who is pathologically afraid of dying it must have seemed perfect. And it was, too, because the trouble which developed was not really the doctor’s fault. It came about through the patient’s ignorance of its own physiological background.

“The way I see it,” Conway went on, “the patient had been taking its rejuvenation treatments at an early stage of its biological lifetime. I mean that it did not wait until middle or old age before regenerating itself. But on this occasion, either because it forgot or was careless or had been working on a problem which took longer than usual, it aged more than it had previously and acquired this skin condition. Pathology says that this was probably a common complaint with this race, and the normal course would be for the EPLH to slough off the affected skin and carry on as usual. But our patient, because the type of its rejuvenation treatment caused memory damage, did not know this, so its personal physician did not know it either.”

Conway continued, “This, er, resident physician knew very little about the medical background of its patient-host’s body, but its motto must have been to maintain the status quo at all costs. When pieces of its patient’s body threatened to break away it held onto them, not realizing that this could have been a normal occurrence like losing hair or a reptile periodically shedding its skin, especially as its master would have insisted that the occurrence was not natural. A pretty fierce struggle must have developed between the patient’s body processes and its doctor, with the patient’s mind also ranged against its doctor. Because of this the doctor had to render the patient unconscious the better to do what it considered to be the right thing.

“When we gave it the test shots the doctor neutralized them. They were a foreign substance being introduced into its patient’s body, you see. And you know what happened when we tried surgical removal. It was only when we threatened underlying vital organs with that stake, forcing the doctor to defend its patient at that one point . . .

“When you began asking for wooden stakes,” said O’Mara dryly, “I thought of putting you in a tight harness.”

Conway grinned. He said, “I’m recommending that the EPLH takes his doctor back. Now that Pathology has given it a fuller understanding of its employer’s medical and physiological history it should be the ultimate in personal physicians, and the EPLH is smart enough to see that.”

O’Mara smiled in return. “And I was worried about what it might do when it became conscious. But it turned out to be a very friendly, likeable type. Quite charming, in fact.”

As Conway rose and turned to go he said slyly, “That’s because it’s such a good psychologist. It is pleasant to people all the time . . .

He managed to get the door shut behind him before the explosion.

CHAPTER 5

n time the EPLH patient, whose name was Lonvellin, was discharged I and the steady procession of ailing e-ts who came under his care made the memory of Lonvellin’s fade in Conway’s mind. He did not know whether the EPLH had returned to its home galaxy or was still wandering this one in search of good deeds to do, and he was being kept too busy to care either way. But Conway was not quite finished with the EPLH.

Or more accurately, Lonvellin was not quite finished with Conway . . . “How would you like to get away from the hospital for a few months,

Doctor?” O’Mara said, when Conway had presented himself in the Chief Psychologist’s office in answer to an urgent summons over the PA. “It would be in the nature of a holiday, almost.”

Conway felt his initial unease grow rapidly into panic. He had urgent personal reasons for not leaving the hospital for a few months. He said, “Well . . .

The psychologist raised his head and fixed Conway with a pair of level gray eyes which saw so much and which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty. He said dryly, “Don’t bother to thank me, it is your own fault for curing such powerful, influential patients.”

He went on briskly, “This is a large assignment, Doctor, but it will consist mainly of clerical work. Normally it would be given to someone at Diagnostician level, but that EPLH, Lonvellin, has been at work on a planet which it says is urgently in need of medical aid. Lonvellin has requested Monitor Corps as well as hospital assistance in this, and has asked that you personally should direct the medical side. Apparently a Great Intellect isn’t needed for the job, just one with a peculiar way of looking at things . . .

“You’re too kind, sir,” said Conway.

Grinning, O’Mara said, “I’ve told you before, I’m here to shrink heads, not inflate them. And now, this is the report on the situation there at the moment . . .” He slid the file he had been reading across to Conway, and stood up . . . You can brief yourself on it when you board ship. Be at Lock Sixteen to board Vespasian at 2130, meanwhile I expect you have loose ends to tidy up. And Conway, try not to look as if all your relatives had died. Very probably she’ll wait for you. If she doesn’t, why you have two hundred and seventeen other female DBDGs to chase after. Goodbye and good luck, Doctor.”

Outside O’Mara’s office Conway tried to work out how best to tidy up his loose ends in the six hours remaining before embarkation time. He was scheduled to take a group of trainees through a basic orientation lecture in ten minutes from now, and it was too late to foist that job onto someone else. That would kill three of the six hours, four if he was unlucky and today he felt unlucky. Then an hour to tape instructions regarding his more serious ward patients, then dinner. He might just do it. Conway began hurrying toward Lock Seven on the one hundred and eighth level.

He arrived at the lock antechamber just as the inner seal was opening, and while catching his breath began mentally checking off the trainees who were filing past him. Two Kelgian DBLFs who undulated past like giant, silver-furred caterpillars; then a PVSJ from Illensa, the outlines of its spiny, membranous body softened by the chlorine fog inside its protective envelope; a water-breathing Creppelian octopoid, classification AMSL, whose suit made loud bubbling noises. These were followed by five AACPs, a race whose remote ancestors had been a species of mobile vegetable. They were slow moving, but the CO2 tanks which they wore seemed to be the only protection they needed. Then another Kelgian . . .

When they were all inside and the seal closed behind them Conway spoke. Quite unnecessarily and simply as a means of breaking the conversational ice, he said, “Is everyone present?”

Inevitably they all replied in chorus, sending Conway’s Translator into a howl of oscillation. Sighing, he began the customary procedure of introducing himself and bidding his new colleagues welcome. It was only at the end of these polite formalities that he worked in a gentle reminder regarding the operating principles of the Translator, and the advisability of speaking one at a time so as not to overload it . . .

On their home worlds these were all very important people, medically speaking. It was only at Sector General that they were new boys, and for some of them the transition from acknowledged master to lowly pupil might be difficult, so that large quantities of tact were necessary when handling them at this stage. Later, however, when they began to settle in, they could be bawled out for their mistakes like anyone else.

“I propose to start our tour at Reception,” Conway went on, “where the problems of admittance and initial treatment are dealt with. Then, providing the environment does not require complex protective arrangements for ourselves and the patient’s condition is not critical, we will visit the adjacent wards to observe examination procedures on newly-arrived patients. If anyone wants to ask questions at any time, feel free to do so.

“On the way to Reception,” he continued, “we will use corridors which may be crowded. There is a complicated system of precedence governing the rights of way of junior and senior medical staff, a system which you will learn in time. But for the present there is just one simple rule to remember. If the being coming at you is bigger than you are, get out of its way.”

He was about to add that no doctor in Sector General would deliberately trample a colleague to death, but thought better of it. A great many e-ts did not have a sense of humor and such a harmless pleasantry, if taken literally, could lead to endless complications. Instead he said, “Follow me, please.”

Conway arranged for the five AACPs, who were the slowest-moving of the group, to follow himself and set the pace for the others. After them came the two Kelgians whose undulating gait was only slightly faster than the vegetable life-forms preceding them. The chlorine-breather came next and the Creppelian octopoid brought up the rear, the bubbling noise from its suit giving Conway an audible indication that his fifty-yard long tail was all in one piece.

Strung out as they were there was no point in Conway trying to talk, and they negotiated the first stage of the journey in silence-three ascending ramps and a couple of hundred yards of straight and angled corridors. The only person they met coming in the opposite direction was a Nidian wearing the armband of a two-year intern. Nidians averaged four feet in height so that nobody was in any danger of being trampled to death. They reached the internal lock which gave access to the water breather’s section.

In the adjoining dressing room Conway supervised the suiting-up of the two Kelgians, then climbed into a light-weight suit himself. The AACPs said that their vegetable metabolism enabled them to exist under water for long periods without protection. The Illensan was already sealed against the oxygen-laden air so that the equally poisonous water did not worry it. But the Creppelian was a water-breather and wanted to take its suit off-it had eight legs which badly needed stretching, it said. But Conway vetoed this on the grounds that it would only be in the water for fifteen minutes at most.

The lock opened into the main AUGL ward, a vast, shadowy tank of tepid green water two hundred feet deep and five hundred feet across. Conway quickly discovered that moving the trainees from the lock to the corridor entrance on the other side was like trying to drive a three dimensional herd of cattle through green glue. With the single exception of the Creppelian they all lost their sense of direction in the water within the first few minutes. Conway had to swim frantically around them, gesticulating and shouting directions, and despite the cooling and drying elements in his suit the interior soon became like an overheated Turkish bath. Several times he lost his temper and directed his charges to a place other than the corridor entrance.

And during one particularly chaotic moment an AUGL patient-one of the forty-foot, armored, fish-like natives of Chalderescol Il-swam ponderously toward them. It closed to within five yards, causing a near panic among the AACPs, said “Student!” and swam away again. Chalders were notoriously antisocial during convalescence, but the incident did not help Conway’s temper any.

It seemed much longer than fifteen minutes later when they were assembled in the corridor at the other side of the tank. Conway said, “Three hundred yards along this corridor is the transfer lock into the oxygen section of Reception, which is the best place to see what is going on there. Those of you who are wearing protection against water only will remove their suits, the others will go straight through . . .

As he was swimming with them toward the lock the Creppelian said to one of the AACPs, “Ours is supposed to be filled with superheated steam, but you have to have done something very bad to be sent there.” To which the AACP replied, “Our Hell is hot, too, but there is no moisture in it at all . . .”

Conway had been about to apologize for losing his temper back in the tank, fearing that he might have hurt some sensitive extra-terrestrial feelings, but obviously they hadn’t taken what he’d said very seriously.

CHAPTER 6

Through the transparent wall of its observation gallery, Reception showed as a large, shadowy room containing three large control desks, only one of which was currently occupied. The being seated before it was another Nidian, a small humanoid with seven-fingered hands and an overall coat of tight, curly red fur. Indicator lights on the desk showed that it had just made contact with a ship approaching the hospital.

Conway said, “Listen . . .”

“Identify yourself, please,” said the red teddy bear in its staccato, barking speech-which was filtered through Conway’s Translator as flat, toneless English and which came to the others as equally toneless Kelgian, Illensan or whatever. “Patient, visitor or staff, and species?”

“Pilot, with one passenger-patient aboard,” came the reply. “Both human.”

There was a short pause, then; “Give your physiological classification, please, or make full-vision contact,” said the Nidian with a very Earth human wink toward the watchers in the gallery. “All intelligent races refer to their own species as human and think of all others as being nonhuman. What you call yourself has no meaning so far as preparing accommodation for the patient is concerned . . .

Conway muted the speaker which carried the conversation between ship and receptionist into the gallery and said, “This is as good a time as any to explain our physiological classification system to you. Briefly, that is, because later there will be special lectures on this subject.”

Clearing his throat, he began, “In the four-letter classification system the first letter indicates the level of physical evolution, the second denotes the type and distribution of limbs and sense organs and the other two the combination metabolism and pressure and gravity requirements, which in turn give an indication of the physical mass and form of protective tegument possessed by the being. I must mention here, in case any of you might feel inferior regarding your classification, that the level of physical evolution has no relation to the level of intelligence . . .

Species with the prefix A, B and C, he went onto explain, were water breathers. On most worlds life had originated in the sea 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 intelligence races in the galaxy, and the G and 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 0 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 extra-sensory powers sufficiently well-developed to make walking or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V, regardless of size or shape.

Conway admitted to anomalies in the system, but these could be blamed on the lack of imagination by its originators. One of the species present in the observation gallery was a case in point—the AACP type with its vegetable metabolism. Normally the A prefix denoted a water breather, there being nothing lower in the system than the piscatorial life forms. But the AACPs were vegetables and plants had come before fish.

. . . Great stress is laid on the importance of a rapid and accurate classification of incoming patients, who very often are in no condition to furnish this information themselves,” Conway went on. “Ideally, you should reach a stage of proficiency which will enable you to rattle off a classification after a three-second glimpse of an e-t foot or section of tegument.

“But look there,” he said, pointing.

Over the control desk three screens were alight, and adjacent indicators added detail to the information contained in the pictures. The first showed the interior of Lock Three, which contained two Earth-human orderlies and a large stretcher-carrier. The orderlies wore heavy duty suits and anti-gravity belts, which didn’t surprise Conway at all because Lock Three and its associated levels were maintained at five Gs with pressure to match. Another screen showed the exterior of the lock with its transfer servo-mechanisms and the ship about to make contact, and the third picture was being relayed from inside the ship and showed the patient. Conway said, “You can see that it is a heavy, squat life-form possessing six appendages which serve both as arms and legs. Its skin is thick, very tough and pitted all over, and is also encrusted in places with a dry, brownish substance which sometimes flakes off when the patient moves. Pay particular attention to this brown substance, and to features which seem to be missing from the body. The tell-tales show a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing metabolism adapted to a gravity pull of four Gs. Would one of you like to classify it for me?”

There was a long silence, then the Creppelian AMSL twitched a tentacle and said, “FROL, sir.”

“Very close,” said Conway approvingly. “However, I happen to know that this being’s atmosphere is a dense, nearly opaque soup, the resemblance to soup being increased by the fact that its lower reaches are alive with small airborne organisms which it feeds upon. You missed the fact that it has no eating mouth but absorbs food directly via the pitting in its skin. When traveling in space, however, the food has to be sprayed on, hence the brownish encrustation—”

“FROB,” said the Creppelian quickly.

“Correct.”

Conway wondered whether this AMSL was a little brighter than the others or just less shy. He made a mental note to keep an eye on this particular batch of trainees. He could use a bright assistant in his own wards.

Waving goodbye to the furry receptionist, Conway gathered his flock about him again and headed them toward the FGLJ ward five levels below. After that came other wards until Conway decided to introduce them to the complex, far flung department of the Hospital without whose constant and efficient working the tremendous establishment of Sector General could not have functioned and the vast multitude of its patients, staff and maintenance personnel could not have lived.

Conway was feeling hungry, and it was time he showed them where they all ate.

AACPs did not eat in the normal manner but planted themselves during their sleep period in specially prepared soil and absorbed nutriment in that way. After seeing them settled he deposited the PVSJ in the dim, noisome depths of the hail where the chlorine-breathers ate, and this left him with the two DBLFs and the AMSL to dispose of.

The largest dining hail in the hospital, the one devoted to oxygen breathers, was close by. Conway saw the two Kelgians placed with a group of their own species, then with a look of hungry yearning toward the Senior’s enclosure he hurried out again to take care of the Creppelian.

To reach the section catering for the water-breathers necessitated a fifteen minute walk along some of the busiest corridors of the hospital. Entities of all shapes and sizes flapped, undulated and sometimes walked past them. Conway had become inured to being jostled by elephantine Tralthans and having to step carefully around the fragile, diminutive LSVOs, but the Creppelian was like an armor plated octopus walking on eggs—there were times when the AMSL seemed afraid to move. The bubbling sounds from its suit had increased noticeably, too.

Conway tried to make it relax by getting it to talk about its previous hospital experience, but without much success. Then suddenly they turned a corner and Conway saw his old friend Prilicla coming from a side ward . . .

The AMSL went “Wheep!” and its eight legs threshed frantically into reverse. One of them swung heavily into the back of Conway’s knees and he sat down violently. The octopoid took off down the corridor, still wheeping.

“What the blazes  . . . !” said Conway, with what he thought later was commendable restraint.

“This is my fault entirely, I frightened it,” said Prilicla as it hurried up. “Are you hurt, Doctor?”

“You frightened it . . .

The gentle, spider-like creature from Cinruss apologized, “Yes, I’m afraid so. The combination of surprise and what seems to be a deeply rooted xenophobic neurosis caused a panic reaction. It is badly frightened but not completely out of control. Are you hurt, Doctor?”

“Just my feelings,” Conway growled, scrambling to his feet and going after the fleeing Creppelian, who was now out of sight and very nearly out of earshot.

His progress in the wake of the AMSL became a rapid zigzag that was half sprint and half waltz. To his superiors he called “Excuse me!” and to equals and inferiors he bawled “Gangway!” Almost at once he began to overtake the AMSL, proving once again that as an efficient means of locomotion two feet were much better than eight, and he was just drawing level when the being trapped itself neatly by turning into a linen storeroom. Conway skidded to a halt outside the still open door, went in and closed it firmly behind him.

As calmly as shortage of breath would allow he said, “Why did you run away?”

Words poured suddenly from the AMSL. The Translator filtered out all the emotional overtones but from the sheer rapidity of its speech he knew that the Creppelian was having the equivalent of hysterics, and as he listened he knew that Prilicla’s emotional reading had been right. Here was a xenophobic neurosis and no mistake.

O’Mara will get you if you don’t watch out, he thought grimly.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, there were still occasions when inter-racial friction occurred in the hospital. Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which affected its professional efficiency, mental stability, or both. An Earth human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if one of the Cmrusskins, like Prilicla, were to treat such an Earth-human patient . . .

It was O’Mara’s job as Chief Psychologist to detect and eradicate such trouble-or if all else failed, to remove the potentially dangerous individuals-before such friction developed into open conflict. Conway did not know how O’Mara would react to a hulking great AMSL who fled in panic from such a fragile creature as Dr. Prilicla.

When the Creppelian’s outburst began to ease off Conway raised his hand for attention and said, “I realize now that Dr. Prilicla bears a physical resemblance to a species of small, amphibious predator native to your home world, and that in your youth you experienced an extremely harrowing incident with these animals. But Doctor Prilicla is not an animal and the resemblance is purely visual. Far from being a threat you could kill Prilicla if you were to touch it carelessly.

“Knowing this,” Conway ended seriously, “would you be frightened into running if you were to meet this being again?”

“I don’t know,” said the AMSL. “I might.”

Conway sighed. He could not help remembering his own first weeks at Sector General and the horrible, nightmare creatures which had haunted his sleep. What had made the nightmares particularly horrifying had been the fact that they were not figments of his imagination but actual, physical realities which in many cases were only a few bullcheads away.

He had never fled from any of these nightmares who had later become his teachers, colleagues and eventually friends. But to be honest with himself this was not due so much to intestinal fortitude as the fact that extreme fear had a tendency to paralyze Conway rather than to make him run away.

“I think you may need psychiatric assistance, Doctor,” he told the Creppelian gently, “and the hospital’s Chief Psychologist will help you. But I would advise you not to consult him at once. Spend a week or so trying to adapt to the situation before going to him. You will find that he will think more highly of you for doing this . . .

. . . And less likely, he added silently, to send you packing as unsuited for duty in a multi-environment hospital.

The Creppelian left the storeroom with very little persuasion, after Conway told it that Prilicla was the only GLNO in the hospital at the moment and that their paths were very unlikely to cross twice in the same day. Ten minutes later the AMSL was settled in its dining tank and Conway was making for his own dinner by the fastest possible route.

CHAPTER 7

By a stroke of luck he saw Dr. Mannon at an otherwise empty table in the Senior’s enclosure. Mannon was an Earth-human who had once been Conway’s superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving Diagnostician status. Currently he was allowed to retain three physiology tapes-those of a Tralthan specialist in microsurgery and two which had been made by surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species-but despite this his reactions were reasonably human. At the moment he was working through a salad with his eyes turned toward Heaven and the dining hall ceiling in an effort not to look at what he was eating. Conway sat down facing him and made a sympathetic, querying noise.

“I’ve had a Tralthan and a LSVO on my list this afternoon, both long jobs,” Mannon said grumpily. “You know how it is, I’ve been thinking like them too much. If only these blasted Tralthans weren’t vegetarians, or the LSVOs weren’t sickened by anything which doesn’t look like bird seed. Are you anybody else today?”

Conway shook his head. “Just me. Do you mind if I have steak?”

“No, just don’t talk about it.”

“I won’t.”

Conway knew only too well the confusion, mental double vision and the severe emotional disturbance which went with a physiology tape that had become too thoroughly keyed in to the operating physician’s mind. He could remember a time only three months ago when he had fallen hopelessly-but hopelessly-in love with one of a group of visiting specialists from Melf IV. The Melfans were ELNTs-six-legged, amphibious, vaguely crab-like beings-and while one half of his mind had insisted that the whole affair was ridiculous the other half thought lovingly of that gorgeously marked carapace and generally felt like baying at the moon.

Physiology tapes were decidedly a mixed blessing, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological data needed for the treatment of patients in a multienvironment hospital. The incredible mass of data required to take care of them was furnished by means of Educator tapes, which were simply the brain recordings of great medical specialists of the various species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. But Senior Physicians with teaching duties were often called onto retain these tapes for long periods, which wasn’t much fun at all.

The only good thing from their point of view was that they were better off than the Diagnosticians.

They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.

For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving brain as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personality sharing his mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common.

Conway brought his thoughts back to the here and now. Mannon was speaking again.

“A funny thing about the taste of salad,” he said, still glaring at the ceiling as he ate, “is that none of my alter egos seem to mind it. The sight of it yes, but not the taste. They don’t particularly like it, mind, but neither does it completely revolt them. At the same time there are few species with an overwhelming passion for it, either. And speaking of overwhelming passions, how about you and Murchison?”

One of these days Conway expected to hear gears clashing, the way Mannon changed subjects so quickly.

“I’ll be seeing her tonight if I’ve time,” he replied carefully. “However, we re just good friends.”

“Haw,” said Mannon.

Conway make an equally violent switch of subjects by hurriedly breaking the news about his latest assignment. Mannon was the best in the world, but he had the painful habit of pulling a person’s leg until it threatened to come off at the hip. Conway managed to keep the conversation off Murchison for the rest of the meal.

As soon as Mannon and himself split up he went to the intercom and had a few words with the doctors of various species who would be taking over the instruction of the trainees, then he looked at his watch. There was almost an hour before he was due aboard Vespasian. He began to walk a little more hurriedly than befitted a Senior Physician . . .

The sign over the entrance read “Recreation Level, Species DBDG, DBLF, ELNT, GKNM & FGLI.” Conway went in, changed his whites for shorts and began searching for Murchison.

Trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping had given the recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to the sea, which stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was blue and cloudless-realistic cloud effects were difficult to reproduce, a maintenance engineer had told him-and the water of the bay was deep blue shading to turquoise. It lapped against the golden, gently sloping beach whose sand was almost too warm for the feet. Only the artificial sun, which was too much on the reddish side for Conway’s taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and cliff’s kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth.

But then space was at a premium—in Sector General and the people who worked together were expected to play together as well.

The most effective, yet completely unseen, aspect of the place was the fact that it was maintained at one-half normal gravity. A half-G meant that people who were tired could relax more comfortably and the ones who were feeling lively could feel livelier still, Conway thought wryly as a steep, slow-moving wave ran up the beach and broke around his knees. The turbulence in the bay was not produced artificially, but varied in proportion to the size, number and enthusiasm of the bathers using it.

Projecting from one of the cliffs were a series of diving ledges connected by concealed tunnels. Conway climbed to the highest, fifty-foot ledge and from this point of vantage tried to find a DBDG female in a white swimsuit called Murchison.

She wasn’t in the restaurant on the other cliff, or in the shallows adjoining the beach, or in the deep green water under the diving ledges. The sand was thickly littered with reclining forms which were large, small, leathery, scaly and furry-but Conway had no difficulty separating the Earth-human DBDGs from the general mass, they being the only intelligent species in the Federation with a nudity taboo. So he knew that anyone wearing clothing, no matter how abbreviated, was what he considered a human being.

Suddenly he caught a glimpse of white which was partly obscured by two patches of green and one of yellow standing around it. That would be Murchison, all right. He took a quick bearing and retraced his steps.

When Conway approached the crowd around Murchison, two Corpsmen and an intern from the eighty-seventh level dispersed with obvious reluctance. In a voice which, much to his disgust, had gone up in pitch, he said, “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”

Murchison shielded her eyes to look up at him. “I just arrived myself,” she said, smiling. “Why don’t you lie down?”

Conway dropped onto the sand but remained propped on one elbow, looking at her.

Murchison possessed a combination of physical features which made it impossible for any Earth-human male member of the staff to regard her with anything like clinical detachment, and regular exposure to the artificial but UV-rich sun had given her a deep tan made richer by the dazzling contrast of her white swimsuit. Dark auburn hair stirred restively in the artificial breeze, her eyes were closed again and her lips slightly parted. Her respiration was slow and deep, that of a person either perfectly relaxed or asleep, and the things it was doing to her swimsuit was also doing things to Conway. He thought suddenly that if she was telepathic at this moment she would be up and running for dear life . . .

“You look,” she said, opening one eye, “like somebody who wants to growl deep in his throat and beat his manly, clean-shaven chest—”

“It isn’t clean-shaven,” Conway protested, “it’s just naturally not hairy. But I want you to be serious for a moment. I’d like to talk to you, alone, I mean . . .

“I don’t care either way about chests,” she said soothingly, “so you don’t have to feel bad about it.”

“I don’t,” said Conway, then doggedly; “Can’t we get away from this menagerie and . . . Oops, stampede!”

He reached across quickly and clapped his hand over her eyes, simultaneously closing his own.

Two Tralthans on a total of twelve, elephantine feet thundered past within a few yards of them and plowed into the shallows, scattering sand and spray over a radius of fifty yards. The half-C conditions which allowed the normally slow and ponderous FGLIs to gambol like lambs also kept the sand they had kicked up airborne for a considerable time. When Conway was sure that the last grains had settled he took his hand away from Murchison’s eyes. But not completely.

Hesitantly, a little awkwardly, he slid his hand over the soft warm contour of her cheek until he was cupping the side of her jaw in his palm. Then gently he pushed his fingers into the soft tangle of curls behind her ear. He felt her stiffen, then relax again.

“Uh, see what I mean,” he said dry-mouthed. “Unless you like half ton bullies kicking sand in your face

“We’ll be alone later,” said Murchison, laughing, “when you take me home.”

“And then what happens!” Conway said disgustedly. “Just the same as last time. We’ll sneak up to your door, being very careful not to wake your roommate who has to go on early duty, and then that damned servo will come trundling up . . .” Angrily, Conway began to mimic the taped voice of the robot as he went on, “. . . I perceive that you are beings of classification DBDG and are of differing genders, and note further that you have been in close juxtaposition for a period of two minutes forty-eight seconds. In the circumstances I must respectfully remind you of Regulation Twenty-one, Sub-section Three regarding the entertaining of visitors in DBDG Nurses’ Quarters . . .

Almost choking, Murchison said, “I’m sorry, it must have been very frustrating for you.

Conway thought sourly that the expression of sorrow was rather spoiled by the suppressed laughter preceding it. He leaned closer and took her gently by the shoulder. He said, “It was and is. I want to talk to you and I won’t have time to see you home tonight. But I don’t want to talk here, you always head for the water when I get you cornered. Well, I want to get you in a corner, both literally and conversationally, and ask some serious questions. This being friends is killing me . . .

Murchison shook her head. She took his hand away from her shoulder, squeezed it and said, “Let’s swim.”

Seconds later as he chased her into the shallows he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t a little telepathic after all. She was certainly running fast enough.

In half-C conditions swimming was an exhilarating experience. The waves were high and steep and the smallest splash seemed to hang in the air for seconds, with individual drops sparkling red and amber in the sun. A badly executed dive by one of the heavier life-forms—the FGLIs especially had an awful lot of belly to flop-could cause really spectacular effects. Conway was threshing madly after Murchison on the fringe of just such a titanic upheaval when a loudspeaker on the cliff roared into life.

“Doctor Conway,” it boomed. “Will Doctor Conway report at Lock Sixteen for embarkation, please.

They were walking rapidly up the beach when Murchison said, very seriously for her, “I didn’t know you were leaving. I’ll change and see you off.”

There was a Monitor Corps officer in the lock antechamber. When he saw Conway had company he said, “Doctor Conway? We leave in fifteen minutes, sir,” and disappeared tactfully. Conway stopped beside the boarding tube and so did Murchison. She looked at him but there was no particular expression on her face, it was just beautiful and very desirable. Conway went on telling her about his important new assignment although he didn’t want to talk about that at all. He talked rapidly and nervously until he heard the Monitor officer returning along the tube, then he pulled Murchison tightly against him and kissed her hard.

He couldn’t tell if she responded. He had been too sudden, too ungentle . . .

“I’ll be gone about three months,” he said, in a voice which tried to explain and apologize at the same time. Then with forced lightness he ended, “And in the morning I won’t feel a bit sorry.”

CHAPTER 8

Conway was shown to his cabin by an officer wearing a medic’s caduceus over his insignia who introduced himself as Major Stillman. Although he spoke quietly and politely Conway got the impression that the Major was not a person who would be overawed by anything or anybody. He said that the Captain would be pleased to see Conway in the control room after they had made the first jump, to welcome him aboard personally.

A little later Conway met Colonel Williamson, the ship’s Captain, who gave him the freedom of the ship. This was a courtesy rare enough on a government ship to impress Conway, but he soon discovered that although nobody said anything he was simply in everyone’s way in the control room, and twice he lost himself while trying to explore the ship’s interior. The Monitor heavy cruiser Vespasian was much larger than Conway had realized. After being guided back by a friendly Corpsman with a too-expressionless face he decided that he would spend most of the trip in his cabin familiarizing himself with his new assignment.

Colonel Williamson had given him copies of the more detailed and recent information which had come in through Monitor Corps channels, but he began by studying the file which O’Mara had given him.

The being Lonvellin had been on the way to a world, about which it had heard some very nasty rumors, in a practically unexplored section of the Lesser Megellanic Cloud, when it had been taken ill and admitted to Sector General. Shortly after being pronounced cured it had resumed the journey and a few weeks later it had contacted the Monitor Corps. It had stated that conditions on the world it had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric, and that it would need advice on the medical side before it could begin to act effectively against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed planet. It had also asked if some beings of physiological classification DBDG could be sent along to act as information gatherers as the natives were of that classification and were violently hostile to all off-planet life, a fact which seriously hampered Lonvellin’s activities.

The fact of Lonvellin asking for help of any sort was surprising in itself in view of the enormous intelligence and experience of his species in solving vast sociological problems. But on this occasion things had gone disastrously wrong, and Lonvellin had been kept too busy using its defensive science to do anything else.

According to Lonvellin’s report it had begun by observing the planet from space during many rotations, monitoring the radio transmissions through its Translator, and taking particular note of the low level of industrialization which contrasted so oddly with the single, still functioning space port. When all the information which it had thought necessary had been collected and evaluated it chose what it considered to be the best place to land.

From the evidence at hand Lonvellin judged the world—the native’s name for it was Etla-to have been a once-prosperous colony which had regressed for economic reasons until now it had very little contact with outside. But it did have some, which meant that Lonvellin’s first and usually most difficult job, that of making the natives trust an alien and perhaps visually horrifying being who had dropped out of the sky, was greatly simplified. These people would know about e-ts. So it took the role of a poor, frightened, slightly stupid extra-terrestrial who had been forced to land to make repairs to its ship. For this it would require various odd and completely worthless chunks of metal or rock, and it would pretend great difficulty in making the Etlans understand exactly what it needed. But for these valueless pieces of rubbish it could exchange items of great value, and soon the more enterprising natives would get to know about it.

At this stage Lonvellin expected to be exploited shamelessly, but it didn’t mind. Gradually things would change. Rather than give items of value it would offer to perform even more valuable services. It would let it be known that it now considered its ship to be irreparable, and gradually it would become accepted as a permanent resident. After that it would be just a matter of time, and time was something with which Lonvellin was particularly well supplied.

It landed close to a road which ran between two small towns, and soon had the chance to reveal itself to a native. The native, despite Lonvellin’s careful contact and many reassurances via the Translator, fled. A few hours later small, crude projectiles with chemical warheads began falling on his ship and the whole area, which was densely wooded, had been saturated with volatile chemicals and deliberately set alight.

Lonvellin had been unable to proceed without knowing why this race with experience of space-travel should be so blindly hostile to e-ts, and not being in a position to ask questions himself it had called for Earth human assistance. Shortly afterward Alien Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps had arrived, sized up the situation for themselves and gone in.

Quite openly, as it happened.

They discovered that the natives were terrified of e-ts because they believed them to be disease carriers. What was even more peculiar was the fact that they were not worried by off-planet visitors of their own species or a closely similar race, members of which would have been more likely to be carriers of disease: because it was a well-known medical fact that diseases which affected extra-terrestrials were not communicable to members of other planetary species. Any race with a knowledge of space travel should know that, Conway thought. It was the first thing a star traveling culture learned.

He was trying to make some sense out of this strange contradiction, using a tired brain and some hefty reference works on the Federation’s colonization program, when Major Stillman’s arrival made a very welcome interruption.

“We’ll arrive in three days time, Doctor,” the Major began, “and I think it’s time you had some cloak and dagger training. By that I mean getting to know how to wear Etlan clothes. It’s a very fetching costume, although personally I don’t have the knees for a kilt . . .

Etla had been contacted on two levels by the Corps, Stillman went onto explain. On one they had landed secretly using the native language and dress, no other disguise being necessary because the physiological resemblance had been so close. Most of their later information had been gained in this way and so far none of the agents had been caught. On the other level the Corpsmen admitted their extra-terrestrial origin, conversed by Translator, and their story was that they had heard of the plight of the native population and had come to give medical assistance. The Etlans had accepted this story, revealing the fact that similar offers of help had been made in the past, that an Empire ship was sent every ten years loaded with the newest drugs, but despite all this the medical situation continued to worsen. The Corpsmen were welcome to try to relieve the situation if they could, but the impression given by the Etlans was that they were just another party of well-intentional bunglers.

Naturally when the subject of Lonvellin’s landing came up the Corps had to pretend complete ignorance, and their expressed opinions leaned heavily toward the middle of the road.

It was a very complex problem, Stillman told him, and became more so with every new report sent in by undercover agents. But Lonvellin had a beautifully simple plan for clearing up the whole mess. When Conway heard it he wished suddenly that he hadn’t tried to impress Lonvellin with his skill as a doctor. He would much rather have been back in the hospital right now. This being made responsible for organizing the cure of an entire planetary population gave him an unpleasantly gone feeling in the region of his transverse colon . . .

Etla was beset with much sickness and suffering and narrow, superstitious thinking, their reaction to Lonvellin being a shocking illustration of their intolerance toward species which did not resemble themselves. The first two conditions increased the third, which in turn worsened the first two. Lonvellin hoped to break this vicious circle by causing a marked improvement in the health of the population, one that would be apparent to even the least intelligent and bigoted natives. It would then have the Corpsmen admit publicly that they had been acting under Lonvellin’s instructions all along, which should make the e-t hating natives feel somewhat ashamed of themselves. Then during the perhaps temporary increase of e-t tolerance which would follow, Lonvellin would set about gaining their trust and eventually return to its original long-term plan for making them a sane, happy and thriving culture again.

Conway told Stillman that he wasn’t an expert in these matters but it sounded like a very good plan.

Stillman said, “I am, and it is. If it works.”

On the day before they were due to arrive the Captain asked if Conway would like to come to Control for a few minutes. They were computing their position in preparation for making the final jump and the ship had emerged relatively close to a binary system, one star of which was a short-term variable.

Awed, Conway thought it was the sort of spectacle which makes people feel small and alone, makes them feel the urge to huddle together and the need to talk so that they might re-establish their puny identities amid all the magnificence. Conversational barriers were down and all at once Captain Williamson was speaking in tones which suggested three things to the listening Conway-that the Captain might be human after all, that he had hair and that he was about to let it down a little;

“Er, Doctor Conway,” he began apologetically, “I don’t want to sound as if I’m criticizing Lonvellin. Especially as it was a patient of yours and may also have been a friend. Neither do I want you to think that I’m annoyed because it has a Federation cruiser and various lesser units running errands for it. That isn’t so . . .

Williamson took off his cap and smoothed a wrinkle from the headband with his thumb. Conway had a glimpse of thinning gray hair and a forehead whose deep worry lines had been concealed by the cap’s visor. The cap was replaced and he became the calm, efficient senior officer again.

To put it bluntly, Doctor,” he went on, “Lonvellin is what I would call a gifted amateur. Such people always seem to stir up trouble for us professionals, upsetting schedules and so on. But this doesn’t bother me either, because the situation Lonvellin uncovered here most definitely needs something done about it. The point I’m trying to make is that, as well as our survey, colonization and enforcement duties, we have experience at sorting out just such sociological tangles as this one, although at the same time I admit that there is no individual within the Corps with anything like Lonvellin’s ability. Nor can we suggest any plan at the moment better than the one put forward by Lonvellin . . .

Conway began to wonder if the Captain was getting at something or merely blowing off steam. Williamson had not struck him as being the complaining type.

. . . As the person with most responsibility next to Lonvellin on this project,” the Captain finished with a rush, “it is only fair that you know what we think as well as what we are doing. There are nearly twice as many of our people working on Etla than Lonvellin knows about, and more are on the way. Personally I have the greatest respect for our long-lived friend, but I can’t help feeling that the situation here is more complex than even Lonvellin realizes.”

Conway was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’ve wondered why a ship like Vespasian was being used on what is basically a cultural study project. Do you think that the situation is more, ah, dangerous as well?”

“Yes,” said the Captain.

At that moment the tremendous double-star system pictured in the view-screen dissolved and was replaced by that of a normal C-type sun and, within a distance of ten million miles, the tiny sickle shape of the planet which was their destination. Before Conway could put any of the questions he was suddenly itching to ask, the Captain informed him that they had completed their final jump, that from now until touchdown he would be a very busy man, and ended by politely throwing him out of the control room with the advice that he should catch as much sleep as possible before landing.

Back in his cabin Conway undressed thoughtfully and, a part of his mind was pleased to note, almost automatically. Both Stillman and he had been wearing Etlan costume-blouse, kilt and a waist-sash with pockets, a beret and a dramatic calf-length cloak being added for outdoor use-continually for the past few days, so that now he felt comfortable in it even while dining with Vespasian’s officers. At the moment, however, his discomfort was caused solely by the Captain’s concluding remarks to him in the control room.

Williamson thought that the Etlan situation was dangerous enough to warrant using the largest type of law enforcement vessel possessed by the Monitor Corps. Why? Where was the danger?

Certainly there was nothing resembling a military threat on Etla. The very worst that the Etlans could do they had done to Lonvellin’s ship and that had hurt the being’s feelings and nothing else. Which meant that the danger had to come from somewhere outside.

Suddenly Conway thought he knew what was worrying the Captain. The Empire . . .

Several of the reports had contained references to the Empire. It was the great unknown quantity so far. The Monitor Corps survey vessels had not made contact with it, which wasn’t surprising because this sector of the galaxy was not scheduled for mapping for another fifty years, and would not have been entered if Lonvellin’s project had not come unstuck. All that was known about the Empire was that Etla was part of it and that it sent medical aid at regular if lengthy intervals.

To Conway’s mind the quality of that aid and the intervals between its arrival told an awful lot about the people responsible for sending it. They could not be medically advanced, he reasoned, or the drugs they sent would have checked, if only temporarily, some of the epidemics which had been sweeping Etla at the time. And they were almost certainly poor or the ships would have come at shorter intervals. Conway would not be surprised if the mysterious Empire turned out to be a mother world and a few struggling colonies like Etla. But most important of all, an Empire which regularly sent aid to its distressed colony, whether it was large, medium or small as Empires went, did not seem to Conway to be a particularly evil or dangerous entiw To the contrary, on the evidence available he rather approved of this Empire.

Captain Williamson, he thought as he rolled into bed, was inclined to worry too much.

CHAPTER 9

Vespasian landed. On the main screen in the Communications room Conway saw a cracked white expanse of concrete which stretched to the half-mile distant periphery, where the fine details of vegetation and architecture which would have made the scene alien were lost in the heat haze. Dust and dried leaves littered the concrete and small heaps of cloud were scattered untidily about a very Earth-like sky. The only other ship on the field was a Monitor courier vessel which was grounded close to the block of disused offices that had been loaned by the Etlan authorities for use as the visitor’s surface base.

Behind Conway the Captain said, “You understand, Doctor, that Lonvellin is unable to leave its ship, and that any physical contact between us at this stage would wreck our present good relations with the natives. But this is a big screen. Excuse me . . .

There was a click and Conway was looking into the control room of Lonvellin’s ship, with a life-size image of Lonvellin itself sprawling across most of the picture.

“Greetings, friend Conway,” the EPLH’s voice boomed from the speaker. “It is a great pleasure to see you again.”

“A pleasure to be here, sir,” Conway replied, “I trust you are in good health . . .

The enquiry was not merely a polite formality. Conway wanted to know if there had been anymore “misunderstandings” on the cellular level between Lonvellin and its personal physician, the intelligent, organized virus-colony which dwelt within its patient-host’s body. Lonvellin’s doctor had caused quite a stir at Sector General, where they were still arguing as to whether it should be classified as a doctor or a disease . . .

“My health is excellent, Doctor,” Lonvellin replied, then straightaway got down to the business in hand. Conway hastily returned his mind to present time and concentrated on what the EPLH was saying.

Conway’s own instructions were general. He was to coordinate the work of data-gathering Corps medical officers on Etla and, because the sociological and medical aspects of the problem were so closely connected, he was advised to keep abreast of the developments outside his specialty. With the arrival of the latest reports the sociological problem seemed more confusing, and it was Lonvellin’s hope that a mind trained for the complexities of a multi-environment hospital would be able to establish a sensible pattern among this welter of contradictory facts. Dr. Conway would no doubt appreciate the urgency of the matter, and wish to begin work immediately . . .

. . . And I would like data on the Earth-human Clarke who is operating in District Thirty-five,” Lonvellin went on without a pause, so that I may properly evaluate the reports of this being . . .

As Captain Williamson was giving the required information Stillman tapped Conway’s arm and nodded for them to leave. Twenty minutes later they were in the back of a covered truck on the way to the perimeter. Conway’s head and one ear had been swathed in bandages, and he felt anxious and a little stupid.

“We’ll stay hidden until we’re clear of the port,” Stillman said reassuringly, “then we’ll sit with the driver. Lots of Etlans travel with our people these days, but it might arouse suspicion for us to be seen coming from the ship. And we’ll head straight for town instead of calling at ground headquarters. I think you should see some of your patients as soon as possible.”

Seriously, Conway said, “I know the symptoms are purely psychosomatic, but both my feet seem to be in an advanced stage of frostbite . . .

Stillman laughed. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” he said. “The translator bandaged to your ear will let you know everything that goes on, and you won’t have to speak because I’ll explain that your head injury has temporarily affected your speech centers. Later, however, when you begin to pick up a little of the language a good tip is to develop a stutter. An impediment of this kind disguises the fact that the sufferer does not have the local idiom or accent, the large fault concealing all the smaller ones.

“Not all our undercover people have advanced linguistic training,” he added, “and such ruses are necessary. But the main thing to remember is not to stay in any one place long enough for the more definite oddities of behavior to be noticed . . .

At that point the driver remarked that they were coming level with a blond whom he could cheerfully stay near for the rest of his life. Stillman went on, “Despite the coarse suggestions of Corpsman Briggs here, perhaps our best protection lies in our mental approach to the work, to the fact that our intentions toward these people are completely honorable. If we were hostile agents intent on sabotage, or gathering intelligence for a future act of war, we would be much more likely to be caught. We should be tensed up, trying too hard to be natural, too suspicious and are more inclined to make mistakes because of this.”

Conway said dryly, “You make it sound too easy.” But he felt reassured nevertheless.

The truck left them in the center of town and they began to walk around. The first thing Conway noticed was that there were very few large or new-looking buildings, but that even the oldest were very well kept, and that the Etlans had a very attractive way of decorating the outside of their houses with flowers. He saw the people, the men and women working, shopping or going about businesses which at the present moment he could not even guess at. He had to think of them as men and women, as being he and she rather than a collection of coldly alien its.

He saw the twisted limbs, the crutches, the disease scarred faces, his analytical eye detecting and isolating conditions which had been stamped out among the Federation citizenship over a century ago. And everywhere he saw a sight familiar to anyone who had ever been to or worked in a hospital, that of the less sick patient freely and unselfishly giving all the aid possible to those who were worse off than himself.

The sudden realization that he was not in a hospital ward where such sights were pleasantly normal but in a city street brought Conway physically and mentally to a halt.

“What gets me,” he said when he could speak again, “is that so many of these conditions are curable. Maybe all of them. We haven’t had epilepsy for one hundred and fifty years . . .”

“And you feel like running amuck with a hypo,” Stillman put in grimly, “injecting all and sundry with the indicated specifics. But you have to remember that the whole planet is like this, and that curing a few would not help at all. You are in charge of a very big ward, Doctor.”

“I’ve read the reports,” Conway said shortly. “It’s just that the printed figures did not prepare me for the actuality . . .”

He stopped with the sentence incomplete. They had paused at a busy intersection and Conway noticed that both pedestrian and vehicular traffic had either slowed or come to a halt. Then he saw the reason.

There was a large wagon coming along the street. Painted and draped completely in red it was, unlike the other vehicle around it, unpowered. Short handles projected at intervals along each side and at every handle an Etlan walked or limped or hobbled, pushing it along. Even before Stillman took his beret off and Conway followed suit he knew that he was seeing a funeral.

“We’ll visit the local hospital now,” Stillman said when it had gone past. “If asked, my story is that we are looking for a sick relative called Mennomer who was admitted last week. On Etla that is a name like Smith. But we’re not likely to be questioned, because practically everybody does a stint of hospital work and the staff are used to the part-time help coming and going all the time. And should we run into a Corps medical officer, as well we might, don’t recognize him.

“And in case you’re worried about your Etlan colleagues wanting to look under your bandages,” Stillman went on practically reading Conway’s mind, “they are far too busy to be curious about injuries which have already been treated . . .

They spent two hours in the hospital without once having to tell their story about the ailing Mennomer. It was obvious from the start that Stillman knew his way about the place, that he had probably worked there. But there were always too many Etlans about for Conway to ask if it had been as a Corpsman observer or an undercover part-time nurse. Once he caught a glimpse of a Corpsman medic watching an Etlan doctor draining a pleural cavity of its empyema, his expression showing how dearly he would have liked to roll up his dark green sleeves and wade in himself.

The surgeons wore bright yellow instead of white, some of the operative techniques verged on the barbaric and the concept of isolation wards or barrier nursing had never occurred to them-or perhaps it had occurred to them, Conway thought in an effort to be fair, but the utterly fantastic degree of overcrowding made it impracticable. Considering the facilities at their disposal and the gigantic problem it had to face, this was a very good hospital. Conway approved of it and, judging from what he had seen of its staff, he approved of them, too.

“These are nice people,” Conway said rather inadequately at one point. “I can’t understand them jumping Lonvellin the way they did, somehow they don’t seem to be the type.”

“But they did it,” Stillman replied grimly. “Anything which hasn’t two eyes, two ears, two arms and two legs, or which has these things but happens to have them in the wrong places, gets jumped. It’s something drummed into them at a very early age, with their ABCs, practically. I wish we knew why.”

Conway was silent. He was thinking that the reason he had been sent here was to organize medical aid for this planet, and that wandering in fancy dress over one small piece of the jigsaw was not going to solve the big puzzle. It was time he got down to some serious work.

As if reading Conway’s mind again Stillman said, “I think we should go back now. Would you prefer to work in the office block or the ship, Doctor?”

Stillman, Conway thought, was going to be a very good aide. Aloud he said, “The office block, please. I get lost too easily in the ship.”

And so Conway was installed in a small office with a large desk, a button for calling Stillman and some other less-vital communications equipment. After his first lunch in the officers dining quarters he ate all his meals in the office with Stillman. Sometimes he slept in the office and sometimes he didn’t sleep at all. The days passed and his eyes began to feel like hot, gritty marbles in his head from reading reports and more reports. Stillman always kept them coming. Conway reorganized the medical investigation, bringing in some of the Corps doctors for discussion or flying out to those who could not for various reasons get in.

A large number of the reports were outside his province, being copies of information sent in by Williamson’s men on purely sociological problems. He read them on the off-chance of their having a bearing on his own problem, which many of them did, But they usually added to his puzzlement.

Blood samples, biopsies, specimens of all kinds began to flow in. They were immediately loaded onto a courier—the Corps had put three of them at his disposal now-and rushed to the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology at Sector General. The results were sub-radioed back to Vespasian, taped, and the reels dumped on Conway’s desk within a few days. The ship’s main computer, or rather the section of it which wasn’t engaged on Translator relay, was also placed at his disposal, and gradually the vaguest suggestion of a pattern seemed to be emerging out of the flood of related and unrelated facts. But it was a pattern which made no sense to anyone, least of all Conway. He was nearing the end of his fifth week on Etla and there was still very little progress to report to Lonvellin.

But Lonvellin wasn’t pushing for results. It was a very patient being who had all the time in the world. Sometimes Conway found himself wondering if Murchison would be as patient as Lonvellin.

CHAPTER 10

I n answer to his buzz Major Stillman, red-eyed and with his usually crisp uniform just slightly rumpled, stumbled in and sat down. They exchanged yawns, then Conway spoke.

“In a few days I’ll have the supply and distribution figures needed to begin curing this place,” he said. “Every serious disease has been listed together with information on the age, sex and geographical location of the patient, and the quantities of medication calculated. But before I give the go ahead for flooding the place with medical supplies I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if we knew exactly how this situation came about in the first place.

“Frankly, I’m worried,” he went on. “I think we may be guilty of replacing the broken crockery while the bull is still loose in the china shop.

Stillman nodded, whether in agreement or with weariness Conway couldn’t say.

On a planet which was an absolute pest-hole why were infant mortality figures, or deaths arising from complications or infections during childbirth so low? Why was there a marked tendency for infants to be healthy and the adults chronically ill? Admittedly a large proportion of the infant population were born blind or were physically impaired by inherited diseases, but relatively few of them died young. They carried their deformities and disfigurements through to late middle age where, statistically, most of them succumbed.

And there was also statistical evidence that the Etlans were guilty of gross exhibitionism in the matter of their diseases. They ran heavily to unpleasant skin conditions, maladies which caused gradual wasting or deformity of the limbs, and some pretty horrible combinations of both. And their costume did nothing to conceal their afflictions. To the contrary, Conway had the feeling sometimes that they were like so many small boys showing off their sore knees to their friends . . .

Conway realized that he had been thinking aloud when Stillman interrupted him suddenly.

“You’re wrong, Doctor!” he said, sharply for him. “These people aren’t masochists. Whatever went wrong here originally, they’ve been trying to fight it. They’ve been fighting, with very little assistance, for over a century and losing all the time. It surprises me they have a civilization left at all. And they wear an abbreviated costume because they believe fresh air and sunlight is good for what ails them, and in most cases they are quite right.

“This belief is drilled into them from an early age,” Stillman went on, his tone gradually losing its sharpness, “like their hatred of e-ts and the belief that isolating infectious diseases is unnecessary. Is dangerous, in fact, because they believe that the germs of one disease fight the germs of another so that both are weakened . . .”

Stillman shuddered at the thought and fell silent.

“I didn’t mean to belittle our patients, Major,” Conway said. “I have no sensible answers to this thing so my mind is throwing up stupid ones. But you mentioned the lack of assistance which the Etlans receive from their Empire. I would like more details on that, especially on how it is distributed. Better still, I’d like to ask the Imperial Representative on Etla about it. Have you been able to find him yet?”

Stillman shook his head and said dryly, “This aid doesn’t come like a batch of food parcels. There are drugs, of course, but most of it would be in the form of the latest medical literature relevant to the conditions here. How it reaches the people is something we are just now finding out .

Every ten years an Empire ship would land and be met by the Imperial Representative, Stillman went on to explain, and after unloading and handing over what were presumably dispatches it left again within a matter of hours. Apparently no citizen of the Empire would stay on Ella for a second longer than was necessary, which was understandable. Then the Imperial Representative, a personage called Teltrenn, set about distributing the medical aid.

But instead of using the mass distribution media to bring local medical authorities up to date on these new methods, and allow local GPs time to familiarize themselves with the theory and procedures before the medication arrived, Teltrenn sat tight on all the information until such times as he could pay them a personal visit. Then he handed everything over as being a personal gift from their glorious Emperor, accruing no small measure of glory himself by being the middleman, and the data which could have been in the hands of every doctor on the planet within three months reached them piecemeal in anything up to six years . . .

“Six years!” said Conway, startled.

“Teltrenn isn’t, so far as we’ve been able to find out, a very energetic person,” Stillman said. “What makes matters worse is that little or no original medical research is being done on Etla, due to the absence of the researcher’s most vital tool, the microscope. Ella can’t make precision optical equipment and apparently no Empire ship has thought to bring them.

“It all boils down to the fact,” Stillman ended grimly, “that the Empire does all of Etla’s medical thinking for her, and the evidence suggests that medically the Empire is not very smart.”

Conway said firmly, “I’d like to see the correlation between the arrival of this aid and the incidence of disease immediately thereafter. Can you help me in that?”

“There’s a report just in which might help you,” Stillman replied. “It’s a copy of the records of a North Continent hospital which go back past Teltrenn’s last visit to them. The records show that he brought on that occasion some useful data on obstetrics and a specific against what we have called B-Eighteen. The incidence of B-Eighteen dropped rapidly within a few weeks there, although the overall figures remained much the same because F-Twenty-one began to appear about that time . . .”

B-Eighteen was analogous to a severe influenza, fatal to children and young adults in four cases out of ten. F-Twenty-one was a mild, nonfatal fever which lasted three to four weeks during which large, crescentric weals appeared all over the face, limbs and body. When the fever abated the weals darkened to a livid purple and remained for the rest of the patient’s life.

Conway shook his head angrily. He said, “One of the main things wrong with Etla is its Imperial Representative!”

Standing up, Stillman said, “We want to ask him a few questions, too. We’ve advertised that fact widely by radio and print, so much so that we are now fairly certain that Teltrenn is hiding from us deliberately. Probably the reason is a guilty conscience over his mismanagement of affairs here. But a psych report, based on what hearsay evidence we have been able to gather about him, has been prepared for Lonvellin. I’ll have them send a copy from the ship.”

“Thank you,” said Conway.

Stillman nodded, yawned and left. Conway thumbed his communicator switch, contacted Vespasian and asked for an audio link with the fifty miles distant Lonvellin. He was still worried and wanted to get it off his chest, the only trouble being he did not know exactly what “it” was.

. . . You have done very well, friend Conway,” Lonvellin said when he had finished speaking, “in fulfilling your part of the project so quickly, and I am fortunate indeed in the quality and eagerness of my assistants. We have now gained the trust of the Etlan doctors in most areas and the way will shortly be open to begin full-scale instruction in your latest curative techniques. You will therefore be returning to your hospital within a few days, and I urge that you do not leave with the feeling that you have not performed your assigned task in a completely satisfactory manner. These anxieties you mention are groundless.

“Your suggestion that the being Teltrenn should be removed or replaced as part of the re-education program is sound,” Lonvellin continued ponderously, “and I already had this step in mind. An added reason for removing it from office being the well-documented fact that it is the being largely responsible for keeping alive the widespread intolerance of off planet life-forms. Your other suggestion that these harmful ideas may originate, not with Teltrenn but in the Empire, may or may not be correct. This does not, however, call for an immediate search for and investigation of the Empire which you urge.

Lonvellin’s Translated voice was slow and necessarily emotionless, but Conway seemed to detect a hardening in its tone as it went on, “I perceive Etla as an isolated world kept in quarantine. The problem can therefore be solved without bringing in considerations of Empire influences or understanding fully the various inconsistencies which puzzle us both. These will become plain after its cure has been effected, and the answers we seek are of secondary importance to the planet-wide relief of suffering.

“Your contention that the visits of the Imperial ship,” it went on, “which occur every ten years and last only a few hours, is a major factor in this problem is invalid. I might even suggest that, unconsciously perhaps, you are laying too much stress on this point merely that your curiosity regarding this Empire might be satisfied.”

You’re so right, Conway thought. But before he could reply the EPLH went on, “I wish to treat Etla as an isolated problem. Bringing in the Empire, which itself may or may not be in need of medical aid also, would enlarge the scope of the operation beyond manageable limits.

“However, and purely to remove your evident anxiety,” Lonvellin ended, “you may tell the being Williamson that it has my permission to scout for this Empire and report on conditions within it. In the event of it being found, however, no mention of what we are doing here on Etla is to be made until the operation is completed.”

“I understand, sir,” Conway said, and broke the connection. He thought it decidedly odd that Lonvellin had pinned his ears back for being curious, then almost with the same breath given him permission to indulge that curiosity. Was Lonvellin more concerned about the Empire’s influence here than it cared to admit, or was the big beastie just going soft in its old age?

He called Captain Williamson.

The Captain hemmed a coupled of times when Conway had finished speaking and there was a distinctly embarrassed note in his voice when he replied. He said, “We’ve had a number of officers, both medical and cultural contact people, searching for the Empire for the last two months, Doctor. One of them has been successful and sent in a preliminary report. It comes from a medical officer who was not attached to the Ella project, and knows very little of what has been happening here, so it may not be as informative as you might wish. I’ll send you a copy with the material on Teltrenn.”

Coughing slightly, Williamson ended, “Lonvellin will have to be informed of this, naturally, but I must leave it to your discretion when you tell it.”

Suddenly Conway laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, Colonel, I’ll sit on the information for a while. But if you are found out you can always remind Lonvellin that the function of a good servant is to anticipate the wishes of his master.

He continued laughing softly after Williamson signed off, then all at once the reaction set in.

Conway hadn’t laughed much since coming to Etla. And he had not been guilty of over-identifying with his patients-no half-way decent doctor with the good of his charges at heart would commit that crime. It was just that nobody laughed very much on Etla. There was something in the atmosphere of the place, a feeling comprised both of urgency and hopelessness which seemed to intensify with each day that passed. It was rather like the atmosphere in a ward where a patient was going to die, Conway thought, except that even in those circumstances people found time to make cracks and relax for a few minutes between crises.

Conway was beginning to miss Sector General. He was glad that in a few days he would be going back, despite his feeling of dissatisfaction over all the loose ends he was leaving untied. He began to think about Murchison.

That was something he had not done very often on Etla, either. Twice he had sent messages to her with the Elan specimens. He knew that Thornnastor in Pathology would see that she got them, even though Thornnastor was an FGLI with only the barest of passing interests in the emotional involvements of Earth-human DBDGs. But Murchison was the undemonstrative type. She might consider that going to the trouble of smuggling back a reply would be giving him too much encouragement, or maybe that kiss and run episode at the airlock had soured her on him completely. She was a peculiar girl. Very serious-minded, extremely dedicated, absolutely no time for men.

The first time she agreed to date him it had been because Conway had just pulled off a slick op and wanted to celebrate, and that previously he had worked with her on a case without once making a pass. Since then he had dated Murchison regularly and had been the envy of all the male DBDGs in the hospital. The only trouble was that they had nothing to be envious about . . .

His lugubrious train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of a Corpsman who dropped a folder onto his desk and said, “The material on Teltrenn, Doctor. The other report was confidential to Colonel Williamson and has to be copied by his Writer. We’ll have it for you in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. The Corpsman left and he began to read.

Being a colony world which had not had the chance to grow naturally, Etla did not have national boundaries or the armed forces which went with them, but the police force enforcing the law on the planet were technically soldiers of the Emperor and under the command of Teltrenn. It had been a force of these policemen-soldiers who had attacked, and were still attacking, Lonvellin’s ship. At first appraisal, the report stated, the evidence pointed to Teltrenn having a personality which was proud and power-hungry, but the cruelty usually found in such personalities was absent. In his relations with the native population—the Imperial Representative had not been born on Etla-Teltrenn showed fairness and consideration. It was plain that he looked down on the natives-way down, almost as if they were members of a lower species. But he did not, openly, despise them, and he was never cruel to them.

Conway threw down the report; this was another stupid piece of an already senseless puzzle, and all at once he was sick of the whole silly business. He rose and stamped into the outer office, sending the door crashing against the wall. Stillman twitched slightly and looked up.

“Dump that paperwork until morning!” Conway snapped. “Tonight we are going to indulge shamelessly in pleasures of the flesh. We’re going to sleep in our own cabins . . .

“Sleep?” said Stillman, grinning suddenly. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know,” said Conway, “I thought you might. I hear it’s a new sensation, unutterable bliss and very habit-forming. Shall we live dangerously . . .

“After you,” said Stillman.

Outside the office block the night was pleasantly cool. There was broken cloud on the horizon but above them the stars seemed to crowd down, bright and thick and cold. This was a dense region of space, a fact further proved by the meteorites which made white scratches across the sky every few minutes. Altogether it was an inspiring and calming sight, but Conway could not stop worrying. He was convinced that he was missing something, and his anxiety was much worse out here under the sky than it had been at any time in the office. Suddenly he wanted to read that report on the Empire as quickly as possible.

To Stillman, he said, “Do you ever think of something, then feel horribly ashamed for having the kind of dirty mind which thinks thoughts like that?”

Stillman grunted, treating it as a rhetorical question, and they continued walking toward the ship. Abruptly they stopped.

On the Southern horizon the sun seemed to be rising. The sky had become a pale, rich blue which shaded through turquoise into black, and the bases of the distant clouds burned pink and gold. Then before they could appreciate, or even react to this glorious, misplaced sunrise it had faded to an angry red smudge on the horizon. They felt a tiny shock transmitted through the soles of their shoes, and a little later they heard a noise like distant thunder.

“Lonvellin’s ship!” said Stillman.

They began to run.

CHAPTER 11

The communications room on Vespasian was a whirlwind of activity with the Captain forming its calm and purposeful center. When Stillman and Conway arrived orders had gone out to the courier ship and all available helicopters to load decontamination and rescue gear and proceed to the blast area to render all possible aid. There was, of course, no hope for the Etlan force which had been surrounding Lonvellin’s ship, but there were isolated farms and at least one small village on the fringe area. The rescuers would have to deal with panic as well as radiation casualties, because the Etlans had no experience of nuclear explosions and would almost certainly resist evacuation.

Out on the field, when Conway had seen Lonvellin’s ship go up and had realized what it meant, he had felt physically ill. And now, listening to Williamson’s urgent but unhurried orders going out, he felt cold sweat trickle down his forehead and spine. He licked his lips and said, “Captain, I have an urgent suggestion to make . . .

He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his tone which made Williamson swing around immediately.

“This accident to Lonvellin means that you are in charge of the project, Doctor,” Williamson said impatiently. “There is no need for such diffidence.”

“In that case,” said Conway in the same low, tense voice, “I have orders for you. Call off the rescue attempts and order everyone back to the ship. Take off before we are bombed, too . . .

Conway saw them all looking at him, at his white, sweating face and frightened eyes, and he could see them all jumping to wrong conclusions. Williamson looked angry, embarrassed and completely at a loss for a few seconds, then his expression hardened. He turned to an officer beside him, snapped an order, then swung to face Conway again.

“Doctor,” he began stiffly, “I have just put out our secondary meteor shield. Any solid object greater than one inch in diameter approaching from any direction whatever will be detected at a distance of one hundred miles and automatically deflected by pressors. So I can assure you, Doctor, that we are in no danger from any hypothetical attack with atomic missiles. The idea of a nuclear bombardment here is ridiculous, anyway. There is no atomic power on Etla, none whatever. We have instruments . . . You must have read the report.

“My suggestion,” the Captain went on, in exactly the tone he used to suggest that the junior astrogator make an alteration in course, “is that we rush all possible help to the survivors of the blow-up, which must have been caused by a fault in Lonvellin’s power pile . . .”

“Lonvellin wouldn’t have a faulty pile!” Conway said harshly. “Like many long-lived beings it suffered from a constant and increasing fear of death the longer its life went on. It had the ultimate in personal physicians so that illness would not shorten its already tremendous life span, and it follows that it would not have endangered itself by using a ship which was anything but mechanically perfect.

“Lonvellin was killed,” Conway went on grimly, “and the reason they hit its ship first is probably because they dislike e-ts so much. And it’s nice to know that you can protect the ship, but if we leave now they might not launch another missile at all, and our people out there and a lot more Etlans would not have to die . . .

It was no good, Conway thought sickly. Williamson looked angry and embarrassed and stubborn-angry at being given apparently senseless orders, embarrassed because it looked as though Conway was behaving like a frightened old woman and stubborn because he thought he and not Conway was right. Get the lead out of your pants, you unprintable fool! Conway raged at him, but under his breath. He could not address such words to a Monitor Colonel surrounded by junior officers, and for the added reason that Williamson was not nor ever had been a fool. He was a reasonable, intelligent, highly competent officer. It was just that he had not had the chance to put the facts together properly. He didn’t have any medical training, nor did he have a nasty, suspicious mind like Conway . . .

“You have a report on the Empire for me,” he said instead. “Can I read it?”

Williamson’s eyes flickered toward the battery of view-screens surrounding them. All showed scenes of frantic activity-a helicopter being readied for flight, another staggering off the ground with a load obviously in excess of the safety limit, and a stream of men and decontamination equipment being rushed through the lock of the courier ship. He said, “You want to read it now . . .

“Yes,” said Conway, then quickly shook his head as another idea struck him. He had been trying desperately to make Williamson take off immediately and leave the explanations until later when there was time to give them, but it was obvious now that he would have to explain first, and fast. He said, “I’ve a theory which explains what has been going on here and the report should verify it. But if I can tell you what I think is in that report before reading it, will you give my theory enough credence to do what I tell you and take off at once?”

Outside the ship both ’copters were climbing into the night sky, the courier boat was sealing her lock and a collection of surface transport, both Etlan and Monitor, was dispersing toward the perimeter. More than half of the ship’s crew were out there, Conway knew, together with all the land-based Corpsmen who could possibly be spared-all heading for the scene of the blow-up and all piling up the distance between themselves and Vespasian with every second which passed.

Without waiting for Williamson’s reply, Conway rushed on, “My guess is that it is an Empire in the strict sense of the word, not a loose Federation like ours. This means an extensive military organization to hold it together and implement the laws of its Emperor, and the government on individual worlds would also be an essentially military one. All the citizens would be DBDGs like the Etlans and ourselves, and on the whole pretty average people except for their antipathy toward extraterrestrials, who they have had little opportunity of getting to know so far.”

Conway took a deep breath and went on, “Living conditions and level of technology should be similar to our own. Taxation might be high, but this would be negated by government controlled news channels. My guess is that this Empire has reached the unwieldy stage, say about forty to fifty inhabited systems . . .

“Forty-three,” said Williamson in a surprised voice.

And I would guess that everyone in it knows about Etla and are sympathetic toward its plight. They would consider it a world under constant quarantine, but they do everything they can to help it . . .

“They certainly do!” Williamson broke in. “Our man was on one of the outlying planets of the Empire for only two days before he was sent to the Central world for a audience with the Big Chief. But he had time to see what the people thought of Etla. There are pictures of the suffering Etlans practically everywhere he looked. In places they out-numbered commercial advertising, and it is a charity to which the Imperial Government gives full support! These look like being very nice people, Doctor.

“I’m sure they are, Captain,” Conway said savagely. “But don’t you think it a trifle odd that the combined charity of forty-three inhabited systems can only run to sending one ship every ten years . . .

Williamson opened his mouth, closed it, and looked thoughtful. The whole room was silent except for the muted, incoming messages. Then suddenly, from behind Conway, Stillman swore and said thickly, “I see what he’s getting at, sir. We’ve got to take off at once . . .

Williamson’s eyes flicked from Conway to Stillman and back again. He murmured, “One could be temporary insanity, but two represents a trend . . .”

Three seconds later recall instructions were going out to all personnel, their urgency emphasized by the ear-splitting howl of the General Alarm siren. When every order which had been issued only minutes ago had been reversed, Williamson turned to Conway again.

“Go on, Doctor,” he said grimly. “I think I’m beginning to see it, too.

Conway sighed thankfully and began to talk.

Etla had begun as a normal colony world, with a single space field to land the initial equipment and colonists, then towns had been set up convenient to natural resources and the planetary population had increased nicely. But then they must have been hit by a wave of disease, or a succession of diseases, which had threatened to wipe them out. Hearing of their plight the citizens of the Empire had rallied round, as people do when their friends are in trouble, and soon help began to arrive.

It must have started in a small way but built up quickly as news of the colony’s distress got around. But so far as the Etlans were concerned the assistance stayed small.

The odd, un-missed pennies of a whole planetary population added up to a respectable amount, and when scores of worlds were contributing the amount was something which could not be ignored by the Imperial government, or by the Emperor himself. Because even in those days the Empire must have grown too big and the inevitable rot had set in at its core. More and more revenue was needed to maintain the Empire, and! or to maintain the Emperor and his court in the luxury to which they felt entitled. It was natural to assume that they might tell themselves that charity began at home, and appropriate a large part of these funds for their own use. Then gradually, as the Etlan charity was publicized and encouraged, these funds became an essential part of the administration’s income.

That was how it had begun.

Etla was placed in strict quarantine, even though nobody in their right mind would have wanted to go there anyway. But then a calamity threatened, the Etlans through their own unaided efforts must have begun to cure themselves. The lucrative source of revenue looked like drying up. Something had to be done, quickly.

From withholding the aid which would have cured them it was only a small matter ethically, the administration must have told itself, to keep the Etlans sick by introducing a few relatively harmless diseases from time to time. The diseases would have to be photogenic, of course, to have the maximum effect on the kind-hearted citizenry-disfiguring diseases, for the most part, or those which left the sufferer crippled or deformed. And steps had to be taken to ensure that the supply of suffering natives did not fall off, so that the techniques of gynecology and child care on Etla were well advanced.

At a fairly early stage an Imperial Representative, psychologically tailored to fit his post, was installed to ensure that the level of health on the planet was held at the desired point. Somehow the Etlans had ceased to be people and had become valuable sick animals, which was just how the Imperial Representative seemed to regard them.

Conway paused at that point. The Captain and Stillman were looking ill, he thought; which was exactly how he had felt since the destruction of Lonvellin’s ship had caused all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.

He said, “A native force sufficient to drive off or destroy chance visitors is always at Teltrenn’s disposal. Because of the quarantine all visitors are likely to be alien, and the natives have been taught to hate aliens regardless of shape, number or intentions.

“But how could they be so . . . so cold-blooded?” Williamson said, aghast.

“It probably started as simple misappropriation of funds,” Conway said tiredly, “then it gradually got out of hand. But now we, by our interference, have threatened to wreck a very profitable Imperial racket. So now the Empire is trying to wreck us.”

Before Williamson could reply the Chief Communications officer reported both helicopter crews back in the ship, also all personnel who had been within earshot of the siren, which meant everyone in town. The remainder could not make it back to Vespasian for several hours at least and had been ordered to go under cover until a scout ship sneaked in later to pick them up. Almost before the officer had finished speaking the Captain snapped “Lift ship” and Conway felt a moment’s dizziness as the ship’s anti-gravity grids compensated for full emergency thrust. Vespasian climbed frantically for space, with the courier vessel only ten seconds behind her.

“You must have thought me pretty stupid back there . . .” Williamson began, then was interrupted by reports from the returned crew-men. One of the helicopters had been fired on and the men from town had been ordered to stay there by the local police. These orders had come directly from the Imperial Representative, with instructions to kill anyone who tried to escape. But the local police and Corpsmen had come to know each other very well, and the Etlans had aimed well above their heads . . .

“This is getting dirtier by the minute,” said Stillman suddenly. “You know, I think we are going to be blamed for what happened around Lonvellin’s ship, for all the casualties in the area. Everything we have done here is going to be twisted so that we will be the villains. And I bet a lot of new diseases will be introduced immediately we leave, for which we will be blamed!”

Stillman swore, then went on, “You know how the people of the Empire think of this planet. Etla is their poor, weak, crippled sister, and we are going to be the dirty aliens who cold-bloodedly assaulted her . . .

As the Major had been talking Conway had begun to sweat again. His deductions regarding the Empire’s treatment of Etla had been from medical evidence, and it had been the medical aspect which had most concerned him, so that the larger implications of it all had not yet occurred to him. Suddenly he burst out, “But this could mean a war!”

“Yes indeed,” said Stillman savagely, “and that is probably just what the Imperial government wants. It has grown too big and fat and rotten at the core, judging by what has been happening here. Within a few decades it would probably fall apart of its own accord, and a good thing, too. But there is nothing like a good war, a Cause that everybody can feel strongly about, to pull a crumbling Empire together again. If they play it right this war could make it stand for another hundred years.”

Conway shook his head numbly. “I should have seen what was happening sooner,” he said. “If we’d had time to tell the Etlans the truth—”

“You saw it sooner than anyone else,” the Captain broke in sharply, “and telling the natives would not have helped them or us if the ordinary people of the Empire could not have been told also. You have no reason to blame yourself for—”

“Ordinance Officer,” said a voice from one of the twenty-odd speaker grills in the room. “We have a trace at Green Twelve Thirty-one which I’m putting on your repeater screen Five. Trace is putting out patterned interference against missile attack and considerable radar window, suggesting that it has a guilty conscience and is smaller than we are. Instructions, sir?”

Williamson glanced at the repeater screen. “Do nothing unless it does,” he said, then turned to Stillman and Conway again. When he spoke it was with the calming, confidence-inspiring tone of the senior officer who bears, and accepts, full responsibility, a tone which insisted that they were not to worry because he was there to do it for them.

He said, “Don’t look so distressed, gentlemen. This situation, this threat of interstellar war, was bound to come about sometime and plans have been devised for dealing with it. Luckily we have plenty of time to put these plans into effect.

“Spatially the Empire is a small, dense association of worlds,” he went on reassuringly, “otherwise we could not have made contact with them so soon. The Federation, however, is spread thinly across half the Galaxy. We had a star cluster to search where one sun in five possessed an inhabited planet. Their problem is nowhere near as simple. If they were very lucky they might find us in three years, but my own estimate is that it would be nearer twenty. So you can see that we have plenty of time.”

Conway did not feel reassured and he must have shown it, but the Captain was trying to meet his objections before he could make them.

“The agent who made the report may help them,” Williamson went on quickly. “Willingly, because he doesn’t know the truth about the Empire yet, he may give information regarding the Federation and the organization and strength of its Monitor Corps. But because he is a doctor this information is unlikely to be either complete or accurate, and would be useless anyway unless the Empire knows where we are. They won’t find that out unless they capture an astrogator or a ship with its charts intact, and that is a contingency which we will take very great precautions to guard against from this moment on.

“Agents are trained in linguistics, medicine or the social sciences,” Williamson ended confidently. “Their knowledge of interstellar navigation is nil. The scout ship which lands them returns to base immediately, this being standard precautionary procedure in operations of this sort. So you can see that we have a serious problem but that it is not an immediate one.

“Isn’t it?” said Conway.

He saw Williamson and Stillman looking at him—intently and cautiously as if he was some kind of bomb which, having exploded half an hour ago was about to do so again. In a way Conway was sorry that he had to explode on them again and make them share the fear and horrible, gnawing anxiety which up to now had been his alone. He wet his lips and tried to break it to them as gently as possible.

“Speaking personally,” he said quietly, “I don’t have the faintest idea of the coordinates of Traltha, or Illensa or Earth, or even the Earth-seeded planet where I was born. But there is one set of figures which I do know, and any other doctor on space service in this Sector is likely to know them also. They are the coordinates of Sector General.

“I don’t think we have any time at all.”

CHAPTER 12

The only constructive thing which Conway did during the trip back to Sector General was to catch up on his sleep, but very often the sleep was made so hideous by nightmares of the coming war that it was more pleasant to stay awake, and his waking time he spent in discussions with Williamson, Stillman and the other senior officers on Vespasian. Since he had called the shots right during that last half hour on Etla Williamson seemed to value any ideas he might have, even though problems of espionage, logistics and fleet maneuvers were hardly within the specialty of a Senior Physician.

The discussions were interesting, informative and, like his dreams, anything but pleasant.

According to Colonel Williamson an interstellar war of conquest was logistically impossible, but a simple war of extermination could be fought by anyone with sufficient force and stomachs strong enough to withstand the thought of slaughtering other intelligent beings by the planet-load. The Empire had more than enough force, and the strength of its collective stomach was dependent on factors over which the Monitor Corps had no control, as yet.

Given enough time agents of the Corps could have infiltrated the Empire. They already knew the position of one of its inhabited worlds and, because there was traffic between it and the other planets of the Empire, they would soon know the positions of others. The first step then would be to gather intelligence and eventually . . . Well, the Corps were no mean propagandists themselves and in a situation like this where the enemy was basing their campaign on a series of Big Lies, some method of striking at this weak spot could be devised. The Corps was primarily a police organization, a force intended not so much to wage war as to maintain peace. And like any good police force its actions were constrained by the possible effects on innocent bystanders-in this case the citizens of the Empire as well as the people of the Federation.

That was why the plan for undermining the Empire would be set in motion, even though it could not possibly take effect before the first clash occurred. Williamson’s fondest hope-or prayer might be a more accurate word-was that the Corpsman who was now in Empire hands would not know, and so would not be able to tell, the coordinates of Sector General. The Colonel was realist enough to know that if the agent knew anything the enemy would get it out of him one way or another. But failing this ideal solution the hospital would be defended in such a way that it would be the only Federation position that the enemy would know-unless they diverted a large proportion of their force to the time wasting job of searching the main body of the Galaxy, which was just what the Corps wanted.

Conway tried not to think of what it would be like at Sector General when the entire mobile force of the Empire was concentrated there . . .

A few hours before emergence they received another report from the agent who was now on the Empire’s Central World. The first one had taken nine days to reach Etla, the second was relayed with top priority coding in eighteen hours.

The report stated that the Central World did not seem to be as hostile toward extra-terrestrials as Etla and the other worlds of the Empire. The people there seemed much more cosmopolitan and occasionally e-ts could be seen in the streets. There were subtle indications, however, that beings had diplomatic status and were natives of worlds with which the Empire had made treaties with the purpose of holding them off as a group until such times as it could annex them individually. So far as the agent personally had been treated, things could not have been nicer, and in a few days time he was due for an audience with the Emperor himself. Nevertheless, he was beginning to feel uneasy.

It was nothing that he could put his finger on-he was a doctor who had been yanked off Survey and pre-Colonization duty, he reminded them, and not one of the Cultural Contact hot-shots. He got the impression that on certain occasions and among certain people, all mention of the Federation’s aims and constitution by himself was discouraged, while at other times, usually when there were only a few people present, they encouraged him to talk at great length. Another point which worried him was the fact that none of the newscasts he had seen made any mention of his arrival. Had the position been reversed and a citizen of the Empire made contact with the Federation, the event would have been top-line news for weeks.

He wondered sometimes if he was talking too much, and wished that a subspace receiver could be built as small as a sender so that he could ask for instructions .

That was the last they ever heard from that agent.

Conway’s return to Sector General was not as pleasant as he had thought it would be a few weeks previously. Then he had expected to return as a near-heroic personage with the biggest assignment of his career successfully accomplished, the plaudits of his colleagues ringing in his ears and with Murchison waiting to receive him with open arms. The latter had been a very slim probability indeed, but Conway liked to dream sometimes. Instead he was returning from a job which had blown up most horribly in his face, hoping that his colleagues would not stop him to ask how or what he had been doing, and with Murchison standing inside the lock with a friendly smile on her face and both arms hanging correctly by her sides.

Meeting him after a long absence, Conway thought sourly, was the sort of thing one friend did for another—there could be nothing more to it than that. She said it was nice to see him back and he said it was nice to be back, and when she started to ask questions he said he had a lot of things to do now but would it be all right if he called her later, and he smiled as if calling her to arrange a date was the most important thing in his mind. But his smile had suffered through lack of use and she must have seen that there was something definitely insincere about it. She went all Doctor-and-Nurse on him, said that of course he had more important things to attend to, and left quickly.

Murchison had looked as beautiful and desirable as ever and he had undoubtedly hurt her feelings, but somehow none of these things mattered to Conway at the moment. His mind would not think of anything but his impending meeting with O’Mara. And when he presented himself in the office of the Chief Psychologist shortly afterward it seemed that his worst forebodings were to be realized.

“Sit down, Doctor,” O’Mara began. “So you finally succeeded in involving us in an interstellar war . . .

“That isn’t funny,” said Conway.

O’Mara gave him a long, steady look. It was a look which not only noted the expression on Conway’s face but such other factors as his posture in the chair and the position and movements of his hands. O’Mara did not set much store by correct modes of address, but the fact that Conway had omitted to say “Sir” was also being noted as a contributory datum and given its proper place in his analysis of the situation. The process took perhaps two minutes and during that time the Chief Psychologist did not move an eyelid. O’Mara had no irritating mannerisms; his strong, blunt hands never twitched or fiddled with things, and when he desired it his features could be as expressive as a lump of rock.

On this occasion he let his face relax into an expression of almost benign disfavor, and finally he spoke.

“I agree,” he said quietly, “it isn’t a bit funny. But you know as well as I do that there is always the chance of some well-intentioned doctor in a place like this stirring up trouble on a large scale. We have often brought in some weird beastie of a hitherto unknown species who requires treatment urgently, and there is no time to search for its friends to discover if what we propose to do is the right procedure in the circumstances. A case in point was that Ian chrysalis you had a few months ago. That was before we made formal contact with the Ians, and if you hadn’t correctly diagnosed the patient’s condition as a growing chrysalis instead of a malignant growth requiring instant removal, a procedure which would have killed the patient, we would have been in serious trouble with the Ians.”

“Yes, sir,” said Conway.

O’Mara went on, “My remark was in the nature of a pleasantry, and had a certain aptness considering your recent experience with that Ian. Perhaps it was in questionable taste, but if you think I’m going to apologize then you obviously believe in miracles. Now tell me about Etla.

“And,” he added quickly before Conway could speak, “my desk and wastebasket are full of reports detailing the implications and probable dire consequences of the Etla business. What I want to know is how you handled your assignment as originally given.”

As briefly as possible Conway did as he was told. While he talked he felt himself begin to relax. He still had a confused and very frightening picture in the back of his mind of what the war would mean to countless millions of beings, to the hospital and to himself, but he no longer felt that he was partly responsible for bringing it about. O’Mara had begun the interview by accusing him of the very thing he had felt guilty of, then without saying so in so many words had made him see how ridiculous it had been to feel guilty. But as he neared the point where Lonvellin’s ship had been destroyed, the feeling returned full strength. If he had put the pieces together sooner, Lonvellin would not have died . . .

O’Mara must have detected the change of feeling, but allowed him to finish before he said, “It surprises me that Lonvellin didn’t see it before you did, it being the brain behind the operation. And while we’re on the subject of brains, yours does not seem to be thrown into complete disorder by problems involving large numbers of people requiring differing forms of treatment. So I have another job for you. It is smaller than the Etla assignment, you won’t have to leave the hospital, and with any luck it won’t blow up in your face.

“I want you to organize the evacuation of Sector General.”

Conway swallowed, then swallowed again.

“Stop looking as though you’d been sandbagged!” O’Mara said testily, “or I will hit you with something! You must have thought this thing through far enough to see that we can’t have patients here when the Empire force arrives. Or any non-military staff who have not volunteered to stay. Or any person, regardless of position or rank, who has in his mind detailed information regarding the whereabouts of any Federation planets. And surely the idea of telling people nominally your superiors what to do doesn’t frighten you, not after ordering a Corps Colonel around

Conway felt his neck getting warm. He let the dig about Williamson pass and said, “I thought we might leave the place empty for them.”

“No,” said O’Mara dryly. “It has too much sentimental, monetary and strategic value. We hope to keep a few levels operating for the treatment of casualties sustained by the defending force. Colonel Skempton is already at work on the evacuation problem and will help you all he can. What time is it by you, Doctor?”

Conway told him that when he had left Vespasian it had been two hours after breakfast.

“Good,” said O’Mara. “You can contact Skempton and go to work at once. With me it is long past bedtime, but I’ll sleep here in case you or the Colonel want something. Goodnight, Doctor.”

So saying he took off and folded his tunic, stepped out of his shoes and lay down. Within seconds his breathing became deep and regular. Suddenly Conway laughed.

“Seeing the Chief Psychologist lying on his own couch,” Conway said through his laughter, “is something of a traumatic experience. I very much doubt, sir, if our relationship will ever be quite the same . . .

As he was leaving O’Mara murmured sleepily, “I’m glad. For a while there I thought you were going all melancholy on me . . .

CHAPTER 13

Seven hours later Conway surveyed his littered desk wearily but with a measure of triumph, rubbed his eyes and looked across at the desk facing his. For a moment he felt that he was back on Etla and that a red-eyed Major Stillman would look up and ask what he wanted. But it was a red-eyed Colonel Skempton who looked up when he spoke.

“The breakdown of patients to be evacuated is complete,” Conway said tiredly. “There are divided first into species, which will indicate the number of ships required to move them and the living conditions which must be reproduced in each ship. With some of the weirder types this will necessitate structural alterations to the vessels, which will take time. Then each species is sub-divided into degrees of seriousness of the patient’s condition, which will determine the order of their going . . .

Except, thought Conway sourly, when a patient’s condition was such that to move it would endanger its life. In which case it would have to be evacuated last instead of first so that treatment could be prolonged as much as possible, which meant that specialized medical staff who themselves should have been evacuated by that time would be held back to treat it, and by that time its life might be endangered by missiles from an Empire warship anyway. Nothing seemed to happen in a tidy, consecutive fashion anymore.

. . . Then it will take a few days for Major O’Mara’s department to process the medical and maintenance staff,” Conway went on, “even though he just has to ask them a few questions under scope. When I arrived I expected the hospital to be under attack already. At the moment I don’t know whether to plan for a panic evacuation within forty-eight hours, which is the absolute minimum time for it and which would probably kill more patients than it would save, or take my time and plan for a merely hurried evacuation.”

“I couldn’t assemble the transport in forty-eight hours,” said Skempton shortly, and lowered his head again. As Chief of Maintenance and the Hospital’s ranking Monitor officer the job of assembling, modifying and routing the transports devolved on him, and he had an awful lot of work to do.

“What I’m trying to say,” Conway said insistently, “is how much time do you think we’ve got?”

The Colonel looked up again. “Sorry, Doctor,” he said. “I have an estimate which came in a few hours ago . . .” He lifted one of the top layer of papers on his desk and began to read.

Subjecting all the known factors to a rigid analysis, the report stated, it appeared likely that a short time-lag would occur between the point at which the Empire discovered the exact position of Sector General and the time when they acted on this information. The initial action was likely to be an investigation by a scout ship or a small scouting force. Monitor units at present stationed around Sector General would attempt to destroy this force. Whether they were successful or not the Empire’s next move would be more decisive, probably a full-scale offensive which would require many days to mount. By that time additional units of the Monitor Corps would have reached the area.

Say eight days,” Skempton concluded, “or three weeks if we’re lucky. But I don’t think we’ll be lucky.”

“Thank you,” said Conway, and returned to work.

First he prepared an outline of the situation for distribution to the medical staff within the next six hours. In it he laid as much stress as possible on the necessity for a quick, orderly evacuation without overdoing it to the extent of causing a panic, and recommended that patients be informed via their physicians so as to cause the minimum distress. In the case of seriously ill patients the doctors in charge should use their discretion whether the patient should be told or evacuated under sedation. He added that an at present unspecified number of medical staff would be evacuated with the patients and that everyone should be prepared to leave the hospital at a few hours notice. This document he sent to Publications for copying in print and tape so that everyone would be in possession of the information at roughly the same time.

At least that was the theory, Conway thought dryly. But if he knew his hospital grapevine the essential data would be circulating ten minutes after it left his desk.

Next he prepared more detailed instructions regarding the patients. The warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-forms could leave by any of several levels, but the heavy-G, high-pressure species would pose special problems, not to mention the light-gravity MSVKs and LSVOs, the giant, water-breathing AUGLs, the ultra-frigid types and the dozen or so beings on Level Thirty-eight who breathed superheated steam. Conway was planning on the operation taking five days for the patients and an additional two for the staff, and for this rapid clearing of the wards he would have to send people through levels foreign to them to reach their embarkation points. There would be possible oxygen contamination of chlorine environments, danger of chlorine leaking into the AUGL wards, or of water flooding all over the place. Precautions would have to be taken against failure of the methane life-forms’ refrigerators, breakdown of the antigravity equipment of the fragile, bird-like LSVOs and rupture of Illensan pressure envelopes.

Contamination was the greatest danger in a multi-environment hospital-contamination by oxygen, chlorine, methane, water, cold, heat or radiation. During the evacuation the safety devices usually in operation- airtight doors, double, inter-level locks, the various detection and alarm systems-would have to be overridden in the interests of a quick getaway.

Then staff would have to be detailed to inspect the transport units to ensure that their passenger space accurately reproduced the environment of the patients they were to carry.

All at once Conway’s mind refused to take any more of it. He closed his eyes, sank his head into the palms of his hands and watched the afterimage of his desktop fade slowly into redness. He was sick of paperwork. Since being given the Etla job his whole life had been paperwork; reports, summaries, charts, instructions. He was a doctor currently planning a complicated operation, but it was the sort of operation performed by a high-level clerk rather than a surgeon. Conway had not studied and trained for the greater part of his life to be a clerk.

He stood up, excused himself hoarsely to the Colonel and left the office. Without really thinking about it he was moving in the direction of his wards.

A new shift was just coming on duty and to the patients it was half an hour before the first meal of the day, which made it a very unusual time for a Senior Physician to do his rounds. The mild panic he caused would, in other circumstances, have been funny. Conway greeted the intern on duty politely, felt mildly surprised to find that it was the Creppelian octopoid he had met as a trainee two months previously, then felt annoyed when the AMSL insisted on following him around at a respectful distance. This was the proper procedure for a junior intern, but at that moment Conway wanted to be alone with his patients and his thoughts.

Most strongly of all he felt the need to see and speak to the sometimes weird and always wonderful extra-terrestrial patients who were technically under his care-all the beings he had come to know before leaving for Etla having been long since discharged. He did not look at their charts, however, because he had an allergy toward the abstraction of information via the printed word at the moment. Instead he questioned them closely, almost hungrily, regarding their symptoms and condition and background. He left some of the minor cases pleased and flabbergasted by such attention from a Senior Physician, and some might have been annoyed by his prying. But Conway had to do it. While he still had patients left he wanted to be a doctor.

An e-t doctor . . .

Sector General was breaking up. The vast, complex structure dedicated to the relief of suffering and the advance of xenological medicine was dying, succumbing like any terminal patient to a disease too powerful for it to resist. Tomorrow or the next day these wards would begin to empty. The patients with their exotic variations of physiology, metabolism and complaints would drain away. In darkened wards the weird and wonderful fabrications which constituted the alien idea of a comfortable bed would crouch like surrealistic ghosts along the walls. And with the departure of the e-t patients and staff would go the necessity for maintaining the environments which housed them, the Translators which allowed them to communicate, the physiology tapes which made it possible for one species to treat another.

But the Galaxy’s greatest e-t hospital would not die completely, not for another few days or weeks. The Monitor Corps had no experience of interstellar wars, this being their first, but they thought they knew what to expect. Casualties among the ship’s crews would be heavy and with a very high proportion of them fatal. The still-living casualties brought in would be of three types; decompression, bone-fractures and radiation poisoning. It was expected that two or three levels would be enough to take care of them, because if the engagement was fought with nuclear weapons, and there was no reason to suppose otherwise, most of the decompression and fracture cases would be radiation-terminal also- there would be no danger of overcrowding.

Then the internal break-up began with the evacuation would continue on the structural level as the Empire forces attacked. Conway was no military tactician, but he could not see how the vast, nearly-empty hospital could be protected. It was a sitting duck, soon to be a dead one. A great, fused and battered metal graveyard . . .

All at once a tremendous wave of feeling washed through Conway’s mind-bitterness, sadness and a surge of sheer anger which left him shaking. As he stumbled out of the ward he didn’t know whether he wanted to cry or curse or knock somebody down. But the decision was taken away from him when he turned the corner leading to the PVSJ section and collided solidly with Murchison.

The impact was not painful, one of the colliding bodies being well endowed with shock-absorbing equipment, but it was sharp enough to jolt his mind of a very somber train of thought onto one infinitely more pleasant. Suddenly he wanted to watch and talk to Murchison as badly as he had wanted to visit his patients, and for the same reason. This might be the last time he would see her.

“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, backing off. Then remembering their last meeting, he said, “I was a bit rushed at the lock this morning, couldn’t say much. Are you on duty?”

“Just coming off,” said Murchison in a neutral voice.

“Oh,” said Conway, then; “I wondered if . . . that is, would you mind . . .”

“I wouldn’t mind going for a swim,” she said.

“Fine,” said Conway.

They went up to the recreation level, changed and met inside on the simulated beach. While they were walking toward the water she said suddenly, “Oh, Doctor. When you were sending me those letters, did you ever think of putting them in envelopes with my name and room number on them?”

“And let everybody know I was writing to you?” Conway said. “I didn’t think you wanted that.”

Murchison gave a lady-like snort. “The system you devised was not exactly secret,” she said with a hint of anger in her tone. “Thornnastor in Pathology has three mouths and it can’t keep any of them shut. They were nice letters, but I don’t think it was fitting for you to write them on the back of sputum test reports . . .

“I’m sorry,” said Conway. “It won’t happen again.”

With the words the dark mood which the sight of Murchison had pushed from his mind came rushing back. It certainly wouldn’t happen again, he thought bleakly, not ever. And the hot, artificial sun did not seem to be warming his skin as he remembered it and the water was not so stingingly cold. Even in the half-G conditions the swim was wearying rather than exhilarating. It was as if some deep layer of tiredness swathed his body, dulling all sensation. After only a few minutes he returned to the shallows and waded onto the beach. Murchison followed him, looking concerned.

“You’ve got thinner,” she said when she had caught up with him.

Conway’s first impulse was to say “You haven’t,” but the intended compliment could have been taken another way, and he was lousy enough company already without running the risk of insulting her. Then he had an idea and said quickly, “I forgot that you’re just off duty and haven’t eaten yet. Will we go to the restaurant?”

“Yes, please,” said Murchison.

The restaurant was perched high on the cliff facing the diving ledges and boasted a continuous transparent wall which allowed a full view of the beach while keeping out the noise. It was the only place in the recreation level where quiet conversation was possible. But the quietness was wasted on them because they hardly spoke at all.

Until half way through the meal when Murchison said, “You aren’t eating as much, either.”

Conway said, “Have you ever owned, or navigated, a space vessel?”

“Me? Of course not!”

“Or if you were wrecked in a ship whose astrogator was injured and unconscious,” he persisted, “and the ship’s drive had been repaired, could you give the coordinates for reaching some planet within the Federation?”

“No,” said Murchison impatiently. “I’d have to stay there until the astrogator woke up. What sort of questions are these?”

“The sort I’ll be asking all my friends,” Conway replied grimly. “If you had answered 'Yes’ to one of them it would have taken a load off my mind.”

Murchison put down her knife and fork, frowning slightly. Conway thought that she looked lovely when she frowned, or laughed, or did anything. Especially when she was wearing a swimsuit. That was one thing he liked about this place, they allowed you to dine in swimsuits. And he wished that he could pull himself out of his dismal mood and be sparkling company for a couple of hours. On his present showing he doubted if Murchison would let him take her home, much less cooperate in the clinch for the two minutes, forty-eight seconds it took for the robot to arrive . . .

“Something is bothering you,” Murchison said. She hesitated, then went on, “If you need a soft shoulder, be my guest. But remember it is only for crying on, nothing else.”

“What else could I use it for?” said Conway.

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling, “but I’d probably find out.”

Conway did not smile in return. Instead he began to talk about the things that were worrying him-and the people, including her. When he had finished she was quiet for a long time. Sadly Conway watched the faintly ridiculous picture of a young, dedicated, very beautiful girl in a white swimsuit coming to a decision which would almost certainly cost her life.

“I think I’ll stay behind,” she said finally, as Conway knew she would. “You’re staying too, of course?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Conway said carefully. “I can’t leave until after the evacuation anyway. And there may be nothing to stay for . . .

He made a last try to make her change her mind. “. . .and all your e-t training would be wasted. There are lots of other hospitals that would be glad to have you . . .

Murchison sat up straight in her seat. When she spoke it was in the brisk, competent, no-nonsense tone of a nurse prescribing treatment to a possibly recalcitrant patient. She said, “From what you tell me you’re going to have a busy day tomorrow. You should get all the sleep you can. In fact, I think you should go to your room right away.

Then in a completely different tone she added, “But if you’d like to take me home first . . .

CHAPTER 14

On the day after instructions to evacuate the hospital had been issued, everything went smoothly. The patients gave no trouble at all, the natural order of things being for patients to leave hospital and in this instance their discharge was just a little bit more dramatic than usual. Discharging the medical staff, however, was a most unnatural thing. To a patient Hospital was merely a painful, or at least not very pleasant, episode in his life. To the staff of Sector General the hospital was their life.

Everything went smoothly with the staff on the first day also. Everyone did as they were told, probably because habit and their state of shock made that the easiest thing to do. But by the second day the shock had worn off and they began to produce arguments, and the person they most wanted to argue with was Dr. Conway.

On the third day Conway had to call O’Mara.

“What’s the trouble!” Conway burst out when O’Mara replied. “The trouble is making this . . . this gaggle of geniuses see things sensibly! And the brighter a being is the more stupid it insists on acting. Take Prilicla, a beastie who is so much eggshell and matchsticks that it would blow away in a strong draft, it wants to stay. And Doctor Mannon, who is as near being a Diagnostician as makes no difference. Mannon says treating exclusively human casualties would be something of a holiday. And the reasons some of the others have thought up are fantastic.

“You’ve got to make them see sense, sir. You’re the Chief Psychologist . . .

“Three quarters of the medical and maintenance staff,” O’Mara said sharply, “are in possession of information likely to help the enemy in the event of their capture. They will be leaving, regardless of whether they are Diagnosticians, computer men or junior ward orderlies, for reasons of security. They will have no choice in the matter. In addition to these there will be a number of specialist medical staff who will feel obliged, because of their patient’s condition, to travel with their charges. So far as the remainder are concerned there is very little I can do, they are sane, intelligent, mature beings capable of making up their own minds.”

Conway said, “Hah.”

“Before you impugn other people’s sanity,” O’Mara said dryly, “answer me one question. Are you going to stay?”

“Well . . .” began Conway.

O’Mara broke the connection.

Conway stared at the handset a long time without reclipping it. He still had not made up his mind if he was going to stay or not. He knew that he wasn’t the heroic type, and he badly wanted to leave. But he didn’t want to leave without his friends, because if Murchison and Prilicla and the others stayed behind, he couldn’t have borne the things they would think about him if he was to run away.

Probably they all thought that he meant to stay but was being coy about it, while the truth was that he was too cowardly and at the same time too much of a hypocrite to admit to them that he was afraid . . .

The sharp voice of Colonel Skempton broke into his mood of self loathing, dispelling it for the moment.

“Doctor, the Kelgian hospital ship is here. And an Illensan freighter. Locks Five and Seventeen in ten minutes.”

“Right,” said Conway. He left the office at a near run, heading for Reception.

All three control desks were occupied when he arrived, two by Nidians and the other by a Corps Lieutenant on stand-by. Conway positioned himself between and behind the Nidians where he could study both sets of repeater screens and began hoping very hard that he could deal with the things which would inevitably go wrong.

The Kelgian vessel already locked on at Five was a brute, one of the latest interstellar liners which had been partially converted into a hospital ship on the way out. The alterations were not quite complete, but a team of maintenance staff and robots were already boarding it together with senior ward staff who would arrange for the disposition of their patients. At the same time the occupants of the wards were being readied for the transfer and the equipment necessary for treating them was being dismantled, rapidly and with little regard for the subsequent condition of the ward walls. Some of the smaller equipment, heaped onto powered stretcher-carriers, was already on the way to the ship.

Altogether it looked like being a fairly simple operation. The atmosphere, pressure and gravity requirement of the patients were exactly those of the ship, so that no complicated protective arrangements were necessary, and the vessel was big enough to take all of the Kelgian patients with room to spare. He would be able to clear the DBLF levels completely and get rid of a few Tralthan FGLIs as well. But even though the first job was relatively uncomplicated, Conway estimated that it would take at least six hours for the ship to be loaded and away. He turned to the other control desk.

Here the picture was in many respects similar. The environment of the Illensan freighter matched perfectly that of the PVSJ wards, but the ship was smaller and, considering its purpose, did not have a large crew. The preparations for receiving patients aboard were, for this reason, not well advanced. Conway directed extra maintenance staff to the Illensan freighter, thinking that they would be lucky to get away with sixty PVSJs in the same time as it took the other ship to clear three whole levels.

He was still trying to find shortcuts in the problem when the Lieutenant’s screen lit up.

“A Tralthan ambulance ship, Doctor,” he reported. “Fully staffed and with provision for six FROBs and a Chalder as well as twenty of their own species. No preparation needed at their end, they say just load em up.

The AUGL denizens of Chalderescol, a forty-foot long, armored fishlike species were water-breathers who could not live in any other medium for more than a few seconds and live. On the other hand the FROBs were squat, immensely massive and thick-skinned beings accustomed to the crushing gravity and pressure of Hudlar. Properly speaking Hudlarians did not breathe at all, and their incredibly strong tegument allowed them to exist for long periods in conditions of zero gravity and pressure, so that the water in the AUGL section would not bother them . . .

Conway said quickly, “Lock Twenty-eight for the Chalder. While they’re loading it send the FROBs through the ELNT section into the main AUGL tank and out by the same Lock. Then tell them to move to Lock Five and we’ll have their other patients waiting . . .

Gradually the evacuation got under way. Accommodations was prepared for the first convalescent PVSJs aboard the Jllensan freighter and the slow trek of patients and staff through the noisome yellow fog of the chlorine section commenced. Simultaneously the other screen was showing a long, undulating file of Kelgians moving toward their ship, with medical and engineering staff carrying equipment charging up and down the line.

To some it might have seemed callous to evacuate the convalescent patients first, but there were very good reasons for doing so. With these walking wounded out of the way the wards and approaches to the locks would be less congested, which would allow the complicated frames and harnesses containing the more seriously ill patients to be moved more easily, as well as giving them a little more time in the optimum conditions of the wards.

“Two more Illensan ships, Doctor,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “Small jobs, capacity about twenty patients each.”

“Lock Seventeen is still tied up,” said Conway. “Tell them to orbit.”

The next arrival was a small passenger ship from the Earth-human world of Gregory, and with it came the lunch trays. There were only a few Earth-human patients at Sector General, but at a pinch the Gregorian ship could take any warm-blooded oxygen-breather below the mass of a Tralthan. Conway dealt with both arrivals at the same time, not caring if he did have to speak or even shout, with his mouth full . . .

Then suddenly the sweating, harassed face of Colonel Skempton flicked onto the internal screen. He said sharply, “Doctor, there are two Illensan ships hanging about in orbit. Don’t you have work for them?”

“Yes!” said Conway, irritated by the other’s tone. “But there is a ship already loading chlorine-breathers at Seventeen, and there is no other lock suitable on that level. They’ll have to wait their turn.

“That won’t do,” Skempton cut in harshly. “While they’re hanging about out there they are in danger should the enemy attack suddenly. Ether you start loading them at once or we send them away to come back later. Probably much later. Sorry.”

Conway opened his mouth and then shut it with a click over what he had been about to say. Hanging grimly onto his temper he tried to think.

He knew that the build-up of the defense fleet had been going on for days and that the astrogation officers responsible for bringing those units in would leave again as soon as possible-either on their own scout ships or with the patients leaving Sector General. The plan devised by the Monitor Corps called for no information regarding the whereabouts of the Federation being available in the minds of the defending forces or the non-combatants who remained in the hospital. The defense fleet was deployed to protect the hospital and the ships locked onto it, and the thought of two other ships swinging around loose, ships which contained fully qualified astrogators aboard, must have made the Monitor fleet commander start biting his nails.

“Very well, Colonel,” Conway said. “We’ll take the ships at Fifteen and Twenty-one. This will mean chlorine-breathers traveling through the DBLF maternity ward and a part of the AUGL section. Despite these complications we should have the patients aboard in three hours . . .

Complications was right . . .! Conway thought grimly as he gave the necessary orders. Luckily both the DBLF ward and that section of the AUGL level would be vacant by the time the chlorine-breathing Illensans in their pressure tents came through. But the ship from Gregory was at an adjoining lock taking on ELNTs who were being shepherded through the area by DBLF nurses in protective suits. Also there were some of the low-G, bird-like MSVKs being brought to the same vessel through the chlorine ward which he was hoping to clear . . .

There weren’t enough screens in Reception to keep properly in touch with what was going on down there, Conway decided suddenly. He had the horrible feeling that a most awful snarl-up would occur if he wasn’t careful. But he couldn’t be careful if he didn’t know what was going on. The only course was for him to go there and direct the traffic himself.

He called O’Mara, explained the situation quickly and asked for a relief.

CHAPTER 15

Dr. Mannon arrived, groaned piteously at the battery of screens and flashing lights, then smoothly took over the job of directing the evacuation. As a replacement Conway could not have hoped for anyone better. He was turning to go when Mannon pushed his face within three inches of one of the screens and said “Harrumph.”

Conway stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” said Mannon, without turning round. “It’s just that I’m beginning to understand why you want to go down there.”

“But I told you why!” said Conway impatiently. He stamped out, telling himself angrily that Mannon was indulging in senseless conversation at a time when unnecessary talk of any kind was criminal. Then he wondered if the aging Dr. Mannon was tired, or had a particularly confusing tape riding him, and felt suddenly ashamed. Snapping at Skempton or the receptionists hadn’t worried him unduly, but he did not want to begin biting the heads off his friends-even if he was harassed and tired and the whole place was rapidly going to Hell on horseback. Then very soon he was being kept too busy to feel ashamed.

Three hours later the state of confusion around him seemed to have doubled, although in actual fact it was simply that twice as much was being accomplished twice as fast. From his position at one of the high level entrances to the main AUGL ward Conway could look down on a line of ELNTs-six-legged, crab-like entities from Melf IV-scuttling or being towed across the floor of the great tank. Unlike their amphibious patients, the thickly-furred, air breathing Kelgians attending them had to wear protective envelopes which were sweltering hot inside. The scraps of Translated conversation which drifted up to him, although necessarily emotionless, verged on the incandescent. But the work was being done, and much faster than Conway had ever hoped for.

In the corridor behind him a slow procession of Illensans, some in protective suits and the more seriously ill in pressure tents which enclosed their beds, moved past. They were being attended by Earth-human and Kelgian nurses. The transfer was going smoothly now, but there had been a time only half an hour back when Conway had wondered if it would go at all . . .

When the large pressure tents came through into the water-filled AUGL section they had risen like giant chlorine bubbles and stuck fast against the ceiling. Towing them along the corridor ceiling had been impossible because outgrowths of plumbing might have ruptured the thin envelopes, and getting five or six nurses to weigh them down was impractical. And when he brought in powered stretcher carriers from the level above-vehicles not designed for but theoretically capable of operating under water-with the idea of both holding his super-buoyant patients down and moving them quickly, a battery casing had split and the carrier became the center of a mass of hissing, bubbling water which had rapidly turned black.

Conway would not be surprised to hear that the patient on that particular carrier had a relapse.

He had solved the problem finally with a magnificent flash of inspiration which, he told himself disgustedly, should have come two seconds after he had seen the problem. He had quickly switched the artificial gravity grids in the corridor to zero attraction and in the weightless condition the pressure tents had lost their buoyancy. It meant that the nurses had to swim instead of walk with their patients, but that was a small thing.

It was during the transfer of these PVSJs that Conway learned the reason for Mannon’s “Harrumph” up in Reception-Murchison was one of the nurses on that duty. She hadn’t recognized him, of course, but he knew there was only one person who could fill a nurse’s lightweight suit the way she did. He didn’t speak to her, however-it didn’t seem to be the proper time or place.

Time passed rapidly without another major crisis developing. At Lock Five the Kelgian hospital ship was ready to go, waiting only for some of the hospital’s senior staff to go aboard and for a Monitor ship to escort them out to a safe jump distance. Remembering some of the beings who were scheduled to leave on that ship, many of them friends of long standing, Conway decided the chance offered by the quiet spell to say a quick good-bye to some of them. He called Mannon to tell him where he was going, then headed for Five.

But by the time he arrived the Kelgian ship had gone. In one of the big direction vision panels he could see it drawing away with a Monitor cruiser in close attendance; and beyond them, hanging like newly-formed constellations in the blackness, lay the Monitor defense fleet. The buildup of units around the hospital was proceeding as planned and had increased visibly since Conway had looked at it yesterday. Reassured, and not a little awed by the sight, he hurried back to the AUGL section.

And arrived to find the corridor almost plugged by an expanding sphere of ice.

The ship from Gregory contained a specially refrigerated compartment for beings of the SNLU classification. These were fragile, crystalline, methane-based life-forms who would be instantly cremated if the temperature rose above minus one-twenty. Sector General was currently treating seven of these ultra-frigid creatures, and all of them had been packed into a ten-foot refrigerated sphere for the transfer. Because of the difficulties expected in handling them they were the last patients for the Gregorian ship.

If there had been a direct opening to space from the cold section they would have been moved to the ship along the outer hull, but as this was not possible they had to be brought through fourteen levels from the methane ward to their loading point at Lock Sixteen. In all the other levels the corridors had been spacious and filled with air or chlorine, so that all that the protective sphere had done was to collect a coating of frost and chill the surrounding atmosphere. But in the AUGL section it was growing ice. Fast.

Conway had known this would happen but had not considered it important because the sphere should not have been in the water-filled corridor long enough to cause a problem. But one of the towing lines had snapped and pulled it against some projecting conduit and within seconds they were welded together with ice. Now the sphere was encased in an icy shell four feet thick and there was barely room to pass above or below it.

“Get cutting torches down here,” Conway bawled up to Mannon, “quick!”

Three Corpsmen arrived just before the corridor was completely blocked. With the cutting flames of their torches set to maximum dispersal they attacked the icy mass, melting it free of the projection and trying to reduce it to a more manageable size. In the confined space of the corridor the heat being applied to the ice-ball sent the water temperature soaring up, and none of their suits had cooling units. Conway began to feel a distinct empathy toward boiled lobsters. And the great, awkward mass of ice was a danger to life and limb-danger from being crushed between it and the corridor wall, and the scalding, nearly opaque water which made it so easy to put an arm or leg between the ice and a cutting flame.

But finally the job was done. The container with its SNLU occupants was maneuvered through the inter-level lock into another air-filled section. Conway rubbed a hand across the outside of his helmet in an unconscious attempt to wipe the sweat from his forehead and wondered what else would go wrong.

The answer, according to Dr. Mannon up in Reception was not a thing.

All three levels of DBLF patients had left with the Kelgian ship, Mannon told him enthusiastically, the only caterpillars remaining in the hospital being a few of the nursing staff. Between them the three Illensan freighters had cleared the PVSJ wards of their chlorine-breathers, except for a few stragglers who would be aboard within a few minutes. Among the water-breathing types the AUGLs and ELNTs were clear, and the SNLUs in their baby iceberg were just going aboard. In all fourteen levels had been cleared and that was not a bad day’s work. Dr. Mannon suggested that Dr. Conway might take this opportunity of applying a pillow to his head and going into a state of voluntary unconsciousness in preparation for an equally busy day tomorrow.

Conway was swimming tiredly toward the inter-level lock, his mind revolving around the infinitely alluring concepts of a large steak and a long sleep, when it happened.

Something which he did not see struck him a savage, disabling blow. It bit simultaneously in the abdomen, chest and legs—the places where his suit was tightest. Agony burst inside him like a red explosion that was just barely contained by his tortured body. He doubled up and began to black out, he wanted to die and he desperately wanted to be sick. But some tiny portion of his brain unaffected by the pain and nausea insisted that he did not allow himself to be sick, that being sick inside his helmet was a very nasty way to die . . .

Gradually the pain receded and became bearable. Conway still felt as if a Tralthan had kicked him in the groin with all six feet, but other things were beginning to register. Loud, insistent, gurgling noises and the extremely odd sight of a Kelgian drifting in the water without its protective suit. A second look told him that it was wearing a suit, but that it was ruptured and full of water.

Further down in the AUGL tank two more Kelgians floated, their long, soft, furry bodies burst open from head to tail, the ghastly details mercifully obscured by an expanding red fog. And against the opposite wall of the tank there was an area of turbulence around a dark, irregular hole through which the water seemed to be leaving.

Conway swore. He thought he knew what had happened. Whatever had made that ragged-edged hole had, because of the non-compressibility of water, also expended its force on the unfortunate occupants of the AUGL tank. But because the other Kelgian and himself had been up here in the corridor they had escaped the worst effects of it.

Or maybe only one of them had escaped . . .

It took three minutes for him to drag the Kelgian nurse into the lock ten yards along the corridor. Once inside he set the pumps going to clear the chamber of water, simultaneously cracking an air valve. While the last of the water was draining away he struggled to lay the sodden, inert body on its side against one wall. The being’s silvery pelt was a mass of dirty gray spikes, and he could detect no pulse or respiration. Conway quickly lay down on his side on the floor, moved the third and fourth set of legs apart so that he could put his shoulder into the space between them, then with his own feet braced firmly against the opposite wall he began to push rhythmically. Sitting on top of it and pressing down with the palms was not, Conway knew, an effective method of applying artificial respiration to one of the massive DBLFs. After a few seconds water began trickling out of its mouth.

He broke off suddenly as he heard somebody trying to open the lock from the AUGL corridor side. Conway tried his radio, but one or the other of their sets was not working. Taking off his helmet quickly he put his mouth up against the seal, cupped his hands around it and yelled, “I’ve an air-breather in here without its suit, don’t open the seal or else you’ll drown us! Come in from the other side

A few minutes later the seal on the air-filled side opened and Murchison was looking down at him. She said, “D-Doctor Conway . . .” in a peculiar voice.

Conway straightened his legs sharply, ramming his shoulder into the area of the Kelgian’s underbelly nearest its lungs and said, “What?”

“I . . . You . . . the explosion . . .” she began. Then after the brief false start her tone became firm and purposeful as she went on, “There’s been an explosion, Doctor. One of the DBLF nurses is injured, severe lacerated wounds caused by a piece of floor plating spinning against it. We coagulated at once but I don’t think its holding. And the corridor where its lying is being flooded, the explosion must have opened a way into the AUGL section. The air-pressure is dropping slightly so we must be open to space somewhere, too, and there is a distinct smell of chlorine . . .

Conway groaned and ceased his efforts with the Kelgian, but before he could speak Murchison went on quickly, “All the Kelgian doctors have been evacuated and the only DBLFs left are this one and a couple who should be around here somewhere, but they’re just nursing staff . . .

Here was a proper mess, Conway thought as he scrambled to his feet; contamination and threatening decompression. The injured being would have to be moved quickly, because if the pressure dropped too much the airtight doors would drop and if the patient was on the wrong side of them when they did it would be just too bad. And the absence of a qualified DBLF meant that he would have to take a Kelgian physiology tape and do the job himself, which meant a quick trip to O’Mara’s office. But first he would have to look at the patient.

“Take over this one, please Nurse,” he said, indicating the sodden mass on the floor, “I think it’s beginning to breath for itself, but will you give it another ten minutes . . .” He watched while Murchison lay down on her side, knees bent and with both feet planted against the opposite wall. This was definitely neither the time nor the place, but the sight of her lying there in that demoralizingly tight suit made the urgency of patients, evacuations and physiology tapes diminish for just an instant. Then the tight, moisture beaded suit made him remember that Murchison had been in the AUGL tank, too, just a few minutes before the explosion, and he had an awful vision of her lovely body burst open like those of the two hapless DBLFs . . .

“Between the third and fourth pair of legs, not the fifth and sixth!” Conway said harshly as he turned to go.

Which wasn’t what he had meant to say at all.

CHAPTER 16

For some reason Conway’s mind had been considering the effects of the explosion rather than its cause. Or perhaps he had been deliberately trying not to think along that line, trying to fool himself that there had been some sort of accident rather than that the hospital was under attack. But the yammering PA reminded him of the truth at every intersection and on the way to O’Mara’s office everyone was moving twice as fast as usual and, as usual, all in a direction opposite to Conway’s. He wondered if they all felt as he did, scared, unprotected, momentarily expecting a second explosion to rip the floor apart under their hurrying feet. Yet it was stupid of him to hurry because he might be rushing toward the spot where the next explosion would occur . . .

He had to force himself to walk slowly into the Chief Psychologist’s office, detail his requirements and ask O’Mara quietly what had happened.

“Seven ships,” O’Mara replied, motioning Conway onto the couch as he lowered the Educator helmet into position. “They seem to have been small jobs, with no evidence of unusual armament or defenses. There was quite a scrap. Three got away and one of the four which didn’t launched a missile at us before it was clobbered. A small missile with a chemical warhead.

“Which is very odd,” O’Mara went on thoughtfully, “because if it had been a nuclear warhead there would be no hospital here now. We weren’t expecting them just as soon as this and were taken by surprise a little. Do you have to take this patient?”

“Eh? Oh, yes,” said Conway. “You know DBLF. Any incised wound is an emergency with them. By the time another doctor had a look at the patient and came up here for a tape it might be too late.”

O’Mara grunted. His hard, square, oddly gentle hands checked the fitting of the helmet, then pressed Conway down onto the couch. He went on, “They tried to press that attack home, it was really vicious. A clear indication, I would say, of their feelings toward us. Yet they used a chemical head when they could have destroyed us completely. Peculiar. One thing, though, it has made the ditherers make up their minds. Anybody who wants to stay here now really wants to stay and the ones who are leaving are going to leave fast, which is a good thing from Dermod’s point of view . . .

Dermod was the fleet commander.

. . . Now make your mind a blank,” he ended sourly, “or at least make it blanker than usual.”

Conway did not have to try to make his mind a blank, a process which aided the reception of an alien physiology tape. O’Mara’s couch was wonderfully soft and comfortable. He had never appreciated it properly before, he seemed to be sinking right into it . . .

A sharp tap on the shoulder made him jump. O’Mara said caustically, “Don’t go to sleep! And when you finish with your patient go to bed. Mannon can handle things in Reception and the hospital won’t go to pieces without you unless we get hit with an atomic bomb . . .

With the first evidence of double-mindedness already becoming apparent, Conway left the office. Basically the tape was a brain recording of one of the great medical minds of the species of the patient to be treated. But the doctor taking such a tape had, literally, to share his mind with a completely alien personality. That was how it felt, because all the memories and experience of the being who had donated the tape were impressed on the receiving mind, not just selected pieces of medical data. Physiology tapes could not be edited.

But the DBLFs were not as alien as some of the beings Conway had had to share his mind with. Although physically they resembled giant, silvery caterpillars they had a lot in common with Earth-humans. Their emotional reactions to such stimuli as music, a piece of scenic grandeur, or DBLFs of the opposite sex were very nearly identical. This one even liked meat, so that Conway would not have to starve on salad if he had to keep the tape for any length of time.

What matter if he did feel unsafe walking on just two legs, or found himself humping his back rhythmically as he walked. Or even, when he reached the abandoned DBLF section and the small theater where the patient had been brought, that a part of his mind thought of Murchison as just another one of those spindly DBDGs from Earth . . .

Although Murchison had everything ready for him, Conway did not start at once. Because of the mind and personality of the great Kelgian doctor sharing his brain he really felt for the patient now. He appreciated the seriousness of its condition and knew that there were several hours of delicate, exacting work ahead of him. At the same time he knew that he was very tired, that he could barely keep his eyes open. It was an effort even to move his feet, and his fingers, when he was checking over the instruments, felt like thick, tired sausages. He knew that he couldn’t work in this condition unless he wanted to kill the patient.

“Fix me a pep-shot, will you please?” he said, biting down on a yawn. For an instant Murchison looked as if she might give him an argument. Pep-shots were frowned on in the hospital—their use was sanctioned only in cases of the gravest emergency, and for very good reasons. But she prepared and injected the shot without saying anything, using a blunt needle and quite unnecessary force to jab it home. Even though half his mind wasn’t his own, Conway could see that she was mad at him.

Then suddenly the shot took effect. Except for a slight tingling sensation in his feet and a blotchiness which only Murchison could see in his face Conway felt as clear-eyed, alert and physically refreshed as if he had just come out of a shower after ten hours sleep.

“How’s the other one?” he asked suddenly. He had been so tired he had forgotten the Kelgian he had left with Murchison in the lock.

“Artificial respiration brought it round,” she replied, then with more enthusiasm, “but it was still in shock. I sent it up to the Tralthan section, they still have a few senior staff there . . .

“Good,” said Conway warmly. He wanted to say more, to be more personally complimentary, but he knew that there was no time to stand and chat. He ended, “Let’s begin, shall we . . .

Except for the thin-walled, narrow casing which housed the brain the DBLF species had no honey structure. Their bodies were composed of an outer cylinder of musculature which, in addition to being its primary means of locomotion, served to protect the vital organs within it. To the mind of a being more generously reinforced with bones this protection was far from adequate. Another severe disadvantage in the event of injury was its complex and extremely vulnerable circulatory system; the blood supply network which had to feed the tremendous bands of muscle encircling its body ran close under the skin. The thick fur of the pelt gave some protection here, but not against chunks of jagged-edged, flying metal.

An injury which many other species would consider superficial could cause a DBLF to bleed to death in minutes.

Conway worked slowly and carefully, dissolving away the coagulant so hastily applied by Murchison, repairing or partially replacing damaged major blood vessels and sealing off the minor branches which were too fine for him to do anything else. This part of the operation worried him- not because it endangered the life of the patient but because he knew that the beautiful silvery fur would never grow properly in these areas again, that if it grew at all it would be yellowed and visually repulsive to a male Kelgian. The injured nurse was a remarkably handsome young female and such a disfiguration could be a real tragedy. Conway hoped she wouldn’t be too proud to keep the area covered with surrogate fur. Admittedly it did not have the rich, deep luster of living fur and would be immediately recognizable for what it was, but neither would it be so visually distressing . . .

An hour ago this would have been just another caterpillar, Conway thought dryly, an “it” about whom he felt only clinical concern. Now he had reached the stage of worrying about the patient’s marriage prospects. A physiology tape certainly made one feel for one’s e-t patients.

When he had finished Conway called Reception, described the patient’s condition and urged that it should be evacuated as quickly as possible. Mannon told him that there was half a dozen small vessels loading at the moment, most of them with provision for taking oxy-breathers, and gave him a choice of two Locks in the vicinity. Mannon added that, with the exception of a few patients on the critically ill list, all patients of classifications A through G had either gone or were on the point of going, along with staff members of the same classifications who had been ordered to go by O’Mara for security reasons.

Some of them had displayed extreme reluctance to leave. One in particular, a hoary old Tralthan Diagnostician who was unfortunate enough to own a personal space yacht-something which in normal conditions would not have been considered a misfortune!-had had to be formally charged with attempted treason, disturbing the peace and incitement to mutiny and arrested, that being the only way to get it aboard ship.

As he broke the connection Conway thought that they wouldn’t have to go to such lengths to get him to leave the hospital. He shook his head, angry and ashamed of himself, and gave Murchison instructions for transferring the patient to the ship.

The injured Kelgian had to be enclosed in a pressure tent for the initial stage of its trip through the AUGL ward, which was now open to space. There were no water-breathers left in the big tank and no water, there being more urgent things to do than repairing and refilling a section which would very likely never be used again. The sight of the great tank, empty now, with its walls vacuum dry and the lush, underwater vegetation which had been designed to make the ward seem more homelike to its occupants hanging like pieces of brittle, discolored parchment made Conway feel horribly depressed. The depression remained with him while they negotiated the three empty chlorine levels below it and came to another air-filled section.

Here they had to pause to allow a procession of TLTUs to pass. Conway was glad of the chance to stop for a while because, although the pep-shot had him still feeling full of artificial beans, Murchison was beginning to droop. As soon as their patient was aboard he thought he would order her off to bed.

Seven TLTUs filed slowly past, their protective spheres anchored to stretcher-carriers driven by sweating, tense-faced orderlies. Unlike those of the methane life-forms these spheres did not collect frost. Instead they emitted a high-pitched, shuddering whine as their generators labored to maintain the internal temperature at a comfortable, for their occupants, five hundred degrees. Each one of them passed in a wave of heat which Conway could feel six yards away.

If another warhead was to strike here and now, and one of those globes was opened . . . Conway didn’t think there was a worse way to die than to have the flesh boiled off his bones in a blast of super-heated steam.

By the time they had handed the patient over to the ship’s medical officer at the Lock, Conway was having difficulty focusing his eyes and his legs had a definite rubbery feel to them. Bed was indicated, he thought, or another pep-shot. He had just decided on the former course of treatment when he was collared respectfully by a Monitor officer wearing a heavy-duty suit which was still radiating the cold of space.

“The casualties are here, sir,” the officer said urgently. “We brought them in on a supply ship because Reception is tied up with the evacuation. We’re locked onto the DBLF section, but the place is empty and you’re the first doctor I’ve seen. Will you take care of them?”

Conway almost asked what casualties, but stopped himself in time. There had been an attack, he remembered suddenly, the attack had been beaten off and the ensuing casualties, whether great or small, were obviously of prime concern to this officer. If he had known that Conway had been too busy to think about the battle and its casualties.

“Where did you put them?” said Conway.

“They’re still in the ship,” the officer replied, relaxing slightly. “We thought it better for someone to look at them before they were moved. Some of them . . . I mean . . . Uh, will you follow me, sir?”

There were eighteen of them, the wreckage of men who had been fished out of the wreckage of a ship, whose suits were still cold to the touch. Only their helmets had been taken off, and that had been to ascertain whether or not they still lived. Conway counted three decompressions, the rest being fractures of varying degrees of complication one of which was quite definitely a depressed fracture of the skull. There were no radiation cases. So far it had been a clean war, if any war could have been described as clean . . .

Conway felt himself getting angry, but fought it back. This was no time to become emotional over broken, bleeding and asphyxiated patients or the reasons for them being in that condition. Instead he straightened and turned to Murchison.

“I’ll take another pep-shot,” he said briskly, “this will be a long session. But first I’ll have the DBLF tape erased and try to around up some help. While I’m gone you might see to getting these men out of their suits and moved to DBLF Theater Five, then you can catch up on your sleep.

“And thank you,” he added awkwardly, not wanting to say too much because the Corpsman was still at his elbow. If he had tried to say the things he wanted to say to Murchison with eighteen urgent cases lying around their feet the officer would have been scandalized, and Conway would not have blamed him. But dammit the Corpsman hadn’t been working beside Murchison for the last three hours, with a pep-shot heightening all his senses . . .

“If it would help you,” said Murchison suddenly, “I could take a pep shot, too.”

Gratefully, Conway said, “You’re a very silly girl, but I was hoping you would say that . . .

CHAPTER 17

By the eighth day all the extra-terrestrial patients had been evacuated and with them had gone nearly four-fifths of the hospital’s staff. On the levels which maintained extremes of temperature, pressure or gravity the power was withdrawn causing the ultra-frigid solids to melt and gasify and the dense or superheated atmospheres to condense into a sludgy liquid mess on the floors. Then as the days passed more and more Corpsmen of the Engineering Division arrived, converting the one-time wards into barracks and tearing out large sections of the outer hull so that they could erect projector bases and launching platforms. Dermod’s idea now was that Sector General should defend itself instead of relying completely on the fleet, which had already shown that it wasn’t capable of stopping everything. By the twenty-fifth day Sector General had made the transition from being a defenseless hospital into what amounted to a heavily armed military base.

Because of its tremendous size and vast reserves of power-several times greater than that of the mobile forces defending it—the weapons were many and truly formidable. Which was as well because on the twenty-ninth day they were tested to the utmost in the first major attack by the enemy.

It lasted for three days.

Conway knew that there were sound, logical reasons for the Corps fortifying the hospital as they had done, but he didn’t like it. Even after that fantastic, three-day long attack when the hospital had been hit four times-again with chemical warheads, luckily he still felt wrong about it: Every time he thought of the tremendous structure which had been dedicated to the highest ideals of humanity and medicine being made into an engine of destruction, geared to a hellish and unnatural ecology wherein it produced its own casualties, Conway felt angry and sad and not a little sickened by the whole ghastly mess. Sometimes he was apt to give vent to his opinions . . .

It was five weeks after the beginning of the evacuation and he was lunching with Mannon and Prilicla. The main dining hall was no longer crowded at mealtimes and green uniformed Corpsmen heavily outnumbered the e-ts at the tables, but there were still upward of two hundred extra-terrestrials in the place and this was what Conway was currently objecting to.

I still say it’s a waste,” he said angrily, “a waste of lives, of medical talent, everything! All the cases are, and will continue to be, Monitor casualties. Every one an Earth-human. So there are no juicy e-t cases for them to work on. The e-t staff should be sent home!

“Present company included,” he ended, with a glare at Prilicla before he turned to face Mannon.

Dr. Mannon made an incision in his steak and hefted a generous forkful mouth ward. Since the disappearance of all his light-gravity patients he had had his LSVO and MSVK tapes erased and so had no mental restrictions placed on his diet. In the five weeks since the evacuation he had noticeably put on weight.

“To an e-t,” he said reasonably, “we are juicy e-ts.”

“You’re quibbling,” said Conway. “What I’m objecting to is senseless heroics.”

Mannon raised his eyebrows. “But heroics are nearly always senseless,” he said dryly, “and highly contagious as well. In this case I’d say the Corps started it by wanting to defend this place, and because of that we felt obliged to stay also to look after the wounded. At least a few of us feel like that, or we think a few of us feel like that.

“The sane, logical thing to do would have been to get while the going was good,” Mannon continued, not quite looking at Conway, “and not a word would have been said to those who got. But then these sane, logical people have colleagues or, uh, friends who they suspect might be in the true hero category, and they won’t leave because of what they imagine their friends will think of them if they run away. So they’d sooner die than have their friends think they were cowards, and they stay.”

Conway felt his face getting warm, but he didn’t say anything.

Mannon grinned suddenly and went on, “But this is a form of heroism, too. A case of Death before Dishonor, you might say. And before you can turn around twice everybody is a hero of one kind or the other. And no doubt the e-ts . . .” He gave a sly glance at Prilicla. “. . . are staying for similar reasons. And also, I suspect, because they don’t want it thought that Earth-human DBDGs have a monopoly on heroism.”

“I see,” said Conway. He knew that his face was flaming red. It was now quite obvious that Mannon knew that the only reason he had stayed in the hospital was because Murchison, O’Mara and Mannon himself might have been disappointed in him if he’d left. And at the other side of the table Prilicla, the emotion sensitive, would be reading him like a book. Conway thought that he had never felt worse in his whole life.

“You are so right,” said Prilicla suddenly, deftly inserting its fork into the plate of spaghetti before it and using two mandibles to twist. “If it had not been for the heroic example of you DBDGs I would have been on the second ship out.”

“The second?” asked Mannon.

“I am not,” said Prilicla, waving spaghetti for emphasis, “completely without valor.”

Listening to the by-play Conway thought that the honest thing would have been for him to admit his cowardice to them, but he also knew that to do so would be to cause embarrassment all round. It was plain that they both knew him for the coward he was and were telling him in their separate fashions that it didn’t matter. And looking at it objectively it really did not matter, because there would be no more ships leaving Sector General and its remaining staff were going to be heroes whether they liked it or not. But Conway still did not think it right that he should be given credit for being a brave, selfless, dedicated man of medicine when he was nothing of the sort.

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 entity 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 latest 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.

Conway turned away from the view-port and began moving toward his post. Even the unimportant skirmishes produced casualties and he really had no business being up here sightseeing. Besides, he would get a much truer picture of how the battle was going down in the wards.

For the next twelve hours casualties arrived in a steady trickle, then the light, probing attacks changed to heavy, feinting thrusts and the wounded came in an irregular stream. Then the attack proper began and they became a flood.

He lost all sense of time, of who his assistants were, of the number of cases he dealt with. There were many times when he needed a pep shot to clear the fatigue from his mind and hands, but pep-shots were now forbidden regardless of circumstances—the medical staff were hard pressed enough without some of them becoming patients. Instead he had to work tired, knowing that he was not bringing everything he had to the treatment of his patients, and he ate and slept when he reached the point of not being able to hold his instruments properly. Sometimes it was the towering bulk of a Tralthan at his side, sometimes a Corpsman medical orderly, sometimes Murchison. Mostly it was Murchison, he thought. Either she didn’t need to sleep, or she snatched a catnap the same times as he did, or even at a time like this he was more inclined to notice her. It was usually Murchison who pushed food at his unresisting face and told him when he really ought to lie down.

By the fourth day the attack showed no signs of diminishing. The rattlers on the outer hull were going almost constantly, their power drain making the lights flicker.

The principle which furnished artificial gravity for the floor and compensated for the killing accelerations used by the ships also lay behind the weapons of both sides—the repulsion screen, originally a meteor protection device, the tractor and pressor beams, and the rattler which was a combination of both. The rattler pushed and pulled-vibrated- depending on how narrowly it was focused, at up to eighty Gs. A push of eighty gravities then a pull of eighty gravities, several times a minute. Naturally it was not always focused accurately on target, both ships were moving and taking counter-measures, but it was still tight enough to tear the plating off a hull or, in the case of a small ship, to shake it until the men inside rattled.

There was a lot of rattler work going on now. The Empire forces were attacking savagely, compressing the Monitor defense globe down against the hospital’s outer hull. The infighting which was taking place was with rattler only, space being too congested to fling missiles about indiscriminately. This applied only to the warring ships, however—there were still missiles being directed at the hospital, probably hundreds of them, and some of them were getting through. At least five times Conway felt the tell-tale shock against the soles of his shoes where his feet were strapped to the operating room floor.

There was no fine diagnostic skill required in the treatment of these rattled men. It was all too plain that they suffered from multiple and complicated fractures, some of them of nearly every bone in their bodies. Many times when he had to cut one of the smashed bodies out of its suit Conway wanted to yell at the men who had brought it in, “What do you expect me to do with this . . .

But this was alive, and as a doctor he was supposed to do everything possible to make it stay that way.

He had just finished a particularly bad one, with both Murchison and a Tralthan nurse assisting, when Conway became aware of a DBLF in the room. Conway had become familiar with the dyed patterns of color used by the Kelgian military to denote rank, and he saw that this one bore an additional symbol which identified it as a doctor.

“I am to relieve you, Doctor,” the DBLF said in a flat, Translated, hurried voice. “I am experienced in treating beings of your species. Major O’Mara wants you to go to Lock Twelve at once.”

Conway quickly introduced Murchison and the Tralthan—there was another casualty being floated in and they would be working on it within minutes—then said, “Why?”

“Doctor Thornnastor was disabled when the last missile hit us,” the Kelgian replied, spraying its manipulators with the plastic its race used instead of gloves. “Someone with e-t experience is required to take over Thornnastor’s patients and the FGLIs which are coming in now at Lock Twelve. Major O’Mara suggests you look at them as soon as possible to see what tapes you need.

“And take a suit, Doctor,” the DBLF added as Conway turned to go. “The level above this one is losing pressure .

There had been little for Pathology to do since the evacuation, Conway thought as he propelled himself along the corridors leading to Twelve, but the Diagnostician in charge of that department had demonstrated its versatility by taking over the largest casualty section. In addition to FGLIs of its own species Thornnastor had taken DBLFs and Earth-humans, and the patients who had that lumbering, irascible, incredibly brilliant Tralthan to care for them were lucky indeed. Conway wondered how badly it was injured, the Kelgian doctor hadn’t been able to tell him.

He passed a view-port and took a quick look outside. It reminded him of a cloud of angry fireflies. The stanchion he was gripping slapped his hand, telling him that another missile had struck not too far away.

There were two Tralthans, a Nidian and a space-suited QCQL in the antechamber when he arrived as well as the ever present Corpsmen. The Nidian explained that a Tralthan ship had been nearly pulled apart by enemy rattlers but that many of its crew had survived. The tractor beams mounted on Sector General itself had whisked the damaged vessel down to the lock and . . .

The Nidian began to bark at him.

“Stop that!” said Conway irritably.

The Nidian looked startled, then it started to bark again. A few seconds later the Tralthan nurses came over and began to deafen him with their modulated fog-horn blasts, and the QCQL was whistling at him through its suit radio. The Corpsmen, engrossed in bringing the casualties through the boarding tube, were merely looking puzzled. Suddenly Conway began to sweat.

They had been hit again, but because he had not been holding onto anything he had not felt it-but he knew exactly where they had been hit. Conway fumbled with his Translator, rapped it sharply with his knuckles-a completely futile gesture-and kicked himself toward the intercom.

On every circuit he tried things howled and trumpeted and moaned and made guttural barking sounds, a mad cacaphony that set Conway’s teeth on edge. A picture of the theater he had just left flashed before his mind, with Murchison and the Tralthan and the Kelgian doctor working on that casualty and not one of them knowing what the other was saying. Instructions, vital directions, demands for instruments or information on the patient’s condition-all would be given in an alien gabble incomprehensible to the theater staff. He was seeing the picture repeated all over the hospital. Only beings of the same species could make themselves understood to each other, and even that did not hold true in every case. There were Earth-humans who did not speak Universal, who spoke languages native to areas on their home planets and who had to rely on Translators even when speaking to other Earth-humans . . .

From the alien babel Conway’s straining ears were able to isolate words and a voice which he could understand. It was intelligence battling through a high level of background noise, and all at once his ears seemed to tune out the static and hear only the voice, the voice which was saying,

Three torps playing follow-my-leader, sir. They blasted a way right through. We can’t jury-rig a Translator, there’s nothing of it left to do it with. The last torp went off inside the computer room . . .

Outside the intercom niche the e-t nurses were whistling and growling and moaning at him and at each other. He should be giving instructions for the preliminary examination of his casualties, arranging for ward accommodation, checking on the readiness of the FGLI theater. But he could not do any of these things because his nursing staff would not understand a word he said.

CHAPTER 19

For a long time, although it might have only been a few seconds, Conway could not bring himself to leave the alcove which contained the intercom unit, and the Chief Psychologist would have been clinically concerned about the thoughts which were going through his mind just then. But slowly he fought down the panic that made him want to run away and hide somewhere, by reminding himself savagely that there was nowhere to run to and by forcing himself to look at the FGLIs drifting about in the antechamber. The place was literally filled with them.

Conway himself knew only the rudiments of Tralthan physiology, but that was the least of his worries because he could easily take an FGLI tape. What he had to do was to start things moving for them now. But it was hard to think of each other and the Corpsmen shouting to know what was the matter and the casualties, many of whom were conscious, making pitiful, frantic noises that were muffled only slightly by their pressure envelopes.

“Sergeant!” Conway bawled suddenly at the senior orderly, waving at the casualties. “Ward Four-B, Two-Hundred and Seventh level. Know where it is?”

The NCO bobbed his head, and Conway turned to the nurses.

He got nowhere with the Nidian and QCQL despite all his efforts at sign language, and it was only when he wrapped his legs around one of the FGLI’s forelimbs and by brute force twisted the appendage containing its visual equipment until the cluster of eyes pointed at where the causalities were going that he got anywhere at all. Finally he made the Tralthans understand-he hoped-that they were to accompany the injured and do what they could for them when they arrived.

Four-B had been given over almost entirely to FGLI casualties and most of the staff were Tralthan also, which meant that some of the patients could be reassured by nurses speaking their own language. Conway refused to think of the other casualties who did not have this advantage. He had been assigned Thornnastor’s wards. One thing at a time.

When he reached O’Mara’s office the Major wasn’t there. Carrington, one of his assistants, explained that O’Mara was busy trying to match up patients and staff into species wherever possible, and that he wanted to see Conway immediately the Doctor was finished in the Tralthan wards. Carrington added that as communications were either dead or tied up with e-ts yelling gibberish at each other would he mind either reporting back here or remaining where he was so that the Major could find him. Ten minutes later Conway had the tape he wanted and was on his way to Four-B.

He had taken FGLI tapes before and they weren’t too bad. There was a tendency for him to feel awkward at having to walk on only two feet instead of six, and he wanted to move his head and neck about to follow moving objects instead of merely swiveling his eyes. But it was not until he reached the ward that he realized how fully his Tralthan mind partner had settled in. The rows of Tralthan patients became his most immediate and pressing concern, while only a small part of his mind was engaged with the problem of the Tralthan nurses who were obviously close to panic and whose words, for some odd reason, he could not understand. For the Earth-human nurses-puny, shapeless and unlovely bags of dough-he felt only impatience.

Conway went over to the group of shapeless and unlovely bags, although to the human portion of his mind a couple of them looked very shapely indeed, and said, “Give me your attention, please. I have a Tralthan tape which will enable me to treat these FGLJs, but the Translator breakdown means I can’t talk to them or the Tralthan staff. You girls will have to help with the preliminary examinations and in the theater.”

They were all staring at him and losing their fear at being told what to do again by someone in authority, even though they were being told to do the impossible. There were forty-seven FGLI patients in the ward, which included eight new arrivals needing immediate attention. There were only three Earth-human nurses.

“The FGLI staff and yourselves can’t talk now,” he went on after a moment’s hesitation, “but you use the same system of medical notation. Some method of communication can be worked out. It will be slow and roundabout, of course, but you must let them know what we are doing and get their help.

“Wave your arms,” he ended, “draw pictures. Above all, use your pretty little heads.”

Soft soap at a time like this, he thought ashamedly. But it was all he could think of at the moment, he wasn’t a psychologist like O’Mara . . .

He had dealt with four of the most urgent cases when Mannon arrived with another FGLJ in a stretcher held to the floor with magnets. The patient was Thornnastor and it was immediately obvious that the Diagnostician would be immobilized for a long time to come.

Mannon gave details of Thornnastor’s injuries and what he had done about them, then went on, “. . . Seeing that you have the monopoly on Tralthans you’d better handle its post-op nursing. And this is the sanest and quietest ward in the hospital, dammit. What’s your secret? Boyish charm, a bright idea, or have you access to a bootleg Translator?”

Conway explained what he was trying to do about the mixed species nurses.

“Ordinarily I don’t hold with nurses and doctors passing notes during an op,” Mannon said. His face was gray with fatigue, his attempt at humor little more than a conditioned reflex. “But it seemed to work for you. I’ll pass the idea on.”

They maneuvered Thornnastor’s vast body into one of the padded frameworks used as beds for FGLIs in weightless conditions, then Mannon said, “I’ve got an FGLI tape, too. Needed it for Thorny, here. Now I’ve got two QCQLs lined up. Didn’t know there was any such beastie until today, but O’Mara has the tape. It’s a suit job, that gunk they breathe would kill anything that walks, crawls or flies, excluding them. They’re both conscious, too, and I can’t talk to them. I can see I’m going to have fun.”

Suddenly his shoulders drooped and the muscles holding up the corners of his mouth gave up the fight. He said dully, “I wish you’d think of something, Conway. In wards like this where the patients and some nurses are of the same classification it isn’t too bad. Relatively, that is. But other places where the casualties and staff are completely mixed, and where singletons among the e-t staff have become casualties in the bombardment, things are rough.”

Conway had heard the bombardment, a continuous and irregular series of crashes that had been transmitted through the metal of the hospital as if someone was beating on a discordant gong. He had heard them and tried not to think about them, for he knew that the staff were becoming casualties and the casualties that the staff had been taking care of were becoming casualties twice over.

“I can imagine,” Conway said grimly. “But with Thornnastor’s wards to look after I’ve plenty to do—”

“Everybody has plenty to do!” Mannon said sharply, “but someone will have to come up with something quick!”

What do you want me to do about it? Conway thought angrily at Mannon’s receding back, then he turned to his next patient.

For the past few hours something distinctly odd had been happening in Conway’s mind. It had begun with an increasingly strong feeling that he almost knew what the Tralthan nurses in the ward were saying. This he put down to the fact that the FGLI tape he had taken—the complete memory record of an eminent physiologist of that race-had given him a lot of data on Tralthan attitudes and expressions and tones of voice. He had never noticed the effect before-probably, he supposed, because he had never had to deal with so many Tralthans in so short a time before, and he had always had a Translator anyway. But working with mainly Tralthan patients had caused the FGLI recorded personality to gain greater than usual prominence at the expense of the human personality.

There was no struggle for possession of his mind, no conflict in the process. It happened naturally because he was being forced to do so much FGLI type thinking. When he did have occasion to speak to an Earth human nurse or patient, he had to concentrate hard if the first few words they spoke were not to sound like gibberish to him.

And now he was beginning to hear and understand Tralthan talking.

It was far from perfect, of course. For one thing the elephantine hootings and trumpetings were being filtered through human rather than Tralthan ears to the FGLI within his mind, and suffered distortion and change of pitch accordingly. The words tended to be muffled and growly, but he did get some of them, which meant that he possessed a Translator of sorts. It was a strictly one-way affair, of course. Or was it?

When he was preparing the next case for the theater he decided to try talking back.

His FGLI alter ego knew how the words should sound, he knew how to work his own vocal cords, and the Earth-human voice was reputed to be one of the most versatile instruments in the Galaxy. Conway took a deep breath and gave forth.

The first attempt was disastrous. It ended in an uncontrollable fit of coughing on his part and spread alarm and consternation for the length and breadth of the ward. But with the third attempt he got through- one of the Tralthan nurses answered him! After that it was just a matter of time until he had enough of the more important directions off pat, and subsequent operations proceeded more quickly, efficiently and with enormously increased chances for the patient.

The Earth-human nurses were greatly impressed by the odd noises issuing from Conway’s overworked throat. At the same time they seemed to see an element of humor in the situation . . .

“Well, well,” said a familiar, irascible voice behind him, “a ward full of happy, smiling patients, with the Good Doctor keeping up morale by doing animal impressions. What the blazes do you think you’re doing?”

O’Mara, Conway saw with a shock, was really angry-not just playing his usual, short-tempered self. In the circumstances it would be better to answer the question and ignore the rhetoric.

“I’m looking after Thornnastor’s patients, plus some new arrivals,” Conway said quietly. “The Corpsmen and FGLI patients have been taken care of, and I was about to ask you for a DBLF tape for the Kelgians who have just come in.”

O’Mara snorted. “I’ll send down a Kelgian doctor to take care of that,” he said angrily, “and your nurses can take care of the others for the time being. You don’t seem to realize that this is one level out of three-hundred eighty-four, Doctor Conway. That there are ward patients urgently in need of the simplest treatment or medication, and they won’t get it because the staff concerned whistle while they cheep. That the casualties are piling up around the locks, some of them in corridors which have been opened to space. Those pressure litters won’t supply air forever, you know, and the people in them can’t be feeling very happy . . .

“What do you want me to do?” said Conway.

For some reason this made O’Mara angrier. He said bitingly, “I don’t know, Doctor Conway. I am a psychologist. I can no longer act effectively because most of my patients no longer speak the same language. Those who do I’ve tried to chivvy into thinking of something to get us out of this mess. But they’re all too busy treating the sick in their own neighborhood to think of the hospital as a whole. They want to leave it to the Big Brains . . .

“In these circumstances,” Conway put in, “a Diagnostician seems to be the logical person to come up with a bright idea.”

O’Mara’s anger was being explained, Conway thought. It must be pretty frustrating for a psychologist who could neither listen or talk to his patients. But the anger seemed almost personal, as if Conway himself had fallen down on the job in some fashion.

“Thornnastor is out of the picture,” O’Mara said, lowering his voice slightly. “You were probably too busy to know that the other two Diagnosticians who stayed behind were killed earlier today. Among the Senior Physicians, Harkness, Irkultis, Mannon—”

“Mannon! Is he . . .

“I thought you might have known about him,” O’Mara said almost gently, “since it happened just two levels away. He was working on two QCQLs when the theater was opened up. A piece of flying metal ruptured his suit. He’s decompressed, and before that poison they use for air escaped completely he breathed some of it. But he’ll live.”

Conway found that he had been holding his breath. He said, “I’m glad.”

“Me, too,” said O’Mara gruffly. “But what I started to say was that there are no Diagnosticians left and no Senior Physicians other than yourself, and the place is in a mess. As the senior surviving medical officer in the hospital, what do you plan to do about it?”

He stood watching Conway, and waiting.

CHAPTER 20

Conway had thought that nothing could make him feel worse than the realization some hours previously that the Translator system had broken down. He didn’t want this responsibility, the very thought of it scared him to death. Yet there had been times when he’d dreamed of being Sector General’s director and having absolute control over all things medical within the gigantic organization. But in those dreams the hospital had not been a dying, war-torn behemoth that was virtually paralyzed by the breakdown of communications between its separate and vital organs, nor had it bristled with death-dealing weapons, nor had it been criminally understaffed and horribly overcrowded with patients.

Probably these were the only circumstances which would allow someone like himself to become Director of a hospital like this, Conway told himself sadly. He wasn’t the best available, he was the only one available. Even so it gave him a quite indescribable feeling, compounded of fear, anger and pride, that he was to be its head for the remaining days or weeks of its life.

Conway gave a quick look around his ward, at the orderly if uneven rows of Tralthan and Earth-human beds and at the quietly efficient staff. He had made it this way. But he was beginning to see that he had been hiding himself down here, that he had been running away from his responsibilities.

“I do have an idea,” he said suddenly to O’Mara. “It isn’t a good idea, and I think we ought to go to your office to talk about it, because you’ll probably object to it, loudly, and that might disturb the patients.”

O’Mara looked at him sharply. When he spoke the anger had gone from his voice so that it was merely normally sarcastic again. He said, “I find all your ideas objectionable, Doctor. It’s because I’ve got such an orderly mind.”

On the way to O’Mara’s office they passed a group of high-ranking Monitor officers and the Major told him that they were part of Dermod’s staff who were preparing to shift tactical command into the hospital. At the moment Dermod was commanding from Vespasian. But even the capital ships were taking a beating now, and the fleet commander had already had Domitian not quite shot from under him . . .

When they arrived Conway said, “It isn’t such a hot idea, and seeing those Corpsmen on the way up here has given me a better one. Suppose we ask Dermod to let us use his ship Translators . . .

O’Mara shook his head. “It won’t work,” he said. “I thought of that idea, too. It seems the only Translator computers of any use to us are on the big ships, and they are such an integral part of the structure that it would practically wreck the ship to take one out. Besides, for our absolute minimum needs we would require twenty capital ship computers. We haven’t got twenty capital ships left, and what we do have Dermod says he has a much better use for.

“Now what was your other not very good idea?”

Conway told him.

When he had finished, O’Mara looked at him steadily for nearly a minute. Finally he said, “Consider your idea objected to, but strongly. Consider, if you like, that I jumped up and down and pounded the desk, because that is what I’d be doing if I wasn’t so blasted tired. Don’t you realize what you’d be letting yourself in for?”

From somewhere below them came a tearing crash with ridiculous, gong-like overtones. Conway jerked involuntarily, then said, “I think so. There will be a lot of mental confusion and discomfort, but I hope to avoid most of it by letting the tape entity take over almost completely until I have what I need, then I partly suppress it and do the translation. That was how it worked with the Tralthan tape and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work with DBLFs or any of the others. The DBLF language should be a cinch, it being easier to moan like a Kelgian than hoot like a Tralthan . . .

He would not have to stay in any one place for very long, Conway hoped, only long enough to sort out the local translation problems. Some of the e-t sounds would be difficult to reproduce orally, but he had an idea for modifying certain musical instruments which might take care of that. And he would not be the only walking Translator, there were still e-t and human doctors who could help by taking one or two tapes. Some of them might have done so already, but had not thought of using them for translation yet. As he talked Conway’s tongue was having a hard job to keep up with his racing mind.

“Just a minute,” said O’Mara at one point. “You keep talking about letting one personality come to the fore, then suppressing it, then bringing out two together and so on. You might find that you haven’t that much control. Multiple physiology tapes are tricky, and you’ve never had more than two before at any one time. I have your records.”

O’Mara hesitated for a moment, then went on seriously, “What you get is the recorded memories of an e-t high in the medical profession on its home planet. It isn’t an alien entity fighting for possession of your mind, but because its memory and personality are impressed alongside your own you may be panicked into thinking that it is trying to take over. Some of our tapes were taken from very aggressive individuals, you see.

“Odd things happen to doctors who take a number of longterm tapes for the first time,” O’Mara went on. “Pains, skin conditions, perhaps organic malfunctionings develop. All have a psychosomatic basis, of course, but to the person concerned they hurt just as much as the real thing. These disturbances can be controlled, even negated, by a strong mind. Yet a mind with strength alone will break under them in time. Flexibility allied with strength is required, also something to act as a mental anchor, something that you must find for yourself . . .

“Suppose I agree to this,” he ended abruptly, “how many will you need?”

Conway thought quickly. Tralthan, Kelgian, Melfan, Nidian, the ambulating plants he had met before going to Etla, who also had remained behind, and the beasties Mannon had been treating when he was knocked out of it. He said, “FGLI, DBLF, ELNT, Nidian-DBDG, AACP and QCQL. Six.”

O’Mara compressed his lips. “I wouldn’t mind if it was a Diagnostician doing this,” he objected, “because they are used to splitting their minds six ways. But you are just—”

“The senior medical officer of the hospital,” Conway finished for him, grinning.

“Hm,” said O’Mara.

In the silence they could hear human voices and a peculiar, alien gabbling go past in the corridor outside. Whoever was making the noise must have been shouting very loud because the Major’s office was supposed to be soundproof.

“All right,” said O’Mara suddenly, “you can try it. But I don’t want to have deal with you in my professional capacity, and that is a much stronger possibility than you seem to think. We’re too short of doctors to have you immobilizing yourself in a straight-jacket, so I’m going to set a watchdog on you. We’ll add GLNO to your list.”

“Prilicla!”

“Yes. Being an empath it has had a hard time with the sort of emotional radiation that is going around recently, and I’ve had to keep it under sedation. But it will be able to keep a mental eye on you, and probably help you, too. Move over to the couch.”

Conway moved to the couch and O’Mara fitted the helmet. Then the Major began to talk softly, sometimes asking questions, sometimes just talking. Conway should be unconscious for a multiple transfer, he said, he should in fact sleep for at least four hours for the best results, and he needed sleep anyway. Probably, Q'Mara said, he had thought up this whole, harebrained scheme just to have a legitimate excuse to sleep. He had a big job ahead, the psychologist told him quietly, and he would really need to be in seven places as well as being seven people at once, so that a sleep would do him good . . .

“It won’t be too bad,” Conway said, struggling to keep his eyes open. “I’ll stay in any one place only long enough to learn a few basic words and phrases that I can teach to the nursing staff. Just enough so they’ll understand when an e-t surgeon says ’scalpel,' or 'Forceps’ or ’stop breathing down the back of my neck, Nurse . . .'”

The last words that Conway heard clearly were O’Mara saying, “Hang onto your sense of humor, lad. You’re going to need it . . .

He awoke in a room that was too large and too small, alien in six different ways and at the same time completely familiar. He did not feel rested. Clinging to the ceiling by six pipe stem legs was a tiny, enormous, fragile, beautiful, disgustingly insectile creature that reminded him of his worst nightmares the amphibious cllels he used to hunt at the bottom of his private lake for breakfast, and many other things including a perfectly ordinary GLNO Cinrusskin like himself. It was beginning to quiver slightly in reaction to the emotional radiation he was producing. All of him knew that the GLNOs from Cinruss were empaths.

Fighting his way to the surface of a maelstrom of alien thoughts, memories and impressions Conway decided that it was time to go to work. Prilicla was immediately available for the first test of his idea. He began searching for and bringing up the GLNO memories and experiences, sifting through a welter of alien data for the type of information which is not consciously remembered but is constantly in use-data on the Cinrusskin language.

No, not the Cinrusskin language, he reminded himself sharply, his language. He had to think and feel and listen like a GLNO. Gradually he began to do it . . .

And it was not pleasant.

He was a Cinrusskin, a member of a fragile, low-gravity, insect race of empaths. The handsome, delicately marked exoskeleton and the youthful, iridescent sheen of Prilicla’s not quite atrophied wings were now things which he could properly appreciate, and the way Prilicla’s mandibles quivered in sudden concern at his distress. For Conway was a member of an empathic race, all the memories and experience of his GLNO life were those of a normally happy and healthy empath, but now he was an empath no more. He could see Prilicla, but the faculty which let him share the other’s emotions, and subtly colored every word, gesture and expression so that for two Cinrusskins to be within visual range was to be unalloyed pleasure for both, was missing. He could remember having empathetic contact, remember having it all his life, but now he was little more than a deaf mute.

His human brain did not possess the empathetic faculty, and it was not bestowed by filling his mind with memories of having had it.

Prilicla made a series of clicking, buzzing sounds. Conway, who had never spoken with the GLNO other than by means of the toneless and emotion-filtering process of Translation, heard it say “I’m sorry” in a voice full of concern and pity.

In return Conway tried to make the soft trill and click which was Prilicla’s name, the true sound of the Earth-human word “Prilicla” being only a clumsy approximation. On the fifth attempt he succeeded in making something which was close to the sound he wanted.

“That is very good, friend Conway,” Prilicla said warmly. “I had not considered this idea of yours possible. Can you understand me?”

Conway sought the word-sounds he needed, then carefully began to form them. “Thank you,” he said, “and yes.”

They tried more difficult phrases then, technical words to put across obtuse medical and physiological details. Sometimes Conway was able to do it, sometimes not. His was at best only the crudest of pidgin Cinrus skin, but he persevered. Then suddenly there was an interruption.

“O’Mara here,” said a voice from his room communicator. “You should be awake now so here is the latest position, Doctor. We are still under attack, but this has eased off somewhat since more volunteer e-ts arrived to reinforce us. These are Melfans, some more Tralthans and a force of Illensan chlorine-breathers. So you’re going to have PVSJs to worry about, too. Then inside the hospital . . .

There followed a detailed breakdown of casualties and available staff into species, location and numbers, with further data on problems peculiar to each section and their degree of urgency.

. . . It’s for you to decide where to start,” O’Mara went on, “and the sooner the better. But in case you are still feeling confused I’ll repeat—”

“No need,” said Conway, “I got it.”

“Good. How do you feel?”

“Awful. Horrible. And very peculiar.”

“That,” said O’Mara dryly, “is in all respects a normal reaction. Off.”

Conway released the strapping which held him to the bed and swung his legs out. Immediately he stiffened, unable to let go. Many of the beings inhabiting his mind were terrified by weightless conditions and the reaction was instinctive. Because of this it was very difficult to counter, and he had a moment of sheer panic when he discovered that his feet would not stick to the ceiling the way Prilicla’s did. And when he did relax his grip on the edge of the bed he found that he had been holding on with an appendage that was pallid and flabby and horribly different to the clean, hard outlines of the mandible he had expected to see. But somehow he managed to cross his room into the corridor and traverse it for a distance of fifty yards.

Then he was stopped.

An irate medical orderly in Corps green wanted to know why he was out of bed and what ward he had come from. The Corpsman’s language was colorful and not at all respectful.

Conway became aware of his large, gross, fragile, loathsome pink body. A perfectly good body, part of his mind insisted, if a little on the skinny side. And this shapeless, puny, monstrosity was encircled, where it was joined by its two lower appendages, by a piece of white fabric which served no apparent purpose. The body looked ridiculous as well as alien.

Oh damn! thought Conway, struggling up through a smother of alien impressions, I forgot to dress.

CHAPTER 21

Conway’s first act was to install one representative from each species room. A semblance of order had already been restored to the network by posting Corpsmen at every intercom unit to forbid their use-if the would-be user was not too persistent and well-muscled-to e-ts. This meant that Earth-human personnel could talk to each other. But with e-ts on the switchboard, calls by other species could be answered and redirected. Conway spent nearly two hours, more time than he ever spent anywhere else, putting himself en rapport with the e-t operators and devising a list of synonyms which would allow them to pass simple-very simple-messages to each other. He had two Monitor language experts with him on it, and it was they who suggested that he made a taped record of this seven-way Rosetta stone, and make others to fit the conditions he would find in the wards.

Wherever he went after that Prilicla, the language experts and a Corps radio technician trailed behind, in addition to the nursing staff he accumulated from time to time. It was an impressive procession, but Conway was in no mood to appreciate it just then.

Earth-human medical staff made up more than half of the present complement, but Earth-human Monitor casualties outnumbered the e-ts by thirty to one. On some levels one nurse had a whole ward of Corpsmen in her charge, with a few Tralthans or Kelgians trying to assist her. In such cases Conway’s job was simply that of arranging a minimum of communication between the human and e-t nurses. But there were other instances when the staff were ELNTs and FGLIs and the patients in their charge were DBLF, QCQL and Earth-human, or Earth-humans in charge of ELNTs, or the plant-like AACPs looking after a mixed bag of practically everything. The simple answer would have been to move the patients into the charge of staff of their own species-except that they could not be moved for the reason that they were too ill, that there was no staff available to move them, or that there were no nurses of that particular species. In these cases Conway’s job was infinitely more complex.

The shortage of nursing staff of all species was chronic. With regard to doctors the position was desperate. He called O’Mara.

“We haven’t enough doctors,” he said. “I think nurses should be given more discretion in the diagnosis and treatment of casualties. They should do as they think best without waiting for authority from a doctor who is too busy to supervise anyway. The casualties are still coming in and I can’t see any other way of—”

“Do it, you’re the boss,” O’Mara broke in harshly.

“Right,” said Conway, nettled. “Another thing. I’ve had offers by a lot of the doctors to take two or three tapes for translation purposes in addition to the tape they draw for current ops. And some of the girls have volunteered to do the same- “No!” said O’Mara. “I’ve had some of your volunteers up here and

they aren’t suitable. The doctors left to us are either very junior interns or Corps medical officers and e-ts who came with the volunteer forces. None of them have experience with multiple physiology tapes. It would render them permanently insane within the first hour.

“As for the girls,” he went on, a sardonic edge in his voice, “you have noticed by this time that the female Earth-human DBDG has a rather peculiar mind. One of its peculiarities is a deep, sex-based mental fastidiousness. No matter what they say they will not, repeat not, allow alien beings to apparently take over their pretty little brains. If such should happen, severe mental damage would result. No again. Off.”

Conway resumed his tour. It was beginning to get him down now. Even though his technique was improving the process of Translation was an increasing strain. And in the relatively easy periods between translations he felt as if there were seven different people all arguing and shouting inside his brain, and his own was very rarely the loudest voice. His throat was raw from making noises that it had never been designed for, and he was hungry.

All seven of him had different ideas for assuaging that hunger, revoltingly different ideas. Since the hospital’s catering arrangement had suffered as badly as everything else there was no wide selection from which he could have picked neutral items that would not have offended, or at least not completely nauseated, his alter egos. He was reduced to eating sandwiches with his eyes shut, in case he would find out what was in them, and drinking water and glucose. None of him objected to water.

Eventually an organization for the reception and treatment of casualties was operating again in all the habitable levels-it was slow, but it was operating. And now that there were facilities for treating them Conway’s next job was to move the patients who were currently jamming the approaches to the airlocks. There were actually pressure-litters anchored to the outer hull, he had been told.

Prilicla objected.

For a few minutes he tried to find out why. One of Prilicla’s objections was that Conway was tired, which he countered by telling it that everybody in the hospital, including Prilicla itself, was tired. The other objections were either too weak or too subtle for the limited communications available. Conway ignored them and headed for the nearest lock.

The problems here were very similar to those inside the hospital- the major disadvantage being his spacesuit radio which hampered translation considerably. But to offset this he could get around much more quickly. The tractor beam men who handled the wrecks and wreckage around the hospital could whisk his whole party from point to point within seconds.

But he discovered that the Melfan segment of his mind, which had been seriously troubled by the weightless conditions inside the hospital, was utterly terrified outside it. The Melfan ELNT who had produced the tape had been an amphibious, crab-like being who lived mainly under water and had had no experience whatever of space. Conway had to fight down the panic which threatened his whole, multi-tenanted mind as well as the fear which all of him felt at the battle going on above his head.

O’Mara had told him that the attack was easing off, but Conway could not imagine anything more savage than what he was seeing.

Between the warring ships no missiles were being used—the attackers and defenders were too condensed, too inextricably tangled up. Like tiny, fast-moving models, so sharply defined that he felt he could reach up and grab one, the ships wheeled through their wild, chaotic dance. Singly and in groups they lunged, whirled, took frantic evasive action, broke formation or had their formations broken, reformed and attacked again. It was endless, implacable and almost hypnotic. There was, of course, no noise. What missiles were launched were directed at the hospital, a target too big to miss, and they were felt rather than heard.

Between the ships, tractor and pressor beams jabbed out like solid, invisible fingers, slowing or deflecting the target ship so that a rattler could be focused. Sometimes three or more vessels would converge on a single target and tear it apart within seconds. Sometimes a well-directed rattler would rip apart the artificial gravity system an instant before it disrupted the drive. With the crew hammered flat by high acceleration the ship would go tumbling out of the fight, unless someone put another rattler on it or a tractor man on Sector General’s hull pulled it down to look for survivors.

Whether or not there were any survivors the wreck could be used . . .

The once smooth and shining hull was a mass of deep, jagged-edged craters and buckled plating. And because the missile lighting did strike twice, or even three times, in the same place-that was how the Translator computer had been destroyed—the craters were being plugged with wreckage in an effort to keep the missiles from exploding deeper inside the hospital. Any type of wreckage served, the tractor men weren’t choosy.

Conway was on a tractor-beam mount when one of the wrecks was pulled in. He saw the rescue team shooting from the shelter of the airlock, circle the hulk carefully, then enter. About ten minutes later they came out towing . . . something.

“Doctor,” said the NCO in charge of the installation, “I think I goofed. My men say the beastie they’ve pulled out of that wreck is new to them and want you to have a look. I’m sorry, but one wreck is like any other wreck. I don’t think it is one of ours . . .

Six parts of Conway’s mind contained personalities whose memories did not contain data on the war and they did not think it mattered. As the minority opinion Conway didn’t think it mattered either, but he knew that neither the sergeant nor himself had time to start an ethical debate on it. He had a quick look, then said, “Take it inside. Level Two-forty, Ward Seven.”

Since being given the tapes Conway had been forced to watch helplessly while patients-casualties whose condition was such that they merited a fully qualified Senior Physician at least to perform the surgery-were operated on by tired, harassed, but well-intentioned beings who just did not have the required skill. They had done the job as best they could because there was nobody else to do it. Conway had wanted to step in many times, but had reminded himself and been reminded by Prilicla and the rest of his entourage, that he had to consider the Big Picture. Reorganizing the hospital then had been more important than any one patient. But now he felt that he could stop being an organizer and go back to being a doctor.

This was a new species to the hospital. O’Mara would not have a tape on its physiology, and even if the patient recovered consciousness it would not be able to cooperate because the Translators were dead. Conway had got to take this one and nobody was going to talk him out of it.

Ward Seven was adjacent to the section where a Kelgian military doctor and Murchison had been working wonders with a mixed bag of FGLI, QCQL and Earth-human patients, so he asked them both to assist. Conway put the new arrival’s classification as TRLH, being aided in this by the fact that the patient’s spacesuit was transparent as well as flexible. Had the suit been less flexible the being’s injuries would have been less severe, but then the suit would have cracked instead of bending with the force which had smashed against it.

Conway bored a tiny hole in the suit, drew off a sample of the internal atmosphere and resealed it. He put the sample in the analyzer.

“And I thought the QCQLs were bad,” said Murchison when he showed her the result. “But we can reproduce it. You will need to replace the air here, I expect?”

Conway said, “Yes, please.”

They climbed into their operating suits-regulation light-weight pattern except that the arms and hands sections ended in a fine, tight-fitting sheath that was like a second skin. The air was replaced by the patient’s atmosphere and they began cutting it out of its suit.

The TRLH had a thin carapace which covered its back and curved down and inward to protect the central area of its underside. Four thick, single-jointed legs projected from the uncovered sections and a large, but again lightly boned head contained four manipulatory appendages, two recessed but extensible eyes and two months, one of which had blood coming from it. The being must have been hurled against several metal projections. Its shell was fractured in six places and in one area it had been almost shattered, the pieces being severely depressed. In this area it was losing blood rapidly. Conway began charting the internal damage with the X-ray scanner, then a few minutes later he signaled that he was ready to start.

He wasn’t ready, but the patient was bleeding to death.

The internal arrangement of organs was different from anything he had previously encountered, and different from anything in the experience of the six personalities sharing his mind. But from the QCQL he received pointers on the probable metabolism of beings who breathed such highly corrosive air, from the Melfan data on the possible methods of exploring the damaged carapace, and the FGLI, DBLF, GLNO and AACP contributed their experience. But it was not always helpful-at every stage they literally shrieked warnings to be careful, so much so that for seconds at a time Conway stood with his hands shaking, unable to go on. He was probing the recorded memories deeply now, hitherto it had only been for data on language, and everything was coming up.

The private nightmares and neuroses of the individuals, triggered off by being so inextricably mixed with the similar alien nightmares around them, and all mounting, growing worse by the minutes. The beings who had produced the tapes did not all have e-t hospital experience, they were not accustomed to alien points of view. The proper thing was to keep reminding himself that they were not separate personalities, Conway told himself, but merely a mass of alien data of different types. But he was horribly, stupidly tired and he was beginning to lose control of what was going on in his mind. And still the memories welled up in a dark, turgid flood. Petty, shameful, secret memories mostly concerned with sex-and that, in e-ts, was alien, so alien that he wanted to scream. He found suddenly that he was bent over, sweating, as if there was a heavy weight on his back.

He felt Murchison gripping his arm. “What’s wrong, Doctor?” she said urgently. “Can I help?”

He shook his head, because for a second he didn’t know how to form words in his own language, but he kept looking at her for all of ten seconds. When he turned back he had a picture of her in his mind as she was to him, not as a Tralthan or a Melfan or a Kelgian saw her. The concern in her eyes had been for him alone. At times Conway had had secret thoughts of his own about Murchison, but they were normal, human thoughts. He hugged them to him tightly and for a time he was in control again. Long enough to finish with the patient.

Then suddenly his mind was tearing itself apart into seven pieces and he was falling into the deepest, darkest pits of even different Hells. He did not know that his limbs stiffened or bent or twisted as if something alien had separate possession of each one. Or that Murchison dragged him out and held him while Prilicla, at great danger to life and its fragile, spidery limbs, gave him the shot which knocked him out.

CHAPTER 22

The intercom buzzer awakened Conway, instantly but without confusion in the pleasant, familiar, cramped surroundings of his own room. He felt rested and alert and ready for breakfast, and the hand he used to push back the sheets had five pink fingers on it and felt just right that way. But then he became aware of a certain strangeness which made him hesitate for a moment. The place was quiet . . .

“To save you the where-am-I-what-time-is-it? routine,” O’Mara’s voice came wearily, “you have not been consciously with us for two days. During that time, early yesterday, to be exact, the attack ceased and has not yet been resumed and I did a lot of work on you. For your own good you were given a hypno treatment to forget everything, so you will not be eternally grateful for what I’ve done for you. How do you feel now?”

“Fine,” said Conway enthusiastically. “I can’t feel any . . . I mean, there seems to be plenty of room in my head . . .

O’Mara grunted. “The obvious retort is that your head is empty, but I won’t make it.”

The Chief Psychologist, despite his attempt to maintain his usual dry, sardonic manner, sounded desperately tired-his words were actually slurred with weariness. But O’Mara, Conway knew, was not the type who became tired-he might, if driven long and hard enough, succumb to mental fatigue . . .

“The fleet commander wants a meeting with us in four hours time,” O’Mara went one, “so don’t get involved with any cases between now and then. Things are running fairly smoothly now, anyway, so you can afford to play hooky for a while. I’m going to sleep. Off.”

But it was very difficult to spend four hours doing nothing, Conway found. The main dining hall was jammed with Corpsmen-projector crews engaged on hull defense, replacements for the defending ships, maintenance men and Medical Division personnel who were supplementing the civilian medical staff. Conversation was loud and nervous and too cheerful, and revolved around the past and possible future aspects of the attack.

Apparently the Monitor force had practically been pushed down onto the outer hull when an e-t force of volunteer Illensans had emerged from hyperspace just outside the enemy globe. Illensan ships were big and badly designed and looked like capital ships even though they only had the armament of a light cruiser, and the sight of ten of them popping out of nowhere had put the enemy off his stride. The attacking force had pulled back temporarily to regroup and the Monitors, with nothing to regroup with, were concentrating on increasing the armament of their last line of defense, the hospital itself. But even though it concerned him as closely as anyone else in the room, Conway felt averse to joining in the cheerfully morbid conversations.

Since O’Mara had erased all the physiology tapes and indulged in some curative tinkering with his mind, the nightmare of two days ago and the e-t language data he had gained had faded, so he could not indulge in polite conversation with the e-ts scattered about the hall. And the Earth-human nurses were being monopolized by Corpsmen, usually at the rate of ten or twelve to one, with an obvious improvement in morale in both directions. Conway ate quickly and left, feeling that his own morale was in need of improvement, too.

Which made him wonder suddenly if Murchison was on duty, off duty or asleep. If she was asleep there was nothing he could do, but if she was on duty he could very soon take her off it, and when she was off . . .

Strangely he felt only the slightest prick lings of conscience over this shameless abuse of his authority for his own selfish ends. In time of war, he thought, people became less bound by their professional and moral codes. Ethically he was going to the dogs.

But Murchison was just going off duty when he arrived in her ward, so he did not have to openly commit the crime he had been intent on committing. In the same loud, too-cheerful tone that he had considered so artificial when he had heard it in the dining hall he asked if she had any previous engagement, suggested a date, and muttered something horribly banal about all work and no play . . .

“Previous engage . . . play  . . . ! But I want to sleep!” she protested; then in more reasonable tones, “You can’t . . . I mean, where would we go, what would we do? The place is a wreck. Would I have to change?”

“The recreation level is still there,” Conway said, “and you look fine.” The regulation nurses uniform of blue, tight-fitting tunic and slacks- very tight-fitting so as to ease the problem of climbing in and out of protective suits-flattered Murchison, but she looked worn out. As she unhooked the broad white belt and instrument pouches and removed her cap and hairnet Conway growled deep in his throat, and immediately burst into a fit of coughing because it was still tender from making e-t noises.

Murchison laughed, shaking out her hair and rubbing her cheeks to put some color into them. She said brightly, “Promise you won’t keep me out too late ?”

On the way to the recreation level it was difficult not to talk shop. Many sections of the hospital had lost pressure so that in the habitable levels overcrowding was severe—there was scarcely an air-filled corridor which was not also filled with casualties. And this was a situation which none of them had foreseen. They had not expected the enemy to use limited warfare on them. Had atomic weapons been used there would not have been any overcrowding, or, possibly, any hospital. Most of the time Conway was not listening to Murchison, but she didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps because she wasn’t listening to him.

The recreation level was the same in detail as they remembered it, but the details had been dramatically changed around. With the hospital’s center of gravity being above the recreation level what little attraction there was upward, and all the loose material normally on the ground or in the bay had collected against the roof, where it made a translucent chaos of sand-veined water, air-pockets and trailing watery globes through which the submerged sun shone a deep, rich purple.

“Oh, this is nice!” said Murchison. “And restful, sort of.”

The lighting gave her skin a warm, dusky coloration that was wholly indescribable, Conway thought, but nice. Her lips-soft purple, verging on black-were parted slightly to reveal teeth which seemed almost iridescent, and her eyes were large and mysterious and glowing.

“The word,” he said, “is romantic.”

They launched themselves gently into the vast room in the direction of the restaurant. Below them the tree tops drifted past and they ran through a wisp of fog-cooling steam produced by the warm, underwater sun which beaded their faces and arms with moisture. Conway caught her hand and held it gently, but their velocities were not exactly matching and they began to spin around their center of gravity. Conway bent his elbow slowly, drawing her toward him, and their rate of spin increased. Then he slid his other arm around her waist and pulled her closer still.

She started to protest and then suddenly, gloriously, she was kissing him and clinging to him as fiercely as he was to her, and the empty bay, cliffs, and purple, watery sky was whirling madly around them.

In a calm, impersonal corner of his mind Conway thought that his head would have been spinning anyway even if his body hadn’t, it was that sort of kiss. Then they spun gently into the cliff-top at the other side of the bay and broke apart, laughing.

They used the artificial greenery to pull themselves toward the onetime restaurant. It was dim inside, and during its slow fall ceiling ward a lot of water had collected under the transparent roof and on the undersides of the table canopies. Like some fragile, alien fruit it hung in clusters which stirred gently at their passage or burst into hundreds of tiny silvery globes when they blundered against a table. With the low ceiling and dim light it was difficult to keep from knocking into things and soon the globes were all around them, seeming to crowd in, throwing back a hundred tiny, distorted reflections of Murchison and himself. It was like an alien dream world, Conway thought; and it was a wish-fulfillment dream. The dark, lovely shape of Murchison drifting beside him left no doubt about that.

They sat down at one of the tables, but carefully so as not to dislodge the water in the canopy above them. Conway took her hand in his, the others being needed to hold them onto their chairs, and said, “I want to talk to you.

She smiled, a little warily.

Conway tried to talk. He tried to say the things that he had rehearsed to himself many times, but what came out was a disjointed hodge-podge. She was beautiful, he said, and he didn’t want to be friends and she was a stupid little fool for staying behind. He loved her and wanted her and he would have been happy spending months-not too many months, maybe-getting her in a corner where she couldn’t say anything but yes. But now there wasn’t time to do things properly. He thought about her all the time and even during the TRLH operation it had been thinking about her that let him hang on until the end. And all during the bombardment he had worried in case . . .

“I worried about you, too,” Murchison broke in softly. “You were all over the place and every time there was a hit . . . And you always knew exactly what to do and . . . and I was afraid you would get yourself killed.”

Her face was shadowed, her uniform clung damply. Conway felt his mouth dry.

She said warmly, “You were wonderful that day with the TRLH. It was like working with a Diagnostician. Seven tapes, O’Mara said. I . . . I asked him to give me one, earlier, to help you out. But he said no because . . .” She hesitated, and looked away. “. . . because he said girls are very choosy who they let take possession of them. Their minds, I mean . . .

“How choosy?” said Conway thickly. “Does the choice exclude . . . friends?”

He leaned forward involuntarily as he spoke, letting go his hold on the chair with his other hand. He drifted heavily up from the table, jarred the canopy and touched one of the floating globes with his forehead. With the surface tension broken it collapsed wetly all over his face. Spluttering he brushed it away, knocking it into a cloud of tiny, glowing marbles. Then he saw it.

It was the only harsh note in this dream world, a pile of unarmed missiles occupying a dark corner of the room. They were held to the floor by clamps and further secured with netting in case the clamps were jarred free by an explosion. There was plenty of slack in the netting. Still holding onto Murchison, he kicked himself over to it, searched until he found the edge of the net, and pulled it up from the floor.

“We can’t talk properly if we keep floating into the air,” he said quietly. “Come into my parlor . . . ”

Maybe the netting was too much like a spider’s web, or his tone resembled too closely that of a predatory spider. He felt her hesitate. The hand he was holding was trembling.

“I . . . I know how you feel,” she said quickly, not looking at him. “I like you, too. Maybe more than that. But this isn’t right. I know we don’t have any time, but sneaking down here like this and . . . it’s selfish. I keep thinking about all those men in the corridors, and the other casualties still to come. I know it sounds stuffy, but we’re supposed to think about other people first. That’s why—”

“Thank you,” said Conway furiously. “Thank you for reminding me of my duty.”

“Oh, please!” she cried, and suddenly she was clinging to him again, her head against his chest. “I don’t want to hurt you, or make you hate me. I didn’t think the war would be so horrible. I’m frightened. I don’t want you to be killed and leave me all alone. Oh, please, hold me tight and . . . and tell me what to do . . .

Her eyes were glittering and it was not until one of the tiny points of light floated away from them that he realized she was crying silently. He had never imagined Murchison crying, somehow. He held her tightly for a long time, then gently pushed her away from him.

Roughly, he said, “I don’t hate you, but I don’t want you to discuss my exact feelings at the moment, either. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

But he didn’t take her home. The alarm siren went a few minutes later and when it stopped a voice on the PA was asking Doctor Conway to come to the intercom.

CHAPTER 23

Once it had been Reception, with three fast-talking Nidians to handle the sometimes complex problems of getting patients out of their ambulances and into the hospital. Now it was Command Headquarters and twenty Monitor officers murmuring tensely into throat mikes, their eyes glued to screens which showed the enemy at all degrees of magnification from nil to five hundred. Two of the three main screens showed sections of the enemy fleet, the images partly obliterated by the ghostly lines and geometrical figures that was a tactical officer trying to predict what they would do next. The other screen gave a wide-angle view of the outer hull.

A missile came down like a distant shooting star, making a tiny flash and throwing up in minute fountain of wreckage. The tearing, metallic crash which reverberated through the room was out of all proportion to the image.

Dermod said, “They’ve withdrawn out of range of the heavy stuff mounted on the hospital and are sending in missiles. This is the softening up process designed to wear us down prior to the main attack. A counterattack by our remaining mobile force would result in its destruction, they are so heavily outnumbered that they can operate effectively only if backed by the defenses of the hospital. So we have no choice but to soak up this stage as best we can and save our strength for—”

“What strength?” said Conway angrily. Beside him O’Mara made a disapproving noise, and across the desk the Fleet commander looked coldly at him. When Dermod spoke it was to Conway, but he didn’t answer the question.

“We can also expect small raids by fast, maneuverable units designed to further unsettle us,” he went on. “Your casualties will come from Corpsmen engaged on hull defense, personnel from the defending ships, and perhaps enemy casualties. Which brings me to a point which I would like cleared up. You seem to be handling a lot of enemy wounded, Doctor, and you’ve told me that your facilities are already strained to the limit . . .

“How the blazes can you tell?” said Conway. Dermod’s expression became more frigid, but this time he answered the question.

“Because I have reports of patients lying beside each other finding that the other one is talking gibberish, patients of the same physological type, that is. What steps are you taking to—”

“None!” said Conway, so angry suddenly that he wanted to take this cold, unfeeling martinet by the throat and shake some humanity into him.

At the beginning he had liked Dermod. He had thought him a thoughtful and sensitive as well as a competent Fleet commander, but during the past few days he had become the embodiment of the blind, coldly implacable forces which had Conway and everyone else in the hospital trapped. Daily conferences between the military and medical authorities in the hospital had been ordered since the last attack had begun, and at all three of them Conway had found himself running across the fleet commander with increasing frequency.

But when Conway snapped, the Fleet commander did not snap back. Dermod merely looked at him with his eyes so bleak and distant that Conway felt that the commander wasn’t seeing him at all. And it did no good at all when O’Mara advised him quietly to hold his tongue and not be so all-fired touchy-that Dermod had a war to fight and he was doing the best he could, and that the pressures he was under excused a certain lack of charm in his personality.

“Surely,” said Dermod coldly, just as Conway had decided that he really ought to be more patient with this cold-blooded, military creature, you are not treating enemy casualties the same as our own . . .

“It is difficult,” said Conway, speaking so quietly that O’Mara looked suddenly worried, “to tell the difference. Subtle variations in spacesuit design mean nothing to the nursing staff and myself. And when, as frequently happens, the suit and underlying uniform is cut away the latter may be unidentifiable due to the bleeding. Between the injection of anti-pain and unconsciousness the oral noises they make are not easily translatable. And if there is any way to tell the difference between a Corpsman and one of the enemy screaming, I don’t want to know about it.

He had started quietly, but when he ended he was close to shouting. I won’t make any such distinction between casualties and neither

will my staff! This is a hospital, damn you! Well isn’t it?”

“Take it easy, son. It’s still a hospital,” said O’Mara gently.

“It is also,” Dermod snapped, “a military base!”

“What I don’t understand,” O’Mara put in quickly, trying desperately to pour on the oil, “is why the hell they don’t finish us with atomic warheads . . .

Another hit, more distant this time, sent its tinny echoes through the room.

“The reason they don’t finish us off with an atomic bomb, Major,” he replied, with his eyes still locked with Conway’s, “is because they must make a conquest. The political forces involved demand it. The Empire must take and occupy this outpost of the hated enemy, the Emperor’s general must have a triumph and not a pyrrhic victory, and subjugating the enemy and capturing his territory, no matter how few or how little, can be made to look like a triumph to the citizens of the Empire.

“Our own casualties are heavy,” Dermod went on coldly. “A space battle being what it is only ten percent of the casualties survive to be hospitalized and we are fortunate both in having medical facilities immediately available and in occupying a strong defensive position. The number of enemy casualties is much higher than ours, my estimate would be twenty to one, so that if they were to knock us out with an atomic missile now, when they could have done the same thing at the very beginning without losing a man, some very awkward questions will be asked within the Empire. If the Emperor can’t answer them he might find that the war, and all the fine, martial fervor he has built up, will backfire on him . . .”

“Why don’t you communicate with them?” Conway interrupted harshly. “Tell them the truth about us, and tell them about the wounded here. You surely don’t expect to win this battle now. Why don’t we surrender.

“We cannot communicate with them, Doctor,” the commander said bitingly, “because they won’t listen to us. Or if they do listen they don’t believe what we say. They know, or think they know, what we did on Etla and what we are supposed to be doing here. Telling them that we were really helping the Etlan natives and that we have been forced to defend our hospital is no good. A series of plagues swept Etla soon after we left and this establishment no longer behaves, outwardly, that is, like a hospital. What we say to them has no importance, it is what we do that counts. And we are doing exactly what their Emperor has lead them to expect of us.

“If they were really thinking,” he continued savagely, “they would wonder at the large number of our e-ts who are helping us. According to them our e-ts are downtrodden, subject races who are little more than slaves. The volunteers who have come out to help us do not fight like slaves, but at the present stage that is too subtle a thing to make any impression. They are thinking emotionally instead of logically . . .

“And I’m thinking emotionally, too!” Conway broke in sharply. “I’m thinking of my patients. The wards are full. They are lying in odd corners and along corridors all over the place, with inadequate protection against pressure loss . . .

“You’ve lost the ability to think about anything but your patients, Doctor!” Dermod snapped back. “It might surprise you to know that I think about them, too, but I try not to be so maudlin about it. If I did think that way I would begin to feel angry, begin to hate the enemy. Before I knew it I would want revenge . . .

Another hit rang like a loud, discordant gong through the hospital. The commander raised his voice, and kept on raising it.

You must know that the Monitor Corps is the police force for most of the inhabited Galaxy, and keeping the peace within the Federation calls for the constant application of the psychological and social sciences. In short, guiding and molding opinion both on the individual and planetary population levels. So the situation we have here, a gallant band of Corpsmen and doctors holding out against the savage, unceasing attacks of an overwhelmingly superior enemy, is one I could use. Even so it would take the Federation a long time to become angry enough to mobilize for war, far too long to do us personally any good, but think how we would be avenged, Doctor . . .

His voice was shaking now, his face white and tight with fury. He was shouting.

“In an interstellar war planets cannot be captured, Doctor. They can only be detonated. That stinking little Empire with its forty planets would be stamped out, destroyed, completely obliterated  . . . !”

O’Mara did not speak. Conway couldn’t, nor could he take his eyes off Dermod to see how the psychologist was reacting to this outburst. He hadn’t thought it possible for the commander to blow up like this and it was suddenly frightening. Because Dermod’s sanity and self control, like O’Mara’s, was something Conway had depended on even though he hated it.

“But the Corps is a police force, remember?” he raged on. “We are trying to think of this as a disturbance, a riot on an interstellar scale where as usual the casualties among the rioters outnumber those of the police. Personally I think it is past the time when anything will make them see the truth and a full-scale war is inevitable, but I do not want to hate them. This is the difference, Doctor, between maintaining peace and waging war.

“And I don’t want any sniveling, narrow-minded doctors, who have nothing to worry about except their patients, reminding me of all the horrible ways my men are dying. Trying to make me lose my perspective, making me hate people who are no different to us except that they are being fed wrong information.

“And I don’t care if you treat enemy and Corps wounded alike,” he yelled, trying to bring his voice down but not succeeding, “but you will listen when I give orders concerning them. This is a military base and they are enemy casualties. The ones who are in a condition to move must be guarded against the possibility of them committing acts of sabotage. Now do you understand, Doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” said Conway in a small voice.

When he left Reception with O’Mara a few minutes later Conway still had the feeling of being charred around the edges. It was plain now that he had gravely misjudged the fleet commander, and he should apologize for the hard things he had been thinking about Dermod. Underneath all the ice Dermod was a good man.

Beside him O’Mara said suddenly, “I like to see these cold, controlled types blow off steam occasionally. Psychologically it is desirable, considering the pressures he is under at the present time. I’m glad you finally made him angry.”

“What about me?” said Conway.

“You, Doctor, are not controlled at all,” O’Mara replied sternly. “Despite your new authority, which should make you set an example of tolerance and good behavior at least, you are fast becoming a bad-tempered brat. Watch it, Doctor.”

Conway had been looking for sympathy for the tongue-lashing Dermod had given him, and a little consideration for the pressures he himself was under, not criticism from another quarter. When O’Mara turned off toward his office a few minutes later, Conway was still too angry to speak.

CHAPTER 24

Next day Conway did not get the chance to apologize to the Fleet commander—the rioters launched their most vicious attack yet and both the Station Inspector and the Police Surgeon were much too busy to talk. But calling the battle a riot, Conway thought cynically, made no difference to the nature and number of the casualties which flooded suddenly in, because it began with a near-catastrophe for both sides.

The enemy force closed in, stepping up the missile bombardment to a fantastic rate and englobing the hospital so tightly that there were times when they came within a few hundred feet of the outer hull. Dermod’s ships-Vespasian, a Tralthan capital ship and the other smaller units remaining to him-dropped back to anchor with tractors against the hospital, there being no space to maneuver without obstructing the heavy armament below them. They settled and with their lighter weapons strengthened the fixed defenses wherever possible.

But this must have been the move which the enemy commander had been waiting for. With the rapidity possible only to a well-planned maneuver the ranks of the attacking globe thinned, scattered and reformed over one small area of the hull. On this area was concentrated the total firepower of three-quarters of the entire enemy force.

A storm of missiles tore into the heavy plating, blasting away the wreckage which plugged earlier damage and gouging into the more fragile inner hull. Tractors and rattlers seized the still-settling wreckage, shaking it viciously apart and pulling it away so that the missiles could gouge deeper still. Monitor defenses took a frightful toll of the tightly packed ships, but only for minutes. The tremendous concentration of fire battered them down, hammered them flat, ripped and worried at them until they were one with the other shifting masses of savaged men and metal. They left a section of the outer hull completely undefended, and suddenly it became plain that this was not only an attack but an invasion.

Under the covering fire of the massed attackers, three, giant, unarmed ships were dropping ponderously toward the undefended section. Transports . . .

At once Vespasian was directed to fill the gap in the defenses. It shot toward the point where the first transport was about to touch down, running the gauntlet of Monitor as well as enemy fire and throwing everything it had as soon as the target appeared above the curve of the hull . . .

There were several excuses given for what happened then. An error in judgment by its pilot, a hit by one of the enemy-or even its own people’s-missiles which deflected it from course at exactly the wrong moment. But it was never suggested that Captain Williamson deliberately rammed the enemy transport, because Williamson was known to be a clear-headed, competent officer and a one-to-one swap, even at this desperate stage of the battle, was a tactically stupid move considering how the enemy outnumbered them.

Vespasian struck the larger but more lightly constructed transport near its stern and seemed to go right through it before grinding silently to a halt. Inside the wreckage a single, small explosion lit the fog of escaping air but the two ships remained locked together, spinning slowly.

For a second everything seemed to stop. Then the Monitor fixed defenses lashed out, ignoring all other targets if their projectors would bear on the second descending transport. Within minutes rattlers had torn off plating in three areas of its hull and were biting deeper. The transport withdrew ponderously, losing air. The third one was already pulling back. The whole enemy force was pulling back, but not very far. Only slightly diminished in intensity the bombardment continued.

It was not by any stretch of the imagination a victory for the Monitor Corps. The enemy had merely made an error of judgment, been a little premature. The hospital required further softening up.

Tractor beams reached out and gently brought the spinning wreckage to a halt and lowered it onto the ravaged hull. Corpsmen jetted out to look for survivors and soon the casualties were coming in. But by roundabout routes, because under the wrecked ships there now stretched other wreckage and other rescue teams working to free patients who were casualties for the second and third time . . .

Dr. Prilicla was with the rescue teams. The GLNO life-form was the most fragile known to the Federation, cowardice being acknowledged as one of their prime survival characteristics. But Prilicla was guiding his thin-walled pressure bubble over jagged plating and through wreckage which shifted visibly all around it, seeking life. Living minds radiated even when unconscious and the little GLNO was pointing out unerringly the living from the dead. With casualties bleeding to death inside their suits or the suits themselves losing pressure, such identification directed effort to where it did the most good, and Prilicla was saving many, many lives. But for an empath, an emotion sensitive, it was a hellish job in every horrible and painful sense of the word . . .

Major O’Mara was everywhere. If there hadn’t been weightless conditions the Chief Psychologist would have been dragging himself from place to place, but as it was his extreme fatigue showed only in the way he misjudged distances and collided with doors and people. But when he talked to Earth-human patients, nurses and Corpsmen his voice was never tired. His mere presence had a steadying effect on the e-t staff as well, for although they could not understand him they remembered the person he had been when there were Translators and he could lift off their hides with a few pungent words.

The e-t staff—the massive, awkward Tralthan FGLIs, the crab-like Melfan ELNTs and all the others-were everywhere, on some levels directing Earth-human staff and on others aiding the nurses and Corpsmen orderlies. They were tired and harried and all too often they did not know what was being said to them, but between them they saved a great many lives.

And every time a missile struck the hospital, they lost a little ground . . .

Dr. Conway never left the dining hall. He had communication with most of the other levels, but the corridors leading to them were in many cases airless or blocked with wreckage, and it was the general opinion that the hospital’s last remaining Senior Physician should stay in a reasonably safe place. He had plenty of human casualties to look after and the difficult e-t cases, whether combatants or casualties among his own staff, were sent to him.

In a way he had the biggest and most compact ward in the hospital. Since nobody had time to gather for meals anymore and relied on packaged food sent to the wards, the main dining hall had been converted. Beds and theater equipment had been clamped to the floor, walls and ceiling of the great room and the patients, being space personnel, were not troubled either by the weightlessness or the sight of other patients hanging a few yards above them. It was convenient for the patients who were able to talk.

Conway had reached the stage of tiredness where he no longer felt tired. The tinny crash and clangor of missiles striking had become a monotonous background noise. He knew that the bombardment was steadily eating through the outer and inner hulls, a deadly erosion which must soon open every corridor and ward to space, but his brain had ceased to react to the sound. When casualties arrived he did what was indicated, but his reactions then were simply the conditioned reflexes of a doctor. He had lost much of his capacity to think or feel or remember, and when he did remember he had no sense of time. The last e-t case—which had required him taking four physiology tapes-stood out amid the weary, bloody, noisy monotony, as did the arrival of Vespasian’s injured. But Conway did not know whether that had been three days of three weeks ago, or which incident had occurred first.

He remembered the Vespasian incident often. Cutting Major Stillman out of his battered suit, stripping it off and pushing away the pieces which persisted in floating around the bed. Stillman had two cracked ribs, a shattered humerus and a minor decompression which was temporarily affecting his eyesight. Until the hypo took hold he kept asking about the Captain.

And Captain Williamson kept asking about his men. Williamson was in a cast from neck to toes, had very little pain and had remembered Conway immediately. It had been a large crew and he must have known them all by their names. Conway didn’t.

“Stillman is three beds away on your right,” Conway had told him, “and there are others all over the place.”

Williamson’s eyes had moved along the patients hanging above him. He couldn’t move anything else. “There’s some of them I don’t recognize,” he had said.

Looking at the livid bruises around Williamson’s right eye, temple and jaw where his face had struck the inside of his helmet, Conway had dragged up his mouth into the semblance of a smile and said, “Some of them won’t recognize you.”

He remembered the second TRLH . . .

It had arrived strapped to a pressure litter whose atmosphere unit had already filled it with the poison which the occupant called air. Through the twin transparencies of the litter wall and the TRLH’s suit its injuries were plainly apparent-a large, depressed fracture of the carapace which had cut underlying blood vessels. There was no time to take the tapes he had used during the previous TRLH case because the patient was obviously bleeding to death. Conway nodded for the litter to be clamped into the cleared area in the center of the floor and quickly changed his suit gauntlets for litter gloves. From the beds attached to the ceiling, eyes watched his every move.

He charged the gloves and pushed his hands against the sagging, transparent fabric of the tent. Immediately the thin, tough material became rubbery and pliable without losing any of its strength. It clung to the charged gloves, if not like a second skin at least like another pair of thin gloves. Carefully so as not to strain the fabric which separated the two mutually poisonous atmospheres, Conway removed the patient’s suit with instruments clipped to the inside of the litter.

Quite complex procedures were possible while operating a flexible tent-Conway had a couple of PVSJs and a QCQL a few beds away to prove it-but they were limited by the instruments and medication available inside the tent, and the slight hampering effect of the fabric.

He had been removing the splinters of carapace from the damaged area when the crash of a missile striking nearby made the floor jump. The alarm bell which indicated a pressure drop sounded a few minutes later and Murchison and the Kelgian military doctor—the entire ward staff-had hurried to check the seals on the tents of patients who were not able to check their own. The drop was slight, probably a small leak caused by sprung plating, but to Conway’s patient inside the tent it could be deadly. He had begun working with frantic speed.

But while he had striven to tie off the severed blood vessels the thin, tough fabric of the pressure litter began to swell out. It had become difficult to hold instruments, virtually impossible to guide them accurately, and his hands were actually pushed away from the operative field. The difference in pressure between the interior of the tent and the ward was only a few pounds per square inch at most, barely enough to have made Conway’s ears pop, but the fabric of the litter had continued to balloon out. He had withdrawn helplessly, and half an hour later when the leak had been sealed and normal pressure restored, he had started again. By then it had been too much.

He remembered a sudden impairment of vision then, and a shock of surprise when he realized that he was crying. Tears weren’t a conditioned medical reflex, he knew, because doctors just did not cry over patients.

Probably it had been a combination of anger at losing the patient-who really should not have been lost-and his extreme fatigue. And when he’d seen the expressions of all the patients watching him, Conway had felt horribly embarrassed.

Now the events around him had taken on a jerky, erratic motion. His eyes kept closing and several seconds, or minutes, passed before he could force them open again even though to himself no time at all went by. The walking wounded-patients with injuries which allowed them to move about the ward and return quickly to their tents in the event of a puncture-were moving from bed to bed doing the small, necessary jobs, or chatting with patients who couldn’t move, or hanging like ungainly shoals of fish while they talked among themselves. But Conway was always too busy with the newly-arrived patients, or too confused with a multiplicity of tapes, to chat with the older ones. Mostly, however, his eyes went to the sleeping figures of Murchison and the Kelgian who floated near the entrance to the ward.

The Kelgian hung like a great, furry question mark, now and then emitting the low moaning sound which some DBLFs made when they were asleep. Murchison floated at the end of a snaking, ten-foot safety line, turning slowly. It was odd how sleepers in the weightless condition adopted the fetal position, Conway thought tenderly as he watched his beautiful, adult girl baby swaying at the end of an impossibly thin umbilical cord. He desperately wanted to sleep himself, but it was his spell on duty and he would not be relieved for a long time-five minutes maybe, or five hours, but an eternity in either case. He would have to keep doing something.

Without realizing he had made a decision he found himself moving into the empty storeroom which housed the terminal and probable terminal cases. It was only here that Conway spared himself the time to chat, or if talking was not possible to do the essential and at the same time useless things which help to comfort the dying. With the e-ts he could only stand by and hope that the shattered, bloody wreckage of the Tralthan or Melfan or whatever would be given a tiny flash of Prilicla’s emphathetic faculty so that they would know he was a friend and how he felt.

It was only gradually that Conway became aware that the walking wounded had followed him into the room, together with patients who had no business being outside their tents who were being towed by the others. They gathered slowly around and above him, their expression grim, determined and respectful. Major Stillman pushed his way to the front, awkwardly, because in his one good hand he carried a gun.

“The killing has got to stop, Doctor,” Stillman said quietly. “We’ve all talked it over and that’s what we decided. And it’s got to be stopped right now.” He reversed the weapon suddenly, offering it to Conway. “You might need this, to point at Dermod to keep him from doing anything foolish while we’re telling him what has been going on . . .

Close behind Stillman hung the mummified shape of Captain Williamson and the man who had towed him in. They were talking to each other in low voices and the language was both foreign and familiar to Conway. Before he could place it the patients all began moving out again and he noticed how many of them were armed. The weapons had been part of the spacesuits they had worn, and Conway had not thought about guns when he had piled the suits into a ward storage space. Dermod, he thought, would be very annoyed with him. Then he followed the patients out to the main ward entrance, and the corridor which led to Reception.

Stillman talked nearly all the time, telling him what had been happening. When they were almost there he said anxiously, “You don’t think I’m . . . I’m a traitor for doing this, Doctor?”

There were so many different emotions churning inside Conway that all he could say was “No!”

CHAPTER 25

He felt ridiculous pointing the gun at the Fleet commander, but that had seemed to be the only way to do this thing. Conway had entered Reception, threaded his way through the officers around the control desks until he had reached Dermod, then he had held the gun on the Fleet commander, while the others came in. He had also tried to explain things, but he wasn’t doing a very good job.

. . . So you want me to surrender, Doctor,” said Dermod wearily, not looking at the gun. His eyes went from Conway’s face to those of some of the Corpsmen patients who were still floating into the room. He looked hurt and disappointed, as if a friend had done a very shameful thing.

Conway tried again.

“Not surrender, sir,” he said, pointing at the man who was still guiding Williamson’s stretcher. “We . . . I mean, that man over there needs a communicator. He wants to order a cease fire . . .”

Stammering in his eagerness to explain what had happened, Conway started with the influx of casualties after the collision between Vespasian and the enemy transport. The interiors of both ships were a shambles and, while it was known that there were enemy as well as Corpsmen injured, there had never been time or the staff available to separate them. Then later, when the less seriously injured began to move around, talking to or helping to nurse the other patients, it became plain that almost half of the casualties were from the other side. Oddly this did not seem to matter much to the patients, and the staff were too busy to notice. So the patients went on doing the simpler, necessary and not very pleasant jobs for each other, jobs which just had to be done in a ward so drastically understaffed, and talking . . .

For these were Corpsmen from Vespasian, and Vespasian had been to Etla. Which meant that its crew were variously proficient in the Etlan language, and the Etlans spoke the same language as that used all over the Empire-a general purpose language similar to the Federation’s Universal. They talked to each other a lot and one of the things they learned, after the initial caution and distrust had passed, was that the enemy transport had contained some very high officers. One of the ones who had survived the collision was third in line of command of the Empire forces around Sector General . . .

And for the last few days peace talks have been going on among my patients,” Conway ended breathlessly. “Unofficial, perhaps, but I think Colonel Williamson and Heraltnor here have enough rank to make them binding. —

Heraltnor, the enemy officer, spoke briefly and vehemently to Williamson in Etlan, then gently tilted the plaster encased figure of the Captain until he could look at the fleet commander. Heraltnor watched Dermod, too. Anxiously.

“He’s no fool, sir,” said Williamson painfully. “From the sound of the bombardment and the glimpses he’s had of your screens he knows our defenses are hammered flat. He says that his people could land now and we couldn’t do a thing to stop them. That is true, sir, and we both know it. He says his chief will probably order the landing in a matter of hours, but he still wants a cease fire, sir, not a surrender.

“He doesn’t want his side to win,” the Captain ended weakly. “He just wants the fighting to stop. There are some things he has been told about this war and us which need straightening out, he says . . .”

“He’s been saying a lot,” said Dermod angrily. His face had a tortured look, as if he was wanting desperately to hope but did not dare let himself do so. He went on, “And you men have been doing a lot of talking! Why didn’t you let me know about it . . .

“It wasn’t what we said,” Stillman broke in sharply, “it was what we did! They didn’t believe a word we told them at first. But this place wasn’t at all what they had been told to expect, it looked more like a hospital than a torture chamber. Appearances could have been deceptive, and they were a very suspicious bunch, but they saw human and e-t doctors and nurses working themselves to death over them, and they saw him. Talking didn’t do anything, at least not until later. It was what we did, what he did . . .!”

Conway felt his ears getting warm. He protested, “But the same thing was happening in every ward of the hospital!”

“Shut up, Doctor,” Stillman said respectfully, then went on, “He never seemed to sleep. He hardly ever spoke to us once we were out of danger, but the patients in the side ward he never let up on, even though they were the hopeless cases. A couple of them he proved not to be hopeless, and moved them out to us in the main ward. It didn’t matter what side they were on, he worked as hard for everybody . . .

“Stillman,” said Conway sharply, “you’re dramatizing things . . .

Even then they were wavering a bit,” Stillman went on regardless.

“But it was the TRLH case which clinched things. The TRLHs were enemy e-t volunteers, and normally the Empire people don’t think much of e-ts and expected us to feel the same. Especially as this e-t was on the other side. But he worked just as hard on it, and when the pressure drop made it impossible for him to go on with the operation and the e-t died, they saw his reaction—”

“Stillman!” said Conway furiously.

But Stillman did not go into details. He was silent, watching Dermod anxiously. Everybody was watching Dermod. Except Conway, who was looking at Heraltnor.

The Empire officer did not look very impressive at that moment, Conway thought. He looked like a very ordinary, graying, middle-aged man with a heavy chin and worry-lines around his eyes. In comparison to Dermod’s trim green uniform with its quietly impressive load of insignia the shapeless, white garment issued to DBDG patients put Heraltnor at somewhat of a disadvantage. As the silence dragged on Conway wondered whether they would salute each other or just nod.

But they did better than either, they shook hands.

There was an initial period of suspicion and mistrust, of course. The Empire commander-in-chief was convinced that Heraltnor had been hypnotized at first, but when the investigating party of Empire officers landed on Sector General after the cease fire the distrust diminished rapidly to zero. For Conway the only thing which diminished was his worries regarding wards being opened to space. There was still too much for his staff and himself to do, even though engineers and medical officers from the Empire fleet were doing all they could to put Sector General together again. While they worked the first trickle of the evacuated staff began to return, both medical and maintenance, and the Translator computer went back into operation. Then five weeks and six days after the cease fire the Empire fleet left the vicinity of the hospital. They left their wounded behind them, the reasons being that they were getting the best possible treatment where they were, and that the fleet might have more fighting to do.

In one of the daily meetings with the hospital authorities-which still consisted of O’Mara and Conway since nobody more senior to them had come with the recent arrivals-Dermod tried to put a complex situation into very simple terms.

. . . Now that the Imperial citizens know the truth about Etla among other things,” he said seriously, “the Emperor and his administration are virtually extinct. But things are still very confused in some sectors and a show of force will help stabilize things. I’d like it to be just a show of force, which is why I talked their commander into taking some of our cultural contact and sociology people with him. We want rid of the Emperor, but not at the price of a civil war.

“Heraltnor wanted you to go along, too, Doctor. But I told him that . . .

Beside him O’Mara groaned. “Besides saving hundreds of lives,” the Chief Psychologist said, “and averting a galaxy-wide war, our miracle working, brilliant young doctor is being called on to—”

“Stop needling him, O’Mara!” Dermod said sharply. “Those things are literally true, or very nearly so. If he hadn’t . . .

“Just force of habit, sir,” said O’Mara blandly. “As a head-shrinker I consider it my bounden duty to keep his from swelling . . .

At that moment the main screen behind Dermod’s desk, manned by a Nidian Receptionist now instead of a Monitor officer, lit with a picture of a furry Kelgian head. It appeared that there was a large DBLF transport coming in with FGLI and ELNT staff aboard in addition to the Kelgians, eighteen of which were Senior Physicians. Bearing in mind the damaged state of the hospital and the fact that just three locks were in operable condition, the Kelgian on the screen wanted to discuss quarters and assignments before landing with the Diagnostician-in-Charge . . .

“Thornnastor’s still unfit and there are no other . . .” Conway began to say when O’Mara reached across to touch his arm.

“Seven tapes, remember,” he said gruffly. “Let us not quibble, Doctor. —

Conway gave O’Mara a long, steady look, a look which went deeper than the blunt, scowling features and the sarcastic, hectoring voice. Conway was not a Diagnostician-what he had done two months ago had been forced on him, and it had nearly killed him. But what O’Mara was saying-with the touch of his hand and the expression in his eyes, not the scowl on his face and the tone of his voice-was that it would be just a matter of time.

Coloring with pleasure, which Dermod probably put down to embarrassment at O’Mara’s ribbing, he dealt quickly with the quartering and duties of the staff on the Kelgian transport, then excused himself. He was supposed to meet Murchison at the recreation level in ten minutes, and she had asked him . . .

As he was leaving he heard O’Mara saying morosely . . . And in addition to saving countless billions from the horrors of war, I bet he gets the girl, too . . .

Sector General 3—Major Operation

James White

INVADER

Far out on the Galactic Rim, where star systems were widely scattered and the darkness nearly absolute, the tremendous structure which was SectorTwelveGeneralHospital hung in space. Inside its three hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum ranging from the ultra frigid methane species through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation. In addition to the patients, whose number and physiological classification was a constant variable, there was a medical and maintenance staff who were composed of sixty-odd differing life-forms with sixty different sets of mannerisms, body odors and ways of looking at life.

The staff of Sector General was an extremely able, dedicated, but not always serious group of people who were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life-had this not been so they could never have served in such a multienvironment hospital in the first place. They prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless, and their facilities and professional reputation were second to none. It was unthinkable that one of their number should be guilty of nearly killing a patient through sheer carelessness.

“Obviously the thought isn’t unthinkable,” O’Mara, the Chief Psychologist, said dryly. “I’m thinking it, reluctantly, and you are also thinking it—if only momentarily. Far worse, Mannon himself is convinced of his own guilt. This leaves me with no choice but to—”

“No!” said Conway, strong emotion overriding his usual respect for authority. “Mannon is one of the best Seniors we have—you know that!

He wouldn’t . . . I mean, he isn’t the type to . . . He’s . . .

“A good friend of yours,” O’Mara finished for him, smiling. When Conway did not reply he went on, “My liking for Mannon may not equal yours, but my professional knowledge of him is much more detailed and objective. So much so that two days ago I would not have believed him capable of such a thing. Now, dammit, uncharacteristic behavior bothers me . . .

Conway could understand that. As Chief Psychologist, O’Mara’s prime concern was the smooth and efficient running of the hospital’s medical staff, but keeping so many different and potentially antagonistic life-forms working in harmony was a big job whose limits, like those of O’Mara’s authority, were difficult to define. Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect in its personnel, there were still occasions when friction occurred.

Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop a xenophobic neurosis which might affect its efficiency, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on one of the insectile Cinrusskin patients the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. It was O’Mara’s duty to detect and eradicate such trouble, or to remove the potentially troublesome individuals. This guarding against wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking was a duty which he performed with such zeal that Conway had heard him likened to a latter-day Torquemada.

Now it looked as if this paragon of psychologists had been something less than alert. In psychology there were no effects without prior cause and O’Mara must now be thinking that he had missed some small but vital warning signal—a slightly uncharacteristic word or expression or display of temper, perhaps—which should have warned him of trouble developing for Senior Physician Mannon.

The psychologist sat back and fixed Conway with a pair of gray eyes which saw so much and which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty He said, “No doubt you are thinking that I have lost my grip. You feel sure that Mannon’s trouble is basically psychological and that there is an explanation other than negligence for what happened. You may decide that the recent death of his dog has caused him to go to pieces from sheer grief, and other ideas of an equally uncomplicated and ridiculous nature will occur to you. In my opinion, however, any time spent investigating the psychological aspects of this business will be completely wasted. Doctor Mannon has been subjected to the most exhaustive tests. He is physically sound and as sane as we are. As sane as I am any . . .

“Thank you,” said Conway.

“I keep telling you, Doctor,” O’Mara said sourly, “my job here is to shrink heads, not swell them. Your assignment, if we can call it that, is strictly unofficial. Since there is no excuse for Mannon’s error so far as health and psycho profile are concerned I want you to look for some other reason-some outside influence, perhaps, of which the Doctor is unaware. Doctor Prilicla observed the incident in question and may be able to help you.

“You have a peculiar mind, Doctor,” O’Mara concluded, rising from his seat, “and an odd way of looking at problems. We don’t want to lose Doctor Mannon, but if you do get him out of trouble the surprise will probably kill me. I mention this so that you will have an added incentive . . .

Conway left the office, fuming slightly. O’Mara was always flinging his allegedly peculiar mind in his face when the simple truth was that he had been so shy when he had first joined the hospital, especially with nurses of his own species, that he had felt more comfortable in extraterrestrial company. He was no longer shy, but still he numbered more friends among the weird and wonderful denizens of Traltha, Illensa and a score of other systems than beings of his own species. This might be peculiar, Conway admitted, but to a doctor living in a multi-environment hospital it was also a distinct advantage.

Outside in the corridor Conway contacted Prilicla in the other’s ward, found that the little empath was free and arranged a meeting for as soon as possible on the Forty-sixth Level, which was where the Hudlar operating theater was situated. Then he devoted a part of his mind to the problem of Mannon while the rest of it guided him toward Forty-six and kept him from being trampled to death en route.

His Senior Physician’s armband automatically cleared the way so far as nurses and subordinate grades of doctors were concerned, but there were continual encounters with the lordly and absentminded Diagnosticians who plowed their way through everyone and everything regardless, or with junior members of the staff who happened to belong to a more massive species. Tralthans of physiological classification FGLI-warm-blooded oxygen breathers resembling a sort of low-slung, six-legged elephant. Or the Kelgian DBLFs who were giant, silver-furred caterpillars who hooted like a siren when they were jostled whether they were outranked or not, or the crab-like ELNTs from Melf LV . . .

The majority of the intelligent races in the Federation were oxygen breathers even though their physiological classifications varied enormously, but a much greater hazard to navigation on foot was the entity traversing a foreign level in protective armor. The protection required by a TLTU doctor, who breathed superheated steam and whose gravity and pressure requirements were three times those of the oxygen levels, was a great, clanking juggernaut which was to be avoided at all costs.

At the next intersection lock he donned a lightweight suit and let himself into the yellow, foggy world of the chlorine-breathing Illensans. Here the corridors were crowded with the spiny, membranous and unadorned denizens of Illensa while it was the Tralthans, Kelgians and Earth humans like himself who wore, or in some cases drove, protective armor. The next leg of his journey took him through the vast tank where the thirty-foot long, water-breathing entities from Chalderescol II swam ponderously through their warm, green world. The same suit served him here and, while the traffic was less dense, he was slowed down considerably through having to swim instead of walk. Despite this he was on the Forty-sixth Level observation gallery, his suit still streaming Chalder water, just fifteen minutes after leaving O’Mara’s office, and Prilicla arrived close behind him.

“Good morning, friend Conway,” said the little empath as it swung itself deftly onto the ceiling and hung by six fragile, sucker-tipped legs. The musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech were received by Conway’s Translator pack, relayed down to the tremendous computer at the center of the hospital and transmitted back to his earpiece as flat, emotionless English. Trembling slightly, the Cinrusskin went on, “I feel you needing help, Doctor.”

“Yes indeed,” said Conway, his words going through the same process of Translation and reaching Prilicla as equally toneless Cinrusskin. “It’s about Mannon. There was no time to give details when I called you . . .

“No need, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “On the Mannon incident the grapevine is more than usually efficient. You want to know what I saw and felt, of course.

“If you don’t mind,” said Conway apologetically.

Prilicla said that it didn’t mind. But the Cinrusskin was, in addition to being the nicest entity in the whole hospital, its greatest liar.

Of physiological classification GLNO-insectile, exoskeletal with six pipe stem legs and a pair of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings, and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty, only on Cinruss with its one-eighth Earth gravity could a race of insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and a high civilization. But in Sector General Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity nullification devices everywhere outside its quarters because the gravity pull which most beings considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat, and when Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it swung itself out of reach of any thoughtless movement of arm or tentacle which would have caved in its fragile body or snapped off a leg. While accompanying anyone on rounds it usually kept pace with them along the corridor walls or ceiling so as to avoid the same fate.

Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt Prilicla in any way-it was too well liked for that. Prilicla’s empathic faculty saw to it that the little being always said and did the right thing to people-being an emotion-sensitive to do otherwise would mean that the feelings of anger or sorrow which its thoughtless action caused would bounce back and figuratively smack it in the face. So the little empath was forced constantly to lie and to always be kind and considerate in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible.

Except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and violent emotion in a patient, or it wanted to help a friend.

Just before Prilicla began its report Conway said, “I’m not sure myself what exactly it is I’m looking for, Doctor. But if you can remember anything unusual about Mannon’s actions or emotions, or those of his staff . . .

With its fragile body trembling with the memory of the emotional gale which had emanated from the now empty Hudlar theater two days ago, Prilicla set the scene as it had been at the beginning of the operation. The little GLNO had not taken the Hudlar physiology tape and so had not been able to view the proceedings with any degree of involvement with the patient’s condition, and the patient itself was anesthetized and scarcely radiating at all. Mannon and his staff had been concentrating on their duties with only a small part of their minds free to think or emote about anything else. And then Senior Physician Mannon had his . . . accident. In actual fact it was five separate and distinct accidents.

Prilicla’s body began to quiver violently and Conway said, “I . . . I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” said the empath, and resumed its report.

The patient had been partially decompressed so that the operative field could be worked more effectively. There was some danger in this considering the Hudlar pulse rate and blood pressure, but Mannon himself had evolved this procedure and so was best able to weigh the risks. Since the patient was decompressed he had had to work quickly, and at first everything seemed to be going well. He had opened a flap of the flexible armor-plating which the Hudlars used for skin and had controlled the subcutaneous bleeding when the first mistake occurred, followed in quick succession by two more. Prilicla could not tell by observation that they were mistakes, even though there was considerable bleeding-it was Mannon’s emotional reactions, some of the most violent the empath had ever experienced, which told it that the surgeon had committed a serious and stupid blunder.

There were longer intervals between the two others which followed- Mannon’s work had slowed drastically, his technique resembling the first fumblings of a student rather than that of one of the most skillful surgeons in the hospital. He had become so slow that curative surgery was impossible, and he had barely time to withdraw and restore pressure before the patient’s condition deteriorated beyond the point of no return.

It was very distressing,” Prilicla said, still trembling violently. “He wanted to work quickly, but the earlier mistakes had wrecked his self confidence. He was thinking twice about doing even the simplest things, things which a surgeon of his experience would do automatically, without thinking.”

Conway was silent for a moment, thinking about the horrible situation Mannon had been in. Then he said, “Was there anything else unusual about his feelings? Or those of the theater staff?”

Prilicla hesitated, then said, “It is difficult to isolate subtle nuances of emotion when the source is emoting so . . . so violently. But I received the impression of . . . the effect is hard to describe . . . of something like a faint emotional echo of irregular duration . . .”

“Probably the Hudlar tape,” said Conway. “It’s not the first time a physiology tape gave me mental double vision.”

“That might possibly be the case,” said Prilicla. Which, in a being who was invariably and enthusiastically in agreement with whatever was said to it, was as close as the empath could come to a negative reply. Conway began to feel that he might be getting onto something important.

“How about the others?”

“Two of them,” said Prilicla, “were radiating the shock-worry-fear combination indicative of a mildly traumatic experience in the recent past. I was in the gallery when both incidents occurred, and one of them gave me quite a jolt . . .

One of the nurses had almost had an accident while lifting a tray of instruments. One of them, a long, heavy, Hudlar Type Six scalpel used for opening the incredibly tough skin of that species, had slipped off the tray for some reason. Even a small punctured or incised wound was a very serious matter for a Kelgian, so that the Kelgian nurse had a bad fright when it saw that vicious blade dropping toward its unprotected side. But somehow it had struck in such a way-it was difficult to know how, considering its shape and lack of balance-that it had not penetrated the skin or even damaged the fur. The Kelgian had been relieved and thankful for its good fortune, but still a little disturbed.

“I can imagine,” said Conway. “Probably the Charge Nurse read the riot act. Minor errors become major crimes where theater staff are concerned . . .

Prilicla’s legs began to tremble again, a sign that it was nerving itself for the effort of being slightly disagreeable. It said, “The entity in question was the Charge Nurse. That was why, when the other nurse goofed on an instrument count-there was one too many or too few-the ticking off was relatively mild. And during both incidents I detected the echo effect radiated by Mannon, although in these cases the echo was from the respective nurses.

“We may have something there!” said Conway excitedly. “Did the nurses have any physical contact with Mannon?”

“They were assisting him,” said Prilicla, “and they were all wearing protective suits. I don’t see how any form of parasitic life or bacteria could have passed between them, if that is the idea which is making you feel so excited and hopeful just now. I am very sorry, friend Conway, but this echo effect, while peculiar, does not seem to me to be important.”

“It’s something they had in common,” said Conway.

“Yes,” Prilicla said, “but the something did not have self identity, it was not an individual. Just a very faint emotional echo of the feelings of the people concerned.”

“Even so,” said Conway.

Three people had made mistakes or had had accidents in this theater two days ago, all of whom had radiated an odd emotional echo which Prilicla did not consider important. The presence of an accident-prone Conway ruled out because O’Mara’s screening methods were too efficient in that respect. But suppose Prilicla was wrong and something had got in the theater or into the hospital, some form of life which was difficult to detect and outside their present experience. It was well known that when odd things happened in Sector General the reasons very often were found outside the hospital. At the moment, however, he hadn’t enough evidence to form even a vague theory and the first job should be to gather some—even though he might not recognize it if he tripped over it with both feet.

“I’m hungry and it’s high time we talked to the man himself,” said Conway suddenly. “Let’s find him and invite him to lunch.”

The dining hall for the oxygen-breathing Medical and Maintenance staff occupied one complete level, and at one time it had been sectioned off into physiological types with low dividing ropes. But this had not worked out too well because the diners very often wanted to talk shop with other species colleagues or they found that there were no vacant places in their own enclosure and space going to waste in that of another life-form. So it was no surprise when they arrived to find that they had the choice of sitting at an enormous Tralthan table with benches which were a shade too far from the table’s edge and one in the Melfan section which was cozier but whose chairs resembled surrealistic wastepaper baskets. They insinuated themselves into three of the latter and began the usual preliminaries to ordering.

“I’m just myself today,” said Prilicla in answer to Conway’s question. “The usual, if you please.”

Conway dialed for the usual, which was a triple helping of Earth type spaghetti, then looked at Mannon.

“I’ve an FROB and an MSVK beastie riding me,” the other Senior said gruffly. “Hudlars aren’t persnickity about food, but those blasted MSVKs are offended by anything which doesn’t look like birdseed! Just get me something nutritious, but don’t tell me what it is and put it in about three sandwiches so’s I won’t see what it is . . .”

While they were waiting for the food to arrive Mannon spoke quietly,. the normality of his tone belied by the fact that his emotional radiation was making Prilicla shake like a leaf. He said, “The grapevine has it that you two are trying to get me out of this trouble I’m in. It’s nice of you, but you’re wasting your time.

“We don’t think so and neither does O’Mara,” said Conway, shading the truth considerably. “O’Mara gives you a clean bill of mental and physical health, and he said that your behavior was most uncharacteristic. There must be some explanation, some environmental influence, perhaps, or something whose presence or absence would make you behave, if only momentarily, in an uncharacteristic fashion . . .

Conway outlined what little they knew to date, trying to sound more hopeful than he really felt, but Mannon was no fool.

“I don’t know whether to feel grateful for your efforts or concerned for your respective mental well-beings,” Mannon said when he had finished. “These peculiar and rather vague mental effects are . . . are . . . at the risk of offending Daddy-longlegs here I would suggest that any peculiarities there are lie in your own minds-your attempts to find excuses for me are becoming ridiculous!”

“Now you’re telling me I have a peculiar mind,” said Conway.

Mannon laughed quietly, but Prilicla was trembling worse than ever. “A circumstance, person or thing,” Conway repeated, “whose presence or absence might effect your- “Ye Gods!” Mannon burst out. “You’re not thinking of the dog!” Conway had been thinking about the dog, but he was too much of

a moral coward to admit it right then. Instead he said, “Were you thinking about it during that op, Doctor?”

“No!” said Mannon.

There was a long, awkward silence after that, during which the service panels slid open and their orders rose into view. It was Mannon who spoke first.

“I liked that dog,” he said carefully, “when I was myself, that is. But for the past four years I’ve had to carry MSVK and LSVO tapes permanently in connection with my teaching duties, and recently I’ve needed the Hudlar and Melfan tapes for a project Thornnastor invited me to join. They were in permanent occupation as well. With my brain thinking that it was five different people, five very different people . . . Well, you know how it is . . .”

Conway and Prilicla knew how it was only too well.

The Hospital was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, but no single person could hold in his brain even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity was a matter of ability and training, but the complete physiological knowledge of any patient was furnished by means of an Educator Tape, which was simply the brain record of some great medical genius belonging to the same or a similar species to that of the patient being treated. If an Earth human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took a DBLF physiology tape until treatment was completed, after which it was erased. The sole exceptions to this rule were Senior Physicians with teaching duties and the Diagnosticians.

A Diagnostician was one of the elite, a being whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently six, seven or even ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.

But the tapes did not impart only physiological data, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of schizophrenia. The entities apparently sharing one’s mind could be unpleasant, aggressive individuals- geniuses were rarely charming people—with all sorts of peeves and phobias. These did not become apparent only at mealtimes. The worst period was when the possessor of the tapes was relaxing prior to sleeping.

Alien nightmares were really nightmarish and alien sexual fantasies and wish-fulfillment dreams were enough to make the person concerned wish, if he were capable of wishing coherently for anything, that he was dead.

. . . Within the space of a few minutes,” Mannon continued, “she would change from being a ferocious, hairy beast intent on tearing out my belly feathers to a brainless bundle of fur which would get squashed by one of my six feet if it didn’t get to blazes out of the way, to a perfectly ordinary dog wanting to play. It wasn’t fair to the mutt, you know. She was a very old and confused dog toward the end, and I’m more glad than sorry that she died.

“And now let’s talk and emote about some other subject,” Mannon ended briskly. “Otherwise we will completely ruin Prilicla’s lunch . . .

He did just that for the remainder of the meal, discussing with apparent relish a juicy piece of gossip originating in the SNLU section of the methane wards. How anything of a scandalous nature could occur between two intelligent crystalline life-forms living at minus one hundred and fifty degrees Centigrade was something which puzzled Conway, or for that matter why their moral shortcomings were of such interest to a warm-blooded oxygen-breather. Unless this was one of the reasons why Senior Physician Mannon was so far on the way to becoming a Diagnostician himself.

Or had been.

If Mannon was assisting Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology (and as such the hospital’s senior Diagnostician) in one of that august being’s projects, then Mannon had to be in good physical and mental shape-Diagnosticians were terribly choosy about their assistants. And everything the Chief Psychologist had told him pointed the same way. But then what had got into Mannon two days ago to make him behave as he had?

As the others talked Conway began to realize that the sort of evidence he needed might be difficult to gather. The questions he had to ask would require tact and some sort of theory to explain his line of investigation. His mind was still miles away when Mannon and Prilicla began rising to go. As they were leaving the table Conway moved closer to Prilicla and asked softly, “Any echoes, Doctor?”

“Nothing,” said Prilicla, “nothing at all.”

Within seconds their places at the table were taken by three Kelgians who draped their long, silvery, caterpillar bodies over the backs of the ELNT chairs so that their forward manipulators hung over the table at a comfortable distance for eating. One of the three was Naydrad, the Charge Nurse on Mannon’s theater staff. Conway excused himself to his friends and returned quickly to the table.

When he had finished talking it was Naydrad who spoke first. It said, “We would like to help, sir, but this is an unusual request. It involves, at very least, the wholesale betrayal of confidence . . .

“We don’t want names,” said Conway urgently. “The mistakes are required for statistical purposes only and no disciplinary action will be taken. This investigation is unofficial, an idea of my own. Its only purpose is to help Doctor Mannon.”

They were all keen to help their Chief, naturally, and Conway went on, “To summarize, if we accept that Senior Physician Mannon is incapable of gross professional misconduct-which we all do-then we must assume that his error was caused by an outside influence. Since there is strong evidence that the Doctor was mentally stable and free from all disease or physical malfunction it follows that we are looking for an outside influence-or more accurately, indications of the presence of an outside influence-which may be nonphysical.

“Mistakes by a person in authority are more noticeable, and serious, than those of a subordinate,” Conway went on, “but if these errors are being caused by an outside agency they should not be confined only to senior staff, and it is here that we need data. There are bound to be mistakes, especially among trainee staff-we all realize this. What we must know is whether there has been an overall or local increase in the number of these minor errors and, if so, exactly where and when they occurred.”

“Is this matter to be kept confidential?” one of the Kelgians asked.

Conway nearly choked at the idea of anything being kept confidential in this place, but the sarcasm was, fortunately, filtered out of his tone by the process of Translation.

“The more people gathering data on this the better,” he said. “Just use your discretion . . .

A few minutes later he was at another table saying much the same thing, then another and another. He would be late back to his wards today, but fortunately he had a couple of very good assistants-the type who just loved it when they had a chance to show how well they could do without him.

During the remainder of the day there was no great response, nor had he expected any, but on the second day nursing staff of all shapes and species began approaching him with elaborate secrecy to tell of incidents which invariably had happened to a third party. Conway noted times and places carefully while showing no curiosity whatever regarding the identities of the persons concerned. Then on the morning of the third day Mannon sought him out during his rounds.

“You’re really working at this thing, aren’t you, Conway,” Mannon said harshly, then added, “I’m grateful. Loyalty is nice even when it’s misplaced. But I wish you would stop. You’re heading for serious trouble.”

Conway said, “You’re the one in trouble, Doctor, not me.

“That’s what you think,” said Mannon gruffly. “I’ve just come from O’Mara’s office. He wants to see you. Forthwith.”

A few minutes later Conway was being waved into the inner sanctum by one of O’Mara’s assistants, who was trying hard to warn him of impending doom with his eyebrows while commiserating with him by turning down the corners of his mouth. The combination of expressions looked so ridiculous that Conway found himself inside before he realized it, facing a very angry O’Mara with what must have been a stupid grin on his face.

The psychologist stabbed a finger in the direction of the least comfortable chair and shouted, “What the blazes do you mean by infesting the hospital with a disembodied intelligence?”

“What . . . ?” began Conway.

Are you trying to make a fool of yourself?” O’Mara stormed on, disregarding him. “Or make a fool out of me? Don’t interrupt! Granted you’re the youngest Senior in the place and your colleagues-none of whom specialize in applied psychology, let me add-think highly of you. But such idiotic and irresponsible behavior is worthy only of a patient in the psychiatric wards!

“Junior staff discipline is going to pot, thanks to you,” O’Mara went on, a little more quietly. “It is now becoming the done thing to make mistakes! Practically every Charge Nurse in the place is screaming for me-me! —to get rid of the thing! All you did was invent this invisible, undetectable, insubstantial monster-apparently the job of getting rid of it is the responsibility of the Chief Psychologist!”

O’Mara paused to catch his breath, and when he continued his tone had become quiet and almost polite. He said, “And don’t think that you are fooling anyone. Boiled down to its simplest terms, you are hoping that if enough other mistakes are made your friend’s will pass relatively unnoticed. And stop opening and closing your mouth-your turn to talk will come! One of the aspects of this whole situation which really troubles me is that I share responsibility for it in that I gave you an insoluble problem hoping that you might attack it from a new angle-an angle which might give a partial solution, enough to let our friend off the hook. Instead you created a new and perhaps worse problem!

“I may have exaggerated things a little because of excusable annoyance, Doctor,” O’Mara went on quietly, “but the fact remains that you may be in serious trouble over this business. I don’t believe that the nursing staff will deliberately make mistakes-at least, not of the order which would endanger their patients. But any relaxation of standards is dangerous, obviously. Do you begin to see what you’ve been doing, Doctor?”

“Yes, sir,” said Conway.

“I see that you do,” O’Mara said with uncharacteristic mildness. “And now I would like to know why you did it. Well, Doctor?”

Conway took his time about answering. This was not the first time he had left the Chief Psychologist’s office with his ego singed around the edges, but this time it looked serious. The generally held opinion was that when O’Mara was not unduly concerned over, or in some cases when he actually liked an individual, the psychologist felt able to relax with them and be his bad-tempered, obnoxious self, but when O’Mara became quiet and polite and not at all sarcastic, when he began treating a person as a patient rather than a colleague in other words, that person was in trouble up to his or its neck.

Finally, Conway said, “At first it was simply a story to explain why I was being so nosy, sir. Nurses don’t tell tales and it might have looked as if that was what I wanted them to do. All I did was suggest that as Doctor Mannon was in all respects fit, outside physical agencies such as e-t bacteria or parasites and the like were ruled out because of the thoroughness of our aseptic procedures. You, sir, had already reassured us regarding his mental condition. I postulated an . . . an outside, nonmaterial cause which might or might not be consciously directed.

“I haven’t anything so definite as a theory about it,” Conway went on quickly. “Nor did I mention disembodied intelligences to anyone, but something odd happened in that theater, and not only during the time of Mannon’s operation . . .

He described the echo effect Prilicla had detected while monitoring Mannon’s emotional radiation, and the similar effect when Naydrad had had the accident with the knife. There was also the later incident of the Melfan intern whose sprayer wouldn’t spray-their mandibles weren’t suited to surgical gloves so that they painted them with plastic before an op. When the intern had tried to use the sprayer it oozed what the Melfan described as metallic porridge. Later the sprayer in question could not be found. Perhaps it had never existed. And there were other peculiar incidents. Mistakes which seemed a little too simple for trained staff to make-errors in instrument counts, dropping things, and all seeming to involve a certain amount of temporary mental confusion and perhaps outright hallucination.

So far there has not been enough to make a statistically meaningful sample,” Conway went on, “but they are enough to make me curious. I’d give you their names if I wasn’t sworn to keep them confidential, because I think you would be interested in the way they describe some of these incidents.

“Possibly, Doctor,” said O’Mara coldly. “On the other hand I might not want to lend my professional support to a figment of your imagination by investigating such trivia. As for the near-accidents with scalpels and the other mistakes, it is my opinion that some people are lucky, others a little bit stupid at times, while others are fond of pulling other peoples’ legs. Well, Doctor?”

Conway took a firmer grip on the arms of his chair and said doggedly, “The dropped scalpel was an FROB Type Six, a very heavy, unbalanced instrument. Even if it had struck handle first it would have spun into Naydrad’s side a few inches below the point of impact and caused a deep and serious wound-if the blade had any actual physical existence at all! This is something I’m beginning to doubt. That is why I think we should widen the scope of this investigation. May I have permission to see Colonel Skempton and if necessary contact the Corps survey people, to check on the origins of recent arrivals?”

The expected explosion did not come. Instead O’Mara’s voice sounded almost sympathetic as he said, “I cannot decide whether you are honestly convinced that you’re onto something or simply that you’ve gone too far to back down without looking ridiculous. So far as I’m concerned you couldn’t look anymore ridiculous at the moment. You should not be afraid to admit you were wrong, Doctor, and begin repairing some of the damage to discipline your irresponsibility has caused.”

O’Mara waited precisely ten seconds for Conway’s reply, then he said, “Very well, Doctor. See the Colonel. And tell Prilicla I’m rearranging its schedule-it may be helpful to have your emotional echo-detector available at all times. Since you insist on making a fool of yourself you might as well do it properly. Afterward-well, we will be very sorry to see Mannon go, and in all honesty I suppose I must say the same about you. Both of you are likely to be on the same ship out . . .

A few seconds later he was dismissed very quietly.

Mannon himself had accused Conway of misguided loyalty and now O’Mara had suggested that his present stand was the result of not wanting to admit to a mistake. He had been given an out, which he had refused to take, and now the thought of service in the smaller multienvironment hospital, or even a planet-side establishment where the arrival of an e-t patient would be considered a major event, was beginning to come home to him. It gave him an unpleasantly gone feeling in the abdominal area. Maybe he was basing his theory on too little evidence and refusing to admit it. Maybe the odd errors were part of an entirely different puzzle, with no connection whatever with Mannon’s trouble. As he strode along the corridors, taking evading action or being evaded every few yards, the impulse grew in him to rush back to O’Mara, say yes to everything, apologize abjectly and promise to be a good boy. But by the time he was ready to give into it he was outside Colonel Skempton’s door.

Sector General was supplied and to a large extent maintained by the Monitor Corps, which was the Federation’s executive and law enforcement arm. As the senior Corps officer in the hospital, Colonel Skempton handled traffic to and from the hospital in addition to a horde of other administrative details. It was said that the top of his desk had never been visible since the day it arrived. When Conway was shown in he looked up, said “Good morning,” looked down at his desk and said, “Ten minutes . . .”

It took much longer than ten minutes. Conway was interested in traffic from odd points of origin, or ships which had called at such places. He wanted data on the level of technology, medical science and physiological classification of their inhabitants-especially if the psychological sciences or psionics were well-developed or if the incidence of mental illness was unusually high. Skempton began excavating among the papers on his desk.

But the supply ship, ambulances and ships pressed into emergency service as ambulances which had arrived during the past few weeks had originated from Federation worlds which were well known and medically innocuous. All except one, that was-the Cultural Contact and Survey vessel Descartes. It had landed, very briefly, on a most unusual planet. She was on the ground, if it could be called that, for only a few minutes. None of the crew had left the ship, the air-locks had remained sealed and the samples of air, water and surface material were drawn in, analyzed and declared interesting but harmless. The pathology department of the hospital had made a more thorough analysis and had had the same thing to say. Descartes had called briefly to leave the samples and a patient . . .

“A patient!” Conway almost shouted when the Colonel reached that point in his report. Skempton would not need an empathic faculty to know what he was thinking.

“Yes, Doctor, but don’t get your hopes up,” said the Colonel. “He had nothing more exotic than a broken leg. And despite the fact e-t bugs find it impossible to live on beings of another species, a fact which simplifies the practice of extraterrestrial medicine no end, ship medics are constantly on the lookout for the exception which is supposed to prove the rule. In short, he was suffering only from a broken leg.”

“I’d like to see him anyway,” said Conway.

“Level Two-eighty-three, Ward Four, name of Lieutenant Harrison,” said Skempton. “Don’t slam the door.”

But the meeting with Lieutenant Harrison had to wait until late that evening, because Prilicla’s schedule needed time to rearrange and Conway himself had duties other than the search for hypothetical disembodied intelligences. The delay, however, was fortunate because much more information was made available to him, gathered during rounds and at mealtimes, even though the data was such that he did not quite know what to do with it.

The number of boobs, errors and mistakes was surprising, he suspected, only because he had not interested himself in such things before now. Even so, the silly, stupid mistakes he encountered, especially among the highly trained and responsible OR staff, were definitely uncharacteristic, he thought. And they did not form the sort of pattern he had expected. A plot of times and places should have shown an early focal point of this hypothetical mental contagion becoming more widespread as the disease progressed. Instead the pattern indicated a single focus moving within a certain circumscribed area-the Hudlar theater and its immediate surroundings. Whatever the thing was, if there was anything there at all, it was behaving like a single entity rather than a disease.

. . . Which is ridiculous!” Conway protested. “Even I didn’t seriously believe in a disembodied intelligence-it was a working hypothesis only. I’m not that stupid!”

He had been filling Prilicla in on the latest developments while they were on the way to see the Lieutenant. The empath kept pace with him along the ceiling for a few minutes in silence, then said inevitably, “I agree.”

Conway would have preferred some constructive objections for a change, so he did not speak again until they had reached 283-Four. This was a small private ward off a larger e-t compartment and the Lieutenant seemed glad to see them. He looked, and Prilicla said that he felt, bored.

“Apart from some temporary structural damage you are in very good shape, Lieutenant,” Conway began, just in case Harrison was worried by the presence of two Senior Physicians at his bed. “What we would like to talk about is the events leading up to your accident. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.”

“Not at all,” said the Lieutenant. “Where do you want me to start? With the landing, or before that?”

“If you were to tell us a little about the planet itself first,” suggested Conway.

The Lieutenant nodded and moved his headrest to a more comfortable angle for conversation, then began, “It was a weirdie. We had been observing it for a long time from orbit . . .

Christened Meatball because Captain Williamson of the cultural contact and survey vessel Descartes had declined, very forcibly, to have such an odd and distasteful planet named after him, it had to be seen to be believed-and even then it had been difficult for its discoverers to believe what they were seeing.

Its oceans were a thick, living soup and its land masses were almost completely covered by slow-moving carpets of animal life. In many areas there were mineral outcroppings and soil which supported vegetable life, and other forms of vegetation grew in the water, on the sea bed, or rooted itself on the organic land surface. But the greater part of the land surface was covered by a layer of animal life which in some places was half a mile thick.

This vast organic carpet was subdivided into strata which crawled and slipped and fought their way through each other to gain access to necessary top surface vegetation or subsurface minerals or simply to choke off and cannibalize each other. During the course of this slow, gargantuan struggle these living strata heaved themselves into hills and valleys, altering the shapes of lakes and coastlines and changing the whole topography of their world from month to month.

It had been generally agreed by the specialists on Descartes that if the planet possessed intelligent life it should take one of two forms, and both were a possibility. The first type would be large—one of the tremendous, living carpets which might be capable of anchoring itself to the underlying rock while pushing extensions toward the surface for the purpose of breathing, ingestion, and the elimination of wastes. It should also possess a means of defense around its far-flung perimeter to keep less intelligent strata creatures from insinuating themselves between it and the ground below or from slipping over it and cutting off light, food, and air as well as discouraging sea predators large and small who seemed to nibble at it around the clock.

The second possibility might be a fairly small life-form, smooth skinned, flexible, and fast enough to allow them to live inside or between the strata creatures and avoid the ingestive processes of the strata beasts whose movements and metabolism were slow. Their homes, which would have to be safe enough to protect their young and develop their culture and science, would probably be in caves or tunnel systems in the underlying rock.

If either life-form existed on the planet it was unlikely that they would possess an advanced technology. Certainly the larger, complex type of industrial machinery was impossible on this heaving world. Tools, if they developed them at all, would be small, handy and unspecialized, but the chances were that it would be a very primitive society with no roots.

“They might be strong in the philosophical sciences,” Conway broke in at that point. Prilicla moved closer, trembling with Conway’s excitement as well as its own.

Harrison shrugged. “We had a Cinrusskin with us,” he said, looking at Prilicla. “It reported no indication of the more subtle type of emoting usually radiated by intelligent life, but the aura of hunger and raw, animal ferocity emanating from the whole planet was such that the empath had to be kept under sedation most of the time. This background radiation might well have concealed intelligent emoting. The proportion of intelligent life on any given world is only a small proportion of its total life . . .

“I see,” said Conway, disappointed. “How about the landing?”

The Captain had chosen an area composed of some thick, dry, leathery material. The stuff looked dead and insensitive so that the ship’s tail flare should not cause pain to any life in the area, intelligent or otherwise. They landed without incident and for perhaps ten minutes nothing happened. Then gradually the leathery surface below them began to sag, but slowly and evenly so that the ship’s gyros had no trouble keeping them level. They began to sink into what was at first a shallow depression and then a low-walled crater. The lips of the crater curled toward them, pressing against the landing legs. The legs were designed to retract telescopically, not fold toward the center line of the ship. The extension mechanism and leg housings began to give, with a noise like somebody tearing sheet metal into small pieces.

Then somebody or something began throwing rocks. To Harrison it had sounded almost as if Descartes was sitting atop a volcano in process of erupting. The din was unbelievable and the only way to transmit orders was through the suit radios with the volume turned way up. Harrison was ordered to make a quick damage check of the stern prior to takeoff.

I was between the inner and outer skin close to the venturi orifice level when I found the hole,” the Lieutenant went on quickly. “It was about three inches across and when I started to patch it I found the edges to be slightly magnetized. Before I could finish the Captain decided to take off at once. The crater wall was threatening to trap one of the landing legs. He did give us five seconds’ warning . . .”

Harrison paused at that point as if to clarify something in his own mind. He said carefully, “There wasn’t much danger in this, you understand. We were taking off at about one-and-a-half Gs because we weren’t sure whether the crater was a manifestation of intelligence, even hostile intelligence, or the involuntary movement of some dirty great beastie closing its mouth, so we wanted to avoid unnecessary destruction in the area. If I hung onto a couple of supporting struts and had somewhere to brace my feet I’d be all right. But long-duration suits are awkward and five seconds isn’t long. I had two good hand-holds and was looking for a bracket which should have been there to brace my foot. Then I saw it, and actually felt my boot touch it, but . . . but . . .

“You were confused and misjudged the distance,” Conway finished for him softly. “Or perhaps you simply imagined it was there.”

On the other side of the Lieutenant, Prilicla began to tremble again. It said, “I’m sorry, Doctor. No echoes.”

“I didn’t expect any,” said Conway. “It must have moved on by now.”

Harrison looked from one to the other, his expression puzzled and a little hurt. He said, “Maybe I did imagine it was there. Anyhow, it didn’t hold me and I fell. The landing leg on my side tore free during the takeoff and the wreckage of its housing plugged the inters kin space so tightly that I couldn’t get out. The engine room control lines passed too close to me for them to risk cutting me out, and our medic said it would be better to come here and let your heavy-rescue people cut a way in. We were coming here with the samples anyway.

Conway looked quickly at Prilicla, then said, “At any time during the trip back did your Cinrusskin empath monitor your emotional radiation?”

Harrison shook his head. “There was no need-I was having pain despite the suit’s medication and it would have been unpleasant for an empath. Nobody could get within yards of me . . .

The Lieutenant paused, then in the tone of one who wished to change an unpleasant subject he said brightly, “We’ll send down an unmanned ship next, packed with communications equipment. If that thing is just a big mouth connected with a bigger belly and with no brains at all, at worst we’ll lose a drone and it will get indigestion. But if it is intelligent or if there are smaller intelligent beings on the planet who maybe use, or have trained, the bigger beasties to serve them-that is a strong possibility, our cultural contact people say-then they are bound to be curious and try to communicate . . .”

“The imagination boggles,” said Conway, smiling. “At the present moment I’m trying hard not to think about the medical problems a beastie the size of a subcontinent would have. But to return to the here and now, Lieutenant Harrison, we are both very much obliged for the information you’ve given us, and we hope you won’t mind if we come again to—”

“Any time,” said Harrison. “Glad to help. You see, most of the nurses here have mandibles or tentacles or too many feet . . . No offense, Doctor Prilicla

“None taken,” said Prilicla.

. . . And my ideas regarding ministering angels are rather old fashioned,” he ended as they turned to go. His expression looked decidedly woebegone.

In the corridor Conway called Murchison’s quarters. By the time he had finished explaining what he wanted her to do she was fully awake.

“I’m on duty in two hours and don’t have any free time for another six,” she said, yawning. “And normally I do not spend my precious time off doing a Mata Han on lonely patients. But if this one has information which might help Doctor Mannon I don’t mind at all. I’d do anything for that man.

“How about me?”

“For you, dear, almost anything. “Bye.”

Conway racked the handset and said to Prilicla, “Something gained entrance to that ship. Harrison suffered the same type of mild hallucination or mental confusion that the OR staff experienced. But I keep thinking about that hole in the outer skin-a disembodied intelligence shouldn’t have to make a hole to get in. And those rocks hitting the stern. Suppose this was only a side-effect of the major, nonmaterial influence-a disturbance analogous to the poltergeist phenomena. Where does that leave us?”

Prilicla didn’t know.

“I’ll probably regret it,” said Conway, “but I think I’ll call O’Mara . . .”

But it was the Chief Psychologist who did all the talking at first. Mannon had just left his office after having told O’Mara that the Hudlar patient’s condition had deteriorated suddenly, necessitating a second operation not later than noon tomorrow. The Senior Physician, it had been obvious, held no hopes for the patient’s survival, but had said that what little chance it did have would be fractionally increased if they operated quickly.

O’Mara ended, “This doesn’t give you much time to prove your theory, Conway. Now, what did you want to say to me?”

The news about Mannon had put Conway badly off his stride, so that he was woefully aware that his report on the Meatball incident and his ideas regarding it sounded weak and, what was worse where O’Mara was concerned, incoherent. The psychologist had little patience with people who did not think clearly and say exactly what they meant.

And the whole affair is so peculiar,'' he concluded awkwardly, “that I’m almost convinced now that the Meatball business has nothing to do with Mannon’s trouble, except that . . .”

“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “You’re talking in circles, dithering! You must realize that if two peculiar events occur with only a small separation in time then the probability is high that they have a common cause. I don’t mind too much if your theory is downright ridiculous—at least you arrived at it by a tortuous form of logic—but I do mind you ceasing to think at all. Being wrong, Doctor, is infinitely preferable to being stupid!”

For a few seconds Conway breathed heavily through his nose, trying to control his anger enough to reply. But O’Mara saved him the trouble by breaking the connection.

“He was not very polite to you, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “Toward the end he sounded quite bad-tempered. This is a significant improvement over his feelings for you this morning . . .

Conway laughed in spite of himself. He said, “One of these days you will forget to say the right thing, Doctor, and everyone in the hospital will drop dead!”

The galling part of the whole affair was that they did not know what exactly they were looking for, and now their time for finding it had been cut in half. All they could do was to continue gathering information and hope that something would emerge from it. But even the questions sounded nonsensical-variations of “Have you done or omitted to do something during the past few days which might lead you to suspect that something was influencing your mind?” They were loosely worded, silly, almost meaningless questions, but they went on asking them until Prilicia’s pencil-thin legs were rubbery with fatigue-the empath’s stamina was proportional to its strength, which was practically nonexistent-and it had to retire. Doggedly Conway went on asking them, feeling more tired, angrier and more stupid with every hour which passed.

Deliberately he refrained from contacting Mannon again-the Doctor at that time would, if anything, be a demoralizing influence. He called Skempton to ask if Descartes’ medical officer had made a report, and was sworn at horribly because it was the middle of the Colonel’s night. But he did find out that the Chief Psychologist had called seeking the same information, saying that he preferred his facts to come from the official report rather than through an emotionally involved Doctor with a disembodied ax to grind. Then the totally unexpected happened in that Conway’s sources of information went suddenly dry on him.

Apparently O’Mara was bringing in certain operating room staff for their periodic testing before their psych tests were due, and most of them had been people who had been very helpful about admitting their mistakes to Conway. It was not suggested in so many words that Conway had broken confidence and blabbed to O’Mara, but at the same time nobody would talk about anything.

Conway felt weary and discouraged and stupid, but mostly weary. It was too near breakfast time, however, to go to bed.

After his rounds Conway had an early lunch with Mannon and Prilicla, then accompanied the doctor to O’Mara’s office while the empath left for the Hudlar theater to monitor the emotional radiation of the staff during their preparations. The Chief Psychologist looked a little tired, which was unusual, and rather grumpy, which was usually a good sign.

“Are you assisting Senior Physician Mannon in this operation, Doctor?”

“No, sir, observing,” Conway replied. “But from inside the theater. If anything funny is going on—I mean, the Hudlar tape might confuse me and I want to be as alert as possible—”

“Alert, he says.” O’Mara’s tone was scathing. “You look asleep on your feet.” To Mannon he said, “You will be relieved to know that I, too, am beginning to suspect something funny is going on, and this time I’ll be observing from the observation blister. And now if you’ll lie on the couch, Mannon, I’ll give you the Hudlar tape myself . . .

Mannon sat on the edge of the low couch. His knees were nearly level with his chin and he had half-folded his arms across his chest so that his posture was almost a fetal position, sitting up. When he spoke his tone was pleading, desperate. He said, “Look. I’ve worked with empaths and telepaths before. Empaths receive but do not project emotion, and telepaths can only communicate with other telepaths of their own species-they’ve tried occasionally, but all they did was give me a slight mental itch. But that day in the theater I was in complete mental control of myself-f am absolutely sure of this! Yet you all keep trying to tell me that something unsubstantial, invisible and undetectable influenced my judgment. It would be much simpler if you admitted that this thing you’re looking for is nonexistent as well, but you’re all too damned—”

“Excuse me,” said O’Mara, pushing Mannon backward and lowering the massive helmet into position. He spent a few minutes positioning the electrodes, then switched on. Mannon’s eyes began to glaze as the memories and experience of one of the greatest Hudlar physicians who had ever lived flooded into his brain.

Just before he lost consciousness completely he muttered, “My trouble is that no matter what I say or do, you believe only the best about me . . .

Two hours later they were in the theater. Mannon wore a heavy operating suit and Conway a lighter type which relied only on its gravity neutralizers for protection. The G-plates under the floor were set for a pull of five gravities, the Hudlar normal, but the pressure was only a fraction higher than the Earth norm-Hudlars were not unduly bothered by low pressure and could, in fact, work quite without protection in the vacuum of space. But if something went disastrously wrong and the patient needed full, home-planet pressure, Conway would have to leave in a hurry. Conway had a direct line to Prilicla and O’Mara in the observation blister and another, and completely separate, channel linking him with Mannon and the operating staff.

O’Mara’s voice crackled suddenly in his ear-piece. “Prilicla is getting emotional echoes, Doctor. Also the radiation indicative of a minor error having been made-minor level anxiety and confusion . . .

“Yehudi is here,” said Conway softly.

“What?”

“The little man who isn’t there,” Conway replied, and went on, misquoting slightly, “The little man upon the stair. He isn’t there again today, Oh, gee I wish he’d go away . . .

O’Mara grunted, then said, “Despite what I told Mannon in my office there is still no real proof that anything untoward is happening. My remarks then were designed to help both Doctor and patient by bolstering Mannon’s weakening self-confidence-something which they failed to do. So it would be better for Mannon and yourself if your little man came in and introduced himself.”

The patient was brought in at that moment and transferred to the table. Mannon’s hands, projecting from the heavy arms of the suit, were encased only in thin, transparent plastic, but should full Hudlar pressure become necessary he could snap on heavy gauntlets within a few seconds. But to open a Hudlar at all in these conditions was to cause an immediate decompression, so that the subsequent procedures had to be done quickly.

Physiological classification FROB, the Hudlar was a low, squat, immensely powerful being somewhat reminiscent of an armadillo with a tegument like flexible armor plate. Inside and out the Hudlars were tough-so much so that Hudlar medical science was a almost complete stranger to surgery. If a patient could not be cured by medication very often it could not be cured at all, because surgery on that planet was impracticable if not downright impossible. But in Sector General, where pressure and gravity of any desired combination could be produced at a few minutes notice, Mannon and a few others had been nibbling at the edges of the hitherto impossible.

Conway watched him make a triangular incision in the incredibly tough tegument and clamp back the flap. Immediately a bright yellow, inverted cone of mist flicked into being above the operative field-a fine spray of blood under pressure escaping from the severed capillaries. A nurse quickly interposed a sheet of plastic between the opening and Mannon s visor while another positioned a mirror which gave him an indirect view of the operative field. In four and a half minutes he had controlled the bleeding. He should have done it in two.

Mannon seemed to be reading Conway’s mind, because he said, “The first time was faster than this-I was thinking two or three moves ahead, you know how it is. But I found I was making incisions now that I shouldn’t have made until several seconds later. If it had happened once it would have been bad enough, but five times . . .! I had to withdraw before I killed the patient there and then.

“And now,” he added in a voice thick with self-loathing, “I’m trying to be careful and the result will be the same.

Conway remained silent.

“Such a piddling little growth, too,” Mannon went on. “So near the surface and a natural for the first attempt at Hudlar surgery. Simply cut away the growth, encase the three severed blood vessels in the area with plastic tubing, and the patient’s blood pressure and our special clamps should make a perfect seal until the veins regenerate in a few months. But this . . . ! Have you ever seen such a botched-up mess . . .

More than half of the growth, a grayish, spongy mass which seemed to be more than half vegetable, remained in position. Five major blood vessels in the area had been severed-two of necessity, the rest by “accident"-and encased in tubing. But these lengths of artificial vein were too short or insecurely clamped-or perhaps the movement of the heart had pulled one of the vessels partially out of its tube. The only thing which had saved the patient’s life had been Mannon’s insistence that it was not to be allowed to regain consciousness since the first operation. The slightest physical effort could have pulled one of those vessels free of its tubing and caused a massive internal hemorrhage and, with the tremendous pulse rate and pressure of the Hudlar species, death within a few minutes.

On O’Mara’s channel Conway said harshly, “Any echoes? Anything at all?”

“Nothing,” said O’Mara.

“This is ridiculous!” Conway burst out. “If there is an intelligence, disembodied or otherwise, it should possess the attributes-curiosity, the ability to use tools, and so on. Now this hospital is a large and interesting place, with no barriers we know of to the movements of the entity we are trying to find. Why then had it stayed in one place? Why didn’t it go prowling around Descartes? What makes it stay in this area? Is it frightened, or stupid, or disembodied even?

“There is little likelihood of finding a complex technology on Meatball,” Conway went on quickly, “but a good chance of them being well advanced in the philosophical sciences. If something physical boarded Descartes, there is a definite lower limit to the mass of an intelligent being . . .

“If you want to ask questions of anyone, Doctor,” O’Mara said quietly, “I will throw a little of my weight behind them. But there isn’t much time.”

Conway thought for a moment, then said, “Thank you, sir. I’d like you to get Murchison for me. She’s in—”

“At a time like this,” said O’Mara in a dangerous voice, “he wants to call his . . .

“She’s with Harrison at the moment,” said Conway. “I want to establish a physical connection between the Lieutenant and this theater, even though he has never been within fifty levels of the place. Would you ask her to ask him . . .

It was a long, involved, many-sided question, designed to tell him how a small, intelligent life-form had reached this area without detection. It was also a stupid question because any intelligence which affected the minds of Earth-humans and e-ts alike could not have remained undetected with an empath like Prilicla around. Which left him back where he started with a nonmaterial something which refused, or was incapable of, moving beyond the environs of the theater.

“Harrison says he had lots of delusions during the trip back,” O’Mara’s voice sounded suddenly. “He says the ship’s doctor said this was normal considering all the dope he had in him. He also says he was completely out when he arrived here and doesn’t know how or where he came in. And now I suppose we contact Reception, Doctor. I’m patching you in, just in case I ask the wrong questions . . .

Seconds later a slow, flat, translated voice which could have belonged to anything said, “Lieutenant Harrison was not processed in the usual way. Being a corpsman whose medical background was known in detail he was admitted to Service Lock Fifteen into the charge of Major Edwards.

Edwards was not available, but his office promised O’Mara that they would have him in a few minutes.

All at once Conway felt like giving up. Lock Fifteen was too far away-a difficult, complicated journey involving three major changes of environment. For their hypothetical invader, who was also a stranger to the hospital, to find its way to this theater would have necessitated it taking mental control of someone and being carried. But if that was the case Prilicla would have detected its presence. Prilicla could detect anything which thought-from the smallest insect to the slow emanations of a mind deeply and totally unconscious. No living thing could shut its mind down completely and still be alive.

Which meant that the invader might not be alive!

A few feet distant Mannon had signaled for a nurse to stand by the pressure cock. A sudden return to Hudlar normal pressure would diminish the violence of any bleeding which might occur, but it would also make it impossible for Mannon to operate without heavy gloves. Not only that, the pressure increase would cause the operative field to subside within the opening, where movement transmitted from the nearby heart would make delicate work impossible. At present, despite the danger of a wrong incision, the complex of blood vessels was distended, separate and relatively motionless.

Suddenly it happened. Bright yellow blood spurted out, so violently that it hit Mannon’s visor with an audible slap. Driven by the patient’s enormous blood pressure and pulse rate the severed vein whipped about like a miniature unheld hose-pipe. Mannon got to it, lost it, tried again. The spurting became a thin, wavering spray and stopped. The nurse at the pressure cock relaxed visibly while the one at Mannon’s side cleaned his visor.

Mannon moved back slightly while the field was sucked clear. Through the visor his eyes glittered oddly in the sweating white mask of his face. Time was important now. Hudlars were tough, but there were limits-they could not stand decompression indefinitely. There would be a gradual movement of body fluid toward the opening in the tegument, a strain on vital organs in the vicinity and an even greater increase in blood pressure. To be successful the operation could not last for much more than thirty minutes and more than half the time had gone merely in opening up the seat of the trouble. Even if the growth was removed, its removal entailed damage to underlying blood vessels which had to be repaired with great care before Mannon withdrew.

They all knew that speed was essential, but to Conway it seemed suddenly as if he was watching a film which was steadily being speeded up. Mannon’s hands were moving faster than Conway had ever seen them move before. And faster still.

“I don’t like this,” said O’Mara harshly. “It looks like he’s regained his confidence, but more likely that he’s ceased caring-about himself, that is. He still cares about the patient, obviously, even though he knows it hasn’t much chance. And the tragic thing about it is that it never did have much chance, Thornnastor tells me. If it hadn’t been for your hypothetical friend’s interference Mannon wouldn’t have worried too much about losing this patient-it would have been one of his very few failures. When he made that first slip it wrecked his self-confidence and now he’s—”

“Something made him slip,” said Conway firmly.

“You’ve tried convincing him of that, with what result?” the psychologist snapped back. He went on, “Prilicla is seriously agitated and its shakes are getting worse by the minute. But Mannon is, or was, a pretty stable type I don’t think he’ll crack until after the operation. Though with these serious, dedicated types whose profession is their whole life it’s hard to say what might happen.”

“Edwards here,” said a new voice. “What is it?”

“Go ahead, Conway,” said the psychologist. “You ask the questions. Right now I’ve other things on my mind.”

The spongy growth had been lifted clear, but a great many small blood vessels had been severed to accomplish this and the job of repairing them would be much more difficult than anything which had gone before. Insinuating the severed ends into the tubing, far enough so that they would not simply squirm out again when circulation was restored, was a difficult, repetitious, nerve-wracking procedure.

There were only eighteen minutes left.

“I remember Harrison well,” the distant Edwards replied when Conway had explained what he wanted to know. “His suit was damaged in the leg section only, so we couldn’t write it off-those things carry a full set of tools and survival gear and are expensive. And naturally we decontaminated it! The regulations expressly state that—”

“It still may have been a carrier of some kind, Major,” Conway said quickly. “How thoroughly did you carry out this decon—”

“Thoroughly,” said the Major, beginning to sound annoyed. “If it was carrying any kind of bug or parasite it is defunct now. The suit together with all its attachments was sterilized with high-pressure steam and irradiated-it went through the same sterilization procedure as your surgical instruments, in fact. Does that satisfy you, Doctor?”

“Yes,” said Conway softly. “Yes indeed.”

He now had the link-up between Meatball and the operating theater, via Harrison’s suit and the sterilization chamber. But that wasn’t all he had. He had Yehudi!

Beside him Mannon had stopped. The surgeon’s hands were trembling as he said desperately, “I need eight pairs of hands, or instruments that can do eight different operations at once. This isn’t going well, Conway. Not well at all . . .

“Don’t do anything for a minute, Doctor,” Conway said urgently, then began calling out instructions for the nurses to file past him carrying their instrument trays. O’Mara started shouting to know what was going on, but Conway was concentrating too hard to answer him. Then one of the Kelgian nurses made a noise like a foghorn breathing in, the DBLF equivalent of a shriek of surprise, because suddenly there was a medium sized box spanner among the forceps on her tray.

“You won’t believe this,” said Conway joyfully as he carried the- thing-to Mannon and placed it in the surgeon’s hands, “but if you’ll just listen for a minute and then do as I tell you . . .

Mannon was back at work in less than a minute.

Hesitantly at first, but then with growing confidence and speed, he resumed the delicate repair work. Occasionally he whistled through his teeth or swore luridly, but this was normal behavior for Mannon during a difficult op which was promising to go well. In the observation blister Conway could see the happily scowling, baffled face of the Chief Psychologist and the fragile,. spidery body of the empath. Prilicla was still trembling, but very slowly. It was a type of reaction not often seen in a Cinrusskin off its native planet, indicating a nearby source of emotional radiation which was intense and altogether pleasant.

After the operation they had all wanted to question Harrison about Meatball, but before they could do so Conway had first to explain what had happened again to the Lieutenant.

“. . . And while we still have no idea what they look like,” Conway was saying, “we do know that they are highly intelligent and in their own fashion technically advanced. By that I mean they fashion and use tools . . .

“Indeed yes,” said Mannon dryly, and the thing in his hand became a metallic sphere, a miniature bust of Beethoven and a set of Tralthan dentures. Since it had become certain that the Hudlar would be another one of Mannon’s successes rather than a failure he had begun to regain his sense of humor.

. . . But the tool-making stage must have followed a long way after the development of the philosophical sciences,” Conway went on. “The imagination boggles at the conditions in which they evolved. These tools are not designed for manual use, the natives may not possess hands as we know them. But they have minds . . .

Under the mental control of its owner the “tool” had cut a way into Descartes beside Harrison’s station, but during the sudden takeoff it had been unable to get back and a new source of mental control, the Lieutenant, had unwittingly taken over. It had become the foothold which Harrison had needed so badly, only to give under his weight because it had not really been part of the ship’s structure. When the attachments of Harrison’s suit had been sterilized in the same room as the surgical instruments and when a nurse had come looking for a certain instrument for the theater, it again became what was wanted.

From then on there was confusion over instrument counts and falling scalpels which did not cut and sprayers which behaved oddly indeed, and Mannon had used a knife which had followed his mind instead of his hands, with near-fatal results for the patient. But the second time it happened Mannon knew that he was holding a small, unspecialized, all purpose tool which was subject to mental as well as manual control, and some of the shapes he had made it take and the things he had made it do would make Conway remember that operation for the rest of his life.

. . . This . . . gadget . . . is probably of great value to its owner,” Conway finished seriously. “By rights we should return it. But we need it here, many more of them if possible! Your people have got to make contact and set up trade relations. There’s bound to be something we have or can do that they want . . .

“I’d give my right arm for one,” said Mannon, then added, grinning, “My right leg, anyway.”

The Lieutenant returned his smile. He said, “As I remember the place, Doctor, there was no shortage of raw meat.”

O’Mara, who had been unusually silent until then, said very seriously, “Normally I am not a covetous man. But consider the things this hospital could do with just ten of those things, or even five. We have one and, if we were doing the right thing, we would put it back where we found it—obviously a tool like this is of enormous value. This means that we will have to buy or conduct some form of trade for them, and to do this we must first learn to communicate with their owners.”

He looked at each of them in turn, then went on sardonically. “One hesitates to mention such sordid commercial matters to pure-minded, dedicated medical men like yourselves, but I must do so to explain why, when Descartes eventually makes contact with the beings who use the tools, I want Conway and whoever else he may select to investigate the medical situation on Meatball.

“Our interest will not be entirely commercial, however,” he added quickly, “but it seems to me that if we have to go in for the practice of barter and exchange, the only thing we have to trade is our medical knowledge and facilities.”

VERTIGO

It was perhaps inevitable that when the long-awaited indication of intelligent life at last appeared the majority of the ship’s observers were looking somewhere else, that it did not appear in the batteries of telescopes that were being trained on the surface or on the still and cine films being taken by Descartes’ planetary probes, but on the vessel’s close approach radar screens.

In Descartes’ control room the Captain jabbed a button on his console and said sharply, “Communications . . .

“We have it, sir,” came the reply. “A telescope locked onto the radar bearing-the image is on your repeater screen Five. It is a two- or three stage chemically fueled vehicle with the second stage still firing. This means we will be able to reconstruct its flight path and pinpoint the launch area with fair accuracy. It is emitting complex patterns of radio frequency radiation indicative of high-speed telemetry channels. The second stage has just cut out and is falling away. The third stage, if it is a third stage, has not ignited . . . It’s in trouble!”

The alien spacecraft, a slim, shining cylinder pointed at one end and thickened and blunt at the other, had begun to tumble. Slowly at first but with steadily increasing speed it swung and whirled end over end.

“Ordnance?” asked the Captain.

“Apart from the tumbling action,” said a slower, more precise voice, “the vessel seems to have been inserted into a very neat circular orbit. It is most unlikely that this orbit was taken up by accident. The lack of sophistication-relative, that is-in the vehicle’s design and the fact that its nearest approach to us will be a little under two hundred miles all point to the conclusion that it is either an artificial satellite or a manned orbiting vehicle rather than a missile directed at this ship.

“If it is manned,” the voice added with more feeling, “the crew must be in serious trouble . . .

“Yes,” said the Captain, who treated words like nuggets of some rare and precious metal. He went on, “Astrogation, prepare intersecting and matching orbits, please. Power Room, stand by.”

As the tremendous bulk of Descartes closed with the tiny alien craft it became apparent that, as well as tumbling dizzily end over end, the other vessel was leaking. The rapid spin made it impossible to say with certainty whether it was a fuel leak from the unfired third stage or air escaping from the command module if it was, in fact, a manned vehicle.

The obvious procedure was to check the spin with tractor beams as gently as possible so as to avoid straining the hull structure, then defuel the unfired third stage to remove the fire hazard before bringing the craft alongside. If the vessel was manned and the leak was of air rather than fuel, it could then be taken into Descartes’ cargo hold where rescue and first contact proceedings would be possible-at leisure since Meatball’s air was suited to human beings and the reverse, presumably, also held true.

It was expected to be a fairly simple rescue operation, at first . . .

“Tractor stations Six and Seven, sir. The alien spacecraft won’t stay put. We’ve slowed it to a stop three times and each time it applies steering thrust and recommences spinning. For some reason it is deliberately fighting our efforts to bring it to rest. The speed and quality of the reaction suggests direction by an on-the-spot intelligence. We can apply more force, but only at the risk of damaging the vessel’s hull-it is incredibly fragile by present-day standards, sir.”

“I suggest using all necessary force to immediately check the spin, opening its tanks and jettisoning all fuel into space then whisking it into the cargo hold. With normal air pressure around it again there will be no danger to the crew and we will have time to . . .”

“Astrogation, here. Negative to that, I’m afraid, sir. Our computation shows that the vessel took off from the sea-more accurately, from beneath the sea, because there is no visible evidence of floating gantries or other launch facilities in the area. We can reproduce Meatball air because it is virtually the same as our own, but not that animal and vegetable soup they use for water, and all the indications point toward the crew being water breathers.”

For a few seconds the Captain did not reply. He was thinking about the alien crew member or members and their reasons for behaving as they were doing. Whether the reason was technical, physiological, psychological or simply alien was, however, of secondary importance. The main thing was to render assistance as quickly as possible.

If his own ship could not aid the other vessel directly it could, in a matter of days, take it to a place which possessed all the necessary facilities for doing so. Transportation itself posed only a minor problem—the spinning vehicle could be towed without checking its spin by attaching a magnetic grapple to its center of rotation, and with the shipside attachment point also rotating so that the line would not twist-shorten and bring the alien craft crashing into Descartes’ side. During the trip the larger ship’s hyper-drive field could be expanded to enclose both vessels.

His chief concern was over the leak and his complete ignorance of how long a period the alien spacecraft had intended to stay in orbit. He had also, if he wanted to establish friendly relations with the people on Meatball, to make the correct decision quickly.

He knew that in the early days of human space flight leakage was a quite normal occurrence, for there had been many occasions when it had been preferable to carry extra air supplies rather than pay the severe weight penalty of making the craft completely airtight. On the other hand the leak and spinning were more likely to be emergency conditions with the time available for their correction strictly limited. Since the alien astronaut or astronauts would not, for some odd reason, let him immobilize their ship to make a more thorough investigation of its condition and because he could not reproduce their environment anyway, his duty was plain. Probably his hesitancy was due to misplaced professional pride because he was passing responsibility for a particularly sticky one to others.

Quickly and with his usual economy of words the Captain issued the necessary orders and, less than half an hour after it had first been sighted, the alien spacecraft was on its way to Sector General.

With quiet insistence the PA was repeating, “Will Senior Physician Conway please contact Major O’Mara . . .

Conway quickly sized up the traffic situation in the corridor, jumped across the path of a Tralthan intern who was lumbering down on him on six elephantine feet, rubbed fur briefly with a Kelgian caterpillar who was moving in the opposite direction and, while squeezing himself against the wall to avoid being run over by something in a highly refrigerated box on wheels, unracked the hand-set of the communicator.

As soon as he had established contact the PA began insisting quietly that somebody else contact somebody else.

“Are you doing anything important at the moment, Doctor?” asked the Chief Psychologist without preamble. “Engaged on vital research, perhaps, or in performing some life-or-death operation?” O’Mara paused, then added dryly, “You realize, of course, that these questions are purely rhetorical . . .

Conway sighed and said, “I was just going to lunch.”

“Fine,” said O’Mara. “In that case you will be delighted to know that the natives of Meatball have put a spacecraft into orbit-judging by its looks it may well be their first. It got into difficulties-Colonel Skempton can give you the details-and Descartes is bringing it here for us to deal with. It will arrive in just under three hours and I suggest you take an ambulance ship and heavy rescue gear out to it with a view to extricating its crew. I shall also suggest that Doctors Mannon and Prilicla be detached from their normal duties to assist you, since you three are going to be our specialists in Meatball matters.”

“I understand,” said Conway eagerly.

“Right,” said the Major. “And I’m glad, Doctor, that you realize that there are things more important than food. A less enlightened and able psychologist than myself might wonder at this sudden hunger which develops whenever an important assignment is mentioned. I, of course, realize that this is not an outward symptom of a sense of insecurity but sheer, blasted greed!

“You will have arrangements to make, Doctor,” he concluded pleasantly. “Off.”

Skempton’s office was fairly close so that Conway needed just fifteen minutes-which included the time taken to don a protective suit for the two hundred yards of the journey which lay through the levels of the Illensan chlorine breathers-to reach it.

“Good morning,” said Skempton while Conway was still opening his mouth. “Tip the stuff off that chair and sit down. O’Mara has been in touch. I’ve decided to return Descartes to Meatball as soon as it leaves the distressed spacecraft. To native observers it might appear that the vehicle was taken-one might almost say kidnapped-and Descartes should be on hand to note reactions, make contact if possible and give reassurances. I’d be obliged if you would extricate, treat and return this patient to Meatball as quickly as possible-you can imagine the boon this would be to our cultural contact people.

“This is a copy of the report on the incident radioed from Descartes,” the Colonel went on without, apparently, even pausing for breath. “And you will need this analysis of water taken from the sea around the takeoff-the actual samples will be available as soon as Descartes arrives. Should you need further background information on Meatball or on contact procedures call on Lieutenant Harrison, who is due for discharge now and who will be glad to assist. Try not to slam the door, Doctor.”

The Colonel began excavating deeply in the layer of paperwork covering his desk and Conway closed his mouth again and left. In the outer office he asked permission to use the communicator and got to work.

An unoccupied ward in the Chalder section was the obvious place to house the new patient. The giant denizens of Chalderescol II were water breathers, although the tepid, greenish water in which they lived was almost one hundred percent pure compared with the soupy environment of Meatball’s seas. The analysis would allow Dietetics and Environmental Control to synthesize the food content of the water-but not to reproduce the living organisms it contained. That would have to wait until the samples arrived and they had a chance to study and breed these organisms, just as the E.C. people could reproduce the gravity and water pressure, but would have to wait for the arrival of the spacecraft to add the finishing touches to the patient’s quarters.

Next he arranged for an ambulance ship with heavy rescue equipment, crew and medical support to be made available prior to Descartes’ arrival. The tender should be prepared to transfer a patient of unknown physiological classification who was probably injured and decompressed and close to terminal by this time, and he wanted a rescue team experienced in the rapid emergency transfer of shipwreck survivors.

Conway was about to make a final call, to Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, when he hesitated.

He was not quite sure whether he wanted to ask a series of specific questions-even a series of hypothetical questions-or to indulge in several minutes worrying out loud. It was vitally important that he treat and cure this patient. Quite apart from it being his and the hospital’s job to do so, successful treatment would be the ideal way of opening communications with the natives of Meatball and ultimately laying hands on more of those wonderful, thought-controlled surgical instruments.

But what were the owners of those fabulous tools really like? Were they small and completely unspecialized with no fixed physical shape like the tools they used or, considering the mental abilities needed to develop the tools in the first place, were they little more than physically helpless brains dependent on their thought-controlled instruments to feed them, protect them and furnish all their physical needs? Conway badly wanted to know what to expect when the ship arrived. But Diagnosticians, as everyone knew, were unpredictable and even more impatient of muddy or confused thinking than was the Chief Psychologist.

He would be better advised, Conway told himself, to let his questions wait until he had actually seen his patient, which would be in just over an hour from now. The intervening period he would spend studying Descartes’ report.

And having lunch.

The Monitor Survey cruiser popped into normal space, the alien spacecraft spinning like an unwieldy propeller astern, then just as quickly reentered hyperspace for the return trip to Meatball. The rescue tender closed in, snagged the towline which had been left by Descartes and fixed the free end to a rotating attachment point of its own.

Space suited Doctors Mannon and Prilicla, Lieutenant Harrison and Conway watched from the tender’s open airlock.

“It’s still leaking,” said Mannon. “That’s a good sign-there is still pressure inside . . .

“Unless it’s a fuel leak,” Harrison said.

“What do you feel?” asked Conway.

Prilicla’s fragile, eggshell body and six pipe-stem legs were beginning to quiver violently so it was obvious that it was feeling something.

“The vessel contains one living entity,” said Prilicla slowly. “Its emotional radiation is comprised chiefly of fear and feelings of pain and suffocation. I would say that these feelings have been with it for many days-the radiation is subdued and lacking in clarity due to developing unconsciousness. But the quality of that entity’s mentation leaves no doubt that it is intelligent and not simply an experimental animal . . .

“It’s nice to know,” said Mannon dryly, “that we’re not going to all this trouble for an instrument package or a Meatball space puppy . . .

“We haven’t much time,” said Conway.

He was thinking that their patient must be pretty far gone by now. It’s fear was understandable, of course, and its pain, suffocation and diminished consciousness were probably due to injury, intense hunger and foul breathing water. He tried to put himself in the Meatball astronaut’s position.

Even though the pilot had been badly confused by the apparently uncontrollable spinning, the being had deliberately sought to maintain the spin when Descartes tried to take it aboard because it must have been smart enough to realize that a tumbling ship could not be drawn into the cruiser’s hold. Possibly it could have checked its own spin with steering power if Descartes had not been so eager to rush to its aid-but that was simply a possibility, of course, and the spacecraft had been leaking badly as well. Now it was still leaking and spinning and, with its occupant barely conscious, Conway thought he could risk frightening it just a little more by checking the spin and moving the vehicle into the tender and the patient as quickly as possible into the water-filled compartment where they could work on it.

But as soon as the immaterial fingers of the tractor beams reached out an equally invisible force seemed to grip Prilicla’s fragile body and shake it furiously.

“Doctor,” said the empath, “the being is radiating extreme fear. It is forcing coherent thought from a mind which is close to panic. It is losing consciousness rapidly, perhaps dying . . . Look! It is using steering thrust!”

“Cut!” shouted Conway to the tractor beamers. The alien spacecraft, which had almost come to rest, began to spin slowly as vapor jetted from lateral vents in the nose and stern. After a few minutes the jets became irregular, weaker and finally ceased altogether, leaving the vehicle spinning at approximately half its original speed. Prilicla still looked as if its body was being shaken by a high wind.

“Doctor,” said Conway suddenly, “considering the kind of tools these people use I wonder if some kind of psionic force is being used against you-you are shaking like a leaf.”

When it replied Prilicla’s voice was, of course, devoid of all emotion. “It is not thinking directly at anyone, friend Conway,” said the empath. “Its emotional radiation is composed chiefly of fear and despair. Perceptions are diminishing and it seems to be struggling to avoid a final catastrophe . . .

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” said Mannon suddenly.

“If you mean am I thinking of setting the thing spinning at full speed again,” Conway replied. “The answer is yes. But there’s no logical reason for doing so, is there?”

A few seconds later the tractor beam men reversed polarity to increase the vessel’s spin. Almost immediately Prilicla’s trembling ceased and it said, “The being feels much better now-relatively, that is. Its vitality is still very low.”

Prilicla began to tremble again and this time Conway knew that his own feelings of angry frustration were affecting the little being. He tried to make his thinking cooler and more constructive, even though he knew that the situation was essentially the same as it had been when Descartes had first tried to aid the Meatball astronaut, that they were making no progress at all.

But there were a few things he could do which would help the patient, however indirectly.

The vapor escaping from the vehicle should be analyzed to see if it was fuel or simply water from the being’s life-support system. Much valuable data could be gained from a direct look at the patient-even if it was only possible to see it through the wrong end of a periscope, since the vessel did not possess a direct-vision port. They should also seek means of entering the vessel to examine and reassure the occupant before transferring it to the ambulance and the wards.

Closely followed by Lieutenant Harrison, Conway pulled himself along the towing cable toward the spinning ship. By the time they had gone a few yards both men were turning with the rotating cable so that when they reached the spacecraft it seemed steady while the rest of creation whirled around them in dizzying circles. Mannon stayed in the airlock, insisting that he was too old for such acrobatics, and Prilicla approached the vessel drifting free and using its spacesuit propulsors for maneuvering.

Now that the patient was almost unconscious the Cinrusskin had to be close to detect subtle changes in its emotional radiation. But the long, tubular hull was hurtling silently past the little being like the vanes of some tremendous windmill.

Conway did not voice his concern, however. With Prilicla one did not need to.

“I appreciate your feelings, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “but I do not think that I was born, despite my physiological classification, to be swatted.”

At the hull they transferred from the towing cable and used wrist and boot magnets to cling to the spinning ship, noting that the magnetic grapple placed there by Descartes had seriously dented the hull plating and that the area was obscured by a fog of escaping vapor. Their own suit magnets left shallow grooves in the plating as well. The metal was not much thicker than paper, and Conway felt that if he made a too sudden movement he would kick a hole in it.

“It isn’t quite as bad as that, Doctor,” said the Lieutenant. “In our own early days of space flight—before gravity control, hyper spatial travel and atomic motors made considerations of weight of little or no importance—vehicles had to be built as light as possible. So much so that the fuel contents were sometimes used to help stiffen the structure.

“Nevertheless,” said Conway, “I feel as if I am lying on very thin ice-I can even hear water or fuel gurgling underneath. Will you check the stern, please. I’ll head forward.”

They took samples of the escaping vapor from several points and they tapped and sounded and listened carefully with sensitive microphones to the noises coming from inside the ship. There was no response from the occupant, and Prilicla told them that it was unaware of their presence. The only signs of life from the interior were mechanical. There seemed to be an unusually large amount of machinery, to judge from the sounds they could hear, in addition to the gurgling of liquid. And as they moved toward the extremities of the vessel, centrifugal force added another complication.

The closer they moved toward the bow or stern, the greater was the force tending to fling them off the spinning ship.

Conway’s head was pointing toward the ship’s bow so that the centrifugal force was imposing a negative G on his body. It was not really uncomfortable as yet, however-he felt a little pop-eyed but there was no redding out of vision. His greatest discomfort came from the sight of the ambulance ship, Prilicla and the vast, tubular Christmas tree which was Sector General sweeping around the apparently steady ship’s bows. When he closed his eyes the feeling of vertigo diminished, but then he could not see what he was doing.

The farther forward he went the more power his suit magnets needed to hold him against the smooth metal of the ship’s hull, but he could not increase the power too much because the thin plating was beginning to ripple under the magnets and he was afraid of tearing open the hull. But a few feet ahead there was a stubby, projecting pipe which was possibly some kind of periscope and he began to slide himself carefully toward it. Suddenly he began to slip forward and grabbed instinctively for the pipe as he slithered past.

The projection bent alarmingly in his hand and he let go hurriedly, noticing the cloud of vapor which had formed around it, and he felt himself being flung away like a stone from a slingshot.

“Where the blazes are you, Doctor?” said Mannon. “Last time around you were there, now you aren’t .

“I don’t know, Doctor,” Conway replied angrily. He lit one of his suit’s distress flares and added, “Can you see me now?”

As he felt the tractor beams focus on him and begin to draw him back to the tender, Conway went on, “This is ridiculous! We’re taking far too long over what should be a simple rescue job. Lieutenant Harrison and Doctor Prilicla, go back to the tender, please. We’ll try another approach.”

While they were discussing it Conway had the spacecraft photographed from every angle and had the tender’s lab begin a detailed analysis of the samples Harrison and himself had gathered. They were still trying to find another approach when the prints and completed analyzes reached them several hours later.

It had been established that all the leaks in the alien spacecraft were of water rather than fuel, that the water was for breathing purposes only since it did not contain the usual animal and vegetable matter found in the Meatball ocean samples and that, compared with these local samples, its CO2 content was rather high-the water was, in brief, dangerously stale.

A close study of the photographs by Harrison, who was quite an authority on early space flight, suggested that the flared-out stern of the ship contained a heat shield to which was mounted a solid fuel retro pack. It was now plain that, rather than an unignited final stage, the long cylindrical vehicle contained little more than the life-support equipment which, judging by its size, must be pretty crude. Having made this statement the Lieutenant promptly had second, more charitable thoughts and added that while air-breathing astronauts could carry compressed air with them a water breather could not very well compress its water.

The point of the nose cone contained small panels which would probably open to release the landing parachutes. About five feet astern of this was another panel which was about fifteen inches wide and six feet deep. This was an odd shape for an entry and exit hatch for the pilot, but Harrison was convinced that it could be nothing else. He added that the lack of sophistication shown in the vehicle’s construction made it unlikely that the exit panel was the outer seal of an airlock, that it was almost certainly a simple hatch opening into the command module.

If Doctor Conway was to open this hatch, he warned, centrifugal force would empty the ship of its water-or to be quite accurate, of half its water-within a few seconds. The same force would see to it that the water in the stern section remained there, but it was almost certain that the astronaut was in the nose cone.

Conway yawned furiously and rubbed his eyes. He said, “I have to see the patient to get some idea of its injuries and to prepare accommodation, Lieutenant. Suppose I cut a way in amidships at the center of rotation. An appreciable quantity of its water has already leaked away and centrifugal force has caused the remainder to be pushed toward the nose and stern, so that the middle of the ship would be empty and the additional loss of water caused by my entry would be slight.”

“I agree, Doctor,” said Harrison. “But the structure of the ship might be such that you would open a seam into the water-filled sections-it’s so fragile there is even the danger that centrifugal force might pull it apart.”

Conway shook his head. “If we put a wide, thin-metal band around the waist section, and if the band included a hinged, airtight hatch big enough for a man, we can seal the edges of the band to the ship with fast-setting cement—no welding, of course, as the heat might damage the skin-and rig a temporary airlock over the hatch. That would allow me to get in without—”

“That would be a very tricky job,” said Mannon, “on a spinning ship.”

Harrison said, “Yes. But we can set up a light, tubular framework anchored to the hull by magnets. The band and airlock could be set up working from that. It will take a little time, though.”

Prilicla did not comment. Cinrus skins were notoriously lacking in physical stamina and the little empath had attached itself to the ceiling with six, sucker-tipped legs and had gone to sleep.

Mannon, the Lieutenant and Conway were ordering material and specialized assistance from the Hospital and beginning to organize a work party when the tender’s radioman said, “I have Major O’Mara for you on Screen Two.”

“Doctor Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist, when he was able to see and be seen. “Rumors have reached me that you are trying-and may have already succeeded, in fact-to set up a new record for the length of time taken to transfer a patient from ship to ward. I have no need to remind you of the urgency and importance of this matter, but I will anyway. It is urgent, Doctor, and important. Off.”

“You sarcastic . . .” began Conway angrily to the already fading image, then quickly controlled his feelings because they were beginning to make Prilicla twitch in its sleep.

“Maybe,” said the Lieutenant, looking speculatively at Mannon, “my leg isn’t properly healed since I broke it during that landing on Meatball. A friendly, cooperative doctor might decide to send me back to Level Two-eighty-three, Ward Four.”

“The same friendly, helpful doctor,” said Mannon dryly, “might decide a certain Earth-human nurse in 283-Four had something to do with your relapse, and he might send you to . . . say, 241-Seven. There is nothing like being fussed over by a nurse with four eyes and far too many legs to cure a man of baying at the moon.”

Conway laughed. “Ignore him, Harrison. At times his mind is even nastier than O’Mara’s. Right now there isn’t anything more we can do and it has been a long, hard day. Let’s go to bed before we go to sleep.”

Another day went by without any significant progress being made. Because of the need for urgency the team setting up the framework tried to hurry the job, with the result that they lost tools, sections of framework and on several occasions men overboard. The men could be retrieved easily enough by tractor beams, but the tools and framework sections were not equipped with signal flares and were usually lost. Cursing the necessity for having to perform a tricky job of construction on a space going merry-go-round, the men went back to work.

Progress became much slower but a little more certain, the number of dents and furrows put in the spacecraft’s hull by tools and space boots had become uncountable, and the fog of water vapor escaping from the vessel continued to increase.

In a desperate attempt to speed things up, and much against Prilicla’s wishes, Conway tried slowing the craft’s rate of spin again. There were no signs of panic from the occupant this time, the empath reported, because it was too deeply unconscious to care. It added that it could not describe the patient’s emotional radiation to anyone but another empath, but that it was its considered professional opinion that if full spin was not restored the patient would die very shortly.

Next day the framework was completed and work started on fitting the metal band which would take the temporary airlock. While the lock structure was going up Conway and Harrison attached safety lines to the framework and examined the hull. The Lieutenant discovered quite a lot about the steering jets and the circuits to the retro pack, while Conway could only stare baffled at the long, narrow exit hatch or stare through the tiny glass port-it was only a few inches in diameter-which showed little more than a shutter which opened and closed rapidly. And it was not until the following day that the Lieutenant and himself were able to enter the alien spacecraft.

Its occupant was still alive, Prilicla said, but only just.

As expected the waist section of the spacecraft was almost empty of water. Centrifugal force had caused it to collect toward the extremities of the ship, but their spotlights reflected off a dazzling fog of water vapor and droplets which, a quick investigation showed, were being stirred up by the operation of a system of sprocket wheels and chain drives that ran the length of the ship.

Moving carefully so as not to snag a hand between a gear wheel and its chain or inadvertently stick a boot through the fragile hull into space, the Lieutenant moved aft while Conway went forward. They did this so as to ensure that the vessel’s center of gravity stayed as closely as possible to its center of rotation, for any imbalance introduced now would shake loose the framework and probably tear holes in the sides of the ship.

“I realize that the circulation and purification of water requires heavier hardware than an air recycling system,” said Conway, speaking to Harrison and the tender, “but surely there should be a higher proportion of electrical to mechanical systems? I can’t move more than a few yards forward and all I can see are gear wheels and chains drives. The circulation system sets up a strong current, as well, and I’m in danger of being drawn into the works.”

The fine, ever-present mist of bubbles made it difficult to see clearly, but for a moment he caught a glimpse of something which was not part of the machinery-something that was brown and convoluted and with a suggestion of fronds or short tentacles sprouting from it, something organic. The being was hemmed in on all sides by revolving machinery, and it also seemed to be rotating, but there was so little of its body visible that he could not be sure.

“I see it,” said Conway. “Not enough for accurate classification, though. It doesn’t seem to be wearing a pressure suit so this must be its equivalent of shirt-sleeve conditions. But we can’t get at the brute without tearing its ship apart and killing it in the process.” He swore, then went on furiously, “This is ridiculous, insane! I’m supposed to come out here, immobilize the patient, transfer it to a ward and give treatment. But this blasted thing can’t be immobilized without . . .

“Suppose there is something wrong with its life-support system,” the Lieutenant broke in. “Something which requires gravity, or artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal force, to restore proper function. If we could somehow repair this malfunctioning equipment . . .

“But why?” said Conway suddenly, as a vague idea that had been lurking at the back of his mind began to creep out into the light. “I mean, why should we assume that it is malfunctioning . . .” He paused, then said, “We’ll open the valves of a couple of oxygen tanks in here to freshen up the beastie’s air—I mean water. It’s only a first-aid measure, I’m afraid, until we’re in a position to do something more positive. Then back to the tender, I’m beginning to get some odd ideas about this astronaut and I’d like to test them.”

They returned to the control room without taking off their suits, and were met by Prilicla who told them that the patient’s condition seemed a little better although it was still unconscious. The empath added that the reason for this might be that the being was injured and in an advanced state of malnutrition as well as having been close to death through asphyxiation. Conway began telling them about his idea and sketching the alien ship as he talked.

“If this is the center of spin,” he said when the drawing was complete, “and the distance from that point to the pilot’s position is this, and the rate of rotation is this, can you tell me how closely does the apparent gravity in the pilot’s position approach that of Meatball itself?”

“Just a minute,” said Harrison as he took Conway’s pen and began to scribble. A few minutes later-he had taken extra time to double check his calculations-he said, “Very close, Doctor. Identical, in fact.”

“Which means,” said Conway thoughtfully, “that we have here a beastie which can’t, for some very good physiological reason no doubt, live without gravity, for whom weightless conditions are fatal . . .

“Excuse me, Doctor,” the quiet voice of the radioman cut in. “I have Major O’Mara for you on Screen Two . . .

Conway felt the idea which was beginning to take shape at the back of his mind being blown into tatters. Spin, he thought furiously, trying to draw it back; centrifugal force, wheels within wheels! But the square, craggy features of the Chief Psychologist were filling the screen and it was impossible to think of anything else.

O’Mara spoke pleasantly-a very bad sign. He said, “Your recent activity has been impressive, Doctor-especially when it took the form of man-made meteorite activity in the shape of dropped tools and structural material. But I’m concerned about your patient. We all are-even, and especially, the Captain of Descartes who has recently returned to Meatball.

“The Captain has run into trouble,” the psychologist continued, “in the shape of three missiles with nuclear warheads which were directed at his ship. One of them went off course and dirtied up a large area of Meatball ocean, and the other two came so close that he had to use full emergency thrust to avoid them. He says that establishing communications and friendly contact with the inhabitants in these circumstances is impossible, that they obviously think he has kidnapped their astronaut for some ghastly purpose of his own, and that the return of the being in a happy and healthy condition is the only means there is of retrieving the situation . . . Doctor Conway, your mouth is open. Either say something or close it!”

“Sorry, sir,” said Conway absently. “I was thinking. There is something I would like to try, and perhaps you could help me with it—by getting Colonel Skempton’s support, I mean. We’re wasting time out here, I realize that now, and I want to bring the spacecraft inside the hospital. Still spinning, of course—at first, anyway. Cargo Lock Thirty is big enough to take it and is close enough to the water-filled corridor leading to the ward we are preparing for this patient. But I’m afraid the Colonel will be a bit sticky about allowing the spacecraft into the hospital.”

The Colonel was very sticky indeed, despite Conway’s arguments and the support given by O’Mara. Skempton, for the third time, gave a firm and unequivocal negative.

He said, “I realize the urgency of this matter. I fully appreciate its importance to our future hopes of trading with Meatball and I sympathize with your technical problems. But you are not, repeat not, going to bring a chemically powered spacecraft with a live retro pack inside this hospital! If it accidentally ignited we might have a hole blown in the hull which would cause a lethal pressure drop on a dozen levels, or the vehicle might go bulleting into the central computer or gravity-control sections!”

“Excuse me,” said Conway angrily, and turned to the Lieutenant. He asked, “Can you ignite that retro pack, working from the ambulance ship, or disconnect it?”

“I probably couldn’t disconnect it without inadvertently setting it off and burning myself to a crisp,” Harrison replied slowly, “but I know enough to be able to set up a relay which . . . Yes, we could ignite it from this control room.”

“Go to it, Lieutenant,” said Conway, and returned to the image of Skempton. “I take it, sir, that you have no objection to taking the vessel aboard after its retro pack has been fired? Or to furnishing the special equipment I will need in the cargo lock and ward?”

“The maintenance officer on that level has orders to cooperate,” said Skempton. “Good luck, Doctor. Off.”

While Harrison set up his relay, Prilicla kept an emotional eye on the patient while Mannon and himself worked out the being’s approximate size and weight based on the brief look Conway had had of the astronaut and on the dimensions of its ship. This information would be needed quickly if the special transporter and the rotating operating theater were to be ready in time.

“I’m still here, Doctor,” said O’Mara sharply, “and I have a question. Your idea that the being needs gravity, either normal or artificial, to live I can understand, but strapping it onto an elaborate merry go-round . . .

“Not a merry-go-round, sir,” said Conway. “It will be mounted vertically, like a ferris wheel.”

O’Mara breathed heavily through his nose. “I suppose you are quite sure that you know what you’re doing, Doctor?”

“Well . . .” began Conway.

“Ask a stupid question,” said the psychologist, and broke the connection.

It took longer than the Lieutenant had estimated to set up his relay—everything took longer than estimated on this assignment!—and Prilicla reported that the patient’s condition was rapidly worsening. But at last the spacecraft’s retros flared out for the number of seconds necessary to have brought it out of its original orbit and the ambulance ship kept pace with it, spinning it with opposing tractors as soon as thrust disappeared so that the occupant would still have the gravity it needed. There were complications even so. Immediately the retros cut out, panels opened in the nose cone and the landing parachute tumbled out and within seconds the spinning ship had wound the parachute untidily around itself.

The short period of thrust had added to the hull damage as well.

“It’s leaking like a sieve!” Conway burst out. “Shoot another magnetic grapple to it. Keep it spinning and get us to Lock Thirty quick! How is the patient?”

“Conscious now,” said Prilicla, trembling. “Just barely conscious and radiating extreme fear . . .

Still spinning, the vehicle was maneuvered into the enormous mouth of Lock Thirty. Inside the lock chamber the artificial gravity grids under the deck were set at neutral so that the weightless conditions of space were duplicated there. Conway’s feeling of vertigo, which had been with him since he had first seen the ship, was intensified by the sight of the alien vessel whirling ponderously in the enclosed space, flinging out streamers of coldly steaming water as it spun.

Then suddenly the lock’s outer seal clanged shut, the tractors smoothly checked the ship’s spin as, simultaneously, the artificial gravity of the deck was brought up to Meatball normal. Within a few seconds the spacecraft was resting horizontally on the deck.

“How is it?” began Conway anxiously.

Prilicla said, “Fear . . . no, extreme anxiety. The radiation is quite strong now-otherwise the being seems all right, or at least improved . . .

The empath gave the impression of not believing its own feelings.

The spacecraft was lifted gently and a long, low trolley mounted on balloon wheels rolled under it. Water began pouring into the lock chamber from the seal which had opened into the adjacent water-filled section. Prilicla ran up the wall and across the ceiling until it was in position a few yards above the nose of the vessel, and Mannon, Harrison and Conway waded, then swam, in the same direction. When they reached it they clustered around the forward section, ignoring the team which was throwing straps around the hull and fastening it to the trolley prior to moving it into the nearby corridor of the water-breathers, while they cut into the thin hull plating and carefully peeled it away.

Conway insisted on extreme care during this operation so as to avoid damaging the life-support machinery.

Gradually the nose section became little more than a skeleton and the astronaut lay revealed, like a leathery, brown caterpillar with its tail in its mouth that was caught on one of the innermost gear wheels of a giant clock. By this time the vessel was completely submerged, oxygen was being released into the water all around it, and Prilicla was reporting the patient’s feelings as being extremely anxious and confused.

“It’s confused . . .” said a familiar, irascible voice and Conway discovered O’Mara swimming beside him. Colonel Skempton was dogpaddling along on his other side, but silently. The psychologist went on, “This is an important one, Doctor, in case you’ve forgotten-hence our close personal interest. But now why don’t you pull that glorified alarm clock apart and get the patient out of there? You’ve proved your theory that it needed gravity to live, and we’re supplying that now . . .

“No, sir,” said Conway, “not just yet . . .

“Obviously the rotation of the being inside the capsule,” Colonel Skempton broke in, “compensates for the ship’s spin, thus allowing the pilot a stationary view of the outside world.”

“I don’t know,” said Conway doggedly. “The ship’s rotation does not quite match that of the astronaut inside it. In my opinion we should wait until we can transfer it quickly to the ferris wheel, which will almost exactly duplicate module conditions. I have an idea-it may be a pretty wild one-that we aren’t out of the woods yet.”

“But transferring the whole ship into the ward when the patient alone could be moved there in a fraction of the time . . .

“No,” said Conway.

“He’s the Doctor,” said O’Mara, before the argument could develop further, and smoothly directed the Colonel’s attention to the system of paddle-wheels which kept the water-breathing astronaut’s air circulating.

The enormous trolley, its weight supported in the water to a large extent by air-filled balloon tires, was manhandled along the corridor and into the tremendous tank which was one of the combined theater/wards of the hospital’s water-breathing patients. Suddenly there was another complication.

“Doctor! It’s coming out!”

One of the men swarming around the nose section must have accidentally pushed the astronaut’s ejection button, because the narrow hatch had swung open and the system of gears, sprocket wheels and chain drives was sliding into new positions. Something which looked like three five foot diameter tires was rolling toward the opening.

The innermost tire of the three was the astronaut while the two on each side of it had a metallic look and a series of tubes running from them into the central, organic tire-probably food storage tanks, Conway thought. His theory was borne out when the outer sections stopped just inside the hatch and the alien, still trailing one of the feeding tubes, rolled out of its ship. Still turning it began to fall slowly toward the floor eight feet below.

Harrison, who was nearest, tried to break its fall but could only get one hand to it. The being tipped over and hit the floor flat on its side. It bounced slowly just once and came to rest, motionless.

“It is unconscious again, dying! Quickly, friend Conway!”

The normally polite and self-effacing empath had turned the volume of its suit radio to maximum so as to attract attention quickly. Conway acknowledged with a wave-he was already swimming toward the fallen astronaut as fast as he could-and yelled at Harrison, “Get it upright, man! Turn it!”

“What . . .” began Harrison, but he nevertheless got both hands under the alien and began to lift.

Mannon, O’Mara and Conway arrived together. With four of them working on it they quickly lifted the being into an upright position, but when Conway tried to get them to roll it, it wobbled like a huge, soggy hoop and tended to fold in on itself. Prilicla, at great danger to life and its extremely fragile limbs, landed beside them and deafened everyone with details of the astronaut’s emotional radiation-which was now virtually nonexistent.

Conway yelled directions to the other three to lift the alien to waist height while keeping it upright and turning. Within a few seconds he had O’Mara pulling down on his side, Mannon lifting on his and the Lieutenant and himself at each flank turning and steadying the great, flaccid, ring-shaped body.

“Cut your volume, Prilicla!” O’Mara shouted. Then in a quieter, furious voice he snarled, “I suppose one of us knows what we’re doing?”

“I think so,” said Conway. “Can you speed it up-it was rotating much faster than this inside its ship. Prilicla?”

“It . . . it is barely alive, friend Conway.”

They did everything possible to speed the alien’s rotation while at the same time moving it toward the accommodation prepared for it. This contained the elaborate ferris wheel which Conway had ordered and a watery atmosphere which duplicated the soup of Meatball’s oceans. It was not an exact duplicate because the material suspended in the soup was a nonliving synthetic rather than the living organisms found in the original, but it had the same food value and, because it was nontoxic so far as the other water breathers who were likely to use the ward were concerned, the astronaut’s quarters were contained by a transparent plastic film rather than metal plating and a lock chamber. This also helped speed the process of getting the patient into its ward and onto the wheel.

Finally it was in position, strapped down and turning in the direction and at the same velocity as its “couch” on the spacecraft. Mannon, Prilicla and Conway attached themselves as close to the center of the wheel and their rotating patient as possible and, as their examination proceeded, theater staff, special instruments, diagnostic equipment and the very special, thought-controlled “tool” from Meatball added themselves or were attached to the framework of the wheel and whirled up and over and around through the nearly opaque soup.

The patient was still deeply unconscious at the end of the first hour.

For the benefit of O’Mara and Skempton, who had relinquished their places on the wheel to members of the theater staff, Conway said, “Even at close range it is difficult to see through this stuff, but as the process of breathing is involuntary and includes ingestion, and as the patient has been short of food and air for a long time, I’d prefer not to work in clear, food-free water at this time.”

“My favorite medicine,” said Mannon, “is food.”

“I keep wondering how such a life-form got started,” Conway went on. “I suppose it all began in some wide, shallow, tidal pool-so constituted that the tidal effects caused the water to wash constantly around it instead of going in and out. The patient might then have evolved from some early beastie which was continually rolled around in the shallows by the circular tides, picking up food as it went. Eventually this prehistoric creature evolved specialized internal musculature and organs which allowed it to do the rolling instead of trusting to the tides and currents, also manipulatory appendages in the form of this fringe of short tentacles sprouting from the inner circumference of its body between the series of gill mouths and eyes. Its visual equipment must operate like some form of coeleostat since the contents of its field of vision are constantly rotating.

“Reproduction is probably by direct fission,” he went on, “and they keep rolling for every moment of their lives, because to stop is to die.”

“But why?” O’Mara broke in. “Why must it roll when water and food can be sucked in without it having to move?”

“Do you know what is wrong with the patient, Doctor?” Skempton asked sharply, then added worriedly, “Can you treat it?”

Mannon made a noise which could have been a snort of derision, a bark of laughter or perhaps merely a strangled cough.

Conway said, “Yes and no, sir. Or, in a sense, the answer should be yes to both questions.” He glanced at O’Mara to include the psychologist and went on, “It has to roll to stay alive-there is an ingenious method of shifting its center of gravity while keeping itself upright by partially inflating the section of its body which is on top at any given moment. The continual rolling causes its blood to circulate-it uses a form of gravity feed system instead of a muscular pump. You see, this creature has no heart, none at all. When it stops rolling its circulation stops and it dies within a few minutes.

“The trouble is,” he ended grimly, “we may have almost stopped its circulation once too often.”

“I disagree, friend Conway,” said Priicla, who never disagreed with anyone as a rule. The empath’s body and pipe stem legs were quivering, but slowly in the manner of a Cinrusskin who was being exposed to emotion of a comfortable type. It went on, “The patient is regaining consciousness quickly. It is fully conscious now. There is a suggestion of dull, unlocalized pain which is almost certainly caused by hunger, but this is already beginning to fade. It is feeling slightly anxious, very excited and intensely curious.

“Curious?” said Conway.

“Curiosity is the predominating emotion, Doctor.”

“Our early astronauts,” said O’Mara, “were very special people, too .

It was more than an hour later by the time they were finished, medically speaking, with the Meatball astronaut and were climbing out of their suits. A Corps linguist was sharing the ferris wheel with the alien with the intention of adding, with the minimum of delay, a new e-t language to the memory banks of the hospital’s translation computer, and Colonel Skempton had left to compose a rather tricky message to the Captain of Descartes.

“The news isn’t all good,” Conway said, grinning with relief despite himself. “For one thing, our ‘patient’ wasn’t suffering from anything other than malnutrition, partial asphyxiation and general mishandling as a result of being rescued—or rather by—by Descartes. As well, it shows no special aptitude in the use of the thought-controlled tools and seems completely unfamiliar with the things. This can only mean that there is another intelligent race on Meatball. But when our friend can talk properly I don’t think there will be much difficulty getting it to help us find the real owners-it doesn’t hold any grudges for the number of times we nearly killed it, Prilicla says, and . . . and I don’t know how we managed to come out of this so well after all the stupid mistakes we made.”

“And if you are trying to extract a compliment from me for another brilliant piece of deductive reasoning, or your lucky guess,” said O’Mara sourly, “you are wasting your time and mine . . .

Mannon said, “Let’s all have lunch.”

Turning to go, O’Mara said, “You know I don’t eat in public-it gives the impression that I am an ordinary human being like everyone else. Besides, I’ll be too busy working out a set of tests for yet another so-called intelligent species . . .

BLOOD BROTHER

This is not a purely medical assignment, Doctor,” said O’Mara when Conway was summoned to the Chief Psychologist’s office three days later, “although that is the most important, naturally. Should your problems develop political complications—”

“I shall be guided by the vast experience of the cultural-contact specialists of the Monitor Corps,” said Conway.

“Your tone, Doctor Conway,” said O’Mara dryly, “is an implied criticism of the splendid body of men and creatures to which I have the honor to belong . . .

The third person in the room continued to make gurgling sounds as it rotated ponderously like some large, organic prayer wheel, but otherwise said nothing.

. . . But we’re wasting time,” O’Mara went on. “You have two days before your ship leaves for Meatball-time enough, I should think, to tidy up any personal or professional loose ends. You had better study the details of this project as much as possible, while you still have comfortable surroundings in which to work.”

He continued, “I have decided, reluctantly, to exclude Doctor Prilicla from this assignment-Meatball is no place for a being who is so hypersensitive to emotional radiation that it practically curls up and dies if anyone thinks a harsh thought at it. Instead you will have Surreshun here, who has volunteered to act as your guide and adviser-although why it is doing so when it was quite literally by and nearly killed by us is a mystery to me . . .

“It is because I am so brave and generous and forgiving,” said Surreshun in its flat, Translated voice. Still rotating, it added, “I am also farsighted and altruistic and concerned only with the ultimate good of both our species.”

“Yes,” said O’Mara in a carefully neutral voice. “But our purpose it not completely altruistic. We plan to investigate and assess the medical requirements on your home planet with a view to rendering assistance in this area. Since we are also generous, altruistic and . . . and highly ethical this assistance will be given freely in any case, but if you should offer to make available to us a number of those instruments, quasiliving implements, tools or what ever you choose to call them which originate on your planet—”

“But Surreshun has already told us that its race does not use them . . .” began Conway.

“And I believe it,” said Major O’Mara. “But we know that they come from its home planet and it is your problem-one of your problems, Doctor-to find the people who do use them. And now, if there are no other questions . . .

A few minutes later they were in the corridor. Conway looked at his watch and said, “Lunch. I don’t know about you, but I always think better with my mouth full. The water breathers’ section is just two levels above us- “It is kind of you to offer but I realize how inconvenient it is for

your species to eat in my environment,” replied Surreshun. “My life-support equipment contains an interesting selection of food and, although I am completely unselfish and thoughtful where the comfort of my friends is concerned, I shall be returning home in two days and the opportunities of experiencing multienvironment conditions and contacts are therefore limited. I should prefer to use the dining facilities of your warm-blooded oxygen breathers.”

Conway’s sigh of relief was untranslatable. He merely said, “After you.

As they entered the dining hall Conway tried to decide whether to eat standing up like a Tralthan or risk giving himself a multiple hernia on a Melfan torture rack. All the Earth-human tables were taken.

Conway insinuated himself into a Melfan chair while Surreshun, whose food supply was suspended in the water it breathed, parked its mobile life-support system as close as possible to the table. He was about to order when there was an interruption. Thornnastor, the Diagnosticianin-Charge of Pathology, lumbered up, directed an eye at each of them while the other two surveyed the room at large and made a noise like a modulated foghorn.

The sounds were retransmitted in the usual toneless voice saying, “I saw you come in, Doctor and Friend Surreshun, and wondered if we might discuss your assignment for a few minutes-before you begin your meal . . .

Like all its fellow Tralthans Thornnastor was a vegetarian. Conway had the choice of eating salad-a food which he considered fit only for rabbits-or waiting, as his superior had suggested, on a steak.

At the tables around them people finished their lunches and walked, undulated and, in one case, flew out to be replaced by a similar assortment of extraterrestrials, and still Thornnastor continued to discuss methods of processing the data and specimens they would be sending him and the efficient organization of this planet-sized medical examination. As the being responsible for analyzing this mass of incoming data it had very definite ideas on how the job should be handled.

But finally the pathologist lumbered off, Conway ordered his steak and for a few minutes he performed major surgery with knife and fork in silence. Then he became aware that Surreshun’s Translator was making a low, erratic growling sound which was probably the equivalent of the untranslatable noise an Earth-human would make clearing his throat. He asked, “You have a question?”

“Yes,” said Surreshun. It made another untranslatable sound then went on, “Brave and resourceful and emotionally stable as I am . . .

“Modest, too,” said Conway dryly.

I cannot help but feel slightly concerned over tomorrow’s visit to the being O’Mara’s office. Specifically, will it hurt and are there any mental aftereffects?”

“Not a bit and none at all,” said Conway reassuringly. He went onto explain the procedure used for taking a brain recording or Educator Tape, adding that the whole affair was entirely voluntary and should the idea cause Surreshun mental or physical distress it could change its mind at any time without loss of respect. It was doing the hospital a great service by allowing O’Mara to prepare this tape, a tape which would enable them to gain a full and valuable understanding of Surreshun’s world and society—

Surreshun was still making the equivalent of “Aw, shucks noises when they finished their meal. Shortly afterward it left for a roll around the water-filled AUGL ward and Conway headed for his own section.

Before morning he would have to make a start on tidying up loose ends, familiarizing himself with Meatball conditions and drawing up some fairly detailed plans for procedure prior to arrival-if for no other reason than to give the corpsman who would be assisting him the idea that Sector General doctors knew what they were doing.

Currently in his charge were a ward of silver furred caterpillar Kelgians and the hospital’s Tralthan maternity section. He was also responsible for a small ward of Hudlars, with their hide like flexible armor plate, whose artificial gravity system was set at five Gs and whose atmosphere was a dense, high-pressure fog-and the oddball TLTU classification entity hailing from he knew not where who breathed superheated steam. It took more than a few hours to tidy up such a collection of loose ends.

The courses of treatment or convalescence were well advanced, but he felt obliged to have a word with them all and say good-bye because they would be discharged and back on their home planets long before he returned from Meatball.

Conway had a hurried and unbalanced meal off an instrument trolley, and then decided to call Murchison. Reaction to his lengthy bout of medical dedication was setting in, he thought cynically, and he was beginning to think only of his own selfish pleasure . . .

But in Pathology they told him that Murchison was on duty in the methane section, encased in a small half-track vehicle—heavily insulated, jammed with heaters inside, hung with refrigerators outside—which was the only way of entering the Cold Section without both freezing herself to death within seconds and blasting the life out of every patient in the ward with her body heat.

He was able to get through to her on a relay from the ward’s duty room but, remembering the ears both human and otherwise which were probably listening in, he spoke briefly and professionally about his coming assignment and the possibility that she might be able to join him on Meatball in her capacity as a pathologist, and suggested that they discuss the details on the recreation level when she came off duty. He discovered that that would not be for six hours. While she spoke he could hear in the background the ineffably sweet and delicate tinkling-like the chiming of colliding snowflakes, he thought-of a ward full of intelligent crystals talking to each other.

Six hours later they were in the recreation level, where trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping gave an illusion of spaciousness, lying on a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to a sea which seemed to stretch for miles. Only the alien vegetation growing from the cliff tops kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth, but then space was at a premium in Sector General and the people who worked together were expected to play together as well.

Conway was feeling very tired and he realized suddenly that he would have been due to start tomorrow morning’s rounds in two hours’ time if he still had had rounds to make. But tomorrow-today, that was- would be even busier and, if he knew his O’Mara, Conway would not be completely himself.

When he awakened, Murchison was leaning over him with an expression which was a mixture of amusement, irritation and concern. Punching him not too gently in the stomach she said, “You went to sleep on me, in the middle of a sentence, over an hour ago! I don’t like that-it makes me feel insecure, unwanted, unattractive to men.” She went on punishing his diaphragm. “I expected to hear some inside information, at least. Some idea of the problems or dangers of your new job and how long you will be gone. At very least I expected a warm and tender farewell . . .

“If you want to fight,” said Conway laughing, “let’s wrestle . . .”

But she slipped free and took off for the water. With Conway close behind she dived into the area of turbulence surrounding a Tralthan who was being taught how to swim. He thought he had lost her until a slim, tanned arm came around his neck from behind and he swallowed half of the artificial ocean.

While they were catching their breath again on the hot, artificial sand, Conway told her about the new assignment and about the tape taken from Surreshun which he was expected to take shortly. Descartes was not due to leave for another thirty-six hours, but for most of that time Conway would have delusions of being an animated doughnut which probably considered all Earth-human females as shapeless and unlovely bags of dough, or perhaps something much worse.

They left the recreation level a few minutes later, talking about the best way of wangling her release from Thornnastor, to whose elephantine species the word romance was just an unTranslatable noise.

There was no real necessity for them to leave the recreation level, of course. It was just that the Earth-human DBDGs were the only race in the Galactic Federation with a nudity taboo, and one of the very few member species with an aversion to making love in public.

Surreshun had already gone when Conway arrived in Major O’Mara’s office. “You know it all already, Doctor,” said the psychologist as he and Lieutenant Craythorne, his assistant, hooked him up to the Educator. “But I am nevertheless required to warn you that the first few minutes following memory transfer are the worst-it is then that the human mind feels sure that it is being taken over by the alien alter ego. This is a purely subjective phenomenon caused by the sudden influx of alien memories and experience. You must try to maintain flexibility of mind and adapt to these alien, sometimes very alien, impressions as quickly as possible. How you do this is up to you. Since this is a completely new tape I shall monitor your reactions in case of trouble. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” said Conway, and yawned.

“Don’t show off,” said O’Mara, and threw the switch.

Conway came to a few seconds later in a small, square, alien room whose planes and outlines, like its furnishings, were too straight and sharp-edged. Two grotesque entities-a small part of his mind insisted they were his friends-towered over him, studying him with flat, wet eyes set in two faces made of shapeless pink dough. The room, its occupants and himself were motionless and . . .

He was dying!

Conway was aware suddenly that he had pushed O’Mara onto the floor and that he was sitting on the edge of the treatment couch, fists clenched, arms crossed tightly over his chest, swaying rapidly back and forth. But the movement did not help at all-the room was still too horrifying, dizzyingly steady! He was sick with vertigo, his vision was fading, he was choking, losing all sense of touch . . .

“Take it easy, lad,” said O’Mara gently. “Don’t fight it. Adapt.”

Conway tried to swear at him but the sound which came out was like the bleat of a terrified small animal. He rocked forward and back, faster and faster, waggling his head from side to side. The room jerked and rolled about but it was still too steady. The steadiness was terrifying and lethal. How, Conway asked himself in utter desperation, does one adapt to dying?

“Pull up his sleeve, Lieutenant,” said O’Mara urgently, “and hold him steady.”

Conway lost control then. The alien entity who apparently had control would not allow anyone to immobilize its body-that was unthinkable! He jumped to his feet and staggered into O’Mara’s desk. Still trying to find a movement which would pacify the alien inside his mind Conway crawled on hands and knees through the organized clutter on top of the desk, rolling and shaking his head.

But the alien in his mind was dizzy from standing still and the Earth human portion was dizzy from too much movement. Conway was no psychologist but he knew that if he did not think of something quickly he would end up as a patient-of O’Mara’s-instead of a doctor, because his alien was firmly convinced that it was dying, right now.

Even by proxy, dying was going to be a severe traumatic experience.

He had had an idea when he climbed onto the desk, but it was hard to recall it when most of his mind was in the grip of panic reaction. Someone tried to pull him off and he kicked until they let go, but the effort made him lose his balance and he tumbled head first onto O’Mara’s swivel chair. He felt himself rolling toward the floor and instinctively shot out his leg to check the fall. The chair swiveled more than 180 degrees, so he kicked out again, and again. The chair continued to rotate, erratically at first, but then more smoothly as he got the hang of it.

His body was jackknifed on its side around the back of the chair, the left thigh and knee resting flat on the seat while the right foot kicked steadily against the floor. It was not too difficult to imagine that the filing cabinets, bookshelves, office door and the figures of O’Mara and Craythorne were all lying on their sides and that he, Conway, was rotating in the vertical plane. His panic began to subside a little.

“If you stop me,” said Conway, meaning every word, “I’ll kick you in the face . . .

Craythorne’s expression was ludicrous as his face wobbled into sight. O’Mara’s was hidden by the open door of the drug cabinet.

Defensively Conway went on, “This is not simply revulsion to a suddenly introduced alien viewpoint-believe me, Surreshun as a person is more human than most of the taped entities I’ve had recently. But I can’t take this one! I’m not the psychologist around here, but I don’t think any sane person can adapt to a continually recurring death agony.

“On Meatball,” he continued grimly, “there is no such thing as pretending to be dead, sleeping or unconsciousness. You are either moving and alive or still and dead. Even the young of Surreshun’s race rotate during gestation until—”

“You’ve made your point, Doctor,” said O’Mara, approaching once again. His right hand, palm upward, held three tablets. “I won’t give you a shot because stopping you to do so will cause distress, obviously. Instead I’ll give you three of these sleep-bombs. The effects will be sudden and you will be out for at least forty-eight hours. I shall erase the tape while you’re unconscious. There will be a few residual memories and impressions when you awaken, but no panic.

“Now open your mouth, Doctor. Your eyes will close by themselves

Conway awoke in a tiny cabin whose austere color scheme told him that he was aboard a Federation cruiser and whose wall plaque narrowed it down to Cultural Contact and Survey vessel Descartes. An officer wearing Major’s insignia was sitting in the single, fold-down chair, overcrowding the cabin while studying one of the thick Meatball files. He looked up.

“Edwards, ship’s medical officer,” he said pleasantly. “Nice to have you with us, Doctor. Are you awake?”

Conway yawned furiously and said, “Half.”

“In that case,” said Edwards, moving into the corridor so that Conway could have room to dress, “the Captain wants to see us.

Descartes was a large ship and its control room was spacious enough to contain Surreshun’s life-support system without too much inconvenience to the officers manning it. Captain Williamson had invited the roller to spend most of its time there-a compliment which could be appreciated by any astronaut regardless of species-and for a being who did not know the meaning of sleep it had the advantage of always being manned. Surreshun could talk to them, after a fashion.

The vessel’s computer was tiny compared with the monster which handled Translation at Sector General, and even then only a fraction of its capacity could be spared for translation purposes since it still had to serve the ship. As a result the Captain’s attempts at communicating complex psycho political ideas to Surreshun were not meeting with much success.

The officer standing behind the Captain turned and he recognized Harrison. Conway nodded and said, “How’s the leg, Lieutenant?”

“Fine, thank you,” said Harrison. He added seriously, “It troubles me a little when it rains, but that isn’t often in a spaceship . . .

“If you must make conversation, Harrison,” said the Captain with controlled irritation, “please make intelligent conversation.” To Conway he said briskly, “Doctor, its governmental system is completely beyond me-if anything it appears to be a form of paramilitary anarchy. But we must contact its superiors or, failing this, its mate or close relatives. Trouble is, Surreshun doesn’t even understand the concept of parental affection and its sex relationships seem to be unusually complex . . .

“That they are,” said Conway with feeling.

“Obviously you know more than we do on this subject,” said the Captain, looking relieved. “I had hoped for this. As well as sharing minds for a few minutes it was also your patient, I’m told?”

Conway nodded. “It was not really a patient, sir, since it wasn’t sick, but it cooperated during the many physiological and psychological tests. It is still anxious to return home and almost as anxious for us to make friendly contact with its people. What is the problem, sir?”

Basically the Captain’s problem was that he had a suspicious mind and he was giving the Meatball natives credit for having similar minds. So far as they were concerned Surreshun, the first being of their race to go into space, had been swallowed up by Descartes’ cargo lock and taken away.

“They expected to lose me,” Surreshun put in at that point, “but they did not expect to have me stolen.”

Their subsequent reaction on Descartes’ return was predictable- every form of nastiness of which they were capable had been hurled at the ship. The nuclear missiles were easily evaded or knocked out, but Williamson had withdrawn because their warheads had been of a particularly dirty type and surface life would have been seriously affected by fallout if the attack had been allowed to continue. Now he was returning again, this time with Meatball’s first astronaut, and he must prove to the planetary authorities and/or Surreshun’s friends that nothing unpleasant had happened to it.

The easiest way of doing this would be to go into orbit beyond the range of their missiles and let Surreshun itself spend as much time as necessary convincing its people that it had not been tortured or had its mind taken over by some form of monstrous alien life like the Captain. Its vehicle’s communications equipment had been duplicated so there was no technical problem. Nevertheless, Williamson felt that the proper procedure would be for him to communicate with the Meatball authorities and apologize for the mistake before Surreshun spoke.

“The original purpose of this exercise was to make friendly contact with these people,” Williamson concluded, “even before you people at the hospital got so excited about these thought-controlled tools and decided that you wanted more of them.”

“My reason for being here is not altogether commercial,” said Conway, in the tone of one whose conscience is not altogether clear. He went on, ’so far as the present problem is concerned, I can help you. The difficulty stems from your not understanding their complete lack of parental and filial affection or any other emotional ties other than the brief but very intense bond which exists prior to and during the mating process. You see, they really do hate their fathers and everyone else who . . .

“Help us, he said,” muttered Edwards.

Everyone else who is directly related to them,” Conway went on.

“As well, some of Surreshun’s more unusual memories have remained in my mind. This sometimes occurs after exposure to an unusually alien personality, and these people are unusual . . .

The structure of Meatball’s society until the fairly recent past had been a complete reversal of what most intelligent species considered normal. Outwardly it was an anarchy in which the most respected people were the rugged individualist, the far travelers, the beings who lived dangerously and continually sought for new experiences. Cooperation and self-imposed discipline was necessary for mutual protection, of course, since the species had many natural enemies, but this was completely foreign to their natures and only the cowards and weaklings who put safety and comfort above all else were able to overcome the shame of close physical cooperation.

In the early days this stratum of society was considered to be the lowest of the low, but it had been one of them who had devised a method of allowing a person to rotate and live without having to travel along the sea bed. This, the ability to live while remaining stationary, was analogous to the discovery of fire or the wheel on Earth and had been the beginning of technological development on Meatball.

As the desire for comfort, safety and cooperation grew the number of rugged individualists dwindled-they tended to be killed off rather frequently, in any case. Real power came to lie in the stubby tentacles of the beings who worried about the future or who were so curious about the world around them that they were willing to do shameful things and give up practically all of their physical freedom to satisfy it. They made a token admission of guilt and lack of authority, but they were, in fact, the real rulers. The individualists who were nominally the rulers had become figureheads with one rather important exception.

The reason for this topsy-turvy arrangement was a deep, sex-based revulsion toward all blood relations. Since the rollers of Meatball had evolved in a fairly small and confined area and had been forced to move continually within this area, physical contact for mating purposes-a wholly instinctive affair in presapient times-was much more likely to occur between relatives than complete strangers, they had evolved an effective safeguard against inbreeding.

Surreshun’s species reproduced hermaphroditically. Each parent after mating grew their twin offspring, one on each side of their bodies like continuous blisters encircling the side walls of a tire. Injury, disease or the mental confusion immediately following birth could cause the parent to lose balance, roll onto its side, stop and die. But this type of fatality occurred less frequently now that there were machines to maintain the parent’s rotation until it was out of danger. But the points where the children eventually detached themselves form their parents remained very sensitive areas to everyone concerned and their positions were governed by hereditary factors. The result was that any close blood relation trying to make mating contact caused itself and the other being considerable pain. The rollers really did hate their fathers and every other relative. They had no choice.

. . . And the very brief period of courtship,” Conway added in conclusion, “explains the apparent boastfulness we have observed in Surreshun. During a chance convergence on the sea bottom there is never much time to impress an intended mate with the strength and beauty of one’s personality, so that modesty is definitely a no survival characteristic.”

The Captain gave Surreshun a long, thoughtful look, then turned back to Conway. “I take it, Doctor, that our friend, because of the long training and discipline necessary to its becoming Meatball’s first astronaut, belongs to the lowest social stratum even though unofficially it may be quite well thought of?”

Conway shook his head. “You’re forgetting, sir, the importance- again this is tied in with the avoidance of inbreeding-which these people place on the far travelers who bring back new blood and knowledge. In this respect Surreshun is unique. As the planet’s first astronaut it is top dog no matter which way you view it-it is the most respected being on its world and its influence is, well, considerable.”

The Captain did not speak, but his features were stretching themselves into the unusual, for them, configuration of a smile.

“Speaking as one who had been inside looking out,” said Conway, “you can be sure that it doesn’t hold a grudge over being kidnapped-it feels obligated to us, in fact-and that it will cooperate during contact procedure. Just remember, sir, to stress our differences to these people. They are the strangest species we have encountered-which is literally true. Be especially careful not to talk about us all being brothers under the epidermis, or that we belong to the great, galaxy-wide family of intelligent life. 'Family' and 'brother' are dirty words!”

Shortly afterward Williamson called a meeting of the cultural contact and communications specialists to discuss Conway’s new information. Despite the poor translation facilities available on Descartes, by the time the watch-keeping officers in the control room had been relieved for the second time they had completed plans for making contact with the natives of Meatball.

But the senior cultural-contact specialist was still not satisfied-he wanted to study the culture in depth. Normal civilizations, he insisted, were based upon the extension of family ties to tribe, village and country until eventually the world was untied. He could not see how a civilization could rise without such cooperation at family and tribal level, but he thought that a closer study of personal relationships, might clarify things. Perhaps Doctor Conway would like to take the Surreshun tape again?

Conway was tired, irritable and hungry. His reply was forestalled by Major Edwards who said, “No! Definitely not! O’Mara has given me strict instructions about this. With respect, Doctor, he forbids it even if you are stupid enough to volunteer. This is one species whose tapes are unusable. Dammit, I’m hungry and I don’t want more sandwiches!”

“Me, too,” said Conway.

“Why are doctors always hungry?” asked the CC officer.

“Gentlemen,” said the Captain tiredly.

“Speaking personally,” Conway said, “it is because my entire adult life had been devoted to the unselfish service of others and my wide powers of healing and surgical skill instantly available at any time of the day or night. The tenets of my great and altruistic profession demand no less. These sacrifices-the long hours, inadequate sleep and irregular meals-I suffer willingly and without complaint. If I should think of food more often than seems normal for lesser beings it is because some medical emergency may arise to make the next meal uncertain and eating now will enable me to bring a greater degree of skill-even laymen like yourselves must appreciate the effect of malnutrition on mind and muscle- to the aid of my patient.”

He added dryly, “There is no need to stare, gentlemen. I am merely preparing my mind for contact with Surreshun’s people by pretending that modesty does not exist.”

For the remainder of the voyage Conway divided his time between Communications and Control talking to the Captain, Edwards and Surreshun. But by the time Descartes materialized inside the Meatball solar system he had gained very little useful information on the practice of medicine on the planet and even less about its medical practitioners.

Contact with his opposite numbers on Meatball was essential for the success of the assignment.

But curative surgery and medicine were very recent developments which had become possible only when the species learned how to rotate while remaining in one position. There were vague references to another species, however, who acted as physicians of sorts. From Surreshun’s description they seemed to be part physician, part parasite and part predator. Carrying one of them was a very risky business which very often caused imbalance, stoppage and death in the patient’s continually rotating body. The doctor, Surreshun insisted, was more to be feared than the disease.

With the limited translation facilities it was unable to explain how the beings communicated with their patients. Surreshun had never met one personally nor was it on rolling-together terms with anyone who had. The nearest it could express it was that they made direct contact with the patient’s soul.

“Oh Lord,” said Edwards, “what next?”

“Are you praying or just relieving your feelings?” asked Conway.

The Major grinned, then went on seriously, “If our friend uses the word ’soul' it is because your hospital translator carries the word with an equivalent Meatball meaning. You’ll just have to signal the hospital to find out what that overgrown electronic brain thinks a soul is.”

“O’Mara,” said Conway, “will begin wondering about my mental health again . . .

By the time the answer arrived Captain Williamson had successfully made his apologies to the Meatball non-authorities and Surreshun had painted such a glowing picture of the utter strangeness of the Earth humans that their welcome was assured. Descartes had been requested to remain in orbit, however, until a suitable landing area had been marked out and cleared.

“According to this,” said Edwards as he passed the signal flimsy to Conway, “the computer’s definition of ’soul' is simply 'the life of principle.' O’Mara says the programmers did not want to confuse it with religious and philosophical factors by including material or immortal souls. So far as the translation computer is concerned if a thing is alive then it has a soul. Apparently Meatball physicians make direct contact with their patients’ life-principle.”

“Faith healing, do you think?”

“I don’t know, Doctor,” said Edwards. “It seems to me that your Chief Psychologist isn’t being much help on this one. And if you think I’m going to help by giving you Surreshun’s tape again, save your breath.”

Conway was surprised at the normal appearance of Meatball as seen from orbit. It was not until the ship was within ten miles of the surface that the slow wrinklings and twitchings of the vast carpets of animal tissue which crawled over the land surface became obvious, and the unnatural stillness of the thick, soupy sea. Only along the shorelines was there activity. Here the sea was stirred into a yellow-green forth by water-dwelling predators large and small tearing furiously at the living coastline while the “land” fought just as viciously back.

Descartes came down about two miles off a peaceful stretch of coast in the center of an area marked with brightly colored floats, completely hidden in the cloud of steam produced by its tail flare. As the stern slipped below the surface, thrust was reduced and it came to rest gently on the sandy sea bottom. The great mass of boiled water produced by the flare drifted slowly away on the tide and the people began to roll up.

Literally, thought Conway.

Like great soggy doughnuts they rolled out of the green liquid fog and up to the base of the ship, then around and around it. When outcroppings of rock or a spiky sea growth got in the way they wobbled ponderously around it, sometimes laying themselves almost flat for an instant if forced to reverse direction, but always maintaining their constant rate of rotation and the maximum possible distance from each other.

Conway waited for a decent interval to allow Surreshun to descend the ramp and be properly welcomed by its non-friends. He was wearing a lightweight suit identical to the type used in the water breather’s section of the hospital, both for comfort and to show as much as possible of his oddly shaped body to the natives. He stepped off the side of the ramp and fell slowly toward the sea bottom, listening to the translated voices of Surreshun, the VIPs and the louder members of the circling crowd.

When he touched bottom he thought he was being attacked at first. Every being in the vicinity of the ship tried to score the nearest possible miss on him and each one said something as it passed. The suit mike picked up the sound as a burbling grunt but the translator, because it was a simple message within the capabilities of the ship’s computer, relayed it as “Welcome stranger.”

There could be no doubt about their sincerity-on this cockeyed world the warmth of a welcome was directly proportional to the degree of strangeness. And they did not mind answering questions one little bit. From here on in, Conway was sure his job would be easy.

Almost the first thing he discovered was that they had no real need of his professional services.

It was a society whose members never stopped moving through and around “towns” which were simply facilities for manufacture, learning or research rather than large groupings of living quarters-on Meatball there were no living quarters. After a period of work on a mechanically rotated frame the doughnut slipped out of its retaining harness and rolled away to seek food, exercise, excitement or strange company somewhere across the sea bed.

There was no sleep, no physical contact other than for reproduction, no tall buildings, no burial places.

When one of the rollers stopped due to age, accident or a run-in with one of the predators or a poison-spined plant it was ignored. The generation of internal gases which took place shortly after death caused the body to float to the surface where the birds and fish disposed of it.

Conway spoke to several beings who were too old to roll and who were being kept alive by artificial feeding while they were rotated in their individual ferris wheels. He was never quite sure whether they were kept alive because of their value to the community or simply the subject of experimentation. He knew that he was seeing geriatrics being practiced, but other than a similar form of assistance with difficult births this was the only form of medicine he encountered.

Meanwhile the survey teams were mapping the planet and bringing in specimens by the boatload. Most of this material was sent to Sector General for processing and very soon detailed analysis suggestions for treatment began coming from Thornnastor. According to the Diagnostician-Pathologist Meatball had a medical problem of the utmost urgency. Conway and Edwards, who had had a preliminary look at the data and a number of low-level flights over the planetary surface, could not have agreed more.

“We can begin a preliminary diagnosis of the planet’s troubles,” said Conway angrily, “which are caused by the rollers being too damned free with the use of nuclear weapons! But we still badly need a local appreciation of the medical situation and that we are not getting. The big question is—”

“Is there a doctor in the house?” said Edwards, grinning. “And if so, where?”

“Exactly,” said Conway. He did not laugh.

Outside the direct vision port the slow, turgid waves reflected the moonlight through a curtain of surface mist. The moon, which was approaching Roche’s Limit and disintegration, would pose the inhabitants of Meatball yet another major problem-but not for another million years or so. At the moment it was a great jagged crescent illuminating the sea, the two hundred feet of Descartes which projected above the surface and the strangely peaceful shoreline.

Peaceful because it was dead and the predators refused to eat carrion.

“If I built a rotating framework for myself would O’Mara . . . ?” began Conway.

Edwards shook his head. “Surreshun’s tape is more dangerous than you think-you were very lucky not to have lost all of your marbles, permanently. Besides, O’Mara has already thought of that idea and discarded it. Rotating yourself while under the influence of the tape, either in a swivel chair or in a gadget built by our machine shop, will fool your mind for only a few minutes, he says. But I’ll ask him again, if you like?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Conway. Thoughtfully, he went on, “The question I keep asking myself is where on this planet is a doctor most likely to be found. Suppose the answer is where the greatest number of casualties occur, that is, along the coastlines—”

“Not necessarily,” Edwards objected. “One doesn’t normally find a doctor in a slaughterhouse. And don’t forget that there is another intelligent race on this planet, the makers of those thought-controlled tools. Isn’t it possible that your doctors belong to this race and your answer lies outside the roller culture entirely?”

“True,” said Conway. “But here we have the willing cooperation of the natives and we should make all possible use of it. I shall ask permission, I think, to follow one of our far-traveling doughnuts next time it sets off on a trip. It may be like having a third party along on a honeymoon and I may be told politely where to go with my request, but it is obvious that there are no doctors in the towns or settled areas and it is only the travelers who have a chance of meeting one. Meanwhile,” he ended, “let’s try to find that other intelligent species.”

Two days later Conway made contact with a non-relative of Surreshun who worked in the nearby power station, a nuclear reactor in which he felt almost at home because it had four solid walls and a roof. The roller was planning a trip along an unsettled stretch of coast at the end of its current work period which, Conway estimated, would last two or three days. The being’s name was Camsaug and it did not mind Conway coming along provided he did not stay too close if certain circumstances arose. It described the circumstances in detail and without apparent shame.

Camsaug had heard about the “protectors,” but only at second or third hand. They did not cut people and sew them up again as Conway’s doctors did-it did not know what they did exactly, only that they often killed the people they were supposed to protect. They were stupid, slow moving beings who for some odd reason stayed close to the most active and dangerous stretches of shore.

“Not a slaughterhouse, Major, a battlefield,” said Conway smugly. “You expect to find doctors on a battlefield . . .

But they could not wait for Camsaug to start its vacation-Thornnastor’s reports, the samples brought in by the scout ships and their own unaided eyes left no doubt about the urgency of the situation.

Meatball was a very sick planet. Surreshun’s people had been much too free in the use of their newly discovered atomic energy. Their reason for this was that they were an expanding culture which could not afford to be hampered by the constant threat of the massive land beasts. By detonating a series of nuclear devices a few miles inland, taking good care that the wind would not blow the fallout onto their own living area, of course, they had killed large areas of the land beast. They were now able to establish bases on the dead land to further their scientific investigation in many fields.

They did not care that they spread blight and cancer over vast areas far inland-the great carpets were their natural enemy. Hundreds of their people were stopped and eaten by the land beasts every year and now they were simply getting their own back.

“Are these carpets alive and intelligent?” asked Conway angrily as their scout ship made a low-level run over an area which seemed to be afflicted with advanced gangrene. “Or are there small, intelligent organisms living in or under it? No matter which, Surreshun’s people will have to stop chucking their filthy bombs about!”

“I agree,” said Edwards. “But we’ll have to tell them tactfully. We are their guests, you know.”

“You shouldn’t have to tell a man tactfully to stop killing himself!”

“You must have had unusually intelligent patients, Doctor,” said Edwards dryly. He went on, “If the carpets are intelligent and not just stomachs with the attachments for keeping them filled they should have eyes, ears and some kind of nervous system capable of reacting to outside stimuli—”

“When Descartes landed first there was quite a reaction,” said Harrison from the pilot’s position. “The beastie tried to swallow us! We’ll be passing close to the original landing site in a few minutes. Do you want to look at it?”

“Yes, please,” said Conway. Thoughtfully, he added, “Opening a mouth could be an instinctive reaction from a hungry and unintelligent beast. But intelligence of some kind was present because those thought controlled tools came aboard.”

They cleared the diseased area and began to chase their shadow across large patches of vivid green vegetation. Unlike the types which recycled air and wastes these were tiny plants which served no apparent purpose. The specimens which Conway had examined in Descartes’ lab had had very long, thin roots and four wide leaves which rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides when they were shaded from the light. Their scout ship trailed a line of rolled-up leaves in the wake of its shadow as if the surface was a bright green oscilloscope screen and the ship’s shadow a high-persistency spot.

Somewhere in the back of Conway’s mind an idea began to take shape, but it dissolved again as they reached the original landing site and began to circle.

It was just a shallow crater with a lumpy bottom, Conway thought, and not at all like a mouth. Harrison asked if they wanted to land, in a tone which left no doubt that he expected the answer to be “No.”

“Yes,” said Conway.

They landed in the center of the crater. The doctors put on heavy duty suits as protection against the plants which, both on land and under sea, defended themselves by lashing out with poison-thorn branches or shooting lethal quills at anything that came too close. The ground gave no indication of opening up and swallowing them so they went outside, leaving Harrison ready to take off in a hurry should it decide to change its mind.

Nothing happened while they explored the crater and immediate surroundings, so they set up the portable drilling rig to take back some local samples of skin and underlying tissue. All scout ships carried these rigs and specimens had been taken from hundreds of areas all over the planet. But here the specimen was far from typical-they had to drill through nearly fifty feet of dry, fibrous skin before they came to the pink, spongy, underlying tissue. They transferred the rig to a position outside the crater and tried again. Here the skin was only twenty feet thick, the planetary average.

“This bothers me,” said Conway suddenly. “There was no oral cavity, no evidence of operating musculature, no sign of any kind of opening. It can’t be a mouth!”

“It wasn’t an eye it opened,” said Harrison on the suit frequency. “I was there . . . here, I mean.”

“It looks just like scar tissue,” said Conway. “But it’s too deep to have been formed only as a result of burning by Descartes’ tail flare. And why did it just happen to have a mouth here anyway, just where the ship decided to land? The chances against that happening are millions to one. And why haven’t other mouths been discovered inland? We’ve surveyed every square mile of the land mass, but the only surface mouth to appear was a few minutes after Descartes landed. Why?”

“It saw us coming and . . .” began Harrison.

“What with?” said Edwards.

. . . Or fit us land, then, and decided to form a mouth . . .

“A mouth,” said Conway, “with muscles to open and close it, with teeth, predigestive juices and an alimentary canal joining it to a stomach which, unless it decided to form that as well, could be many miles away- all within a few minutes of the ship landing? From what we know of carpet metabolism I can’t see all that happening so quickly, can you?”

Edwards and Harrison were silent.

“From our study of the carpet inhabiting that small island to the north,” said Conway, “we have a fair idea of how they function.”

Since the day after their arrival the island had been kept under constant observation. Its inhabitant had an incredibly slow, almost vegetable, metabolism. The carpet’s upper surface appeared not to move, but it did in fact alter its contours so as to provide a supply of rainwater wherever needed for the plant life which recycled its air and wastes or served as an additional food supply. The only real activity occurred around the fringes of the carpet, where the great being had its mouths. But here again it was not the carpet itself which moved quickly but the hordes of predators who tried to eat it while it slowly and ponderously ate them in with the thick, food-rich sea water. The other big carpets unlucky enough not to have a fringe adjoining the sea ate vegetation and each other.

The carpets did not possess hands or tentacles or manipulatory appendages of any kind-just mouths and eyes capable of tracking an arriving spaceship.

“Eyes?” said Edwards. “Why didn’t they see our scout ship?”

“There have been dozens of scout ships and copters flitting about recently,” said Conway, “and the beast may be confused. But what I’d like you to do now, Lieutenant, is take your ship up to, say, one thousand feet and do a series of figure-eight turns. Do them as tightly and quickly as possible, cover the same area of ground each time and make the crossover point directly above our heads. Got it?”

“Yes, but . . .

“This will let the beastie know that we aren’t just any scout ship but a very special one,” Conway explained, then added, “be ready to pick us up in a hurry if something goes wrong.

A few minutes later Harrison took off, leaving the two doctors standing beside their drilling rig. Edwards said, “I see what you mean, Doctor. You want to attract attention to us. ‘X’ marks the spot and an 'X' with closed ends is a figure-eight. Persistency of vision will do the rest.”

The scout ship was criss-crossing above them in the tightest turns Conway had ever seen. Even with the ship’s gravity compensators working at full capacity Harrison must have been taking at least four Gs. On the ground the ship’s shadow whipped past and around them, trailing a long, bright yellow line of rolled-up leaves. The ground shook to the thunder of the tiny vessel’s jet and then, very slightly, it began shaking by itself.

“Harrison!”

The scout ship broke off the maneuver and roared into a landing behind them. By then the ground was already beginning to sag.

Suddenly they appeared.

Two large, flat metal disks embedded vertically in the ground, one about twenty feet in front of them and the other the same distance behind. As they watched each disk contracted suddenly into a shapeless blob of metal which crawled a few feet to the side and then suddenly became a large, razor-edged disk again, cutting a deep incision in the ground. The disks had each cut more than a quarter circle around them and the ground was sagging rapidly inside the incisions before Conway realized what was happening.

“Think cubes at them!” he yelled. “Think something blunt! Harrison!”

“Lock’s open. Come running.”

But they could not run without taking their eyes and minds off the disks, and if they did that they could not run fast enough to clear the circular incision which was being made around them. Instead they sidled toward the scout ship, willing every inch of the way that the disks become cubes or spheres or horseshoes-anything but the great, circular scalpels which something had made them become.

At Sector General Conway had watched his colleague Mannon perform incredible feats of surgery, using one of these thought-controlled tools, an all-purpose surgical instrument which became anything he wanted it to be instantly. Now two of the things were crawling and twisting like metallic nightmares as they tried to shape them one way and something else-which was their owner and as such had more expertise-tried to shape them another. It was a very one-sided struggle but they did, just barely, manage to hamper their opponent’s thinking enough to allow them to get clear before the circular plug of “skin” containing the drilling rig and other odds and ends of equipment dropped from sight.

“They’re welcome to it,” said Major Edwards as the lock slammed shut and Harrison lifted off. “After all, we’ve been taking specimens for weeks and it may give them something to think about before we broaden contact with shadow diagrams.” He grew suddenly excited as he went on, “With high-acceleration radio-controlled missiles we can build up quite complex figures!”

Conway said, “I was thinking more in terms of a tight beam of light projected onto the surface at night. The leaves should react by opening and the beam could be moved very quickly in a rectangular sweep pattern like old-fashioned TV. It might even be possible to project moving pictures.”

“That’s it,” said Edwards enthusiastically. “But how a dirty great beast the size of a county, who doesn’t have arms, legs or anything else, will be able to answer our signals is another matter. Probably it will think of something.”

Conway shook his head. “It is possible that despite their slow movements the carpets are capable of quick thinking, that they are in fact the tool users we are looking for and that their enormous bodies undergo voluntary surgery whenever they want to draw in and examine a specimen which is not within reach of a mouth. But I prefer the theory of a smaller, intelligent life-form inside or under the big one, an intelligent parasite perhaps which helps maintain the host in good health by the use of the tools and other abilities, and which makes use of the host being’s 'eyes’ as well as everything else. You can take your pick.”

There was silence while the scout ship leveled off on a course which would take it back to the mother ship, then Harrison said, “We haven’t made direct contact, then-we’ve just put squiggles on a vegetable radar screen? But it is still a big step forward.”

“As I see it,” said Conway, “if tools were being used to bring us to them, they must be a fair distance from the surface-perhaps they can’t exist on the surface. And don’t forget they would use the carpet exactly as we use vegetable and mineral resources. How would they analyze life samples? Would they be able to see them at all down there? They use plants for eyes but I can’t imagine a vegetable microscope. Perhaps they would use the big beastie’s digestive juices in certain stages of the analysis .

Harrison was beginning to look a little green around the gills. He said, “Let’s send down a robot sensor first, to see what they do, eh?”

Conway began, “This is all theory . . .

He broke off as the ship’s radio hummed, cleared its throat and said

briskly, “Scout ship Nine. Mother here. I have an urgent signal for Doctor

Conway. The being Camsaug has gone on vacation wearing the tracer the

Doctor gave it. It is heading for the active stretch of shore in area

H-Twelve. Harrison, have you anything to report?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied the Lieutenant, glancing at Conway. “But first I think the Doctor wants to speak to you.”

Conway spoke briefly and a few minutes later the scout ship leaped ahead under emergency thrust, ripping through the sky too fast for even the leaves to react to its shadow and trailing an unending shock wave which would have deafened anything on the surface with ears to hear. But the great carpet slipping past them might well number deafness among its many other infirmities which now, Conway thought angrily, included a number of well-developed and extensive skin cancers and God alone knew what else.

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 aglistening 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 making 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 —t 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 wealdy 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 scout ship Dl 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 nonhuman, 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 the 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 0 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 scout ship 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.

Conway had just finished securing his helmet when its receiver said, “Harrison here, Doctor. The reception team leader says that it will take some time to completely fill the lock with water as well as making it necessary to carry out the full anti contamination procedure at the other five internal entrances. It is a big lock, pressure of water on the other seals will be severe

if—”

“Filling won’t be necessary,” said Conway. “The Drambon CLCH will be all right so long as the water reaches the top edge of the freight hatch.”

“The man says bless you.”

They let themselves into the scout ship’s hold, carefully avoiding the self-powered life support machinery which kept the first Drambon rotating like an organic prayer wheel as they removed the retaining straps from the freight lashing points.

“We’ve arrived, Surreshun,” said Conway. “In a few minutes you’ll be able to say good-bye to that contraption for a few days. How is our friend?”

It was a purely rhetorical question because the second Drambon did not and perhaps could not speak. But if it could not converse it could at least react. Like a great, translucent jellyfish-it would have been completely invisible in water had it not been for its iridescent skin and a few misty internal organs-the Drambon undulated toward them. It curled around Conway like a thick, translucent cocoon for a moment, then transferred its attentions to Edwards.

“Ready when you are, Doctors.”

“This is a much better entrance than your first one,” said Conway as Edwards helped him maneuver Surreshun’s life-support equipment out of the hold. “At least this time we know what we are doing.”

“There is no need to apologize, friend Conway,” said Surreshun in its flat, translated voice. “To a being of my high intelligence and ethical values, sympathy for the mental shortcomings of lesser beings and, of course, forgiveness for any wrongs they may have done me are but small facets of my generous personality.”

Conway had not been aware that he was apologizing, but to a being to whom the concept of modesty was completely alien it was possible that his words had sounded that way. Diplomatically he said nothing.

Lock Twenty-three’s reception team arrived to help them move Surreshun’s wheel to the entrance to the water-filled AUGL wards. The team leader, whose black suit had red and yellow striped arms and legs making him look like an updated court jester, swam up to Conway and touched helmets.

“Sorry about this, Doctor,” his voice sounded, clearly if somewhat distorted by the transmitting media, “but an emergency has come up suddenly and I don’t want to tie up the suit frequency. I’d like all you people to move into the ward as quickly as possible. Surreshun has been through our hands before so we don’t have to worry about it, just take charge of the other character wherever it is and . . . What the blazes!”

The other character had wrapped itself around his head and shoulders, pinioning his arms and nuzzling at him like a dog with a dozen invisible heads.

“Maybe it likes you,” said Conway. “If you ignore it for a minute it will go away.

“Things usually do find me irresistible,” said the team leader dryly. “I wish the same could be said for females of my own species . . .

Conway swam around and over it, grabbed two large handfuls of the flexible, transparent tegument covering its back and kicked sideways against the water until the being’s front end was pointing toward the ward entrance. Great, slow ripples moved along its body and it began undulating toward the corridor leading to the AUGL ward like an iridescent flying carpet. Less gracefully Surreshun’s ferris wheel followed close behind.

“An emergency, you said?”

“Yes, Doctor,” said the team leader on the suit frequency. “But nothing will happen for another ten minutes, so I can use the suit radio if we keep it brief. My information is that a Kelgian DBLF on the Hudlar operating theater staff was injured by a muscular spasm and involuntary movement of the patient’s forward tentacles during the course of the op. The injuries are complicated by compression effects plus the fact that the constituents of that high-pressure muck which Hudlars breathe are highly toxic to the Kelgian metabolism. But it is the bleeding which is the real cause of the emergency. You know Kelgians.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Conway.

Even a small punctured or incised wound was a very serious matter for a Kelgian. They were giant, furry caterpillars and only their brain, which was housed in the blunt, conical head section, was protected by anything resembling a bony structure. The body consisted of a series of wide, circular bands of muscle which gave it mobility and served to protect, very inadequately, the vital organs within.

The trouble was that to give those tremendous bands of muscle an adequate blood supply the Kelgian pulse rate and pressure were, by Earth standards, abnormally high.

“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 again. 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 . . .

“Can damn well wait until this lot are sorted out,” said O’Mara firmly.

The meeting broke up shortly after that because neither Surreshun nor Conway could give any information on Drambo which was not already available in the Corps reports. O’Mara retreated into his inner office with the Drambon doctor, Thornnastor and Skempton returned to their quarters and Edwards, Mannon, Prilicla, and Conway, having first seen to the comfort of Surreshun in the AUGL tank, headed for the cafeteria reserved for warm-blooded oxygen breathers to refuel. The Hudlar and Melfan doctors went along to find out more about Drambo and to watch the others eat. As very recent additions to the hospital staff in the first flush of enthusiasm, they were spending every available minute observing and talking to e-ts.

Conway knew the feeling. It was still very much with him, but nowadays he was practical enough to use as well as admire the enthusiasm of the new boys . . .

“The Chalders are tough and mobile enough to hold their own against the native predators,” Conway said as they distributed themselves around a table designed for Tralthan FGLIs-the Earth-human DBDG tables were all taken, by Kelgians-and dialed their orders. “You Melfans are very fast movers on the sea bed and your legs, being mostly osseus material, are proof against the poisonous plants and spines growing on the ocean floor. Hudlars, however, while slow-moving do not have to worry about anything less than an armor-piercing shell hurting them and the water all over the planet is so thick with vegetable and animal life anxious to attach itself to any smooth surface that you could throw away your food spraying gear and live completely off the sea.”

“It sounds like heaven,” said the Hudlar, its flat, translated tone making it impossible to tell whether or not it was being sarcastic. “But you will need large numbers of doctors in all three species-far too many to be supplied by the hospital even if everyone on the staff was allowed to volunteer.

“We’ll need hundreds of you,” Conway replied, “and Drambo isn’t heaven even for Hudlars. At the same time I thought there might be doctors-young, still restless, newly qualified people-anxious for e-t experience . . .

“I’m not Prilicla,” said Mannon, laughing, “but even I can sense that you are preaching to the converted. Do you like lukewarm steak, Conway?”

For several minutes they concentrated on eating so that the gentle breeze produced by Prilicla’s wings-it preferred to hover during meals, claiming that flying aided its digestion-would not ruin everything but the ice cream.

“At the meeting,” said Edwards suddenly, “you mentioned other, less urgent problems. I expect the recruiting of thick-skinned beasties like Garoth here was one of them. I’m afraid to ask about the others . . .

Conway said, “We will need on-the-spot advice during this large-scale medical examination, which means doctors, nurses and medical technicians experienced in the processing and analysis of specimens covering the widest possible range of life-forms. I am going to have to talk Thornnastor into releasing some of his pathology staff . . .”

Prilicla side-slipped suddenly and almost put one of its pencil-thin legs into Mannon’s dessert. It was trembling slightly as it flew, a sure sign that someone at the table was radiating strong and complicated emotions.

“I’m still not Prilicla,” said Mannon, “but from the behavior of our empathic friend I would guess that you are seeking, and trying to justify, a much closer liaison with the pathology department and especially a pathologist called Murchison. Right, Doctor?”

“My emotions are supposed to be privileged,” said Conway.

“I did not say a word,” said Prilicla, who was still finding difficulty in maintaining a stable hover.

Edwards said, “Who’s Murchison?”

“Oh, a female of the Earth-human DBDG classification,” said Garoth through his translator. “A very efficient nurse with theater experience covering more than thirty different life-forms, who recently qualified as a pathologist senior grade. Personally I have found her pleasant and polite, so much so that I am able to ignore the, to me, physically repellent slabs of adipose overlaying much of her musculature.”

“And you’re going to bring her to Drambo with you, Conway?” The Monitor Corps and its officers had very old-fashioned ideas about mixed crews, even on long survey missions.

“Only,” said Mannon gravely, “if he’s given half a chance.”

“You should marry the girl, Conway.”

“He did.”

“This is a very strange establishment in some ways, Major,” said Mannon, smiling, “full of odd and peculiar practices. Take sex, for instance. To a large number of the entities here it is either a continuing, involuntary process as public, and giving the about degree of stimulation, as breathing, or it is physiological earthquake which rocks them for perhaps three days in the year. People like these find it hard to understand the, to them, bewildering complications and ritualistic behavior connected with pairing off and mating in our species-although admittedly there are a few whose sex lives make ours look about as simple as crosspollination.

“But the point I’m trying to make,” Mannon went on, “is that the vast majority of our e-ts just do not understand why the female of our species should lose her identity, surrender that most precious of all possessions, her name. To many of them this smacks of slavery, or at least second-class citizenship, and to the others sheer stupidity. They don’t see why an Earth-human female doctor, nurse or technician should change her identity and take the name belonging to another entity for purely emotional reasons and neither, if it comes to that, does the Records computer. So they retain their professional names, like actresses and similar professional females, and are very careful to use them at all times to avoid confusions of identity with e-ts who—”

“He gets the point,” said Conway dryly. “But sometime I’d like you to explain the difference between an amateur as opposed to a professional female.”

“They behave differently in private, of course,” Mannon went on, ignoring him. “Some of them are sufficiently depraved to call each other by their first names.

“We need a pathology team,” said Conway, ignoring Mannon. “But even more we need local medical help. Surreshun’s people, for physiological reasons, can give us only moral support, which means that everything depends on gaining the cooperation of our leech-like friends. This is where you come in, Prilicla. You were monitoring its emotional radiation during the meeting. Any ideas?”

“I’m afraid not, friend Conway,” said the empath. “During the whole of the meeting the Drambon doctor was conscious and aware, but it did not react to anything that was said or done or engage in any concentrated thinking. It emoted only feelings of well-being, repletion and self satisfaction.”

“It certainly did a good job on that Kelgian,” said Edwards, “and to a leech the pint or so of blood it siphoned off . . .

Prilicla waited politely for the interruption to cease, then went on, “There was a very brief heightening of interest detectable when members of the meeting first entered the room-the emotion was not one of curiosity, however, but more like the increase of awareness necessary for a cursory identification.”

“Was there any indication that the trip here had affected it?” asked Conway. “Impaired its physical or mental faculties, anything like that?”

“It was thinking only contented thoughts,” replied Prilicla, “so I would say not.——

They discussed the Drambon doctor until they were about to leave the dining hall, when Conway said, “O’Mara will be glad of your help, Prilicla, while he is putting our blood-sucking friend through his psychological hoops, so I would be grateful if you could monitor its emotional radiation while contact is being established. The Major may want to wait until communication is complete and a special translator pack has been programmed for the Drambon before contacting me. But I would like to have any useful information as you get it . . .”

Three days later as he was about to board Descartes with Edwards and the first batch of recruits-a very carefully chosen few who would, he hoped, by their enthusiasm attract and instruct many more-the PA began quietly insisting that Doctor Conway contact Major O’Mara at once, its insistence reinforced by the repeated double chime which preceded most urgent signals. He waved the others ahead and went to the lock’s communicator.

“Glad I caught you,” said the Chief Psychologist before Conway could do anything more than identify himself. “Listen, don’t talk. Prilicla and I are getting nowhere with your Drambon medic. It emotes but we can’t get it excited about anything so that we cannot even establish its likes and dislikes.

“We know that it sees and feels,” O’Mara went on, “but we aren’t sure if it can hear or talk or, if it can, how it does these things. Prilicla thinks it may have a low form of empathy, but until we can put a few ripples into its even disposition there is no way of proving that. I am not admitting that I’m beaten, Conway, but you have handed us a problem which may have a very simple solution—”

“Did you try it with the thought-controlled tool?”

“That was the first, second and twenty-eighth thing we tried,” said O’Mara sourly. “Prilicla detected a very slight heightening of interest consistent, it says, with the identification of a familiar object. But the Drambon made no attempt to control the gadget. I was saying that you handed us a problem. Maybe the simplest answer would be for you to hand us another just like it.”

The Chief Psychologist disliked having to give unnecessary explanations almost as much as people who were slow on the uptake, so Conway thought for a moment before saying, “So you would like me to bring back another Drambon medic so that you could observe and eavesdrop on their conversation when they meet, and reproduce the method on the translator . . .

“Yes, Doctor, and fast,” said O’Mara, “before your Chief Psychologist needs a psychiatrist. Off.”

It was not possible for Conway to immediately seek out, kidnap or otherwise acquire another leech-like SRJH on his return to Drambo. He had a group of e-ts of widely varying dietary, gravity and atmosphere requirements to attend to and, while all three life-forms could exist without too much difficulty in the Drambon ocean, their quarters on Descartes had to have some of the comforts of home.

They also had to be given some appreciation of the scope of the medical problem they were being asked to help solve, and this entailed many copter flights over the strata creatures. He showed them the great tracks of living “land” covered with the tiny, long-rooted plants which might or might not serve as the strata beasts’ eyes-the leaves rolled back tightly to reveal their bright undersides when the helicopter’s shadow passed over them, and opened out again a few seconds after it had passed. It was as if their shadow was a high-persistency yellow spot on a bright green radar screen. And he showed them the coastlines, which were much more dramatic.

Here the sea predators, large and small, tore at each other and at the periphery of the great land beasts, stirring the thick, turgid ocean into yellow foam streaked and stained with red. It was in an area like this, where Conway had judged the strata beast’s need for protection had been greatest, that he had found the leech-like SRJHs and where, as soon as he could possibly manage it, he must look for another.

But this time he would have lots of willing and specialized help.

Every day there was a message from O’Mara, different only in the mounting impatience evident between the lines. Prilicla and the Chief Psychologist were having no success with the Drambon doctor and had come to the conclusion that it used one of the exotic Visio tactile languages which were virtually impossible to reproduce without a detailed sight touch vocabulary.

The first expedition to the coast was in the nature of a rehearsal-at least, it started out that way. Camsaug and Surreshun took the lead, wobbling and wheeling along the uneven sea bed like a pair of great organic doughnuts. They were flanked by two crab-like Melfans who were easily capable of scuttling along twice as fast as the Drambons could roll, while a thirty-foot scaled and tentacled Chalder swam ponderously above them ready to discourage local predators with its teeth, claws and great bony club of a tail-although in Conway’s opinion one look from any one of its four extensible eyes would be enough to discourage anything with the slightest will to live.

Conway, Edwards, and Garoth traveled in one of the Corps’s surface cruisers, a vehicle capable not only of moving over any conceivable topography but of going over, through or under the sea as well as being able to hover for a limited period in the air. They kept just far enough in the rear to keep everyone else in sight.

They were headed toward a dead section of coast, a deep strip of the strata beast which Surreshun’s people had killed to give themselves more protected rolling space. They had accomplished this by lobbing a series of very dirty atomic bombs ten miles inland and then waiting while the living coastline stopped killing and eating and drinking, and the coastline predators lost interest in the dead meat and left.

Fallout did not concern the rollers because the prevailing wind blew inland. But Conway had deliberately selected a spot which was only a few miles from a stretch of coast which was still very much alive, so that with any luck their first examination might turn out to be something more than an autopsy.

With the departure of the predators the sea’s plant life had moved in. On Drambo the division between plant and animal life was rarely sharp and all animals were omnivorous. They had to travel along the coast for nearly a mile before finding a mouth that was not either closed too tightly or too badly overgrown to allow entry, but the time was not wasted because Camsaug and Surreshun were able to point out large numbers of dangerous plants that even the heavily armored e-ts should avoid whenever possible.

The practice of extraterrestrial medicine was greatly simplified by the fact that the illnesses and infections of one species were not transmittable to another. But this did not mean that poisons or other toxic material secreted by e-t animals and plants could not kill, and on the Drambon sea bed the vegetation was particularly vicious. Several varieties were covered with poisoned spines and one acted as if it had delusions of being a vegetable octopus.

The first usable mouth looked like an enormous cavern. When they followed the rollers inside the vehicle’s spotlights showed pallid vegetation waving and wriggling slowly to the limit of vision. Surreshun and Camsaug were rolling out unsteady figure-eights on the densely overgrown floor and apologizing for the fact that they could not take the party any farther without risking being stopped.

“We understand,” said Conway, “and thank you.”

As they moved deeper into the enormous mouth the vegetation became sparse and more pallid, revealing large areas of the creature’s tissue. It looked coarse and fibrous and much more like vegetable rather than animal material, even allowing for the fact that it had died several years earlier. The roof began suddenly to press down on them and the forward lights showed the first serious barrier, a tangle of long, tusk-like teeth so thick that they looked like the edge of a petrified forest.

One of the Melfans was the first to report. It said, “I cannot be absolutely sure until Pathology checks my specimens, Doctor Conway, but the indications are that the creature’s teeth are vegetable rather than animal osseous material. They grow thickly on both the upper and lower surfaces of the mouth and to the limit of our visibility. The roots grow transversely so that the teeth are free to bend forward and backward under steady pressure. In the normal position they are angled sharply toward the outer orifice and act as a killing barrier to large predators rather than as a means of grinding them into small pieces.

“From the position and condition of several large cadavers in the area,” the Melfan went on, “I would say that the creature’s ingestion system is very simple. Sea water containing food animals of all sizes is drawn into a stomach or prestomach. Small animals slip through the teeth while large ones impale themselves, whereupon the inward current and the struggles of the animal concerned cause the teeth to bend inward and release it. I assume that the small animals are no problem but that the big ones could do serious damage to the stomach before the digestive system neutralizes them, so they have to be dead before they reach the stomach.”

Conway directed the spotlight toward the area containing the Melfan and saw it wave one of its mandibles. He said, “That sounds reasonable, Doctor. It wouldn’t surprise me if the digestive processes are very slow indeed-in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the creature is more vegetable than animal. An organism of normal flesh, blood, bone and muscle of this size would be too heavy to move at all. But it moves, and does everything else, very slowly . . .” He broke off and narrowed the beam for maximum penetration, then went on, “You had better get aboard so we can burn a way through those teeth.”

“No need, Doctor,” said the Melfan. “The teeth have decayed and are quite soft and brittle. You can simply drive through them and we will follow.”

Edwards allowed the cruiser to sink to the floor, then moved it forward at a comfortable scuttling pace for Melfans. Hundreds of the long, discolored plant teeth snapped and toppled slowly through the cloudy water before they were suddenly in the clear.

“If the teeth are a specialized form of plant life,” said Conway thoughtfully, “they occupied a very sharply defined area, which suggests that someone is responsible for planting them.”

Grunting assent, Edwards checked to see that everyone had come through the tunnel they had just made, then he said, “The channel is widening and deepening again, and I can see another presumably specialized form of plant life. Big, isn’t it? There’s another. They’re all over the place.

“This is far enough,” said Conway. “We don’t want to lose sight of the way out.

Edwards shook his head. “I can see openings on both sides just like this one. If the place is a stomach, and it looks big enough, there are several inlets.”

Angry suddenly, Conway said, “We know that there are hundreds of these mouths in this dead section alone and the number of stomachs is anybody’s guess-great, flat, hollow caveins miles across if that radar isn’t telling fluorescent lies. We aren’t even nibbling at the problem!”

Edwards made a sympathetic noise and pointed ahead. “They look like stalactites that have gone soft in the middle. I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look.”

Even the Hudlar went out to have a closer look at the great, sharply curved pillars which supported the roof. Using their portable analyzers they were able to establish that the pillars were a part of the strata beast’s musculature and not, as they had earlier thought, another form of plant life-although the surface of all the muscular supports in the area were covered with something resembling outsize seaweed. The blisters were nearly three feet across and looked about ready to burst. A Melfan taking a specimen of the underlying muscle accidentally touched one and it did burst, triggering off about twenty others in the vicinity. They released a thick, milky liquid which spread rapidly and dissolved in the surrounding water.

The Melfan made untranslatable noises and scuttled backward.

“What’s wrong?” said Conway sharply. “Is it poisonous?”

“No, Doctor. There is a strong acid content but it is not immediately harmful. If you were a water breather you would say that it stinks. But look at the effect on the muscle.”

The great pillar of muscle rooted firmly to both floor and roof was quivering, its sharp curve beginning to straighten out.

“Yes,” said Conway briskly, “this supports our theory about the creature’s method of ingestion. But now I think we should return to Descartes-this area may not be as dead as we thought.”

Specialized teeth plants served as a filter and killing barrier to food drawn into the creature’s stomach. Other symbiotic plants growing on the muscle pillars released a secretion which caused them to stiffen, expand the stomach, and draw in large quantities of food-bearing water. Presumably the secretion also served to dissolve the food, digest it for assimilation through the stomach wall or by other specialized plants- they had taken enough specimens for Thornnastor to be able to work out the digestive mechanism in detail. When the power of the digestive secretion had been diluted by the food entering the stomach their effect on the muscles diminished, allowing the pillars to partially collapse again and expel undigested material.

Blisters were beginning to rupture off the other pillars now. By itself that did not mean that the beast was alive, only that a dead muscle could still respond to the proper stimulus. But the cavern roof was being pushed up and water was flowing in again.

“I agree, Doctor,” said Edwards, “let’s get out of here. But could we leave by a different mouth-we might learn something from a stretch of new scenery.

“Yes,” said Conway, with the uncomfortable feeling that he should have said no. If dead muscles could twitch, what other forms of involuntary activity were possible to the gigantic carcass? He added, “You drive, but keep the cargo hatch and personnel lock open-I’ll stay outside with the e-ts .

A few minutes later Conway was hanging onto a handy projection as the vehicle followed the e-ts into a different mouth opening. He hoped it was a mouth and not a connection with something deeper inside the beast, because Edwards reported that it was curving toward a live area of coast. But before the lowering temperature of his feet could affect his speech centers enough for him to order them back the way they had come, there was an interruption.

“Major Edwards, stop the cruiser, please,” said one of the Melfans. “Doctor Conway, down here. I think I have found a dead . . . colleague.”

It was a Drambon SRJH, no longer transparent but milky and shriveled with a long, incised wound traversing its body, drifting and bumping along the floor.

“Thornnastor will be pleased with you, friend,” said Conway enthusiastically. “And so will O’Mara and Prilicla. Let’s get it aboard with the other specimens. Oh, I’m not a water breather, but . . .

“It doesn’t,” the Melfan replied to the unspoken question. “I’d say that it was too recently dead to be offensive.”

The Chalder came sweeping back, its tentacles gripped the dead SRJH and transferred it to the refrigerated specimen compartment, then it returned to its position. A few seconds later one flat, toneless, translated word rasped in their receivers.

“Company. ”

Edwards directed all his lights ahead to show a fighting, squirming menagerie practically filling the throat ahead. Conway identified two kinds of large sea predators who had obviously been able to batter a way through the brittle teeth, several smaller ones, about ten SRJHs and a few large-headed, tentacled fish that he had never seen before. It was impossible to tell at first which were fighting which or even if it mattered to the beings concerned.

Edwards dropped the vehicle to the floor. “Back inside! Quickly!”

Half-running, half-swimming toward the vehicle, Conway envied the underwater mobility of the Melfans so much that it hurt. He overtook the Hudlar who had the jaws of a big predator locked on its carapace. Just above him one of the new life-forms had an SRJH wrapped around it, the Drambon doctor already turning red as it treated its patient in the only way it knew how. There was a deep, reverberating clang as another predator charged the cruiser, smashing two of their four lights.

“Into the cargo hold!” Edwards shouted hoarsely. “We’ve no time to fiddle about with personnel locks!”

“Get off me, you fool,” said the Hudlar with the predator on its back. “I’m inedible.”

“Conway, behind you!”

Two big predators were coming at him along the bottom while the Chalder was shooting in from the flank. Suddenly there was a Drambon doctor undulating rapidly between the leading predator and Conway. It barely touched the beast but the predator went into a muscular spasm so violent that parts of its skeleton popped white through the skin.

So you can kill as well as cure, thought Conway gratefully as he tried to avoid the second predator. The Chalder arrived then and with a swipe of its armored tail cleared the Hudlar’s back while simultaneously its enormous maw opened and crashed shut on the second predator’s neck.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Conway. “Your amputation technique is crude but effective.”

“All too often,” replied the Chalder, “we must sacrifice neatness for speed . . .”

“Stop chattering and get in!” yelled Edwards.

“Wait! We need another local medic for O’Mara,” began Conway, gripping the edge of the hatch. There was a Drambon doctor drifting a few yards away, bright red and obliviously wrapped around its patient. Conway pointed and to the Chalder said, “Nudge it inside, Doctor. But be gentle, it can kill, too.”

When the hatch clanged shut a few minutes later the cargo hold contained two Melfans, a Hudlar, the Chalder, the Drambon SRJH with its patient and Conway. It was pitch dark. The vehicle shuddered every few seconds as predators crashed against its hull, and conditions were so cramped that if the Chalder moved at all everyone but the armor-plated Hudlar would have been mashed flat. Several years seemed to go past before Edward’s voice sounded in Conway’s helmet.

“We’re leaking in a couple of places, Doctor-but not badly and it shouldn’t worry water breathers in any case. The automatic cameras have some good stuff on internal life-forms being helped by local medics. O’Mara will be very pleased. Oh, I can see teeth ahead. We’ll soon be out of this

Conway was to remember that conversation several weeks later at the hospital when the living and dead specimens and film had been examined, dissected, and viewed so often that the leech-like Drambons undulated through his every dream.

O’Mara was not pleased. He was, in fact, extremely displeased-with himself, which made things much worse for the people around him.

“We have examined the Drambon medics singly and together, friend Conway,” said Prilicla in a vain attempt to render the emotional atmosphere in the room a little more pleasant. “There is no evidence that they communicate verbally, visually, tactually, telepathically, by smell or any other system known to us. The quality of their emotional radiation leads me to suspect that they do not communicate at all in the accepted sense. They are simply aware of other beings and objects around them and, by using their eyes and a mechanism similar to the empathic faculty which my race possesses, are able to identify friend and foe-they attacked the Drambon predators without hesitation, remember, but ignored the much more visually frightening Chalder doctor who was feeling friendship for them.

“So far as we have been able to discover,” Prilicla went on, “its emphatic faculty is highly developed and not allied to intelligence. The same applies to the second Drambon native you brought back, except that it is .

“Much smarter,” O’Mara finished sourly. “Almost as smart as a badly retarded dog. I don’t mind admitting that for a while I thought our failure to communicate may have been due to a lack of professional competence in myself. But now it is clear that you were simply wasting our time giving sophisticated tests to Drambon animals.”

“But that SRJH saved me.”

“A very highly specialized but nonintelligent animal,” said O’Mara firmly. “It protects and heals friends and kills enemies, but it does not think about it. As for the new specimen you brought in, when we exposed it to the thought-controlled tool it emoted awareness and caution—a feeling similar to our emotional radiation if we were standing close to a bare power line—but according to Prilicla it did not think at or even about the gadget.

“So I’m sorry, Conway,” he ended, “we are still looking for the species responsible for making those tools, and for intelligent local medical assistance with your own problem.”

Conway was silent for a long time, staring at the two SRJHs on O’Mara’s floor. It seemed all wrong that a creature responsible for saving his life should have done so without thought or feeling. The SRJH was simply a specialist like the other specialized animals and plants inhabiting the interior of the great strata beasts, doing the work it had evolved to do. Chemical reactions were so slow inside the strata creatures-the material was too diluted for them to be otherwise since its blood might be little more than slightly impure water-that specialized plant and animal symbiotes could produce the secretions necessary for muscle activity, endocrine balance, supplying nourishment to and removing waste material from large areas of tissue. Other specialized symbiotes handled the respiration cycle and gave vision of a kind on the surface.

“Friend Conway has an idea,” said Prilicla.

“Yes,” said Conway, “but I would like to check it by getting the dead SRJH up here. Thornnastor hasn’t done anything drastic to it yet, and if something should happen to it we can easily get another. I would like to face the two living SRJHs with a dead colleague.

“Prilicla says that they do not emote strongly about anything,” Conway added. “They reproduce by fission so there can be no sexual feeling between them. But the sight of one of their own dead should cause some kind of reaction.”

O’Mara stared hard at Conway as he said, “I can tell by the way Prilicla is trembling and by the smug look on your face that you think you have the answer. But what is likely to happen? Are these two going to heal and resuscitate it? Oh, never mind, I’ll wait and let you have your moment of medical drama . . .

When the dead SRJH arrived Conway quickly slid it from the litter onto the office floor and waved O’Mara and Prilicla back. The two living SRJHs were already moving purposefully toward the cadaver. They touched it, flowed around and over it and for about ten minutes were very busy. When they had finished there was nothing left.

“No detectable change in emotional radiation, no evidence of grief,” said Prilicla. It was trembling but its own feelings of surprise were probably responsible for that.

“You don’t look surprised, Conway,” said O’Mara accusingly.

Conway grinned and said, “No, sir. I’m still disappointed at not making contact with a Drambon doctor, but these beasties are a very good second best. They kill the strata beast’s enemies, heal and protect its friends and tidy up the debris. Doesn’t that suggest something to you? They aren’t doctors, of course, just glorified leucocytes. But there must be millions of them, and they’re all on our side . . .

“Glad you’re satisfied, Doctor,” said the Chief Psychologist, looking pointedly at his watch.

“But I’m not satisfied,” said Conway. “I still need a senior pathologist trained in and with the ability to use the hospital’s facilities-one particular pathologist. I need to maintain a close liaison with—”

“The closest possible liaison,” said O’Mara, grinning suddenly. “I quite understand, Doctor, and I shall urge it with Thornnastor just as soon as you’ve closed the door . . .

MAJOR OPERATION

On the whole weird and wonderful planet there were only thirty-seven patients requiring treatment, and they varied widely both in size and in their degree of physical distress. Naturally it was the patient who was in the greatest distress who was being treated first, even though it was also the largest-so large that at their scout ship’s sub orbital velocity of six thousand plus miles per hour it took just over nine minutes to travel from one side of the patient to the other.

“It’s a large problem,” said Conway seriously, “and even altitude doesn’t make it look smaller. Neither does the shortage of skilled help.”

Pathologist Murchison, who was sharing the tiny observation blister with him, sounded cool and a little on the defensive as she replied, “I have been studying all the Drambon material long before and since my arrival two months ago, but I agree that seeing it like this for the first time really does bring the problem home to one. As for the shortage of help, you must realize, Doctor, that you can’t strip the hospital of its staff and facilities for just one patient even if it is the size of a subcontinent—there are thousands of smaller and more easily curable patients with equal demands on us.

“And if you are still suggesting that I, personally, took my time in getting here,” she ended hotly, “I came just as soon as my chief decided that you really did need me, as a pathologist.”

“I’ve been telling Thornnastor for six months that I needed a top pathologist here,” said Conway gently. Murchison looked beautiful when she was angry, but even better when she was not. “I thought everybody in the hospital knew why I wanted you, which is one reason why we are sharing this cramped observation blister, looking at a view we have both seen many times on tape and arguing when we could be enjoying some unprofessional behavior—”

“Pilot here,” said a tinny voice in the blister’s ’speaker. “We are losing height and circling back now and will land about five miles east of the terminator. The reaction of the eye plants to sunrise is worth seeing.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. To Murchison he added, “I had not planned on looking out the window.”

“I had,” she said, punching him with one softly clenched fist on the jaw. “You I can see anytime.”

She pointed suddenly and said, “Someone is drawing yellow triangles on your patient.”

Conway laughed. “I forgot, you haven’t been involved with our communications problems so far. Most of the surface vegetation is light sensitive and, some of us thought, might act as the creature’s eyes. We produce geometrical and other figures by directing a narrow, intense beam of light from orbit into a dark or twilight area and moving it about quickly. The effect is something like that of drawing with a high persistency spot on a vision screen. So far, there has been no detectable reaction.

“Probably,” he went on, “the creature can’t react even if it wanted to, because eyes are sensory receptors and not transmitters. After all, we can’t send messages with our eyes.

“Speak for yourself,” she said.

“Seriously,” Conway said, “I’m beginning to wonder if the strata creature itself is highly intelligent . . .

They landed shortly afterward and stepped carefully onto the springy ground, crushing several of the vegetable eyes with every few yards of progress. The fact that the patient had countless millions of other eyes did not make them feel any better about the damage inflicted by their feet.

When they were about fifty yards from the ship, she said suddenly, “If these plants are eyes-and it is a natural assumption, since they are sensitive to light-why should it have so many in an area where danger threatens so seldom? Peripheral vision to coordinate the activity of its feeding mouths would be much more useful.”

Conway nodded. They knelt carefully among the plants, their long shadows filled with the yellow of tightly closed leaves. He indicated their tracks from the entry lock of the ship, which were also bright yellow, and moved his arms about so as to partly obscure some of the plants from the light. Leaves partially in shade or suffering even minor damage reacted exactly as those completely cut off from the light. They rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides.

“The roots are thin and go on forever,” he said, excavating gently with his fingers to show a whitish root which narrowed to the diameter of thin string before disappearing from sight. “Even with mining equipment or during exploratories with diggers we haven’t been able to find the other end of one. Have you learned anything new from the internals?”

He covered the exposed root with soil, but kept the palms of both hands pressed lightly against the ground.

Watching him, she said, “Not very much. Light and darkness, as well as causing the leaves to open out or roll up tight, causes electrochemical changes in the sap, which is so heavily loaded with mineral salts that it makes a very good conductor. Electrical pulses produced by these changes could travel very quickly from the plant to the other end of the root. Er, what are you doing, dear, taking its pulse?”

Conway shook his head without speaking, and she went on. “The eye plants are evenly distributed over the patient’s top surface, including those areas containing dense growths of the air-renewal and waste-elimination types, so that a shadow or light stimulus received anywhere on its surface is transmitted quickly-almost instantaneously, in fact-to the central nervous system via this mineral-rich sap. But the thing which bothers me is what possible reason could the creature have for evolving an eyeball several hundred miles across?”

“Close your eyes,” said Conway, smiling. “I’m going to touch you. As accurately as you can, try to tell me where.”

“You’ve been too long in the company of men and e-ts, Doctor,” she began, then broke off, looking thoughtful.

Conway began by touching her lightly on the face, then he rested three fingers on top of her shoulder and went on from there.

“Left cheek about an inch from the left side of my mouth,” she said. “Now you’ve rested your hand on my shoulder. You seem to be rubbing an X onto my left bicep. Now you have a thumb and two, maybe three, fingers at the back of my neck just on the hairline . . . Are you enjoying this? I am.”

Conway laughed. “I might if it wasn’t for the thought of Lieutenant Harrison watching us and steaming up the pilot’s canopy with his hot little breath. But seriously, you see what I’m getting at, that the eye plants have nothing to do with the creature’s vision but are analogous to pressure- , pain- or temperature-sensitive nerve endings?”

She opened her eyes and nodded. “It’s a good theory, but you don’t look happy about it.”

“I’m not,” said Conway sourly, “and I’d like you to shoot as many holes in it as possible. You see, the complete success of this operation depends on us being able to communicate with the beings who produced the thought-controlled tools. Up until now I had assumed that these beings would be comparable in size to ourselves even if their physiological classification would be completely alien, and that they would possess the usual sensory equipment of sight, hearing, taste, touch and be capable of being reached through any or all of these channels. But now the evidence is piling up in favor of a single intelligent life-form, the strata creature itself, which is naturally deaf, dumb and blind so far as we can see. The problem of communicating even the simplest concepts to it is—”

He broke off, all his attention concentrated on the palm of one hand which was still pressed against the ground, then said urgently, “Run for the ship.”

They were much less careful about stepping on plants on the way back, and as the hatch slammed shut behind them Harrison’s voice rattled at them from the lock communicator.

“Are we expecting company?”

“Yes, but not for a few minutes,” said Conway breathlessly. “How much time do you need to get away, and can we observe the tools’ arrival through something bigger than this airlock port?”

“For an emergency liftoff, two minutes,” said the pilot, “and if you come up to Control you can use the scanners, which check for external damage.

“But what were you doing, Doctor?” Harrison resumed as they entered his control position. “I mean, in my experience the front of the bicep is not considered to be a zone of erotic stimulation.”

When Conway did not answer he looked appealingly at Murchison.

“He was conducting an experiment,” she said quietly, “designed to prove that I cannot see with the nerve endings of my upper arm. When we were interrupted he was proving that I did not have eyes in the back of my neck, either.”

“Ask a silly question . . .” began Harrison.

“Here they come,” said Conway.

They were three semicircular disks of metal which seemed to flicker into and out of existence on the area of ground covered by the long morning shadow of the scout ship. Harrison stepped up the magnification of his scanners, which showed that the objects did not so much appear and disappear as shrink rhythmically into tiny metal blobs a few inches across, then expand again into flat, circular blades which knifed through the surface. There they lay flat for a few seconds among the shadowed eye plants, then suddenly the discs became shallow inverted bowls. The change was so abrupt that they bounced several yards into the air to land about twenty feet away. The process was repeated every few seconds, with one disc bouncing rapidly toward the distant tip of their shadow, the second zig-zagging to chart its width and the third heading directly for the ship.

“I’ve never seen them act like that before,” said the lieutenant.

“We’ve made a long, thin itch,” said Conway, “and they’ve come to scratch it. Can we stay put for a few minutes?”

Harrison nodded, but said, “Just remember that we’ll still be staying put for two minutes after you change your mind.”

The third disk was still coming at them in five-yard leaps along the center of their shadow. He had never before seen them display such mobility and coordination, even though he knew that they were capable of taking any shape their operators’ thought at them, and that the complexity of the shape and the speed of the change were controlled solely by the speed and clarity of thought of the user’s mind.

“Lieutenant Harrison has a point, Doctor,” said Murchison suddenly. “The early reports say that the tools were used to undercut grounded ships so that they would fall inside the strata creature, presumably for closer examination at its leisure. On those occasions they tried to undercut the object’s shadow, using the shaded eye plants as a guide to size and position. But now, to use your own analogy, they seem to have learned how to tell the itch from the object causing it.”

A loud clang reverberated along the hull, signaling the arrival of the first tool. Immediately the other two turned and headed after the first, and one after the other they bounced high into the air, higher even than the control position, to arch over and crash against the hull. The damage scanners showed them strike, cling for a few seconds while they spread over hull projections like thin, metallic pancakes, then fall away. An instant later they were clanging and clinging against a different section of hull. But a few seconds later they stopped clinging because, just before making contact, they grew needle points which scored bright, deep scratches in the plating.

“They must be blind,” said Conway excitedly. “The tools must be an extension of the creature’s sense of touch, used to augment the information supplied by the plants. They are feeling us for size and shape and consistency.”

“Before they discover that we have a soft center,” said Harrison firmly, “I suggest that we make a tactical withdrawal, or even get the hell out.

Conway nodded. While Harrison played silent tunes on his control panels he explained that the tools were controllable by human minds up to a distance of about twenty feet and that beyond this distance the tool users had control. He told her to think blunt shapes at them as soon as they came into range, any shape so long as it did not have points or cutting edges .

“No, wait,” he said as a better idea struck him. “Think wide and flat at them, with an aerofoil section and some kind of vertical projection for stabilization and guidance. Hold the shape while it is falling and glide it as far away from the ship as possible. With luck it will need three or four jumps to get back.”

Their first attempt was not a success, although the shape which finally stuck the ship was too blunt and convoluted to do serious damage. But they concentrated hard on the next one, holding it to a triangle shape only a fraction of an inch thick and with a wide central fin. Murchison held the overall shape while Conway thought-warped the trailing edges and stabilizer so that it performed a balanced vertical bank just outside the direct-vision panel and headed away from the ship in a long, flat glide.

The glide continued long after it passed beyond their range of influence, banking and wobbling a little, then cutting a short swathe through the eye plants before touching down.

“Doctor, I could kiss you . . .” she began.

“I know you like playing with girls and model airplanes, Doctor,” Harrison broke in dryly, “but we lift in twenty seconds. Straps.”

“It held that shape right to the end,” Conway said, beginning to worry for some reason. “Could it have been learning from us, experimenting perhaps?”

He stopped. The tool melted, flowed into the inverted bowl shape and bounced high into the air. As it began to fall back it changed into glider configuration, picking up speed as it fell, then leveled out a few feet above the surface and came sweeping toward them. The leading edges of its wings were like razors. Its two companions were also aloft in glider form, slicing the air toward them from the other side of the ship.

“Straps.”

They hit their acceleration couches just as the three fast-gliding tools struck the hull, by accident or design, cutting off two of the external vision pickups. The one which was still operating showed a three-foot gash torn in the thin plating with a glider embedded in the tear, changing shape, stretching and widening it. Probably it was a good thing that they could not see what the other two were doing.

Through the gash in the plating Conway could see brightly colored plumbing and cable runs which were also being pushed apart by the tool. Then that screen went dead as well just as takeoff boost rammed him deep into the couch.

“Doctor, check the stern for stowaways,” said Harrison harshly as the initial acceleration began to taper off. “If you find any, think safe shapes at them-something which won’t scramble anymore of my wiring. Quickly.”

Conway had not realized the full extent of the damage, only that there were more red lights than usual winking from the control board. The pilot’s fingers were moving over his panels with such an intensity of gentleness that the harshness in his voice made it sound as if it was coming from a completely different person.

“The aft pickup,” said Conway reassuringly, “shows all three tools gliding in pursuit of our shadow.

For a time there was silence broken only by the tuneless whistling of air through torn plating and unretracted scanner supports. The surface wobbled past below them and the ship’s motion made Conway feel that it was at sea rather than in the air. Their problem was to maintain height at a very low flying speed, because to increase speed would cause damaged sections of the hull to peel off or heat up due to atmospheric friction, or increase the drag to such an extent that the ship would not fly at all. For a vessel which was classed as a supersonic glider for operations in atmosphere their present low speed was ridiculous. Harrison must be holding onto the sky with his fingernails.

Conway tried hard to forget the lieutenant’s problems by worrying aloud about his own.

“I think this proves conclusively that the strata creatures are our intelligent tool users,” he said. “The high degree of mobility and adaptability shown by the tools makes that very plain. They must be controlled by a diffuse and not very strong field of mental radiation conducted and transmitted by root networks and extending only a short distance above the surface. It is so weak that an average Earth-human or e-t mind can take local control.

“If the tool users were beings of comparable size and mental ability to ourselves,” he went on, trying not to look at the landscape lurching past below them, “they would have to travel under and through the surface material as quickly as the tools were flying over it if they were to maintain control. To burrow at that speed would require them being encased in a self-propelled armor-piercing shell. But this does not explain why they have ignored our attempts at making wide-range contact through remote-control devices, other than by reducing the communication modules to their component pieces . . .

“If the range of mental influence pervades its whole body,” Murchison broke in, “would that mean that the creature’s brain is also diffuse? Or, if it does have a localized brain, where is it?”

“I favor the idea of a centralized nervous system,” Conway replied, in a safe and naturally well-protected area-probably close to the creature’s underside where there is a plentiful supply of minerals and possibly in a natural hollow in the subsurface rock. Eye plant and similar types of internal root networks which you’ve analyzed tend to become more complex and extensive the closer we go to the subsurface, which could mean that the pressure-sensitive network there is augmented by the electro vegetable system which causes muscular movement as well as the other types whose function and purpose are still unknown to us. Admittedly the nervous system is largely vegetable, but the mineral content of the root systems means that electrochemical reactions generated at any nerve ending will transmit impulses to the brain very quickly, so there is probably only one brain and it could be situated anywhere.”

She shook her head. “In a being the size of a subcontinent, with no detectable skeleton or osseous structure to form a protective casing and whose body, relative to its area, resembles a thin carpet, I think more than one would be needed-one central brain, anyway, plus a number of neural substations. But the thing which really worries me is what do we do if the brain happens to be in or dangerously close to the operative field.”

“One thing we can’t do,” Conway replied grimly, “is delay the op. Your reports make that very clear.”

She had not been wasting time since coming to Drambo and, as a result of her analysis of thousands of specimens taken by test bores, diggers and exploring medics from all areas and levels of its far-flung body, she was able to give an accurate if not completely detailed picture of the creature’s current physiological state.

They already knew that the metabolism of the strata creature was extremely slow and that its muscular reactions were closer to those of a vegetable than an animal. Voluntary and involuntary muscles controlling mobility, ingestion and digestion, circulation of its working fluid and the breaking down of waste products were all governed or initiated by the secretions of the specialized plants. But it was the plants comprising the patient’s nervous system with their extensive root networks which had suffered worst in the roller fallout, because they had allowed the surface radioactivity to penetrate deep inside the strata creature. This had killed many plant species and had also caused the deaths of thousands of internal animal organisms whose purpose it was to control the growth of various forms of specialized vegetation.

There were two distinct types of internal organisms and they took their jobs very seriously. The large-headed farmer fish were responsible for cultivating and protecting benign growth and destroying all others- for such a large creature, the patient’s metabolic balance was remarkably delicate. The second type, which were the being’s equivalent of leucocytes, assisted the farmer fish in plant control and directly if one of the fish became injured or unwell. They were also cursed with the tidy habit of eating or otherwise absorbing dead members of their own or the fish species, so that a very small quantity of radioactive material introduced by the roots of surface plants could be responsible for killing a very large number of leucocytes, one after another.

And so the dead areas which had spread far beyond the regions directly affected by roller fallout were caused by the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant plant life. The process, like decomposition, was irreversible. The urgent surgical removal of the affected areas was the only solution.

But the report had been encouraging in some respects. Minor surgery had already been performed in a number of areas to check on the probable ecological effects of large masses of decomposing animo vegetable material on the sea or adjacent living strata creature, and to devise methods of radioactive decontamination on a large scale. It had been found that the patient would heal, but slowly; that if the incision was widened to a trench one hundred feet across, then the uncontrolled growth in the excised section would not spread to infect the living area, although regular patrols of the incision to make absolutely sure of this were recommended. The decomposition problem was no problem at all-the explosive growth rate continued until the plant life concerned used up the available material and died. On land the residue would subside into a very rich loam and make an ideal site for a self-supporting base if medical observers were needed in the years to come. In the case of material sliding off shelving coastlines into the sea, it simply broke up and drifted to the seabed to form an edible carpet for the rollers.

Certain areas could not be treated surgically, of course, for the same reason that Shylock had to forego his pound of flesh. These were relatively small trouble spots far inland, whose condition was analogous to a severe skin cancer, but limited surgery and incredibly massive doses of medication were beginning to show results.

“But I still don’t understand its hostility toward us,” Murchison said nervously as the ship went into a three-dimensional skid and lost a lot of height. “After all, it can’t possibly know enough about us to hate us like that.”

The ship was passing over a dead area where the eye plants were discolored and lifeless and did not react to their shadow. Conway wondered if the vast creature could feel pain or if there was simply a loss of sensation when parts of it died. In every other life-form he had ever encountered, and he had met some really weird ones at Sector General, survival was pleasure and death brought pain-that was how evolution kept a race from just lying down and dying when the going got tough. So the strata creature almost certainly had felt pain, intense pain over hundreds of square miles, when the rollers had detonated their nuclear weapons. It had felt more than enough pain to drive it mad with hatred.

Conway cringed inwardly at the thought of such vast and unimaginable pain. Several things were becoming very clear to him.

“You’re right,” he said. “They don’t know anything at all about us, but they hate our shadows. This one in particular hates them because the aircraft carrying the sea-rollers’ atomic bombs produced a shadow not unlike ours just before large tracts of the patient’s body were fried and irradiated.”

“We land in four minutes,” said Harrison suddenly. “On the coast, I’m afraid, because this bucket has too many holes in it to float. Descartes has us in sight and will send a copter.

The pilot’s face made Conway fight the urge to laugh. It looked like that of a half made-up clown. Furious concentration had drawn Harrison’s brows into a ridiculous scowl while his lower lip, which he had been chewing steadily since takeoff, was a wide, blood-red bow of good humor.

Conway said, “The tools can’t operate in this area and, except for a little background radiation caused by fallout, there is no danger. You can land safely.”

“Your trust in my professional ability,” said the pilot, “is touching.” From their condition of unlevel flight they curved into a barely controlled, tail-first dive. The surface crept, then rushed up at them. Harrison checked the rush with full emergency thrust. There were metallic tearing noises and the rest of the lights on his board turned red.

“Harrison, pieces of you are dropping off . . .” began Descartes’ radioman, then they touched down.

For days afterward the observers argued about it, trying to decide whether it had been a landing or a crash. The shock-absorber legs buckled, the stern section took some more of the shock as it tried to telescope amidships and the acceleration couches took the rest-even when the ship toppled, crashed onto its side and a broad, flickering wedge of daylight appeared in the plating a few feet away. The rescue copter was almost on top of them.

“Everybody out,” said Harrison. “The pile shielding has been damaged.”

Looking at the dead and discolored surface around them, Conway thought again of his patient. Angrily, he said, “A little more radiation hereabout won’t make much difference.”

“To your patient, no,” said the lieutenant urgently. “But perhaps selfishly I was thinking of my future offspring. After you.”

During the short trip to the mother ship Conway stared silently out of the port beside him and tried hard not to feel frightened and inadequate. His fear was due to reaction after what could easily have been a fatal crash plus the thought of an even more dangerous trip he would have to make in a few days’ time, and any doctor with a patient who stretched beyond the limits of visibility in all directions could not help feeling small. He was a single microbe trying to cure the body containing it, and suddenly he longed for the normal doctor-patient relationships of his hospital-even though very few of his patients or colleagues could be considered normal.

He wondered if it might not be better to have sent a general to medical school than to give a doctor control of a whole sector sub fleet.

Only six of the Monitor Corps heavies were grounded on Drambo, their landing legs planted firmly in the shallows a few miles off one of the dead sections of coastline. The others filled the morning and evening sky like regimented stars. His medical teams were grouped in and around the grounded ships, which rose out of the thick, soupy sea like gray beehives. The Earth-humans like himself lived on board while the e-ts, none of whom breathed air, were quite happy roughing it on the sea bed.

He had called what he hoped would be the final pre-op meeting in the cargo hold of Descartes, which was filled with Drambon sea water whose content of animal and plant, life had been filtered out so that the beam of the projector would have a sporting chance of fighting its way to the screen attached to the forward bulkheads.

Protocol demanded that the Drambons present opened the proceedings. Watching their spokesman, Surreshun, rolling like a great flaccid doughnut around the clear space in the center of the deck, Conway wondered once again how such a ridiculously vulnerable species had been able to survive and evolve a highly complex, technology-based culture- though it was just possible that an intelligent dinosaur would have had similar thoughts about early man.

Surreshun was followed by Garoth, the Hudlar Senior Physician who was in charge of the patient’s medical treatment. Garoth’s chief concern was with the devising and implementation of artificial feeding in areas where incisions would cut the throat tunnels between the coastal mouths and the inland prestomachs. Again unlike Surreshun, it did not say very much but let the projector do all the talking.

The big screen was filled by a picture of an auxiliary mouth shaft situated about two miles inland of the planned incision line. Every few minutes a copter or small supply ship grounded beside the shaft discharged its load of freshly dead animal life from the coastal shallows and departed while corpsmen with loaders and earth-moving machinery pushed the food over the lip. Possibly the amount and quality of the food was less than that which was drawn in naturally, but when the throat was sealed during the major operation this would be the only way that large areas of the patient could be supplied with food.

Aseptic procedures were impossible in an operation on this scale so that pumping equipment drawing sea water from the coast was drawn through large-diameter plastic piping. It poured in a steady stream- except when tools cut the pipeline-into the food shaft, supplying the strata creature with needed working fluid and at the same time wetting the walls so that leucocytes could be slipped down from time to time to combat the effects of any dangerous plant life which might have been introduced during feeding.

They were seeing a drill, of course, performed at one of the feeding installations a few days earlier, but there were more than fifty auxiliary mouths in a similar state of readiness strung out along the proposed incision line.

Suddenly there was a silvery blur of motion on the ground beside the pump housing and a corpsman hopped a few yards on one foot before falling to the ground. His boot with his other foot still in it lay on its side where he had been standing and the tool, no longer silvery, was already cutting its way beneath the blood-splashed surface.

“Tool attacks are increasing in frequency and strength,” said Garoth in Translated. “They are also displaying considerable initiative. Your idea of clearing an area around the feeding installations of all eye plants so that the tools would have to operate blind, and would have to bounce around feeling for targets, worked only for a short time, Doctor. They devised a new trick, that of sliding along a few inches below the surface, blind, of course, then suddenly extruding a point or a cutting blade and stabbing or swinging with it before retreating under the surface again. If we can’t see them, mental control is impossible, and guarding every working corpsman with another carrying a metal detector has not worked very well so far-it has simply given the tool a better chance of hitting someone.

“And just recently,” Garoth concluded, “there are indications of the tools linking up into five- , six- and in one case ten-unit combinations. The corpsman who reported this died a few seconds later before he was able to finish his report. The condition of his vehicle later supports this theory, however.”

Conway nodded grimly and said, “Thank you, Doctor. But now I’m afraid that you’ll have to withstand air attacks as well. On the way here we taught the patient how gliders work, and it learned fast . . .” He went onto describe the incident, adding the latest pathological findings and their deductions and theories on the nature of their patient. As a result the meeting quickly became a debate and was degenerating into a bitter argument before he had to pull rank and get his human and e-t doctors back to a state of clinical detachment.

The heads of the Melfan and Chalder teams made their report practically as a duet. Like Garoth they had both been concerned with the no surgical aspects of the patient’s treatment. To a hypothetical observer ignorant of the true scope of their problem this medical treatment could have been mistaken for a very widespread mining operation, agriculture on an even larger scale and mass kidnapping. Both were strongly convinced, and Conway agreed with them, that the wrong way to treat a skin cancer was by amputation of the affected limb.

The amounts of radioactive material deposited by fallout in the central areas were relatively small, and their effects spread fairly slowly into the depths of the patient’s body. But even this condition would be ultimately fatal if something was not done to check it. And, since the areas affected by light fallout were too numerous and occurred in too many inoperable locations, they had skinned off the poisoned surface with earth-moving machinery and pushed it into heaps for later decontamination. The remainder of the treatment involved helping the patient to help itself.

A picture appeared suddenly on the screen of a section of subsurface tunnel under one of the areas affected by fallout. There were dozens of life-forms in the tunnel, most of them farmer fish with stubby arms sprouting from the base of their enlarged heads while the others drifted or undulated toward the observer’s position like great, transparent slugs.

For a living section of the strata creature it looked none too healthy. The farmer fish, whose function was the cultivation and control of internal plant life, moved slowly, bumping into each other and the leucocytes which, normally transparent, were displaying the milky coloration which occurred shortly before death. The radiation sensor readings left no doubt as to what they were dying from.

“These specimens were rescued shortly afterward,” said the Chalder, “and transferred to sick bays in the larger ships and to Sector General. Both fish and leeches respond to the same decontamination and regeneration treatments given to our own people who have been exposed to a radiation overdose. They were then returned to carry on their good work.”

“That being,” the Melfan joined in, “absorbing the radiation from the nearest poisoned plant or fish and getting themselves sick again.”

O’Mara had accused Conway of treating Sector General like some kind of e-t sausage machine, although the hospital was curing everything Drambon that they possibly could, and the Monitor Corps medics had merely looked long-suffering when they weren’t looking extremely busy.

By themselves neither the hospital nor treatment facilities on the capital ships were enough to swing the balance. To really allow the patient to fight these local infections required massive transfusions of the leucocyte life-form from other, and healthier, strata creatures.

When he had first suggested the transfusion idea Conway had been worried in case the patient would reject what were, in effect, another creature’s antibodies. But this had not happened, and the only problems encountered were those of transportation and supply as the first single, carefully selected kidnappings became continual wholesale abduction.

On the screen appeared a sequence showing one of the special commandos withdrawing leucocytes from a small and disgustingly healthy strata creature on the other side of the planet. The entry shaft had been in use for several weeks and the motion of the strata creature had caused it to bend in several places, but it was still usable. The corpsmen dropped from the copters and into the sloping tunnel, running and occasionally ducking to avoid the lifting gear which would later haul their catch to the surface. They wore lightweight suits and carried only nets. The leucocytes were their friends. It was very important for them to remember that.

The leucocytes possessed a highly developed empathic faculty, which allowed them to distinguish the parent body’s friends from its foes simply by monitoring their emotional radiation. Provided the corpsmen kidnappers thought warm, friendly thoughts while they went about their business, they were perfectly safe. But it was hard and often frustrating work, netting and hauling and transferring the massive and inert slugs into the transport copters. Sweating and short-tempered as they frequently were, it was not easy to radiate feelings of friendship and helpfulness toward their charges. Circumstances arose in which a corpsman gave way to a flash of anger or irritation-at an item of his own equipment, perhaps- and for such lapses many of them died.

Rarely did they die singly. At the end of the sequence Conway watched the entire crew of a transport copter taken out within a few minutes, because it had been impossible for one man to think kindly thoughts toward a being who had just killed a crew mate-by injecting a poison which triggered off muscular spasms so violent that the man broke practically every bone in his body-even if his own life did depend on it. There was no protection and no cure. Heavy-duty spacesuits tough enough to resist the needle points of the leeches’ probes would not have allowed enough mobility for the corpsmen to do their job, and the creatures killed just as quickly and thoroughly and unthinkingly as they cured.

“To summarize,” said the Chalder as it blanked the screen, “the transfusion and artificial feeding operations are going well at present, but if casualties continue to mount at this rate the supply will fall dangerously short of the computed demand. I therefore recommend, most strongly, that surgery be commenced immediately.”

“I agree,” added the Melfan. “Assuming that we must proceed without either the consent or cooperation of the patient, we should start immediately.”

“How immediate?” broke in Captain Williamson, speaking for the first time. “It takes time to deploy a whole sector sub fleet over the operative field. My people will need final briefings and, well, I think the Fleet Commander is a little worried about this one. Up to now his operations have been purely military.”

Conway was silent, trying to force himself to the decision he had been avoiding for several weeks. Once he gave the word to start, once he began cutting on this gargantuan scale, he was committed. There would be no chance to withdraw and try again later, there were no specialists that he could fall back on if the going got tough and, worst of all, there was no time for dithering, because already the patient’s condition had been left untreated for far too long.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” said Conway, trying hard to radiate the confidence and reassurance which he did not feel. “So far as your people are concerned, this has become a military operation. I know that in the beginning you treated it as a disaster-relief exercise on an unusually large scale, but now it has become indistinguishable from war in your minds, because in war you have to expect casualties and you are certainly getting them. I’m very sorry about that, sir. I never expected such heavy losses and I’m personally very sorry that I taught those tools to glide this morning because that stunt will cost a lot more . . .

“It couldn’t be helped, Doctor,” Williamson broke in, “and one of our people was bound to think of the same idea some time-they’ve thought of practically everything else. But what I want to know is—”

“How soon is immediately,” said Conway for him. “Well, bearing in mind the fact that the operation will be measured in weeks rather than hours, and provided there are no logistical reasons for holding back, I suggest we start the job at first light on the day after tomorrow.”

Williamson nodded, but hesitated before he spoke. “We can be in position at that time, Doctor, but something else has just come up which may cause you to change your mind about the timing.”

He gestured toward the screen and went on, “I can show you charts and figures, if you like, but it is quicker to tell you the results first. The survey of healthy and less ill strata creatures which you asked our cultural contact people to carry out-your idea being that it might be easier to establish communications with a being who was not in constant pain than otherwise-is now complete. Altogether eighteen hundred and seventy-four sites covering every known strata creature were visited, a tool left unattended on the surface and kept under observation from a distance for periods of up to six hours. Even though the body material was practically identical with that of our patient, including the presence of a somewhat simplified form of eye plant, the results were completely negative. The strata creatures under test made no attempt to control or change the tools in any way, and the small changes which did occur were directly traceable to mental radiation from birds or nonintelligent surface animals. We fed this data to Descartes’ computer and then to the tactical computer on Vespasian. The conclusions left no doubt at all, I’m afraid.

“There is only one intelligent strata creature on Drambo,” Williamson ended grimly, “and it is our patient.”

Conway did not reply at once and the meeting became more and more disorganized. To begin with there were a few useful ideas put up-at least, they sounded good until the Captain shot them down. But then instead of ideas he got senseless arguments and bad temper and suddenly Conway knew why.

They had all been both overworked and overtired when the meeting had started, and that had been five hours ago. The Melfan’s bony underside was sagging to within a few inches of the deck. The Hudlar was probably hungry because the water inside the hold had been cleared of all edible material as had the floor, which would similarly displease the constantly rolling Drambon. Above them the enormous Chalder had been hanging in a cramped position for far too long, and the other Earth humans must have been finding their pressure suits as irksome as Conway was finding his. It was obvious that there would be no more useful contributions from anyone at this meeting, including himself, and it was time to wind it up.

He signaled for silence, then said, “Thank you, everyone. The news that our patient is the planet’s only intelligent strata creature makes it necessary for us to try even harder, if that is possible, to make the forthcoming operation a success. It is not a valid reason for delaying surgery.

“You will all have plenty to occupy you tomorrow,” he ended. “I shall spend the time making one last try at obtaining the consent and cooperation of our patient.”

Modifications had been completed to a pair of the tracked boring machines just three days earlier, making them as foolproof as possible and extending their two-way vision equipment to allow Conway to view and, if necessary, direct the operation from anywhere on or inside the strata creature. It was the communications gear that he checked first.

“I have no intention of becoming a dead hero,” Conway explained, grinning. “If we are in any danger I shall be the first to scream for help.”

Harrison shook his head. “The second.”

“Ladies first,” said Murchison firmly.

They drove inland to a healthy area thickly covered by eye plants and stopped for a full hour, then moved on for an hour and stopped again. They spent the morning and early afternoon moving and stopping with no discernible reaction from the patient. Sometimes they drove around in tight circles in an attempt to attract attention, still without success. Not a single tool appeared. Their ground sensors gave no sign that anything was trying to undercut them. Altogether it was turning out to be an intensely frustrating if physically restful day.

When darkness fell they switched on the digger’s spotlights and played them around and watched thousands of eye plants open and close suddenly to this artificial sunshine, but still the strata creature refused the bait.

“In the beginning the brute must have been curious about us,” said Conway, “and anxious to investigate any strange object or occurrence. Now it is simply frightened and hostile, and there are much better targets elsewhere.”

The digger’s vision screens showed several transfusion and feeding sites under constant tool attack, and too many dark stains on the ground which were not of oil.

“I still think,” said Conway seriously, “that if we could get close to its brain, or even into the area where the tools are produced, we would stand a better chance of communicating directly. If direct communication is impossible we might be able to artificially stimulate certain sections to make it think that large objects had landed on the surface, forcing it to draw off the tools attacking the transfusion installations. Or if we could gain an understanding of its technology that might give us a lever . . .”

He broke off as Murchison shook her head. She produced a chart comprising thirty or more transparent overlays which showed the patient’s interior layout as accurately as six months’ hard work with insufficient facilities could make it. Her features fell into their lecturing expression, the one which said that she wanted attention but not admiration.

She said, “We have already tried to find the patient’s brain location by backtracking along the nerve paths—that is, the network of rootlets containing metallic salts which are capable of carrying electrochemical impulses. Using test bores taken at random on the top surface and by direct observation from diggers, we found that they link up, not to a central brain, but to a flat layer of similar rootlets lying just above the subsurface. They do not join directly onto this new network, but lie alongside, paralleling it close enough for impulses to be passed across by induction.

“Some of this network is probably responsible for the subsurface muscular contractions which gave the patient mobility before it took over this particular land mass and stopped climbing over and smothering its enemies, and it is natural to assume that the eye plants above and the muscles below has a direct connection since they would give the first warning of another strata creature attempting to slip over this one, and the subsequent muscular reaction would be almost involuntary.

“But there are many other root networks in that layer,” she went on, “whose function we do not know. They are not color coded-they all look exactly the same except for minute variations in thickness. The type which apparently abstracts minerals from the subsurface rock can vary in thickness. So I would advise against artificial stimulation of any kind. You could very easily start a bunch of subsurface muscles to twitching, and the corpsmen up top would have localized earthquakes to contend with as well as everything else.”

“All right,” said Conway irked for no other reason than that her objections were valid. “But I still want to get close to its brain or to the tool-producing area, and if it won’t pull us in we must go looking for it. But we’re running out of time. Where, in your opinion, is the best place to look?”

She was thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Either the brain or the tool-producing area could be in a hollow or small valley in the subsurface where, presumably, the creature absorbs necessary minerals. There is a large, rocky hollow fifteen miles away, just here, which would give the necessary protection from below and from all sides while the mass of the overlaying body would save it from injury from above. But there are dozens of other sites just as good. Oh, yes, there would have to be a constant supply of nutriment and oxygen available, but as this is a quasi vegetable process in the patient with water instead of blood as the working fluid, there should be no problem in supplying a deeply buried brain . . .

She broke off, her face and jaw stiffening in a successfully stifled yawn. Before she could go on, Conway said, “It’s quite a problem. Why don’t you sleep on it?”

Suddenly she laughed. “I am. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Conway smiled and said, “Seriously, I would like to call a copter to pick you up before we go under. I’ve no idea what to expect if we do find what we’re looking for-we might find ourselves caught in an underground blast furnace or paralyzed by the brain’s mental radiation. I realize that your curiosity is strong and entirely professional, but I would much prefer that you didn’t come. After all, scientific curiosity kills more cats than any other kind.”

“With respect, Doctor,” said Murchison, showing very little of it, “you are talking rubbish. There have been no indications of unusually high temperatures on the subsurface, and we both know that while some e-ts communicate telepathically, they can only do so among their own species. The tools are an entirely different matter, an inert but thought-malleable fabrication which . . .” She broke off, took a deep breath and ended quietly, “There is another digger just like this one. I’m sure there would also be an officer and gentleman on Descartes willing to trail you in it.”

Harrison sighed loudly and said, “Don’t be antisocial, Doctor. If you can’t beat 'em, let them join you.”

“I’ll drive for a while,” said Conway, treating incipient mutiny in the only way he could in the circumstances, by ignoring it. “I’m hungry, and it’s your turn to dish up.”

“I’ll help you, Lieutenant,” said Murchison.

As Harrison turned over the driving position to Conway and headed for the galley, he muttered, “You know, Doctor, sometimes I enjoy drooling over a hot dish, especially yours.”

It was shortly before midnight that they reached the area of the subsurface depression, nosed over and bored in. Murchison stared through the direct-vision port beside her, occasionally making notes about the tracery of fine roots which ran through the damp, cork-like material which was the flesh of the strata creature. There was no indication of a conventional blood supply, nothing to show that the creature had ever been alive in the animal rather than the vegetable sense.

Suddenly they broke through the roof of a stomach and drifted down between the great vegetable pillars which raised and lowered the roof, drawing food-bearing water from the sea and expelling, many days later, the waste material not already absorbed by specialist plants. The vegetable stalactites stretched away to the limits of the spotlight in all directions, each one covered with the other specialized growths whose secretions caused the pillars to stiffen when the stomach had been empty for too long and relax when it was full. Other caverns, smaller and spaced closer together than the stomachs, simply kept the water flowing in the system without performing any digestive function.

Just before they drifted to the floor Harrison angled the digger into diving position and spun the forward cutters to maximum speed. They struck the stomach floor softly and kept on going. Half an hour later they were thrown forward against their straps. The soft thudding of the cutter blades had risen to an ear-piercing shriek, which died into silence as Harrison switched them off.

“Either we’ve reached the subsurface,” he said dryly, “or this beastie has a very hard heart.

They withdrew a short distance, then flattened their angle of descent so that they could continue tunneling with their tracks rolling over the rocky subsurface and the cutters chewing through material which now had the appearance of heavily compressed and thickly veined cork. When they had gone a few hundred yards Conway signaled the Lieutenant to stop.

“This doesn’t look like the stuff that brains are made of,” Conway said, “but I suppose we should take a closer look.”

They were able to collect a few specimens and to look closely, but not for long. By the time they had sealed their suits and exited through the rear hatch, the tunnel they had made was already sagging dangerously and, where the wet, gritty floor met the tunnel sides, an oily black liquid oozed out and climbed steadily until it was over their ankles. Conway did not want to take too much of the stuff back with them into the digger. From the earlier samples taken by drill they knew that it stank to high heaven.

When they were back inside Murchison lifted one of the specimens. It looked a little like an Earthly onion which had been cut laterally in two. The flat underside was covered by a pad of stubby, worm-like growths and the single stalk divided and subdivided many times before joining the nerve network a short distance above them. She said, “I would say that the plant’s secretions dissolve and absorb minerals and/or chemicals from the subsurface rock and soil and, with the water which filters down here, provides the lubrication which allows the creature to change position if the mineral supply runs out. But there are no signs of unusual or concentrated nerve networks here, nor are there any traces of the scars which tools leave when they cut their way through this material. I’m afraid we’ll have to try again somewhere else.”

Nearly an hour went by before they reached the second hollow and another three took them to the third. Conway had been a little doubtful from the beginning about the third site because it was too close to the periphery, in his opinion, to house a brain. But the possibility had still not been ruled out, on a creature this size, of multiple brains or at least a number of neural substations. She reminded him that the old-time brontosaurus had needed two, and it had been microscopic when compared with their patient.

The third site was also very close to the beginning of the first incision line.

“We could spend the rest of our lives searching hollows and still not find what we’re looking for,” said Conway angrily, “and we haven’t that much time.”

His repeater screens showed the sky lightening far above them, with Monitor heavy cruisers already in position, floodlights being switched off at transfusion and feeding installations and occasionally glimpses of Edwards, who had been transferred to the flagship Vespasian as medical liaison chief for the duration. It was his job to translate Conway’s medical instructions into military maneuvers for the fleet’s executive officers.

“Your test bores,” said Conway suddenly. “I assume they were spaced out at regular intervals and went right down to the subsurface? Was there any indication that the black goo which the patient uses as a lubricant is more prevalent in certain areas than in others? I’m trying to find a section of the creature which is virtually incapable of movement, because—”

“Of course,” said Murchison excitedly, “that is the big factor which makes our intelligent patient different from all the smaller and nonintelligent strata creatures. For better protection the brain, and probably the tool-production centers, would almost certainly have to be in a stationary section. Offhand, I can only remember about a dozen test bores in which lubricant was absent or present in very small quantities, but I can look up the map references for you in a few minutes.”

“You know,” said Conway with feeling, “I still don’t want you here but I’m glad you’ve come.

“Thank you,” she said, then added, “I think.”

Five minutes later she had all the available information. “The subsurface forms a small plain ringed by low mountains in that area. Aerial sensors tell us that it is unusually rich in minerals, but then so is most of the center of this land mass. Our test bores were very widely spaced, so that we could easily have missed picking up brain material, but I’m pretty sure now that it is there.”

Conway nodded, then said, “Harrison, that will be the next stop. But it’s too far to go traveling on or under the surface. Take us topside and arrange for a transport copter to lift us to the spot. And on the way would you mind angling us toward Throat Tunnel Forty-three, as close to the incision line as you can manage, so that I can see how the patient reacts to the early stages of the operation. It is bound to have some natural defense against gross physical injury.

He broke off, his mood swinging suddenly from high excitement to deepest gloom. He said, “Dammit, I wish I had concentrated on the tools from the very beginning, instead of getting sidetracked with the rollers, and then thinking that those overgrown leucocytes were the intelligent tool users. I’ve wasted far too much time.”

“We’re not wasting time now,” said Harrison, and pointed toward his repeater screens.

For better or for worse, major surgery had begun.

The main screen showed a line of heavy cruisers playing ponderous follow-the-leader along the first section of the incision, rattlers probing deep while their pressers held the edges of the wound apart to allow deeper penetration by the next ship in line. Like all of the Emperor class ships they were capable of delivering a wide variety of frightfulness in very accurately metered doses, from putting a few streets full of rioters to sleep to dispensing atomic annihilation on a continental scale. The Monitor Corps rarely allowed any situation to deteriorate to the point where the use of mass destruction weapons became the only solution, but they kept them as a big and potent stick-like most policemen, the Federation’s law-enforcement arm knew that an undrawn baton had better and more long-lasting effects than one that was too busy cracking skulls. But their most effective and versatile close-range weapon-versatile because it served equally well either as a sword or a plowshare-was the rattler.

A development of the artificial gravity system which compensated for the killing accelerations used by Federation spaceships, and of the repulsion screen which gave protection against meteorites or which allowed a vessel with sufficient power reserves to hover above a planetary surface like an old-time dirigible airship, the rattler beam simply pushed and pulled, violently, with a force of up to one hundred Gs, several times a minute.

It was very rarely that the corps were forced to use their rattlers in anger-normally the fire-control officers had to be satisfied with using them to clear and cultivate rough ground for newly established colonies- and for the optimum effect the focus had to be really tight. But even a diffuse beam could be devastating, especially on a small target like a scout ship. Instead of tearing off large sections of hull plating and making metallic mincemeat of the underlying structure, it shook the whole ship until the men inside rattled.

On this operation, however, the focus was very tight and the range known to the last inch.

Visually it was not at all spectacular. Each cruiser had three rattler batteries which could be brought to bear, but they pushed and pulled so rapidly that the surface seemed hardly to be disturbed. Only the relatively gentle tractor beams positioned between the rattlers seemed to be doing anything-they pulled up the narrow wedge of material and shredded vegetation so that the next rattler in line could deepen the incision. It would not be until the incision had penetrated to the subsurface and extended for several miles that the other squadrons still hanging in orbit would come in to widen the cut into what they all hoped would be a trench wide enough to check the spread of vegetable infection from the excised and decomposing dead material.

As a background to the pictures Conway could hear the clipped voices of the ordnance officers reporting in. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all saying the same things in the fewest possible words. At irregular intervals a quiet, unhurried voice would break in, directing, approving, coordinating the overall effort-the voice of God, sometimes known as Fleet Commander Dermod, the ranking Monitor Corps officer of Galactic Sector Twelve and as such the tactical director of more than three thousand major fleet units, supply and communications vessels, support bases, ship production lines and the vast number of beings, Earth-human and otherwise, who manned them.

If the operation came unstuck, Conway certainly would not be able to complain about the quality of the help. He began to feel quietly pleased with the way thing were going.

The feeling lasted for all of ten minutes, during which time the incision line passed through the tunnel-Number Forty-three-which they had just entered. Conway could actually see the inward end of the seal, a thick, corrugated sausage of tough plastic inflated to fifty pounds per square inch which pressed against the tunnel walls. Special arrangements had been needed to guard against loss of working fluid because the strata creature’s healing processes were woefully slow. Its blood was quite literally water and one important quality which water did not have was the ability to coagulate.

Two corpsmen and a Melfan medic were on guard beside the seal. They seemed to be agitated, but there were so many leucocytes moving about the tunnel that he could not see the reason for it. His screens showed the incision line crossing the throat tunnel. A few hundreds of gallons of water between the seal and the incision poured away-considering the size of the patient, it was scarcely a drop. The rattlers and tractors moved on, extending and deepening the cut while the great immaterial presser beams, the invisible stilts which supported the enormous weight of the cruisers, pushed the edges apart until the incision became a widening and deepening ravine. A small charge of chemical explosive brought down the roof of the emptied section of tunnel, reinforcing the plastic seal. Everything seemed to be working exactly as planned, until the immediate attention signal began flashing on his board and Major Edwards’ face filled the screen.

“Conway,” said the Major urgently. “The seal in Tunnel Forty-three is under attack by tools.”

“But that’s impossible,” said Murchison, in the scandalized tones of one who has caught a friend cheating at cards. “The patient has never interfered with our internal operations. There are no eye plants down here to give away our positions, no light to speak of, and the seal isn’t even metal. They never attack plastic material on the surface, just men and machines.”

“And they attack men because we betray our presence by trying to take mental control of them,” Conway said quickly. Then to Edwards, “Major, get those people away from the seal and into the supply shaft. Quickly. I can’t talk to them directly. While they’re doing that tell them to try not to think—”

He broke off as the seal ahead disappeared in a soft white explosion of bubbles which roared toward them along the tunnel roof. He could not see anything outside the digger and inside only Edwards’ face and pictures of ships in line astern formation.

“Doctor, the seal’s gone,” shouted the Major, his eyes sliding to one side. “The debris behind the seal is being washed away. Harrison, dig in!”

But the Lieutenant could not dig in because the bubbles roaring past made it impossible to see. He threw the tracks into reverse, but the current sweeping them along was so strong that the digger was just barely in contact with the floor. He killed the floodlights because reflection from the froth outside the canopy was dazzling them. But there was still a patch of light ahead, growing steadily larger . . .

“Edwards, cut the rattlers . . .

A few seconds later they were swept out of the tunnel as part of a cataract which tumbled down an organic cliff into a ravine which seemed to have no bottom. The vehicle did not explode into its component parts nor themselves into strawberry jam, so they knew that Major Edwards had been able to kill the rattler batteries in time. When they crashed to a halt a subjective eternity later, two of the repeater screens died in spectacular implosions and the cataract which had cushioned their fall on the way down began battering at their side, pushing and rolling them along the floor of the incision.

“Anyone hurt?” said Conway.

Murchison eased her safety webbing and winced. “I’m black and blue and . . . and embossed all over.”

“That,” said Harrison in an obviously uninjured tone, “I would like to see.

Both relieved and irritated, Conway said, “First we should look at the patient.”

The only operable view screen was transmitting a picture taken from one of the copters stationed above the incision. The heavy cruisers had drawn off a short distance to leave the operative field clear for rescue and observation copters, which buzzed and dipped above the wound like great metal flies. Thousands of gallons of water were pouring from the severed throat tunnel every minute, carrying the bodies of leucocytes, farmer fish, incompletely digested food and clumps of vital internal vegetation into and along the ravine. Conway signaled for Edwards.

“We’re safe,” he said before the other could speak, “but this is a mess. Unless we can stop this loss of fluid, the stomach system will collapse and we will have killed instead of cured our patient. Dammit, why doesn’t it have some method of protecting itself against gross physical injury, a nonreturn valve arrangement or some such? I certainly did not expect this to happen . . .

Conway checked himself, realizing that he was beginning to whine and make excuses instead of issuing instructions. Briskly, he said, “I need expert advice. Have you a specialist in short-range, low-power explosive weapons?”

“Right,” said Edwards. A few seconds later a new voice said, “Ordnance control, Vespasian, Major Holroyd. Can I help you, Doctor?”

I sincerely hope so, thought Conway, while aloud he went onto outline his problem.

They were faced with the emergency situation of a patient bleeding to death on the table. Whether the being concerned was large or small, whether its body fluid was Earth-human blood, the superheated liquid metal used by the TLTUs of Threcald Five or the somewhat impure water which carried food and specialized internal organisms to the far flung extremities of this Drambon strata creature’s body, the result would be the same-steadily reducing blood pressure, increasingly deep shock, spreading muscular paralysis and death.

Normal procedure in these circumstances would be to control the bleeding by tying off the damaged blood vessel and suturing the wound. But this particular vessel was a tunnel with walls no more strong or elastic than the surrounding body material, so they could not be tied or even clamped. As Conway saw it the only method remaining was to plug the ruptured vessel by bringing down the tunnel roof.

“Close-range TR-7s,” said the ordnance officer quickly. “They are aerodynamically clean, so there will be no problem shooting into the flow, and provided there are no sharp bends near the mouth of the tunnel any desired penetration can be achieved by—”

“No,” said Conway firmly. “I’m concerned about the compression effects of a large explosion in the tunnel itself. The shock wave would be transmitted deep into the interior, and a great many farmer fish and leucocytes would die, not to mention large quantities of the fragile internal vegetation. We must seal the tunnel as close to the incision as possible, Major, and confine the damage to that area.

“Armor-piercing B-22s, then,” said Holroyd promptly. “In this material we could get penetrations of fifty yards without any trouble. I suggest a simultaneous launch of three missiles, spaced vertically above the tunnel mouth so that they will bring down enough loose material to block the tunnel even against the pressure of water trying to push it away as it subsides.”

“Now,” said Conway, “you’re talking.”

But Vespasian’s ordnance officer could do more than talk. Within a very few minutes the screen showed the cruiser hovering low over the incision. Conway did not see the missiles launched because he had suddenly remembered to check if their digger had been swept far enough to avoid being buried in the debris, which fortunately it had. His first indication that anything at all had happened was when the flow of water turned suddenly muddy, slowed to a trickle and stopped. A few minutes later great gobs of thick, viscous mud began to ooze over the lip of the tunnel and suddenly a wide area around the mouth began to sag, fall apart and slip like a mass of brown porridge into the ravine.

The tunnel mouth was now six times larger than it had been and the patient continued to bleed with undiminished force.

“Sorry, Doctor,” said Holroyd. “Shall I repeat the dose and try for greater penetration?”

“No, wait.”

Conway tried desperately to think. I knew that he was conducting a surgical operation, but he did not really believe it-both the problem and the patient were too big. If an Earth-human was in the same condition, even if no instruments or medication were available, he would know what to do-check the flow at a pressure point, apply a tourniquet . . . That was it.

“Holroyd, plant three more in the same position and depth as last time,” he said quickly. “But before you launch them can you arrange your vessel’s presser beams so that as many of them as possible will be focused just above the tunnel opening? Angle them against the face of the incision instead of having them acting vertically, if possible. The idea is to use the weight of your ship to compress and support the material brought down by the missiles.”

“Can do, Doctor.”

It took less than fifteen minutes for Vespasian to rearrange and refocus her invisible feet and launch the missiles, but almost at once the cataract ceased and this time it did not resume. The tunnel opening was gone and in its place there was a great, saucer-shaped depression in the wall of the incision where Vespasian’s starboard pressers were focused. Water still oozed through the compacted seal, but it would hold so long as the cruiser maintained position and leaned her not inconsiderable weight on it. As extra insurance another inflatable seal was already being moved into the supply tunnel.

Suddenly the picture was replaced by that of a lined, young-old face above green-clad shoulders on which there rested a quietly impressive weight of insignia. It was the Fleet Commander himself.

“Doctor Conway. My flagship has engaged in some odd exercises in her time, but never before have we been asked to hold a tourniquet.”

“I’m sorry, sir-it seemed the only way of handling the situation. But right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to have this digger lifted to map reference numbers . . .

He broke off because Harrison was waving at him. The Lieutenant said softly, “Not this digger. Ask him to have the other one checked out and waiting when they get around to pulling us out.”

Three hours later they were in the second modified and strengthened digger, suspended under a transport copter and approaching the area which, they hoped, contained the strata creature’s brain and/or tool producing facilities. The trip gave them a chance to do some constructive theorizing about their patient.

They were now convinced that it had evolved originally from a mobile vegetable form. It had always been large and omnivorous, and when these life-forms began to live off each other they grew in size and complexity and shrank in numbers. There did not seem to be any way that the strata creature could reproduce itself. It simply continued to live and grow until one of its own kind who was bigger than it was killed it. Their patient was the biggest, oldest, toughest and wisest of its kind. As the sole occupant of its land mass for many thousands of years, there had no longer been the necessity for it to move itself bodily and so it had taken root again.

But this had not been a process of devolution. With no chance of cannibalizing others of its own kind, it devised methods of controlling its growth and of rendering its metabolism more efficient by evolving tools to do the jobs like mining, investigating the subsurface, processing necessary minerals for its nerve network. The original farmer fish were probably a strain which were able to survive, like the legendary Jonah, in its stomach and later grow plant teeth for both the parent creature and the farmer fish to defend themselves against sea predators sucked in by the mouths. How the leucocytes got there was still not clear, but the rollers occasionally ran across a smaller, less highly evolved variety which were probably the leeches’ wild cousins.

“But one point which we must keep in mind when we try to talk to it,” Conway ended seriously, “is that the patient is not only blind, deaf and dumb, it has never had another of its own kind to talk to. Our problem isn’t simply learning a peculiar and difficult e-t language, we have to communicate with something which does not even know the meaning of the word communicate.”

“If you’re trying to raise my morale,” said Murchison dryly, “you aren’t.”

Conway had been staring ahead through the forward canopy, mostly to avoid having to look at the carnage depicted on his repeater screens where the tool attacks were taking an increasingly heavy toll at the feeding and transfusion sites. He said suddenly, “The suspected brain area is far too extensive to be searched quickly but, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this also the locality where Descartes made her first touchdown? If that is so then the tools sent to investigate her had a relatively short distance to come, and if it is possible to trace the path of a tool by the scar tissue it leaves in the body material . . .

“It is,” said Murchison, looking excited. Harrison gave new instructions to the transport copter’s pilot without having to be told and a few minutes later they were down, cutting blades spinning and nosing into their patient’s spongy quasi flesh.

But instead of the large, cylindrical plug cut from the body material they found a flat, reversed conical section which tapered sharply to a narrow, almost hair-thin wound which angled almost at once toward the suspected brain area.

“The ship would have been drawn only a short distance below the surface, obviously,” said Murchison. “Enough to let tools make contact with its total surface while supported by body material, instead of making a fleeting contact after bouncing themselves into the air. But do you notice how the tools, even though they must have been cutting through at top speed, still managed to avoid severing the root network which relays their mental instructions . . .

“At the present angle of descent,” Harrison cut in, “we are about twenty minutes from the subsurface. Sonar readings indicate the presence of caverns or deep pits.”

Before Conway could reply to either of them, Edwards’ face flicked onto the main screen. “Doctor, seals Thirty-eight through Forty-one have gone. We’re already holding tourniquets at Eighteen, Twenty-six and Forty-three, but—”

“Same procedure,” snapped Conway.

There was a dull clang followed by metallic scraping sounds running the length of the digger. The sounds were repeated with rapidly increasing frequency. Without looking up, Harrison said, “Tools, Doctor. Dozens of them. They can’t build up much impetus coming at us through this spongy stuff and our extra armor should cope. But I’m worried about the antenna housing.”

Before Conway could ask why, Murchison turned from the view port. She said, “I’ve lost the original trail, Doctor-this area is practically solid with tool scar tissue. Traffic must be very heavy around here.”

The secondary screens were showing logistic displays on the deployment of ships, earth-moving machinery, decontamination equipment and movements into and out of the feeding and transfusion areas, and the main screen showed Vespasian no longer in position above Tunnel Forty-three. It was losing height and wheeling around in a ponderous, lateral spin while its pilot was obviously fighting hard to keep it from flipping over onto its back.

One of its four presser installations, Conway saw during the next swing, had been smashed in as if by a gigantic hammer and he knew without being told that this was the one which had been holding closed the ruptured Forty-three. As the ship whirled closer to the ground he wanted to close his eyes, but then he saw that the spin was being checked and that the surface vegetation was being flattened by the three remaining pressers, fanned out at maximum power to support the ship’s weight.

Vespasian landed hard but not catastrophically. Another cruiser moved into position above Forty-three while surface transport and copters raced toward the crash-landed ship to give assistance. They arrived at the same time as a large group of tools which were doing nothing at all to help.

Suddenly Dermod’s head filled the screen.

“Doctor Conway,” said the Fleet Commander in a coldly furious voice, “this is not the first time that I have had a ship converted to scrap around me, but I have never learned to enjoy the experience. The accident was caused by trying to balance virtually the whole of the ship’s weight on one narrowly focused presser beam, with the result that its supporting structure buckled and damn near wrecked the ship.”

His tone warmed a little, but only temporarily, as he went on, “If we are to hold tourniquets over every tunnel, and with tools attacking every seal it looks as if we will have to do just that, I shall either have to withdraw my ships for major structural modifications or use them for an hour or so at a time and check for incipient structural failure after each spell of duty. But this will tie up a much larger number of ships in unproductive activity, and the farther we extend the incision the more tunnels we will have to sit on and the slower the work will go. The operation is fast becoming a logistical impossibility, the casualty figures and material losses are making it indistinguishable from a full-scale battle, and if I thought that the only result would be the satisfaction of your medical curiosity, Doctor, and that of our cultural contact people, I would throw a permanent 'Hold' on it right now. I have the mind of a policeman, not a soldier-the Federation prefers it that way. I don’t glory in this sort of thing . . .

The digger lurched and for an instant Conway felt a sensation impossible in these surroundings, that of free fall. Then there was a crash as the vehicle struck rocky ground. It landed on its side, rolled over twice and moved forward again, but skidding and slewing to one side. The sound of tools striking the hull was deafening.

Two vertical creases appeared on the Fleet Commander’s forehead. He said, “Having trouble, Doctor?”

The constant banging of tools made it hard to think. Conway nodded and said, “I didn’t expect the seals to be attacked, but now I realize that the patient is simply trying to defend itself where it thinks it is under the heaviest attack. I also realize now that its sense of touch is not restricted to its top surface. You see, it is blind, deaf and dumb but it seems to be able to feel in three dimensions. The eye plants and subsurface root networks allow it to feel areas of local pressure, but vaguely, without detail. To feel the fine details it sends tools, which are extremely sensitive- sensitive enough to feel the airflow over their wings in the glider configuration and reproduce the shape themselves at will. Our patient learns very quickly and that glider I thought at it has cost a lot of lives. I wish—”

“Doctor Conway,” the Fleet Commander broke in harshly. “You are

either trying to make excuses or giving me a very basic lecture with which

I am already familiar. I have time to listen to neither. We are faced with

a surgical and tactical emergency. I require guidance.”

Conway shook his head violently. He had the feeling that he had just said or thought of something important but he did not know what it was. He had to stay with his present train of thought if he expected to drag it out into the light again.

He went on, “The patient sees, experiences everything, by touch. So far our only area of common contact are the tools. They are thought controlled extensions of its sense of touch throughout and for a short distance above the patient’s body. Our own mental radiation and control are more concentrated and of strictly limited range. The situation has been that of two fencers trying to communicate only through the tips of their foils—”

He stopped abruptly because he was talking to an empty screen. All three repeaters glowed with power, but there was neither sound nor vision.

Harrison shouted, “I was afraid of this, Doctor. We strengthened the hull armor but had to cover the antenna housing with a plastic radome to allow two-way communications. The tools have found our weak spot. Now we are deaf, dumb and blind, too-and missing one leg because our port caterpillar tread won’t work.”

The digger had come to rest on a flat shelf of rock in a large cavern which angled steeply into the subsurface. Above and behind them hung a great mass of the creature’s body material from which there was suspended thousands of rootlets which joined and rejoined until they became thick, silvery cables writhing motionlessly across the cavern floor, walls and roof before disappearing into the depths. Each cable had at least one bud sprouting from it, like a leaf of wrinkled tinfoil. The more well developed buds quivered and were trying to take the shapes of the tools which were attacking the digger.

“This is one of the places where it makes the tools,” she said, using a spotlight as pointer, “or should I say grows them-I still can’t decide whether this is an animal or vegetable life-form basically. The nervous system seems to be centered in this area, so it is almost certainly part of the brain as well. And it is sensitive-do you see how carefully the tools avoid those silver cables while they are attacking?”

“We’ll do the same,” said Conway, then to Harrison, “That is, if you can move the digger on one track to that overhanging wall with the cables running along it, without crushing those two on the floor?”

Damage in this sensitive area could have serious effects on their patient.

The Lieutenant nodded and began rocking the digger forward and backward along the shelf until they were tight against the indicated wall. Protected by the sensitive cables above, the cavern floor below and the rocky wall on their starboard side, the tool attack was confined to their unprotected port side. They could once again hear themselves think, but Harrison pointed out firmly but apologetically that they could not climb the slope or dig their way out on one track, that they could not call for help and that they had air for only fourteen hours and then only if they sealed their suits to use their remaining tanked air.

“Let’s do that now,” said Conway briskly, “and move outside. Station yourselves at each end of the digger, under the cables and with your backs to the cavern wall. That way you will have to think off attacks from the front only-any tool trying to cut through the rock behind you will make too much noise to take you by surprise. I also want you far enough from my position amidships so that your mental radiation will not affect the tools which I will be trying to control . . .

“I know that smug, self-satisfied look,” said Murchison to the Lieutenant as she began sealing her helmet. “Our Doctor has had a sudden rush of brains to the head. I think he intends talking to the patient.”

“What language?” asked Harrison dryly.

“I suppose,” said Conway, smiling to show the confidence which he did not feel, “you could call it three-dimensional Braille.”

Quickly he explained what he hoped to do and a few minutes later they were in position outside the digger. Conway sat with his back to the port track housing a few feet from a water-filled depression in the cavern floor. There was a hole of unknown depth in the center of the depression where a cable or similar ore-extracting plant had eaten its way into the rock. To one side of him a group of seven or eight tools had merged together to encircle and squeeze the vehicle’s hull, and some of the armor was beginning to gape at the seams. Conway thought a break in the metal band and then he rolled it into the depression like a great lump of animated, silvery dough. Then he got down to work.

Conway made no attempt to protect himself against attacking tools. He intended concentrating so hard on one particular shape that anything which came within mental range would, he hoped, lose its dangerous edges or points.

Thought-shaping the creature’s outward aspect was easy. Within a few minutes there was a large, silvery pancake-a small-scale replica of the patient-lying in the center of the pool. But thinking three dimensionally of the mouths and their connecting tunnels and stomachs was not so easy. Even harder was the stage when he began thinking the tiny stomachs into expanding and contracting, sucking the gritty, algae-filled water into his scale model and expelling it again.

It was a crude, oversimplified model. The best he could manage at one time was eight mouths and connecting stomachs, and he was very much afraid that it bore the same relation to the patient that a doll did to a living baby. But then he began to add the creeping motions he had observed in smaller, younger strata creatures, keeping the area around the central depression motionless, however, and hoping that with the pumping motions of the stomachs he was giving the impression of a living organism. The sweat poured off his forehead and into his eyes, but by then it did not matter that he could not see properly, because the sections he was shaping were out of sight anyway. Then he began to think certain areas solid, motionless, dead. He extended these dead, motionless and detail-less areas until gradually the whole model was a solid, lifeless lump.

Then he blinked the sweat out of his eyes and started all over again, and then again, and suddenly the others were standing beside him.

“They aren’t attacking us anymore,” said Harrison quietly, “and before they change their minds I am going to try fixing that damaged track. At least, there is no shortage of tools.”

Murchison said, “Can I help-apart from keeping my mind blank to avoid warping your model?”

Without looking up Conway said, “Yes, please. I’m going to take it through the same sequence once again, but halt it at the point where the dead areas extend to at the present time. When I do that I would like you to think the positions of our incisions and extend and widen them while I seal the severed throat tunnels and think the feeding and transfusion shafts. You withdraw the excised material a short distance and think it solid-dead, that is-while I try to get across the idea that the remainder is alive and twitching and likely to stay that way.”

She caught on very quickly but Conway had no way of knowing if their patient had, or could, catch on. Behind them Harrison was at work on the damaged tread while before them their model of the patient and the effects of their present surgery became more and more detailed- right down to the miniature corrugated seals and what happened to the creature when one of them was collapsed. But still there was no indication from the patient that it understood what they were trying to tell it.

Suddenly Conway stood up and began climbing the sloping floor. He said, “I’m sorry, I have to move out of range for a minute to catch my mental breath.”

“Me, too,” she said a few minutes later. “I’ll join you . . . look!”

Conway had been staring at the darkness of the cavern roof to rest both his mind and his eyes. He looked down quickly, thinking they were him into the digger and, while Conway made contact with the surface, Murchison instinctively raised her hand in farewell to the cavern and the shapes of the tool models scattered across the shelf. She must have been thinking very hard about her good-bye because her last model raised its hand also and kept it there while the digger crawled slowly out of mental range.

Suddenly all three repeaters were alive and Dermod was staring at him, his face reflecting concern, relief and excitement in sequence and then altogether. He said, “Doctor, I thought we’d lost you-you blanked out four hours ago. But I can report progress. The incision is proceeding and all tool attacks ceased half an hour ago. There is no tool trouble reported from the tunnel seals, the decontamination teams, the transfusion shafts anywhere. Doctor, is this a temporary condition?”

Conway let his breath go in a long, loud sigh of relief. Their patient was a very bright lad despite its physically slow reaction times. He shook his head and said, “You will have no more trouble from the tools. In fact, you will find them of assistance in helping maintain equipment and for use in awkward sections of the incision once we make it understand our needs. You can also forget about digging that isolation trench-our patient retains enough mobility to withdraw itself from the newly excised material-which means that ships which would have been tied up in digging that trench will now be free to extend the incision more rapidly, so that our operation will be completed in a fraction of the time originally thought necessary.

“You see, sir,” Conway ended, “we now have the active cooperation of our patient.”

Major surgery was completed in just under four months and Conway was ordered back to Sector General. Postoperative treatment would take a great many years and would proceed in conjunction with the exploration of Drambo and the closer investigation of its life-forms and cultures. Before leaving, while he was still seriously troubled by the thought of the casualty figures, Conway had once questioned the value of what they had done. A rather supercilious cultural contact specialist had tried to make it very simple for him by saying that difference, whether it was cultural, physiological or technological, was immensely valuable. They would learn much from the strata creature and the rollers while they were teaching them. Conway, with some difficulty, accepted that. He could also accept the fact that, as a surgeon, his work on Drambo was done. It was much harder to accept the fact that the pathology team, particularly one member of it, still had a lot of work to do.

While O’Mara did not openly enjoy his anguish, neither did he display sympathy.

“Stop suffering so loudly in silence, Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist on his return, “and sublimate yourself-preferably in quicklime. But failing that there is always work, and an odd case has just come in which you might like to look at. I’m being polite, of course. It is your case as of now. Observe.”

The large visi screen behind O’Mara’s desk came to life and he went on. “This beastie was found in one of the hitherto unexplored regions, the victim of an accident which virtually cut its ship and itself in two. Airtight bulkheads sealed off the undamaged section and your patient was able to withdraw itself, or some of itself, before they closed. It was a large ship, filled with some kind of nutrient earth, and the victim is still alive- or should I say half alive. You see, we don’t know which half of it we rescued. Well?”

Conway stared at the screen, already devising methods of immobilizing a section of the patient for examination and treatment, of synthesizing supplies of that nutrient soil which now must be virtually sucked dry, and for studying the wreck’s controls to gain data on its sensory equipment. If the accident which had wrecked its ship had been due to an explosion in the power plant, which was likely, then this might well be the front half containing the brain.

His new patient was not quite the Midgard Serpent but it did not fall far short of it. Twisting and coiling it practically filled the enormous hangar deck which had been emptied to accommodate it.

“Well?” said O’Mara again.

Conway stood up. Before turning to go he grinned and said, “Small, isn’t it?”

Sector General 4—Ambulance Ship

James White

Part 1

SPACEBIRD

I

The Monitor Corps scoutship Torrance was engaged on a mission which was both highly important and deadly dull. Like the other units of its flotilla it had been assigned a relatively tiny volume of space in Sector Nine—one of the many threedimensional blanks which still appeared in the Federation’s charts— to fill in the types and positions of the stars which it contained and the numbers of planets circling them.

Because a ten-man scoutship did not have the facilities for handling a first contact situation, they were forbidden to land or even make a close approach to these planets. They would identify the technologically advanced worlds, if any, by analyzing the radio frequency and other forms of radiation emanating from them. As Major Madden, the vessel’s captain, had told them at the start of the mission, they were simply going to count lights in the sky and that was all.

Naturally, Fate could not resist a temptation like that . . .

“Radar, sir,” said a voice from the controlroom speaker. “We have a blip on the close-approach screen. Distance six miles, closing slowly, non-collision course.”

“Lock on the telescope,” said the Captain, “and let’s see it.”

“Yes, sir. Repeater screen Two.”

On Corps scoutships discipline was strict only when circumstances warranted it, and normally those circumstances did not arise during a mapping mission. As a result the noises coming from the speaker resembled a debate rather than a series of station reports.

“It looks like a . . . a bird, sir, with its wings spread.”

“A plucked bird.”

“Has anyone calculated the chances against materializing this close to an object in interstellar space?”

“I think it’s an asteroid, or molten material which congealed by accident into that shape.”

“Two lights years from the nearest sun?”

“Quiet, please,” said the Captain. “Lock on an analyzer and report.”

There was a short pause, then: “Estimated size, roughly onethird that of this ship. It’s non-reflective, non-metallic, non-mineral and—”

“You’re doing a fine job of telling me what it isn’t,” said the Captain dryly.

“It is organic, sir, and .

“Yes?”

“And alive.”

For a few seconds the controlroom speaker and the Captain held their breath, then Madden said firmly, “Power Room, maneuvering thrust in five minutes. Astrogation, match courses and close to five hundred yards. Ordanace, stand by. Surgeon-Lieutenant Brenner will prepare for EVA.”

The debate was over.

During the ensuing four hours Lieutenant Brenner examined the creature, initially at a safe distance and later as closely as his suit would allow. He was sure that the analyzer had been a little too optimistic over what was most likely a not quite frigid corpse. Certainly the thing was no threat because it could not move even if it had wanted to. The covering of what looked like large, flat barnacles and the rock-hard cement which held them together saw to that.

Later, when he was ending his report to the Captain, he said, “To sum up, sir, it is suffering from a pretty weird skin condition which got out of control and caused it to be dumped—certainly it didn’t fly out here. This implies a race with space-travel who are subject to a disease which scares them so badly that they dump the sufferers into space while they are still alive.

“As you know,” he continued, “I don’t have the qualifications to treat e-t diseases, and the being is too large to fit into our hold. But we could enlarge our hyperspace envelope and tow it to Sector General.

“That would make a nice break in the mapping routine,” he added hopefully, “and I’ve never been to that place. I’m told that not all the nurses there have six legs.”

The Captain was silent for a moment, then he nodded.

“I have,” he said. “Some of them have more.”

* * *

Framed in the rescue tender’s aft vision screen the tremendous structure that was Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space like a gigantic cylindrical Christmas tree. Its thousands of viewports were constantly ablaze with light in the dazzling variety of color and intensity necessary for the visual equipment of its patients and staff, while inside its three hundred and eighty-four levels was reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation—a biological spectrum ranging from the ultrafrigid methane-breathers through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation.

In addition to the patients, whose numbers and physiological classifications were a constant variable, there was a medical and maintenance staff comprising sixty-odd differing life-forms with sixty different sets of mannerisms, body odors and ways of looking at life.

The staff of Sector General prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless, and their reputation and facilities were second to none. They were an extremely able, dedicated, but not always serious bunch, and Senior Physician Conway could not rid himself of the idea that on this occasion someone was playing a complicated joke on him.

“Now that I see it,” he said dryly, “I still can’t believe it.”

Pathologist Murchison, who occupied the position beside him, stared at the image of Torrance and its tow without comment. On the controlroom ceiling, where it clung with six fragile, suckertipped legs, Doctor Prilicla trembled slightly and said, “It could prove to be an interesting and exciting professional challenge, friend Conway.”

The musical trills and clicks of the Cinrusskin’s speech were received by Conway’s translator pack, relayed to the translation computer at the center of the hospital and transmitted back to his earpiece as flat, emotionless English. As expected, the reply was pleasant, polite and extremely non-controversial.

Prilicla was insectile, exe-skeletal, six-legged and with a pair of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings and possessing a highlydeveloped empathic faculty. Only on Cinruss with its one-eighth gravity and dense atmosphere could a race of insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and an advanced civilization. But in Sector General Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity nullifiers everywhere outside its own quarters because the gravity pull which most of its colleagues considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat, and when Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it kept well out of reach of any thoughtless movement of an arm or tentacle which could easily cave in its fragile body or snap off a leg.

Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt Prilicla-it was too well-liked for that. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty forced it to be kind and considerate to everyone in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible.

Except when its professional duty exposed it to pain and violent emotion in a patient, and that situation might arise within the next few minutes.

Turning suddenly to Prilicla, Conway said, “Wear your lightweight suit but stay well clear of the being until we tell you that there is no danger of movement, involuntary or otherwise, from it. We shall wear heavy duty suits, mostly because they have more hooks on which to hang our diagnostic equipment, and I shall ask Torrance’s medic to do the same.”

Half an hour later Lieutenant Brenner, Murchison and Conway were hanging beside the form of the enormous bird while Prilicla, wearing a transparent plastic bubble through which projected its bony mandibles, drifted beside the lock of their tender.

“No detectable emotional radiation, friend Conway,” reported the empath.

“I’m not surprised,” said Murchison.

“It could be dead,” said the Lieutenant defensively. “But when we found it the body temperature was measurably above the norm for an object warmed only by a two light-years distant sun.

“There was no criticism intended, Doctor,” said Murchison soothingly. “I was simply agreeing with our empathic friend. But did you, before or during the trip here, carry out any examinations, observations or tests on this patient, or reach any tentative conclusions as a result of such tests? And don’t be shy, Lieutenant-we may be the acknowledged experts in xenological medicine and physiology here, but we got that way by listening and looking, not by gratuitous displays of our expertise. You were curious, naturally, and . . .

“Yes, ma’am,” said Brenner, his voice registering surprise that there was an Earth-human female inside the bulky suit. “I assumed that, lacking information on its planet of origin, you might want to know if there were any safe atmospheric compositions in which it could be examined-I was assuming that, being a bird, it needed an atmosphere to fly in and that it had been dumped in space because of its diseased condition . . .

Listening, Conway could not help admiring the smooth way in which Murchison was getting the Corps medic to tell them about the things he had done wrong. As an e-t pathologist she was used to non-specialists interfering and complicating her job, and it was necessary that she discover as much as possible about the being’s original condition before the changes or additional damage caused by inexpert examination-no matter how well-intentioned-had been introduced. She was finding out all that she needed to know quietly and without giving offense, as if she was Prilicla in human form.

But as Brenner continued talking it became increasingly clear that he had made few, if any, mistakes, and a fair proportion of Conway’s professional admiration was being diverted towards the Lieutenant.

. . . After I sent the preliminary report and we were on our way,” Brenner was saying, “I discovered two small, rough areas on the black stuff covering the creature-a small, circular patch at the base of the neck, right here, and an oval patch, a little larger, which you can see on the underside. In both these areas the black stuff is cracked but with the cracks filled, or partly filled, by more of the stuff, and a few of the barnacles in these areas have been damaged as well. This is where I took my specimens.”

“Marking the places you took them from, I see,” said Murchison. “Go on, Doctor.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the Lieutenant, and went on. The black material seems to be a near-perfect insulator-it is highly resistant to heat, including that of a cutting torch at medium power. At very high temperatures the area under test formed a black ash which flaked away but showed no sign of softening or cracking. The chips of shell from the damaged barnacles were not quite so heat-resistant unless they happened to be covered by the black material.

“The black stuff was also resistant to chemical attack,” Brenner continued, “but not the pieces of shell. When the chips were exposed to various basic atmospheric types, the results seemed to indicate that they had not originated on one of the exotic environments- methane- or ammonia- or even chlorine-based atmosphere envelopes. Composition of the fragments seems to be basic hydrocarbon material, and they did not react to short-term exposures to an oxygen-rich mixture—”

“Give me the details of the tests you made,” said Murchison, suddenly becoming very businesslike and, although the Lieutenant did not know it, very complimentary. Conway signaled Prilicla to come closer, leaving the professional and amateur pathologists to get on with it.

“I don’t think the patient is capable of movement,” he told the Cinrusskin. “I don’t even know if it’s alive. Is it?”

Prilicla’s limbs trembled as it steeled itself to make a negative reply and by so doing, become just the slightest bit disagreeable. It said, “That is a deceptively simple question, friend Conway. All that I can say is that it doesn’t appear to be quite dead.”

“But you can detect the emotional emanations from a sleeping or deeply unconscious mind,” said Conway incredulously. “Is there no emotional radiation at all?”

“There are traces, friend Conway,” said the Cinrusskin, still trembling, “but they are too faint to be identifiable. There is no selfawareness and the traces which are apparent do not, so far as I am able to tell, originate from the being’s cranial area-they seem to emanate from the body as a whole. I have never encountered this effect before, so I lack sufficient information or experience even to speculate.”

“But you will,” said Conway, smiling.

“Of course,” said Prilicla. “It is possible that if the being was both deeply unconscious and at the same time was having the nerve endings in its skin constantly stimulated by severe pain, this might explain the effect which I can detect on and for some distance below the skin.”

“But that means that you are detecting the peripheral nerve network and not the brain,” said Conway. “That is unusual.”

“Highly unusual, friend Conway,” said the little empath. “The brain in question would have to have had important nerve trunks severed or have suffered major structural damage.”

In short, Conway thought grimly, we may have been handed someone’s cast-off patient.

II

Murchison and Brenner, using the pathologist’s sterile drills, were taking deep samples as well as collecting and labelling chippings of shell and the black material which covered the patient-more accurately, Murchison took the samples while the Lieutenant sealed the tiny openings she made. Conway returned to the tender with Prilicla to arrange accommodation for the patient based on their sketchy knowledge-an evacuated chamber large enough to hold the thing, with provision for restraining it and for surrounding it with an oxygen-based atmosphere-and was followed shortly afterwards by the others.

It was then that Brenner saw for the first time the contents of the pathologist’s spacesuit, and Prilicla began a slow tremble.

Unless covered by a heavy duty suit fitted with an opaque sun filter, Murchison displayed a combination of physiological features which made it impossible for any male Earth-human member of the staff to regard her with anything approaching clinical detachment. The Lieutenant finally managed to drag his eyes away from her and to notice Prilicla.

“Is something wrong, Doctor?” he asked, looking concerned.

“To the contrary, friend Brenner,” said the empath, still trembling slowly. “This type of involuntary physical activity is my species’ reaction to the close proximity of an intense but pleasurable source of emotional radiation of the kind usually associated with the biological urge to mate.

The Cinrusskin broke off and stopped trembling because the Surgeon-Lieutenant’s suddenly red face was clashing discordantly against his green uniform, and Prilicla was feeling his embarrassment.

Murchison smiled sympathetically and said, “Perhaps I am the cause, Lieutenant Brenner-I have intense feelings of pleasure over the way in which your earlier tests and deductions have saved me nearly four hours work in a very irksome spacesuit. Isn’t that so, Prilicla?”

“Most certainly,” said the empath, to whom lying was second nature so long as it made someone, especially itself, happy. “Empathy is not nearly as accurate as telepathy, you know, and mistakes of this kind frequently occur.”

Conway cleared his throat and said, “I’ve arranged to see O’Mara just as soon as we have the patient accommodated which, initially, will be in an evacuated dock and storage chamber on Level 103. We will use the tender’s tractor beam to transfer the patient to the hospital, so if you are needed on board Torrance, Lieutenant . . .

Brenner shook his head. “The Captain would like to spend some time here, if possible, and so would I if I wouldn’t be in the way. It’s my first time to visit this place. Are there, ah, many other Earthhumans on the medical staff?”

If you mean like Murchison, Conway thought smugly, the answer is no. Aloud, he said, “We would welcome your help, of course. But you do not know what you are letting yourself in for, Lieutenant, and you keep asking about the Earth-humans on the staff. Are you xenophobic, even slightly? Uncomfortable near extraterrestrials?”

“Certainly not,” said Brenner firmly, then added, “Of course, I wouldn’t want to marry one.

Prilicla began the slow shakes again. The musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech formed a pleasant background to its translated voice as it said, “From the sudden flood of pleasant emotional radiation, for which I can see no apparent reason in the current situation and recent dialogue, I assume that someone has made what Earth-humans call a joke.”

At Level 103 Prilicla left to check on its wards while the others supervised the transfer of the great, stiff-winged bird into the storage chamber. Looking at the swept-back, partially folded wings and stiffly extended neck, Conway was reminded of one of the old-time space shuttles. His mind began to slip off on an interesting but ridiculous, tangent and he had to remind himself that birds did not fly, in space.

With the patient immobilized under one full G of artificial gravity it still took another three hours before Murchison had everything she wanted in the way of specimens and x-rays. In part the delay was caused by them having to work in pressure suits because, as Murchison put it, there would be little risk in observing the patient for a few more hours in airless conditions until they had worked out its atmosphere requirements with exactness-otherwise they might simply end by observing its processes of decomposition.

But their information on the patient was growing with every minute that passed, and the results of their tests-transmitted direct from Pathology by the portable communicator beside them-were both interesting and utterly baffling. Conway lost all track of time until the communicator chimed for attention and the face of Major O’Mara glowered out at them.

“Conway, you arranged to see me here seven and one half minutes ago,” said the Chief Psychologist. “No doubt you were just leaving.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Conway, “the preliminary investigation is taking longer than I estimated, and I want to have something concrete to report before seeing you.

There was a faint rustling sound as O’Mara breathed heavily through his nose. The Chief Psychologist’s face was about as readable as a piece of weathered basalt, which in some respects it resembled, but the eyes which studied Conway opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave the Major what amounted to a telepathic faculty.

As Chief Psychologist of a multi-environment hospital he was responsible for the mental well-being of a staff of several thousand entities belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of Major did not place him high in the chain of command, there was no clear limit to his authority. To O’Mara the medical staff were patients, too, and part of his job was to assign the right kind of doctor-whether Earth-human or e-t- to a given patient.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, potentially dangerous situations could still arise through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which threatened to affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if someone like Prilicla were to treat such an Earth-human patient . . .

A large part of O’Mara’s job was to detect and eradicate such trouble among the medical staff while other members of his department saw to it that the problem did not arise where the patients were concerned. According to O’Mara himself, however, the true reason for the high degree of mental stability among the variegated and often touchy medical staff was that they were all too frightened of him to risk going mad.

Caustically, he said, “Doctor Conway, I freely admit that this patient is unusual even by your standards, but you must have discovered a few simple facts about it and its condition. Is it alive? Is it diseased or injured? Does it possess intelligence? Are you wasting your time on an outsize, space-frozen turkey?”

Conway ignored the rhetoric and tried to answer the questions. He said. “The patient is alive, just barely, and the indications are that it is both diseased-the exact nature of the disease is not yet known-and suffering from gross physical injury, specifically a punctured wound made by a large, high-velocity projectile or a tightly focused heat beam which passed through the base of the neck and the upper chestal area. The wound entrance and exit is sealed by the black covering or growth-we still don’t know which-encasing the body. Regarding the possibility of intelligence, the cranial capacity is large enough not to rule this out, but again, the head is too deeply unconscious to radiate detectable emotion. The manipulatory appendages, whose degree of specialization or otherwise can give a strong indication of the presence or absence of intelligence, have been removed.

“Not by us,” Conway added.

O’Mara was silent for a moment, then he said, “I see. Another one of your deceptively simple cases. No doubt you will have deceptively simple special requirements. Accommodation? Physiology tapes? Information on planet of origin?”

Conway shook his head. “I don’t believe that you have a physlology tape that will cover this patient’s type-all the winged species we know are light-gravity beings, and this one has muscles for about four Gs. The present accommodation is fine, although we’ll have to be careful in case of contamination of or from the chlorine level above us-the seals to storage compartments like this are not designed for constant traffic, unlike the ward airlocks—”

“I didn’t know that, of course.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Conway. “I was thinking aloud, and partly for the benefit of Surgeon-Lieutenant Brenner, who is visiting this madhouse for the first time. Regarding information on its planet of origin, I would like you to approach Colonel Skempton to ask him if it would be possible for Torrance to return to that area to investigate the two nearer star systems, to look for beings with a similar physiological classification.”

“In other words,” said O’Mara dryly, “you have a difficult medical problem and think that the best solution is to find the patient’s own doctor.”

Conway smiled and said, “We don’t need full cultural contact- just a quick look, atmosphere samples and specimens of local plant and animal life, if Torrance wouldn’t mind soft-landing a probe—”

O’Mara broke the connection at that point with a sound which was untranslatable and Conway, now that they had gone as far as they could with the patient without the path reports, suddenly realized how hungry he was.

III

To reach the dining hall reserved for warm-bodied oxygen breathers they had to travel through two levels, none of which required protective suits, and a network of corridors crowded with entities which flapped, crawled, undulated and occasionally walked past them. They were met at the entrance by Prilicla who was carrying a folder of green path reports.

As they entered the last Earth-human table was being taken by a bunch of crab-like Melfans and a Tralthan-Melfans could adapt themselves to the low stools and the Tralthans did everything including sleep on their six elephantine feet. Prilicla spotted an empty table in the Kelgian area and flew across to claim it before the party of Corps maintenancemen could get there. Luckily it was beyond the range of their emotional radiation.

Conway began eagerly leafing through the reports once he saw that the Lieutenant was being shown by Murchison how to balance on the edge of a Kelgian chair within reach of the food he had ordered. But for once Brenner’s attention was not on the shapely pathologist. He was staring at Prilicla, his eyebrows almost lost in his hairline.

“Cinrusskins prefer to eat while hovering-they say it aids the digestion,” explained Murchison, and added, “The slipstream helps cool the soup, too.”

Prilicla maintained a stable hover while they concentrated on refuelling, breaking off only to pass around the reports. Finally Conway, feeling pleasantly distended, turned to the Cinrusskin.

“I don’t know how you managed it,” he said warmly. “When I want a fast report from Thornnastor the most he will let me do is just two places in the queue.”

Prilicla trembled at the compliment as it replied “I insisted, quite truthfully, that our patient was at the point of death.”

“But not,” said Murchison dryly, “that it has been in that condition for a very long time.”

“You’re sure of that?” asked Conway.

“I am now,” she answered seriously, tapping one of the reports as she spoke. “The indications are that the large punctured wound was inflicted by a meteorite collision some time after the disease, that is the barnacles and coating material were in position. The coating which flowed into and across the wound, effectively sealed it.

“As well,” she continued, “these tests show that a very complex chemical form of suspended animation-not just hypothermia was used and that it was applied organ by organ, almost cell by cell, by micro-injections of the required specifics. In a way you could think of it as if the creature had been embalmed before it was quite dead in an effort to prolong its life.”

“What about the missing legs or claws?” said Conway, “and the evidence of charring under the coating in the areas behind the wings? And the pieces of what seems to be a different kind of barnacle in those areas?”

“It is possible,” Murchison replied, “that the disease initially affected the being’s legs or claws, perhaps during its equivalent of nesting. The removal of the limbs and the evidence of charring you mention might have been early and unsuccessful attempts at curing the patient’s condition. Remember that virtually all of the creature’s body wastes were eliminated before the coating was applied. That is standard procedure before hibernation, anesthesia or major surgery.

The silence which followed was broken by the Lieutenant, who said, “Excuse me, I’m getting lost. This disease or growth, what exactly do we know about it?”

They knew that the outward symptoms of the disease were the barnacle-like growths, Murchison told him, which covered the patient’s tegument so completely that it could have been a suit of chain mail. It was still open to argument whether the barnacles were skin conditions which had sprouted rootlets or a subcutaneous condition with a barnacle-like eruption on the surface, but in either event they were held by a thick pencil of fine rootlets extending and subdividing to an unknown depth within the patient. They penetrated not only the subcutaneous tissue and underlying musculature, but practically all of the vital organs and central nervous systems. And the rootlets were hungry. There could be no doubt from the condition of the tissue underlying the barnacles that this was a severely wasting disease which was far advanced.

“It seems to me that you should have been called in earlier,” said Brenner, “and that the patient was sealed up just before it was due to die.”

Conway nodded and said, “But it isn’t hopeless. Some of our e-ts practice micro-surgery techniques which would enable them to excise the rootlets, even the ones which are tangled up in the nerve bundles. It is a very slow procedure, however, and there is the danger that when we revive the patient the disease will also be revived and that it might progress faster than the micro-surgeon. I think the answer is to learn as much as we possibly can about the disease before we do anything else.”

When they returned to the patient there was a message waiting from O’Mara to say that Torrance had left with the promise of preliminary reports on the two solar systems nearest to the find within three days. During those three days Conway expected to devise procedures which would remove the coating and barnacles from the patient, arrest the disease and initiate curative surgery so that the scoutship’s reports would be needed only to prepare proper accommodation for the patient’s convalescence.

During those three days, however, they got precisely nowhere.

The material which encased barnacles and patient alike could be drilled and chipped away with great difficulty and an enormous waste of time-the process resembled that of chipping out a fossil without inflicting damage, and this particular fossil was fifty feet long and over eighty from tip to tip of its partially folded wings. When Conway insisted that Pathology produce a faster method of stripping the patient he was told that the coating was a complex organic, that the specifics they had devised for dissolving it would produce large quantities of toxic gases-toxic to the patient as well as the attending physicians-and that the shell material of the barnacles would be instantly dissolved by this solvent and that it would not be good for the patient’s skin and underlying tissue, either. They went back to drilling and chipping.

Murchison, who was continually withdrawing micro-specimens from the areas affected by the rootlets, was informative but unhelpful.

“I’m not suggesting that you should abandon this one,” she said sympathetically, “but you should start thinking about it. In addition to the widespread tissue wastage, there is evidence of structural damage to the wing muscles-damage which may well have been selfinflicted-and I think the heart has ruptured. This will mean major surgical repairs as well as—”

“This muscle and heart damage,” said Conway sharply. “Could it have been caused by the patient trying to get out of its casing?” “It is possible but not likely,” she replied in a voice which reminded him that he was not talking to a junior intern and that past and present relationships could change with very little notice. “That coating is hard, but it is relatively very thin and the leverage of the patient’s wings is considerable. I would say that the heart and muscle damage occurred before the patient was encased.”

“I’m sorry if began Conway.

“There is also the fact,” she went on coldly, “that the barnacles are clustered thickly about the patient’s head and along the spine. Even with our tissue and nerve regeneration techniques, the patient may never be able to think or move itself even if we are successful in returning it to a technically living state.”

“I hadn’t realized,” said Conway dully, “that it was as serious as that. But there must be something we can do He tried to pull his face muscles into a smile. “. . . if only to preserve Brenner’s illusions about the miracle-workers of Sector General.”

Brenner had been looking from one to the other, obviously wondering whether this was a spirited professional discussion or the beginning of some kind of family fight. But the Lieutenant was tactful as well as observant. He said, “I would have given up a long time ago.

Before either of them could reply the communicator chimed and Chief of Pathology Thornnastor was framed in the screen.

“My department,” said the Tralthan, “has worked long and diligently to discover a method of removing the coating material by chemical means, but in vain. The material is, however, affected by intense heat. At high temperatures the surface crumbles, the ashy deposit can be scraped or blown away and heat again applied. The process can be continued safely until the coating is very thin, after which it could be removed in large sections without harm to the patient.”

Conway obtained the temperature and thickness figures, thanked Thornnastor and then used the communicator to call the maintenance section for cutting torches and operators. He had not forgotten Murchison’s doubts regarding the advisability of attempting a cure, but he had to go on trying. He did not know that the great, diseased bird would end as a winged vegetable, and he would not know until they knew everything possible about the disease which was affecting it.

Because the heat treatment was untried they began near the tail, where the vital organs were deeply buried and where the area had already been disturbed, presumably by the efforts of their medical predecessors.

After only half an hour’s continuous burning they had their first stroke of luck in three days. They discovered a barnacle which was embedded upside down in the patient-its bundle of rootlets fanned out to link up with the other barnacles, but a few of them curved down and past the rim of its shell to enter the patient. The surface rootlet network was clearly visible as the flame of the torch burned the rootlet material into a fine, incandescent web. One of the briefly incandescent rootlets pointed towards a barnacle which was larger and differently shaped.

Patiently they painted both objects and their immediate surroundings with the cutting torches, brushing away the crumbling layers of coating until it was wafer thin. They cracked it, carefully peeled back the remains of the coating and lifted away two perfect specimens.

“They are dead,” asked Conway, “not just dormant?”

“They are dead,” said Prilicla.

“And the patient?”

“Life is still present, friend Conway, but the radiation is extremely weak, and diffuse.”

Conway studied the area bared by the removal of the two specimens. Beneath the first was a small, deep hollow which followed the contours of the reversed shell. The underlying tissues showed a high degree of compression, and the few rootlets in evidence were much too weak and fine to have held the barnacle so tightly against the patient. Something or somebody had pressed the barnacle into position with considerable force.

The second, and different, specimen had been held only by the coating, apparently-it did not possess rootlets. But it did possess wings folded into long slits in its carapace and so, on closer inspection, did the first type.

Prilicla alighted beside them, trembling slightly and erratically in the fashion which denoted excitement. It said, “You will have noticed that these are two entirely different species, friend Conway. Both are large, winged insects of the type which require a lowgravity planet with a thick air envelope-not unlike Cinruss. It is possible that the first type is a predator parasite and that the second is a natural enemy, introduced by a third party in an attempt to cure the patient.”

Conway nodded. “It would explain why type one turned on to its back when approached by type two . . .

“I hope,” said Murchison apologetically, “that your theory is flexible enough to accept another datum.” She had been scraping persistently at a piece of coating which was still adhering to a smaller slit in the barnacle. “The coating material was not applied by a third party, it is a body secretion of type one.

“If you don’t mind,” she added, “I’ll take both of these beasties to Pathology for a long, close look.”

For several minutes after she left nobody spoke. Prilicla began to tremble again and, judging by the expression of Brenner’s face, it was at something the officer was feeling. It was the Lieutenant who broke the silence.

“If the parasites are responsible for the coating,” he said sickly, “then there was no earlier attempt to cure the patient. Our heavygravity patient was probably attacked on the light-gravity planet of the flying barnacles, they sank in their rootlets or tendrils, paralyzed its muscles and nervous system and encased it in a . . . a shell of slowly feeding maggots when it wasn’t even dead—”

“A little more clinical detachment, Lieutenant,” said Conway sharply. “You’re bothering Prilicla. And while something like that may have happened, there are still a few awkward facts which don’t fit. That depression under the inverted barnacle still bothers me.”

“Maybe it sat on one of them,” said Brenner angrily, his feeling of revulsion temporarily overcoming his manners. “And I can understand why its friends dumped the patient into space-there was nothing else they could do.”

He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, Doctor. But is there anything else that you can do?”

“There is something,” said Conway grimly, “that we can try . . .

IV

According to Prilicla their patient was, just barely, alive, and now that the barnacles were known to be the attacking organisms and not just surface eruptions, they and their coating must be removed as quickly as possible. Removal of the tendrils would require more delicate and time-consuming work, but the surface condition would respond to heat and, with the barnacles removed, the patient just might recover enough to be able to help Conway to help it. Pathology had already suggested methods for restarting its paralyzed life processes.

He would need at least fifty cutting torches operating simultaneously with high-pressure air hoses to blow the ash away. They would begin burning on the head, neck, breast and wing-muscle areas, freeing the patient of barnacle control of the brain, lungs and heart. If the heart was in a terminal condition emergency surgery would be necessary to bypass it-Murchison had already mapped out the arterial and venous processes in the area. And in case the patient twitched or began flapping its wings, they would need the protection of heavy-duty suits.

But no-Prilicla, who would be monitoring the emotional radiation during the op, would need maximum protection. The others would have to dodge until it could be immobilized with pressors. If emergency surgery was necessary, heavy-duty suits were too cumbersome anyway. As well, the communicator would have to be moved to a side compartment in case it was damaged, because the adjoining levels would have to be alerted and various specialist staff would have to be standing by.

While he gave the necessary orders Conway moved briskly but unhurriedly and his tone was quiet and confident. But all the time he had a vague but persistent feeling that he was saying and doing and, most of all, thinking all the wrong things.

O’Mara did not approve of his proposed line of treatment but, apart from asking whether Conway intended curing or barbecuing the patient, he did not interfere. He added that there was still no report from Torrance.

Finally they were ready to go. The maintenance technicians with cutting torches and air lines hissing-but directed away from the patient-were positioned around the head, neck and leading edges of the wings. Behind them waited the specialist and medical technicians with stimulants, a general purpose heart-lung machine and the bright, sterile tools of their trade. The doors to the side compartments were dogged open in case the patient revived too suddenly and they had to take cover. There was no logical reason for waiting any longer.

Conway gave the signal to begin only seconds before his communicator chimed and Murchison, looking disheveled and very cross, filled the screen.

“There has been a slight accident, an explosion,” she said. “Our type two flew across the lab, damaged some test equipment and scared hell out of—”

“But it was dead,” protested Conway. “They were both dead- Prilicla said so.”

“It still is,” said Murchison, “and it didn’t fly exactly-it shot away from us. I’m not yet sure of the mechanics of the process, but apparently the thing produces gases in its intestinal tract which react explosively together, propelling it forward. Used in conjunction with its wings this would help it to escape fast-moving natural enemies like the barnacle. The gases must still have been present when I began work.

“There is a similar species, much smaller,” she went on, “which is native to Earth. We studied the more exotic types of Earth fauna in preparation for the e-t courses. It was called a bombardier beetle and it—”

“Doctor Conway!”

He swung away from the screen and ran into the main compartment. He did not need to be an empath to know that something was seriously wrong.

The team leader of the maintenancemen was waving frantically and Prilicla, encased in its protective globe and supported by gravity nullifiers, was drifting above the man’s head and trembling.

“Increasing awareness, friend Conway,” reported the empath. “Suggesting rapidly returning consciousness. Feelings of fear and confusion.”

Some of the confusion, thought Conway, belongs to me . . .

The maintenanceman simply pointed.

Instead of the hard coating he had expected to see there was a black, oily, semi-liquid which flowed and rippled and dripped slowly on to the floor plating. As he watched the area where the flame was being applied, the stuff rolled away from one of the barnacles, which twitched and unfolded its wings. The wings flapped, slowly at first, and it began pulling free of the patient, drawing its long tendrils out of the bird until it was completely detached and it went blundering into the air.

“Kill the torches,” said Conway urgently, “but cool it with the air hose. Try to harden that black stuff.”

But the thick, black liquid would not harden. Once initiated by the heat the softening process was self-sustaining. The patient’s neck, no longer supported by solid material, slumped heavily on to the deck followed a few seconds later by the massive wings. The black pool around the patient widened and more and more of the barnacles struggled free to blunder about the compartment on wide, membranous wings, trailing their tendrils behind them like long, fine plumes.

“Back everybody! Take cover, quickly!”

Their patient lay motionless and almost certainly dead, but there was nothing that Conway could do. Neither the maintenancemen nor the medical technicians were protected against those fine, harmless-looking tendrils of the barnacles-only Prilicla in its transparent globe was safe there, and now there seemed to be hundreds of the things filling the air. He knew that he should feel badly about the patient, but somehow he did not. Was it simply delayed reaction or was there another reason?

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, bumping him gently with its globe, “I suggest that you take your own advice.”

The thought of fine, barnacle tendrils probing through his clothing, skin and underlying tissues, paralyzing his muscles and scrambling his brain made him run for the side compartment, closely followed by Brenner and Prilicla. The Lieutenant closed the door as soon as the Cinrusskin was inside.

There was a barnacle already there.

For a split second Conway’s mind was like a camera, registering everything as it was in the small room: the face of O’Mara on the communicator screen, as expressionless as a slab of rock with only the eyes showing his concern; Prilicla trembling within its protective globe; the barnacle hovering near the ceiling, its tendrils blowing in a self-generated breeze, and Brenner with one eye closed in a diabolical wink as he pointed his gun-a type which threw explosive pellets-at the hovering barnacle.

There was something wrong.

“Don’t shoot,” said Conway, quietly but firmly, then asked, “Are you afraid, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t normally use this thing,” said Brenner, looking puzzled, “but I can. No, I’m not afraid.”

“And I’m not afraid because you have that gun,” said Conway. “Prilicla is protected and has nothing to fear. So who He indicated the empath’s trembling feelers. “. . . is afraid?”

“It is, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, indicating the barnacle. “It is afraid and confused and intensely curious.

Conway nodded. He could see Prilicla beginning to react to his intense relief. He said, “Nudge it outside, Prilicla, when the Lieutenant opens the door-just in case of accidents. But gently.”

As soon as it was outside, O’Mara’s voice roared from the communicator.

“What the blazes have you done?”

Conway tried to find a simple answer to an apparently simple question. He said, “I suppose you could say that I have prematurely initiated a planetary re-entry sequence.

* * *

The report from Torrance arrived just before Conway reached O’Mara’s office. It said that one of the two stars had a light-gravity planet which was inhabitable while showing no indications of advanced technology, and that the other possessed a large, fastspinning world which was so flattened at the poles that it resembled two soup bowls joined at the rims. On the latter world the atmosphere was dense and far-reaching, gravity varied between three Gs at the poles to one-quarter G at the equator, and surface metals were nonexistent. Very recently, in astronomical terms, the world had spiraled too close to its sun and planet-wide volcanic activity and steam had rendered the atmosphere opaque. Torrance doubted that it was still habitable.

“That supports my theory,” said Conway excitedly when O’Mara had relayed the report to him, “that the bird and the barnacles, and the other insect life-form, originate from the same planet. The barnacles are parasites, of course, with a small individual brain capacity, but intelligent when linked and operating as a gestalt. They must have known that their planet was heading for destruction for centuries, and decided to escape. But just think of what it must have taken to develop a space-travel capability completely without metal . . .

Somehow they had learned how to trap the giant birds from the heavy-gravity polar regions and to control them with their tendrils- the barnacles were a physically weak species and their ability to control non-intelligent hosts was the only strength they had. The birds, Conway now knew, were a non-intelligent species as were the tendril-less beetles. They had taken control of the birds and had flown them high above the equator, commanding maximum physical effort to achieve the required height and velocity for the linkup with the final propulsion stage-the beetles. They also had been controlled by the barnacles, perhaps fifty to each parasite, and they had attached themselves to the areas behind the wings in a gigantic, narrow cone.

Meanwhile the bird had been shaped and paralyzed into the configuration of a supersonic glider, its claws removed to render it aerodynamically clean, and injected with the secretions which would arrest the processes of decomposition. The crew had then sealed it and themselves in position and gone into hibernation for the duration of the voyage using the bird’s tissue for life-support.

Once in position the propulsion cone comprising millions of insects, hundreds of thousands of which were the intelligent controllers, had begun firing. They had done so very evenly and gently, so as not to shatter or crush the narrow apex of the cone where it was attached to the bird. The beetles could be made to deliver their tiny modicum of thrust whether they were alive or dead and, even with their ability to seal themselves inside a hard coating, the propulsion controllers had not lived for very long-they also were expendable. But in dying they had helped an organic starship carrying a few hundred of their fellows to achieve escape velocity from their doomed planet and its sun.

. . . I don’t know how they intended to position the bird for re-entry,” Conway went on admiringly, “but atmospheric heating was intended to trigger the organic melting process when they had braked sufficiently, allowing the barnacles to pull free of the bird and fly to the surface under their own wing-power. In my hurry to get rid of the coating I applied heat over a wide area of the forward section, which simulated re-entry conditions and—”

“Yes, yes,” said O’Mara testily. “A masterly exercise in medical deduction and sheer blasted luck! And now, I suppose, you will leave me to clean up after you by devising a method for communicating with these beasties and arranging for their transport to their intended destination. Or was there something else you wanted?”

Conway nodded. “Brenner tells me that his scoutship flotilla, using an extension of the search procedure for overdue ships, could cover the volume of space between the home and destination stars. There are probably other birds, perhaps hundreds of them—”

O’Mara opened his mouth and looked ready to emulate a bombardier beetle. Conway added hastily, “I don’t want them brought here, sir. The Corps can take them where they are going, melt them on the surface to avoid re-entry casualties, and explain the situation to them.

“They’re colonists, after all—not patients.”

Part 2

CONTAGION

I

Senior Physician Conway wriggled into a slightly less uncomfortable position in a piece of furniture that had been designed for the comfort of a six-legged, exoskeletal Melfan, and said in an aggrieved tone, “After twelve years’ medical and surgical experience in the Federation’s biggest multienvironment hospital, one would expect the next logical step up the promotional ladder would be to something more prestigious than . . . than an ambulance driver!”

There was no immediate response from the other four beings who were waiting with him in the office of the Chief Psychologist. Doctor Prilicla clung silently to the ceiling, the position it favored when in the company of more massive and well-muscled beings than itself. Sharing an Illensan bench were the spectacularly beautiful Pathologist Murchison and a silver-furred, caterpiller-like Kelgian charge nurse called Naydrad, also in silence. It was Major Fletcher, who as a recent visitor to the hospital had been given the office’s only physiologically suitable chair, who broke the silence.

Seriously, he said, “You will not be allowed to drive, Doctor.”

It was plain that Major Fletcher was still very conscious of the bright new ship commander’s insignia decorating the sleeve of his Monitor Corps tunic, and that he was already concerned about the welfare of the vessel so soon to be his. Conway remembered feeling the same way about his first pocket scanner.

“Not even an ambulance driver,” said Murchison, laughing.

Naydrad joined the conversation with a series of moaning, whistling sounds, which translated as, “In an establishment like this one, Doctor, do you expect logic?”

Conway did not reply. He was thinking that the hospital grapevine, a normally dependable form of vegetable life, had been carrying the news for days that a senior physician, Conway himself, was to be permanently attached to an ambulance ship.

On the ceiling, Doctor Prilicla was beginning to quiver in response to his emotional radiation, so Conway tried to bring his feelings of confusion and disappointment and hurt pride under control.

“Please do not concern yourself unnecessarily over this matter, friend Conway,” said the little empath, the musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech overlaying the emotionless translated words. “We have yet to be informed officially of the new assignment, and the probability is that you may be pleasantly surprised, Doctor.”

Prilicla, Conway knew, was not averse to telling lies if by so doing it could improve the emotional atmosphere of a situation. But not if the improvement would last for only a few seconds or minutes and be followed by even more intense feelings of anger and disappointment.

“What makes you think so, Doctor?” Conway asked. “You used the word probability and not possibility. Have you inside information?”

“That is correct, friend Conway,” the Cinrusskin replied. “I have detected a source of emotional radiation that entered the outer office several minutes ago. It is identifiable as belonging to the Chief Psychologist, and the emoting is purposeful, with the type of minorkey worrying associated with the carriage of authority and responsibility. I cannot detect the kind of feelings that should be present if the imparting of unpleasant news to someone was being planned. At present Major O’Mara is talking to an assistant, who is also unaware of any potential unpleasantness.”

Conway smiled and said, “Thank you, Doctor. I feel much better now.

“I know,” said Prilicla.

“And I feel,” said Nurse Naydrad, “that such discussion of the being O’Mara’s feelings verges on a breach of medical ethics. Emotional radiation is privileged information, surely, and should not be divulged in this fashion.——

“Perhaps you have not considered the fact,” Prilicla replied, using the form of words which was the closest it could ever come to telling another being it was wrong, “that the being whose emotional radiation was under discussion is not a patient, friend Naydrad, and that the being most closely resembling a patient in this situation is Doctor Conway, who is concerned about the future and requires reassurance in the form of information on the non-patient’s emotional radiation . . .

Naydrad’s silvery fur was beginning to twitch and ripple, indicating that the Kelgian charge nurse was about to reply. But the entrance of the non-patient from the outer office put an end to what could have been an interesting ethical debate.

O’Mara nodded briefly to everyone in turn, and took the only other physiologically suitable seat in the room, his own. The Chief Psychologist’s features were about as readable as a lump of weathered basalt, which in some respects they resembled, but the eyes which regarded them were backed by a mind so keenly analytical that it gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty.

Caustically, he began: “Before I tell you why I have asked for you four in particular to accompany Major Fletcher, and give you the details of your next assignment, which no doubt you have already learned in outline, I have to give you some background information of a non-medical nature.

“The problem of briefing people like yourselves on this subject,” he went on, “is that I cannot afford to make assumptions regarding your level of ignorance in matters outside your specialties. Should some of this information seem too elementary, you are at liberty to allow your attention to wander, so long as I don’t catch you at it.”

“You have our undivided attention, friend O’Mara,” said Prilicla, who, of course, knew this to be a fact.

“For the time being,” Naydrad added.

“Charge Nurse Naydrad!” Major Fletcher burst out, his reddening face clashing with the dark green of his uniform. “You are being something less than respectful to a senior officer. Such offensive behavior will not be tolerated on my ship, nor shall I—”

O’Mara held up his hand and said dryly, “I didn’t take offense, Major, and neither should you. Up until now, your career has been free of close personal contact with e-ts, so your mistake is understandable. It is unlikely to be repeated when you learn to understand the thought processes and behavior of the beings who will be working with you on this project.

“Charge Nurse Naydrad,” O’Mara went on, politely for him, is a Kelgian, a caterpillar-like life-form whose most noticeable feature is an all-over coat of silver-gray fur. You will already have noticed that Naydrad’s fur is constantly in motion, as if a strong wind was continually blowing it into tufts and ripples. These are completely involuntary movements triggered by its emotional reactions to outside stimuli. The evolutionary reasons for this mechanism are not clearly understood, not even by the Kelgians themselves, but it is generally believed that the emotionally expressive fur complements the Kelgian vocal equipment, which lacks emotional flexibility of tone. However, you must understand that the movements of the fur makes it absolutely clear to another Kelgian what it feels about the subject under discussion. As a result, they always say exactly what they mean because what they think is plainly obvious-at least to another Kelgian. They cannot do otherwise. Unlike Doctor Prilicla, who is always polite and sometimes edits the truth to remove the unpleasant bits, Charge Nurse Naydrad will invariably tell the truth regardless of your rank or your feelings. You will soon grow used to it, Major.

“But I did not intend to give a lecture on Kelgians,” he continued. “I did intend to discuss briefly the formation of what is now called the Galactic Federation .

On the briefing screen behind him there appeared suddenly a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As they watched and listened a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another-the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extraterrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared, the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.

Several decades had passed before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. (Beings tended to be suspicious in those days, on one occasion even to the point of war.) But time as well as distance was being compressed on this representation.

The tracery of golden lines grew more rapidly as contact, then commerce, was established with the highly advanced and stable cultures of Kelgia, Illensa, Hudlar, Melf and, if any, their associated colonies. Visually it did not seem to be an orderly progression. The lines darted inwards to the galactic center, doubled back to the rim, seesawed between zenith and nadir, and even made a jump across intergalactic space to link up with the Ian worlds-although in that instance it had been the Ians who had done the initial traveling. When the lines connected the worlds of the Galactic Federation, the planets known to contain intelligent and, in their own sometimes peculiar fashions, technically and philosophically advanced life, the result was an untidy yellow scribble resembling a cross between a DNA molecule and a bramble bush.

. . . Only a tiny fraction of the Galaxy has been explored by us or by any of the other races within the Federation,” O’Mara continued, “and we are in the position of a man who has friends in far countries but has no idea of who is living in the next street. The reason for this is that travelers tend to meet more often than people who stay at home, especially when the travelers exchange addresses and visits regularly.

Providing there were no major distorting influences en route and the exact co-ordinates of the destination were known, it was virtually as easy to travel through subspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other end of the Galaxy. But one had first to find an inhabited solar system before its coordinates could be logged, and that was proving to be no easy task.

Very, very slowly, a few of the smaller blank areas in the star charts were being mapped and surveyed, but with little success. When the survey scoutships turned up a star with planets, it was a rare find-even rarer when the planets included one harboring life. And if one of the native life-forms was intelligent, jubilation, not unmixed with concern over what might be a possible threat to the Pax Galactica, swept the worlds of the Federation. Then the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were sent to perform the tricky, time-consuming and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.

The Cultural Contact people were the elite of the Monitor Corps, a small group of specialists in e-t communications, philosophy and psychology. Although small, the group was not, regrettably, ove—orked . . .

During the past twenty years,” O’Mara went on, “they have initiated First Contact procedure on three occasions, all of which resulted in the species concerned joining the Federation. I will not bore you with details of the number of survey operations mounted and the ships, personnel and materiel involved, or shock you with the cost of it all. I mention the Cultural Contact group’s three successes simply to make the point that within the same time period this hospital became fully operational and also initiated First Contacts, which resulted in seven new species joining the Federation. This was accomplished not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by giving medical assistance to a sick alien.”

The Chief Psychologist stared at each of them in turn, and it was obvious that he did not need Prilicla to tell him that he had their undivided attention. “I’m oversimplifying, of course. You had the medical and/or surgical problem of treating a hitherto unknown life-form. You had the hospital’s translation computer, the second largest in the Galaxy, and Monitor Corps communications specialists to assist where necessary. Indeed, the Corps was responsible for rescuing many of the extraterrestrial casualties. But the fact remains that all of us, by giving medical assistance, demonstrated the Federation’s good will towards e-ts much more simply and directly than could have been done by any long-winded exchange of concepts. As a result, there has recently been a marked change of emphasis in First Contact policy . . .

Just as there was only one known way of traveling in hyperspace, there was only one method of sending a distress signal if an accident or malfunction occurred and a vessel was stranded in normal space between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio was not a dependable method of interstellar communication, subject as it was to interference and distortion caused by intervening stellar bodies, as well as requiring inordinate amounts of a vessel’s power-power which a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence. It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast a location signal, a subspace scream for help, which ran up and down the usable frequencies until, in a matter of minutes or hours, it died.

Because all Federation ships were required to file course and passenger details before departure, the position of the distress signal was usually a good indication of the physiological type of species that had run into trouble, and an ambulance ship with a matching crew and life-support equipment was sent from Sector General or from the ship’s home planet.

But there were instances, far more than were generally realized, when the disasters involved beings unknown to the Federation in urgent need of help, help which the would-be rescuers were powerless to give.

Only when the rescue ship concerned had the capability of extending its hyperdrive envelope to include the distressed vessel, or when the beings could be extricated safely and a suitable environment prepared for them within the Federation ship, were they transported to Sector General. The result was that many hitherto unknown life-forms, being of high intelligence and advanced technology, were lost except as interesting specimens for dissection and study. But an answer to this problem had been sought and, perhaps, found.

It had been decided to equip one very special ambulance ship that would answer only those distress signals whose positions did not agree with the flight plans filed by Federation vessels.

Whenever possible,” O’Mara continued, “we prefer to make contact with a star-traveling race. Species who are intelligent but are not space travelers pose problems. We are never sure whether we are helping or hindering their natural development, giving them a technological leg up or a crushing inferiority complex when we drop down from their sky—”

Naydrad broke in: “The starship in distress might not possess a beacon. What then?”

“If a species advanced enough to possess starships did not make this provision for the safety of its individuals,” O’Mara replied, “then I would prefer not to know them.”

“I understand,” said the Kelgian.

The Chief Psychologist nodded, then went on briskly, “Now you know why four senior or specialist members of the hospital’s medical and surgical services are being demoted to ambulance attendants.” He tapped buttons on his desk, and the Federation star map was replaced by a large and detailed diagram of a ship. “Attendants on a very special ambulance, as you can see. Captain Fletcher, continue, please.”

For the first time, O’Mara had used Fletcher’s title of ship commander rather than his Monitor Corps rank of major, Conway noted. It was probably the Chief Psychologist’s way of reminding everyone that Fletcher, whether they liked it or not, was the man in charge.

Conway was only half-listening to the Captain as Fletcher, in tones reminiscent of a doting parent extolling the virtues of a favorite offspring, began listing the dimensions and performance and search capabilities of his new command.

The image on the briefing screen was familiar to Conway. He had seen the ship, hanging like an enormous white dart, in the Corps docking area, with its outlines blurred by a small forest of extended sensors and open inspection hatches, and surrounded by a shoal of smaller ships in the drab service coloring of the Monitor Corps. It had the configuration and mass of a Federation light cruiser, which was the largest type of Corps vessel capable of aerodynamic maneuvering within a planetary atmosphere. He was visualizing its gleaming white hull and delta wings decorated with the red cross, occluded sun, yellow leaf and multitudinous other symbols that represented the concept of assistance freely given throughout the Federation.

The crew will mostly be comprised of physiological classification DBDG,” Captain Fletcher was saying, “which means that they, like the majority of Monitor Corps personnel, are Earthhuman or natives of Earth-seeded planets.

“But this is a Tralthan-built ship, with all the design and structural advantages that implies,” he went on enthusiastically, “and we have named it the Rhabwar, after one of the great figures of Tralthan medical history. The accommodation for extraterrestrial medical personnel is flexible in regard to gravity, pressure, and atmospheric composition, food, furniture and fittings, providing they are warmblooded oxygen-breathers. Neither the Kelgian DBLF physiological classification”—he looked at Naydrad, then up towards Prilicla- “nor the Cinrusskin GLNO will pose any life-support problems

“The only physiologically non-specialized section of the ship is the Casualty Deck and associated ward compartment,” Fletcher continued. “It is large enough to take an e-t casualty up to the mass of a fully grown Chalder. The ward compartment has gravity control in half-G settings from zero to five, provision for the supply of a variety of gaseous and liquid atmospheres, and both material and non-material forms of restraint-straps and pressor beams, that is- should the casualty be confused, aggressive or require immobilization for medical examination or surgery. This compartment will be the exclusive responsibility of the medical personnel, who will prepare a compatible environment for and initiate treatment of the casualties I shall bring them.

“I must stress this point,” the Captain went on, his tone hardening. “The responsibility for general ship management, for finding the distressed alien vessel and for the rescue itself is mine. The rescue of an extraterrestrial from a completely strange and damaged ship is no easy matter. There is the possibility of activating, by accident, alien mechanisms with unknown potentialities for destruction or injury to the rescuers, toxic or explosive atmospheres, radiation, the often complex problems associated with merely entering the alien ship and the tricky job of finding and bringing out the extraterrestrial casualty without killing it or seriously compounding its injuries . . .

Fletcher hesitated and looked around him. Prilicla was beginning to shake in the invisible wind of emotional radiation emanating from Naydrad, whose silvery fur was twisting itself into spikes. Murchison was trying to remain expressionless, without much success, and Conway did not think he was being particularly poker-faced, either.

O’Mara shook his head slowly. “Captain, not only have you been telling the medical team to mind their own business, you have been trying to tell them their business. Senior Physician Conway, in addition to his e-t surgical and medical experience, has been involved in a number of ship rescue incidents, as have Pathologist Murchison and Doctor Prilicla, and Charge Nurse Naydrad has specialized in heavy rescue for the past six years. This project calls for close cooperation. You will need the cooperation of your medics, and I strongly suspect that you will get it whether you ask for it or not.”

He turned his attention to Conway. “Doctor, you have been chosen by me for this project because of your ability to work with and understand e-ts, both as colleagues and patients. You should encounter no insurmountable difficulties in learning to understand and work with a newly appointed ship commander who is understandably—”

The attention signal on his desk began flashing, and the voice of one of his assistants filled the room. “Diagnostician Thornnastor is here, sir.”

“Three minutes,” said O’Mara. With his eyes still on Conway he went on: “I’ll be brief. Normally I would not give any of you the option of refusing an assignment, but this one is more in the nature of a shakedown cruise for the Rhabwar than a mission calling for your professional expertise. We have received distress signals from the scoutship Tenelphi, which is crewed exclusively by Earth-human DBDGs, so there won’t even be a communications problem. It is a simple search-and-rescue mission, and any charge of incompetence which may be brought against the survivors later will be a Corps disciplinary matter and is not your concern. The Rhabwar will be ready to leave in less than an hour. The available information on the incident is on this tape. Study it when you are aboard.

“That is all,” he concluded, “except that there is no need for Prilicla or Naydrad to go along just to treat a few DBDG fractures or decompressions. There will be no juicy extraterrestrial cases on this trip—”

He broke off because Prilicla was beginning to tremble and Naydrad’s fur was becoming agitated. The empath spoke first: “I will, of course, remain in the hospital if requested to do so,” Prilicla said timidly, “but if I were to be given a choice, then I would prefer to go with—”

“To us,” said Naydrad loudly, “Earth-human DBDGs are juicy extraterrestrials.”

O’Mara sighed. “A predictable reaction, I suppose. Very well, you may all go. Ask Thornnastor to come in as you leave.”

When they were in the corridor, Conway stood for a moment, working out the fastest, but not necessarily the most comfortable, route for reaching the ambulance ship docking bay on Level 83, then moved off quickly. Prilicla kept pace along the ceiling, Naydrad undulated rapidly behind him and Murchison brought up the rear with the Captain, who was all too plainly afraid of losing his medical team and himself.

Conway’s senior physician’s armband cleared the way as far as nurses and subordinate grades of doctor were concerned, but there were continual encounters with the lordly and multiply absentminded Diagnosticians-who ploughed their way through everybody and everything regardless-and with junior members of the staff who happened to belong to a more heavily muscled species. Tralthans of physiological classification FGLI-warm-blooded oxygen-breathers resembling low-slung, six-legged and tentacled elephants-bore down on them and swept past with the mass and momentum of organic ground vehicles; they were jostled by a pair of ELNTs from Melf, who chittered at them reproachfully despite being outranked by three grades; and Conway certainly did not feel like pulling rank on the TLTU intern who breathed superheated steam and whose protective suit was a great, clanking juggernaut that hissed continually as if it was about to spring a leak.

At the next transection lock they donned lightweight protective suits and let themselves into the foggy yellow world of the chlorinebreathing Illensans. Here the corridors were crowded with the spiny, membranous and unprotected Illensan PVSJs, and it was the oxygen-breathing Tralthans, Kelgians and Earth-humans who wore, or in some cases drove, life-suits. The next leg of the journey took them through the vast tanks where the thirty-foot-long, waterbreathing entities of Chalderescol swam ponderously, like armorplated and tentacled crocodiles, through their warm, green wards. The same protective suits served them here, and although the traffic was less dense, the necessity of having to swim instead of walk slowed them down somewhat. Despite all the obstacles, they finally arrived in the ambulance bay, their suits still streaming Chalder water, just thirty-five minutes after leaving O’Mara’s office.

As they boarded the Rhabwar the personnel lock swung closed behind them. The Captain hurried to the ship’s gravity-free central well and began pulling himself forward towards Control. In more leisurely fashion, the medical team headed for the Casualty Deck amidships. In the ward compartment they spent a few minutes converting the highly unspecialized accommodation and equipment- which were capable of serving the operative and after-care needs of casualties belonging to any of the sixty-odd intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation-into the relatively simple bedding and life-support required for ordinary DBDG Earth-human fracture and/or decompression cases.

Even though the casualties’ stay in the ambulance ship would be a matter of hours rather than days, the treatment available during the first few minutes could make all the difference between a casualty who survived and one who was dead on arrival. Even Sector General could do nothing about the latter category, Conway thought; he wondered if any other preparations could be made to receive casualties whose number and condition were as yet unknown.

He must have been wondering aloud, because Naydrad said suddenly, “There is provision for twelve casualties, Doctor, assuming that each member of the scoutship’s ten-man crew is injured, and further assuming that two of our crew-members are injured during the rescue, which is a very low probability. Eight of the beds have been prepared for multiple-fracture cases, and the other four for cranial and mandible fractures with associated brain damage necessitating a cardiac or respiratory assist. Self-shaping splints, body restraints and medication suited to the DBDG classification are readily available. When may we learn the contents of O’Mara’s tape?”

“Soon, I hope,” Conway replied. “Though I lack the empathic faculty of Prilicla, I feel sure our Captain would not be pleased if we were to discover and discuss the details of our mission without him.”

“Correct, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “However, the combination of observation, deduction and experience can in many cases give a non-empathic species the ability to detect or to accurately predict emotional output.”

“Obviously,” said Naydrad. “But unless someone has something important to say, I shall go to sleep.”

“And I,” said Murchison, “shall press my not-unattractive face against a viewport and watch. It must be three years since I had a chance to see outside the hospital.”

While the Kelgian charge nurse curled itself into a furry question mark on one of the beds, Murchison, Prilicla and Conway moved to a viewport, which at that moment showed only a featureless expanse of metal plating and the foreshortened cylinder of one of the hydraulic docking booms. But as they watched they felt a series of tiny shocks, which were being transmitted through the fabric of the ship. The hospital’s outer skin began moving away from them, and the docking boom became even more foreshortened as it came smoothly to full extension, simultaneously releasing the ship and pushing it away.

The distance increased, allowing more and more details to crawl into the port’s field of vision-the personnel and stores loading tubes, which were already being withdrawn into their housing; the flashing or steadily burning approach and docking beacons; a line of ports ablaze with the greenish yellow lighting characteristic of the Illensan chlorine-breathers; and a big supply tender sidling up to its docking boom.

Suddenly the picture began to unroll from the top to the bottom of the viewport as the Rhabwar applied thrust. It was a gentle, cautious maneuver aimed at placing the ship on a spiral course that would take it through the local hospital traffic to a distance where full thrust could be applied without inconveniencing other ships in the area or elevating the temperature of the hospital’s skin-something that would be much more than an inconvenience if behind such a temporary hot spot there was a ward filled with the fragile, crystalline, ultra-frigid methane life-forms. The picture continued to shrink until the whole vast hospital structure was framed in the port, turning slowly as the ship spiraled away; then thrust was applied, and it slipped out of sight astern.

With the disappearance of the brilliantly lit hospital, their night vision returned slowly, and they watched, in a silence broken only by the hissing noises made by the sleeping Kelgian, while stars began to develop in the blank blackness outside the port.

The casualty deck speaker clicked and hummed. “This is Control. We are proceeding at one Earth-gravity thrust until Jump-distance is reached, which will be in forty-six minutes. During this period the artificial-gravity grids will be deactivated on all decks for the purposes of system checking and inspection. Any e-t requiring special gravity settings please check and activate its personal equipment.”

Conway wondered why the Captain was not covering the Jumpdistance at maximum thrust instead of dawdling along at one-G. He certainly could not Jump too close to the hospital, because the creation of an artificial universe that would allow faster-than-light travel-even a tiny one capable of enclosing the mass of their ship- would be much more than an inconvenience to Sector General. It could disrupt every piece of communications and control equipment in the place, with dire results for patients and staff alike. But Fletcher did not seem to be reacting with urgency to what was, after all, a distress call. Was Fletcher being overly careful with his nice new ship, Conway wondered, or was he proceeding carefully because the distress call had come before the ship was quite ready for it?

Though Conway’s worrying was causing the Cinrusskin to tremble slightly, Prilicla seemed calm. “I check my gravity nullifiers every hour, since my continued existence as a living and thinking entity requires it. But it is nice of the Captain to worry about my safety. He appears to be an efficient officer and an entity in whom we can place full trust where the workings of the ship are concerned.”

“I was a little worried for a moment,” Conway admitted, laughing at the empath’s unsubtle attempt at reassurance. “But how did you know I was worried about the ship? Are you becoming a telepath too?”

“No, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “I was aware of your feeling and had already noted our somewhat leisurely departure, and I wondered if it was the ship or the Captain who was proceeding cautiously.”

“Great minds worry alike,” said Murchison, turning away from the viewport. “I could eat a horse,” she added with feeling.

“I, too, have an urgent requirement for food,” said Prilicla.

“What is a horse, friend Murchison, and would it agree with my metabolism?”

“Food,” said Naydrad, coming awake.

They did not have to mention the fact that if the Tenelphi casualties were serious they might not have many opportunities to eat and it was always a good idea to refuel whenever an opportunity offered itself. As well, Conway thought, eating stopped worrying, at least for a while.

“Food,” Conway agreed, and he led the way to the central well, which connected the eight habitable levels of the ship.

As he began climbing the connecting ladder against the one-G thrust aft, Conway was remembering the diagram of the ship’s deck layout, which had been projected on O’Mara’s screen. Level One was Control, Two and Three held the crew and medics’ quarters, which were neither large nor overly well supplied with recreational aids, since ambulance ship missions were expected to be of short duration. Level Four housed the dining and recreational areas, and Five contained the stores of non-medical consumables. Six and Seven were the Casualty Deck and its ward, respectively, and Eight was the Power Room. Aft of Eight was a solid plug of shielding, then the two levels that could not be entered without special protective armor: Nine, which housed the hyperdrive generator, and Ten, which contained the fuel tanks and nuclear-powered thrusters.

Those thrusters were making Conway climb very carefully and hold tightly onto the rungs. A fall down the normally gravity-free well could quickly change his status from doctor to patient-or even to cadaver. Murchison was also being careful, but Naydrad, who had no shortage of legs with which to grip the rungs, began ruffling its fur with impatience. Prilicla, using its personal gravity nullifiers, had flown ahead to check on the food dispensers.

“The selection seems to be rather restricted,” it reported when they arrived, “but I think the quality is better than the hospital food.”

“It couldn’t be worse,” said Naydrad.

Conway quickly began performing major surgery on a steak and everyone else was using its mouth for a purpose other than talking when two green-uniformed legs came into sight as they climbed down from the deck above. They were followed by a torso and the features of Captain Fletcher.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked stiffly. “I think we should listen to the Tenelphi material as soon as possible.”

“Not at all,” Conway replied in the same formal tone. “Please sit down, Captain.”

Normally a Monitor Corps ship commander ate in the isolation of his cabin, Conway knew, that being one of the unwritten laws of the service. The Rhabwar was Fletcher’s first command and this his first operational mission, and here he was breaking one of those rules by dining with crew-members who were not even fellow officers of the Corps. But it was obvious as the Captain drew his meal from the dispenser that he was trying very hard to be relaxed and friendly-he was trying so hard, in fact, that Prilicla’s stable hover over its place at the table became somewhat unsteady.

Murchison smiled at the Captain. “Doctor Prilicla tells us that eating while in flight aids the Cinrusskin digestion as well as cools everyone else’s soup.

“If my method of ingestion offends you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla offered timidly, “I am quite capable of eating while at rest.”

“I m not offended, Doctor.” Fletcher smiled stiffly. “I think fascinated would better describe my feelings. But will listening to the tape adversely affect anyone’s digestion? The playback can certainly wait until you’ve all finished.”

“Talking shop,” said Conway in his best clinical manner, “also aids the digestion.” He slotted in the tape, and O’Mara’s dry, precise voice filled the compartment.

The Monitor Corps scoutship Tenelphi, which was currently engaged on preliminary survey operations in Sector Nine, had failed to make three successive position reports. The coordinates of the star systems assigned to the Ten elphi for investigation were known, as was the sequence in which they would be visited; and since the ship had not released a distress beacon, there was no immediate cause for concern over the fate of the missing vessel. The trouble, as so often happened, might turn out to be a simple communications failure rather than anything dramatic.

Stellar activity in the region was well above the norm, with the result that subspace radio communication was extremely difficult. Signals considered to be important-and they had to be very important indeed, because of the power required to penetrate the highly peculiar medium that was hyperspace-were taped and transmitted repeatedly for as long as was thought necessary, and safe, to do so. The transmission process released harmful radiation, which could not be effectively shielded if the signal was prolonged, especially where lightly built scoutships were concerned. The result was that a terse, highly compressed signal riddled with stellar interference was sent to be pieced together, hopefully in its entirety, from fifty or more identical but individually unreadable messages. Position-report signals were brief and therefore safe, and the power drain was relatively light, even for a scoutship.

But the Tenelphi had not sent a position report. Instead, it had transmitted a repeated message to the effect that it had detected and later closed with a large derelict that was falling rapidly into the system’s sun, with impact estimated in just under eight days. Since none of the system’s planets was within the life-spectrum-unless the life concerned was one of the exotic varieties that might be capable of flourishing on semi-molten rock under a small, intensely hot and aging sun-the assumption had been made that the vessel’s entry into the system was accidental rather than the result of a planned mission. There was evidence of residual power remaining in the derelict, and of several pockets of atmosphere of various densities, but no sign of life. The Tenelphi’s intention was to board it and investigate.

In spite of the poor signal quality, there could be no doubt of the pleasure felt by the Tenelphi’s communications officer at this lucky break in the otherwise deadly monotony of a routine mapping assignment.

Possibly they became too excited to remember to include a position report,” O’Mara’s voice continued, “or they knew that the timing of the signal, by checking it against their flight plans, would tell us where they were in general terms. But that was the only coherent message received. Three days later there was another signal, not taped but repeated, each time in slightly different form, by the sender speaking into a microphone. It said that there had been a serious collision, the ship was losing pressure and the crew was incapacitated. There was also some sort of warning. In my professional opinion the voice was distorted by more than the intervening subspace radio interference, but you can decide that for yourselves. Then, two hours later, a distress beacon was released.

“I have included a copy of the second signal, which may help you.” The Chief Psychologist’s voice added dryly, “Or help confuse you . . .

Unlike the first signal, the second was virtually unreadable. It was like listening to a mighty storm through which a voice, badly distorted to begin with, was trying to make itself heard in a whisper. They listened intently to the words while trying even harder to ignore the rattling explosions of interstellar static accompanying them, so much so that Naydrad’s fur rippled tensely with the strain and Prilicla, who was reacting to everyone else’s feelings as well as to the noise, gave up its attempt to hover and settled, trembling, on the table.

. . . idea if this . . . getting out or . . . crew incap . . . collision with derelict and . . . can’t do . . . distress beac . . . work it inside . . . manually . . . but can’t assume . . . stupidity of specialization when . . . if signal is getting out . . . warning in case . . . in collision . . . internal pressure dropping . . . can’t do anything about that, either . . . how to operate beacon from inside,, . release it manually from . . . al warning in case, lets too stiff to . . . confused and not much time . . . only chance is . . . sin chest . . . derelict is close . . . extra suit tanks . . . my specialty . . . ship Tenelphi in collision with . . . crew incapable of any . . . pressure dropping . . .

The voice went on for several minutes, but the words were lost in a prolonged burst of static. Shortly afterwards the tape ended. There were a few minutes of beautiful silence, during which Naydrad’s fur settled down and Prilicla flew up to the ceiling.

“It seems to me that the gist of this message,” Conway said thoughtfully, “is that the sender was unsure that the signal was being transmitted, possibly because he was not the communications officer and knew nothing about the equipment he was using, or maybe because he thought the subspace radio antenna had been damaged in the collision, which had, apparently, knocked out the rest of the crew. He did not seem to be able to help them, pressure was dropping, and again due to structural damage, he was unable to release the distress beacon from inside the ship. He would have to have set its timer and pushed it away from the ship with his hands.

“His doubts about the signal going out and his remarks regarding the stupidity of specialization,” he went on, “indicate that he was probably not the communications officer or even the Captain, who would have a working knowledge of the equipment in all departments of his ship. The ‘lets too stiff’ bit could be ‘gauntlets too stiff’ to operate certain controls or suit fastenings, and with the ship’s internal pressure dropping he might have been afraid to change from his heavy-duty spacesuit to a lightweight type with its thinner gauntlets. What an ‘al warning’ or a ‘sin chest’ is, I just don’t know, and in any case the distortion was so bad that those may only be approximations of the words he used.”

Conway looked around the table. “Maybe you can find something I missed. Shall I play the tape again?”

They listened again, and again, before Naydrad, in its forthright fashion, told him he was wasting their time.

“We would know how much credence to place on the material in this signal,” Conway said, “if we knew which officer sent it and why he, of all the crew, escaped serious injury during the collision. And another point: Once he says the crew are incapable, and later he describes them as being incapacitated. Not hurt or injured, but incapacitated. That choice of word makes me wonder if he is perhaps the ship’s medical officer, except that he hasn’t described the extent of their injuries or, as far as his signal is concerned, done much to help them.”

Naydrad, who was the hospital’s expert in ship rescue procedures, made noises like a modulated foghorn, which translated as, “Regardless of his function in the ship, there is not much that any officer could do with fracture and decompression casualties, especially if everyone was sealed in suits or if the officer himself was a minor casualty. Regarding the, to me, subtle difference in meaning between the words incapacitated and injured, I think we are wasting time discussing it. Unless there is a deficiency in this ship’s translation computer that affects only the Kelgian programing . . .

The Captain bridled visibly at the suggestion that there might be anything at all wrong with his ship or its equipment. “This is not Sector General, Charge Nurse, where the translation computer fills three whole levels and handles simultaneous translations for six thousand individuals. The Rhabwar’s computer is programmed only to cover the languages of the ship’s personnel, plus the three most widely used languages in the Federation other than our own-Tralthan, Illensan and Melfan. It has been thoroughly tested, and it performs its function without ambiguity, so that any confusion—”

“Undoubtedly lies in the signal itself,” Conway contributed hastily, “and not in the translation. But I would still like to know who sent the message. The crew-member who used the words incapacitated and incapable instead of hurt or injured, who could not do something because he was confused and short of time and was hampered by gauntlets . . . Dammit, he might at least have told us something about the physical condition of the casualties so we’d know what to expect!”

Fletcher relaxed again. “I wonder why he was wearing a suit in the first place. Even if the ship was maneuvering close to the derelict and a collision occurred for whatever reason, it would not have been expected. By that I mean the crew would not normally be wearing spacesuits during such a maneuver. But if they were wearing them, then they were expecting trouble.”

“From the derelict?” Murchison asked quietly.

A long silence followed, broken finally by the Captain. “Very unlikely, if it was, in fact, a derelict, and there is no reason to doubt the Tenelphi’s original report on the situation. If they were not expecting trouble, then we are back with this officer, not necessarily the ship’s medic, who was able to get into a spacesuit and perhaps help some of the others into theirs—”

“Without compounding their injuries?” asked Naydrad.

“I can assure you that Monitor Corpsmen are trained to react to situations like this one,” said Fletcher sharply.

Reacting to the Captain’s growing irritation at the implied criticism of one of his fellow officers, Prilicla joined in: “The brokenup message we received did not mention injuries, so it is possible that the most serious damage is to the scoutship’s structure and systems rather than to its crew. Incapacitated is not a very strong word. We may find that we have nothing to do.”

While approving the little empath’s attempt to halt the bickering between Naydrad and the overly touchy ship commander, Conway thought that Prilicla was being far too optimistic. But before anyone could speak there was an interruption.

“Control to Captain. Jump in seven minutes, sir.”

Fletcher regarded his half-finished meal for a moment, then stood up. “There is no real need for me to go up there, you know,” he said awkwardly. “We took our time coming out to Jump-distance to ensure that the ship was fully operational. It is, in every respect.” He gave a short, forced laugh. “But the trouble with good subordinates is that sometimes they make a superior officer feel redundant . . .

The Captain, Conway thought as Fletcher’s legs disappeared up the well, was trying very hard to be human.

Shortly afterwards the ship made the transition into hyperspace, and just under six hours later it re-emerged. Because the Rhabwar had left the hospital at the end of the medical team’s duty period, they had all used the intervening time to catch up on their rest. Nonetheless, there were a few interruptions whenever the Captain relayed what he thought were significant pieces of conversation from Control over the ship’s PA system. Obviously, he was simply trying to keep the medics fully informed at every stage of the proceedings. If he had realized the reaction of Conway and the others at being repeatedly awakened to be given information that was either too technically specialized or too elementary, he would have dropped the idea.

Then, suddenly, a relay from Control that signaled the end of any further hope of sleeping for a long time to come.

“We have contact, sir! Two traces, one large and one small. Distance one point six million miles. The small trace matches the mass and dimensions of the Tenelphi.”

“Astrogation?”

“Sir. At maximum thrust we can match course, velocity and position in two hours, seventeen minutes.”

“Very well, we’ll do that. Power Room?”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Four-gravities thrust in thirty seconds, Mr. Chen. Dodds, give Haslam your course figures. Would Senior Physician Conway report to Control as soon as convenient.”

* * *

Because the physiological classification of the casualties and the general nature of their injuries were already known, it had been decided that Captain Fletcher would remain in the Rhabwar while Conway and the other Corps officers boarded the Tenelphi to assess the situation. Murchison, Prilicla and Naydrad were standing by on the Casualty Deck, ready to treat the cases as they came through. Since both the casualties and medical team had the same atmosphere and life-support requirements, it was expected that the examination and preliminary treatment time would be short, and that the Rhabwar would be returning to Sector General within the hour.

Conway sat in the supernumerary’s position in Control, sealed up except for his helmet visor, watching the image of the Tenelphi growing larger on the Captain’s screen. Flanking the Captain were Haslam and Dodds in the communications and astrogation positions, respectively, also suited except for their gauntlets, which had been removed to facilitate operation of their control consoles. The three officers muttered to one another in the esoteric language of their profession and occasionally exchanged words with Chen, who was in the Power Room aft.

The image of the distressed ship grew until it overflowed the edges of the screen, whereupon magnification was stepped down and it was suddenly tiny again-a bright silver cigar shape tumbling slowly in the blackness, with the immense spherical shape of the derelict turning slowly, like a battered, metal moon, two miles beyond it.

Like Conway, the derelict was being ignored for the present. For no other reason than to register his presence, he said, “It doesn’t appear to be too badly damaged, does it?”

“Obviously not a head-on collision,” Fletcher responded. “There is serious damage forward, but most of it is to the antennae and sensors, sustained, I think, when she struck and then rolled against the other ship. I can’t see the extent of the damage in detail because of the fog. She’s still losing a lot of air.”

“Which could mean that she still has a lot of air to lose, sir,” said Dodds. “Forward tractors and pressors ready.”

“Right, check her pitch and roll,” ordered the Captain. “But gently. The hull will be weakened, and we don’t want to pull it apart. They might not be wearing suits . . .

He left the sentence hanging as Dodds leaned stiffly over his console. All of the astrogator’s attention was concentrated in his fingertips as he focused the immaterial cone-shaped fields of the pressor and tractor beams on the hull of the damaged ship, bringing it slowly and gently to rest with respect to the Rhabwar. Seen at rest, the Tenelphi’s bow and stern were still obscured by a fog of escaping air, but amidships the vessel seemed to have retained its structural integrity.

“Sir,” Haslam reported excitedly, “the midships lock is undamaged. I think we can dock and . . . and walk aboard!”

. . . And evacuate the casualties in a fraction of the time needed for an EVA transfer, Conway thought thankfully. Medical attention was only minutes away for those who had been able to survive thus far. He stood up, closed and sealed his helmet.

“I’ll handle the docking,” said Fletcher briskly. “You two go with the Doctor. Chen, stay put unless they send for you.

They felt the tiny shock of the Rhabwar making contact with the other ship while they were still inside their own midships lock with the inner seal closed behind them. Dodds activated the outer seal, which swung slowly inwards to reveal the outer surface of an identical seal a few inches away. They could see a large, irregular patch of what seemed to be paint or oil, mottled brown and black in color, in the middle of the Tenelphi’s seal. The stuff had a ridged, blistered appearance.

“What is that stuff?” Conway asked.

“I haven’t a clue,” Haslam began, reaching out to touch it. His fingers left yellowish smears and some of the material stuck to his gauntlets. “It’s grease, Doctor. The dark color fooled me at first. I expect the heat of the beacon melted and burned off most of it and left the rest looking like that.”

“Grease,” said Conway. “How did grease get spread over the outer seal?”

Haslam sounded impatient as he replied: “Probably one of the dispenser canisters broke loose during the crash and spun against the seal. There is a pressure nozzle at one end of the canister, which, if depressed with sufficient force, discharges several ounces of grease automatically. If you’re very interested, Doctor, I can show you one of them later. Stand back, please, I’m going to open up.

The seal swung open, and Haslam, Conway and Dodds stepped into the Tenelphi’s lock chamber. Haslam checked the telltales as Dodds closed the outer seal. The pressure inside the ship was dangerously low, but not lethally low for a person who was fit and healthy. What it would do to an unprotected casualty who might be in shock-with decompression effects accelerating the loss of blood from even superficial cuts and lacerations-was another matter. Suddenly the inner seal opened; their suits creaked and swelled with the pressure differential, and they moved quickly inside.

Haslam gasped. “I don’t believe it!”

The lock antechamber was filled with spacesuited figures drifting loosely on the ends of pieces of rope or webbing that had been attached to equipment support brackets or any other convenient tethering point. The emergency lighting system was functioning and bright enough to show all the figures in detail, including the webbing that bound each man’s legs together, his arms tightly to his sides and extra air tanks on his back. The spacesuits were all of the rigid, heavy-duty type, so the tight webbing did not compress the underlying limbs and torsos and whatever injuries they might have sustained. In each case the helmet visor was covered by its almost opaque sun filter.

Moving carefully between two of the drifting figures, Conway steadied one and slid back the sun filter. The inside of the visor was badly fogged, but he could make out a face that was much redder than normal and eyes that squeezed themselves shut as soon as the light hit them. He slid back the filter of another casualty, then another, with similar results.

“Untether them and move them to the Casualty Deck, quickly,” Conway said. “Leave the arm and leg restraints in place for the present. It makes them easier to move, and the strapping will support the fractured limbs, if any. This is not the complete crew?”

It was not really a question. Obviously, someone had trussed up the casualties and moved them to the Tenelphi’s airlock to be ready for a fast evacuation.

“Nine here, Doctor,” said Haslam after a quick count. “One crew-member is missing. Shall I look for him?”

“Not yet,” said Conway, thinking that the missing officer had been a very busy man. He had sent a subspace radio message, released a distress beacon when the automatic release mechanism had malfunctioned or he had been unable to work it, and he had moved his companions from their duty positions in various parts of their ship to the airlock antechamber. It was not inconceivable that during these activities he had damaged his spacesuit and had been forced to find himself an airtight compartment somewhere to await rescue.

The man who had accomplished all that, Conway swore to himself, was damn well going to be rescued!

While he was helping Haslam and Dodds transfer the first few casualties through to the Rhabwar, Conway described the situation for the benefit of those on the Casualty Deck and for the Captain. Then he added, “Prilicla, can you be spared back there for a few minutes?”

“Easily, friend Conway,” the little empath replied. “My musculature is not sufficiently robust to assist directly in the treatment of DBDG casualties. My support is moral rather than medical.”

“Fine,” said Conway. “Our problem is a missing crew-member who may or may not be injured, perhaps sheltered in an airtight compartment. Will you pinpoint his position for us so we won’t waste time searching through wreckage? Are you wearing a pressure envelope?”

“Yes, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “I’m leaving at once.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for the casualties to be moved out of the Tenelphi and into the ambulance ship. By that time Prilicla was drifting back and forth along the exterior of the wreck’s hull in an effort to detect the emotional radiation of the missing crewmember. Conway stayed inside the wreck and tried to keep his feelings of impatience and concern under control so as not to distract the Cinrusskin.

If anything lived in the Tenelphi, even if it was deeply unconscious or dying, Prilicla’s empathic faculty would detect it.

“Nothing, friend Conway,” Prilicla reported after twenty interminable minutes. “The only source of emotional radiation inside the wreck is yourself.”

Conway’s initial reaction was one of angry disbelief.

“I’m sorry, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “If the being is still in the ship it . . . it is dead.”

But Conway had never been one to give up easily on a patient. “Captain, Conway here. Is it possible that he’s adrift? Perhaps injured or with his suit radio damaged as a result of releasing the beacon?”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Fletcher replied. “We made a radar sweep of the area when we arrived in case the man had accidentally released himself along with the beacon. There is some loose metallic wreckage but nothing large enough to be a man. Nonetheless, I’ll make another sweep to be absolutely sure.” He paused for a moment, then went on: “Haslam, Dodds. Providing you will not be interfering with the medical treatment down there, check the ID tags and uniform insignias of the casualties and bring me a list. Quickly.

“Chen, you won’t be needed in the Power Room for a while,” he continued. “Seal up and search the wreck as thoroughly as possible in the time left to us. The casualties are supposed to be moved as quickly as possible to the hospital, and to add to our troubles, this system’s sun is coming too close for comfort. You will be looking for the missing officer’s body, ship’s papers, tapes or anything that might explain what happened here. You should find a crew duty roster attached to the Recreation Deck notice board. By comparing it with the list of casualties, we will be able to tell the identity of the missing man as well as his specialty—”

“I know his specialty,” Conway broke in suddenly. He was thinking of the highly professional way in which the missing man had moved the casualties, immobilized them against the possibility of further and perhaps self-inflicted injuries as well as extended the duration of their air supply, and of the amateurish way he had done everything else. “I’m sure he was the ship’s medic.”

Fletcher did not reply, and Conway began moving slowly around the Tenelphi’s lock antechamber. He had the uncomfortable feeling that something should be done, and quickly, but he had no idea what that something was. There was nothing unusual to be seen except, possibly, a wall-mounted clip that was designed to hold three cylindrical canisters about two feet long and that now held only two. Closer inspection showed identification labels on the cylinders, indicating that they contained type GP1O/5B grease suitable for use on major actuator mechanisms and control linkages periodically or permanently exposed to low temperature and/or vacuum conditions. Feeling confused and impatient with himself-his job was on the Casualty Deck and not wasting time here-Conway returned to the Rhabwar.

Lieutenant Chen was already waiting to enter the lock Conway had just vacated. He opened his visor to speak to the Doctor without tying up the suit frequency and asked Conway if he had been forward to the damaged area of the wreck. Without unsealing his visor Conway shook his head. As Conway moved towards the communication well, Haslam, a piece of folded paper between his teeth to leave both hands free for climbing, came briefly into sight as he pulled himself in the direction of Control. Conway waited until the man had passed, then he stepped into the gravity-free well and began pulling himself aft towards the Casualty Deck.

Of the nine casualties, two of them had already had their spacesuits cut away in small pieces so as not to compound any underlying injuries. Murchison and Dodds were stripping a third without cutting the suit away, and Naydrad was removing the suit of a fourth casualty-also in normal fashion.

Without giving Conway time to ask the inevitable question, Murchison said, “According to Lieutenant Dodds here, all the indications are that these men were already encased in their spacesuits and strapped tightly to their couches before the collision occurred. I did not agree at first, but when we stripped the first two and found no injuries, not even bruising . . . ! And the suit fabric was marked by abrasive contact in areas corresponding to the positions of the safety strapping.

“The x-ray scanner lacks definition when used through a spacesuit,” she went on, holding the casualty under the arms to steady him while Dodds tugged carefully at the leg sections, “but it is clear enough to show fractures or serious internal injuries. There are none, so I decided that cutting away the suits would be an unnecessary waste of time.”

“And of valuable service property,” Dodds added with feeling. To a spacegoing Monitor Corps officer, a spacesuit was much more than a piece of equipment, it was analogous to a warm, close-fitting, protective womb. Seeing them being deliberately torn apart would be something of a traumatic experience for him.

“But if they aren’t injured,” Conway asked, “what the blazes is wrong with them?”

Murchison was working on the man’s neck seal and did not look up. “I don’t know,” she answered defensively.

“Not even a preliminary diag—”

“No,” she said sharply, then went on: “When Doctor Prilicla’s empathic faculty established the fact that they were in no immediate danger of dying, we decided that diagnosis and treatment could wait until they were all out of their suits, so our examination thus far has been cursory, to say the least. All I know is that the subspace radio message was correct-they are incapacitated, not injured.”

Prilicla, who had been hovering silently over the two stripped patients, joined the conversation timidly. “That is correct, friend Conway. I, too, am puzzled by the condition of these beings. I was expecting gross physical injuries, and instead I find something which resembles an infectious disease. Perhaps you, friend Conway, as a member of the same species, will recognize the symptoms.”

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to sound critical,” Conway said awkwardly. “I’ll help you with that one, Naydrad.”

As soon as he took off the man’s helmet he could see that his face was red and streaming with perspiration. The temperature was elevated and there was pronounced photophobia, which explained why the glare shields were in place over the visor. The hair was wet and plastered against the man’s forehead and skull as if he had just been in for a swim. The drying elements in the suit had been unable to cope with the excessive moisture, so that the interior of the faceplate was opaque with condensation. For that reason Conway did not notice the medication dispenser attached to the collar piece until the helmet had been removed. The medication was in the usual form of an edible transparent plastic tube nipped off at intervals to enclose a single color-coded capsule in each division.

“Did any of the other helmets contain this anti-nausea medication?” asked Conway.

“All of them so far, Doctor,” Naydrad replied, its four manipulators working independently on the suit fastenings while its eyes curled up to regard Conway. “The first casualty to be undressed displayed symptoms of nausea when I inadvertently applied pressure to the abdominal region. The being was not fully conscious at the time, so its words were not sufficiently coherent for translation.”

Prilicla quickly joined in. “The emotional radiation is characteristic of a being in delirium, friend Conway, probably caused by the elevated temperature. I have also observed erratic, uncoordinated movements of the limbs and head, which are also symptomatic of delirium.”

“I agree,” said Conway. But what was causing it? He did not utter the question aloud because he was supposed to know the answer, but he had an uneasy premonition that even a really thorough examination might not reveal the cause. He began helping the charge nurse to remove the patient’s sweat-soaked clothing.

There was evidence of heat prostration and dehydration, which, considering the patient’s high temperature and associated loss of body fluid, was to be expected. Gentle palpation in the abdominal area caused involuntary retching movements, although there was no foreign material in the stomach so far as Conway could determine. The man had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours.

The pulse was a little fast but steady, respiration irregular and with a tendency towards intermittent coughing. When Conway checked the throat he found it seriously inflamed, and his scanner indicated that the inflammation extended along the bronchi and into the pleural cavity. He checked the tongue and lips for signs of damage by toxic or corrosive material, and noticed that the man’s face was not, as he had first thought, wet only with perspiration- the tear ducts were leaking steadily, and there was a mucous discharge from the nose as well. Finally, he checked for evidence of radiation exposure or the inhalation of radioactive material, with negative results.

“Captain. Conway,” he called suddenly. “Would you ask Lieutenant Chen, while he is searching the Tenelphi for the missing officer, to bring back samples of the ship’s air and food and liquid consumables? Would he also look for evidence of a leakage of toxic material, solid or gaseous, into the life-support system, and bring them, tightly sealed, to Pathologist Murchison for analysis as quickly as possible?”

“Will do,” Fletcher responded. “Chen, you overheard?”

“Yes, sir,” said the engineer officer. “I still can’t find the missing casualty, Doctor. Now I’m beginning to look in all the unlikely places.”

Because Conway’s helmet was still sealed, Murchison had been listening to the conversation on the Casualty Deck’s speaker as well as hearing his side of it through his suit’s external sound system. “Two questions, Doctor,” she said irritably. “Do you know what’s wrong with them, and has it anything to do with your using that overly loud suit speaker instead of opening your visor and talking normally?”

“I’m not sure,” said Conway.

“Perhaps,” she said angrily to Dodds, “he doesn’t like my perfume.”

Conway disregarded the sarcasm and looked around the ward. While he had been examining the casualty with Naydrad, Murchison and Dodds had stripped the others and were obviously waiting for instructions. Prilicla was already carrying out the instructions that Conway had yet to utter on the first two casualties, but then, Prilicla invariably said and did the right thing because it was an exceptionally fine doctor as well as an empath.

“If it wasn’t for the very high temperature and general severity of their symptoms,” Conway said finally, “I’d say we are dealing with a respiratory infection with associated nausea caused, perhaps, by swallowing infected mucus. But the sudden and incapacitating onset of the symptoms makes me doubtful of that diagnosis.

“But that is not the reason I stayed sealed,” he went on. “There was no reason for doing so at first. Now, however, I think it would be a good idea if Lieutenant Dodds and you sealed up. It may be an unnecessary precaution.”

“Or it may already be too late,” said Murchison, unclipping one of the lightweight helmets, which, with its connecting hose, air tank and body webbing, converted the coveralls she was wearing into a protective suit, proof against anything but the most corrosive atmospheres. Dodds had already sealed his visor with remarkable haste.

“Until we can get them to the hospital,” Conway said, “treatment must be supportive rather than curative. Replace the lost fluids intravenously, control the nausea and try to keep the temperature down. We may have to use body restraints to keep them from dislodging their monitor leads. Isolate them in pressure tents and raise the oxygen level. I think their condition is going to worsen, and we may eventually need to assist their breathing with a ventilator.”

He paused for a moment, and when he looked at Murchison he knew that the concern on his face was concealed by the blurring effect of his visor and by the suit’s external speaker, which distorted his voice.

“The isolation may be unnecessary,” he said. “These symptoms could just as easily be due to inhaling and swallowing an as yet unidentified toxin. We can’t be sure, and we haven’t the proper facilities to find the answer in the limited time available. As soon as we find out what happened to the missing crew-man, we’ll whisk them all back to Sector General and submit ourselves to a thorough—”

“While we are waiting,” Murchison broke in, her voice and features now also distorted by a helmet, “I would like to try to discover what it was that hit them, and what it is that may hit everyone else but yourself.”

“There may not be time for that,” Conway began, but the voice of the engineer officer reporting to the Captain made him break off.

“Captain, Chen here. I’ve found the duty roster, sir, and I’ve checked it against the IDs of the casualties. The missing man turns out to be Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland, so the Doctor’s guess was right. But his body is not here. I’ve searched thoroughly and he’s not inside the wreck. There are things missing as well-the ship’s portable sound and vision recorders, the crew’s personal recorders, cameras, baggage containers, all missing. Clothing and personal effects are drifting about inside the crew’s quarters as —f they’d been scattered during a hurried unpacking.

“Practically all the spare air tanks have gone, and the equipment register shows that the crew’s spacesuits were all logged out for a period of between two and three days, except for the Surgeon-Lieutenant’s suit, which wasn’t logged out and is missing. The ship’s portable airlock is missing also.

“The Control area is badly damaged, so I can’t be absolutely sure, but it looks as if they were trying to set up for an automatic Jump, and the instrument settings in the Power Room, which wasn’t damaged, supports this. I’d say they were trying to move away from the derelict because of the distortion such a large mass of metal would zntroduce into the Jump calculations, but they collided with it instead.”

“I have the samples for Pathologist Murchison. Shall I come back now, sir?”

“Right away,” the Captain ordered.

While Lieutenant Chen and the Captain had been talking, Conway had been trying to make sense out of the strange behavior of the Tenelphi’s medical officer. Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland had displayed professional competence of a very high order in his treatment of the casualties. Through no fault of his own, he had not been able to communicate properly via the subspace radio although he had made a good try, but he had managed to perform the tricky job of manually releasing and activating the distress beacon. It seemed to Conway that Sutherland was a sensible and resourceful officer of the kind who did not panic easily. Neither was he the kind who would get himself killed accidentally or go without leaving some sort of message.

“If he isn’t adrift and he isn’t on the Tenelphi,” said Conway suddenly, “there is only one other place he can be. Can you land me on the derelict, Captain?”

Knowing Fletcher’s concern for his ship, Conway expected anything from a flat negative to a verbal explosion at the very suggestion. Instead, he received the kind of response an instructor gives to a pupil of mediocre intelligence-a lecture couched in such elementary language that if the Captain had not been five levels forward in Control, Conway would have risked unsealing his visor to spit in Fletcher’s eye.

“I can conceive of no reason, Doctor, why the missing officer should leave the Tenelphi when the obvious course would be to stay with the other casualties and await rescue,” the Captain began. Then he went on to remind Conway that they did not have a lot of time to waste. Not only should the casualties be hospitalized quickly, but the derelict, the Tenelphi and their own vessel were closing with the system’s sun at an accelerating rate, which would make it uncomfortably warm for all concerned in two days and would cause their hull to melt in four. There was also the fact that the closer they approached the sun, the more difficult it would be for them to make a Jump.

An added complication was that the Tenelphi and the Rhabwar were now docked and coupled fore and aft so that the ambulance ship could expand its hyperspace envelope to enclose the wreck, which would have to be taken back with them as evidence in the forthcoming investigation into the collision. With the two ships locked together and only one capable of exerting controlled thrust, delicate maneuvering of the order needed to land him on the derelict would be impossible. If Fletcher attempted it, the Rhabwar might well end up in the same condition as the Tenelphi. And then there was the sheer size of the derelict .

“The vessel is, or was originally, spherical,” the Captain went on, and the image from the Rhabwar’s telescope appeared on the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. “It is four hundred meters in diameter, with residual power and pressure in a few compartments deep inside the ship. But the Tenelphi has already reported the absence of life on board—”

“Sutherland may be on board now, Captain.”

Fletcher’s sigh made rustling noises on the intercom; then he went on in his patient, lecturing and infuriating voice. “The other ship’s findings are more dependable than ours, Doctor. A life indication is the result of a large number of sensor readings comprising the type and distribution of power sources, vibration associated with the mechanical aspects of life-support systems, pressure and temperature variations within the hull, detection of communication or lighting systems, and many more subtle indications. We both realize that many e-ts require ultra-low temperatures or do not see on our visual frequencies, but if anything, they are easier to detect as far as their life-support requirements are concerned.

“But right now,” the Captain continued, “I could not say with certainty whether or not anyone or anything was alive inside that thing. The close approach to the sun has heated up the outer hull to such an extent that it is no longer possible to detect subtle differences of temperature inside, and the other sensor readings are badly distorted because of the effect of the heat expansion on the structure as a whole. Besides, that ship is big. Its hull is so torn and punctured by meteorite collisions that Sutherland could have found a way in anywhere. Where would you start looking for him, Doctor?”

“If he’s there,” said Conway, “he’ll let us know where to look.”

The Captain remained silent for a moment, and Conway, despite his irritation with Fletcher’s manner towards him, could sympathize with the other’s dilemma. No more than Conway did the Captain want to leave the area without finding or otherwise establishing the fate of the missing Surgeon-Lieutenant. But there was the welfare of the other casualties to consider, which properly was Conway’s responsibility, and the safety of the ambulance ship, which was very definitely Fletcher’s.

With all three vessels sliding down the gravity well of the system’s sun with an acceleration that did not bear thinking about, the time allocated for a search for the missing officer would be strictly limited, and the Captain would not want to be placed in the position of having to abandon Senior Physician Conway of Sector General as well as the Monitor Corps medic on the derelict. Neither could he risk sending one of his officers with Conway because if he, too, was lost the Captain would have a very serious problem. The Rhabwar’s crew was small and there was no overlapping of specialties. Fletcher would probably be able to Jump back to Sector General eventually, but serious risks and delays would be involved that could adversely affect the casualties.

The wall speaker rustled with another sigh, and Fletcher said, “Very well, Doctor, you may search for the Surgeon-Lieutenant. Dodds, take the scope. You are searching for evidence of a recent entry into the derelict. Lieutenant Chen, forget the pathologist’s samples for the time being and return to the Power Room. I want maneuvering thrust in five minutes. Doctor, I shall circle the derelict longitudinally at a distance of half a mile. Since it is rotating once every fifty-two minutes, this will enable us to scan its hull surface in four orbits. Haslam, do what you can with the sensors, and give the doctor some idea of the geography of the interior.”

“Thank you,” said Conway.

Dodds had been helping Murchison move one of the casualties into a pressure tent. As soon as he was finished he excused himself and headed for Control. Conway looked at the repeater screen and the image of the derelict, half of which was a featureless blackness and half a confusion of brilliantly reflective hull plating that was crisscrossed by black fissures and craters. He glanced at it from time to time while he was helping attach bio-sensors to the casualties, seeing it grow larger and begin to unroll from top to bottom of the screen. Suddenly the image flicked off, to be replaced by a diagrammatic representation of the derelict.

It showed the cross section of the spherical vessel, with its deck levels making concentric circles to its core. Near the center several compartments of different sizes were marked in various shades of green, and close to the inner wall of the hull at one point there was a large, rectangular compartment marked in red. Fine red lines joined this area with the green compartments at the center.

“Doctor, Haslam here. I’m projecting a sensor diagram of the derelict’s interior. It is not detailed, I’m afraid, and a lot of it is guesswork . . .

The derelict had been a generation transport, Haslam went on to explain, of the spherical configuration favored at a time when maximum living and cultivating space was a necessity. Direction of travel was along the vertical axis, with the control area forward and the reactor and drive units, which were marked in red, astern. The vessel could rotate fairly rapidly around the vertical axis so as to furnish the outer deck levels amidships with artificial gravity even when the ship was using thrust.

Haslam did not know whether it was one catastrophe or a number of them that had overtaken the ship, but whatever it was it had devastated the control area along with the rest of the outer hull and deck levels and in the process had checked the spin to a fraction of what it should have been. Heavy shielding around the reactors had protected them from serious damage.

The ship had virtually been depopulated, but a number of compartments deep inside the vessel had retained pressure and power, and a number of survivors must have been able to live in them for a time. These were the sections marked in green. The atmosphere inside some of these compartments was little more than a soft vacuum, Haslam added, but in others it was probably still breathable by the present-day members of the species who had built the ship, whoever and whatever they were.

“Is there any possibility . . .”

“No survivors, Doctor,” Haslam stated firmly. “The Tenelphi reported the ship lifeless, derelict. The catastrophe probably happened centuries ago, and the survivors survived for only a short time.”

“Yes, of course,” said Conway. Then why would Sutherland go there?

“Captain. Dodds. I think I’ve found something, sir. Just coming into sunlight now. There it is on full magnification.”

The repeater screen showed a small area of the derelict’s ravaged outer hull. There was a black, jagged-edged opening leading into the depths of the ship, and beside it a section of buckled plating on which there was a large, brownish yellow smear.

“It looks like grease, sir,” said Dodds.

“I agree,” said the Captain, then impatiently: “But why would he use grease instead of fluorescent green marker paint?”

“Perhaps the stuff was handy, sir.”

Fletcher ignored Dodds’ reply-it had been a rhetorical question anyway. ‘Chen, we shall be closing with the derelict to one hundred meters. Haslam, stand by the pressors in case I miscalculate and blunder into that thing. Doctor, under the circumstances I’m afraid I cannot spare an officer to go with you, but a hundred meter flight should pose no serious problems. Just don’t spend too much time in there.”

“I understand,” said Conway.

“Very well, Doctor. Be ready to go in fifteen minutes. Take extra air tanks, water and whatever medical supplies you consider necessary. I hope you find him. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. He wondered what type of medication would be needed for a doctor who seemed to be physically fit but mentally deranged enough to go exploring in the derelict. Regarding his own requirements, he was less hesitant-he would simply increase the duration of his suit to forty-eight hours, at the end of which time the Rhabwar would depart, whether he found Sutherland or not.

While Conway was checking the extra tanks, Prilicla flew over and landed on the wall beside him. As they clung to the white plastic surface, the little empath’s legs trembled as if it was being subjected to intense emotional radiation. When it spoke Conway was surprised to discover that the emotion was self-generated. It was frightened.

“If I might offer a suggestion, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “the job of finding the being Sutherland would be accomplished much more simply and quickly if I were to accompany you.

Conway thought of the tangle of metal plating and structural members that lay beneath the hull of the derelict, of the danger of rupturing their spacesuits practically every foot of the way, and of the other dangers they could not even guess at. He wondered what had become of the celebrated Cinrusskin cowardice, which in that incredibly fragile species was its most important survival characteristic.

“You would come with me?” Conway asked incredulously. “You are offering to come with me?”

Prilicla responded timidly. “Your emotional radiation is somewhat confused, friend Conway, but on the whole flattering to myself. Yes, I shall go with you and use my empathic faculty to help find Sutherland, if he is still alive. However, you already know that I am not a brave person, and I reserve the right to withdraw from the search should the element of risk pass beyond what I consider acceptable limits.”

“I’m relieved,” said Conway. “For a moment there I was worried about your sanity.”

“I know,” said Prilicla, beginning to add items to its own spacesuit.

They exited by the small personnel lock forward, the main one being connected to the Tenelphi, and had to listen to Captain Fletcher worrying out loud about the situation for several interminable minutes. Then they were outside, and the hull of the derelict was spread out ahead and all around them like a gigantic wall, so pitted and torn and ruptured by centuries of meteorite collisions that at close range the spherical shape of the enormous vessel was not apparent. As they guided themselves towards it, there was a sudden dizzying change of perspective. The derelict was no longer a vertical wall but a vast, metallic landscape on which they were about to touch down, and the two coupled ships were hanging in the sky above it.

Conway found it much easier to guide himself down to the marked area than to control his emotions at the thought of landing on one of the legendary generation ships. But it was likely that his emotional radiation would not inconvenience Prilicla too much because the empath’s feelings would be very similar-even though it was physiologically impossible for a Cinrusskin to experience goose bumps or to have the non-existent hair at the back of its neck prickle with sheer wonder.

This was one of the generation ships which, before the discovery of hyperdrive, had carried colonists from their home worlds to the planets of other stars. All of the technologically advanced species of what was now the Galactic Federation had gone through their generation-ship phase. Melf, Illensa, Traltha, Kelgia and Earth had been among the scores of cultures which-between the time of their developing chemical- or nuclear-powered interplanetary travel and virtually instantaneous interstellar flight via the hyperdimension

had flung these planetary seed pods into space.

When a few decades or centuries later the cultures concerned had perfected hyperdrive or received it from one of the species of the emerging Galactic Federation, they had gone looking for these lumbering sub-light-speed behemoths and had rescued the majority of them a few decades or centuries after they had been launched.

This could be accomplished because the courses of the generation ships were known with accuracy, and their positions at any time during their centuries-long voyages could be computed with ease. Provided no physical or psychological catastrophe had occurred in the meantime-and some of the non-physical things that had gone wrong in the generation ships had given the would-be rescuers nightmares for the rest of their lives-the colonists were transferred to their target worlds within a matter of days rather than centuries.

Conway knew that the last of the generation ships to be contacted had been cleared, their metal and reactors salvaged. A few of them had been converted for use as accommodation for personnel engaged on space construction projects more than six hundred years ago. But this particular generation ship was one of the few which had not been contacted when hyperdrive was perfected. Either by accident or because of faulty design, it had gone off course to become a seedling destined never to reach fallow ground.

In silence they landed on the derelict’s hull. Because of the vessel’s slow spin, Conway had to use his feet and wrist magnets to keep from being tossed gently away again, while Prilicla used its gravity nullifiers in combination with magnetic pads on the ends of its six pipe-stem legs. Carefully they climbed through the gap in the plating and out of the direct sunlight. Conway waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then he switched on his suit spotlight.

There was an irregular natural tunnel in the wreckage, leading down for perhaps thirty meters. At the bottom was a projecting piece of metal, which had been daubed with luminescent green marker paint and a smear of grease.

“If the Tenelphi’s officers marked a route for you,” Fletcher said when Conway reported the find, “it should speed the search for Sutherland. Always provided he hasn’t been diverted from the marked path. But there is another problem, Doctor. The farther you go into the derelict, the more difficult it will be to work your radio signals. We have more power here than you have in your suit power pack, so you will be able to listen to us long after we will cease hearing you. I’m referring to spoken messages, you understand. If you switch on your radio deep inside the ship, we will still be able to hear it, as a hiss or a burst of static, and vice versa. So even if we can no longer talk to each other, switch on your radio every fifteen minutes to let us know you’re still alive, and we’ll acknowledge.

“It is possible to send messages by short and long bursts of static. It is a very old method of signaling still used in certain emergency situations. Do you know Morse?”

“No,” said Conway. “At least, only enough to send SOS.”

“I hope you don’t have to, Doctor.”

Following the marked path through the wreckage was slow, dangerous work. The residual spin on the derelict made them feel as if they were climbing up towards the center of the ship, while Conway’s eyes and all of his instincts insisted that he was moving downwards. When they reached the first daub of paint and grease, another mark became visible deeper inside the ship, but the path inclined sharply to avoid a solid mass of wreckage and the next leg of the journey angled in a new direction for the same reason. They were progressing towards the center of the ship, but in a series of flat zigzags.

Prilicla had taken the lead to avoid the risk of Conway falling onto it. With its six legs projecting through its spherical pressure envelope-Prilicla’s bony extremities were not affected by vacuum conditions-it looked like a fat metallic spider picking its way gracefully through a vast, alien web. Only once did its magnetic pads slip, when it began to fall towards him. Instinctively, Conway reached out a hand to check the creature’s slow tumble as it was going past, then pulled his hand back again. If he had gripped one of those fragile legs, it would probably have snapped off.

But Prilicla checked its own fall with the suit thrusters, and they resumed the long, slow climb.

Just before communications with the ambulance ship became unworkable, Fletcher reported that they had been gone four hours, and asked if Conway was sure that he was following the missing Sutherland and not just the path marked by the party of the Tenelphi crew-members. Conway looked at the patch of luminous paint just ahead of them, and at the smear of grease beside it, and said he was sure.

I’m missing something, he told himself angrily, something that is right in front of my stupid face . . . !

As they moved deeper into the ship the wreckage became less densely packed, but the apparent gravity pull exerted by the spin had diminished so much that quite large masses of plating, loose equipment and demolished furnishings moved or slipped or settled ponderously whenever they tried to grip them. The suit spotlights showed other things, too-crushed, torn and unidentifiable masses of desiccated organic material, which were the remains of the crew or domestic animals caught in the centuries-old catastrophe. But separating the organic from the metallic wreckage would have been both highly dangerous and a waste of time. Finding Sutherland had to take priority over satisfying their curiosity regarding the physiological classification of the species that had built the ship.

They had been traveling for just under seven hours and had begun to move through levels that, although their structure was ruptured and contorted, were no longer choked with wreckage. This was fortunate because Prilicla kept blundering gently into walls and bulkheads through sheer fatigue, and every second or third breath that Conway took seemed to turn into a yawn.

He called a halt and asked the empath if it could detect any emotional radiation apart from Conway’s own. Prilicla said no and was too tired even to sound apologetic. When Conway next heard the periodic hiss in his suit phones, he acknowledged by flipping his transmit switch on and off rapidly three times, pausing, then repeating the signal at short intervals for several minutes.

The Captain would realize, he hoped, that the repeated S signal meant that Prilicla and Conway were going to sleep.

They made much better time on the next stage of the journey, which involved simply walking along virtually undamaged decks and climbing broad ramps or narrower stairs towards the center of the ship. Only once did they have to slow to negotiate a plug of wreckage, which had been caused, apparently, by a large and slow-moving meteorite that had punched its way deep inside the ship. A few minutes later they found their first internal airlock.

Obviously the lock had been built by the survivors after the catastrophe, because it was little more than a large metal cube welded to the surround of an airtight door and containing a very crude outer seal mechanism. Both seals were open and had been that way for a very long time, because the compartment beyond was filled with desiccated vegetation, that practically exploded into dust when they brushed against it.

Conway shivered suddenly as he thought of the vast ship, grievously but not mortally wounded by multiple meteorite collisions, blinded but not powerless, and with groups of survivors living in little islands of light and heat and isolated by steadily dropping pressure. But the survivors had been resourceful. They had built airlocks, which had enabled them to travel between their islands and cooperate in the matter of life-support, and they had been able to go on living for a time.

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “your emotional radiation is difficult to analyze.”

Conway laughed nervously. “I keep telling myself that I don’t believe in ghosts, but I still won’t believe me.”

They went around the hydroponics room because the markers said that they should, and an hour or so later they entered a corridor that was intact except for two large ragged-edged holes in the ceiling and deck. There was a strange dilution of the absolute darkness of the corridor, and they switched off their spotlights.

A faint glow was coming from one of the holes, and when they moved to the edge it was as if they were looking down a deep well with a tiny circle of sunlight at the bottom. Within a few seconds the sunlight had disappeared, and for a few more seconds the wreckage at the other end of the tunnel was illuminated. Then the darkness was complete again.

“Now,” Conway said with relief, “at least we know a shortcut back to the outer hull. But if we hadn’t happened to be here at precisely the right time when the sun was shining in—”

He broke off, thinking that they had been very lucky and that there might be more luck to come, because at the end of the corridor containing the newly discovered exit they could see another airlock. It was marked with luminous paint and a very large smear of grease, and the outer seal was closed, a clear indication that there was pressure in the compartment beyond.

Prilicla was trembling with its own excitement as well as with Conway’s as Conway began to operate the simple actuator mechanism. He had to stop for a moment because the suit radio was hissing at him and he had to acknowledge. But when he had done so it kept on hissing at him.

“The Captain is not a very patient man,” said Conway irritably. “We’ve been gone just over thirty-eight hours and he said he would give me two days He paused for a moment and held his breath, listening to the faint, erratic hissing, which was quieter than the sound of his own breathing, so deep inside the derelict had they penetrated. It was difficult to tell when a hiss stopped or started, but gradually he detected a pattern in the signals. Three short bursts. Pause. Three long bursts. Pause. Three short bursts, followed by a longer pause, after which the sequence was repeated again and again. A distress signal. An SOS . . .

“There can’t be anything wrong with the ship,” he said. “That would be ridiculous. So it has to be a problem with the patients. Anyway, they want us back there and I would say the matter is urgent.”

Prilicla, clinging to the wall beside the airlock, did not reply for several seconds. Finally it said, “Pardon the seeming unpoliteness, friend Conway, but my attention was elsewhere. It is at the limit of my range, but I have detected an intelligent life-form.”

“Sutherland!” said Conway.

“I should think so, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. It began to tremble in sympathy with Conway’s dilemma.

Somewhere within a few hundred feet was the missing Tenelphi medic, physical condition unknown, but very definitely alive. It might take an hour or more to find him, even with Prilicla’s help. Conway desperately wanted to find and rescue the man, not just for the usual reasons but because he felt sure that he possessed the answer to what had happened to the other Tenelphi officers. But he and Prilicla were wanted back on the Rhabwar, urgently. Fletcher would not send an SOS signal without good reason.

Obviously the ship was not in distress, so it had to be a problem involving the patients. A sudden worsening of their condition, perhaps, which was serious enough for Murchison and Naydrad-two beings who did not panic without reason-to agree to this method of recalling the two doctors. But, thought Conway suddenly, one doctor could satisfy them temporarily until they got two more a little later, one of whom, Sutherland, had a greater knowledge of the malady concerned than the ambulance ship medics.

Prilicla ceased trembling as soon as Conway made his decision. He turned to his companion. “Doctor, we’ll have to split up. They need us urgently on the ship, or maybe they just want to talk to us urgently. Would you mind taking the shortcut to the outer hull? Find out what the problem is and give what advice you can. But don’t move away from the outer end of that tunnel for at least an hour after you get there. If you do that you will be in line of sight with the Rhabwar and, via the tunnel, with me down here, and can relay messages in either direction.

“You should be able to get to the other end of the tunnel, with no zigzagging necessary and with the centrifugal force of the spin helping you along, in roughly two hours,” Conway went on. “This should give me enough time to find Sutherland and start bringing him out. It has to be my job because it will need DBDG muscles rather than Cinrusskin sympathy to help him through that tunnel.”

“I agree, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, already moving along the corridor towards the opening. “I have rarely agreed to a request with more enthusiasm . . .

The first surprise when he went through the airlock was that there was light. He found himself in a large, open compartment, which, judging from the remains of equipment attached to the deck, walls and ceiling, had been the ship’s assembly and recreation area. The equipment, which had originally been used for weightless exercising and probably for competitive sports as well, had been drastically modified to provide supports for the sandwich hammocks, which were necessary for sleeping in the weightless condition. Apart from a few sections sheeted in with transparent plastic and containing vegetation, some of which was still green, the interior surfaces of the enormous compartment were covered with bedding and furniture modified for gravity-free conditions. It looked as if up to two hundred survivors of the original meteorite collisions, including their young, had once been packed into this compartment. The visual evidence indicated that they had lived there for a long time. The second surprise was that there were no traces of them other than the furniture and fittings they had used. Where were the bodies of the long-dead survivors?

Conway felt his scalp prickle. He turned up the volume of his external suit speaker to full and yelled “Sutherland!”

No response.

Conway launched himself across the compartment towards the opposite wall, where there were two doors. One of them was partly open and light was shining through. When he landed beside it he knew it was the ship’s library.

It was not just the neat racks of books and tape-spools that covered the walls and ceiling of the empty room, or the reading and scanning equipment attached to the deck, or even the present-day tapes and portable recorders that had belonged to the Tenelphi officers but that had been abandoned to drift weightlessly about the room. He knew it was the library because he had been able to read the sign on the door, just as he was able to read the name below the ship’s crest mounted at eye-level on the opposite wall. As he stared at that famous crest everything suddenly became clear.

He knew why the Tenelphi had run into trouble, why the officers had left their ship for the derelict, leaving only their medic as watch-keeping officer. He knew why they had returned so hastily, why they were sick and why there was so little he, or anyone else for that matter, could do for them. He also knew why Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland used grease instead of marker paint, and he had a fair idea of the situation confronting the doctor that had driven him back to the derelict. He knew because that ship’s name and crest appeared in the history books of Earth and of every Earth-seeded planet.

Conway swallowed, blinked away the fog that was temporarily impairing his vision, and backed slowly out of the room.

The sign on the other door had read Sports Equipment Stowage, but it had been relettered Sick Bay. When he slid it open he found that it, too, was lighted, but dimly.

Along the walls on both sides of the door, equipment storage shelves had been modified to serve as tiers of bunks, and two of them were occupied. The bodies occupying them were emaciated to the point of deformity, partly because of malnutrition and partly because of being born and living out their lives in the weightless condition. Unlike the desiccated sections of bodies Prilicla and he had encountered on the outer decks, these two had been exposed to atmosphere, and decomposition had taken place. The process was not sufficiently advanced, however, to conceal the fact that the bodies were of classification DBDG, an old male and a girl-child, both Earth-human, and that their deaths had occurred within the past few months.

Conway thought of the voyage that had lasted nearly seven centuries and of the last two survivors who had almost made it, and he had to blink again. Angrily, he moved deeper into the room, pulling himself along the edge of a treatment table and instrument cabinet. In a far corner his spotlight illuminated a spacesuited figure holding a squarish object in one hand and supporting itself against an open cabinet door with the other.

“S . . . Sutherland?”

The figure jerked and in a weak voice replied, “Not so bloody loud.”

Conway turned down the volume of his speaker and said quickly, “I’m glad to see you, Doctor. I’m Conway, Sector General. We have to get you back to the ambulance ship quickly. They’re having problems there and . . .

He broke off because Sutherland was refusing to let go of the cabinet. Reassuringly, Conway went on: “I know why you used yellow grease instead of paint, and I haven’t unsealed my helmet. We know there is pressure in other parts of the ship. Are there any survivors? And did you find what you were looking for, Doctor?”

Not until they were outside the sick bay with the door closed behind them did Sutherland speak. He opened his visor, rubbed at the moisture beading the inside of it. “Thank God somebody remembers his history,” he said weakly. “No, Doctor, there are no survivors. I searched the other air-filled compartments. One of them is a sort of cemetery of inedible remains. I think cannibalism was forced on them at the end, and they had to put their dead somewhere where they would be, well, available. And no again, I didn’t find what I was looking for, just a means of identifying but not curing the condition. All the indicated medication spoiled hundreds of years ago He gestured with the book he was holding. “I had to read some fine print in there, so I increased the air pressure inside my suit so that when I opened my visor for a closer look it would blow away any airborne infection. In theory it should have worked.”

Obviously it had not worked. In spite of the higher pressure inside his suit blowing air outwards through his visor opening, the Surgeon-Lieutenant had caught what his fellow officers had. He was sweating profusely, squinting against the light and his eyes were streaming, but he was not delirious or unconscious, as the other officers from the Tenelphi had been. Not yet.

“We found a quick way out,” Conway said. “Well, relatively. Do you think you can climb with my assistance, or should I tie your arms and legs and lower you ahead of me?”

Sutherland was in poor shape, but he most emphatically did not want to be tied and lowered, no matter how carefully, down a tunnel whose walls were of twisted and jagged-edged metal. They compromised by strapping themselves together back to back, with Conway doing the climbing and the other medic fending them off the obstructions Conway could not see. They made very good time, so much so that they had begun to catch up to Prilicla before the Cinrusskin was more than halfway along the tunnel. Every time the sun shone into the other end, the dark circle that was the empath’s spacesuited body seemed larger.

The continuous hissing of the SOS signal grew louder by the minute, then suddenly it stopped.

A few minutes later the tiny black circle that was Prilicla became a shining disk as the empath cleared the mouth of the tunnel and moved into sunlight. It reported that the Rhabwar and the Tenelphi were in sight, and that there should be no problem making normal radio contact. They heard it calling the Rhabwar, and what seemed like ten years later came the hissing and crackling sound of the ambulance ship’s reply. Conway was able to make out some of the words through the background mush, so he was not completely surprised by Prilicla’s relayed message.

“Friend Conway,” said the empath, and he could imagine it trying desperately to find some way of softening the effect of its bad news. “That was Naydrad. All the DBDG Earth-humans on the ship, including Pathologist Murchison, are displaying symptoms similar to those of the Tenelphi officers, with varying degrees of incapacity. The Captain and Lieutenant Chen are the least badly affected so far, but both are in a condition that warrants their being confined to bed. Naydrad requires our assistance urgently, and the Captain says he’ll leave without us if we don’t hurry up. Lieutenant Chen is doubtful about our leaving at all, even if they weren’t having to modify the hyperdrive envelope to accommodate the Tenelphi. It seems there are additional problems caused by the proximity of the system’s sun that require a trained astrogator to—”

“That’s enough,” Conway broke in sharply. “Tell them to dump the Tenelphi! Decouple and undock and jettison any samples Chen took aboard for analysis. Neither Sector General nor the Monitor Corps will thank us for bringing back anything that has been in contact with the derelict. They might not be too happy to see us- He broke off as he heard Naydrad’s voice relaying his instructions to the Captain and the beginning of Fletcher’s reply. He went on quickly: “Prilicla, I’m receiving the ship direct, so I don’t need you as a relay anymore. Return to the ship as quickly as possible and help Naydrad with the patients. We should be clear of this tunnel in fifteen minutes. Captain Fletcher, can you hear me?”

A voice which Conway did not recognize as the Captain’s said, “I can hear you.”

“Right,” said Conway, and very briefly he explained what had happened to the Tenelphi and themselves . . .

Finding a derelict in the system they were surveying had been a welcome break in the monotony for the scoutship and for the offduty officers who went on board to investigate and, if possible, identify the vessel. Like all scoutships on survey duty, the Tenelphi had a complement consisting of a Captain and his astrogation, communications, engineering and medical officers, while the remaining five were the survey specialists, whose work went on around the clock.

According to Sutherland, the first officers to board the derelict had identified the ship very quickly, because of a lucky find of a store requisition form, dated and headed with the ship’s crest. The result had been that everyone, including the Captain, had hastily transshipped to the derelict. The sole exception was the ship’s medic, whose specialty was considered the least useful on what had suddenly become a mass information-gathering exercise.

For the derelict was none other than the Einstein, the first starship to leave Earth and the only one of those early generation ships from that planet not to be rescued by the later hyperdrive vessels. Many attempts at rescuing it had been made over the centuries, but the Einstein had not followed its intended course. It had been assumed that the ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction within a relatively short time of leaving the solar system.

And now here it was, the first and undoubtedly the bravest attempt by mankind to reach the stars the hard way, because at that time its technology had been untried, because nobody knew with absolute certainty that its target system contained habitable planets, and because its crew, the very best people that Earth could produce, wanted to go anyway. As well, the Einstein was a piece of technological and psychosociological history, the embodiment of one of the greatest legends of star travel. Now this great ship with its priceless log and records was falling into the sun and would be destroyed within the week. Small wonder, therefore, that the Tenelphi was left with only its medical officer on board. But even he did not realize that there was any danger in the situation until the crew, sick and sweating and near delirium, began to return. From the onset Sutherland had discarded Conway’s first assumptions, that their condition was due to radiation poisoning, inhaling toxic material or eating infected food, because the returning officers told him about the conditions on board the derelict and how long some of the descendants of its crew had been able to survive.

Not only did the ship carry priceless records of man’s first attempt at interstellar flight, it also contained an unknown quantity and variety of bacteria-preserved by the heat and atmosphere and recently living human organisms-of a type which had existed seven hundred years ago and for which the human race no longer had immunity.

Noting the rapidly worsening condition of his fellow officers and knowing there was little he could do for them, Sutherland insisted that they all wear spacesuits continually to avoid the possibility of cross-infection-he could not be absolutely sure they were all suffering from the same disease-and as protection in case of accidents while they were moving clear of the derelict. Their intention was to Jump to Sector General, where some high-powered medical assistance would be available.

When the collision-the inevitable collision, according to Sutherland, considering the semi-conscious and delirious condition of the crew-occurred, he moved the men to the lock antechamber in preparation for a quick evacuation, tried to send a subspace radio signal, and not knowing if he was doing the job properly, tried to eject the distress beacon. But the collision had damaged the release mechanism, and he had to push it out of the airlock. His patients’ condition was worsening, and he wondered again if there was anything at all that he could do for them.

It was then that he decided to go aboard the derelict himself, to look for a cure in the very place the disease had originated. The solution might be in the derelict’s medicine chest, the “sin chest” of the garbled radio signal. With pressure dropping steadily aboard the badly damaged Tenelphi and all the recorders abandoned on the derelict, he could not leave a proper warning for any would-be rescuers. But he had done his best.

He had smeared the Tenelphi’s airlock outer seal with yellow grease, not knowing that the heat from the distress beacon would turn it brown, and he had marked his path through the derelict in similar fashion. Few people these days realized, and even Conway had been slow to remember, that in pre-space-travel times a ship with disease on board flew a yellow flag . . .

“Sutherland discovered that the medication in the Einstein’s sick bay had long since spoiled,” Conway went on, “but he did find a medical textbook which mentioned a number of diseases with symptoms similar to those shown by our people. It is one of the old influenza variants, he thinks, although in our case the loss of natural immunity over the centuries means that these symptoms are being experienced with much greater severity, and any prognosis would be uncertain. That is why I would like you to record this information for proper subspace transmission to Sector General, so that they will know exactly what to expect. And I suggest you make preparations for an automatic Jump, in case you aren’t feeling well enough to—”

“Doctor,” the Captain replied weakly, “I’m trying to do just that. How quickly can you get back here?”

Conway remained silent for a moment while he and Sutherland cleared the edge of the tunnel. “I have you in sight. Ten minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later Conway was removing Sutherland’s spacesuit and uniform on the Casualty Deck, which was rapidly becoming overcrowded. Doctor Prilicla was hovering over the patients in turn, keeping an eye and an empathic faculty on their condition, while Naydrad brought in Lieutenant Haslam, who had collapsed at his position in Control a few minutes earlier.

Neither of the extraterrestrials had anything to fear from terrestrial pathogens, even seven-hundred-year-old pathogens. The Tenelphi and Rhabwar crew-members and Murchison could only lie and hope, if they weren’t already delirious or unconscious, that their bodies’ defenses would find some way of fighting this enemy from the past. Only Conway had remained free from infection, because a smear of grease or something in a garbled radio signal had worried his subconscious to the extent that he had not unsealed his visor after the scoutship’s officers had been brought aboard.

“Four-G thrust in five seconds,” came Chen’s voice from the speaker. “Artificial gravity compensators ready.”

The next time Conway looked at the repeater screen it showed the Einstein and the Tenelphi shrunk to the size of a tiny double star. He finished making Sutherland as comfortable as possible, checked his IVs and moved on to Haslam and Dodds. He was leaving Murchison to the last, because he wanted to spend more time with her.

She was perspiring profusely despite the reduced temperature inside the pressure litter, muttering to herself and turning her head from side to side, eyes half-open but not really conscious of his presence. He was shocked to see Murchison like this. He realized that she was a very seriously ill patient instead of the colleague he had loved and respected since the days when she was a nurse in the FGLI maternity section, when he was convinced that all the ills of the Galaxy could be cured by his pocket x-ray scanner and his dedication to his profession.

But in Sector General, where the lowliest member of the medical staff would be considered a leading authority in a single-species planetary hospital, all things were possible. An able nurse with wide e-t experience could move up and across the lines of promotion to become one of the hospital’s best pathologists, and a junior doctor with unconventional ideas bubbling about in a head that was much too large could learn sense. Conway sighed, wanting to touch and reassure her. But Naydrad had already done all that it was possible to do for her, and there was nothing he could do except watch and wait while her condition deteriorated towards that of the Tenelphi officers.

With any luck they would soon be transferred to the hospital, where more high-powered help and resources were available. Fletcher and Chen had been lucky in that the Captain had been in Control and the engineer officer in the Power Room while the infected Tenelphi officers were being brought aboard, so they had been the last two to be affected. Fortunately, they were still fit enough to work the ship.

Or were they . . .

The repeater screen was still showing an expanse of blackness in which the Einstein and the Tenelphi were indistinguishable among the background stars. But by now the screen should be showing the non-color of the hyperdimension. It would be much better for all concerned, Conway thought suddenly, if he stopped doing nothing for Murchison and tried to do something for Chen and the Captain.

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, indicating with one of its feelers, “would you look at this patient, please, and at the one over there? I feel they are conscious and need reassurance by a member of their own species.”

Ten minutes later Conway was in the well, pulling himself towards Control. As he entered he could hear the voices of the Captain and engineer officer calling numbers to each other, with frequent stops for repeats and rechecks. Fletcher’s face was red and dripping with perspiration, his eyes were streaming and his delirium seemed to have taken the form of a rigid professional monomania as he blinked and squinted at the displays on his panel and read off the numbers. Meanwhile, Chen, who did not look much better, replied from the strange position of the astrogator’s panel. Conway regarded them clinically and did not like what he saw.

“You need help,” he said firmly.

Fletcher looked up at him through red-rimmed, streaming eyes. “Yes, Doctor, but not yours. You saw what happened to the Tenelphi when the medical officer tried to pilot it. Just tend to your patients and leave us alone.”

Chen rubbed sweat from his face. “What the Captain is trying to say, Doctor, is that he can’t teach you in a few minutes what it took him five years of intensive training to learn, and that the delay in making the Jump is caused by our having to get it right first time in case we aren t fit enough for a second try and we materialize in the wrong galactic sector, and that he is sorry for his bad manners but he is feeling terrible.”

Conway laughed. “I accept his apology. But I have just come from speaking to one of the Tenelphi victims of what we now feel sure is one of the old influenza variants. He was one of the first to fall sick along with the other member of the original boarding party. Now his temperature is returning to normal and that of the other one is also falling rapidly. I would say that this outbreak of sevenhundred-year-old flu can be treated successfully with supportive medication, although the hospital will probably insist on a period of quarantine for all of us when we get back.

“However,” he went on briskly, “the officer I speak of is the Tenelphi’s astrogator, and frankly, he is in much better shape than either of you two. You do need help?”

They were looking at him as if he had just produced a miracle, as if in some peculiar fashion Conway was solely responsible for all the complex mechanisms evolved by the DBDG Earth-human lifeform to protect itself against disease-which was, of course, ridiculous. He nodded to them and returned to the Casualty Deck to send up the Tenelphi astrogator. He was thinking that within two weeks at most, everyone apart from the immune Prilicla and Naydrad would be fully recovered and convalescent, and he would no longer have to treat Pathologist Murchison as a patient.

Part 3

QUARANTINE

Immediately on its return to Sector General, the Rhabwar and the I Earth-human personnel on board were placed in strict quarantine and refused admission to the hospital. Conway, who had had no direct physical contact with either the Tenelphi’s or his ambulance ship’s crews since the infection had come aboard, was doubly quarantined in that he inhabited the man-shaped bubble of virus-free air that was his long-duration spacesuit and a cabin hastily modified to provide life-support independent of the ship’s infected system.

There was no real problem in providing supportive treatment to both crews-who were either responding well or were in varying stages of convalescence-because he had Prilicla and Naydrad assisting him. As extraterrestrials they were, of course, impervious to Earth-human pathogens, and they were being very smug about this. Neither was there any difficulty in accommodating the two crews- the officers of the Tenelphi occupied the Casualty Deck, and the ambulance ship personnel had their own cabins. But there were periods, often as long as twenty-three hours in the day, when the Rhabwar was dreadfully overcrowded.

The real problem was that while the hospital refused them admittance, practically every Earth-human and e-t in Sector General was trying to find an excuse to visit the ambulance ship.

During the first week, combined medical and engineering teams worked around the clock flushing out the ship’s air system and sterilizing everything with which the infected air had come in contact. There were also constant checks on the progress of the patients and constant supervision of the regimen, which would ensure that after their cure was effected they would not retain the ability of passing on the infection to any other member of the Earth-human DBDG classification. Lastly, there were those who came simply to talk to the patients and complain about Conway’s handling of the Einstein incident.

These included Thornnastor, the elephantine Tralthan Diagnostician in charge of the Pathology Department, who came chiefly to raise the morale of its department-member Murchison by providing her with the latest hospital gossip, which in some of the e-t wards was colorful; and a variegated bunch of highly professional medics and bitterly disappointed amateur historians who wanted to talk to the Tenelphi crew about their experiences aboard the derelict, and to castigate Conway for not bringing back more in the way of specimens than a seven-hundred-year-old medical textbook, which had fallen apart as soon as it was exposed to present-day sterilization techniques.

Inside his suit-shaped bubble of sterile air, Conway tried, not always successfully, to remain emotionally cool and aloof. Captain Fletcher, whose convalescence had advanced to the stage where he was convinced that medical red tape was all that was keeping him from resuming active duty, could not remain cool at all. Especially when the Rhabwar personnel gathered together at mealtimes.

“You are a senior physician, after all, and you are still the ranking medical officer on this ship,” the Captain observed in an aggrieved tone while he attacked the rather bland meal the hospital dietitians had prescribed for them. “Unlike us, Doctor, you never were a patient, so your rank was not taken away when you were issued a hospital gown. I mean, Thornnastor is all right as a person, but it’s an FGLI, after all, and its movements are about as graceful as those of a six-legged baby elephant. Did you see what it did to the ladder on the Casualty Deck, and to the door of your cabin, ma’am?”

He broke off to smile admiringly at Murchison. Lieutenant Haslam muttered something about often feeling like breaking down the pathologist’s door himself, and the Captain silenced him with a frown. Lieutenants Dodds and Chen, like the good junior officers they were, maintained a respectful silence, and in common with the other male Earth-human DBDGs present, exuded minor-key emotional radiation of a pleasurable nature, which Prilicla would have described as being associated with the urge to reproduce. Charge Nurse Naydrad, who rarely allowed anything to interfere with bodily refueling, kept on moving large portions of the green and yellow vegetable fiber it was pleased to call food, and ignored them.

The emotion-sensitive Doctor Prilicla, who could ignore nobody, hovered silently above the edge of the table, showing no signs of emotional distress. Obviously the Captain was not as irritated as he sounded.

“. . . Seriously, Doctor,” Fletcher went on, “it isn’t just Thornnastor blundering into areas of the ship that were not meant for FGLIs. Some of the other e-ts take up a lot of space as well, and there are times when each crew-member of the Tenelphi has about half a dozen e-ts or Earth-humans sitting at his feet while he chatters on and on about the things he saw on that derelict, and they treat us as if we’d caught a mutated form of leprosy instead of the same influenza virus as the scoutship crew.”

Conway laughed. “I can understand their feelings, Captain. They lost material of priceless historic value, which was already considered irretrievably lost for many centuries. That means they have lost it twice and feel twice as angry with me for not bringing back an ambulance shipful of records and artifacts from the Einstein. At the time I was tempted. But who knows what else I might have brought back with those records in the way of seven-hundred-year-old bacterial and viral infections from which we have little or no immunity? I couldn’t take the risk, and they, when they stop being bitterly disappointed amateur historians and go back to being the hospital’s top seniors and Diagnosticians, will know that, given the same circumstances, they would have done exactly what I did.”

“I agree, Doctor,” said Fletcher, “and I sympathize with your problem and theirs. I also know that they have to undergo a very thorough and, well, physically inconvenient decontamination procedure on leaving the ship, regardless of their physiological classifications, and this weeds out all but the most enthusiastic or masochistic amateur historians. All I want to know is whether there is a polite way, or any way, of telling them to stay off my ship.”

“Some of them,” said Conway helplessly, “are Diagnosticians.”

“You say that as if it was some kind of answer, Doctor,” said the Captain, looking perplexed. “What is so special about a Diagnostician?”

Everyone stopped eating to look at Conway, who alone among them could not eat anywhere outside his sterile cabin. Prilicla’s hover became somewhat unstable, and Naydrad gave a short foghorn blast that was untranslatable but was probably the Kelgian equivalent of a snort of incredulity.

It was Murchison who finally spoke. “The Diagnosticians are very special, Captain,” she said. “And peculiar. You already know that they are the top-ranking medical personnel in the hospital, and as such, cannot be readily ordered around. Another reason is that when you speak to one of them you can never be sure who or what you are talking to . . .”

Sector General was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, Murchison explained, but no single person could hold in his or its brain even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity and a certain amount of e-t diagnostic ability came with training and experience, but the complete physiological knowledge of any patient requiring complex treatment was furnished by means of an Educator tape. This was simply the brain recording of some great medical authority belonging to the same species as or a species similar to that of the patient undergoing treatment.

If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took a DBLF physiology tape until treatment was completed, after which the recording was erased from his mind. The sole exceptions to this rule were senior physicians with teaching duties, which required the retention of one or two tapes, and the Diagnosticians.

A Diagnostician was one of the hospital elite, a being whose mind was considered stable enough to retain six, seven, and in a few cases, ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To these datacrammed minds were given projects such as original research in xenological medicine and the treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.

But the tapes did not impart only physiological data. Rather, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. In effect, a Diagnosticianan subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of schizophrenia. The entities apparently sharing a Diagnostician’s mind could well be aggressive, unpleasant individuals-geniuses, whether medical or otherwise, were rarely pleasant people-with all sorts of peeves and phobias.

The original personality was never submerged completely, but depending on the case or research project currently being worked on and the depth of concentration required for it, one could never be sure of a Diagnostician’s reaction to any request that was not of a medical nature. Even then it was considered good manners to find out who or what kind of personality was in partial mental control of the entity concerned before saying anything at all. As a class they were not people one gave orders to, and even the hospital’s Chief Psychologist O’Mara had to treat them with a certain degree of circumspection.

“. . . So I’m afraid you can’t just tell them to go away, Captain,” Murchison went on, “and the seniors accompanying those Diagnosticians will have sound medical reasons, as well as non-medical ones, for being here. You should also remember that for the past two weeks they have been checking us practically cell by cell, and they might become even more thorough if we were to suggest that they stop wasting time talking history to the scoutship crew and—”

“Not that,” said the Captain hurriedly, and sighed. “But Thornnastor seems a friendly enough being, if a bit big and awkward, and it is our most frequent visitor. Could you suggest to it, ma’am, that if it came less often and without its medical retinue . . .”

Murchison shook her head firmly. “Thornnastor is Diagnosticianin-Charge in Pathology and as such is the hospital’s senior Diagnostician. It is also a source of news, a friend, and my head of department. Anyway, I enjoy Thorny’s visits. You may think it odd that a Tralthan FGLI, an oversized, elephantine, six-legged, warmblooded oxygen-breather with four manipulatory appendages and more eyes than seems decent should relish discussing a juicy piece of gossip from the SNLU section of the methane wards. You may even wonder how anything of a scandalous nature could occur between two intelligent crystalline entities living at minus one hundred and fifty degrees centigrade, or why their off-duty activities are of such interest to a warm-blooded oxygen-breather. But you must understand that Thorny’s feeling for other e-ts, and even for us Earth-humans, is unique. It is, you see, one of our most stable and well-integrated multi-personalities . . .

Fletcher held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “As well as possessing the ability to instill a degree of personal loyalty in its staff, which is unusual, to say the least. All right, ma’am, you’ve convinced me. I am no longer ignorant about Diagnosticians, and I can do nothing about their overrunning my ship.”

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” Murchison agreed sympathetically. “Only O’Mara could do something about that. But he is very fond of his Diagnosticians and of saying that any being sane enough to be a Diagnostician is mad . . .

While Murchison and Fletcher had been speaking, the illumination in the dining compartment had undergone a subtle change, caused by the vision screen lighting up to show the craggy features of the Chief Psychologist.

“Why is it that every time I break in on a conversation I find people talking about me,” O’Mara asked sourly. “But don’t apologize or explain; you would strain my credulity. Conway, Fletcher, I have news for you. Doctor, you can discard that spacesuit, reconnect your cabin to the ship’s air system, and resume eating and direct physical contact with your colleagues.” He smiled faintly, but did not look at Murchison as he went on. “The ship has been cleared as free from infection, but frankly, this business has uncovered a serious weakness in patient reception procedures.

“Up until now,” he continued, “we have assumed, and rightly, that new patients or casualties pose no threat because e-t pathogens cannot affect entities of another species. And because any being traveling in space, even on an interplanetary hop, has to undergo strict health checks, we tended to be a bit lax regarding same-species infections. That is why we are being very cautious and are allowing only the Tenelphi crew off the ship while the rest of you must stay aboard the Rhabwar for another five days. They caught the disease first, then the ambulance ship crew did; if you don’t come down with symptoms during the next five days, then your ship and everyone on it is clear. However, to keep you and everyone else from feeling bored with inaction we have a job for you. Captain Fletcher, you and your officers are returned to active duty. How soon can you be ready to leave?”

Fletcher tried hard not to show his eagerness as he replied: “We have been unofficially on active duty for the past week and the ship is ready, Major. Provided we can have immediate action in the matter of topping up stores and medical consumables and there are no oversized e-ts getting underfoot—”

“That I can promise,” said O’Mara.

“we can take off within two hours,” Fletcher ended.

“Very well,” replied the Chief Psychologist briskly. “You will be answering a distress beacon detected in Sector Five, well out on the rim. The radiation signature of the beacon indicates that it is not one of ours. There is no Federation traffic out there anyway, and the star destiny is so low that we didn’t waste time trying to chart the area ourselves. But if there is a star-traveling race out there, they might let us copy their charts when we show them ours. Especially if you bail some of their friends out of trouble. Or perhaps I should not remind highly altruistic medical types like yourselves of the mutual profit aspect of this situation. Communications Center will let you have the coordinates of the beacon presently. The probability of this distress signal originating from a ship of a hitherto undiscovered species is close to being a certainty.

“And Conway,” O’Mara ended dryly, “this time try to bring back a few ordinary, or even extraordinary, casualties, and not a potential epidemic . . .

* * *

They wasted no time moving out to Jump distance because Fletcher was now fully confident of the capabilities of his ship. He did complain a little, although it seemed to Conway to be more in the nature of an apology, about the tuition during the first mission and this one. Theoretically, his officers and the medical team were supposed to become less specialized in their functions.

According to the ambulance-ship project directive, Conway was supposed to teach his officers the rudiments of e-t physiology, their physical structures, musculatures, circulatory systems and so on- enough of the subject, at least, for them not to kill some hapless casualty through good intentions. Meanwhile, Fletcher was supposed to reciprocate by lecturing the medical team on his particular specialty, e-t ship design and comparative technology, so that they would not make elementary errors regarding the vessel surrounding their patient.

Fletcher agreed with Conway that there would be no time to set up the lecture program on this mission, but that they would keep it in mind for the future. The result was that Conway spent most of the time in hyperspace with Naydrad, Prilicla and Murchison on the Casualty Deck, wondering whether they were properly prepared to receive an unknown number of casualties of an unknown physiological type. But he was in Control, at Fletcher’s invitation, just before they were due to emerge.

A few seconds after the Rhabwar emerged into normal space, Lieutenant Dodds announced, “Wreckage ahead, sir.”

“I don’t believe . . . !” Fletcher began incredulously. “The accuracy of your astrogation is much too good, Dodds, to be due to anything but sheer luck.”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Dodds replied, grinning. “Distance is twelve miles. I’m locking on the scope now. You know, sir, this could be the fastest rescue ever recorded.”

The Captain did not reply. He was looking pleased and excited and a little bit wary of so much good luck. On the screen the wreckage showed as a flickering gray blur spinning rapidly in the blackness. Out here on the Rim the stellar density was low, and most of the available light came from the long, faintly shining fog bank, which was the parent galaxy. Suddenly the image became brighter but even more blurred as Dodds switched to the infrared receptors and they saw the wreckage by its own heat radiation.

“Sensors?” the Captain asked.

“Non-organic material only, sir,” Haslam reported. “No atmosphere present. Relative to the ambient temperature, it is very warm, suggesting that whatever happened occurred recently and probably as a result of an explosion.——

Before the Captain could reply, Dodds said, “More wreckage, sir. A larger piece. Distance fifty-two miles. Spinning rapidly.”

“Give me the numbers for closing with the larger piece,” Fletcher ordered. “Power Room. I want maximum thrust available in five minutes.”

“Three more pieces,” said Dodds. “Large, distance one hundred plus miles, widely divergent bearings, sir,”

“Show me a distribution diagram,” said the Captain, responding quickly. “Compute courses and velocities of all the pieces of wreckage, with a view to tracing the original point of the explosion. Haslam, can you tell me anything?”

“Same temperatures and material as the other pieces, sir,” Haslam reported. “But they are at the limit of sensor range, and I could not say with certainty that it is composed entirely of metal. None of the pieces encloses an atmosphere, even residual.”

“So if organic material is present,” said Fletcher grimly, “it is no longer alive.”

“More wreckage, sir,” said Dodds.

This is not going to be a fast rescue, thought Conway. It might not even be a rescue at all.

Fletcher must have been reading Conway’s mind, because he pointed at the big repeater screen. “Don’t give up hope, Doctor. The first indications are that a ship has suffered a catastrophic explosion, and the distress beacon was released automatically as a result of the malfunction and not by one of the survivors, if any. But look at that display . . .

The picture on the screen did not mean very much to Conway. He knew that the winking blue spot was the Rhabwar and that the white traces that were appearing every few seconds were wreckage detected by the ship’s expanding radar and sensory spheres. The fine yellow lines that converged at the center of the screen were the computed paths taken by the wreckage from the point of the explosion, and what should have been a simple picture was confused by groups of symbols and numbers that flickered, changed or burned steadily beside every trace.

The distribution of the wreckage seems a bit lopsided for an explosion,” Fletcher went on, “and although the scale is too small for it to be apparent on the screen, it appears to have originated from a short, flat arc rather than a point. Then, there is the virtually uniform rate of spin on the pieces of wreckage, and their relatively small number and large size. When a ship is torn apart by an explosion, usually caused by a power-reactor malfunction, debris size is small and the rate of spin negligible. Also, the temperature of this wreckage is too low for it to have originated in a reactor explosion, which we now know would have to have occurred less than seven hours ago.

“The probability is,” the Captain ended, “that it was a hyperdrive generator malfunction, Doctor, and not an explosion.”

Conway tried to control his irritation at the other’s lecturing and faintly condescending tone, realizing that the Captain could not help his academic background. Conway knew that if one of a matched set of hyperdrive generators was to fail, the other was supposed to cut out automatically; the vessel concerned would emerge suddenly into normal space somewhere between the stars, and sit there, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until either it repaired the sick generator or help arrived. But there had been instances when the safety cutoff on the good generator had failed or had been a split second late in functioning, which meant that a part of the ship had been proceeding at hyperspeed while the rest had been slowed instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the vessel concerned was, at best, only slightly less catastrophic than a reactor explosion-but at least there would be no heat fusion, radiation and the other complications of a reactor blowup to worry about. The chance of finding survivors was very slightly increased.

“I understand,” said Conway. He flipped the intercom switch on his console and said, “Casualty Deck, Conway here. You may stand down. Nothing will be happening for at least two hours.”

“That is a pretty accurate estimate,” Fletcher said dryly. “Since when have you become an astrogator, Doctor? Never mind. Dodds, compute a course linking the three largest pieces of wreckage, and put the figures on the Power Room repeater. Chen, we will apply maximum thrust in ten minutes. To save time I plan to make a close pass of the likeliest prospects and decelerate only if Haslam’s sensors or Doctor Prilicla’s empathy say it is worth doing so. Haslam, stay on the sensors and pick out a few more possibilities for us to look at once we’ve checked the first three. And continue searching the radio frequencies in case a survivor is trying to attract our attention in that fashion, and keep an eye on your scope in case it is trying to flash a light at us.”

As Conway was leaving the Control Deck to rejoin his medical team aft, Haslam said in a quiet, respectful voice, “I’ve only got two eyes, sir, and they don’t swivel independently . . .

One hour and fifty-two minutes later they passed heartstoppingly close to the first piece of wreckage. The sensors had already reported negatively on it-no organic material present other than structural plastic trimming panels and furniture, no pockets of atmosphere that might have contained a living entity. When they tried to put a tractor beam on it to check its spin, the whole mass began to fly apart and they had to take violent evasive action.

They caught up with the next piece in less than an hour. They had to decelerate and return to it, because the sensors reported small pockets of atmosphere inside the wreckage and organic material of a non-structural but not necessarily still-living kind. This time they did not risk trying to check its spin in case the loose mass of wreckage fell apart and the potentially life-giving pockets of air were lost to space. Instead, they set the sensor and vision recorders going during their slow, careful and extremely close approach. The close approach was for Prilicla’s benefit, but the empath reported apologetically that none of the organic material was alive.

They had three hours to study the recordings before reaching the third piece of wreckage, which was the largest and most promising to be detected. In the process they learned quite a lot about the design philosophy of the alien ship-builders from the way the structural members and bulkheads had been twisted apart by the accident. The dimensions of the corridors and compartments gave an indication of the size of the life-forms that had crewed the ship. They had glimpses of things that looked like thick pieces of manycolored fur trapped and partially hidden in the wreckage. It might have been floor covering or bedding, except that a few of the pieces were restrained by webbing and many of them showed patches of reddish brown, which looked very much like dried blood.

“Judging by the color of those stains,” Murchison observed as they studied one of the stills on the Casualty Deck repeater, “the chances are pretty good that they are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. But do you think anyone could survive a disaster like that?”

Conway shook his head but tried to sound optimistic. “The staining on the fur does not appear to be associated with lacerations or punctured wounds of the kind suffered through violent deceleration or collision when the restraining body harness becomes deeply embedded in the body it was meant to protect. From these pictures it is impossible to tell which end of the body is which, but the staining seems to be located in the same areas of all the bodies. This suggests explosive decompression and the exiting of body fluid through natural openings, rather than massive external injury due to a sudden deceleration or collision. None of these people was wearing spacesuits, but if any of them was fast enough or lucky enough to be wearing suits, they should have been able to survive.”

Before Murchison could reply the picture changed abruptly to show another mass of wreckage, and the excited voice of the Captain sounded from the wall speaker. “This looks like the best bet so far, Doctor. No spin to speak of, so we can board easily, if necessary. The fog you see is not all escaped air; some of it is boil-off from the vessel’s water and hydraulic systems. If air is escaping, then there must be quite a lot of it still left on board. There is also what seems to be an emergency power circuit in use, weak and probably used for standby lighting. We may want to board this one. Is everyone ready?”

“Ready, friend Fletcher,” said the empath.

“Of course,” said Naydrad.

“We’ll be at the Casualty lock in ten minutes,” said Conway.

“Lieutenant Dodds and myself will accompany you,’ said the Captain, “in case structural or engineering problems are encountered. Ten minutes, Doctor.”

There was not a lot of room to spare in the Casualty airlock with the Captain, Dodds, Naydrad and its already inflated pressure litter, Prilicla and Conway all clinging to its deck and walls with foot and wrist magnets while they watched the approach of the wreckage. It looked like a great rectangular metal thicket shrouded in fog and surrounded by smaller clumps of metal, some of which were spinning rapidly and some of which drifted motionless. When Conway asked why this should be, the Captain turned silent in the manner of a person who has asked himself the same question and was unable to answer. They waited while the ambulance ship edged closer, passing between two of the wreckage’s madly spinning satellites, and their suit spotlights as well as those of the ship reflected off the twisted metal plating and projecting structural members. They went on waiting until the little Cinrusskin began trembling inside its spacesuit.

“Someone,” Prilicla finally managed to utter, “is alive in there.”

Of necessity, it was a hurried but very careful search, because the emotional radiation of the survivor was weak and characteristic of a mind that was becoming more deeply unconscious by the minute. With Prilicla indicating if not leading the way, the Captain and Dodds cleared a path through obstructions with their cutters or pushed away free-floating debris and tangled cable looms with their insulated gauntlets-there was, after all, a live power circuit in use. Conway followed closely behind, pulling himself along in a kind of weightless crawl through corridors and compartments whose ceilings were only four feet high.

Twice his spotlight picked out the bodies of crew-members, which he freed and pushed gently back the way they had come so that the waiting Naydrad could load them into the unpressurized section of the litter. Should the survivor need urgent surgical attention, Conway would feel much better if Murchison had a few cadavers to take apart so that she could tell him how the living one should be put together again.

He still had no clear idea of what they looked like, because the bodies had been encased in spacesuits. But the suits and underlying tissue had been ruptured by violent contact with metallic debris, and if the resulting wounds had not killed the beings, the decompression had. Judging by the shape of the spacesuits, the beings were flattened cylinders about six feet long with four sets of manipulatory appendages behind a conical section that was probably the head, and another four locomotor appendages. There was a marked thickening at what was presumably the rear section of the suit. Apart from the smaller size and number of appendages, the beings physically resembled the Kelgian race, to which Naydrad belonged.

Conway could hear the Captain muttering to himself about the spacesuited aliens as they stopped at the entrance to a compartment that retained pressure. Prilicla felt carefully with its empathic faculty for the presence of life, in vain. The survivor was located somewhere beyond the compartment, the empath said. Before the Captain and Dodds burned away the door, Conway drilled through to obtain an atmosphere sample for Murchison so that she could prepare suitable life-support for the survivor.

Inside the compartment there was light-a warm, orange light, which would give important information about the planet of origin and the visual equipment of this species. But right then it illuminated only a shambles of drifting furniture, twisted wall plating, tangles of plumbing, and aliens, some of whom were spacesuited and all of whom were dead.

The thickened section at the rear of their spacesuits, Conway saw suddenly, was there to accommodate a large, furry tail.

“This is collision damage, dammit!” Fletcher burst out. “Losing a hypergenerator wouldn’t have done all this!”

Conway cleared his throat. “Captain, Lieutenant Dodds, I know we haven’t time to gather material for a major research project, but if you see anything in the way of photographs, paintings, illustrations, anything that would give me information about the alien’s physiology and environment, take it along, please.” He picked out another alien cadaver that was not too badly damaged, noting the pointed, fox-like head and the thick, broad-striped coat that made it look like a furry, short-legged zebra with an enormous tail. “Naydrad,” he called, “here’s another one for you.”

“Yes, that must be it,” the Captain said, half to himself. To Conway he added, “Doctor, these people were doubly unlucky, and the survivor doubly lucky . . .

According to Fletcher, the hypergenerator failure had pulled the ship apart and sent the pieces spinning away. But in this particular place a number of the crew had survived and had managed to climb into their suits. They might even have had some warning of the approach of the second disaster-the overtaking of their section by another and equally massive piece of wreckage. When the collision occurred, the forward end of the first piece must have been swinging down while the afterpart of the second was swinging upwards. The kinetic energy of both sections had been cancelled out, bringing them both to rest and practically fusing them together. That, in the Captain’s opinion, was the only explanation for the type of injuries and damage that had occurred here, and for the fact that this was the only section of the alien ship that was not spinning.

“I think you’re right, Captain,” said Conway, fishing out of the drifting mass of debris a flat piece of plastic with what looked like a landscape on one side of it. “But surely all this is academic now.”

“Of course it is,” Fletcher replied. “But I dislike unanswered questions. Doctor Prilicla, where now?”

The little empath pointed diagonally upwards at the compartment’s ceiling. “Fifteen to twenty meters in that direction, friend Fletcher, but I must admit to some feelings of confusion. The survivor seems to be moving slowly since we entered this compartment.”

Fletcher sighed noisily. “A spacesuited and still mobile survivor,” he said in relieved tones. “That will make the rescue very much easier.” He looked at Dodds, and together they began cutting through the roof plating.

“Not necessarily,” said Conway. “We could have a rescue and a first-contact situation both at the same time. I much prefer new and injured e-ts to be unconscious so that first contact can be made following curative treatment and we can exercise more control over the—”

“Doctor,” the Captain broke in, “surely a star-traveling species, with the technical and philosophical background which that capability implies, would be expecting to meet what it would consider extraterrestrials. Even if they did not have the expectation, they surely would realize that there was a strong possibility of it happening.”

“Granted,” said Conway, “but an e-t who is injured and only partly conscious might react instinctively, illogically, to the sight of an alien being who might physically resemble a natural enemy or a predator on its home planet. And the treatment of a conscious extraterrestrial, a stranger who has no prior knowledge of the beings carrying out the treatment, might be mistaken for something else- torture, perhaps, or medical experimentation. All too often a doctor has to be cruel to be kind.”

At that moment a large, circular section of the ceiling came free, its edges still bright red with the heat of the cutting torches, and was pushed away by Dodds and the Captain. As it followed them through the gap, Prilicla said, “I’m sorry if I confused you, friends. The survivor is moving slowly, but it is too deeply unconscious to move itself.”

Their spotlights played over a compartment that was open to space in several places, filled with drifting masses of debris, containers of various sizes, a shoal of bright objects that were probably sealed food packages, shelving and the bodies of three unsuited aliens, which were torn and swollen by the twin effects of massive external injuries and explosive decompression. The lights of the Rhabwar shone brightly through an open tangle of metal, illuminating the areas where their spotlights did not reach.

“It’s here?” asked Fletcher in disbelief.

“It is here,” said Prilicla.

The empath was indicating a large metal cabinet, drifting slowly past on the outer fringes of the wreckage. The container was deeply scratched and furrowed by violent contact with other metal, and there was one dent in particular that was at least six inches deep. There was a slight haze around the object, indicating that the air trapped inside was escaping slowly.

“Naydrad!” Conway called urgently. “Forget your pressure litter. The survivor has provided one of its own, but it is depressurizing. We’ll push it outside where you can see it, then you can pull it on board with a tractor. As fast as you can, Naydrad.”

“Doctor,” the Captain asked as they were maneuvering the cabinet through a gap in the wreckage, “do we spend time here looking for information on this species, or do we go on looking for other survivors?”

“We go looking, Captain,” responded Conway without hesitation. “With luck, the survivor will tell us all we want to know about its species during convalescence . . .

When the cabinet had been transferred to the Casualty Deck, the Captain examined its door actuator. He said that the operating mechanism was straightforward and that the strength of the door and its surrounding structure had kept that particular face of the cabinet from being deformed during the collision.

“He means the door will open,” Dodds translated dryly.

Fletcher glared at the Lieutenant. “The question is, Should we open it without taking precautions-more precautions than you are taking now, Doctor?”

Conway finished drilling, and he withdrew an air sample from the cabinet interior before replying. As he handed the sample to Murchison for analysis, he said, “Captain, the box does not contain an Earth-human DBDG with influenza. We will find an e-t of a hitherto unknown species in urgent need of medical attention, and as I have already explained, we are in no danger from extraterrestrial pathogens.”

“I keep worrying about the exception that might prove the rule, Doctor,” the Captain replied doggedly. But he unsealed his visor to show everyone that he was not too badly worried.

“Doctor Prilicla, please,” came Haslam’s voice from Control. “Minus ten minutes.”

The little empath hovered briefly over the cabinet, assured them that there was no marked change in the survivor’s emotional radiation-it was still deeply unconscious, but far from being terminal-and hurried to the airlock so that when the astrogator made a close approach to the next mass of wreckage Prilicla would be able to ascertain whether or not anything had survived in it. As the Cinrusskin left, Murchison straightened up from the analyzer display.

“If we assume that the first sample was taken from a compartment at normal atmospheric composition and pressure,” she said, “then, apart from a few innocuous trace elements that our ship atmosphere does not contain, we would be quite happy breathing the same air as they do. But the sample from the cabinet is at half normal pressure and is high in carbon dioxide and water vapor. In short, the air inside that cabinet is dangerously thin and stale, and the sooner we get that beastie out of there the better.”

“Right,” said Conway. He removed the sampling drill without sealing the hole it had made, and as the Casualty Deck’s air whistled into the cabinet, he said, “Open her up, Captain.”

The cabinet was lying on its back with the door fastening, a rectangular metal plate with three conical indentations on it, facing upwards. Fletcher pulled off one of his gauntlets, pressed three fingers hard into the impressions and slid the plate aside. They heard a loud click, then he lifted the door open. Inside was a confused, bloody mess.

It took Conway several minutes to realize what had happened and to withdraw the bloodstained clothing or bedding from around the survivor. The cabinet had once contained upwards of twenty shelves, which had been pulled out hastily and the metal shelf supports padded with bedding or clothing to protect the occupant. But the collision had been a violent one, and there had been no time to attach the padding properly to the supports. As a result, both the padding and the survivor had been tumbled about the interior of the cabinet. The hapless e-t was jammed tightly into one end of the box, still bleeding sluggishly from a great many lacerations made by the shelf supports, and the colored bands of fur could barely be seen through tufted and matted patches of dried blood.

Very gently Murchison and Naydrad helped Conway lift out the survivor and lay it on the examination table. One of the gashes in its side began to bleed more freely, but as yet they did not know enough about the being to risk using one of their coagulants. Conway began going over its body with his scanner. “There must not have been any spacesuits in that compartment. But they must have had a few minutes’ warning, enough for this one to clear and pad the cabinet and get inside, leaving the other three we saw to—”

“No, Doctor,” said the Captain. He indicated the airtight cabinet. “It cannot be closed or opened from inside. The four of them must have decided which one was to survive, and they did their best for it, very quickly and, I should say, with minimum argument. As a species they seem to be very . . . civilized.”

“I see,” said Conway without looking up.

He did not know if there was any minor displacement of the survivor’s internal organs, but his scanner indicated that none of the major ones were damaged or radically out of position. The spine also appeared to be undamaged, as did the elongated rib cage. On the back just above the root of the thick, furry tail was a bright pink area, which Conway thought at first was a patch where the fur was missing. But closer examination showed that it was a natural feature, and there were large flakes of what appeared to be some kind of pigment adhering to it. The being’s head, which was tucked against its underside and partially covered by the tail, was conical, rodentlike and thickly furred. The skull itself appeared intact, but there was evidence of subcutaneous bleeding in several areas, which in a being without facial fur would have shown as massive bruising. There was some bleeding from the mouth, but Conway could not be sure whether it was due to an external blow or was the effect of lung damage caused by decompression.

“Help me straighten the poor thing out,” he said to Naydrad. “It looks as if it tried to roll itself into a ball. Probably an instinctive defense posture it adopts when threatened by natural enemies.”

“That is one of the things that puzzles me about this patient,” said Murchison, looking up from her examination of one of the cadavers. “These creatures do not possess natural weapons of offense or defense as far as I can tell, or any signs of having had any in the past. Considering the fact that it is a planet’s dominant life-form that develops intelligence, I don’t see how these creatures came to dominate. Even their limbs are not built for speed, so they could not run from danger. The set used for walking are too short and are padded, while the forward set are more slender, less wellmuscled and end in four highly flexible digits that don’t possess so much as a fingernail among them. There are the fur markings, of course, but it is rare that a life-form rises to the top of its evolutionary tree by camouflage alone, or by being nice and cuddly. This is strange.”

“It sounds like it comes from a nice world,” said Prilicla, who had returned briefly from its airlock duty, “for Cinrusskins.”

Conway did not join in the conversation, because he was reexamining the patient’s lungs. The slight oral bleeding had worried him, and now that the survivor was properly presented for examination there was unmistakable evidence of decompression damage in the lungs. But moving the patient into the supine position had caused some of the deeper lacerations to start bleeding again. He could do very little about the lung damage with the facilities available on the ambulance ship, but considering the weakened state of the patient, the bleeding would have to be stopped quickly.

“Do you know enough about the composition of this beastie’s blood at present,” Conway asked Murchison, “to suggest a safe coagulant and anesthetic?”

“Coagulant, yes. Anesthetic, doubtful,” Murchison replied. “I’d prefer to wait until we get back to the hospital for that. Thornnastor would be able to suggest, or synthesize, a completely safe one. Is it an emergency?”

Before Conway could reply, Prilicla chimed in: “An anesthetic is unnecessary, friend Conway. The patient is deeply unconscious and will remain so. It is in a slowly deteriorating condition, probably caused by impaired oxygen absorption in the damaged lungs, and the loss of blood would be a contributing factor. Those cabinet-shelf supports were like blunt knives.”

“I agree,” said Conway. “And if you’re trying to suggest that the patient should be hospitalized as soon as possible, I agree with that too. But this one is in no immediate danger, and I would like to be sure that there are no other survivors before we leave. However, if you continue to monitor its emotional radiation and report any sudden change in—”

“More wreckage coming up,” Haslam’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Doctor Prilicla to the airlock, please.”

“Yes, friend Conway,” said the empath as it scuttled rapidly across the ceiling on its way to the lock.

Before he could begin treating the survivor’s surface injuries, he had to quell a minor revolt by Naydrad, who, in common with all of its beautiful silver-furred race, had an intense aversion towards any surgical procedure that would damage or disfigure a being’s most treasured possession, its fur. To a Kelgian the removal of a strip or patch of fur, which in their species represented a means of communication equal to the spoken word, was a personal tragedy that all too often resulted in permanent psychological damage. A Kelgian’s fur did not grow again, and one whose pelt was damaged could rarely find a mate willing to accept a Kelgian who was unable to display fully its feelings. Murchison had to assure the charge nurse that the survivor’s fur was not mobile and emotion-expressive and that it would undoubtedly grow again before Naydrad was content. It did not, of course, refuse to assist Conway during the minor surgery; it simply argued, both vocally and with its rippling and twitching fur, while it was shaving and cleaning the operative field. Murchison broke in occasionally while they were suturing and

applying coagulant to the wounds crisscrossing the patient’s body, giving them odd items of information gleaned from her continuing examination and dissection of the cadavers.

The species had two sexes, male and female, and the reproductive system seemed relatively normal. Unlike the patient, however, whose fur appeared duller and to have less color variation, the cadavers of both sexes had applied a water-soluble dye that enhanced artificially the bands of color on their body fur, which otherwise would have been of the same intensity as those of the patient. Clearly the dyes were applied for cosmetic reasons. But why the patient, who was female, had not used dye on its fur was something unclear to Murchison.

One reason might be that the survivor was not yet fully mature and there was some cultural reason why a preadolescent of the species did not use or was forbidden to use cosmetics. Or it might be that the patient was mature and small, or of a race within the species that did not believe in painting its fur. An equally valid reason might be that the disaster had occurred before it had a chance to apply cosmetics. The only substance at all resembling cosmetic material had been the few pieces of flaking brownish pigment adhering to the patient’s bare patch above its tail, and that material had been removed during pre-op procedure. The action of its friends, or possibly its family, in placing the survivor in an airtight cabinet just before the collision led Murchison to believe that it was a young and probably preadolescent female, rather than a small mature female.

The Federation had yet to encounter an intelligent species in which the adults would not sacrifice themselves to save their young.

While they were busying themselves with the one living and three dead aliens, Prilicla returned from the lock from time to time to report negatively on the search for other survivors-and similarly on the one they had rescued, whose condition, according to the empath’s reading, was still deteriorating. Conway waited until Prilida had been called to the airlock once again, not wanting to inconvenience the Cinrusskin with what could well be a flood of unpleasant emotional radiation; then he called Fletcher in Control.

“Captain, I have to make a decision and I need your advice,” Conway said. “We have completed running repairs on our survivor, so far as the superficial injuries are concerned, but there is decompression damage to the lungs, which requires urgent hospitalization. As an interim measure, we have it on an enriched-oxygen-content air supply. Despite this, its condition is deteriorating, not rapidly but steadily. What, in your opinion, are the chances of picking up other survivors if we are to remain in this area for another four hours?”

“Virtually nil, Doctor,” the Captain replied.

“I see.” Conway had expected the answer to be much more complicated and hedged with probability computations and verbal qualifiers. He felt both relieved and worried.

“You must understand, Doctor,” Fletcher went on, “that the first three pieces of wreckage investigated offered the greatest possibilities of finding survivors, and since then, the likelihood of finding one has diminished sharply, as have the sizes of the collections of debris with every piece we look at. Unless you believe in miracles, Doctor, we are wasting our time here.”

“I see,” said Conway.

“If it will help you reach a decision, Doctor,” the Captain went on, “I can tell you that subspace radio conditions are very good out here, and we have already made two-way contact with the survey and Cultural Contact cruiser Descartes, which I am required to do when evidence of a new intelligent species is discovered. As a matter of urgency the Descartes will investigate this wreckage with a view to obtaining all available data on the new species, and by analyzing the velocities and directions of those species, will roughly establish the alien ship’s point of departure and its destination. There are relatively few stars out here, so they should locate the home planet and star system fairly easily, because they are specialists at that job. Quite possibly, communications will be established with the aliens within a few weeks, perhaps sooner. As well, the Descartes carries two planetary landers, which in space double as close-range search and rescue vessels. They won’t have Prilicla on board, naturally, but those ships could cover the remaining wreckage much faster than we could, Doctor.”

“When will the Descartes arrive?” Conway asked.

“Allowing for multiple Jump effects on the astrogation,” said Fletcher, “four to five hours.”

Conway made no attempt to hide his relief. “Right. If there are no survivors on the next piece of wreckage, let’s head for home at once, Captain.” He paused for a moment, looking at the survivor and the bodies of its friends who had not made it, then at Murchison. “If they find the home world and make contact quickly, will you ask the Descartes to request medical assistance for our friend here? Ask for a volunteer native medic to travel to Sector General to assist or, if necessary, to take charge of the treatment. In cases involving completely new life-forms we can’t afford to be proud . . .

He was also thinking that the native medic might, when it felt more at ease with the multiplicity of life-forms inhabiting the hospital, be agreeable to providing an Educator tape on its people so that the hospital staff would know exactly what they were doing if, on some future occasion, another member of its species became a patient.

* * *

“Identify yourself, please. Visitor, staff or patient, and species?” came a toneless translated voice from Reception a few minutes after they had emerged into normal space. The hospital was still little more than a large blurred star against a background of smaller, brighter ones. “If you are unsure of, or are unable to give, an accurate physiological classification because of physical injury, mental confusion or ignorance of the relevant data, please make vision contact.”

Conway looked at Captain Fletcher, who drew down the corners of his mouth and raised one eyebrow in a piece of non-verbal communication which said that the person who understood the medical jargon was best fitted to answer the questions.

“Ambulance ship Rhabwar, Senior Physician Conway speaking,” he responded briskly. “Staff and one patient, all warm-blooded oxygen-breathing. Crew classifications are Earth-human DBDG, Cinrusskin GLNO and Kelgian DBLF. The patient is a DBPK, origin unknown. It has sustained injuries which will require urgent—”

“You are expected, Rhabwar, and I have you flagged as priority traffic,” the voice from Reception broke in. “Please use approach pattern Red Two and follow the red-yellow-red beacons to Lock Five—”

“But Lock Five is a—”

“—which is, as you know, Doctor, the principal entry port to the levels of the water-breathing AUGLs,” Reception continued. “However, the accommodation being reserved for your casualty is close to Five; and Three, which you would normally use, is tied up with twenty-plus Hudlar casualties. There has been some kind of structural accident with radiation side effects during assembly of a Melfan orbiting factory, but I am aware only of the clinical details at present.

“Thornnastor did not know what, if anything, you were bringing in,” Reception added, “but it thought it better not to subject the casualty even to residual radiation. Your ETA, Doctor?”

Conway looked at Fletcher, who said, “Two hours, sixteen minutes.”

That would be ample time for their DBPK casualty to be transferred into a pressure litter capable of maintaining the integrity of the patient’s life-support system against hard vacuum, water and a wide variety of lethal atmospheres, and for the Rhabwar’s medical team to don lightweight suits, which would enable them to accompany it. The intervening time could also be used to transmit and to consult with Diagnostician-in-Charge Thornnastor regarding their preliminary findings on the DBPK survivor and the results of Murchison’s examination of the cadavers. Thornnastor would probably request the early transfer of those cadavers so as to make a thorough investigation that would give a complete picture of the DBPK lifeform’s metabolism. Conway relayed the Captain’s estimate and asked who would be meeting the Rhabwar medics at Lock Five.

The voice from Reception made a number of short, untranslatable noises, possibly the e-t equivalent of a stammer, then went on, “I’m sorry, Doctor. My instructions are that Rhabwar personnel are still technically in quarantine and may not enter the hospital. But you may accompany the casualty, provided you do not unseal. The assistance of your team will not be required, Doctor, but the proceedings will be broadcast on the teaching channels so that you will be able to observe and, if necessary, advise.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. The sarcasm was lost, naturally, in the translation.

“You’re welcome, Doctor,” said Reception. “And now can I have your communications officer. Diagnostician Thornnastor has requested a direct link with Pathologist Murchison and yourself for purposes of consultation and preliminary diagnosis . . .

A little more than two hours later, Thornnastor knew all that it was possible to know about the casualty at a distance, and the patient in its pressure litter was being transferred very gently from the Rhabwar’s boarding tube into the cavernous entry port that was Lock Five. Prilicla was also allowed to accompany the patient to monitor its emotional radiation. Reluctantly, the hospital authorities had agreed that the little Cinrusskin was unlikely to carry with it the virus that had affected the Rhabwar’s crew, and besides, it was the only medically qualified empath currently on the hospital’s staff.

The reception and transfer team-Earth-humans in lightweight suits with the helmets, belts and boots painted bright fluorescent blue-quickly moved the pressure litter to Lock Five’s inner seal. The outer seal closed ponderously and water poured in, bubbling and steaming coldly as it entered the recently airless chamber. By the time the turbulence had cleared and Conway was able to see, the team was already manhandling the litter into the tepid green depths of the ward devoted to the treatment of the water-breathing inhabitants of Chalderescol.

Conway was glad that their casualty was unconscious, because the Chalders, whose wide variety of ailments rarely left them immobile, swam ponderously around the litter, displaying the curiosity of all hospital patients towards anything that promised to break the monotony of ward routine.

The ward resembled a vast undersea cavern, tastefully decorated, to Chalder eyes, with a variety of artificial native plant life, some of which was obviously carnivorous. This was not the normal environment of the natives of Chalderescol, who were highly advanced both culturally and technically, but the type of surroundings sought by healthy young Chalders going on vacation. According to Chief Psychologist O’Mara, who was rarely wrong in these matters, the primitive environment was a significant aid to recovery. But even to an Earth-human DBDG like Conway, who knew exactly what was going on, it was a spooky place.

A completely new life-form whose language had yet to be programed into the hospital’s translation computer would not know what to think-especially if it was confronted suddenly with one of the AUGL patients.

An adult native of Chalderescol resembled a forty-foot-long crocodile, armor-plated from the rather overlarge mouth to the tail, and with a belt of ribbon tentacles encircling its middle. Even with Prilicla present to radiate reassurance, it was much better for the patient’s peace of mind that it did not see the Chalder AUGLs, who swam to within a few meters of the litter to eye the newcomer and wish it well.

Prilicla drifted slightly ahead of the party, a vague insect shape inside the silvery bubble of its suit, twitching occasionally to the bursts of emotional radiation in the area. Conway knew from past experience that it was not the casualty or the curious AUGL patients who were responsible for this reaction, but the feelings of the transfer team maneuvering the litter past the sleeping frames, equipment and artificial flora of the ward and the stretch of water-filled corridor beyond it. The drying and cooling units in the team’s issue lightweight suits did not operate at peak efficiency in the warm water of the AUGL level, and when strenuous physical effort was called for in that environment, the tempers shortened in direct proportion to the temperature rise.

The Observation Ward for the new patient had been part of the Casualty Department’s initial treatment area for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers before that facility had been moved to Level 33 and extended. The intention had been to fit the original room as an additional AUGL operating theater as soon as the engineering section could get around to it, but at the present time it was still a large, square-sided bubble of air and light inside the watery vastness of the Chalder wards and service units. At the center of the room was an examination table, adjustable to the body configurations of a wide variety of physiological classifications and with provision for conversion to either an operating table or a bed. Ranged along opposing walls of the ward was the similarly non-specialized and complex equipment required for the life-support and intensive care of patients whose life processes were, at times, a partly open book.

Although large, the room was overcrowded-mostly with people who had no business being there and no reason other than professional curiosity. Conway could see one of the scaly, membranous Illensan PVSJs, its loose protective suit transparent except for the faint yellow fog of chlorine it contained, and there was even a TLTU encased in a pressure sphere mounted on caterpillar tracks, which was the only way a being who breathed superheated steam at high pressure could associate professionally with patients and colleagues with less exotic metabolisms. The remainder were warmblooded oxygen-breathers-Melfans, Kelgians, Nidians and one Hudlar-with one thing in common besides their curiosity: the gold or gold-edged ID badges of Diagnosticians or senior physicians.

Rarely had Conway seen so much medical talent concentrated in such a small area.

They all stayed well clear of the transfer team as the patient was moved from the litter onto the examination table, supervised by Thornnastor itself. The litter was left unsealed and moved back to the ward entrance so as to be out of the way; then everyone began edging closer.

Murchison and Naydrad were watching on the Rhabwar’s screen, Conway knew, as Thornnastor began the preliminary examination, which was in all respects identical to the one carried out by Murchison and Conway on the ambulance ship-a careful check of the vital signs, even though at this stage nobody could be quite sure what was or was not a normal pulse, respiration or blood pressure reading for a DBPK-followed by deep and detailed scanning and gentle probing for physical injury or deformation. While it worked, Thornnastor described in detail everything it did, saw or deduced for the many medics who were observing on the teaching channels. Occasionally it paused to ask questions of Murchison on the ambulance ship or of Conway in the ward regarding the patient’s condition immediately following its rescue, and for any comments that might be helpful.

Thornnastor had reached its unrivaled eminence in e-t pathology by asking questions and pondering the answers, not by listening to itself pontificate.

Finally, Thornnastor’s examination was complete. It brought its massive body fully erect so that the osseous dome housing its brain was almost hidden by the curves of its massive triple shoulders. Its four extensible eyes regarded, simultaneously, the patient, the medics ranged around the examination table and the vision pickups through which the Rhabwar and the other non-present observers were viewing the proceedings. Then it spoke.

The most serious damage had been sustained by the patient’s lungs, where decompression effects had ruptured tissue and caused widespread bleeding. Thornnastor proposed relieving this situation by withdrawing the unwanted fluid via a minor surgical intervention through the pleural cavity and into the trachea for the purpose of assisting the patient’s breathing by positive pressure ventilation of the lungs with pure oxygen. There was a wide range of tissueregenerative medication available for warm-blooded oxygenbreathers, but the tests that would be carried out on the DBPK cadavers to find one harmless to the DBPK species would be exhaustive and would require two days at least, by which time a safe anesthetic would also be available. Without immediate surgical intervention the patient would not live for more than a few hours. Neither of the proposed procedures was lengthy, the associated pain was minimal, and as Prilicla reported, the patient was too deeply unconscious to be aware of pain, so Thornnastor, assisted by a Melfan senior physician and a Kelgian theater nurse, would operate at once.

Considering the condition of the patient, Conway thought, it was the only sensible thing to do. He felt irked that it was not himself who was assisting Thornnastor, since he had had prior experience with the DBPK life-form. But then he realized, from listening to the respectful whispers coming from the other observers, that the Melfan senior assisting was Edanelt, one of the hospital’s top e-t surgeons, the permanent possessor of four Educator tapes, and according to the grapevine, a being shortly to be elevated to Diagnostician status. If a surgeon of Edanelt’s eminence could be big enough to assist, then Conway should be able to watch without radiating too much envy.

It had never ceased to amaze Conway, despite the hundreds of operations he had seen Tralthans perform, that such a monstrous and physically ungainly species could produce the Federation’s finest surgeons. The DBPK patient did not know how fortunate it was, because it was said in the hospital that no life-form, no matter how hopeless its case might be, was ever lost if it came under Thornnastor’s personal care. Such a thing was unthinkable, Thornnastor was reputed to have said, because it was not in its contract . . .

“Consciousness is returning,” Prilicla announced suddenly, barely ten minutes after the operation was complete. “It is returning very rapidly.”

Thornnastor made a loud, untranslatable sound, which probably signified satisfaction and pleasure. “Such a rapid response to treatment promises a favorable prognosis and, I should think, an early recovery. But let us withdraw for a short distance. Even though a member of a star-traveling race is accustomed to seeing other lifeforms, in its weakened state our patient might be worried by the close proximity of a group of such large and diverse beings as ourselves. You agree, Doctor Prilicla?”

But the little empath did not have a chance to reply, because the patient had opened its eyes and was struggling so violently against the body restraints that its tracheal air hose threatened to become detached.

Instinctively, Thornnastor reached over the patient to steady the air hose, and the DBPK became even more agitated. The emotionsensitive Prilicla began trembling so violently that it was in danger of coming unstuck from the ceiling. Suddenly the patient stiffened and remained absolutely still for several minutes, but then it began to relax again as the Cinrusskin radiated sympathy and reassurance.

“Thank you, Doctor Prilicla,” said Thornnastor. “When communication has been established, I shall apologize to this patient for nearly frightening it to death. In the meantime, try to let it know that we wish it well.”

“Of course, friend Thornnastor. It is feeling concern now, rather than terror, and it seems to be deeply worried about something which Prilicla broke off and began to tremble violently.

What happened next was utterly impossible.

Thornnastor began to sway alarmingly on its six stubby legs, legs which normally gave the Tralthan species such a stable base that they frequently went to sleep standing up; then it toppled onto its side with a crash that overloaded the sound pickup on Conway’s suit. A few yards away from the treatment table the Melfan Edanelt, who had been assisting Thornnastor, collapsed slowly to the floor, its six multijointed legs becoming progressively more limp until the underside of its exoskeletal body hit the floor with a loud click. The Kelgian theater nurse had also slipped to the floor, the silvery fur on its long, cylindrical body undulating and puckering as if being affected by a tiny whirlwind. A member of the transfer team standing beside Conway dropped loosely to his hands and knees, crawled for a short distance along the floor and then rolled onto his side. Too many e-ts began speaking at once, and Earth-humans trying to outshout them, for Conway’s translator to produce anything intelligible.

“This can’t be happening he began incredulously.

Murchison’s voice sounded in his helmet phones, speaking on the ship frequency. “Three extraterrestrial life-forms and one Earthhuman DBDG, with four radically different metabolisms and inherent species-immunity . . . it’s quadruply impossible! As far as I see, no indications of the other unprotected life-forms being affected.”

Even when observing the impossible, Murchison remained clinical.

“. . . But it is happening,” Conway went on. He turned up the volume of his suit external speaker. “This is Senior Physician Conway. Instructions. All transfer team-members, seal your helmets. Team leader, sound the alarm for Contamination One. Everyone else, move away from the patient They were doing so already, Conway could see, with a degree of haste that verged on panic. “Beings already wearing protective suits stand clear, unprotected oxygen-breathers go to the pressure litter and as many as possible seal yourselves inside. Everyone else should use the breathing masks and oxygen supplies for the ward ventilators. We seem to be affected by some kind of airborne infection—”

He broke off as the observation ward’s main screen flicked on to show the features of the irate Chief Psychologist. As O’Mara spoke Conway could hear in the background the repeated long and two short blasts on the emergency siren, which gave added urgency to the words.

“Conway, why the blazes are you reporting lethal contamination down there? Dammit, there can’t be a lethal contamination of air and water unless the place is flooded and you’re all drowning, and I see no evidence of that!”

“Wait,” said Conway. He was kneeling by the fallen transfer team-member, his hand inside the open visor, feeling for a pulse at the temporal artery. He found it, a fast, irregular beat that he did not like at all. Then he sealed the man’s visor quickly and went on speaking to the ward: “Remember to close any breathing orifices not covered by your masks, nostrils, Melfan gills, the Kelgian speaking mouth. And you, the protected Illensan doctor, will you check Thornnastor and the Melfan Edanelt, quickly please. Prilicla, how is the original patient?”

The chlorine-breather waddled rapidly towards the fallen Thornnastor, its transparent suit rustling. “My name is Gilvesh, Conway. But all DBDGs look the same to me, so I suppose I should not feel insulted.”

“Sorry, Gilvesh,” said Conway. The chlorine-breathing Illensans were generally held to be the most visually repulsive species in the Federation as well as the most vain regarding their own physical appearance. “A snap diagnosis, please. There isn’t time for anything else. What happened to it, and what are the immediate physiological effects?”

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, still trembling violently, “the DBPK patient is feeling much better. It is radiating confusion and worry, but no fear and minimum physical discomfort. The condition of the other four concerns me deeply, but their emotional radiation is too faint to identify because of the high level of emotion pervading the ward.”

“I understand,” said Conway, who knew that the little empath could never bring itself to criticize, however mildly, another being’s emotional shortcomings. “Attention, everyone. Apart from the four people already affected there is no immediate sign of the condition, infection, whatever it is, spreading. I would say that anyone protected by the pressure litter envelope or breathing through a mask is safe for the time being. And calm yourselves, please. We need Prilicla to help with a quick diagnosis on your colleagues, and it can’t work if the rest of you are emoting all over the place.”

While Conway was still speaking, Prilicla detached itself from the ceiling and fluttered across on its iridescent wings to the heap of silvery fur that was the Kelgian theater nurse. It withdrew its scanner and began a physical examination concurrent with its efforts to detect, isolate and identify the creature’s emotional radiation. It was no longer trembling.

“No response to physical stimuli,” Gilvesh reported from its examination of Thornnastor. “Temperature normal, breathing labored, cardiac action weak and irregular, eyes still react to light, but . . . This is strange, Conway. Obviously the lungs have been seriously affected, but the mechanism is unclear, and the curtailed supply of oxygen is affecting the heart and brain. I can find no signs of lung-tissue damage of the kind associated with the inhalation of corrosive or highly toxic material, nor anything to suggest that its immune system has been triggered off. There is no muscular tension or resistance; the voluntary muscles appear to be completely relaxed.”

Using his scanner without unsealing the lightweight suit, Conway had examined the team-member’s upper respiratory tract, trachea, lungs and heart with exactly similar results. But before he could say anything, Prilicla joined in: “My patient displays similar symptoms, friend Conway,” it said. “Shallow and irregular respiration, cardiac condition close to fibrillation, deepening unconsciousness and all the physical and emotional signs of asphyxiation. Shall I check Edanelt?”

“I’ll do that,” said Gilvesh quickly. “Prilicla, move clear lest I walk on you. Conway, in my opinion they require intensive-care therapy as soon as possible, and a breathing assist at once.”

“I agree, friend Gilvesh,” the empath said as it fluttered up to the ceiling again. “The condition of all four beings is extremely grave.

“Right,” Conway agreed briskly. “Team Leader! Move your man, the DBLF and the ELNT clear and as far from the patient as possible, but close to an oxygen supply outlet. Doctor Gilvesh will supervise fitting the proper breathing masks, but keep your team-member sealed up, with his suit air supply at fifty percent oxygen. Regarding Thornnastor, you’ll need the rest of your team to move- “Or an anti-gravity sled,” the Team Leader broke in. “There’s

one on the next level.”

“—it even a few yards,” Conway went on. “Considering its worsening condition, it would be better to rig an extension to an oxygen line and assist Thornnastor’s breathing where it is lying. And, Team Leader, do not leave the ward for a sled or anything else until we know exactly what it is that is loose in here. That goes for everyone . . . Excuse me.

O’Mara was refusing to remain silent any longer. “So there is something loose in there, Doctor?” said the Chief Psychologist harshly. “Something much worse, seemingly, than a simple case of atmospheric contamination from an adjacent ward? Have you finally discovered the exception that proves the rule, a bug that attacks across the species’ lines?”

“I know Earth-human pathogens cannot affect e-ts, and vice versa,” Conway said impatiently, turning to the ward screen to face O’Mara. “It is supposed to be impossible, but the impossible seems to be happening, and we need help to—”

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla broke in, “Thornnastor’s condition is deteriorating steadily. I detect feelings of constriction, strangulation.”

“Doctor,” the translated voice of Gilvesh joined in, “the Kelgian’s oxygen mask isn’t doing much good. The DBLF double mouth and lack of muscle control is posing problems. Positive pressure ventilation of the lungs with direct access through the trachea is indicated to avoid a complete respiratory failure.”

“Can you perform a Kelgian tracheotomy, Doctor Gilvesh?” Conway asked, turning away from the screen. He could not think of anything to do to help Thornnastor.

“Not without a tape,” Gilvesh replied.

“No tape,” said O’Mara firmly, “or anything else.”

Conway swung round to face the image of the Chief Psychologist to protest, but he already knew what O’Mara was going to say.

“When you raised the lethal contamination alarm, Doctor,” the Chief Psychologist went on grimly, “you acted instinctively, I should think, but correctly. By so doing you have probably saved the lives of thousands of beings inside the hospital. But a Contamination One alarm means that your area is isolated until the cause of the contamination has been traced and neutralized. In this case it is much more serious. There seems to be a bug loose that could decimate the hospital’s warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. For that reason your ward has been sealed off. Power, light, communication and translation facilities are available, but you are no longer connected to the main air supply system or to the automatic food distribution network, nor will you receive medical consumables of any kind. Neither will any person, mechanism or specimen for analysis be allowed out of your area. In short, Doctor Gilvesh will not be allowed to come to me for a DBLF physiology tape, nor will any Kelgian, Melfan or Tralthan doctor be allowed to volunteer to go to the aid of the affected beings. Do you understand, Doctor?”

Conway nodded slowly.

O’Mara’s craggy features showed a deep and uncharacteristic concern as he stared at Conway for several seconds. It was said that O’Mara’s normally abrasive and sarcastic manner was reserved only for his friends, with whom he liked to relax and be his bad-tempered self, and that he was quiet and sympathetic only when he was professionally concerned about someone.

He has an awful lot of friends, Conway thought, and right now I’m in trouble . . .

“No doubt you would like to have the life-duration figures based on the residual and tanked air remaining in the ward, and the number and species of the present occupants,” the Major continued. “I’ll have them for you in a few minutes. And, Conway, try to come up with an answer . . .

For several seconds Conway stared at the blank screen and told himself that there was nothing effective he could do about Thornnastor or Edanelt or the Kelgian nurse or the team-member-all of whom had suddenly switched their roles from medics to critically ill patients-without Educator tapes.

In the normal course of events Doctor Gilvesh would have taken a DBLF tape and performed a tracheotomy on the Kelgian as a matter of course, and the Illensan senior would probably have insisted on O’Mara giving it the Tralthan tape for Thornnastor and the ELNT one for Edanelt, provided the Chief Psychologist considered Gilvesh’s mind stable enough to take three tapes for short-term use. But Gilvesh was not allowed to leave the ward even if its chlorine-breathing life depended on it, which it would very shortly.

Conway tried not to think about the diminishing supply of air remaining in the pressure litter, where five or six e-ts were rapidly using up the tanked oxygen; or of the other beings ranged along opposing walls who were connected to breathing masks intended for patients; or of the four-hour supply carried by the transfer teammembers and himself, or of the air in the ward, which was infected and unusable, or even of the strictly limited amount of breathable chlorine carried by Gilvesh, or of the superheated atmosphere required by the TLTU. He had to think of the patients first, he told himself clinically, and try to keep them alive as long as possible. He would do this not because they were his friends and colleagues, but because they had been the first to be stricken and he had to chart the course of the infection as completely as possible so that the hospital medics of all grades and specialties would know exactly what they would have to fight.

But the fight would have to start here in the observation ward, and there were a few things Conway could do, or try to do.

“Gilvesh,” he finally said, “go to the TLTU parked in the corner and the Hudlar on the mask beside it. I don’t know if their translators can receive me at this distance. Ask them if they will move Thornnastor to the clear area of wall beside the lock entrance. If they can do it, warn them that Tralthans must not be rolled onto their backs under normal gravity conditions, since this causes organic displacement, which would increase its respiratory difficulties, and ask one of the transfer team to hold Thorny’s mask in position while it is being moved.

“When it is at the wall,” Conway went on, “position it with its legs pointing away from the wall and ask four team members to . . .“

While he talked Conway was thinking of all the Educator tapes he had had to digest during his career at Sector General and that, in a few cases, erasure had not been complete. None of the weird and wonderful personalities who had donated their brain recordings had remained, even in part, in his memory because that could have been psychologically dangerous. But there were odds and ends of data, pertaining chiefly to physiology and surgical procedures, which he had retained, because the Earth-human part of his mind had been particularly interested in them while the e-t personality had been in charge. The action he was considering taking with regard to the Kelgian theater nurse was dangerous-he had only the vaguest of memories regarding DBLF physiology in the respiratory tract area-and probably unprofessional. But first he had to do something for Thornnastor, even if it was little more than a firstaid measure.

The TLTU medic, whose race existed in an environment of edible minerals and superheated steam, had a protective suit that resembled a spherical pressure boiler bristling with remote handling devices and mounted on caterpillar treads. The vehicle had not been designated to move unconscious Tralthans, but it was quite capable of doing so.

The Hudlar doctor, classification FROB, was a blocky, pearshaped being whose home planet pulled four Earth gravities and had a high-density atmosphere so rich in suspended animal and vegetable nutrients that it resembled thick soup. Although the FROB life-form was warm-blooded and technically an oxygen-breather, it could go for long periods without air if its food supply, which it absorbed directly through its thick but highly porous tegument, was adequate. The Hudlar’s last meal had been sprayed on less than two hours earlier, Conway estimated, judging by the flaking condition of its covering of nutrient paint. It should be able to do without the oxygen mask long enough to help Thornnastor.

. . . While they’re moving Thornnastor,” Conway went on, speaking to the transfer team leader, “have your men move the pressure litter as close as possible to the Kelgian nurse. There is another Kelgian, a Diagnostician, inside the litter. Ask it if it would direct me while I try to do the tracheotomy, and make sure it has a good view of the operation through the envelope of the litter. I’ll be there in a few minutes, as soon as I check on Edanelt.”

“Edanelt’s condition is stable, friend Conway,” reported Prilicla, who was keeping well clear of the Hudlar and the hissing metal juggernaut of the TLTU, who were moving Thornnastor. It made a feather-light landing on the Melfan’s carapace for a closer feel of Edanelt’s emotional radiation. “It is breathing with difficulty but is in no immediate danger.”

Of the three e-ts affected, it had been the farthest away from the DBPK casualty-which should mean something. Conway shook his head angrily. Too much was happening at once. He was not being given a chance to think . . .

“Friend Conway,” called Prilicla, who had moved to the DBPK casualty. “I detect feelings of increasing discomfort not associated with its injuries-feelings of constraint. It is also extremely worried, but not fearful, about something. The feeling is of intense guilt and concern. Perhaps, in addition to the injuries sustained in its ship, there is a history of psychological disturbance of the type common to certain preadolescents . . .

The mental state of the DBPK survivor was low on Conway’s order of priorities right then, and there was no way he could conceal his impatience from Prilicla.

“May I ease its physical restraints, friend Conway?” the empath ended quickly.

“Yes, just don’t let it loose,” Conway replied, then felt stupid as soon as he finished speaking.

The small, furry, utterly inoffensive being did not represent a physical threat-it was the pathogens it carried that provided the danger, and they were already loose. But when Prilicla’s fragile pipestem manipulators touched the buttons that reduced the tightness of the restraining webbing holding the DBPK to the examination table, it did not try to escape. Instead it moved itself carefully until it lay like a sleeping Earth cat, curled up with its head pushed underneath its long and furry tail, looking like a mound of striped fur except for the bare patch at the root of its tail where the skin showed pinkish brown.

“It feels much more comfortable now, but is still worried, friend Conway,” the Cinrusskin reported. Then it scuttled across the ceiling towards Thornnastor’s position, trembling slightly because the unconscious Diagnostician was experiencing strong emotions.

The TLTU had taped Thornnastor’s rear legs together, then withdrawn to enable the Hudlar and four team-members to do their work. With one man each grasping a middle or forward leg, they strained to pull them diagonally apart so as to expand the Tralthan’s chest as much as possible. The Hudlar was saying, “Pull together. Harder. Hold it. Let go.” When it said “let go” the legs resumed their natural position while simultaneously the Hudlar pressed on Thornnastor’s massive rib-cage with its own not inconsiderable weight to ensure that the lungs were deflated before the process was repeated. Behind the visors of the men tugging on Thornnastor’s legs were faces deep red and shining with perspiration, and some of the things they were saying were not suitable for translation.

Every medic, orderly and maintenance man in Sector General was taught the rudiments of first aid as it applied to members of the species that made up the Galactic Federation-those, that is, whose environmental requirements were not so exotic that only another member of their race could aid them without delay. The instructions for giving artificial respiration to a Tralthan FGLI was to tie the rear legs together and open and close the other four so as to suck air into the FGLI’s lungs. Thornnastor’s mask was in position, and it was being forced to breathe pure oxygen. Prilicla was available to report any change in its condition.

But a Kelgian tracheotomy was most decidedly not a first-aid measure. Except for a thin-walled, narrow casing that housed the brain, the DBLF species had no bone structure. The DBLF body was composed of an outer cylinder of musculature, which, in addition to being its primary means of locomotion, protected the vital organs within it. The Kelgian life-form was dangerously susceptible to lethal injury, because the complex and highly vulnerable circulatory system that fed those great bands of encircling muscle ran close under the skin and was protected only by its thick fur. An injury that most other species would consider superficial could cause a Kelgian to bleed to death in minutes. Conway’s problem was that the Kelgian trachea was deeply buried under the neck muscles and passed within half an inch of the main artery and vein, which carried the blood supply to and from the brain.

With an Earth-human surgeon operating to the verbal instructions of another Kelgian, and hampered by the lack of a DBLF physiology tape and suit gauntlets, the procedure promised to be both difficult and dangerous.

“I would prefer,” the Kelgian Diagnostician announced, its face pressed against the transparent wall of the pressure litter, “to perform this operation myself, Doctor.”

Conway did not reply, because they both knew that if the Diagnostician left the litter it would be open to the air of the ward and whatever form of infection it contained, as would the other occupants of the litter. Instead, he began removing a narrow patch of fur from the Kelgian nurse’s neck while Gilvesh sterilized the area.

“Try not to shave off too much fur, Doctor,” said the Kelgian Diagnostician, who had given its name as Towan. “It will not grow again on an adult and the condition of its fur is of great psychological importance to a Kelgian, particularly in premating approaches to the opposite sex.”

“I know that,” said Conway.

As he worked Conway found that some of the memories he retained from the Kelgian physiology tapes were trustworthy, while many others were not. He was very glad of the voice from the litter, which kept him from going disastrously wrong. During the fifteen minutes it took to perform the operation, Towan fumed and fretted and poured out a constant stream of instruction, advice and warnings, which at times were indistinguishable from personal insults- the fellow-feeling among Kelgians was very strong. Then, finally, the operation and the abuse ended, and Gilvesh began preparing to connect the nurse to a ventilator while Conway walked across the ward to have a closer look at Thornnastor.

Suddenly the ward screen lit again, this time to show the faces of O’Mara and the Monitor Corps officer in charge of hospital supply and maintenance, Colonel Skempton. It was the Colonel who finally spoke.

“We have been calculating the time left to you using the air supply currently available in your ward, Doctor,” he said quietly. “The people on breathing masks, provided the bug doesn’t get to them through one of their other body orifices or they don’t fall asleep and dislodge the masks, have about three days’ supply of air. The reason for this is that the six ventilator systems in that ward each carry a ten-hour supply of oxygen as well as other gases which are of no interest to you in the current situation-nitrogen, CO2 and the like. The transfer team-members each have a four-hour supply in their lightweight suits, providing they conserve their oxygen by resting as much as possible—”

The Colonel broke off, and Conway knew that he was staring at the four team-members who were helping the Hudlar give artificial respiration to Thornnastor; then he cleared his throat and went on: “The Kelgian, Nidian and three Earth-humans sheltering inside the litter have less than an hour’s supply remaining. However, it is possible for the team-members to recharge the litter and their own suits with air from the ventilator supply as this becomes necessary. If this is done and everyone rests as much as possible, those of you who do not succumb to the bug should still be alive in, say, thirty hours, which gives us time to—”

“What about Gilvesh and the TLTU?” said Conway sharply.

“Recharging the TLTU’s life-support system is a specialist’s job,” Colonel Skempton replied, “and any unqualified tinkering could result in a steam explosion down there to add to your other difficulties. As for Doctor Gilvesh, you will remember that that is an observation ward for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. There is no chlorine available. I’m sorry.

Quietly but firmly, Conway said, “We need supplies of tanked oxygen and chlorine, a nutrient paint sprayer for the Hudlar, a recharging unit for the TLTU’s vehicle, and low-residue rations complete with feeding tubes, which will enable the food to be taken without it being exposed to the air of the ward. With the exception of the TLTU’s recharger-and I’m sure the team leader would be capable of handling that job if he had step-by-step instructions from one of the maintenance engineers-these items are not bulky. You could move them through the AUGL section and into our lock chamber with probably less trouble than it took getting the DBPK casualty here.”

Skempton shook his head. Just as quietly and firmly he said, “We considered that method of supplying you, Doctor. But we noticed that your lock chamber was left open after the casualty was taken in, and as a result the chamber has been open to contamination for the same period as the rest of the ward. If the lock was cycled to enable us to load it with the needed supplies, water would be drawn in from the AUGL section. When your people pumped out the water to retrieve those supplies, that water, infected with whatever it is that is loose in there, would be returned to the AUGL section, with results we cannot even guess at. I have been told by a number of your colleagues, Doctor, that airborne bacteria can frequently survive and propagate in water.

“Your ward must remain in strict quarantine, Doctor,” the Colonel added. “A pathogen that attacks the life-forms not only of its own planet but of four other off-planet species cannot be allowed to get loose. You must realize that as well as I do.”

Conway nodded. “There is a possibility that we are overreacting, frightening ourselves unnecessarily because of—”

“A Tralthan FGLI, a Kelgian DBLF, a Melfan ELNT and an Earth-human DBDG became ill to the extent of requiring a mechanical assist with their breathing within a matter of minutes,” the Colonel broke in. His expression as he looked at Conway was that of a doctor trying to tell a terminal patient that there was no hope.

Conway felt his face growing red. When he continued he tried to hold his voice steady so as not to appear to be pleading for the impossible. “The effects observed in the ward are totally unlike those experienced on board the Rhabwar. We handled and worked with the casualty and a number of DBPK cadavers without suffering any ill effects—”

“Perhaps some Earth-human DBDGs are naturally immune,” Skempton broke in. “As far as the hospital is concerned, that is a small consolation.”

“Doctor Prilicla and Nurse Naydrad also worked with the DBPKs,” said Conway, “unprotected.”

“I see,” said the Colonel thoughtfully. “A Kelgian in the ward succumbs while another Kelgian on board the Rhabwar escapes. Perhaps there are naturally immune individuals in more than one species, and the Rhabwar personnel are fortunate. They, also, are forbidden contact with the hospital or other vessels in the area, although the problem of keeping them supplied is simple compared with yours. But we have thirty hours to work on that one if you conserve your air and—”

“By that time,” said the TLTU in unemotional translated tones, my air will have condensed into water and I shall have long since perished from hypothermia.”

“I also,” said Gilvesh, without taking its attention from the air hose it was connecting to the Kelgian nurse’s neck, “and the bug you are all worried about would not even be interested in a chlorinebreather.”

Conway shook his head angrily. “The point I’m trying to make is that we don’t know anything at all about this bug.”

“Don’t you think, Doctor,” said O’Mara, in a tone that had the incisive quality of the scalpel Conway had been wielding so recently,

“it is high time you found out something about it?”

A long silence followed, while Conway felt his face growing hotter. Then the quiet was diluted by the Hudlar’s voice as it directed the transfer team-members in their attempt to make Thornnastor breathe. Conway said sheepishly, “Things were a bit hectic for a while, and Thornnastor’s analyzer is designed for Tralthan appendages, but I’ll see what I can do with it.”

“The sooner,” said O’Mara caustically, “the better.”

Conway disregarded the Chief Psychologist’s tone, because O’Mara knew very well what had been happening in the ward and a display of hurt feelings would only waste time. Whatever ultimately happened to the people trapped in the ward, Conway thought, the rest of the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers in the hospital had to be given as much data as possible about the problem, including background information.

As he moved to Thornnastor’s analyzer and started studying the Tralthan control console, Conway began to talk. He described for the people in the ward and the many others outside the search for survivors among the widely scattered wreckage of the DBPK vessel. No doubt Captain Fletcher could, and eventually would, give a more detailed description of the incident, but Conway was concerning himself solely with the medical and physiological aspects.

“The analyzer looks more fearsome than it really is,” Murchison’s voice explained at one point when he began looking, and feeling, baffled. “The labeled studs have been replaced by tactually coded pads, but the console is organized exactly the same as the one on the Rhabwar. I’ve helped Thorny use that thing on a few occasions. The displays are in Tralthan, of course, but the audio unit is linked to the translator. The air-sample flasks are kept behind the sliding blue panel.”

“Thank you,” said Conway with feeling, then went on talking about the rescue of the DBPK survivor and the examination and observations that followed. At the same time he cracked the valves of the sample flasks and resealed them after the ward’s infectionladen atmosphere rushed in to fill their vacuums. He took samples from distances of a few inches from the patient out to the entry lock at the other end of the ward. Using a suction probe, he took samples from the patient’s fur and underlying skin, and surface scrapings from the examination table, used instruments and the ward floor and walls. Then he had to break off to ask Murchison how to load the samples into the analyzer.

Gilvesh used the pause in the narrative to report that the Kelgian nurse’s breathing was deep and steady, even though it was the mechanical ventilator that was actually doing the breathing. Prilicla said that Edanelt’s condition remained stable as did Thornnastor’s, but at a dangerously low level.

“Get on with it, Conway,” O’Mara ordered harshly. “Practically every off-duty medic in the hospital is looking and listening in.”

Conway resumed his account of the rescue and retrieval of the injured survivor and the transfer of the cadavers into the Rhabwar’s ward, stressing tthe fact that once inside the ship none of the crew or medical personnel wore masks while handling or examining the single living and several dead DBPKs. Because the survivor remained unconscious and its condition had been deteriorating steadily, the decision had been taken not to prolong the search for other possible survivors. The survey and Cultural Contact cruiser Descartes was asked to continue searching the area in case- “You did what?” Colonel Skempton broke in. His face had

turned to a sickly gray color.

“The Descartes was asked to continue the search of the area for other survivors,” Conway replied, “and to gather and study the alien material, books, pictures, personal possessions and so on among the wreckage that might help them understand the new life-form prior to making formal contact. The Descartes is one of the few vessels possessing the equipment capable of analyzing the movements of widely dispersed wreckage and of deriving a rough approximation of the wrecked ship’s original hyperspatial heading from them. You know the drill, Colonel. The policy in these cases is to backtrack and make contact with the survivor’s world as quickly as possible and, if they have been able to find it, to request assistance of a doctor of its own species- He broke off because the Colonel was no longer listening to

him.

“Priority hypersignal, maximum power,” the Colonel was saying to someone off-screen. “Use hospital standby power to boost the service generator. Tell the Descartes not, repeat not, to take on board any alien artifacts, technical material or organic specimens from the wreckage. If any such material has already been taken on board they are to jettison it forthwith. On no account is the Descartes to seek out and make contact with the wreck’s planet of origin, nor is the ship to make physical contact with any other vessel, base, satellite station or subplanetary or planetary body, inhabited or otherwise. They are to proceed at once to Sector General to await further instructions. Radio contact only is allowed. They are expressly forbidden to enter the hospital docking area, and their crew-members will stay on board and will allow no visitors of any species until further notice. Code the signal Federation Emergency. Move!”

The Colonel turned to look at Conway again, then continued. “This bug, bacterium, virus, whatever it is, affects warm-blooded oxygen-breathers and perhaps other life-forms as well. As you very well know, Doctor, three-quarters of the citizens of the Federation are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, with the biggest proportion of those made up of the Kelgian, Tralthan, Melfan and Earth-human life-forms. We stand a good chance of containing the infection here, and of discovering something that might enable us to combat it. But if it hits the Descartes it could sweep through the ship so rapidly that they might not be given time to think about the problem, really think it through, before shooting out a distress beacon. Then the ship or ships that go to their aid will carry the infection home-or worse, to other ports of call. An epidemic on such a scale would certainly mean the end of the Federation, and almost certainly the end of civilization on a great many of its worlds.

“We can only hope that the Descartes gets the message in time,” he added grimly. “With the hospital standby reactor boosting the output of the Corps transmitter, if they don’t hear it they have to be deaf, dumb and blind.”

“Or very sick,” O’Mara observed quietly.

A long silence followed and was broken by the respectful voice of Captain Fletcher.

“If I might make a suggestion, Colonel,” he said, “we know the position of the wreckage and of the Descartes, if it is still at the disaster site and, very approximately, of the sector that is likely to contain the wrecked ship’s home planet. If a distress beacon is released in that area it is almost certain that it will come from the Descartes. The Rhabwar could answer it, not to give assistance but to warn off any other would-be rescuers.”

Obviously the Colonel had forgotten about the ambulance ship. “Are you still connected to the hospital by boarding tube, Captain?” he asked harshly.

“Not since the contamination alert,” Fletcher replied. “But if you approve the suggestion we’ll need power and consumables for an extended trip. Normally an ambulance ship is gone only for a couple of days at most.”

“Approved, and thank you, Captain,” said the Colonel. “Arrange for the material to be placed outside your airlock as soon as possible. Your men can load the stores on board later so as to avoid contact with hospital personnel.”

Conway had been dividing his attention between the conversation and the analyzer, which looked as if it was about to make a pronouncement. He looked up at the screen and protested: “Colonel, Captain, you can’t do that! If you take the Rhabwar away we lose Pathologist Murchison and the DBPK specimens, and remove any chance we have of quickly identifying and neutralizing this thing. She is the only pathologist here with first-hand experience of the life-form.”

The Colonel looked thoughtful for a moment. “That is a valid objection, Doctor, but consider. There is no dearth of pathologists here at the hospital to help you study the live specimen, even second-hand, and the DBPK cadavers on the Rhabwar are staying there. We can contain and, in time, devise some method of treating this disease at the hospital. But the Rhabwar could be instrumental in keeping the Descartes from infecting the warm-blooded oxygenbreathers of dozens of planets. The original order stands. The Rhabwar will refuel and replenish and stand by to answer the expected distress signal from the Descartes .

He had a lot more to say on the subject of probable future history, including the strong probability of having to place the DBPK patient’s home planet and off-world colonies in strict quarantine and to refuse all contact with the new species. The Federation would have to enforce this quarantine in its own defense, and the result might well lead to interstellar war. Then, abruptly, the sound cut out, although it was obvious that Colonel Skempton was still talking to someone off-screen-someone, it was obvious, who was objecting to the Rhabwar’s imminent departure as strongly as Conway had.

But the objector, or objectors, was a medical staff-member concerned with solving what was essentially a unique medical problem in extraterrestrial physiology or pharmacology, while Colonel Skempton, like the dedicated Monitor Corps policeman that he was, wanted only to protect a frighteningly large number of innocent bystanders from he knew not what.

Conway looked over at the image of O’Mara. “Sir, I agree that there is the most fearful danger of letting loose a virulent infection that could bring about the collapse of the Federation and cause the technology of many of its individual worlds to slide back into their particular dark ages. But before we react we must first know something about the threat we are reacting against. We must stop and think. Right now we are overreacting and not thinking at all. Could you speak to the Colonel sensibly, sir, and point out to him that a panic reaction frequently does more harm than—”

“Your colleagues are already doing that,” the Chief Psychologist replied dryly, “much more forcibly and persuasively than I could, so far without success. But if you feel that we are all guilty of a panic reaction, Doctor, perhaps you will demonstrate the kind of calm, logical reasoning that you think this problem demands?”

Why, you sarcastic . . . Conway raged silently. But before he could speak there was an interruption. Thornnastor’s analyzer was displaying bright, incomprehensible symbols on its screen and vocalizing its findings through the translator link.

Analysis of samples one through fifty-three taken in Observation Ward One, A UGL Level, it began tonelessly. General observations: All atmosphere samples contain oxygen, nitrogen and the usual trace elements in the normal proportions, also small quantities of carbon dioxide, water vapor and chlorine associated with the acceptable levels of leakage from the TLTU life-support system and the Illensan protective suit, and from the expired breaths of the DBDG, DBLF, ELNT, FGLI and FROB physiological types, as well as perspiration from the first, second and third of these types. Also present are the phenomes associated with the body odors of the species present who are not wearing overall body protection envelopes, including a hitherto unlisted set, which, by elimination, belongs to the DBPK patient. There are very small quantities of dusts, flakings and fibers abraded from walls, working surfaces and instruments. Some of this material cannot be analyzed without a larger sampling, but it is biochemically inert and harmless. There are also present follicles of Earth-human hair, Kelgian and DBPK fur, flakes of discarded Hudlar nutrient paint, and scales from Tralthan and Melfan tegument.

Conclusion: None of the gases, dusts, colloidal suspensions, bacteria or viruses found in these samples are harmful to any oxygen-breathing life-form.

Without realizing it Conway had been holding his breath, and the inside of his visor misted over briefly as he released it in a short, heavy sigh of disappointment. Nothing. The analyzer could not find anything harmful in the ward.

“I’m waiting, Doctor,” said O’Mara.

Conway looked slowly around the ward, at Thornnastor still undergoing artificial respiration, at the Kelgian theater nurse and the spread-eagled Melfan, at the silent Gilvesh and the TLTU hissing quietly in a corner, at the crowded pressure litter and at the beings of several different classifications attached to breathing masks-and found them all looking at him. He thought desperately: Something is loose in here. Something that did not show up in the samples or that the analyzer had classified as harmless anyway. Something that had been harmless, on board the Rhabwar . . .

Aloud, he said, “On the trip back to the hospital we examined and dissected several DBPK cadavers, and thoroughly examined and gave preliminary treatment to the survivor, without body protection and without suffering any ill effects. It is possible that the beings, Earth-human and otherwise, on the Rhabwar all had natural immunity, but that, to my mind, is stretching coincidence beyond its elastic limits. When the survivor was brought into the hospital, protection became necessary because four different physiological types practically dropped in their tracks. We have to ask ourselves, In what way were the circumstances aboard the ambulance ship and in the hospital different?

“We should also ask ourselves,” Conway went on, “the question Pathologist Murchison asked after completing her first DBPK dissection, which was, How did a weak, timid and obviously non-aggressive life-form like this one climb to the top of its planet’s evolutionary ladder and stay there long enough to develop a civilization capable of interstellar travel? The being is a herbivore. It does not even have the fingernails that are the evolutionary legacy of claws, and it appears to be completely defenseless.”

“How about concealed natural weapons?” O’Mara asked. But before Conway could reply, Murchison answered for him.

“No evidence of any, sir,” she said. “I paid particular attention to the furless, brownish area of skin at the base of the spine, since this was the only feature of the being’s physiology that we did not understand. Both male and female cadavers possessed them. They are small mounds or swellings, four to five inches in diameter and composed of dry, porous tissue. They do not secrete anything and give the appearance of a gland or organ that is inactive or has atrophied. The patches were a uniform pale brown color on the adults. The survivor, who is a female adolescent or preadolescent, as far as we can judge, had a pale pink mound, which had been painted to match the coloration of the adult patches.”

“Did you analyze the paint?” asked O’Mara.

“Yes, sir,” said Murchison. “Some of it had already cracked and flaked off, probably at the time the survivor received its injuries, and we removed the rest of it while we were giving the patient a preoperative cleanup before moving it to the hospital. The paint was organically inert and chemically non-toxic. Giving regard to the patient’s age, I assumed that it was a decorative paint applied for cosmetic purposes. Perhaps the young DBPK was trying to appear more adult than it actually was.

“Seems a reasonable assumption,” said O’Mara. “So, we have a beastie with natural vanity and no natural weapons.

Paint, Conway thought suddenly. An idea was stirring at the back of his mind, but he could not make it take form. Something about paint, or the uses of paint, perhaps. Decoration, insulation, protection, warning . . . That must be it-the coating of inert, nontoxic, harmless paint!

He moved quickly to the instrument rack and withdrew one of the sprayers which a number of e-ts used to coat their manipulators instead of wearing surgical gloves. He tested it briefly, because its actuator had not been designed for DBDG fingers. When he was sure that he could direct the sprayer with accuracy, he moved across to the soft, furry and apparently defenseless DBPK patient.

“What the blazes are you doing, Conway?” asked O’Mara.

“In these circumstances the color of the paint should not worry the patient too much,” Conway said, thinking aloud and ignoring the Chief Psychologist for the moment. He went on, “Prilicla, will you move closer to the patient, please. I feel sure there will be a marked change in its emotional radiation over the next few minutes.”

“I am aware of your feelings, friend Conway,” said Prilicla.

Conway laughed nervously. “In that case, friend Prilicla, I feel fairly sure that I have the answer. But what about the patient’s feelings?”

“Unchanged, friend Conway,” said the empath. “There is a general feeling of concern. It is the same feeling I detected shortly after it regained consciousness and recovered from its initial fear and confusion. There is deep concern, sadness, helplessness and . . . and guilt. Perhaps it is thinking about its friends who died.”

“Its friends, yes,” said Conway, switching on the sprayer and beginning to paint the bare area above the patient’s tail with the bright red inert pigment. “It is worried about its friends who are alive.”

The paint dried rapidly and set in a strong, flexible film. By the time Conway had finished spraying on a second layer the patient withdrew its head from underneath its furry tail to look at the repainted patch of bare skin; then it turned its face to Conway and regarded him steadily with its two large, soft eyes. Conway restrained an impulse to stroke its head.

Prilicla made an excited trilling noise, which did not translate, then said, “The patient’s emotional radiation shows a marked change, friend Conway. Instead of deep concern and sadness, the predominant emotion is one of intense relief.”

That, thought Conway with great feeling, is my own predominant feeling at the moment. Aloud, he announced, “That’s it, everyone. The contamination emergency is over.”

They were all staring at him, and their feelings were so intense and mixed that Prilicla was clinging to the ceiling and shaking as if caught in an emotional gale. Colonel Skempton’s face had disappeared from the screen, so it was the craggy features of O’Mara alone glaring out at him.

“Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist harshly, “explain.”

He began his explanation by requesting a playback of the sound and vision record of the DBPK’s treatment from the point a few minutes before it fully regained consciousness. While they were watching Thornnastor, the Kelgian theater nurse and the Melfan Edanelt, who had moved back a short distance to check the patient’s air line, Conway said, “The reason why nobody on board the Rhabwar was affected during the trip here was that at no time was the patient conscious. Now, the three attending physicians may or may not be handsome to other members of their respective species, but a being, an immature being at that, confronted with them for the first time might well find them visually quite horrendous. Under the circumstances the patient’s fear and panic reaction are understandable, but pay particular attention to the physical response to what, for a few seconds, it regarded as a physical threat.

“The eyes opened wide,” he continued as the scene unfolded on the main screen, “the body stiffened and the chest expanded. A fairly normal reaction, you’ll agree. An initial moment of paralysis followed by hyperventilation so that as much oxygen as possible is available in the lungs either to scream for help or to drive the muscles for a quick getaway. But our attention was concentrated on what was happening to the three attending physicians and the affected team-member, so that we did not notice that the patient’s chest remained expanded for several minutes, that it was, in fact, holding its breath.”

On the screen Thornnastor toppled heavily to the floor, the Kelgian nurse collapsed into a limp heap of fur, Edanelt’s bony undershell clicked loudly against the floor, the transfer team-member also collapsed and everyone else who was unprotected headed for the pressure litter or the breathing masks. “The effects of this socalled bug,” Conway went on, “were sudden and dramatic. Respiratory failure or partial failure and collapse, and clear indications that the voluntary and involuntary muscle systems had been affected. But there was no rise in body temperature, which would be expected if the beings concerned were fighting an infection. If infection is ruled out, then the DBPK life-form was not as defenseless as it looked . . .”

To be the dominant life-form on its planet, the DBPKs had to have some means of defending themselves, Conway explained. Or more accurately, the beings who really needed it had a means of defense. Probably the adult DBPKs were mentally agile enough to avoid trouble and to protect their young when they were small and easily carried. But when the children grew too large for their parents to protect and were as yet too inexperienced to protect themselves, they had evolved a means of defense that was effective against everything that lived and breathed.

When threatened by natural enemies, the young DBPKs released a gas-which resembled in its effects the old Earth-snake venom curare, with the rapidity of action of some of the later nerve gases- so that the enemy’s breathing stopped and it was no longer a threat. But it was a two-edged weapon in that it was capable of knocking out everything that breathed oxygen, including the DBPKs themselves. However, the event that triggered the release of the gas also caused the being concerned to hold its breath, which indicated that the toxic material had a complex and unstable molecular structure that broke down and became harmless within a few moments of release, although by that time the natural enemy was no longer a threat.

“With the rise of civilization and the coming of cities, leading to large numbers of the beings of all age groups living closely together, the defense mechanism of the DBPK children became a dangerous embarrassment. A suddenly frightened child, reacting instinctively, could inadvertently kill members of its own family, passers-by in the street or classmates in school. So the organ that released the gas was painted over and sealed until the child reached maturity and the organ became inactive.” There were probably psychological or sociological reasons, Conway thought, why the active organs were painted to resemble those of a ‘safe’ adult.

“But the patient is a preadolescent of a race that has star travel, and it would expect to see alien life forms,” Conway continued, turning away from the screen as the recording flicked off. “It reacted instinctively because of weakness and physical injury, and almost immediately realized what it had done. Judging by Prilicla’s emotion readings, it felt guilty; was desperately sorry for what it had done to some of the friends who had rescued it, and was helpless because it could not warn us of the continuing danger. Now it has been rendered safe again and it is relieved, and judging by its emotional reaction to this situation, I would say that these are nice people—”

Conway broke off as the screen lit again to show the faces of both Colonel Skempton and Major O’Mara. The Colonel looked flustered and embarrassed and he kept his eyes on something he was holding off-screen as he spoke.

“We have received a signal from the Descartes within the past few minutes. It reads: I am disregarding your recent signal. DBPK home planet located and first-contact procedure well advanced. Content of your signal suggests that survivor is a preadolescent DBPK and you are having problems. Warning, do not treat this being without using face masks or light protective suits, or move into the vicinity of the being without similar protection. If precautions have not been taken and hospital personnel are affected, they must be given immediate mechanical assistance with breathing for a period of two-plus hours, after which breathing will resume normally with no aftereffects. This is a natural weapon of defense possessed only by young DBPKs, and the mechanism will be explained to you when the two DBPK medics arrive. They should arrive within four hours in the scoutship Torrance to check on the survivor and bring it home. They are also very interested in the multienvironmental hospital idea and have asked permission to return to Sector General for a while to study and . . .

All at once it became impossible to hear the Colonel’s voice or the Descartes’ message because Doctor Gilvesh was shouting at Conway and pointing at the Kelgian nurse, whose fur was rippling in frustration because its tracheotomy tube was keeping it from vocalizing. A transfer team-member was also calling to him because Thornnastor was trying to climb to its six elephantine feet while complaining loudly at the indignity of it all. The affected Melfan was also up off the floor and loudly demanding to know what had happened; the Hudlar was shouting that it was hungry; and everyone who had been in the pressure litter began crawling out. The people who had been using masks had discarded them, and they were all trying to make themselves heard to Conway or each other. Conway swung around to look at the DBPK, suddenly afraid of

what the mounting bedlam might be doing to it. There was no longer any danger of their being knocked out by its panic reaction because of the painting exercise he had carried out a few minutes earlier, but the poor thing might be frightened out of its wits.

The DBPK was looking around the ward with its large, soft eyes, but it was impossible to read any expression on its furry, triangular face. Then Prilicla dropped from the ceiling to hover a few inches from Conway’s ear.

“Do not feel concern, friend Conway,” said the little empath. “Its predominant feeling is curiosity . . .

Very faintly above the hubbub Conway could hear the series of long blasts on a siren signaling the Contamination All Clear.

Part 4

RECOVERY

The two Dwerlan DBPK medics arrived to collect their casualty, but after a brief consultation, decided that the patient was receiving optimum treatment and that they would be grateful if it was allowed to remain there until it could be discharged as fully recovered in two or three weeks’ time. Meanwhile, the two visiting medics, whose language had been programed into the translation computer, wandered all over the engineering and medical miracle that was Sector Twelve General Hospital, carrying their tails erect in furry question marks of excitement and pleasure-except, of course, when those large and expressive members were squeezed inside protective suits for environmental reasons.

Several times they visited the ambulance ship, initially to thank the officers and medical team on the Rhabwar for saving the young Dwerlan, who had been the only survivor of the disaster to its ship, and later to talk about their impressions of the hospital or of their home world of Dwerla and its four thriving colonies. The visits were welcome breaks in the monotony of what, for the personnel of the Rhabwar, had become an extended period of self-education.

At least, that was how the Chief Psychologist described the series of lectures and drills and technical demonstrations that would occupy them for the next few months, unless a distress call was received before then.

“When the ship is in dock you will spend your on-duty time on board,” O’Mara had told Conway during one brief but not particularly pleasant interview, “until you have satisfied yourselves, and me, that you are completely familiar with every aspect of your new duty-the ship, its systems and equipment, and something of the specialties of its officers. As much, at least, as they will be expected to learn about your specialty. Right now, and in spite of having to answer two distress calls in as many weeks, you are still ignorant.

“Your first mission resulted in considerable inconvenience to yourselves,” he had gone on sourly, “and the second in a near panic for the hospital. But neither job could be called a challenge either to your extraterrestrial medical skill or Fletcher’s e-t engineering expertise. The next mission may not be so easy, Conway. I suggest you prepare yourselves for it by learning to act together as a team, and not by fighting continually to score points like two opposing teams. And don’t bang the door on your way out.”

And so it was that the Rhabwar became a shipshaped classroom and laboratory in which the ship’s officers lectured on their specialties in as much detail as they considered mere medical minds could take, and the medical team tried to teach them the rudiments of e-t physiology. Because so many of the lectures had to give a general, rather than a too narrowly specialized, treatment of their subjects, it was usually the Captain or Conway who delivered them. With the exception of the watch-keeping officer on duty in Control-and he could look and listen in and ask questions-all the ship’s officers were present at the medical lectures.

On this occasion Conway was discussing e-t comparative physiology.

. . . Unless you are attached to a multienvironment hospital like this one,” Conway was explaining to Lieutenants Haslam, Chen and Dodds, and with a brief glance at the vision pickup to include Captain Fletcher in Control, “you normally meet extraterrestrials one species at a time, and refer to them by their planet of origin. But here in the hospital and in the wrecked ships we will encounter, rapid and accurate identification of incoming patients and rescued survivors is vital, because all too often the casualties are in no fit condition to furnish physiological information about themselves. For this reason we have evolved a four-letter physiological classification system, which works like this:

“The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution,” he continued. “The second letter indicates the type and distribution of limbs and sensory equipment, which in turn gives us information regarding the positioning of the brain and the other major organs. The remaining two letters refer to the combination of metabolism and gravity and/or atmospheric-pressure requirements of the being, and these are tied in with the physical mass and the protective tegument, skin, fur, scales, osseous plating and so on represented by the relevant letter.

“It is at this point during the hospital lectures,” Conway said, smiling, “that we have to remind some of our e-t medical students that the initial letter of their classifications should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, and that the level of physical evolution, which is, of course, an adaptation to their planetary environment, has no relation to the level of intelligence . . .

Species with the prefix A, B or C, he went on to explain, were water-breathers. On most worlds, life had originated in the sea, and these beings had developed high intelligence without having to leave it. The letters 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 warm-blooded but insectile. The L’s and M’s were light-gravity, winged beings.

Chlorine-breathing life-forms were contained in the 0 and P groups, and after that came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically and the downright weird types. These included the ultra-high-temperature and frigid-blooded or crystalline beings, and entities capable of modifying their physical structures at will. Those possessing extrasensory powers sufficiently well developed to make ambulatory or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V, regardless of physical size or shape.

. . . There are anomalies in the system,” Conway went on, “but these can be blamed on a lack of imagination by its originators. One of them was the AACP life-form, which has a vegetable metabolism. Normally, the prefix A denotes a water-breather, there being nothing lower in the system than the piscine life-forms. But then we discovered the AACPs, who were, without doubt, vegetable intelligences, and the plant came before the fish—”

“Control here. Sorry for the interruption, Doctor.”

“You have a question, Captain?” asked Conway.

“No, Doctor. Instructions. Lieutenants Haslam and Dodds to Control and Lieutenant Chen to the Power Room, at once. Casualty Deck, we have a distress call, physiological classification unknown. Please ensure maximum readiness—”

“We’re always ready,” said Naydrad, its fur bristling in irritation.

“Pathologist Murchison and Doctor Conway, come to Control as soon as convenient.”

As the three Monitor Corps officers disappeared rapidly up the ladder of the central well, Murchison said, “You realize, of course, that this means we will probably not be given the Captain’s second lecture on control-system organization and identification in vessels of non-bifurcate extraterrestrials this afternoon.” She laughed suddenly. “I am not an empath like Prilicla here, but I detect an overall feeling of relief.”

Naydrad made an untranslatable noise, which was possibly a subdued cheer in Kelgian.

“I also feel,” she went on, “that our Captain is merely being polite. He wants to see us up there as soon as possible.”

“Everybody,” said Prilicla as it began checking the e-t instrument packs, “wants to be an empath, friend Murchison.”

They arrived in Control slightly breathless after their climb up the gravity-free well past the five intervening decks. Murchison had considerably more breath available than Conway, even though she had used a lot of it telling him that he was running to adipose and that his center of gravity was beginning to drop below his waistline-something that had not happened to the delightfully topheavy pathologist over the years. As they straightened up, looking around the small, darkened compartment and at the intent faces lit only by indicator lights and displays, Captain Fletcher motioned them into the two supernumerary positions and waited for them to strap in before he spoke.

“We were unable to obtain an accurate fix on the distress beacon,” he began without preamble, “because of distortion caused by stellar activity in the area, a small cluster whose stars are in an early and very active period of evolution. But I expect the signal has been received by other and much closer Corps installations, who will obtain a more accurate fix, which they will relay to the hospital before we make the first Jump. For this reason I intend proceeding at one instead of four-G thrust to Jump-distance, losing perhaps half an hour, in the hope of obtaining a closer fix, which would save time, a great deal of time, when we reach the disaster site. Do you understand?”

Conway nodded. On many occasions he had been awaiting a subspace radio message, usually in answer to a request for environmental information regarding a patient whose physiological type was new to the hospital, and the signal had been well-nigh unreadable because of interference from intervening stellar objects. The hospital’s receptors were the equal of those used by the major Monitor Corps bases, and were hundreds of times more sensitive than any equipment mounted in a ship. If any sort of message carrying the coordinates of the distressed vessel’s position was received by Sector General, it would be filtered and deloused and relayed to the ambulance ship within seconds.

Always provided, of course, that their ship had not already left normal space.

“Is anything known about the disaster area?” asked Conway, trying to hide his irritation at being treated as a complete ignoramus in all matters outside his medical specialty. “Nearby planetary systems, perhaps, whose inhabitants might have some knowledge regarding the physiology of the survivors, if any?”

“In this kind of operation,” said the Captain, “I did not think there would be time to go looking for the survivors’ friends.”

Conway shook his head. “You’d be surprised, Captain,” he said. “In the hospital’s rescue experience, if the initial disaster does not kill everyone within the first few minutes, the ship’s safety devices can keep the survivors alive for several hours or even days. Furthermore, unless faced with a surgical emergency, it is better and safer to institute palliative treatment on a completely strange lifeform and if it can be found, send for the being’s own doctor, as we would have done with the Dwerlan casualty had its injuries been less serious. There may even be times when it is better to do nothing at all for the patient and allow its own healing processes to proceed without interruption.”

Fletcher started to laugh, thought better of it when be realized that Conway was serious, then began tapping buttons on his console. In the big astrogation cube at the center of the control room there appeared a three-dimensional star chart with a fuzzy red spot at its center. There were about twenty stars in the volume of space represented by the projection, three of which were joined and enclosed by motionless swirls and tendrils of luminous material.

“That fuzzy spot,” said the Captain apologetically, “should be a point of light signifying the position of the distressed ship. As it is, we know its whereabouts only to the nearest hundred million miles. The area has not been surveyed or even visited by Federation ships, because we would not expect to find inhabited systems in a star cluster that is at such an early stage in its formation. In any case, the present position of the distressed ship does not indicate that it is native to the area, unless it malfunctioned soon after Jumping. But a closer study of the probabilities—”

“What bothers me,” said Murchison quickly as she sensed another highly specialized lecture coming on, “is why more of our distressed aliens are not rescued by their own people. That rarely happens.”

“True, ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “A few cases have been recorded where we found technologically interesting wrecks and a few odds and ends-the equivalent of e-t pin-ups, magazines, that sort of thing-but there were no dead e-ts. Their bodies and those of the survivors, if any, had been taken away. It is odd, but thus far we have found no civilized species that does not show respect for its dead. Also, do not forget that a space disaster is a fairly rare occurrence for a single star-traveling species, and any rescue mission they could mount would probably be too little and too late. But to the Galaxy-wide, multispecies Federation, space accidents are not rare. They are expected. Our reaction time to any disaster is very fast because ships like this one are constantly on standby; and so we tend to get there first.

“But we were discussing the difficulties of establishing the original course constants of a wrecked ship,” the Captain went on, refusing to be sidetracked from his lecture. “First, there is the fact that a detour is frequently necessary to reach the destination system. This is because of pockets of unusual stellar density, black holes and similar normal-space obstructions that cause dangerous areas of distortion in the hyperspace medium, so very few ships are able to reach their destinations in fewer than five Jumps. Second, there are the factors associated with the size of the distressed ship and the number of its hypergenerators. A small vessel with one generator poses fewest problems. But if the ship is similar in mass to ourselves, and we carry a matched pair, or if it is a very large ship requiring four or six hypergenerators . . . Well, it would then depend on whether the generators went out simultaneously or consecutively.

“Our ships and, presumably, theirs,” Fletcher continued, warming to his subject, “are fitted with safety cutoffs to all generators, should one fail. But those safety devices are not always foolproof, because it takes only a split-second delay in shutting down a generator and the section of the ship structurally associated with it pops into normal space, tearing free of the rest of the vessel and in the process imparting an unbalanced braking motion, which sends the ship spinning off at a tangent to its original course. The shock to the vessel’s structure would probably cause the other generator or generators to fail, and the process would be repeated, so that a series of such events occurring within a few seconds in hyperspace could very well leave the wreckage of the distressed ship strung out across a distance of several light-years. That is the reason why—”

He broke off as an attention signal flashed on his panel. “Astrogation, sir,” Lieutenant Dodds announced briskly. “Five minutes to Jump.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the Captain. “We will have to continue this discussion at another time. Power Room, status report, please.”

“Both hypergenerators at optimum, and output matched within the safety limits, sir,” came Chen’s reply.

“Life-support?”

“Systems also optimum,” Chen said. “Artificial gravity on all deck levels at one-G Earth-normal setting. Zero-G in the central well, generator housings and in the Cinrusskin doctor’s quarters.”

“Communications?”

“Still nothing from the hospital, sir,” Haslam replied.

“Very well,” said the Captain. “Power Room, shut down the thrusters, and stand by to abort the Jump until minus one minute.” In an aside to Murchison and Conway he explained: “During the final minute we’re committed to the Jump, whether a signal comes from the hospital or not.”

“Killing thrusters,” said Chen. “Acceleration zero and standing by.”

There was a barely detectable surge as the ship’s acceleration ceased and the one-G was maintained by the deck’s artificial-gravity grids. A display on the Captain’s panel marked off the minutes and the seconds in a silence that was broken only by a quiet sigh from Fletcher as the figures marched into the final minute, then the final thirty seconds.

“Communications, sir!” said Haslam quickly. “Signal from Sector General, amended coordinates for the distress beacon. No other message.”

“They certainly didn’t leave themselves time for a tender farewell,” said the Captain with a nervous laugh. Before he could continue, the Jump gong sounded and the ambulance ship and its occupants moved into a self-created universe where action and reaction were not equal and velocities were not limited to the speed of light.

Instinctively, Conway’s eyes went to the direct-vision port and beyond it to the inner surface of the flickering gray globe that enclosed the ship. At first the surface appeared to be a featureless and absolutely smooth gray barrier, but gradually a sensation of depth, of far too much depth, became apparent and an ache grew behind his eyes as they tried to cope with the twisting, constantly changing gray perspectives.

A maintenance engineer at the hospital had once told him that in hyperspace, material things, whether their atomic or molecular building blocks were arranged into the shapes of people or hardware, had no physical existence; that it was still not clearly understood by the physicists why it was that at the conclusion of a Jump the ship, its equipment and its occupants did not materialize as a homogenous molecular stew. The fact that such a thing had never happened before, as far as the engineer knew, did not mean that it could not happen, and could the doctor suggest a really strong sedative that would keep the engineer non-existently asleep while he was Jumping home on his next leave?

Smiling to himself at the memory, Conway looked away from the twisting grayness. Inside Control the non-existent officers were concentrating all their attention on panels and displays that had no philosophical reality while they recited the esoteric litanies of their profession. Conway looked at Murchison, who nodded, and they both unstrapped and stood up.

The Captain stared at them as if he had forgotten they were there. “Naturally you will have things to do, ma’am, Doctor. The Jump will last just under two hours. If anything interesting happens I’ll relay it to you on the Casualty Deck screen.”

They pulled themselves aft along the ladder of the gravity-free well, and a few seconds later, staggered slightly as they stepped onto the Casualty Deck. Its one-G of artificial gravity reminded them that there was such a thing as up and down. The level was empty, but they could see the spacesuited figure of Naydrad through the airlock view panel as it stood on the wing where it joined the hull.

That particular section of wing was fitted with artificial-gravity grids to aid in the maneuvering of awkward loads into and out of the airlock, which was why the Kelgian charge nurse appeared to be standing horizontally on the, to them, vertical wall of the wing. It saw them and waved before resuming its testing of the airlock and wing exterior lighting system.

In addition to the artificial gravity holding it to the wing surface two safety lines were attached to Naydrad’s suit. A person who became detached from its ship in hyperspace was lost, more utterly and completely lost than anyone could really imagine.

The Casualty Deck’s equipment and medication had already been checked by Naydrad and Prilicla, but Conway was required to give everything a final checkout. Prilicla, who needed more rest than its much less fragile colleagues, was in its cabin, and Naydrad was busy outside. This meant that Conway could check their work without Prilicla pretending to ignore him and Naydrad rippling its fur in disapproval.

“I’ll check the pressure litter first,” said Conway.

“I’ll help you,” offered Murchison, “and with the ward medication stores downstairs. I’m not tired.”

“As you very well know,” said Conway as he opened the panel of the litter’s stowage compartment, “the proper term is ‘on the lower deck,’ not ‘downstairs.’ Are you trying to give the Captain the idea that you are ignorant in everything but your own specialty?”

Murchison laughed quietly. “He seems already to have formed that idea, judging by the insufferably patronizing way he talks, or rather lectures, to me.” She helped him roll out the litter, then added briskly: “Let’s inflate the envelope with an inert at triple Earthnormal pressure, just in case we get a heavy-gravity casualty this time. Then we can brew up a few likely atmospheres.”

Conway nodded and stepped back as the thin but immensely tough envelope ballooned outwards. Within a few seconds it had grown so taut that it resembled a thin, elongated glass dome enclosing the upper surface of the litter. The internal pressure indicator held steady.

“No leaks,” Conway reported, switching on the pump that would extract and recompress the inert gas in the envelope. “We’ll try the Illensan atmosphere next. Mask on, just in case.

The base of the litter had a storage compartment in which were racked the basic surgical instruments, the glove extensions that would enable treatment to be carried out on a casualty without the doctor having to enter the envelope, and general-purpose filter masks for several different physiological types. He handed a mask to Murchison and donned one himself. “I still think you should try harder to give the impression that you are intelligent as well as beautiful.”

“Thank you, dear,” Murchison replied, her voice muffled by the mask. She watched Conway use the mixing controls for a moment, checking that the corrosive yellow fog that was slowly filling the envelope was, in fact, identical to the atmosphere used by the chlorine-breathing natives of Illensa.

“Ten, even five years ago, that may have been true,” she went on. “It was said that every time I put on a lightweight suit I upped the blood pressure, pulse and respiration rate of every non-geriatric male DBDG in the hospital. It was mostly you who said it, as I remember.”

“You still have that effect on Earth-human DBDGs, believe me,” said Conway, briefly offering his wrist so that she could check his pulse. “But you should concentrate on impressing the ship’s officers with your intellect; otherwise, I shall have too much competition and the Captain will consider you prejudicial to discipline. Or maybe we are being a bit too unfair to the Captain. I heard one of the officers talking about him, and it seems that he was one of the Monitor Corps’ top instructors and researchers in extraterrestrial engineering. When the special ambulance ship project was first proposed, the Cultural Contact people placed him first as their choice for ship commander.

“In some ways he reminds me of one of our Diagnosticians,” Conway went on, “with his head stuffed so full of facts that he can only communicate in short lectures. So far, Corps discipline, the respect due his rank and professional ability have enabled him to operate effectively without interpersonal communication in depth. But now he has to learn to talk to ordinary people-people, that is, who are not subordinates or fellow officers-and sometimes he does not do a very good job of it. But he is trying, however, and we must—”

“I seem to remember,” Murchison broke in, “a certain young and very new intern who was a lot like that. In fact, O’Mara still insists that this person prefers the company of his extraterrestrial colleagues to those of his own species.

“With one notable exception,” Conway said smugly.

Murchison squeezed his arm affectionately and said that she could not react to that remark as she would have liked while wearing a mask and coveralls, and that it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on Conway’s checklist as time went on. But the high level of emotional radiation in the area was reduced suddenly by the Jump gong signaling the ship’s return to normal space.

The Casualty Deck’s screen remained blank, but Fletcher s voice came from the speaker a few seconds later. “Control here. We have returned to normal space close to the position signaled by the beacon, but there is as yet no sign of a distressed ship or wreckage. However, since it is impossible to achieve pinpoint accuracy with a hyperspatial Jump, the distressed vessel could be many millions of miles away . . .

“He’s lecturing again,” Murchison sighed.

. . . but the impulses from our sensors travel at the velocity of light and are reflected back at the same speed. This means that if ten minutes elapsed before we registered a contact, the distance of the object would be half that time in seconds multiplied by the—”

“Contact, sir!”

“I stand corrected, not too many millions of miles. Very well. Astrogation, give me the distance and course constants, please. Power Room, stand by for maximum thrust in ten minutes. Charge Nurse Naydrad, cancel your EVA immediately. Casualty Deck, you will be kept informed. Control out.”

Conway returned his attention to the pressure litter, evacuating the chlorine atmosphere and replacing it with the high-pressure superheated steam breathed by the TLTU life-forms. He had begun to check the litter’s thrusters and attitude controls when Naydrad slithered through the inner lock seal, its suit beaded with condensation and still radiating the cold of outside. The charge nurse watched them for a few moments, then said that if it was needed it would be in its cabin thinking beautiful thoughts.

They checked the compartment’s restraints with great care. From experience Conway knew that extraterrestrial casualties were not always cooperative, and some of them could be downright aggressive when strange, to them, beings began probing them with equally strange devices of unknown purpose. For that reason the compartment was fitted with a variety of material and immaterial restraints in the forms of straps, webbing, and tractor- and pressorbeam projectors sufficient to immobilize anything up to the mass and muscle power of a Tralthan in the final stages of its premating dance. Conway devoutly hoped that the restraints would never be needed, but they were available and had to be checked.

Two hours passed before any news was forthcoming from the Captain. Then it was brief and to the point.

“Control here. We have established that the contact is not a naturally occurring interstellar body. We will close with it in seventy-three minutes.”

“Time enough,” said Conway, “to check the ward medication.”

A section of the floor of the Casualty Deck opened downwards onto the deck below, which was divided into a ward and a combination laboratory-pharmacy. The ward was capable of accommodating ten casualties of reasonably normal mass-Earth-human size and below-and of producing a wide range of environmental lifesupport. In the laboratory section, which was separated from the ward by a double airlock, were stored the constituent gases and liquids used by every known life-form in the Galactic Federation and with the capability, it was hoped, of reproducing atmospheres of those yet unknown. The lab also contained sets of specialized surgical instruments capable of penetrating the tegument of and performing curative surgery on the majority of the Federation’s physiological types.

The pharmacy section was stocked with the known specifics against the more common e-t diseases and abnormal conditions- in small quantities because of limitations of space-together with the basic analysis equipment common to any e-t pathology lab. All this meant that there was very little space for two people to work, but then Conway had never complained about working closely with Murchison and vice versa.

They had barely finished checking the e-t instruments when Fletcher’s voice returned, and before the Captain had finished speaking they were joined by Prilicla and Naydrad.

“Control here. We have visual acquisition of the distressed vessel, and the telescope is locked on with full magnification. You can see what we can see. We are decelerating and will halt approximately fifty meters from the vessel in twelve minutes. During the last few minutes of our approach, I propose using my tractor beams at low intensity to check the spin of the distressed ship. Comments, Doctor?”

The shape on the screen appeared at first to be a pale, circular blur against the background luminosity associated with the nearby star cluster. Only after a few seconds of close examination of the image did it become apparent that the blurred circle was, in fact, a thick metallic-gray disk that was spinning like a tossed coin. Apart from three slight protuberances spaced equally around the circumference of the disk, there were no other obvious features. As Conway and the others stared the spinning ship grew larger, overflowing the edges of the screen until magnification was stepped down and they could once again see the vessel whole.

Clearing his throat, Conway said, “I should be careful while checking the spin, Captain. There is at least one species we know of which requires constant spin on their space and other vehicles to maintain life-support—”

“I’m familiar with the technology of the Rollers of Dram bo, Doctor. They are a species which must roll, either naturally while traveling over the surface of their world or artificially if operating otherwise stationary machines, if their vital life-functions are to continue. They do not possess a heart as such, but use a gravity-feed system to mazntam circulation of the blood, so that to stop rolling for more than a few seconds means death to them.

“But this ship is not spinning around its vertical, lateral or longitudinal axis. In my opinion it is tumbling in a completely uncontrolled fashion, and its spin should be checked. Rather, it must be checked if we are to gain rapid entry to the ship and to its survivors, if any. But you’re the doctor, Doctor.”

For Prilicla’s sake Conway tried hard to control his irritation. “Very well. Check the spin, Captain, but carefully. You wouldn’t want to place an additional and unnecessary strain on the already damaged and weakened fabric of the ship, or cause wreckage to shift onto possible survivors, or to open a seam that might cause a lethal pressure drop in the vessel’s atmosphere.”

“Control out.”

“You know, if you two stopped trying to impress each other with how much you know about the other person’s job,” Murchison said seriously, “Doctor Prilicla would not get the shakes so often.”

On the screen the magnification was stepped down again as the ambulance ship closed with the distressed vessel, whose rate of spin was slowing under the tangential pull of the Rhabwar’s tractors. By the time both ships were motionless with respect to each other at a distance of fifty meters, the alien vessel had already presented its upper and lower surfaces for detailed inspection by eye and camera. One fact among many was glaringly obvious. But before Conway could comment on it, Control got there first.

“The distressed vessel appears to have retained its structural integrity, Doctor. There are no indications of external damage or malfunction, no signs of external substructures or antenna systems carried away or sheared off Preliminary sensor analysis of the hull surface shows temperature variations with the highest readings in the areas of the bulges on the ship’s rim. These three areas are also emitting residual radiation of the type associated with hyperdrive field generation. There is evidence of a major power concentration positioned around the central hub of the vessel, and several subconcentrations of power, all of which appear to be linked together by a system of power lines which are still active. The details are on the schematic . . .

The picture of the alien ship was replaced by a plan view diagram showing the positions and intensities of the power concentrations in shades of red, with yellow dotted lines indicating the connecting power lines. The original image returned.

“. . . There is no evidence of leakage of a gas or fluid which might constitute the atmosphere used by the crew, and neither, up to the present, can I detect a method of entry into the ship. There are no airlocks, either cargo or personnel, nor any of the markings associated with entry and exit points, inspection and maintenance panels, replenishment points for consumables. In fact, there are no markings or insignia or instructions or warning signs visible at all. The ship is finished in bare, polished metal, as far as we can see, and the only color variation is caused by different alloys being used in certain areas.”

“No paint scheme or insignias,” said Naydrad, edging closer to the screen. “Have we at last discovered a species completely devoid of vanity?”

“Perhaps the visual equipment of the species is in question,” Prilicla added. “They may simply be color blind.”

“The reason is more likely to be aerodynamic than physiological.”

“As far as we are concerned,” Conway joined in, “the reason is much more likely to be medical when the crew of a seemingly undamaged ship releases a distress beacon. Whatever the reason, the condition of the occupants is likely to be grave. We must go over there at once, Captain.”

“I agree. Lieutenant Dodds will remain in Control. Haslam and Chen will accompany me to the ship. I suggest you wear heavy-duty suits because of their longer duration. Our primary objective is to find a way inside, and that could take some time. What are your intentions, Doctor?”

“Pathologist Murchison will remain here,” Conway replied. “Naydrad will suit up as you suggest and stand by with the litter outside the airlock, and Prilicla and I will accompany you to the ship. But I shall wear a lightweight suit with extra air tanks. Its gauntlets are thinner and I may have to treat survivors.”

“I understand. Meet at the lock in fifteen minutes.”

The conversation of the party investigating the alien ship would be relayed to the Casualty Deck and recorded by Dodds in Control, and the three-view projection of the vessel would be updated as new data became available. But when they were in the Rhabwar’s lock and about to launch themselves towards the other ship, Fletcher touched helmets with Conway-signifying that he wanted to talk without being overheard on the suit radio frequency.

“I am having second thoughts about the number of people making the initial investigation and entry,” the Captain said, his voice muffled and distorted by its passage through the fabric of their helmets. “A certain amount of caution is indicated here. That ship appears to be undamaged and operational. It occurred to me that the crew rather than the ship are in a distressed condition and that their problem might be psychological rather than medical-they might be in a disturbed and non-rational state. So much so that they may react badly and possibly Jump if too many strange creatures started clambering all over their hull.”

Now he has delusions of being a xenopsychologist! Conway thought. “You have a point, Captain. But Prilicla and I will not clamber, we will look carefully and touch nothing without first reporting what we have found.”

They began by examining the underside of the disk-shaped vessel. It had to be the underside, Fletcher insisted, because there were four propulsion orifices grouped closely around its diametrical center. He was pretty sure the holes were the mouths of jet venturis because of the heat discoloration and pitting that surrounded them. From the position and direction of the thrusters it was clear that the ship’s direction of travel was along its vertical axis, although the Captain thought that it would be able to skim edge on for aerodynamic maneuvering in an atmosphere.

In addition to the burned areas around the jet orifices there was a large, circular patch of roughened metal centered on the underside and extending out to approximately one quarter of the ship’s radius. There were numerous other roughened areas, only a few inches across for the most part and of various shapes and sizes, scattered over the underside and around the rim. These rough areas puzzled Fletcher because they were really rough-rough enough to snag his gauntlets and pose a danger to anyone wearing a lightweight suit. But he was chiefly puzzled because the rest of the ship looked as if it had been put together by watchmakers.

There were three rough areas which corresponded with the swellings on the rim of the vessel and which were almost certainly the housings of its hypergenerators.

When they moved to the upper surface they found more tiny blemishes, raised very slightly above the surrounding surface, which seemed to be some kind of imperfection in the metal plating. Fletcher said they reminded him of corrosion incrustations except for the fact that there was no difference between their color and the color of the metal they had attacked.

Nowhere was there any evidence of transparent material being used in the ship’s construction. None of its communications antennae or sensory receptors had been deployed, so, presumably, this equipment had been retracted before the distress beacon had been released, and was concealed below some of the ship’s incredibly well fitting access panels and covers-a few of which had been distinguishable only because of slight color differences in the metal panels and the surrounding hull plating. After searching and straining their eyes for nearly two hours, they still found no sign of anything resembling an external actuator for any of these panels. The ship was locked up tight, and the Captain could give no estimate of the time needed to effect an entry.

“This is supposed to be a rescue attempt and not a leisurely scientific investigation.” Conway sounded exasperated. “Can we force an entry?”

“Only as a last resort,” the Captain replied. “We do not want to risk offending the inhabitants until we are sure their condition is desperate. We will concentrate our search for an entry port on the rim. The flat, disk-like configuration of the ship, which presents its upper surface to the direction of travel, suggests that its crew would enter via the rim. Its upper surface should, I feel sure, contain the control and living compartments and, hopefully, the survivors.”

“Right,” agreed Conway. “Prilicla, concentrate your empathic faculty topside while we search the rim. Again.”

The minutes flew by without anyone reporting anything but negative results. Impatiently, Conway guided his suit along the edge of the rim until he was hanging just a few meters from Prilicla’s position topside. On impulse, he energized his boot and wrist magnets, and when they had pulled him gently against the hull, he freed one foot and kicked hard against the metal plating three times.

Immediately, the suit frequency went into a howl of oscillation as everyone tried to report noise and vibration in their sensor pads at the same time. When silence had returned, Conway spoke.

“Sorry. I should have warned you I was going to do that,” he said, knowing that if he had done so there would have been an interminable argument with the Captain, ending in refusal of permission. “We’re using up too much time. This is a rescue mission, dammit, and we don’t even know if there is anyone to rescue. Some kind of response is needed from inside the ship. Prilicla, did we get anything?”

“No, friend Conway,” said the empath. “There is no response to your striking the hull, and no evidence of conscious mentating or emoting. But I cannot yet be sure that there are no survivors. I have the feeling that the total emotional radiation in the vicinity of the ship is not made up solely by the four Earth-humans present and myself.”

“I see,” said Conway. “In your usual polite and self-effacing fashion you are telling us that we are stirring up too much emotional mud and that we should clear the area so that you can work without interference. How much distance will you need, Doctor?”

“If everyone moves back to the hull of our ship,” said Prilicla, “that would be more than adequate, friend Conway. It would also assist me if they engaged in cerebral rather than emotional thinking, and switched off their suit radios.”

For what seemed to be a very long time they stood together on the wing of the Rhabwar with their backs to the alien ship and Prilicla. Conway had told them that if they were to watch the empath at work they would probably feel anxiety or impatience or disappointment if it did not find a survivor quickly, and any kind of strong feeling would cause emotional interference as far as Prilicla was concerned. Conway did not know what form of cerebral exercise the others were performing to clear their minds of troublesome emotional radiation, but he decided to look around him at the star clusters embedded in their billows and curtains of glowing star stuff. Then the thought came that he was exposing his eyes and his mind to too much sheer splendor, and the feeling of wonder might also be disturbing to an emotion-sensitive.

Suddenly the Captain, who had been sneaking an occasional look at Prilicla, began pointing towards the other ship. Conway switched on his radio in time to hear Fletcher say, “I think we can start emoting again.”

Conway swung round to see the spacesuited figure of Prilicla hanging above the metal landscape of the ship like a tiny moon while it directed a spray of fluorescent marker paint at an area midway between the center and the rim. The painted area was already about three meters across and the empath was still extending it.

“Prilicla?” called Conway.

“Two sources, friend Conway,” the Cinrusskin reported. “Both are so faint that I cannot pinpoint them with any degree of accuracy other than to say they are somewhere beneath the marked area of hull. The emotional radiation in both cases is characteristic of the unconscious and severely weakened subject. I would say they are in worse shape than the Dwerlan we rescued recently. They are very close to death.”

Before Conway could reply, the Captain said harshly, “Right, that’s it. Haslam, Chen, break out the portable airlock and cutting gear. This time we’ll search the rim in pairs, except for Doctor Prilida, with one man doing the looking with his light switched off while the other directs side lighting onto the plating so as to throw any joins into relief. Try to find anything that looks like a lock entrance, and cut a way in if we can’t solve the combination. Search carefully but quickly. If we can’t find a way through the rim inside half an hour, we’ll cut through the upper hull in the center of the marked area and hope we don’t hit any control linkages or power lines. Have you anything to add, Doctor?”

“Yes,” said Conway. “Prilicla, is there anything else, anything at all, you can tell me about the condition of the survivors?”

He was already on the way back to the distressed ship with the Captain slightly ahead of him, and the little empath had attached itself magnetically to the marked area of hull.

“My data is largely negative, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “and comprises supposition rather than fact. Neither being is registering pain, but both share feelings suggesting starvation, asphyxiation and the need of something that is vital to the continuance of life. One of the beings is trying very hard to stay alive while the other appears merely to be angry. The emotional radiation is so tenuous that I cannot state with certainty that the beings are intelligent life-forms, but the indications are that the angry one is probably a nonintelligent lab animal or ship’s pet. These are little more than guesses, friend Conway, and I could be completely wrong.”

“I doubt that,” said Conway. “But those feelings oUstarvation and strangulation puzzle me. The ship is undamaged, so food and air supplies should be available.”

“Perhaps, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied timidly, “they are in the terminal stages of a respiratory disease, rather than suffering from gross physical injury.”

“In which case,” said Murchison, joining the conversation from the Rhabwar, “I will be expected to brew up something efficacious against a dose of extraterrestrial pneumonia. Thank you, Doctor Prilicla!”

The portable airlock-a fat, lightweight metal cylinder swathed in the folds of transparent plastic that would form its antechamber-was positioned close to the alien ship. While Prilicla remained as physically close as possible to the survivors, Chen and Haslam joined the Captain and Conway in a final search for a fine line on the rim plating that might enclose an entry port.

He tried to be thorough without wasting time, because Prilicla did not think there was any time to waste as far as the two survivors were concerned. But the ship was close to eighty meters in diameter and they had an awful lot of rim to search in half an hour. Still, there had to be a way in, and their main problem was that, despite the many rough and incrusted patches, the ship’s structure represented an incredibly fine piece of precision engineering.

“Is it possible,” Conway asked suddenly, “that the reason for the ship’s distress is these rough patches?” The side of his helmet was close to the hull as he directed his spotlight at an acute angle onto the area that Fletcher was scanning for joins. “Perhaps the troubles of the survivors are a secondary effect. Maybe the unnaturally tight fit of the plating and panels is meant as a protection against attack by some kind of galloping corrosion native to the survivors’ home planet.”

There was a lengthy silence, then Fletcher said, “That is a very disquieting idea, Doctor, especially since your galloping corrosion might infect our ship. But I don’t think so. The incrusted patches appear to be made of the same material as the underlying metal and not a coating of corrosion. As well, they appear to avoid rather than attack the joins.

Conway did not reply. At the back of his mind an idea had begun to stir and take shape, but it dissolved abruptly as Chen’s voice sounded excitedly in his phones.

“Sir, over here!”

Chen and Haslam had found what seemed to be a large, circular hatch or section of plating approximately a meter in diameter, and they were already spraying the circumference with marker paint when Fletcher, Prilicla and Conway arrived. There were no rough patches inside the circular line or outside it except for two tiny rough spots set side by side just beyond the lower edge of the circle. Closer examination showed a five-inch-diameter circle enclosing the two rough patches.

“That,” said Chen, trying hard to control his excitement, “could be some kind of actuator control for the hatch.”

“You’re probably right,” said the Captain. “Good work, both of you. Now, set up the portable lock around this hatch. Quickly.” He placed his sensor plate against the metal. “There is a large empty space behind this hatch, so it is almost certainly an entry lock. If we can’t open it manually we’ll cut our way in.”

“Prilicla?” called Conway.

“Nothing, friend Conway,” said the empath. “The survivors’ radiation is much too faint to be detectable above the other sources in the area.”

“Casualty Deck,” Conway said. When Murchison responded, he went on quickly: “Considering the condition of the survivors, would you mind coming over here with the portable analyzer? Atmosphere samples will be available shortly. It would save some time if we didn’t have to send them to you for analysis, and shorten the time needed to prepare the litter for the casualties.”

“I was expecting you to think of that,” Murchison replied briskly. “Ten minutes.”

Conway and the Captain ignored the loose folds of transparent fabric and the light-alloy seal that bumped weightlessly against their backs while Haslam and Chen drew the material into position round the entry lock and attached it to the hull with instant sealant. Fletcher concentrated on the lock-actuator mechanism-he insisted that the disk could be nothing but a lock-and described everything he thought and did for the benefit of Dodds, who was recording on the Rhabwar.

“The two rough areas inside the disk appear not to be corrosion,” he said, “but in my opinion are patches of artificially roughened metal designed to give traction to the space-gauntleted mandibles or manipulatory appendages of the ship’s crew- “I’m not so sure of that,” said Conway. The idea he had had at

the back of his mind was taking shape again.

“—to ease the operation of the actuator, this disk, that is,” Fletcher continued, ignoring him. “Now, the disk may be turned clockwise or counterclockwise, screwed in or out on threads in either direction, pulled outwards, or pressed inwards and turned one way or the other into a locking position . . .

The Captain performed the various twisting and pressing movements as he described them, but with no effect. He increased the power on his foot and wrist magnets so as to hold himself more firmly against the hull, placed his gauntleted thumb and forefinger on the two rough spots and twisted even harder. His hand slipped, so that momentarily all of the pressure was on his thumb and one rough area. That half of the disk tilted inwards while the other side moved out. The Captain’s face became very red behind his visor.

. . . or, of course, it might turn out to be a simple rocker switch,” he added.

Suddenly the large, circular hatch began to swing inwards, and the ship’s atmosphere rushed out through the opening seal. The fabric of the portable lock they had attached to the hull bellied outwards and the metal cylinder of its double seal drew away from them, allowing them to stand up inside a large, inflated hemisphere of transparent plastic. As they were watching the hatch move inwards and upwards to the ceiling of the ship’s lock chamber, a short loading ramp was slowly extruded. It curved downwards to stop at the position that would have corresponded to ground level had the ship been on the ground.

Murchison had arrived and had been watching them through the portable lock fabric. “The air that escaped was from the lock chamber, because the flow has already stopped. If I could measure the volume of that lock chamber and our own portable job, I could calculate the aliens’ atmospheric pressure requirements as well as analyze the constituent gases m coming in.”

“Obviously a boarding hatch,” said the Captain. “They should have a smaller, less complicated lock for space EVAs and—”

“No,” said Conway, quietly but very firmly. “These people would not go in for extravehicular activity in space. They would be terrified of losing themselves.”

Murchison looked at him without speaking, and the Captain said impatiently, “I don’t understand you, Doctor. Prilicla, was there any emotional response from the survivors when we opened the lock?”

“No, friend Fletcher,” the empath replied. “Friend Conway is emoting too strongly for the survivors to register with me.”

The Captain stared at Conway for a moment, then he said awkwardly, “Doctor, my specialty has been the study of extraterrestrial mechanisms, control systems and communication devices, and my wide experience in this area led to my appointment to the ambulance ship project. The reason why I was able to operate this lock mechanism so quickly was partly because of my expertise and partly through sheer luck. So there is no reason why you, Doctor, whose expertise lies in a different area, should feel irritated just because—”

“My apologies for interrupting, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla timidly, “but he is not irritated. Friend Conway is feeling wonder, with great intensity.”

Murchison and the Captain were both staring at him. Neither asked the obvious question, but he answered it anyway: “What would make a blind race reach for the stars?”

It took several minutes to make the Captain see that Conway’s theory fitted all the facts as they knew them, but even then Fletcher was not completely convinced that the crew of the ship was blind. It was true that the rough areas on the vessel’s underside, particularly those in the area of the thrusters, would give a being possessing only the sense of touch a strong tactual warning of danger, and that the smaller rough areas placed at regular intervals around the rim were probably the coverings of the less dangerous altitude jets. The smallest and most numerous patches of what at first they had thought was corrosion could well be opening or maintenance instructions on access panels, written in an extraterrestrial equivalent of Braille.

The total absence of transparent material, specifically direct vision ports, also gave support to Conway’s theory, although it was not impossible that the ports were there but protected by movable metal panels. It was a very good theory, Fletcher admitted, but he preferred to believe that the ship’s crew saw in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, rather than were completely blind.

“Why the Braille, then?” Conway asked. But Fletcher did not answer because it was becoming increasingly obvious on closer examination that the rough spots on the panels and actuators were not there simply to furnish traction-each one was as individual as a fingerprint.

Like the exterior of the ship, the lock interior was unpainted metal. The lock chamber itself was large enough for them to stand upright, but the two actuator disks visible below the inner and outer seals were only a few inches above deck level. There were also a number of short, bright scratches and a few shallow dents in evidence, as though something heavy with sharp edges had been loaded or unloaded fairly recently.

“Physiologically,” said Murchison, “this life-form could be a weirdie. Is it a large being whose manipulatory appendages are at ground level? Or are they a small species whose ship was designed to be visited or used by a much more massive race? If the latter, then the rescue should not be complicated by xenophobic reactions on the part of the survivors, since they already know that there are other intelligent life-forms and that the possibility exists that an other-species group might rescue them.”

“It is much more likely to be a cargo lock, ma’am,” said the Captain apologetically, “and it is the cargo, rather than their extraterrestrial friends, if any, that was massive. Are we ready to go in?”

Without replying, Murchison switched her helmet spotlight to wide beam. The Captain and Conway did the same.

Fletcher had already checked that he could maintain two-way communication with Haslam and Chen outside the ship and with Dodds on the Rhabwar by touching the helmet antenna to the metal of the hull, in effect making the ship’s structure an extension of his antenna. He knelt down and depressed the actuator, which was positioned just above deck level inside the outer seal. The hatch swung closed, and he repeated the operation on a similarly positioned actuator below the inner seal.

For a few seconds nothing happened. Then they heard the hiss of atmosphere entering the lock chamber, and they felt their suits becoming less inflated as air pressure built up around them. As the inner seal opened to reveal a stretch of dark, apparently empty corridor, Murchison was busy tapping buttons on her analyzer.

“What do they breathe?” Conway asked.

“Just a moment, I’m double-checking,” Murchison replied. Suddenly she opened her visor and grinned. “Does that answer your question?”

When he opened his own helmet, Conway felt his ears pop at the slight difference in air pressure. “So, the survivors are warmblooded oxygen-breathers with roughly Earth-normal atmosphericpressure requirements. This simplifies the job of preparing ward accommodation.”

Fletcher hesitated for a moment, then he, too, opened his visor. “Let’s find them first.”

They stepped into a metal-walled corridor, featureless except for a large number of dents and scratches on the ceiling and walls, which extended for about thirty meters toward the center of the ship. At the end of the corridor, lying on the deck, was an indistinct something that looked like a tangle of metal bars projecting from a darker mass. Murchison’s foot magnets made loud scraping sounds as she hurried towards it.

“Careful, ma’am,” said the Captain. “If the doctor’s theory is correct, all controls, actuators, instruction or warning tags will have tactile indicators, and there is still power available within the ship; otherwise, the airlock mechanism would not have worked for us. If the crew live and work in complete darkness, you will have to think with your fingers and feet and not touch anything that looks like a patch of corrosion.”

“I’ll be careful, Captain,” Murchison promised.

To Conway, Fletcher said: “The inner seal has an actuator just like the others under its lower rim.” He directed his helmet light at the area in question, then indicated a smaller circle a few inches to the right of the actuator switch. “Before we go any farther I would like to know what this one does.”

“Well,” Conway said, “about the only thing we know for sure is that it isn’t a light switch.” He laughed as Fletcher depressed one side of the disk.

Murchison gave an unladylike grunt of surprise as bright yellow light flooded the corridor from an unseen source at the other end.

“No comment,” said the Captain.

Conway felt his face burning with embarrassment as he muttered about the lights being for the convenience of non-blind visitors.

“If this was a visitor,” said Murchison, who had reached the other end of the corridor, “then it was very severely inconvenienced. Look here.”

The corridor made a right-angle turn at its inboard end, although access to the new section was blocked by a heavy barred grill, which had been twisted away from its anchor points on the deck and one wall. Behind the damaged grill, dozens of metal rods and bars projected at random angles into the corridor space from the walls and ceiling. But they did not pay much attention to the strange cage-like outgrowth of metal because they were staring at the three extraterrestrials who were lying in wide, dried-up patches of their body fluids.

There were two very different physiological types, Conway saw at once. The large one resembled a Tralthan, but less massive and with stubbier legs projecting from a hemispherical carapace, which flared out slightly around the lower edges. From openings higher on the carapace sprouted four long and not particularly thin tentacles, which terminated in flat, spear-like tips with serrated bony edges. Midway between two of the tentacle openings was a larger gap in the carapace, from which projected a head that was all mouth and teeth, with just a little space reserved for two eyes set at the bottom of deep, bony craters. Conway’s first impression was that the entity was little more than an organic killing machine.

He had to remind himself that the Sector General staff included several beings whose species were highly intelligent and sensitive while retaining the physical equipment that had enabled them to fight their way to the top of their home planet’s evolutionary tree.

The other two beings belonged to a much smaller species with much less in the way of organic weaponry. They were roughly circular, just over a meter in diameter, and in cross section, a slim oval flattened slightly on the underside. In shape they very much resembled their ship, except that it did not have a long, thin horn or sting projecting aft or a thin, wide slit on the opposite side, which was obviously a mouth. The upper lip of the mouth was wider and thicker than the lower, and on one of the dead beings it was curled over the lower lip, apparently sealing the mouth shut. Both of the beings were covered on their upper and lower surfaces and around the rims by some kind of organic stubble, which varied in thickness from pin size to the width of a small finger. The stubble on the underside was much coarser than that on the upper surface, and it was plain that parts of it were designed for ambulation.

“It is clear what happened here,” said the Captain. “Two members of the species that crew this ship died when the large one broke free because of inadequate restraints, and presumably the survivors Prilicla detected were unable to cope with the situation and released a distress beacon.”

One of the smaller beings, which had sustained multiple incised and punctured wounds, lay like a piece of torn and rumpled carpet under its killer’s hind feet. Its companion, although just as dead, had suffered fewer wounds and had almost made its escape through a low opening in the wall at deck level before being immobilized and crushed by one of its attacker’s forefeet. It had also, before it died, been able to inflict several deep puncture wounds on the larger alien’s underside, and its broken-off horn or sting was still deeply embedded in one of them.

“I agree,” said Conway. “But one thing puzzles me. The blind ones appear to have modified their ship to accommodate the larger life-form. Why would they go to so much trouble to capture such a dangerous specimen? They must need it very badly or consider it extremely valuable for some reason to risk confining it with a blind crew.

“Possibly they have weapons that reduce the risk,” Fletcher said, “longer range, more effective weapons than that horn or sting, which these two omitted to carry for some reason and died because of the omission.”

“What kind of long-range weapon,” asked Conway, “could be developed by a being with only a sense of touch?”

Murchison tried to head off the argument that was impending. “We don’t know for certain that they have only a sense of touch, although they are blind. As for the value of the large life-form to them, it could be a fast-breeding source of food, or its tissues or organs might contain important sources of valuable medication, or the reason maybe a completely alien one. Excuse me.”

She switched on her suit radio. “Naydrad, we have three cadavers to transfer to the lab. Move them in the litter to avoid additional damage to the specimens by decompression.” She turned to Conway and the Captain. “I don’t think the other members of the crew would object to my opening up their friends, especially since the large one has already begun the process.”

Conway nodded. They both knew that the more she was able to discover about the physiology and metabolism of the two dead specimens, the better would be their chances of helping the surviving blind ones.

With Fletcher’s help they extricated the large cadaver from its cage and from the strange assortment of metal rods and bars that were pressing it against the deck. They had to widen the opening it had made in the grill. This required the combined efforts of the three of them and gave some indication of the strength of the being who had forced it apart. When they had the large alien free, its tentacles opened out and practically blocked the corridor as it floated weightless in the confined space.

While they were pushing it towards the airlock, Murchison said, “The deployment of the legs and tentacles is similar to the Hudlar FROB life-form, but that carapace is a thicker ELNT Melfan shell without markings, and it is plainly not herbivorous. Considering the fact that it is warm-blooded and oxygen-breathing and its appendages show no evidence of the ability to manipulate tools or materials, I would tentatively classify it as FSOJ, and probably nonintelligent.”

“Certainly non-intelligent, considering the circumstances,” said Fletcher as they returned to the caged section of corridor. “It was an escaped specimen, ma’am.”

“We medical types,” said Murchison, smiling, “never commit ourselves, especially where a brand-new life-form is concerned. But right now I wouldn’t even try to classify the blind ones.

Since she was the smallest person there, it was Murchison who wriggled carefully through the damaged grill and between the projecting rods and bars. If it had not been for the large alien warping a number of the bars out of true, she would not have been able to reach the blind one at all.

“This,” she said breathlessly as she reached the cadaver, “is a very strange cage.”

Although it was brightly lit, they could not see the other end of the caged section of corridor, because it followed the curvature of the ship, which at this distance from the center was sharp enough to keep them from seeing more than ten meters into it. The corridor walls and ceiling of the section they could see, however, were covered with projecting metal bars and rods. Some of them had sharp tips, others had spatulate ends and a few of them terminated in something that resembled a small metal ball covered in blunt spikes. The metal bars projected from slits in the walls, and the slots were long enough to allow their individual bars a wide angle of travel either up and down or from side to side. The rods protruded from circular holes and collar pieces in the ceiling and were designed only to move in and out.

“It is strange to me, too, ma’am,” said the Captain. “None of the e-t technology I’ve studied gives me any ideas. For one thing, it is a large cage, or should I say a very long cage, if it is continued around the ship. Perhaps it was meant to house more than one specimen, or the one specimen required space in which to exercise. I’m guessing, but I would say that the bars and rods projecting into the corridor formed some kind of restraint whereby the specimen could be immobilized in any part of the caged section for feeding purposes or for physical examination.”

“A pretty good guess, I’d say,” said Conway. “And if there was a malfunction in the mobile restraints, then the metal grill formed a safety backup that couldn’t, on this occasion, withstand the specimen’s attack. But I’m wondering just how far this corridor follows the radius of the ship. Extending this arc to the other side of the vessel places it in the area where Prilicla detected the two survivors. One of those survivors, according to Prilicla, was emoting anger on a very basic, perhaps animal, level while the other being’s emotional radiation was more complex.

“Let’s suppose,” Conway went on, “that there is another large alien at the other end of the corridor cage, maybe even outside the other end of the cage, with a badly injured blind one who wasn’t as successful as its crew-mate here in killing the brute—”

He broke off as Naydrad’s voice sounded in the suit phones, saying that it was outside with the pressure litter.

Murchison pushed the first blind one towards the lock. “Wait for a few minutes, Naydrad, and you can load all three specimens.”

Fletcher had been staring at Conway while the doctor was talking, plainly not liking the thought of another large FSOJ being in the ship. He pointed anxiously at the second blind one’s body. “This one nearly escaped after killing the FSOJ with its horn. If we knew where it was trying to escape to, we might know where to look for its crew-mate who did escape.”

“I’ll help you,” said Conway.

Time for the survivors, whichever species they belonged to, was fast running out.

At deck level there was a low rectangular opening, which was wide and deep enough to allow entry to a blind one. Nearly one third of its flat, circular body was inside the opening, and when they tried to remove it they encountered resistance and had to give the creature a gentle tug to pull it free. They were pushing it towards Murchison, who was waiting to load it into the airlock with the other two specimens, when there was an interruption on the suit frequency.

“Sir! A panel is swinging open topside. It looks like . . . it is an antenna being deployed.”

“Priicla,” Conway called quickly, “the survivors. Is one of them conscious?”

“No, friend Conway,” the empath replied. “Both remain deeply unconscious.”

Fletcher stared at Conway for a moment. “If the survivors did not extend that antenna, then we did, probably when we were pulling the blind one out from that opening.” He bent suddenly and slid his foot magnets backwards until he was lying flat against the corridor floor. He moved his head close to the opening through which the blind one had tried to escape, and directed his helmet light inside. “Look at this, Doctor, I think we’ve found the control center.”

They were looking into a wide, low tunnel whose internal dimensions were slightly larger than those of the bodies of the blind ones. Visibility was restricted because, like the corridor behind them, it followed the curvature of the ship. For a distance of about fifteen inches inside the opening the floor was bare, but the roof was covered with the tactually labeled actuators of the type they had found in the airlock. There were, naturally, no indicator lights or visual displays. Just beyond this area the tunnel had no roof, and they had a clear view of the first control position.

In shape it resembled a circular, elliptical sectioned sandwich open around the edges to facilitate entry by the blind ones of the crew. They could see hundreds of actuators covering the inside faces of the sandwich and, on the outer surfaces, the cable runs and linkages that connected the actuators with the mechanisms they controlled. The majority of the cable runs led towards the center of the ship while the rest curved towards the rim. There was no evidence of color-coding on the cables, but the sheathing carried various embossed and inset patterns that performed the same function for technicians who felt but could not see. A second control pod was visible beyond the first one.

“I can see only two control positions clearly,” said Fletcher, “but we know that the crew numbered at least three. The survivor is probably out of sight around that curve, and if we could squeeze through the tunnel—”

“Physically impossible,” said Conway.

“—without blundering against actuators every foot of the way,” the Captain went on, ‘and switching on every system in the ship. I wonder why these people, who do not appear to be stupid, even if they are blind, placed a control position so close to the cage of a dangerous captive animal. That was taking a risk.”

“If they couldn’t keep an eye on it,” said Conway dryly, “they had to keep closely in touch.”

“Was that a joke?” the Captain asked disapprovingly while he detached one of his gauntlets and reached into the opening. A few seconds later he said, “I think I feel the actuator we must have snagged pulling the blind one out. I’m pressing it, now.”

Chen’s voice on the suit frequency broke in. “There is another antenna array deploying, close to the first one, sir.”

“Sorry,” said Fletcher. For a moment his face registered an expression of deep concentration as his fingers felt their way over the alien controls; then Chen reported that both antennae had retracted.

The Captain smiled. “Assuming that they group their controls together in sensible fashion, and the actuators for power, altitude control, life-support, communications and so on occupy their own specific areas on the control panels, I’d say that the blind one was touching its communications panel when it died. It managed to release a distress beacon, but that was probably the last thing it was able to do.

“Doctor,” he added, “could you give me your hand, please?”

Conway gave his hand to the Captain to steady him and help him to his feet while Fletcher carefully withdrew his other hand from the opening. Suddenly one of Fletcher’s foot magnets slipped along the deck. His arm jerked backwards instinctively to prevent him from falling, even though in the weightless condition he could not fall, sending the hand back inside the control area.

“I touched something.” He sounded worried.

“You certainly did,” said Conway, and pointed at the caged section of corridor.

“Sir!” said Haslam on the suit frequency. “We are detecting strong intermittent vibrations throughout the fabric of the ship. Also metallic sounds!”

Murchison came diving along the corridor from the airlock. She checked herself expertly against the wall. “What’s happening?” Then she, too, looked into the caged corridor. “What is happening?”

For as far as they could see along the curvature of the corridor there was violent and noisy mechanical activity. The long metal bars projecting from their slots in the walls were whipping back and forth or up and down to the limits of their angles of travel, while the rods with their pointed or mace-like ends were jabbing up and down like pistons from the ceiling. Several of the bars and pistons were badly warped and were striking one another, which caused the awful din. As they watched, a small flap opened in the inboard wall of the corridor a few meters inside the grill, and a mass of something resembling thick porridge was extruded, to drift like a misshapen football into the path of the nearest wildly swinging bar.

The material splattered in all directions, and the smaller pieces were batted about by the other bars and pistons until they moved about the corridor like a sticky hailstorm. Murchison captured some of it in a specimen bag.

“Obviously a food dispenser of some kind,” she observed. “An analysis of this stuff will tell us a lot about the large one’s metabolism. But those bars and pistons are not, to my mind, a means of restraining the FSOJ. Not unless restraint includes clubbing it unconscious.”

“With a physiological classification of FSOJ,” said Conway thoughtfully, “that might be the only way to do it, short of using a heavy-duty pressor beam.”

“All the same,” Murchison went on, “I am feeling a slight attenuation of sympathy for the blind ones. That corridor looks more like a torture chamber than a cage.”

Conway had been thinking the same thing and so, judging by his shocked and sickened expression, had the Captain. They had all been taught, and were themselves convinced, that there was no such thing as a completely evil and inimical intelligent race, and even the suggestion that they believed such a thing possible would have led to their dismissal from the Monitor Corps or from the Federation’s largest multienvironment hospital. Extraterrestrials were different, sometimes wildly and weirdly different, and during the early stages of contact a great deal of caution was necessary until a full understanding of their physiological, psychological and cultural background was available. But there was no such thing as an evil race. Evil or antisocial individuals, perhaps, but not an evil species.

Any species that had evolved to the point of social and technological cooperation necessary for them to travel between the stars had to be civilized. This was the considered opinion of the Federation’s most advanced minds, which were housed inside some sixtyodd different life-forms. Conway had never been the slightest bit xenophobic, but neither was he completely convinced that somewhere there wasn’t an exception that would prove the rule.

“I’m going back with the specimens now,” Murchison said. “I may be able to find some answers. The trouble is finding the right questions to ask.”

Fletcher was stretched out on the deck again with one hand inside the control area. “I’ll have to shut off that . . . whatever it is. But I don’t know where exactly my hand was when I switched it on, or if I switched on anything else at the same time.” He tripped his suit radio toggle. “Haslam, Chen. Will you chart the extent of the noise and vibrations, please, and is there evidence of any other unusual activity within the ship?” He turned to Conway. “Doctor, while I’m trying to find the right button to push, would you do something for me? Use my cutting torch on the corridor wall midway between the L-bend here and the airlock—”

He broke off as they were suddenly plunged into absolute darkness, which seemed to augment the clanging and metallic screeching sounds to such an extent that Conway fumbled for his helmet light switch in near panic. But before he could reach it the ship’s lighting came on again.

“That wasn’t it,” said the Captain, then he continued: “The reason I want you to do this, Doctor, is to find an easier path to the survivors than the one along the corridor. You probably noticed that the majority of the cable runs originating in the control pods go inboard towards the power generation area of the ship, with very few leading out to the periphery. From this I assume that the area of the vessel outboard of the corridor cage and control center is the storage or cargo sections, which should, if the blind ones follow basic design philosophy where their spaceships are concerned, be comprised of large compartments connected by simple doors rather than pressurized bulkheads and airlocks. If this is so, and the sensor readings seem to confirm it, we should have to move only some cargo or stores out of the way to be able to bypass the control pods and get to the survivors fairly quickly. We would not have to risk running through that corridor, or worry about accidentally depressurlzing the ship by cutting in from topside . . .

Before the Captain had finished speaking, Conway began cutting a narrow vertical rectangle in the wall plating, a shape that would enable both his eyes and the helmet light to be directed through the opening at the same time so that he could see into the adjoining compartment. But when he burned through the wall there was nothing to see except a black, powdery substance, which spilled out of the opening and hung in a weightless cloud until the movement of his cutter flame sent it spinning into tiny three-dimensional whirlpools.

He worked his hand carefully into the hole, feeling the warmth of the still-hot edges through his thin gauntlets, and withdrew a small handful of the stuff to examine it more closely. Then he moved to another section of the wall and tried again. And again.

Fletcher watched him but did not speak. All of the Captain’s attention was again concentrated in his fingertips. Conway began working on the opposite wall of the corridor, reducing the size of the test holes to speed up the process. When he had cut four widely separated fist-sized holes without uncovering anything but the powdery material, he called Murchison.

“We are finding large quantities of a coarse black powder,” he told her, “which has a faint odor suggesting an organic or partly organic composition. It could be a form of nutrient soil. Does that fit the crew’s physiology profile?”

“It fits,” said Murchison promptly. “From my preliminary examination of the two small cadavers I would say that the atmosphere in their ship is for the convenience of the larger FSOJ life-form. The blind ones do not possess lungs as such. They are burrowers who metabolize the organic constituents of their soil as well as any other plant or animal tissue that happens to be available. They ingest the soil via the large frontal mouth opening, but the larger upper lip is capable of being folded over the lower one so that the mouth is sealed shut when it needs to burrow without eating. We’ve noticed atrophy of the limbs, or to be more accurate, the movable pads on the underside that propel it, and of hypersensitivity in the uppersurface tactual sensors. This probably means that their culture has evolved to the stage where they inhabit artificially constructed tunnel systems with readily accessible food supplies, rather than having to burrow for it. The material you describe could be a special loosely packed nutrient soil that combines the ship’s food supply with a medium for physical exercise.”

“I see,” said Conway.

A blind, burrowing worm who somehow managed to reach the stars! Then Murchison’s next words reminded him that the blind ones were capable of seemingly petty and cruel activities as well as those that were great and glorious.

“Regarding the survivors,” she went on, “if the FSOJ laboratory animal, or whatever it is, is too close to the surviving crew-member and we cannot rescue both without endangering ourselves or the blind one, a large reduction in atmospheric pressure, provided it is carried out gradually so as to avoid decompression damage to the blind one’s tissues, would disable or more likely kill the FSOJ.”

“That would be the last thing we would try,” said Conway firmly. The rules were very strict in first-contact situations like this, where one could never be absolutely sure that an apparently senseless and ferocious beast was, in fact, a non-sentient creature.

“I know, I know,” Murchison replied. “And it will interest you to know that the FSOJ was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, a time during which most life-forms, regardless of their degree of intelligence, can feel overprotective, overemotional and overaggressive if they think their unborn is being threatened. That might be the reason why the FSOJ broke out of its cage. As well, the blind one would not have been able to kill it with its horn if the FSOJ’s underbody had not been locally weakened in preparation for the imminent birth.”

Conway considered that for a moment. “The female FSOJ’s condition and the beating and prodding it had to take in the—”

“I didn’t say it was female,” Murchison broke in, “though it may be. In many ways it is a far more interesting life-form than the blind one.

“Save your mental energy for the one we know is intelligent,” Conway snapped at her. There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the background hiss from the suit radio. Then he apologized:

“Ignore me, please, I’ve got a bad headache.”

“Me, too,” Fletcher said. “I expect it is caused by the noise and subsonic effects of the vibration of all this moving machinery. If his headache is half as bad as mine you can forgive him, ma’am, and if you could have some helpful medication ready when we return to the ship—”

“Make that three,” said Murchison. “My head has been aching since I came back here, and I was exposed to the noise and vibration for only a few minutes. And I’ve bad news for you: The headache does not respond to medication.”

She broke contact. “Doesn’t it seem strange,” Fletcher asked worriedly, “that three people who breathed the air in this ship are suffering from—”

“Back at the hospital,” Conway broke in, “they have a saying that psychosomatic aches are contagious and incurable. Murchison’s analyzer checked the ship’s atmosphere for toxic material, and any alien bugs present are just not interested in us. This particular headache could be a product of anxiety, tension, or a combination of various psychological factors. But because it is affecting all three of us at once, and all three of us have spent some time inside the ship, it is probable that the headache is being caused by some outside agency, very likely the noise and vibration from that corridor, and you were right the first time. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“If you hadn’t,” said Fletcher, “I certainly would have done so. It is quite unpleasant and is affecting my ability to concentrate on these—”

There was another interruption from the outer hull.

“Haslam, sir. Chen and I have finished charting the extent of the sounds and vibration. They occupy a narrow band, perhaps two meters wide, which coincides with what you have called the corridor cage. The corridor runs right around the ship in a constant-radius circle, which is completed by the arc containing the control pods. But that’s not all, sir. The corridor intersects the area occupied by the two survivors.”

Fletcher looked at Conway. “If I could only stop this mechanical torture chamber, or whatever it is, we might be able to squeeze through it to the survivors . . . But no, if it started up again when someone was inside, it would batter them to death. Very well,” he said to Haslam, “is there anything else to report?”

“Well, sir,” Haslam replied hesitantly. “This may not mean anything, but we have headaches too.”

For a long time there was silence while the Captain and Conway thought about the two Rhabwar officers’ headaches. The men had been outside the ship at all times, making contact with the hull plating infrequently and then only through their magnetic boots and gauntlets-both of which had padded and insulated interiors capable of damping out mechanical vibration. Besides, sounds did not travel through a vacuum. Conway could think of nothing that would explain the two men’s headaches, but not so the Captain.

“Dodds,” Fletcher said suddenly to the officer he had left in the Rhabwar. “Run a sensor recheck for radiation emanating from this ship. It may not have been present until I started pushing buttons. Also, check for possibly harmful radiation associated with the nearby star cluster.”

Conway gave a nod of approval, which the Captain did not see. Even flat on his back with a thumping headache making it difficult to think and with one arm disappearing into an alien control pod in which an unguarded touch could cause anything from the lights going out to an unscheduled Jump into hyperspace, Fletcher was doing all right. But the sensor reading, according to Dodds, cleared the alien ship and the space around them of any trace of harmful radiation. They were still thinking about this when the timid voice of Prilicla broke the silence.

“Friend Conway,” called the empath, “I have delayed making this report until I was sure of my feelings, but there can no longer be any doubt. The condition of both survivors is improving steadily.”

“Thank you, Prilicla,” said Conway. “That will give us more time to think of a way of rescuing them.” To Fletcher, he added, “But why the sudden improvement?”

The Captain looked at the corridor cage and its outgrowth of furiously waving and jabbing metal and said “Could that have anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” said Conway, grinning in relief because the chances of a successful rescue had increased. “Certainly the noise alone is fit to wake the nearly dead.”

The Captain looked disapprovingly at him, plainly unable to see anything funny in the remark or the situation. Very seriously, he said, “I have checked and rechecked all of the flat rocker switches within reach. That particular form of actuator is the only kind suited to the short feeler pads possessed by the blind ones, because as manipulators the pads lack strength and leverage. But I have found something that feels like a lever, several inches long and terminating in a narrow reverse-conical handle. The cone is hollow and is probably designed to accommodate the tip of the blind one’s horn or sting. The lever is positioned at a forty-five-degree angle to its seating, which is the limit of its travel in the up direction. I intend moving it downwards.

“In case something calamitous happens as a result, we should seal our helmets,” Fletcher added. He closed his helmet visor and replaced the gauntlet he had removed earlier. Then he reached inside the opening without hesitation, obviously knowing exactly where his hand was going.

In the corridor cage all mechanical activity ceased abruptly. The silence was so complete that when someone scraped a magnetic boot against the outer hull the noise made Conway start. The Captain was smiling as he got to his feet and opened his visor again.

“The survivors are at the other end of this corridor, Doctor,” he said, then added, “if we can just get to them.”

But they found it completely impossible to wriggle through the thicket of projecting metal rods and bars. Even when the Captain took off his spacesuit to try it, he was successful only in collecting a number of cuts and abrasions. Disappointed, Fletcher climbed into his suit again and began attacking the metal projections with his cutter. But the metal was tough and required several seconds at maximum power before each metal bar was burned through. There were so many of the things it was like weeding a metal garden a stalk at a time, the Captain observed crossly. He had cleared less than two meters of the corridor cage when they were forced back to the airlock because of the buildup of heat.

“It’s no good,” said the Captain. “We can cut a way through to them, but only in short stages with lengthy delays in between to allow the excess heat to dissipate by conduction through the fabric of the ship and to radiate into space. There is also the danger that the heat might melt the insulation on some of their power-control circuitry, with unknown results.”

He tapped the wall beside him with his fist, so hard that it might almost have been a display of temper. “Emptying the storage spaces of nutrient soil would also be a long job, necessitating as it would the movement of the soil in installments from the storage spaces to the corridor to the lock and out, and we have no idea what structural problems could then arise inside those compartments. I’m beginning to think the only thing to do is cut a way in from outside. But there are problems there, too . . .

Cutting down to the survivors through the double hull of the ship would generate a lot of heat, especially inside the portable lock they would have to use to guard against accidentally depressurizing the vessel. Once again, lengthy delays would be required to allow the heat to radiate away, although the process would be faster since they would already be on the outer hull. There was also the problem of cutting through the mechanical linkages to the bars and pistons projecting into the corridor, which would tend to generate a lot of heat inside the ship, heat which might have an adverse effect on the survivors. The only advantage was that they would not run the risk of being beaten to death by metal bars if as a result of their cutting operations the system switched itself on again.

. . . And by the way, Doctor,” Fletcher added, changing from his lecturing tone, “my headache is fading.”

Conway was telling him that his own headache was diminishing as well when Prilicla broke into the conversation. “Friend Fletcher, I have been monitoring emotional radiation of the survivors since you halted the corridor mechanisms. Their condition has deteriorated steadily since then, and they are now in the state similar to that detected on our arrival, or perhaps a little worse. Friend Fletcher, we could easily lose them.”

“That . . . that doesn’t make sense!” the Captain burst out. He looked appealingly at Conway.

Conway could imagine Prilicla trembling inside its spacesuit at the Captain’s outburst and the emotional radiation accompanying it. But he could just barely imagine the effort it had taken for the little empath, who found it acutely painful to disagree with anyone, to speak as it had. “Perhaps not,” he said quickly to Fletcher, “but there is one way of finding out.”

Fletcher gave him an angry, puzzled look, but he moved to the control pod opening and a few seconds later the noise and mechanical activity in the corridor had returned. So had Conway’s headache.

Prilicla said, “The condition of the survivors is improving again.”

“How much did they improve last time?” asked Conway. “And would you be able to tell by their emotional radiation if one being was about to attack another?”

“Both survivors were fully conscious for a few minutes,” Prilicla replied. “Their radiation was so strong that I was able to reduce the area of uncertainty of their position. They are within two meters of each other, and neither of them was or is contemplating an attack.”

“Are you telling me,” the Captain said in a baffled tone, “that a fully conscious FSOJ and a blind one are as close together as that without the animal wanting to attack it?”

“Maybe the blind one found a locker or something to hide in,” said Conway, “and to the FSOJ it is a case of out of sight, out of mind.”

“Excuse me,” said Prilicla. “There is no way that I can tell with absolute certainty that the two beings are of different species. The quality of their emotional radiation strongly suggests this. One is emoting anger and pain and little else while the other’s emotions possess the complexity of a rational mind. But would it help you if you considered the possibility that they are both blind ones, one of whom has suffered gross brain damage, which is causing the raw, mindless level of emoting which I have detected.”

“A nice theory, Doctor Prilicla,” said the Captain. He winced and instinctively put his hands to his head, only to have them stopped short by his helmet. “It explains their close proximity, but it does not explain why their condition is affected by the corridor mechanisms. Unless I damaged the controls in some fashion, and accidentally made a connection between the corridor control lever and some emergency life-support equipment, perhaps a medical therapy unit or . . . I feel completely and utterly confused!”

“Everyone is feeling confused, friend Fletcher,” said the empath. “The general emotional radiation leaves no doubt of that.”

“Let’s go back to the ship,” said Conway suddenly. “I need some peace and quiet to think.”

They left the blind ones’ ship with Chen on watch with instructions to keep his distance and on no account to make physical contact with the vessel’s structure. Prilicla returned with them, saying that the emotional radiation from the two survivors was strong enough for it to be monitored at a distance, since the condition of both was continuing to improve while the corridor mechanisms were still operating.

Entering by the Casualty Deck lock, they headed straight for the lab, which was occupied by a bloodstained Murchison and numerous pieces of FSOJ and blind ones spread around the dissecting tables. Naydrad joined them as Conway asked the Captain to project a plan view diagram of the blind ones’ ship, incorporating the latest data. Fletcher looked relieved at having something to occupy him, since it was obvious that he did not share the close professional interest of the others in the pieces of extraterrestrial raw meat scattered about the place.

When the diagram appeared on the lab’s display screen, Conway asked the Captain to correct him if he went wrong anywhere, then he began reviewing their problem.

Like most major problems this one was composed of a number of smaller ones, some of which were susceptible to solution. There was the blind ones’ ship, which preliminary technical investigation showed to be structurally sound and in a fully powered-up condition. The vessel’s configuration was that of a disk that tapered in thickness towards the circumference. At the center was a circle of perhaps one third the radius of the ship, which enclosed the power generation and associated equipment. Outside this area and enclosing it was a circular corridor linked to the airlock by a straight section of corridor, giving the appearance in the plan view of a sickle with a circular blade whose tip almost reached its handle. The short arc that joined the tip to the top of the handle was occupied by the control pods of the blind ones.

Beyond the circular corridor was the life-support area for both the crew and their captives. Proportionately, the volume of the ship devoted to the FSOJ life-form meant that the vessel had been designed specifically for the purpose of transporting these creatures. The lighting, atmosphere, FSOJ food dispenser and exercise space left no doubt about that.

Conway paused for a moment to look at Fletcher and the others, but there were no arguments. Then he went on: “The arrangement of rapidly moving bars and pistons in the caged corridor, particularly the ones with pointed and club-like extremities, worries me because I cannot accept the idea that the FSOJs are being used solely for the purpose of torture. I prefer the idea that they are being trained, perhaps domesticated, for a very special reason. One does not design an interstellar ship around a non-sentient life-form unless the creature is extremely valuable to the designers.

“We must therefore ask ourselves what the FSOJ has that the blind ones haven’t,” Conway went on. “What is it that they need most?”

They were all staring silently at the FSOJ cadaver. Murchison looked up at him suddenly, but it was the Captain who spoke first.

“Eyes?”

“Right,” said Conway, then continued: “Naturally, I don’t want to suggest that the FSOJs are the blind ones’ equivalent of seeingeye dogs. Rather, when their violent tendencies are curbed, a symbiotic or parasitic relationship is possible whereby the blind one attaches itself with its undersurface pads to tap into the FSOJ’s central nervous system, in particular the vision network, so that it would receive—”

“Not possible,” Murchison said firmly.

Prilicla began shaking to Conway’s feelings of irritation and disappointment. His disappointment predominated because he knew that Murchison would not have spoken so bluntly had she not been certain of her facts.

“Perhaps with a surgical intervention as well as a training program . . .“Conway tried hopefully.

But Murchison shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We now have enough information on both life-forms to know that a symbiotic or parasitic relationship is impossible. The blind ones, which I have tentatively classified as CPSD, are omnivorous and have two sexes. One of the cadavers is male, the other female. The sting is their only natural weapon, but the poison sac associated with it has long since atrophied. I found scratches on the osseous tip of both stings, which suggests that they are now used as a manipulatory appendage. They are highly intelligent and, as we already know, technologically advanced despite their physical and sensory handicaps.

“Their only sense seems to be that of touch,” she continued, “but judging by the degree of specialization apparent in the sensor pads covering the upper surface of their bodies, their touch is extremely sensitive. It is possible that some of those sensors would ‘feel’ vibrations in a solid or gaseous medium, or ‘feel’ the taste of substances with which they came in contact. As well as feeling, hearing and tasting after a fashion, a refinement of the ‘taste’ pads might also enable them to smell by touch. But they cannot see and would probably have difficulty in grasping the concept of sight, so they would not know a visual nerve network if they touched one.”

Murchison indicated the opened torso of the FSOJ, then went on. ‘But that is not the principal reason why they cannot have a symbiotic relationship. Normally, an intelligent parasite or symbiont has to position itself close to the brain or in an area where the main nerve bundles are easily accessible. In our own case that would be at the back of the neck or the top of the head. But this beastie’s brain is not in its skull; it is deep inside the torso with the rest of the other vital organs and is positioned in a rather stupid place, just under the womb and surrounding the beginning of the birth canal. As a result, the brain is compressed as the embryo grows, and if it is a difficult birth its parent’s brain is destroyed. Junior comes out fighting and with a convenient food supply available until it can kill something for itself.

“The FSOJ, which is bisexual, retains its young in the womb until it is well-grown and fully equipped to survive,” she added. “Survival cannot be easy where it lives, and the blind ones must have found a much more suitable life-form for a symbiont, if that was what they were looking for.”

Conway rubbed his aching head and thought that difficult cases usually did not have this effect on him. Occasionally he had lost sleep over patients, or felt anxious or even seriously worried and tense when the time came to make a crucial decision in their case, but up until now it had never given him headaches. Was he growing old? But no, that was much too simple an explanation, because at the blind ones’ ship they had all had headaches.

“One way or another we will have to go after the survivors,” Conway said decisively. “And soon. But it would be criminal and stupid to endanger the life of a sentient being by wasting time on an experimental animal, even one that the ship’s crew consider as valuable as the FSOJ. Now, if we agree that the FSOJ is nonsentient—”

“We depressurize the ship, wait until Prilicla says the FSOJ is dead and cut our way in to the surviving blind one as quickly as possible,” the Captain finished for him, then added, “Dammit, my headache’s back.”

“A suggestion, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla diffidently. “The blind one is small and could probably negotiate the corridor cage without being inconvenienced by the FSOJ training mechanisms. The emotional radiation from both beings is increasing to the point where I would say that they are almost fully recovered. One is radiating anger of the insensate, uncontrolled kind while the other is feeling increasing frustration and is straining hard to do something. And I, too, am having some cranial discomfort, friend Conway.”

The contagious headache again! thought Conway. This is too much of a coincidence . . .

Suddenly his mind was back in time and space to his early years in the hospital, when he was insufferably proud to be on the staff of a multienvironment hospital even though at the time he was little more than a medical messenger boy. But then he had been given the assignment of liaison with one Doctor Arretapec, a VUXG who was teleportive, telekinetic and telepathic, and who had received Federation funding for his project of engendering intelligence in a race of non-sentient Saurians.

Arretapec had given Conway a headache in more ways than one.

He was only half-listening while the Captain was making the arrangements to depressurize the other ship. His plan was, first, to reposition the portable airlock above the survivors in case the blind one could not make its way along the corridor when the FSOJ was dead and they had begun the slow job of cutting a way in. But the sudden incredulity and anger in Fletcher’s voice brought Conway’s mind back to present time with a rush.

. . . And why can’t you do it?” the Captain was demanding. “Start moving that lock at once. Haslam and I will be over to help you in a few minutes. What’s the matter with you, Chen?”

“I don’t feel well,” said Lieutenant Chen from his position beside the blind ones’ ship. “Can I be relieved, sir?”

Before the Captain could reply, Conway said, “Ask him if he has a headache of increasing severity, and is there a feeling of intense itching originating deep inside his ears. When he confirms this, tell him that the discomfort will diminish with distance from the blind ones’ ship.”

A few seconds later Chen was on his way back to the Rhabwar, having confirmed Conway’s description of his symptoms. Fletcher asked helplessly, “What is happening, Doctor?”

“I should have been expecting it,” Conway replied, “but it has been a long time since I had the experience. And I should have remembered that beings who, through physical damage or evolution, have been deprived of vital sensory equipment are compensated for the loss. I think-no, I know. We are experiencing telepathy.”

The Captain shook his head firmly. “You’re wrong, Doctor,” he said. “There are a few telephathic races in the Federation, but they tend to be philosophically rather than technologically inclined, so we don’t meet them very often. But even I know that their ability to communicate telepathically is confined to members of their own species. Their organic transmitter and receivers are tuned to that one frequency, and other species, even other telepathic species, cannot pick up the signals.”

“Correct,” said Conway. “Generally speaking, telepaths communicate only with other telepaths. But there have been a few rare exceptions recorded where non-telepaths have received their thoughts for a few seconds’ or minutes’ duration only, and more often than not the experimenters suffered great discomfort without making contact at all. The reason for their partial success is, according to the e-t neurologists, that many species have a latent telepathic faculty that became atrophied when they developed normal sensory equipment. But when my single, very brief experience took place I had been working closely with a very strong telepath on the same problem, seeing the same images, discussing the same symptoms and sharing the same feelings about our patient for days on end. We must have established a temporary bridge, and for a few minutes the telepath’s thoughts and feelings were able to cross it.”

Prilicla was shaking violently. “If the sentient survivor is trying to establish telepathic contact with us, friend Conway, it is trying very hard. It is feeling extreme desperation.”

“I can understand that,” said the Captain, “with a rapidly improving FSOJ nearby. Now what do we do, Doctor?”

Conway tried to make his aching head produce an answer before the surviving blind one suffered the same fate as its crew-mates. “If we could think hard about something we have in common with it. We could try thinking about the blind ones”—he waved his hand at the dissecting tables—”except that we might not have enough mental control to think of them whole and alive. If we thought about them as dissected specimens, however briefly, it would not be reassuring to the survivor. So look at and think about the FSOJ. As an experimental animal the blind one should not be bothered by seeing, feeling, experiencing or whatever, it in small pieces.

“I would like you all to concentrate on thinking about the FSOJ,” he went on, looking at each of them in turn. “Concentrate hard, and at the same time try to project the feeling that you want to help. There may be some discomfort but no harmful after effects. Now think, think, hard . . . !”

They stared at the partially dismembered FSOJ in silence, and thought. Prilicla began trembling violently and Naydrad’s fur was doing strange things indeed as it reflected the Kelgian’s feelings. Murchison’s face turned white and her lips were pressed together, and the Captain was sweating.

“Some discomfort, he said,” Fletcher muttered.

“Discomfort to a medic,” said Murchison, briefly unclenching her teeth, “can mean anything from the pain of a sprained ankle to being boiled in oil, Captain.”

“Stop talking,” Conway snapped. “Concentrate.”

His head felt as if it could no longer contain his aching brain and there was a raging itch growing inside his skull, a sensation he had felt just once before in his life. Conway glanced quickly at Fletcher as the Captain gave an agonized grunt and started poking at his ear with a finger. And suddenly there was contact. It was a weak, unspoken message that came from nowhere, but it was there in their minds as silent words that formed both a statement and a question.

“You are thinking of my Protector . . .”

They all looked at each other, all obviously wondering if each had heard, felt, experienced the same words. The Captain let out his breath in an explosive sigh of relief, and said, “A . . . a Protector?”

“With those natural weapons, Murchison said, gesturing towards the FSOJ’s horn-tipped tentacles and bony armor, “it certainly has the right equipment for the job.”

“I don’t understand why the blind ones need protectors,” Naydrad said, “when they are technically advanced enough to build starships.”

“They may have natural enemies on the home planet,” began the Captain, “which they are incapable of controlling—”

“Later, later,” Conway said sharply, breaking up what promised to become an interesting but time-wasting debate. “We can discuss this later when we have more data. Right now we must return to the ship. This must be extreme range for mind contact with nontelepaths like us, so we must get as close to it as possible. And this time we’ll go for a rescue . . .

With the exception of the Captain, the non-medical personnel remained with the ambulance ship. It was not thought that Haslam, Chen or Dodds could help very much unless or until they were required to burn a way into the other ship. Three extra minds that were not completely informed regarding the situation might, by their confused thinking, make it more difficult for the surviving telepath to communicate with the others, who, Conway thought dryly, were only slightly less confused than the crew-members.

Prilicla once again stationed itself near the hull to monitor emotional radiation in case the telepathy did not work. Fletcher carried a heavy-duty cutter intended, if necessary, to depressurize the ship rapidly and eliminate the Protector, and Naydrad had positioned itself with the pressure litter outside the airlock. In spite of their belief that the blind one could take decompression with much less danger than the FSOJ, Conway and Murchison would return with it inside the pressure litter should it require medical attention.

Their aching heads continued to feel as if someone were performing radical neurosurgery without benefit of an anesthetic. Since the few seconds of communication on the ambulance ship there had been nothing in their minds but their own thoughts and the maddening, itching headache, and there was no change as Murchison, Fletcher and Conway entered the lock chamber. As soon as they opened the inner seal, the noise of the corridor cage mechanisms thudding and screeching like an alien percussion section did nothing to improve their headaches.

“This time, try to think about the blind ones,” said Conway as they moved inboard along the straight section of corridor. “Think about helping them. Try to ask who and what they are, because we need to know as much as possible about them if we are to help the survivor.”

Even as he was speaking Conway felt that something was badly wrong, and he had an increasingly strong feeling that something terrible would happen if he did not stop and think carefully. But the raging, itching headache was making it difficult to think at all.

My Protector, the telepath on the ship had called the FSOJ. You are thinking of my Protector. He was missing something. But what?

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said suddenly. “Both survivors are moving along the corridor cage towards you. They are moving quickly.”

They looked along the caged section with its screeching and clattering forest of waving metal bludgeons. The Captain unlimbered his cutter. “Prilicla, can you tell if the FSOJ is chasing the blind one?”

“I’m sorry, friend Fletcher,” the empath replied. “They are close together. One being is radiating anger and pain, the other extreme anxiety, frustration and the emotional radiation associated with intense concentration.”

“This is ridiculous!” Fletcher shouted above the suddenly increasing noise of the corridor mechanisms. “We have to kill the FSOJ if we’re to rescue the blind one. I’m going to open the corridor to space—”

“No, wait!” said Conway urgently. “We haven’t thought this through. We know nothing about the FSOJs, the Protectors. Think. Concentrate together. Ask, What are the Protectors? Who do they protect and why? What makes them so valuable to the blind ones? It answered once and it may answer again. Think hard!”

At that moment the FSOJ appeared round the curve of the corridor, moving rapidly in spite of the metal rods and clubs jabbing and battering at its body. The four horn-tipped tentacles whipped back and forth, pounding at the attacking metal bars and pistons and warping them out of shape, even tearing one of them out of its mounting. The noise was indescribable. The FSOJ was not quite running the course, Conway thought grimly as he saw the wounds overlaying the older scars on its body tegument and the distended underbelly, but it was moving fast, considering its condition. He felt a hand shaking his arm.

“Doctor, ma’am, are you both deaf?” Fletcher was shouting at them. “Get back to the airlock!”

“In a moment, Captain,” said Murchison, shaking off Fletcher’s hand and training her recorder on the advancing FSOJ. “I want to get this on tape. These aren’t the surroundings I would choose in which to deliver my offspring, but then I suppose this one wasn’t given any choice . . . Look out!”

The FSOJ had reached the section of corridor that had been partially cleared of the projecting metal by Fletcher’s cutter. With nothing to stop it the being hurled itself through the damaged grill and was suddenly on them, floundering weightlessly now that the corridor mechanisms were no longer beating it against the floor, and spinning helplessly whenever a slashing tentacle struck the wall plating.

Conway flattened himself against the deck with his wrist and boot magnets and began crawling backwards in the direction of the airlock. Murchison was already doing the same, but the Captain was still on his feet. He was retreating slowly and waving his cutter, which he had turned up to maximum intensity, in front of him like a fiery sword. One of the FSOJ’s tentacles was badly charred, but the being did not appear to be handicapped in any way. Suddenly Fletcher gave a loud grunt as one of the FSOJ’s tentacles hit him on the leg, knocking him away from magnetic contact with the deck and sending him cartwheeling helplessly.

Instinctively Conway gripped an arm as it came whirling past him, steadied the Captain, then pushed him towards the lock where Murchison was waiting to help him inside. A few minutes later they were all in the lock chamber and as safe as it was possible to be within a few meters of a rampaging FSOJ.

But it was a weakening . . .

As they watched it through the partly open inner seal, the Captain checked the actuator of his cutter and aimed it towards the outer seal. His voice was slurred with pain. “That damned thing broke my leg, I think. But now we can hold the inner seal open, cut a hole through the outer one, and depressurize the ship fast. That’ll fix the brute. But where’s the other survivor? Where is the blind one?”

Slowly and deliberately, Conway covered the orifice of Fletcher’s cutter with the palm of his hand. “There is no blind one. The ship’s crew are dead.”

Murchison and the Captain were staring at him as if he had suddenly become a mentally disturbed patient instead of the doctor. But there was no time for explanations. Slowly, and thinking hard about the words as he spoke them, he said, “We made contact with it once at long range. Now it is close to us and we must try again. There is so little time left to this being—”

The entity Conway is correct, came a soundless voice inside their heads. I have very little time.

“We mustn’t waste it,” said Conway urgently. He looked appealingly at Murchison and the Captain. “I think I know some of the answers, but we have to know more if we are to be able to help it. Think hard. What are the blind ones? Who and what are the Protectors? Why are they so valuable . . .

Suddenly, they knew.

It was not the slow, steady trickle of data that comes through the medium of the spoken word, but a great, clear river of information that filled their minds with everything that was known about the species from its prehistory to the present time.

The Blind Ones . . .

They had begun as small, sightless, flat worms, burrowing in the primal ooze of their world, scavenging for the most part, but often paralyzing larger life-forms with their sting and ingesting them piecemeal. As they grew in size and number their food requirements increased. They became blind hunters whose sense of touch was specialized to the point where they did not need any other sensory channel.

Specialized touch sensors enabled them to feel the movements of their prey on the surface and to identify its characteristic vibrations so that they could lie in wait for it just below ground until it came within reach of their sting. Other sensors were able to feel out and identify tracks on the surface. This enabled them to follow their prey over long distances to its lair and either burrow underground and sting it from below, or attack it while the sound vibrations it was making told them it was asleep. They could not, of course, achieve much against a sighted and conscious opponent on the surface, and very often they became the prey rather than the hunters, so their hunting strategy was concentrated on variations of the ambush tactic.

On the surface they “built” tracks and other markings of small animals, and these attracted larger beasts of prey into their traps. But the surface animals were steadily becoming larger and much too strong to be seriously affected by a single Blind One’s sting. They were forced to cooperate in setting up these ambushes, and cooperation in more ambitious food-gathering projects led in turn to contact on a widening scale, the formation of subsurface food stores and communities, towns, cities and interlinking systems of communication. They already “talked” to one another and educated their young by touch. Methods were even devised for augmenting and feeling vibrations over long distances.

The Blind Ones were capable of feeling vibrations in the ground and in the atmosphere, and eventually, with the use of amplifiers and transformers, they could “feel” light. They discovered fire and the wheel and the use of radio frequencies by transforming them into touch, and soon large areas of their planet were covered with radio beacons, which enabled them to undertake long journeys using mechanical transport. While they were aware of the advantages of powered flight, and a large number of Blind Ones had died experimenting with it, they preferred to stay in touch with the surface because they were, after all, completely unable to see.

This did not mean that they were unaware of their deficiency. Practically every non-sentient creature on their world had the strange ability to navigate accurately over short or long distances without the need of feeling the wind direction or the disturbances caused by vibrations bouncing off distant objects, but they had no real understanding of what the sense of sight could be. At the same time, the increasing sophistication of their long-range touching systems was making them aware that many and complex vibrations were reaching them from beyond their world, that there were sentient and probably more knowledgeable beings producing these faint touchings, and that these beings might be able to help them attain the sense that was possessed, seemingly, by all creatures except themselves.

Many, many more of the Blind Ones perished while feeling their way into space to their sister planets, but they learned eventually to travel between the stars they could not see. They sought with great difficulty and increasing hopelessness for intelligent life, feeling out world after world in vain, until finally they found the planet on which the Protectors of the Unborn lived.

The Protectors . . .

They had evolved on a world of shallow, steaming seas and swamps and jungles, where the line of demarcation between animal and vegetable life, so far as physical mobility and aggression were concerned, was unclear. To survive at all, a life-form had to move fast, and the dominant species on that world earned its place by fighting and moving and reproducing generations with a greater potential for survival than any of the others.

At a very early stage in their evolution the utter savagery of their environment had forced them into a physiological form that gave maximum protection to their vital organs-brain, heart, lungs, womb, all were deep inside the fantastically well muscled and armored body, and compressed into a relatively small volume. During gestation, the organic displacement was considerable because the embryo had to grow virtually to maturity before birth. It was rare that they were able to survive the reproduction of more than three of their kind; an aging parent was usually too weak to defend itself against attack by its last born.

But the principal reason why the Protectors rose to dominance on their world was because their young were well educated and already experienced in the techniques of survival before they were born. In the dawn of their evolution the process had begun simply as a transmission of a complex set of survival instincts at the genetic level, but the close juxtaposition of the brains of the parent and its developing embryo led to an effect analogous to induction of the electrochemical activity associated with thought. The embryos became short-range telepaths, receiving everything the parent saw or felt. And even before the growth of the embryo was complete, there was another embryo beginning to form within it that was also increasingly aware of the world outside its self-fertilizing grandparent. Then, gradually, the telepathic range increased, and communication became possible between embryos whose parents were close enough to see each other.

To minimize damage to the parent’s internal organs, the growing embryo was paralyzed while in the womb, and the prebirth deparalyzing process also caused loss of sentience and the telepathic faculty. A newborn Protector would not last very long in its incredibly savage world if it was hampered by the ability to think.

With nothing to do but receive impressions from the outside world, exchange thoughts and try to widen their telepathic range by making contact with various forms of non-sentient life around them, the embryos developed minds of great power and intelligence. But they could not build anything, or engage in any form of technical research, or do anything at all that would influence the activities of their parents and protectors, who had to fight and kill and eat unceasingly to maintain their unsleeping bodies and the unborn within them.

This was the situation when the first ship of the Blind Ones landed on the planet of the Protectors and made joyful mental and savage physical contact.

Immediately it became obvious that the two life-forms needed each other-the Blind Ones, technically advanced despite their sensory deprivation, and the highly intelligent race with two-way telepathy who were trapped inside the mindless organic killing machines that were their parents. A species who had just one sensory channel open, hyperdeveloped though it was, and with the capability of traveling between the stars; and another that was capable of experiencing all sensory impressions and of relaying those experiences, who had been confined to within a few square miles of its planetary surface.

Following the initial euphoria and heavy casualties among the Blind Ones, the short- and long-term plans were made for assimilating the Protectors into their culture. To begin with, the Blind Ones did not possess many starships, but a construction program for hyperships capable of transporting Protectors to the world of the Blind Ones was begun. There, although the environment was not as savage as that of their home planet, the surface was still untamed, because the Blind Ones preferred to live underground. There they would be positioned above the Blind Ones’ subsurface cities, hunting and killing the native animals while their telepathic embryos absorbed the knowledge of the citizens below them, showing the Blind Ones what it was like to see, for the first time, the animals and vegetation, the sky with its sun, stars and constantly changing meteorological effects.

Much later, if the Protectors bred true on the Blind Ones’ planet, small numbers would be used on the hyperships to help extend the range of their exploration and search for other sentient beings. But to begin with, the Protectors were needed as the eyes of the Blind Ones on their home world, and they were brought there by specially designed transports two at a time.

It was an extremely hazardous proceeding and many ships had been lost, almost certainly because of the escape of the Protectors from confinement and the subsequent death of the Blind Ones of the crew. But the greatest loss was that of the Protectors concerned and their precious telepathic Unborn.

On the present occasion one of the Protectors had broken out of the corridor cage and had been slow to lose consciousness when the beating and pummeling of its environmental support system had been withdrawn. It had killed one of the crew whose fellow crewmember had also been killed while going to its mate’s assistance, then it had died accidentally on the second Blind One’s sting. But before the Blind One died, it had released the distress beacon and deactivated the corridor cage mechanisms so as to render the surviving Protector unconscious, thus avoiding danger to any wouldbe rescuers until the telepathic embryo could explain matters.

But the Blind One had made two mistakes, neither of which were its fault. It had assumed that all races would be capable of making telepathic contact with the embryo as easily as had the Blind Ones, and it had also assumed that the embryo would remain conscious after its Protector became unconscious . . .

The great flood of data pouring into their minds had slowed gradually. It became specific rather than general, a clear, narrow conversational stream.

. . . The Protector life-form is under constant attack from the moment of its birth until it dies, the silent voice in their minds went on, and the continuous physical assault plays an important part m mazntaining the physiological system at optimum. To withdraw this violent stimulation causes an effect analogous to strangulation, if I read the entity Conway’s mind correctly, including greatly reduced blood pressure, diminished sensoria and loss of voluntary muscle activity. The entity Murchison is also thinking, correctly, that the embryo concerned is similarly affected.

When the entity Fletcher accidentally reactivated the corridor mechanisms, the return to consciousness of my Protector and myself was begun, then checked again when they were switched off only to be turned on again at the insistence of the entity whom you call Prilicla, whose mind I cannot contact although it is more sensitive to myftelings than my thoughts. Those frelings were of urgency and frustration because I had to explain the situation to you before I died.

While there is still time I would like to thank you with all the remaining strength of my mind for making contact, and for showing me in your minds the marvels which exist not only on my planet and the world of the Blind Ones, but throughout your Federation. And I apologize for the pain caused while establishing this contact, and for the injury to the entity Fletcher’s limb. As you now know, I have no control over the actions of my Protector.

“Wait,” said Conway suddenly. “There is no reason why you should die. The life-support systems, your corridor mechanisms and food dispensers are still operative and will remain so until we can move your ship to Sector General. We can take care of you. Our resources are much greater than those of the Blind Ones . . .

Conway fell silent, feeling helpless despite his confident offer of help. The Protector’s tentacles were lashing out weakly and in haphazard fashion as it drifted weightless and obviously dying in the center of the corridor, and each time one of them struck the wall or deck the reaction sent it spinning slowly. There was, therefore, a good if intermittent view of the whole birth process as first the head and then the four tentacles appeared. As yet, the Unborn’s limbs were limp and unmoving because the secretions that would release the prebirth paralysis, and at the same time obliterate all cerebral activity not associated with survival, had not taken effect. Then, abruptly, the tentacles twitched, threshed about and began pulling the recently Unborn out of its parent’s birth canal.

The soundless voice in their minds returned, but this time it was no longer sharp and clear. There was a feeling of pain and confusion and deep anxiety muddying up the clear stream of communication, but fortunately the message was simple:

To be born is to die, friends. My mind and my telephatic faculty are being destroyed, and I am becoming a Protector with my own Unborn to protect while it grows and thinks and makes contact with you. Please cherish it . . .

* * *

There had been some crepitation associated with the Captain’s fractured tibia, and Conway had administered a strong painkiller to make him comfortable during the trip back to the ambulance ship. Fletcher remained fully conscious, and because of the relaxing of inhibitions that was a side effect of the medication, he talked continuously and anxiously about the Unborn telepaths and the Blind Ones.

“Don’t worry about them, Captain,” Murchison told him. They had moved Fletcher to the Casualty Deck, and she was helping Naydrad remove his spacesuit while Conway and Prilicla assembled the tools necessary for a piece of minor structural repair work. She went on: “The hospital will treat them with tender, loving care, never fear, although I can just imagine O’Mara’s face when he learns that they have to be accommodated in what amounts to a torture chamber. And no doubt your Cultural Contact people will be there, too, hoping to obtain the services of a wide-range telepath.

“But the Blind Ones need them most of all,” Fletcher went on worriedly. “Just think of it. After millions of years in darkness they’ve found a way of seeing, even if their eyes can turn and quite literally kill them.”

“Given a little time,” Murchison said reassuringly, “the hospital will turn up the answer to that, too. Thornnastor just loves puzzles like this one. The continuous conception business, for instance, the embryo within an embryo. If we were able to isolate and inhibit the effects of the secretion that destroys the sentient portion of the Unborn’s brain prior to birth, we would have telepathic Protectors as well as Unborn. And if the environmental beating they take all their lives was toned down gradually and eventually eliminated, they might get out of the habit of trying to kill and eat everything they see. The Blind Ones would have the telepathic eyes they need without danger to themselves, and they could roam all over the Galaxy if they wanted to.”

She paused to help Naydrad cut away the trouser leg of the Captain’s uniform, then addressed Conway. “He’s ready for you now, Doctor.”

Murchison and Naydrad were in position, and Prilicla was hovering above them, radiating feelings of reassurance. Conway said, “Relax, Captain. Forget about the Blind Ones and the Protectors. They will be all right. And so will you. After all, I’m a senior physician in the Federation’s most advanced multienvironment hospital. But if you really feel the need to worry about something, think about my present problem.” He smiled suddenly, and added, “It must be ten years since I last set a fractured DBDG tibia.”

Sector General 5—Sector General

James White

ACCIDENT

Retlin complex was Nidia’s largest air terminal, its only spaceport, and, MacEwan thought cynically, its most popular zoo. The main concourse was thronged with furry native airline passengers, sightseers, and ground personnel, but the thickest crowd was outside the transparent walls of the off-planet departure lounge where Nidians of all ages jostled each other in their eagerness to see the waiting space travelers.

But the crowd parted quickly before the Corpsmen escorting MacEwan and his companion—no native would risk giving offense to an offworlder by making even accidental bodily contact. From the departure lounge entrance, the two were directed to a small office whose transparent walls darkened into opacity at their approach.

The man facing them was a full Colonel and the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Nidia, but until they had seated themselves he remained standing, respectfully, as befitted one who was meeting for the first time the great Earth-human MacEwan and the equally legendary Orligian Grawlya-Ki. He remained on his feet for a moment longer while he looked with polite disapproval at their uniforms, torn and stained relics of an almost forgotten war, then he glanced toward the solidograph that occupied one corner of his desk and sat down.

Quietly he began, “The planetary assembly has decided that you are no longer welcome on Nidia, and you are requested to leave at once. My organization, which is the closest thing we have to a neutral extraplanetary police force, has been asked to implement this request. I would prefer that you leave without the use of physical coercion. I am sorry. This is not pleasant for me, either, but I have to say that I agree with the Nidians. Your peacemongering activities of late have become much too . . . warlike.”

Grawlya-Ki’s chest swelled suddenly, making its stiff, spi-key fur rasp dryly against the old battle harness, but the Orligian did not speak. MacEwan said tiredly, “We were just trying to make them understand that—”

“I know what you were trying to do,” the Colonel broke in, “but half wrecking a video studio during a rehearsal was not the way to do it. Besides, you know as well as I do that your supporters were much more interested in taking part in a riot than in promulgating your ideas. You simply gave them an excuse to—”

“The play glamorized war,” MacEwan said.

The Monitor’s eyes flickered toward the solidograph, then back to Grawlya-Ki and MacEwan again. His, tone softened. “I’m sorry, believe me, but you will have to leave. I cannot force it, but ideally you should return to your home planets where you could relax and live out your remaining years in peace. Your wounds must have left mental scars and you may require psychiatric assistance; and, well, I think both of you deserve some of the peace that you want-so desperately for everyone else.” When there was no response, the Colonel sighed and said, “Where do you want to go this time?” ' “Traltha,” MacEwan said. The Monitor looked surprised. “That is a hot, high-gravity, heavily industrialized world, peopled by lumbering, six-legged elephants who are hardworking, peaceloving, and culturally stable. There hasn’t been a war on Traltha for a thousand years. You would be wasting your time there, and feeling very uncomfortable while doing so, but it’s your choice.”

“On Traltha,” MacEwan said, “commercial warfare never stops. One kind of war can lead to another.”

The Colonel made no attempt to disguise his impatience. “You are frightening yourselves without reason and, in any case, maintaining the peace is our concern. We do it quietly, discreetly, by keeping potentially troublesome entities and situations under observation, and by making the minimum response early, before things can get out of control. We do a good job, if I do say so myself. But Traltha is not a danger, now or in the foreseeable future.” He smiled. “Another war between Orligia and Earth would be more likely.”

“That will not happen, Colonel,” Grawlya-Ki said, its modulated growling forming a vaguely threatening accompaniment to the accentless speech coming from its translator pack. “Former enemies who have beaten hell out of each other make the best friends. But there has to be an easier way of making friends.”

Before the officer could reply, MacEwan went on quickly, “I understand what the Monitor Corps is doing, Colonel, and I approve. Everybody does. It is rapidly becoming accepted as the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm. But it can never become a truly multispecies service. Its officers, of necessity, will be almost entirely Earth-human. With so much power entrusted to one species—”

“We are aware of the danger,” the Colonel broke in. Defensively he went on, “Our psychologists are working on the problems and our people are highly trained in e-t cultural contact procedures. And we have the authority to ensure that the members of every ship’s crew making other-species contacts are similarly-gained,. Everyone is aware of the danger of uttering or commiting an unthinking word or action which could be construed as insulting and of what might ensue. We lean over backward in our efforts not to give offense. You know that.”

The Colonel was first and foremost a policeman, MacEwan thought, find like a good policeman he resented any criticism of his service. What was more, his irritation with the two aging war veterans was rapidly reaching the point where the interview would be terminated. Take it easy, he warned himself, this is not an enemy.

Aloud he said, “The point I’m trying to make is that leaning over backward is an inherently unstable position, and this hy-perpoliteness where extraterrestrials are concerned is artificial, even dishonest. The tensions generated must ultimately lead to trouble, even between the handpicked and highly intelligent entities who are the only people allowed to make off-planet contacts. This type of contact is too narrow, too limited. The member species of the Federation are not really getting to know and trust each other, and they never will until contact becomes more relaxed and natural. As things are it would be unthinkable to have even a friendly argument with an extraterrestrial.

“We must get to really know them, Colonel,” MacEwan went on quickly. “Well enough not to have to be so damnably polite all the time. If a Tralthan jostles a Nidian or an Earth; human, we must know the being well enough to tell it to watch where it’s going and to call it any names which seem appropriate to the occasion. We should expect the same treatment if the fault is ours. Ordinary people, not a carefully selected and trained star-traveling elite, must get to know offworlders well enough to be able to argue or even to quarrel nonviolently with them, without—”

“And that,” the Monitor said coldly, rising to his feet, “is the reason you are leaving Nidia. For disturbing the peace.”

Hopelessly, MacEwan tried again. “Colonel, we must find some common ground on which the ordinary citizens of the Federation can meet. Not just because of scientific and cultural exchanges or interstellar trade treaties. It must be something basic, something we all feel strongly about, an idea or a project that we can really get together on. In spite of our much-vaunted Federation and the vigilance of your Monitor Corps, perhaps because of that vigilance, we are not getting to know each other properly. Unless we do another war is inevitable. But nobody worries. You’ve all forgotten how terrible war is.”

He broke off as the Colonel pointed slowly to the solido-graph on his desk, then brought the hand back to his side again. “We have a constant reminder,” he said.

After that the Colonel would say no more, but remained standing stiffly at attention until Grawlya-Ki and MacEwan left the office.

The departure lounge was more than half filled with tight, exclusive little groups of Tralthans, Melfans, Kelgians, and Illensans. There was also a pair of squat, tentacular, heavy-gravity beings who were apparently engaged in spraying each other with paint, and which were a new life-form to MacEwan. A teddybearlike Nidian wearing the blue sash of the nontechnical ground staff moved from behind them to escape the spray, but otherwise ignored the creatures.

There was some excuse for the chlorine-breathing Illensans to keep to themselves: the loose, transparent material of their protective envelopes looked fragile. He did not know anything about the paint-spraying duo, but the others were all warmblooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms with similar pressure and gravity requirements and they should, at least, have been acknowledging each others’ presence even if they did not openly display the curiosity they must be feeling toward each other. Angrily, MacEwan turned away to examine the traffic movements display.

There was an lllensan factory ship in orbit, a great, ungainly nonlander whose shuttle had touched down a few minutes earlier, and a Nidian ground transporter fitted with the chlorine breathers’ life-support was on the way in to pick up passengers. Their Tralthan-built and crewed passenger ship was nearly ready to board and stood on its apron on the other side of the main aircraft runway. It was one of the new ships which boasted of providing comfortable accommodation for six different oxygen-breathing species, but degrees of comfort were relative and MacEwan, Grawlya-Ki, and the other non-Tralthans in the lounge would shortly be judging it for themselves.

Apart from the lllensan shuttle and the Tralthan vessel, the only traffic was the Nidian atmosphere craft which took off and landed every few minutes. They were not large aircraft, but they did not need to be to hold a thousand Nidians. As the aircraft differed only in their registration markings, it seemed that the same machine was endlessly taking off and landing.

Angry because there was nothing else in the room to engage his attention fully, and because it occupied such a prominent Position in the center of the lounge that all eyes were naturally drawn to it, MacEwan turned finally to look once again at that frightful and familiar tableau.

Grawlya-Ki had already done so and was whining softly to itself.

It was a life-sized replica of the old Orligian war memorial, one of the countless thousands of copies which occupied public places of honor or appeared in miniature on the desks or in the homes of responsible and concerned beings on every world-of the Federation. The original had stood within its protective shield in the central Plaza of Orligia’s capital city for more than two centuries, during which a great many native and visiting entities of sensitivity and intelligence had tried vainly to describe its effect upon them.

For that war memorial was no aesthetic marble poem in which godlike figures gestured defiance or lay dying nobly with limbs arranged to the best advantage. Instead it consisted of an Orligian and an Earthman, surrounded by the shattered, remnants of a Control Room belonging to a type of ship now long obsolete.

The Orligian was standing crouched forward, the fur of its chest and face matted with blood. A few yards away lay the Earth-human, very obviously dying. The front of his uniform was in shreds, revealing the ghastly injuries he had sustained. Abdominal organs normally concealed by skin, layers of subcutaneous tissue and muscle were clearly visible. Yet this man, who had no business being alive much less being capable of movement, was struggling toward the Orligian.

Two combatants amid the wreckage of a warship trying to continue their battle hand to-hand?

The dozens of plaques spaced around the base of the tableau described the incident in all the written languages of the Federation .

They told of the epic, single-ship duel between the Orligian and the Earth-human commanders. So evenly matched had they been that, their respective crew members dead, their ships shot to pieces, armaments depleted and power gone, they had crash-landed close together on a world unknown to both of them. The Orligian, anxious to learn all it could regarding enemy ship systems, and driven by a more personal curiosity about its opponent, had boarded the wrecked Earth ship. They met.

For them the war was over, because the terribly wounded Earth-human did not know when he was going to die and the Orligian did not know when, if ever, its distress signal would bring rescuers. The distant, impersonal hatred they had felt toward each other was gone, dissipated by the six-hour period of maximum effort that had been their duel, and was replaced by feelings of mutual respect for the degree of professional competence displayed. So they tried to communicate, and succeeded.

It had been a slow, difficult, and extraordinarily painful process for both of them, but when they did talk they held nothing back. The Orligian knew that any verbal insubordination it might utter would die with this Earth-human, who in turn sensed the other’s sympathy and was in too much pain to care about the things he said about his own superiors. And while they talked the Earth-human learned something of vital importance, an enemy’s-eye view of the simple, stupid, and jointly misunderstood incident which had been responsible for starting the war in the first place.

It had been during the closing stages of this conversation that an Orligian ship which chanced to be in the area had landed and, after assessing the situation, used its Stopper on the Earth wreck.

Even now the operating principles of the Orligian primary space weapon were unclear to MacEwan. The weapon was capable of enclosing a small ship, or vital sections of a large one, within a field of stasis in which all motion stopped. Neither the ships nor their crew were harmed physically, but if someone so much as scratched the surface of one of those Stopped hulls or tried to slip a needle into the skin of one of the Stopped personnel, the result was an explosion of near-nuclear proportions.

But the Orligian stasis field projector had peaceful as well as military applications.

With great difficulty the section of Control Room and the two Stopped bodies it contained had been moved to Orligia, to occupy the central square of the planetary capital as the most gruesomely effective war memorial ever known, for 236 years. During that time the shaky peace which the two frozen beings had brought about between Orligia and Earth ripened into friendship, and medical science progressed to the point where the terribly injured Earth-human could be saved. Although its injuries had not been fatal, Grawlya-Ki had insisted on being Stopped with its friend so that it could see MacEwan cured for itself.

And then the two greatest heroes of the war, heroes because they had ended it, were removed from stasis, rushed to a hospital, and cured. For the first time, it was said, the truly great of history would receive the reward they deserved from posterity—and that was the way it had happened, just over thirty years ago.

Since then the two heroes, the only two entities in the whole Federation with direct experience of war, had grown increasingly monomaniacal on the subject until the honor and respect accorded them had gradually changed to reactions of impatience and embarrassment.

“Sometimes, Ki,” MacEwan saidt turning away from the frozen figures of their former selves, “I wonder if we should give up and try to find peace of mind like the Colonel said. Nobody listens to us anymore, yet all we are trying to tell them is to relax, to take off their heavy, bureaucratic gauntlets when extending the hand of friendship, and to speak and react honestly so that—”

“I am aware of the arguments,” Grawlya-Ki broke in, “and the completely unnecessary restatement of them, especially to one who shares your feelings in this matter, is suggestive of approaching senility.”

“Listen, you mangy, overgrown baboon!” MacEwan began furiously, but the Orligian ignored him.

“And senility is a condition which cannot be successfully treated by the Colonel’s psychiatrists,” it went on. “Neither, I submit, can they give psychiatric assistance to minds which are otherwise sane. As for my localized loss of fur, you are so lacking in male hormones that you can only grow it on your head and—”

“And your females grow more fur than you do,” MacEwan snapped back, then stopped.

He had been conned again.

Since that first historic meeting in MacEwan’s wrecked Control Room they had grown to know each other very well. Grawlya-Ki had assessed the present situation, decided that MacEwan was-feeling far too depressed for his own good, and instituted curative treatment in the form of a therapuetic argument combined with subtle reassurance regarding their sanity. MacEwan smiled.

“This frank and honest exchange of views,” he said quietly, “is distressing the other travelers. They probably think the Earth—Orligian war is about to restart, because they would never dream of saying such things to each other.”

“But they do dream,” Grawlya-ki said, its mind going off at one of its peculiarly Orligian tangents. “All intelligent life-forms require periods of unconsciousness during which they dream. Or have nightmares.”

“The trouble is,” MacEwan said, “they don’t share our particular nightmare.”

Grawlya-Ki was silent. Through the transparent outer wall of the lounge it was watching the rapid approach of the ground transporter from the Illensan shuttle The vehicle was a great, multiwheeled silver bullet distinctively marked to show that it was filled with chlorine, and tipped with a transparent control module whose atmosphere was suited to its Nidian driver. MacEwan wondered why all of the smaller intelligent life-forms, regardless of species, had a compulsion to drive fast. Had he stumbled upon one of the great cosmic truths?

“Maybe we should try a different approach,” the Orligian said, still watching the transporter. “Instead of trying to frighten them with nightmares, we should find them a pleasant and inspiring dream to—What is that idiot doing?”

The vehicle was still approaching at speed, making no attempt to slow or turn so as to present its transfer lock to the lounge’s exit port for breathers of toxic atmospheres. All of the waiting travelers were watching it now, many of them making noises which did not translate.

The driver is showing off, MacEwan thought. Reflected sunlight from the canopy obscured the occupant. It was not until the transporter ran into the shadow of the terminal building that MacEwan saw the figure of the driver slumped face downward over its control console, but by then it was too late for anyone to do anything.

Built as it was from tough, laminated plastic nearly a foot thick, the transparent wall bulged inward but did not immediately shatter as the nose of the vehicle struck. The control module and its occupant were instantly flattened into a thin pancake of riven metal, tangled wiring, and bloody Nidian fur. Then the transporter broke through.

When the driver had collapsed and lost control, the automatic power cutoff and emergency braking systems must have been triggered. But in spite of its locked wheels the transporter skidded ponderously on, enlarging the original break in the transparent wall and losing sections of its own external plating in the process. It plowed through the neat rows of Tralthan, Melfan, Kelgian, and Illensan furniture. The heavy, complex structures were ripped from their floor mountings and hurled aside along with the beings unfortunate enough to still be occupying them. Finally the transporter ground to a halt against one of the building’s roof support pillars, which bent alarmingly but did not break. The shock brought down most of the lounge’s ceiling panels and with them a choking, blinding cloud of dust.

All around MacEwan extraterrestrials were coughing and floundering about and making untranslatable noises indicative of pain and distress, Grawlya-Ki included. He blinked dust out of his eyes and saw that the Orligian was crouched, apparently uninjured, beside the transporter. Both of its enormous, furry hands were covering its face and it looked as if it would shake itself apart with the violence of its coughing. MacEwan kicked loose debris out of the way and moved toward it. Then his eyes began to sting and, just in time, he covered his mouth and nose to keep from inhaling the contaminated air.

Chlorine!

With his free hand he grasped the Orligian’s battle harness and began dragging it away from the damaged vehicle, wondering angrily why he was wasting his time. If the internal pressure hull had been ruptured, the whole lounge would be rendered uninhabitable to oxygen breathers within a few minutes—the Ilknsans’ higher-pressure chlorine atmosphere would see to that. Then he stumbled against a low, sprawling, membraneous body which was hissing and twitching amid the debris and realized that it was not only the damaged vehicle which was responsible for the contamination.

The Illensan must have been hit by the transporter and flung against a Kelgian relaxer frame, which had collapsed. One of the support struts had snagged the chlorine breather’s pressure envelope, ripping it open along the entire length of the body. The oxygen-rich atmosphere was attacking the unprotected body, coating the skin with a powdery, sickly blue organic corrosion which was thickest around the two breathing orifices. All body movement ceased as MacEwan watched, but he could still hear a loud hissing sound.

Still keeping his mouth and nostrils sealed with one hand, he used the other to feel along the Illensan’s body and pressure envelope. His eyes were stinging even though they were now tightly shut.

The creature’s skin felt hot, slippery, and fibrous, with patterns of raised lines which made it seem that the whole body was covered by the leaves of some coarse-textured plant, and there were times when MacEwan did not know whether he was touching the skin or the ruptured pressure suit. The sound of the pulse in his head was incredible, like a constant, thudding explosion, and the constriction in his chest was fast reaching the stage where.he was ready to inhale even chlorine to stop that fiery, choking pain in his lungs. But he fought desperately not to breathe, pressing his hand so tightly against his face that his nose began to bleed.

After what seemed like a couple of hours later, he felt the shape of a large cylinder with a hose connection and strange-feeling bumps and projections at one end—the Illensan’s air tank. He pulled and twisted desperately at controls designed for the spatulate digits of an Illensan, and suddenly the hiss of escaping chlorine ceased.

He turned and staggered away, trying to get clear of the localized cloud of toxic gas so he could breathe again. But he had gone only a few yards when he tripped and fell into a piece of broken e-t furniture covered by a tangle of plastic drapery which had been used to decorate the lounge. His free arm kept him from injuring himself, but it was not enough to enable him to escape from the tangle of tubing and plastic which had somehow wrapped itself around his feet. He opened his eyes and shut them again hastily as the chlorine stung them. With such a high concentration of gas he could not risk opening his mouth to shout for help. The noise inside his head was unbelievable. He felt himself slipping into a roaring, pounding blackness, and there was a tight band gripping and squeezing his chest.

There was something gripping his chest. He felt it- lifting him, shaking him free of the debris entangling his arm and legs, and holding him aloft while it carried him for an unknown distance across the lounge. Suddenly he felt his feet touch the floor and he opened his eyes and mouth.

The smell of chlorine was still strong but he could breathe and see. Grawlya-Ki was standing a few feet away, looking concerned and pointing at the blood bubbling from his nose, and one of the two paint-spraying extraterrestrials was detaching one of its thick, iron-hard tentacles from around his chest. He was too busy just breathing again to be able to say anything. “I apologize most abjectly and sincerely,” his rescuer boomed over the sounds being made by the injured all around them, “if I have in any fashion hurt you, or subjected you to mental trauma or embarrassment by making such a gross and perhaps intimate physical contact with your body. I would not have dared touch you at all had not your Orligian friend insisted that you were in grave danger and requested that I lift you clear. But if I have given offense—”

“You have not given offense,” MacEwan broke in. “On the contrary, you have saved my life at great risk to your own. That chlorine is deadly stuff to all us oxygen breathers. Thank you.”

It was becoming difficult to speak without coughing because the cloud of gas from the dead Illensan’s suit was spreading, and Grawlya-Ki was already moving away. MacEwan was about to follow when the creature spoke again.

“I am in no immediate danger.” Its eyes glittered at him from behind their hard, organic shields as it went on. “I am a Hudlar, Earthperson. My species does not breathe, but absorbs sustenance directly from our atmosphere, which, near the planetary surface, is analogous to a thick, high-pressure, semigas-eous soup. Apart from requiring our body surface to be sprayed at frequent intervals with a nutrient paint, we are not inconvenienced by any but the most corrosive of atmospheres, and we can even work for lengthy periods in vacuum conditions on orbital construction projects.

“I am glad to have been of assistance, Earthperson,” the Hudlar ended, “but I am not a hero.”

“Nevertheless I am grateful,” MacEwan shouted, then stopped moving away. He waved his hand, indicating the lounge which resembled a battlefield rather than a luxurious departure point for the stars, and started coughing. Finally he was able to say, “Pardon me, please, if I am being presumptuous, but is it possible for you to similarly assist the other beings who have been immobilized by their injuries and are in danger of asphyxiation?”

The second Hudlar had joined them, but neither spoke. Grawlya-Ki was waving at him and pointing toward the transparent wall of the Colonel’s office where the Monitor Corps officer was also gesticulating urgently.

“Ki, will you find out what he wants?” MacEwan called to the Orligian. To the first Hudlar he went on, “You are understandably cautious in the matter of physically handling members of another species, lest you inadvertently give offense, and in normal circumstances this would be wholly admirable and the behavior of a being of sensitivity and intelligence. But this is not a normal situation, and it is my belief that any accidental physical intimacy committed on the injured would be forgiven when the intention is purely to give assistance. In these circumstances a great many beings could die who would otherwise—”

“Some of them will die of boredom or old age,” the second Hudlar said suddenly, “if we continue to waste time with unnecessary politeness. Plainly we Hudlars have a physical advantage here. What is it you wish us to do?”

“I apologize most abjectly for my lifemate’s ill-considered and hasty remarks, Earth-human,” the first Hudlar said quickly. “And for any offense they may have given.”

“No need. None taken,” MacEwan said, laughing in sheer relief until the chlorine turned it into a cough. He considered prefacing his instructions with advance apologies for any offense he might inadvertently give to the Hudlars, then decided that that would be wasting more time. He took a deep, careful breath and spoke.

“The chlorine level is still rising around that transporter. Would one of you remove heavy debris from casualties in the area affected and move them to the entrance to the boarding tunnel, where they can be moved into the tunnel itself if the level continues to rise. The other should concentrate on rescuing Illensans by lifting them into their transporter. There is a lock antechamber just inside the entry port, and hopefully some of the less seriously injured chlorine breathers will be able to get them through the lock and give them first aid inside. The Orligian and myself will try to move the casualties not immediately in danger from the chlorine, and open the boarding tunnel entrance. Ki, what have you got there?”

The Orligian had returned with more than, a dozen small cylinders, with breathing masks and straps attached, cradled in both arms. It said, “Fire-fighting equipment. The Colonel directed me to the emergency locker. But it’s Nidian equipment. The masks won’t fit very well, and with some of these beings they won’t fit at all. Maybe we can hold them in position and—”

“This aspect of the problem does not concern us,” the first Hudlar broke in. “Earthperson, what do we do with casualties whose injuries might be compounded by the assistance of well-meaning rescuers ignorant of the physiology of the being concerned?”

MacEwan was already tying a cylinder to his chest, passing the attachment over one shoulder and under the opposite armpit because the Nidian straps were too short to do otherwise. He said grimly, “We will have that problem, too.”

“Then we will use our best judgment,” the second Hudlar said, moving ponderously toward the transporter, followed closely by its lifemate.

“That isn’t the only problem,” Grawlya-Ki said as it, too, attached a cylinder to its harness. “The collision cut our communications and the Colonel can’t tell the terminal authorities about the situation in here, nor does he know what the emergency services are doing about it. He also says that the boarding tunnel entrance won’t open while there is atmospheric contamination in the lounge—it is part of the safety system designed to contain such contamination so that it won’t spread along the boarding tunnel to the waiting ship or into the main concourse. The system can be overridden at this end, but only by a special key carried by the Nidian senior ground staff member on duty in the lounge. Have you seen this being?”

“Yes,” MacEwan said grimly. “It was standing at the exit port just before the crash. I think it is somewhere underneath the transporter.”

Grawlya-Ki whined quietly, then went on, “The Colonel is using his personal radio to contact a docked Monitor Corps vessel to try to patch into the port network that way, but so far without effect. The Nidian rescue teams are doing all the talking and are not listening to outsiders. But if he gets through he wants to know what to tell them. The number and condition of the casualties, the degree of contamination, and optimum entry points for the rescue teams. He wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to him,” MacEwan said. He did not know enough to be able to make a useful situation report, and until he did their time could be used to much better effect than worrying out loud to the Colonel. He pointed to an object which looked like a gray, bloodstained sack which twitched and made untranslatable sounds, and said, “That one first.”

The injured Kelgian was difficult to move, MacEwan found, especially when there was just one Orligian arm and two human ones to take the weight. Grawlya-Ki’s mask was such a bad fit that it had to hold it in position. The casualty was a caterpillar-like being with more than twenty legs and an overall covering of silvery fur now badly bloodstained. But the body, although no more massive than that of a human, was completely flaccid. There seerned to be no skeleton, no bony parts at all except possibly in the head section, but it felt as though there were wide, concentric bands of muscle running the length of the body just underneath the fur.

It rolled and flopped about so much that by the time he had raised it from the floor, supporting its head and midsection between his outstretched arms and chest—Grawlya-Ki had the toil gripped between its side and free arm—one of the wounds began bleeding. Because MacEwan was concentrating on holding the Kelgian’s body immobile as they moved it toward the boarding tunnel entrance, his mind was not on his feet; they became tangled in a piece of decorative curtain, and he fell to his knees. Immediately the Kelgian’s blood began to well out at an alarming rate.

“We should do something about that,” the Orligian said, its voice muffled by the too-small mask. “Any ideas?”

The Service had taught MacEwan only the rudiments of first aid because casualties in a space war tended to be explosive decompressions and rarely if ever treatable, and what little he had learned applied to beings of his own species. Serious bleeding was controlled by cutting off the supply of blood to the wound with a tourniquet or local pressure. The Kelgian’s circulatory system seemed to be very close to its skin, possibly because those great, circular bands of muscle required lots of blood. But the position of the veins were hidden by the being’s thick fur. He thought that a pad and tight bandages were the only treatment possible. He did not have a pad and there was no time to go looking for one, but there was a bandage of sorts still wrapped loosely around his ankle.

He kicked the length of plastic curtain off his foot, then pulled about two meters free of the pile of debris which had fallen with it. The stuff was tough and he needed all his strength to make a transverse tear in it, but it was wide enough to cover the wound with several inches to spare. With the Orligian’s help he held the plastic in position over the wound and passed the two ends around the cylindrical body, knotting them very tightly together.

Probably the makeshift bandage was too tight, and where it passed around the Kelgian’s underside it was pressing two sets of the being’s legs against the underbelly in a direction they were not, perhaps, designed to bend, and he hated to think of what the dust and dirt adhering to the plastic might be doing to that open wound.

The same thought must have been going through the Orligian’s head, because it said, “Maybe we’ll find another Kelgian who isn’t too badly hurt and knows what to do.”

But it was a long time before they found another Kelgian—at least, it felt like an hour even though the big and, strangely, still-functioning lounge clock, whose face was divided into concentric rings marked off in the time units of the major Federation worlds, insisted that it-was only ten minutes.

One of the Hudlars had lifted wreckage from two of the crablike Melfans, one of whom was coherent, seemingly uninjured but unable to see because of the chlorine or dust. Graw-lya-Ki spoke reassuringly to it and led it away by grasping a thick, fleshy projection, purpose unknown, growing from its head. The other Melfan made loud, untranslatable noises. Its carapace was cracked in several places and of the three legs which should have supported it on one side, two were limp and useless and one was missing altogether.

MacEwan bent down quickly and slipped his hands and lower arms under the edge of the carapace between the two useless legs and lifted until the body was at its normal walking height. Immediately the legs on the other side began moving slowly. MacEwan sidled along at the same pace, supporting the injured side and

guiding the Melfan around intervening wreckage until he was able to leave it beside its blinded colleague.

He could think of nothing more to do for it, so he rejoined the Hudlar excavating among the heavier falls of debris.

They uncovered three more Melfans, injured but ambulatory, who were directed to the boarding tunnel entrance, and a pair of the elephantine, six-legged Tralthans who appeared to be uninjured but were badly affected by the gas which was still leaking steadily from the transporter. MacEwan and Graw-lya-Ki each held a Nidian breathing mask to one breathing orifice and yelled at them to close the other. Then they tried desperately not to be trampled underfoot as they guided the Tralthans to the casualty assembly point. Then they uncovered two more of the Kelgian caterpillars, one of whom had obviously bled to death from a deep tear in its flank. The other had five of its rearmost sets of legs damaged, rendering it immobile, but it was conscious and able to cooperate by holding its body rigid while they carried it back to the others.

When MacEwan asked the being if it could help the earlier Kelgian casualty he had tried to bandage, it said that it had no medical training and could think of nothing further to do.

There were more walking, wriggling, and crawling wounded released from the wreckage to join the growing crowd of casualties at the tunnel entrance. Some of them were talking but most were making loud, untranslatable noises which had to be of pain. The sounds made by the casualties still trapped by fallen wreckage were slight by comparison.

The Hudlars were working tirelessly and often invisibly in a cloud of self-created dust, but now they seemed to be uncovering only organic wreckage of which there was no hope of salvage. There was another Kelgian who had bled spectacularly to death; two, or it may have been three, Melfans with crushed and shattered carapaces and broken limbs, and a Tral-than who had been smashed flat by a collapsing roof beam and was still trying to move.

MacEwan was afraid to touch any of them in case they fell apart in his hands, but he could not be absolutely sure that they were beyond help. He had no idea of their ability to survive major injury, or whether specialized medical intervention could save them if taken in time. He felt angry and useless and the chlorine was beginning to penetrate his face mask.

“This being appears to be uninjured,” the Hudlar beside them said. It had lifted a heavy table from a Tralthan who was lying on its side, its six massive legs twitching feebly and its domelike brain casing, multiple eye-trunk, and thick, leathery hide free of any visible signs of damage. “Could it be that it is troubled only by the toxic gas?”

“You’re probably right,” MacEwan said. He and Grawlya-Ki pressed Nidian masks over the Tralthan’s breathing orifices. Several minutes passed with no sign of improvement in its condition. MacEwan’s eyes were stinging even though he, like the Orligian, was using one hand to press the mask tightly against his face. Angrily, he said, “Have you any other ideas?”

The anger was directed at his own helplessness, and he felt like kicking himself for taking it out on the Hudlar. He could not tell the two beings apart, only that one tended to sound worried, long-winded, and overly polite, while its lifemate was more forthright. This one, luckily, was the former.

“It is possible that its injuries are to the flank lying against the floor and are presently invisible to us,” the Hudlar said ponderously. “Or that the being, which is a squat, heavy-gravity creature with certain physical similarities to myself, is seriously inconvenienced by being laid on its side. While we Hudlars can work comfortably in weightless conditions, gravity if present must act downward or within a very short time serious and disabling organ displacement occurs. There is also the fact that all Tralthan ships use an artificial gravity system with multiple failsafe backup, which is just one of the reasons for the dependability and popularity of Tralthan-built ships. This suggests that a lateral gravity pull must be avoided by them at all costs, and that this particular being is—”

“Stop talking about it,” the second Hudlar said, joining them, “and lift the thing.”

The Hudlar extended its forward pair of tentacles and, bracing itself with the other four in front of the Tralthan’s weakly moving feet, slid them over the creature’s back and insinuated them between the floor and its other flank. MacEwan watched as the tentacles tightened, took the strain, and began to quiver. But the body did not move, and the other Hudlar positioned itself to assist.

MacEwan was surprised, and worried. He had seen those tentacles, which served both as ambulatory and manipulatory appendages, lifting beams, major structural members, and large masses of wreckage seemingly without effort. They were beautifully evolved limbs, immensely strong and with thick, hardened pads forming a knuckle on which the being walked while the remainder of the tentacle—the thinner, more flexible half tipped with a cluster of specialized digits—was carried curled inward against its underside. The Tralthan they were trying to move was roughly the mass of an Earthly baby elephant, and the combined efforts of both Hudlars were shifting it only slightly.

“Wait,” MacEwan said urgently. “Both of you have lifted much heavier weights. I think the Tralthan is caught, perhaps impaled on a structural projection, and you cannot move it because—”

“We cannot move it,” the polite Hudlar said, “because we have been expending large amounts of energy after insufficient sustenance. Absorption of our last meal, which was overdue in any case, was halted by the accident after the process was scarcely begun. We are as weak as infants, as are you and your Orligian friend. But if you would both go to the other side of the being and push, your strength, puny as it is, might make a difference.”

Perhaps it wasn’t the polite one, MacEwan thought as he and Grawlya-Ki did as suggested. He wanted to apologize to we Hudlars for assuming that they were simply organic pieces of heavy rescue machinery whose capabilities he had taken for . But he and Grawlya-Ki had their shoulders under the side of the Tralthan’s cranial dome, their puny efforts were making a difference, and, unlike Hudlars, MacEwan needed breath with which to speak.

The Tralthan came upright, rocked unsteadily on its six, widely spaced feet, then was guided toward the other casualties by the Orligian. Sweat as well as chlorine was in MacEwan’s eyes so he did not know which Hudlar spoke, but presumably it had been the one engaged in lifting injured Illensans into the damaged transporter.

“I am having difficulty with a chlorine breather, Earthper-son,” it said. “The being is abusive and will not allow me to touch it. The circumstances call for a very close decision, one I am unwilling to make. Will you speak to it?”

The area around the transporter had been cleared of casualties with the sole exception of this Illensan, who refused to be moved. The reason it gave MacEwan was that while its injuries were not serious, its pressure envelope had suffered two small ruptures. One of these it had sealed, after a fashion, by grasping the fabric of its envelope around the tear in both manipulators and holding it tightly closed, while the other one it had sealed by lying on it. These arrangements had forced it to increase the internal pressure of the envelope temporarily, so that it no longer had any clear idea of the duration of its chlorine tank and asphyxiation might be imminent. But it did not want to be moved to the relative safety of the transporter, which was also leaking, because that would allow the lethal atmosphere of the lounge to enter its envelope.

“I would prefer to die of chlorine starvation,” it ended forcefully, “than have my breathing passages and lungs instantly corroded by your oxygen. Stay away from me.”

MacEwan swore under his breath but did not approach the Illensan. Where were the emergency rescue teams? Surely they should have been there by now. The clock showed that it had been just over twenty-five Earth minutes since the accident. He could see that the sightseers had been cleared from the lounge’s inner wall, to be replaced by a Nidian television crew and some uninformed ground staff who did not appear to be doing anything at all. Outside there were heavy vehicles drawn up and Nidians with backpacks and helmets scurrying around, but his constantly watering eyes and the ever-present plastic hangings kept him from seeing details.

MacEwan pointed suddenly at the hangings and said to the Hudlars, “Will you tear down a large piece of that plastic material, please, and drape it over the Illensan. Pat it down flat around the being’s suit and smooth the folds out toward the edges so as to exclude our air as much as possible. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He hurried around the transporter to the first Illensan casualty, whose body had turned a livid, powdery blue and was beginning to disintegrate, and tried to look only at the fastenings of the chlorine tank. It took him several minutes to get the tank free of the body harness, and several times his bare hands touched the dead Illensan’s flesh, which crumbled like rotting wood. He knew that oxygen was vicious stuff where chlorine breathers were concerned, but now he could really sympathize with the other Illensan’s panic at the thought of being moved in a leaking suit.

When he relumed it was Grawlya-Ki who was smoothing out the plastic around the Illensan while the two Hudlars were standing clear. One of them said apologetically, “Our movements have become somewhat uncoordinated and the chlorine breather was worried lest we accidentally fall on it. If there is something else we can do—”

“Nothing,” MacEwan said firmly.

He turned on the tap of the chlorine tank and slipped it quickly under the plastic sheet and pushed it close to the Illensan. The extra seepage of the gas would make little difference, he thought, because the whole area around the transporter was fast becoming uninhabitable for oxygen breathers. He pressed the tiny mask hard against his face and took a long, careful breath through his nose, and used it to speak to the Hudlars.

“I have been thoughtless and seemingly ungrateful for the fine work you have been doing here,” he said. “There is nothing more that you can do. Please go at once and spray yourselves with the necessary nutrient. You have acted most unselfishly, and I am, as are we all, most grateful to you.”

The two Hudlars did not move. MacEwan began placing pieces of debris around the edges of the plastic and the Orligian, who was quick on the uptake, began doing the same. Soon the edges were held tightly against the floor, the gas escaping from the tank was beginning to inflate the plastic, and they had the Illensan in a crude chlorine tent. Still the Hudlars had not moved.

“The Colonel is waving at you again,” Grawlya-Ki said. “I would say with impatience.”

“We cannot use our sprayers here, Earthperson,” one of the Hudlars said before MacEwan could reply. “The absorption mechanism in our tegument would ingest the toxic gas with our food, and in our species trace amounts of chlorine are lethal. The food sprayers can only be used in a beneficent atmosphere or in airless conditions.”

“Bloody hell!” MacEwan said. When he thought of the way the Hudlars had worked to free the casualties, knowing that their time and available energy was severely limited and letting him assume that they had no problems, he should have had more to say—but that was all that came out. He looked helplessly at Ki, but the Orligian’s face was covered by its furry hand holding the ridiculously small mask.

“With us,” the other Hudlar added, “starvation is a rapid process, somewhat akin to asphyxiation in a gas breather. I estimate that we should lose consciousness and die in just under eight of our small time divisions.”

MacEwan’s eyes went to the concentric circles of the lounge clock. The Hudlar was talking about the equivalent of about twenty Earth minutes. Somehow they had to get that boarding tunnel open.

“Go to the tunnel entrance,” he said, “and try to conserve your strength. Wait beside the others until—” He broke off awkwardly, then said to the Orligian, “Ki, you’d better get over there as well. There’s enough chlorine in the air here to bleach your fur. Keep passing the masks around and—”

“The Colonel,” Grawlya-Ki reminded him as it turned to follow the Hudlars. MacEwan waved acknowledgment, but before he could leave the Illensan began speaking, its voice muffled by the fabric of the makeshift chlorine tent.

“That was an ingenious idea, Earthperson,” it said slowly—“There is now a beneficent atmosphere surrounding my sure envelope, which will enable me to repair the torn fabric and survive until Illensan assistance arrives. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” MacEwan said, and began picking his way over the debris toward the gesticulating figure of the Colonel. He was still several meters from the wall when the officer pointed to his ear, then rapped with a knuckle on the interior surface. MacEwan obediently unfastened his mask on one side and pressed an ear against the transparent wall. The other’s voice was low and indistinct, even though the color of the Colonel’s face showed that he was shouting.

“Listen, MacEwan, and don’t try to answer yet,” the Colonel shouted.

“We’ll have you out of there in fifteen, twenty minutes at most, and you’ll have fresh air in ten. Medical help for all of the casualty species is on the way. Everybody on the planet knows about the accident because the TV channels were covering your deportation as a news item, and now this is big news indeed. Their contact mikes and translators are bringing us every word said in there, and the authorities are insisting that every effort be made to speed up the rescue...”

Across the lounge Grawlya-Ki was waving a mask and air tank above his head. When the Orligian was sure that MacEwan had seen it; he threw it away. None of the other casualties were wearing masks so obviously they were useless, their air tanks empty. He wondered how long his own tank would last.

The equipment had been designed for the diminuitive Nidians, whose lungs were less than half the capacity of an Earth-Arson’s. A lot of air had been wasted during the continual Passing of masks between the casualties, and the furry face of the Orligian would have allowed air to leak past the edges of its mask, especially if Grawlya-Ki had increased the pressure to exclude the chlorine.

The Colonel had seen the Orligian’s action and must have leapt to the same conclusion.

“Tell them to hang on for just a few more minutes,” he went on. “We can’t cut a way in from the main concourse because there are too many unprotected people out there. That plastic wall is tough and needs special, high-temperature equipment to cut it. Anyway—accidents, with the plastic tproduce large quantities of highly toxic fumes, bad enough to make your chlorine problem seem like a bad smell.

“So they’re going in through the hole made by the transporter. There is only a few inches clearance around the vehicle’s hull now, but they’re going to pull the transporter out backward and you will be brought out through the hole it made and into the fresh air, where the medics will be standing by—”

MacEwan began banging with his fist and a foot against the plastic to attract the Colonel’s attention, and breathing as deeply as he could through the mask. He had some shouting to do himself.

“No.” MacEwan said loudly, putting his mouth as close to the wall as the mask would allow: “All but one of the injured Illensans are inside the transporter. The structure was damaged in the collision and is leaking chlorine from every seam. If you drag it out like that it is likely to fall apart and the air will get to the casualties. I’ve seen what exposure to oxygen did to one of them.”

“But if we don’t go in there fast the oxygen breathers will die,” the Colonel replied. His face was no longer red now, but a sickly white.

MacEwan could almost see the way the officer’s mind was working. If the transporter with the chlorine-breathing casualties on board was hauled out and it broke up, the Illensan authorities would not be amused. But neither would the governments of Traltha, Kelgia, Melf, Orligia, and Earth if they did not act quickly to save those people.

This was how an interstellar war could start.

With the media covering every incident as it occurred, with their contact mikes picking up every translated word as it was spoken, and with fellow beings of the casualties’ species on Nidia watching, judging, feeling, and reacting, there was no possibility of this incident being hushed up or diplomatically smoothed over. The decision to be taken was a simple one: Certain death for seven or eight chlorine-breathing Illensans to possibly save triple that number of Tralthans, Hudlars, Kel-gians, Melfans, many of whom were dying anyway. Or death by chlorine poisoning for the oxygen breathers.

MacEwan could not make the decision and neither, he saw, could the pale, sweating, and silent Colonel trapped inside his

office. He banged for attention again and shouted, “Open the boarding tunnel! Blast it open from the other side if you have to. Rig fans or pump in fresh air from the ship to raise the tunnel pressure and keep back this chlorine. Then send the emergency team to this end of the tunnel and open it from the inside. Surely the wiring of the safety system can be short-circuited and—”

While he was talking, MacEwan was thinking about the distance between the tunnel entrance and the take-off apron. It would take a long time to traverse the tunnel if the fast walkway was not operating. And explosives might not be quickly available in an air and space terminal. Maybe the Monitor Corps vessel in dock could provide some, given time, but the time they had was to be measured in minutes.

“The safety system is triggered from your end,” the Colonel broke in. “The other end of the tunnel is too close to the ship for explosives to be used. The vessel would have to take off first and that would waste more time. The system can only be overriden at your end by a special key, carried by the Nidian on lounge duty, which unlocks the cover of the tunnel controls. The cover is transparent and unbreakable. You see, contamination can be a killer in a big complex like this one, especially when you consider that chlorine is mild compared with the stuff some of the offworlders breathe—”

MacEwan thumped the wall again and said, “The Nidian with the key is buried under the transporter, which can’t be moved. And who says the cover is unbreakable? There is bar metal, furniture supports, among the wreckage. If I can’t unlock the cover then I’ll try levering or bashing it off. Find out what I’m supposed to do when it is off.”

But the Colonel was ahead of him. He had already asked the Nidians that same question. In order, to make accidental operation impossible for non-Nidian digits, the tunnel controls were in the form of six recessed buttons, which had to be Depressed in a certain sequence. MacEwan would have to use stylus or something similar to operate them because his Earthly fingers were too thick. He listened carefully, signaled that he understood, then returned to the casualties.

Grawlya-Ki had heard MacEwan’s half of the shouted con-versation and had found two lengths of metal. It was using one of them to attack the console when he arrived. The metal was a strong-enough alloy, but lacked the necessary weight and inertia. The metal bounced or skidded off the cover every time they swung at it, without leaving a mark.

Damn the Nidians and their superhard plastics! MacEwan raged. He tried to lever off the cover, but the join was almost invisible and the fastenings were flush with the console pedestal. He swore and tried again.

The Orligian did not speak because it was coughing all the time now, and the chlorine was affecting its eyes so badly that more often than not its blows missed the console altogether. MacEwan was beginning to feel an impairment in his own air supply, as if the tank were nearly empty and he was sucking at air which was not there, instead drawing in the contaminated air of the lounge through the edges of his mask.

Around them the casualties were still moving, but jerkily, as if they were struggling in the final stages of asphyxiation. The movements were not helping their injuries. Only the two Hudlars were motionless; their six tentacular limbs supported them just a few inches above the floor. MacEwan raised the metal bar high, stood on his toes, and brought it down-as hard as he could.

He grunted in pain as the shock jarred his arms from wrist to shoulders and the bar slipped out of his hands. He swore again and looked around helplessly.

The Colonel was watching him through his glass-walled office. Through the inner wall of the lounge MacEwan could see the cameras of the Nidian TV networks watching him, listening and recording every word and cough and groan of those inside. Beyond the outer wall, now that the dust had settled and most of the intervening draperies had been pulled down, he could see the crews of the heavy Nidian towing vehicles watching him. He had only to signal to the Colonel and the emergency team would drag out the damaged transporter and medics would be attending the casualties within a few minutes.

But how would the fllensans as a species react to that? They were highly advanced technologically, occupying scores of colony worlds which they had had to adapt to their environmental needs, and, despite being the most widely traveled race in the

Federation, they were a virtually unknown quantity because their worlds were so dangerous and unpleasant that few , indeed, were the visitors they received. Would they hold Nidia responsible for the accident and the deaths of their people? Or the worlds of the other warm-blooded, oxygen breathers whose people had survived at the expense of the Illensans?

And if everybody dithered and remained undecided until all but the Illensans had died, how would the world governments of Kelgia, Traltha, Melf, Orligia, and Earth react?

They would probably not gang up on Illensa, nor would the war start over this incident—not officially. But the seeds would have been planted no matter which races were saved or sacrificed, or even if all of them died. It would start, not because anyone wanted it, but because of a highly improbable accident with a number of contributing factors most of which could have been avoided.

Even the sudden collapse of the Nidian driver at the controls of the transporter could have been avoided by keeping closer medical checks on the ground staff. It had been sheer bad luck that the incident had happened when it did, and then the too rigidly designed safety system had done the rest. But most of the deaths would occur, MacEwan thought angrily, because of ignorance and fear—everyone was too frightened and over-polite to have asked the offworlders for a few basic lessons in first aid.

Beside him Grawlya-Ki was on its knees, coughing but still gripping its metal bar. At any moment the Colonel would make his decision because MacEwan, the Earth-being on the spot, was too much of a moral coward to make it. But whether the Colonel decided to save the Illensans or the others he would be wrong. MacEwan moved closer to one of the motionless Hudlars and waved a hand in front of one of its large, widely spaced eyes.

For several interminable seconds there was no response. He was beginning to wonder if the being was already dead when said, “What is it, Earthperson?”

MacEwan took a deep breath through his nose and found at his air had run out. For a moment he panicked and almost through his mouth, but stopped himself in time. Using the air remaining in his nearly empty lungs, he pointed to the console cover and said, “Are you able to break open the cover? Just the cover. I can . . . operate . . . controls . . .”

Desperately he fought the urge to suck the chlorine-laden air into his deflated lungs as the Hudlar slowly extended a tentacle and curled it around the cover. It slipped off the smooth, hemispheric surface. The Hudlar tried again without success, then it withdrew the tentacle slightly and jabbed at it with its sharp, steel-hard digits. A small scratch appeared on the cover but the material showed no sign of cracking. The tentacle withdrew, farther this time.

There was a roaring in MacEwan’s head which was the loudest sound he had ever heard, and big, throbbing patches of darkness obscured the Hudlar as it made another attempt to break through the cover. MacEwan shrugged off his tunic, bunched it tightly in his fist and pressed it against his mouth as a makeshift filter. With his other hand he pressed the Nidian mask against his face to protect his eyes, at least, from the chlorine. He inhaled carefully and tried not to cough as the Hudlar swung its tentacle back for another try.

This time it struck like a battering ram and the cover, console, and even the floor supports exploded into their component parts.

“I am sorry for my clumsiness,” the Hudlar said slowly. “Food deprivation impairs my judgment—”

It broke off as a loud, double chime sounded and the boarding tunnel doors slid open, bathing them suddenly in a wash of cool, pure air. A recorded voice was saying, “Will passengers please mount the moving way of the boarding tunnel and have their travel documents ready for inspection.”

The two Hudlars found enough strength between them to lift the heavier casualties onto the moving way before they got on themselves, after which they began spraying each other with nutrient and making untranslatable noises. By then members of the Nidian emergency services, followed by a couple of Illensan and other offworlder medics, were hurrying in the opposite direction along the static borders of the moving way.

The incident had placed a six-hour hold on the Tralthan ship’s departure, time

for the less severe casualties to be treated and taken on board while the others were moved to the various

offworlder accommodations in the city where they could be under the close supervision of medics of their own species. The transporter, empty of its Illensan casualties, had been withdrawn and a cold wind from the field blew through the gap in the transparent wall.

Grawlya-Ki, MacEwan, and the Colonel were standing beside the entrance to the boarding tunnel. The multichronometer above them indicated that take-off was less than half an Earth hour away.

The Colonel touched a piece of the demolished console with his boot and did not look at them when he spoke. “You were lucky. We were all lucky. I hate to think of the repercussions if you had failed to get all the casualties away. But you, both of you and the Hudlars, were instrumental in saving all but five of them, and they would have died in any case.”

He gave an embarrassed laugh and looked up. “The offworld medics say some of your ideas on first aid are horrendous in their simplicity, but you didn’t kill anybody and actually saved lives. You did it in full view of the media, with all of Nidia and its offworld visitors looking on, and you made your point about closer and more honest contact between species in a way that we are not going to forget. You are heroes again and I think—no, damn it, I’m sure—that you have only to ask and the Nidians will rescind their deportation order.”

“We’re going home,” MacEwan said firmly. “To Orligia and Earth.”

The Colonel looked even more embarrassed. He said, “I can understand your feelings about this sudden change in attitude. But now the authorities are grateful. Everybody, Nidians and offworlders alike, wants to interview you, and you can be sure that your ideas will be listened to. But if you require some form of public apology, I could arrange something.”

MacEwan shook his head. “We are leaving because we have |he answer to the problem. We have found the area of common interest to which ail offworlders will subscribe, a project in which they will gladly cooperate. The answer was obvious all along but until today we were too stupid to see it.

“Implementing the solution,” he went on, smiling, “is not a job for two tired old veterans who are beginning to bore People. It will take an organization like your Monitor Corps

to coordinate the project, the technical resources of half a dozen planets, more money than I can conceive of, and a very, very long time . . .”

As he continued, MacEwan was aware of excited movement among the members of the video team who had stayed behind hoping for an interview with Grawlya-Ki and himself. They would not get an interview but they were recording his final words to the Colonel. And when the Orligian and the Earth-person turned to leave they also got a not very interesting picture of the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Nidia standing very still, with one arm bent double so that the hand was held stiffly against the head. There was an odd brightness in the Earth-person’s eyes and an expression on the pink, furless face which they were, naturally, unable to read.

It took a very long time, much longer than the most generous estimates. The original and relatively modest plans had to be continually extended because scarcely a decade passed without several newly discovered intelligent species joining the Federation and these, too, had to be accommodated. So gigantic and complex was the structure required that in the end hundreds of worlds had each fabricated sections of it and transported them like pieces of a vast, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to the assembly area.

The tremendous structure which had finally taken shape in Galactic Sector Twelve was a hospital, a hospital to end all hospitals. In its 384 levels were reproduced the environments of all the different life-forms who comprised the Galactic Federation—a biological spectrum ranging from the 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.

Sector Twelve General Hospital represented a twofold miracle of engineering and psychology. Its supply, maintenance, and administration were handled by the Monitor Corps, but the traditional friction between the military and civilian members of the staff did not occur. Neither were there any serious disagreements among its ten thousand-odd medical personnel, who were composed of over sixty differing life-forms with the same number of mannerisms, body odors, and life views.

Perhaps their only common denominator, regardless of size, shape, and number of legs, was their need to cure the sick.

And in the vast dining hall used by the hospital’s warmblooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms there was a small dedication plaque just inside the main entrance. The Kelgian, Ian, Melfan, Nidian, Etlan, Orligian, Dwerlan, Tralthan, and Earth-human medical and maintenance staff rarely had time to look at the names inscribed on it, because they were all too busy talking shop, exchanging other-species gossip, and eating at tables with utensils all too often designed for the needs of an entirely different life-form—it was a very busy place, after all, and one grabbed a seat where one could. But then that was the way Grawlya-Ki and MacEwan had wanted it.

SURVIVOR

FOR more than an hour Senior Physician Conway had been dividing his attention between the interstellar emptiness outside the direct vision port and the long-range sensor display, which showed surrounding space to be anything but empty, and feeling more depressed with every minute that Passed. Around him the officers on Rhabwar’s Control Deck were radiating impatience—but inaudibly, because they all knew that when their ship was at the scene of a disaster it was the senior medical officer on board who had the rank.

“Only one survivor,” he said dully.

From the Captain’s position, Fletcher said, “We’ve been fortunate on previous missions, Doctor. More often than not this is all an ambulance ship finds. Just think of what must have happened here.”

Conway did not reply because he had been thinking of little ekse for the past hour.

An interstellar vessel of unknown origin and fully three times the mass of their ambulance ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction which had reduced it to finely divided and widely scattered wreckage. Analysis of the temperature and relative motions showed the debris to be much too cool to have been at the center of a nuclear explosion less than seven hours earlier, when the distress beacon had been automatically released. It was obvious, therefore, that the ship had lost one of its hypergenerators and it had not been of a sufficiently advanced design for the occupants, with one exception, to have any chance of surviving the accident.

On Federation ships, Conway knew, if one of the matched set of hyperdrive generators failed suddenly, the others were designed to cut out simultaneously. The vessel concerned emerged safely into normal space somewhere between the stars, to sit there helplessly, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until it either repaired its sick generator or help arrived. But there were times when the safety cutoffs had failed or been late in functioning, which meant that while a part of the ship had continued for a split second at hyperspeed the remainder was braked instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the early hyperships had been, to say the least, catastrophic.

“The survivor’s species must be relatively new to hyper-travel,” Conway said, “or they would be using the modular design philosophy which we, from long experience, know to be the only structural form which enables a proportion of a ship’s crew to survive when a sudden hypergenerator imbalance tears the vessel apart around them. I can’t understand why the section containing the survivor wasn’t fragmented like the rest.”

The Captain was visibly controlling his impatience as he replied, “You were too busy getting the survivor out before the compartment lost any more air and decompression was added to its other problems, Doctor, to have time for structural observations. The compartment was a separate unit, purpose unknown, which was mounted outboard of the main hull and joined by a short access tube and airlock, and it simply broke away in one piece. That beastie was very lucky.” He gestured toward the long-range sensor displays. “But now we know that the remaining pieces of wreckage are too small to contain survivors and frankly, Doctor, we are wasting time here.”

“I agree,” Conway said absently.

“Right,” Fletcher said briskly. “Power Room, prepare to Jump in five—”

“Hold, Captain,” Conway broke in quietly. “I hadn’t finished. I want a scoutship out here, more than one if they can be spared, to search the wreckage for personal effects, photographs, solid and pictorial an, anything which will assist in reconstructing the survivor’s environment and culture. And request Federation Archives for any information on an intelligent life-form of physiological classification EGCL. Since this is a new species to us, the cultural contact people will want this information as soon as possible, and if our survivor continues to survive, the hospital will need it the day before yesterday.

“Tag the signals with Sector General medical first-contact priority coding,” he went on, “then head for home. I’ll be on the Casualty Deck.”

Rhabwar’s communications officer, Haslam, was already preparing for the transmission when Conway stepped into the gravity-free central well and began pulling himself toward the Casualty Deck amidships. He broke his journey briefly to visit his cabin and get out of the heavy-duty spacesuit he had been wearing since the rescue. He felt as though every bone and muscle in his body was aching. The rescue and transfer of the survivor to Rhabwar had required intense muscular activity, followed by a three-hour emergency op, and another hour sitting still in Control. No wonder he felt stiff.

Try to think about something else, Conway told himself firmly. He exercised briefly to ease his cramped muscles but the dull, unlocalized aching persisted. Angrily he wondered if he was becoming a hypochondriac.

“Subspace radio transmission in five seconds,” the muted voice of Lieutenant Haslam said from the cabin speaker. “Ex-Pect the usual fluctuations in the lighting and artificial gravity systems.”

As the cabin lights flickered and the deck seemed to twitch under his feet, Conway was forced to think of something else—specifically, the problems encountered in transmitting intelli-Sence over interstellar distances compared with the relative simplicity of sending a distress signal.

Just as there was only one known method of traveling faster wan light, there was only one way of calling for help when an accident left a ship stranded between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio could rarely be used in emergency conditions since it was subject to interference from intervening stellar material and required inordinate amounts of a vessel’s power—power which a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence.' It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast its location, a subspace scream for help which ran up and down the usuable frequencies until it died, in a matter of a few hours. And on I this occasion it had died amid a cloud of wreckage containing one survivor who was very lucky indeed to be alive.

But considering the extent of the being’s injuries, Conway thought, it could not really be described as lucky. Mentally shaking himself loose of these uncharacteristically morbid feelings, he went down to the Casualty Deck to check on” the patient’s condition.

Typed as physiological classification EGCL, the survivor was a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-form of approximately twice the body weight of an adult Earth-human. Visually it resembled an outsize snail with a high, conical shell which was pierced around the tip where its four extensible eyes were I located. Equally spaced around the base of the shell were eight triangular slots from which projected the manipulatory appendages. The carapace rested on a thick, circular pad of muscle I which was the locomotor system. Around the circumference of the pad were a number of fleshy projections, hollows and slits associated with its systems of ingestion, respiration, elimination, reproduction, and nonvisual sensors. Its gravity and atmospheric pressure requirements had been estimated but, because of its severely weakened condition, the artificial gravity I setting had been reduced to assist the heart and the pressure increased so that decompression effects would not aggravate the bleeding.

As Conway stood looking down at the terribly injured EGCL, Pathologist Murchison and Charge Nurse Naydrad joined him at the pressure litter. It was the same litter which had been I used to move the casualty from the wreck, and, because the patient should not be subjected to unnecessary movement,- it would be used again to transfer the EGCL into the hospital. The only difference was that for the second trip the casualty had been tidied up.

In spite of his considerable experience with spacewreck casualties of all shapes, sizes, and physiological classifications, Conway winced at the memory of what they had found. The compartment containing the EGCL had been spinning rapidly when they discovered it, and the being had been rolling about inside and demolishing furniture and equipment with its massive body for many hours before it had lodged itself in a corner under some self-created debris.

In the process its carapace had sustained three fractures, one of which was so deeply depressed that the brain had been involved. One of the eyes was missing, and two of the thin, tentacular manipulators had been traumatically severed by sharp-edged obstructions—these limbs had been retrieved and preserved for possible rejoining—and there were numerous punctured and incised wounds to the base pad.

Apart from carrying out the emergency surgery to relieve some of the cranial pressure, controlling the major areas of bleeding with clamps and temporary sutures, and assisting the patient’s breathing by applying positive pressure ventilation to the remaining undamaged lung, there had been very little that they could do. Certainly there was no way of treating the brain damage aboard Rhabwar, and their efforts at charting the extent of that damage had resulted in conflicting indications from the biosensors and Doctor Prilicla’s empathic faculty. The sensor indications were that cerebral activity had virtually ceased, while the little empath insisted, insofar as the timid, shy, self-effacing Prilicla could insist, otherwise.

“No physical movement and no change in the clinical picture since you left,” Murchison said quietly, anticipating his question. She added, “I’m not at all happy about this.”

“And I am far from happy, Doctor,” the Charge Nurse joined in its fur twitching and rippling as if it was standing in a strong wind. “In my opinion the being is dead and we are simply insuring that Thornnastor receives a fresher than usual specimen to take apart.

“Doctor Prilicla,” the Kelgian went on, “is often guilty of saying things which are not completely accurate just so long as they make the people around it happy, and the predominant radiation it detected from the patient was of pain.

The feeling was so intense, you will remember, that Prilicla asked to be excused as soon as the operation was completed. In my opinion. Doctor, this patient is no longer capable of cerebration but it is, judging by Prilicla’s response, suffering intense pain. Surely your course is clear?”

“Naydrad!” Conway began angrily, then stopped. Murchi-son and the Charge Nurse had expressed exactly the same sentiments. The difference was that the Kelgian, in common with the rest of its species, was incapable of using tact.

Conway stared for a moment at the two-meters-long, caterpillar like life-form whose coat of silvery fur was in constant, rippling motion. This motion was completely involuntary among Kelgians, triggered by their reactions to external and internal stimuli, and the emotionally expressive fur complemented the vocal apparatus which lacked flexibility of tone. But the patterns of movement in the fur made it plain to any Kelgian what another felt about the subject under discussion, so that they always said exactly what they meant. The concepts of diplomacy, tact, and lying were therefore completely alien to them. Conway sighed.

He tried to conceal his own doubts about the case by saying firmly, “Thomnastor much prefers putting together a live speciment than taking apart a dead one. As. well, on a number of occasions Prilicla’s empathy has proved more trustworthy than medical instrumentation, so we cannot be absolutely sure that this case is hopeless. In any event, until we reach the hospital its treatment is my responsibility.

“Let’s not become too emotionally involved with this patient,” he added. “It is unprofessional and not like either of you.”

Naydrad, its fur twitching angrily, made a sound which did not register on Conway’s translator, and Murchison said, “You’re right, of course. We’ve seen much worse cases and I don’t know why I feel so badly about this one. Maybe I’m just growing old.”

“The onset of senility could be one explanation for such uncharacteristic behavior,” the Kelgian said, “although this is not so in my case.”

Murchison’s face reddened. “The Charge Nurse is allowed

to say things like that but you, Doctor, had better not agree with it,” she said crossly.

Conway laughed suddenly. “Relax. I wouldn’t dream of agreeing with such a blatantly obvious misstatement,” he said. “And now, if you have everything you think Thorny will need on our friend here, both of you get some rest. Emergence is in six hours. If you can’t sleep, please try not to worry too much about the casualty or it will bother Prilicla.”

Murchison nodded and followed Naydrad from the Casualty Deck. Conway, still feeling more like a not very well patient than a medic in charge, set the audible warning which would signal any change in the EGCL’s condition, lay down on a nearby litter, and closed his eyes.

Neither the Earth-human DBDG or the Kelgian DBLF classifications were noted for their ability to exercise full control over their mentation, and it was soon obvious that Murchison and Naydrad had been worrying and, in the process, producing some unpleasant emotional radiation. With his eyes still closed he listened to the faint tapping and plopping sounds which moved along the ceiling toward him and came to a halt overhead. There was a burst of low, musical clicks and trills which came through his translator as “Excuse me, friend Conway, were you sleeping?”

“You know I wasn’t,” Conway said, opening his eyes to see Prilicla clinging to the ceiling above him, trembling uncontrollably as it was washed by his own and the patient’s emotional radiation.

Doctor Prilicla was of physiological classification GLNO—an insectile, exoskeletal, six-legged life-form with two pairs of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty. Only on Cinruss, with its dense atmosphere and one-eighth gravity, could a race of insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and an advanced civilization.

But in both the hospital and Rhabwar, Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity nullifiers everywhere outside its own special quarters because the gravity pull which the majority of its colleagues considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat. When Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it kept well out of reach of any thoughtless movement of an arm or tentacle which would easily have caved in its eggshell body or snapped off one of the incredibly fragile limbs.

Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt the little being—it was far too well liked. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty forced it to be considerate to everyone in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible—except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and associated violent emotion in a patient or to the unintentionally unpleasant feelings of its colleagues.

“You should be sleeping, Prilicla,” Conway said with concern, “or are Murchison and Naydrad emoting too loudly for you?”

“No, friend Conway,” the empath replied timidly. “Their emotional radiation troubles me no more than that of the other people on the ship. I came for a consultation.”

“Good!” Conway said. “You’ve had some useful thoughts on the treatment of our—”

“I wish to consult you about myself,” Prilicla said, committing the—to it—gross impoliteness of breaking in on another’s conversation without prior apology. For a moment its pipestem legs and body shook with the strength of Conway’s reaction, then it added, “Please, my friend, control your feelings.”

Conway tried to be clinical about the little Cinrusskin who had been his friend, colleague, and invaluable assistant on virtually every major case since his promotion to Senior Physician. His sudden concern and unadmitted fear of the possible loss of a close friend were not helping that friend and were, in fact, causing it even greater distress. He tried hard to think of Prilicla as a patient, only as a patient, and slowly the empath’s trembling abated.

“What,” Conway said in time-honored fashion, “seems to be the trouble?”

“I do not know,” the Cinrusskin said. “I have no previous experience and there are no recorded instances of the condition among my species. I am confused, friend Conway, and frightened.”

“Symptoms?” Conway asked.

“Empathic hypersensitivity,” Prilicla replied. “The emotional radiation of yourself, the rest of the medical team, and the crew is particularly strong. I can clearly detect the feelings of Lieutenant Chen in the Power Room and those of the rest of the crew in Control with little or no attenuation with distance. The expected, low-key feelings of disappointment and sorrow caused by the unsuccessful rescue bid are reaching me with shocking intensity. We have encountered these tragedies before now, friend Conway, but this emotional reaction to the condition of a being who is a complete stranger is—is—”

“We do feel bad about this one,” Conway broke in gently, “perhaps worse than we normally do, and the feelings are cumulative. And you, as an emotion-sensitive, could be expected to feel them much more strongly. This might explain your apparent hypersensitivity.”

The empath trembled with the effort needed to express disagreement. It said, “No, friend Conway. The condition and emotional radiation of the EGCL, highly unpleasant though it is, is not the problem. It is the ordinary, everyday radiation of everyone else—the minor embarrassments, the bursts of irritation, the odd emotions associated with the feeling you Earth-humans call humor and the like, are registering so strongly with me that I find difficulty in thinking clearly.”

“I see,” Conway said automatically, although he could not see at all. “Apart from the hypersensitivity, are there any other symptoms?”

“Some unlocalized discomfort in the limbs and lower thorax,” Prilicla replied. “I checked the areas with my scanner but could find no obstructions or abnormalities.”

Conway had been reaching for his own pocket scanner but thought better of it. Without taking a Cinrusskin physiology tape he would have only a vage idea of what to look for, and Prides, Prilicla was a first-class diagnostician and surgeon and if it said that there were no abnormalities then that was good enough for Conway.

“Cinrusskins are susceptible to illness only during childhood,” Prilicla went on. “The adults do occasionally suffer from nonphysical disturbances, and the onset of symptoms, as expected with psychological disorders, takes many forms, some of which resemble my present—”

“Nonsense, you’re not going insane!” Conway broke in. But he did not feel as sure as he sounded, and he was uncomfortably aware that Prilicla knew his feelings and was beginning to tremble again.

“The obvious course,” Conway said, trying to regain his clinical calm, “is to desensitize you with a hefty sedative shot. You know that as well as I. But you are too good a doctor to self-administer the indicated medication which would, we both realize, simply be treating the symptoms, without first doing something about the disease, like reporting it to me. Isn’t that so?”

“That is so, friend Conway.”

“Right, then,” Conway said briskly. “You also realize that we can’t do anything about curing the condition until we have you back in the hospital. In the meantime we’ll treat the symptoms with heavy sedation. I want you completely unconscious. You are relieved of all medical duties, naturally, until we have the answer to your little problem.”

Conway could almost feel the little empath’s objections while he was lifting it gently into a pressure litter fitted with gravity nullifiers and the incredibly soft restraints required by this uftrafragile species. Finally Prilicla spoke.

“Friend Conway,” it said weakly, “you know that I am the only medically trained empath on the staff. Our patient wiil require extensive and delicate cerebral surgery. If my condition precludes me from taking a direct part in the operation, I wish to be treated in an adjacent ward where this abnormal hyper-sensitivity will better enable me to monitor the EGCL’s unconscious emotional radiation.

“You know as well as I do,” it went on, “that brain surgery in a hitherto unknown life-form is largely exploratory and very, very risky, and my empathic faculty enables me to sense when surgical intervention in any area is right or wrong. By becoming a patient I have lost none of my abilities as a diagnostic empath, and for this reason, friend Conway, I want your promise that I will be placed as close as possible to the patient and restored to full consciousness while the operation is in progress.”

“Well—” Conway began.

“I am not a telepath, as you know,” Prilicla said, so weakly that Conway had to increase the gain on his translator to hear it. “But your feelings, if you do not intend to keep this promise, will be clear to me.”

Conway had never known the normally timid Prilicla to be so forthright in its manner. Then he thought of what the empath was asking him to do—to subject it, in its hypersensitive state, to the emotional trauma of a lengthy operation during which, because of the patient’s strange physiological classification and metabolism, the effectiveness of the anesthetics could not be guaranteed. His hard-held clinical detachment slipped for a moment and he felt like any concerned friend or relative watching a patient whose prognosis was uncertain.

Prilicla began to shake in its harness, but the sedative was taking effect, and very soon it was unconscious and untroubled by Conway’s feelings for it.

“This is Reception,” a flat, translated voice said from the Control Deck’s main speaker. “Identify yourself, please. State whether visitor, patient, or staff and give physiological classification. If unable to do so because of physical injury, mental confusion, or ignorance of the classification system, please make vision contact.”

Conway cleared his throat and said briskly, “Ambulance ship Rhabwar, Senior Physician Conway. Staff and two patients, all warm-blooded oxygen breathers. Staff classifications are Earth-human DBDG, Cinrusskin GLNO, and Kelgian DBLF. One patient is an EGCL, origin unknown, space wreck casualty in condition nine. The second patient is also staff, a GLNO in condition three. We need—”

“Prilicla?”

“Yes, Prilicla,” Conway said. “We need matching environment OR and postop intensive care facilities for the EGCL, treatment to begin on arrival, and adjacent accommodation for the GLNO whose empathic faculty may be required during the operation. Can do?”

There was silence for a few minutes, then Reception said, 'Use Entry Lock Nine into Level One Six Three, Rhabwar.

Your traffic coding is Priority Red One. ETA?”

Fletcher looked across at his astrogator, and Lieutenant Dodds said, “Two hours, seven minutes, sir.”

“Wait,” Reception said.

There was another silence, much longer this time, before the voice returned. “Diagnostician Thornnastor wishes to discuss the patient’s condition and metabolic profile with Pathologist Murchison and yourself as soon as possible. Senior Physician Edanelt has been assigned to assist Thomnastor during the operation. Both require information on the type and extent of the EGCL’s injuries and want you to transmit surface and deep-scan pictures at once. Until otherwise instructed you are assigned to the Cinrusskin patient. As soon as possible Chief Psychologist O’Mara wants to talk to you about Prilicla.”

It promised to be a very busy two hours and seven minutes.

In Rhabwar’s forward viewscreen the hospital grew from a fuzzy smear of light against the stellar background until it seemed to fill all of space like a gigantic, cylindrical Christmas tree. Its thousands of viewports blazed with light in the dazzling variety of color and intensity necessary for the visual equipment of its patients and staff.

Within a few minutes of Rhabwar docking at Lock Nine, the EGCL and Prilicla had been moved into Operating Room Three and Ward Seven respectively on Level 163. Con way was not familiar with this particular level because it had still been in the process of conversion from the old FROB, FGLI, and ELNT medics’ quarters when he had been detached for ambulance ship duty. Now the Tralthans, Hudlars, and Melfans had more spacious accommodations and their old abode had become the emergency admission and treatment level for warmblooded oxygen breathers, with its own operating theaters, intensive care units, observation and recovery wards, and a diet kitchen which could reproduce the staples of every known warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing race.

While Naydrad and Conway were transferring the EGCL casualty from the litter’s portable life-support and biosensor systems to those of the operating room, Thornnastor and Edanelt arrived.

Senior Physician Edanelt had been the natural if not the inevitable choice for this case. Not only was it one of the hospital’s top surgeons, the permanent possessor of four physiology tapes and, according to the grapevine, a being shortly to be elevated to Diagnostician status, the crablike Melfan’s physiological classification of ELNT was perhaps the closest of all the life-forms on the medical staff to that of the EGCL survivor—a vitally important factor when no physiology tape was available for the patient being treated. Where Thornnastor, the elephantine Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, was concerned there were no physical similarities to the patient at all, other than that they breathed the same air.

In spite of being a Tralthan FGLI and as such one of the more massive intelligent species in the Federation, Thornnastor was no mean surgeon itself. But on this case its primary responsibility was the rapid investigation of the survivor’s physiology and metabolism and, using its own vast experience in the field of e-t pathology together with the facilities available in its department, the synthesizing of the required medication which would include a safe anesthetic, coagulant, and tissue regenerative.

Edanelt and Conway had already discussed the case in detail on the way in, as had Murchison and her chief, Thomnastor. He knew that their initial efforts would be directed toward repairing the grosser structural damage, after which would come the extremely delicate, dangerous, and perhaps impossible operation to relieve the pressure on and repair the damage to the brain and adjacent organs caused by the extensive depressed fracturing of the carapace. At that stage the assistance of Prilicla and its wonderfully sensitive and precise empathic faculty would be required to monitor the operation if the EGCL was to continue to survive as something more than a vegetable.

Conway’s presence was no longer needed, and he would be more usefully employed discussing Prilicla’s condition with O’Mara.

As he excused himself and left, Edanelt waved a pincer it was spraying with the fast-setting plastic film favored by the Melfan medics instead of surgical gloves, but Thornastor’s four eyes were on the patient, Murchison, and two separate pieces of its equipment so that it did not see him leave.

In the corridor Conway stopped for a moment to work out the fastest route to the Chief Psychologist’s office. The three levels above this one, he knew, were the province of the chlorine-breathing Illensans, and if he had not known that then the anticontamination warnings above the interlevel airlocks would have told him. There was no danger of contamination from the levels below since they housed the MSVK and LSVO life-forms, each of which breathed oxygen, required a gravity pull of one-quarter Earth normal, and resembled thin, tripedal storks. Below them were the water-filled wards of the Chalders and then the first of the nonmedical treatment levels where O’Mara’s department was situated.

On the way down a couple of the Nallajim MSVK medics chirped a greeting at him and a recuperating patient narrowly missed flying into his chest before he reached the lock into the AUGL section. For that leg of the journey he had to don a lightweight suit and swim through the vast tanks where the thirty-meters long, water-breathing inhabitants of the water world of Chalderscol drifted ponderously like armorplated crocodiles in their warm, green wards. With his suit still beaded with Chalder water, he was in O’Mara’s office just twenty-three minutes later.

Major O’Mara indicated a piece of furniture designed for the comfort of a DBLF and said sourly, “No doubt you have been too busy in your professional capacity to contact me, Doctor, so don’t waste time apologizing. Tell me about Pril-icla.”

Conway insinuated himself carefully into the Kelgian chair and began describing the Cinrusskin’s condition, from the symptoms at onset to their intensification to the degree where complete sedation was indicated, and the relevant circumstance pertaining at the time. While he was speaking, the Chief Psychologist’s craggy features were still and his eyes, which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty, were likewise unreadable.

As Chief Psychologist of the Federation’s largest multien-vironment hospital, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a staff of several thousand entities belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of Major did not place him high in the hospital’s Service chain of command, and anyway had been given for purely administrative reasons, there was no clear limit to O’Mara’s authority. To him the medical staff were patients, too, regardless of seniority, and an important part of his job was to ensure that the right doctor was assigned to each of the weird and often wonderful variety of patients who turned up at the hospital, and that there was no xenophobic complications on either side.

He was also responsible for the hospital’s medical elite, the Diagnosticians. According to O’Mara himself, however, the real reason for the high level of mental stability among the diverse and often touchy medical staff was that they were all too frightened of him to risk his displeasure by going mad.

O’Mara watched him closely until Conway had finished, then he said, “A clear, concise, and apparently accurate report, Doctor, but you are a close friend of the patient. There is the possibility of clouded judgment, exaggeration. You are not a psychologist but an e-t physician and surgeon who has apparently already decided that the case is one which should be treated by my department. You appreciate my difficulty? Please describe for me your feelings during this mission from the rescue until now. But first, are you feeling all right?”

All that Conway could feel just then was his blood pressure rising.

“Be as objective as possible,” O’Mara added.

Conway took a deep breath and let it out agaJn slowly through his nose. “After our very fast response to the distress signal there was a general feeling of disappointment at the rescue of just one survivor, a survivor who was barely alive. But you’re on the wrong track, Major. The feeling was shared by everyone on the ship, I believe, but it was not strong enough to explain the Cinrusskin’s hypersensitivity. Prilicla was picking up emotional radiation of distressing intensity from crew members stationed at the other end of the ship, a distance at which emoting would normally be barely detectable. And I am given neither to maudlin sentimentality nor exaggeration of symptoms. Right at this moment 1 feel the way I usually do in this blasted office and that is—”

“Objectively, remember,” O’Mara said dryly.

“I was not trying to do your diagnostic work for you,” Conway went on, bringing his voice back to a conversational level, “but the indications are that there is a psychological Problem. The result, perhaps, of an as yet unidentified disease, or organic malfunction or an imbalance in the endocrine system. But a purely psychological reason for the condition is also a Possibility which—”

“Anything is possible. Doctor,” O’Mara broke in impatiently. “Be specific. What are you going to do about your friend, and what exactly do you want me to do about it?”

“Two things,” Conway said. “I want you to check on Pril-icla’s condition yourself—”

“Which you know I will do anyway,” O’Mara said.

“—and give me the GLNO physiology tape,” he went on, “so that I can confirm or eliminate the nonpsychological reasons for the trouble.”

For a moment O’Mara was silent. His face remained as expressionless as a lump of basalt, but the eyes showed concern. “You’ve carried Educator tapes before now and know what to expect. But the GLNO tape is . . . different. You will feel Jike a very unhappy Cinrusskin indeed. You are no Diagnostician, Conway—at least, not yet. Better think about it.”

The physiology tapes, Conway knew from personal experience, fell somewhere between the categories of mixed blessing and necessary evil. While skill in e-t surgery came with aptitude, training, and experience, no single being could hope to hold in its brain the vast quantity of physiological data needed for the treatment of the variety of patients encountered in a hospital like Sector General. The incredible mass of clinical and anatomical information needed to take care of them had therefore to be furnished, usually on a temporary basis, by means of the Educator tapes, which were the brain recordings of the great medical specialists belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the Kelgian physiology

tapes until treatment was completed, after which he had it erased. But for the medic concerned, whether the tape was being carried for as long as it took to perform an other-species operation or for a teaching project lasting several months, the experience was not a pleasant one.

The only good thing about it from the medic’s point of view was that he was much better off than one of the Diagnosticians.

They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare entities whose mind had proved itself stable enough to retain up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the work of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of

disease and injury in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a saying current in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to be a Diagnostician was mad.

For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted; the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving mind as well. In effect, a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to a form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common. And all too frequently the foremost medical authorities of a planet, despite their eminence in the field of healing, were very bad-tempered, aggressive, and unpleasant people indeed.

Such would not be the case with the GLNO tape, Conway knew, because Cinrusskins were the most timid, friendly, and likable beings imaginable.

“I’ve thought about it,” Conway said.

O’Mara nodded and spoke into his desk set. “Carrington? Senior Physician Conway is approved for the GLNO tape, with compulsory postimpression sedation of one hour. I’ll be in Emergency Admissions on Level One Six Three—” he grinned suddenly at Conway “—trying not to tell the medics their business.”

Conway woke to see a large, pink balloon of a face hanging °yer him. Instinctively he tried to scramble up the wall beside “is couch in case the enormous, heavily muscled body sup-Porting the face fell and crushed the life out of him. Then suddenly there was a mental shift in perspective as the features registered concern and withdrew and the slim, Earth-human body in Monitor Corps green straightened up.

Lieutenant Carrington, one of O’Mara’s assistants, said, Easy, Doctor. Sit up slowly, then stand. Concentrate on put-big your two feet onto the floor and don’t worry because they aren’t a Cinrusskin’s six.”

He made good time back to 163 in spite of having to walk a large number of beings who were much smaller than just because the Cinrusskin component of his mind that they were big and dangerous. From Murchison he learned that O’Mara was in Prilicla’s ward, having first called in to the OR to discuss the EGCL’s basic physiology and probable environmental and evolutionary influence with Thorn-nastor and Edanelt, both of whom had been too busy to speak to him.

They would not speak to Con way, either, and he could see why. The operation on the EGCL had become an emergency with an unknown but probably extremely short time limit.

When the splinters of depressed carapace had been removed from the brain over an hour earlier, Murchison explained quietly between rumbled instructions from Thomnastor, there had been a sudden and surprising deterioration in the EGCL’s condition. The change had been detected by Prilicla who, because of its condition, had been excluded from any part of the operation. But the Cinrusskin had continued to act like a doctor by making use of its abnormally heightened emotion-detection faculty. Prilicla had pulled rank to send Ward Seven’s duty nurse to the operating theater with its empathic findings and a diffident suggestion that if they were to relay the operational proceedings to Seven’s viewscreen, it would be able to assist them.

The cause of the deterioration was a number of large blood vessels in the cerebral area which had ruptured when the pressure from the depressed fracture had been removed. Trie two surgeons had been forced to accede to Prilicla’s request” because, without the empath’s monitoring of the patient’s level of consciousness, they had no way of knowing whether the delicate, dangerous, and perforce hurried repair work in the cerebral area was having a good or bad effect—if any.

“Prognosis?” Conway murmured. But before Murchison could reply, one of Thornnastor’s eyes curled backward over its head to glare down at him.

“If this patient does not succumb to a massive cerebral hemorrhage within the next thirty minutes,” the Diagnostician said crossly, “it is probable that it will perish, in time, from the degenerative diseases associated with extreme old age. No* stop distracting my assistant, Conway, and tend to your own patient.”

On the way to Seven Conway wondered briefly how the empath’s emotion sensitivity could detect the unconscious level of emoting of the EGCL without the signals beings swamped by the emotional radiation of dozens of fully conscious entities in the area. Maybe Prilicla’s recent hypersensitivity was responsible, but there was a niggling doubt at the back of his mind which suggested that there was another reason.

O’Mara was still in the ward, steadying himself in the close to zero-gravity conditions with a hand on an equipment rack while he and Prilicla watched the

scene in the operating theater.

“Conway, stop that!” O’Mara said sharply.

He had tried not to react when he had seen the empath’s condition. But half his mind belonged to a Cinrusskin, a member of a species acknowledged to be the most sensitive and sympathetic intelligent life-form known to the Federation who was regarding a brother in extreme distress while the Earth-human half was feeling for a friend in the same condition, and it was difficult to be cool and clinical for both of them.

“I’m sorry,” he said inadequately.

“I know you are, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, turning toward him. “You should not have taken that tape.”

“He was warned,” O’Mara said gruffly, but his expression showed concern.

Conway was a member of an empathic race. All the memories and experience of his GLNO life were those of a normally healthy and happy empath, but now he was no longer an empath. He could see, hear, and touch Prilicla, but the faculty was missing which enabled him to share the other’s emotions and which subtly colored every word, gesture, and expression so that for two Cinrusskins to be within visual range was unalloyed pleasure for both. He could remember experiencing empathic contact, remember having the ability all his life, but now he was little more than a deaf-mute. What he was feeling from Prilicla so strongly was a product of his imagination: It was sympathy, not empathy.

His human brain did not possess the empathic faculty, and it was not bestowed by filling his mind with memories of having had it. But there were other memories as well, covering a lifetime’s experience of Cinrusskin clinical physiology, and these he could, use.

“If you don’t mind, Doctor Prilicla,” Conway said with cool formality, “I would like to examine you.”

“Of course, friend Conway.” Prilicla’s uncontrollable shaking had diminished to a steady, continuous trembling, an indication that Conway’s emotional radiation was under control. “There are more symptoms, Doctor, which are causing severe discomfort.”

“I can see that,” Conway said as he gently moved aside one of the incredibly fragile wings to place his scanner against the empath’s thorax. “Describe them, please.”

In the two hours since Conway had last seen it, Prilicla had changed in ways which were individually subtle but cumulatively marked. There was a strange lack of animation and concentration in the large, triple-lidded eyes; the delicate structure which supported the wing membranes had softened and warped so

that the translucent and iridescent membrane had fallen into unsightly folds and wrinkles; its four tiny, wonderfully precise manipulators, which should one day make it one of the finest surgeons in the hospital, were quivering in spite of being gripped tightly together, and the overall aspect was of a GLNO who was old and grievously ill.

While Conway continued the examination, the Cinrusskin part of his mind shared his bafflement at the findings and described symptoms. They were both sure, and in this their agreement was based on the GLNO tape donor’s personal experience and Conway’s knowledge acquired over many years in Sector General, that Prilicla was close to death.

The empath’s trembling increased sharply, then diminished as Conway once again forced a feeling of clinical detachment on himself. He said calmly, “There is no evidence of deformation, obstruction, lesion, or infection which might cause the symptoms you describe. Neither can I see any cause for the respiratory difficulty you are experiencing. Some degree of empathic hypersensitivity occurs in adolescents of your specie5' my Cinrusskin alter ego tells me, but in nothing like the in* tensity you describe. It is possible, I suppose, that there is a nonpathogenic and nontoxic involvement with the central nervous system.”

“You think it’s psychosomatic?” O’Mara said harshly, i3"3” bing a finger toward Prilicla. “This?”

“I would like to eliminate that possibility,” Conway repljf” calmly. To Prilicla, he said, “If you don’t mind I would & to discuss your case with Major O’Mara outside.”

“Of course, friend Conway,” the empath said. The constant trembling seemed as if it would shake the fragile body apart. “But please have that Cinrusskin tape erased as quickly as possible. Your heightened levels of concern and sympathy are helping neither of us. And consider, friend Conway, your tape was donated by a great Cinrusskin medical authority of the past. In all modesty, I can say that, before coming to Sector General and in preparation for my work here, I had reached a similar degree of eminence in the field.

'There is nothing in the clinical history of our species which even approximates this condition,” it went on, “and absolutely no precedent for the symptomology. Regarding the possibility of a nonphysical basis for the condition, I cannot, of course, be completely objective about this. But I have always been a happy and well-adjusted person with no mental aberrations in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Friend O’Mara has my psych file and will confirm this. My hope is that these peculiar symptoms were so sudden in onset that their recession will be equally rapid.”

“Perhaps Thomnastor could—” Conway began.

“The thought of that—that behemoth approaching me with investigative intent would cause me to terminate at once. And Thomnastor is busy—Friend Edanelt, be careful!”

Prilicla had switched its attention suddenly to the view-screen. It went on,

"Pressure, even temporary pressure in that area causes a marked decrease in the EGCL’s unconscious emoting. I suggest you approach that nerve bundle anteriorly hrough the opening in the . . .”

Conway missed the rest of it because O’Mara had gripped his arm and pulled him carefully out of the low-gravity com-partment.

That was very good advice,” the Chief Psychologist said ner they were some distance from Prilicla’s ward. “Let’s erase that tape, Doctor, and discuss our little friend’s problem on the way to my office.”

Conway shook his head firmly. “Not yet. Prilicla said all that could be said about its case back there. The hard facts are Cinrusskin species is not one of the Federation’s most robust. The have no stamina, no reserves to resist over a long effects of any injury or disease, whatever the cause, know—myself, my alter ego and, I suspect, you yourself—that unless its condition is treated and relieved very quickly Prilicla will die within a few hours, perhaps ten hours at most.”

The Major nodded.

“Unless you can come up with a bright idea,” he went on grimly, “and I would certainly welcome it if you did, I intend to go on thinking with the Cinrusskin tape. It hasn’t helped much up to now, but I want to think without constraint, without having to play mental games with myself to avoid emoting too strongly in the presence of my patient. There is something very odd about this case, something I’m missing.

“So I’m going for a walk,” he ended suddenly. “I won’t be far away. Just far enough, I hope, to be outside the range of Prilicla’s empathy.”

O’Mara nodded again and left without speaking.

Conway put on a lightweight suit and traveled upward for three levels into the section reserved for the spiney, membraneous, chlorine-breathing Illensan PVSJs. The inhabitants of Illensa were not a sociable species by Earth-human standards, and Conway was hoping to walk their foggy yellow wards and corridors without interruption while he wrestled with his problem. But that was not to be.

Senior Physician Gilvesh, who had worked with Conway some months earlier on a Dwerlan DBPK operation, was feeling uncharacteristically sociable and wanted to talk shop with its fellow Senior. They met in a narrow corridor leading from the level’s pharmacy and there was no way that Conway could avoid talking to it.

Gilvesh was having problems. It was one of those days, the Illensan medic said, when all the patients were demanding inordinate amounts of attention and unnecessary quantities of palliative medication, the administration of which required its personal supervision. The junior medics and nursing staff were under pressure, therefore, and there was evident an unusual degree of verbal overreaction and sheer bad temper. Gilvesh said that it was explaining and apologizing in advance for any seeming discourtesy encountered by such an important visiting Senior as Conway. There were several of Gilvesh’s cases, it insisted, which he would find interesting.

In common with the other medics trained for service in a multienvironment hospital, Conway had a thorough grounding in the basics of extraterrestrial physiology, metabolism, and the more common diseases of the Federation’s member species. But for a detailed consultation and diagnosis of the kind required here he needed an Illensan physiology tape, and Gilvesh knew that as well as he did. So the Illensan Senior, it seemed, was sufficiently worried by the current state of its patients to seek a quick, other-species opinion.

With the Cinrusskin tape and his intense concern for Prilicla confusing his clinical view, Conway could do little more than make encouraging noises while Gilvesh discussed a painful intestinal tract, a visually dramatic and undoubtedly uncomfortable fungoid infection involving all eight of the spatulate limbs, and sundry other conditions to which Illensans were heir.

While the patients were seriously ill, their conditions were not critical, and the increased dosages of painkilling medication which Gilvesh was administering against its better judgment seemed to be having the desired effect, albeit slowly. Conway excused himself from the frantically busy wards as soon as he could and headed towards the much quieter MSVK and LSVO levels.

He had to pass through Level 163 again on the way, and stopped to cneck on the condition of the EGCL. Murchison yawned in his face and said that the operation was going well and that Prilicla was satisfied with the patient’s emotional radiation. He did not call on Prilicla.

But he found that the low-gravity levels were having one of those days, too, and he was immediately trapped into further consulations. He could not very well avoid them because he was Conway, the Earth-human Senior Physician, known throughout the hospital for his sometimes unorthodox but effective methods and ideas on diagnosis and treatment. Here, at least, he was able to give “some useful if orthodox advice because his Cinrusskin mind-partner was closer temperamentally and physically to the Nallajim LSVOs and the MSVKs of Euril who were fragile, birdlike, and extremely timid where the larger life-forms were concerned. But he could find no solution, orthodox or otherwise, to the problem he most desperately wanted to solve.

Prilicla’s.

He thought about going to his quarters where he would have peace and quiet in which to think, but they were more than an hour’s journey away at the other end of the hospital and he wanted to be close by in case there was a sudden deterioration in Prilicla’s already close to critical condition. So instead he continued listening to Nallajim patients describing their symptoms and feeling a strange sadness because the Cinrusskin part of his mind knew that they were suffering, feeling, and emoting on many levels but his Earth-human mental equipment was incapable of receiving their emotional radiation. It was as if a sheet of glass lay between them, through which only sight and sound could pass.

But something more was getting through, surely? He h'ad felt some of the aches and pains of the Illensan patients as he was feeling, to a certain extent, those of the Eurils and Nal-lajims around him. Or was that simply the GLNO tape fooling him into believing that he was an empath?

A sheet of glass, he thought suddenly, and a idea began to stir at the back of his mind. He tried to bring it out into the light, to give it form. Glass. Something about glass, or the properties of glass?

“Excuse me, Kytili,” he said to the Nallijim medic who was worrying aloud about an atypical case of what should have been an easily treated and nonpainful condition. “I have to see O’Mara urgently.”

It was Carrington who erased the GLNO tape because the Chief Psychologist had been called to some trouble in the chlorine-breathing level lately vacated by Gonway. As O’Mara’s senior assistant, Carrington was a highly qualified psychologist. He studied Conway’s expression for a moment and asked if he could be of assistance.

Conway shook his head and forced a smile. “I wanted to ask the Major something. He would probably have said no, anyway. May I use the communicator?”

A few seconds later the face of Captain Fletcher flicked onto the screen and he said briskly, “Rhabwar, Control Deck.”

“Captain,” Conway said, “I want to ask a favor. If you agree to do it then it must be clearly understood that you will not be held responsible for any repercussions since it will be a medical matter entirely and you will be acting under my orders.

“There is a way that I may be able to help Prilicla,” he went on, and described what he wanted done. When he finished, Fletcher looked grave.

“I’m aware of Prilicla’s condition, Doctor,” the Captain said. “Naydrad has been in and out of the ship so often it is threatening to wear out the boarding tube, and each time it returns we get an update on the empath’s progress, or rather lack of it. And there is no need to belabor the point about our respective responsibilities. Obviously you wish to use the ship for an unauthorized mission and you are concealing the details so that any blame attached to me as a result of a future inquiry will be minimal. You are cutting comers again, Doctor, but in this instance I sympathize and will accept any instructions you care to give.”

Fletcher broke off, and for the first time in Conway’s experience of the man the Captain’s cold, impassive, almost disdainful expression softened and the voice lost its irritatingly pedantic quality. “But it is my guess that you will order me to take Rhabwar to Cinruss,” he went on, “so that our little friend can die among its own kind.”

Before Conway could reply, Fletcher had switched him to Naydrad on the Casualty Deck.

Half an hour later the Kelgian Charge Nurse and Conway were transferring Prilicla, who was barely conscious and trembling only slightly by then, from its supporting harness to a powered litter. In the corridor leading to Lock Nine none of the medical staff questioned their action, and when any of them looked as if they might, Conway tapped irritably at the casing of his translator pack and pretended that it was malfunctioning. But when they were passing the entrance to the EGCL’s room, Murchison was just leaving it. She stepped quickly in front of the litter.

“Where are you taking Prilicla?” she demanded. She sounded desperately tired and uncharacteristically angry, so much so that the empath began to twitch weakly.

“To Rhabwar” Conway said as calmly as he could. “How is the EGCL?”

Murchison looked at the empath, then visibly tried to control her feelings as she replied, “Very well, all things considered. Its condition is stable. There is a senior nurse continually in attendance. Edanelt is resting next door, only seconds away if I anything should go wrong, but we don’t expect any problems. In fact, we are expecting it to recover consciousness fairly soon. And Thornnastor has returned to Pathology to study the results of the tests we did on Prilicla. That’s why you shouldn’t be moving Prilicla from— ”

“Thornnastor can’t cure Prilicla,” Conway said firmly. He looked from her to the litter and went on, “I can use your help. I Do you think you can stay on your feet for another couple of hours? Please, there isn’t much time.”

Within seconds of the litter’s arrival on Rhabwar’s Casualty Deck, Conway was on the intercom to Fletcher. “Captain, take us out quickly, please. And ready the planetary lander.”

“The planetary—“Fletcher began, then went on, “We haven’t undocked yet, much less reached Jump distance, and you’re worrying about landing on Cinruss! Are you sure you know what—”

“I’m not sure of anything, Captain,” Conway said. “Take us out but be prepared to check velocity at short notice, and well within Jump distance.”

Fletcher broke the connection without replying, and a few seconds later the direct vision port showed the vast metal flank of the hospital moving away. Their velocity increased to the maximum allowed in the vicinity of the establishment, until the nearest section of the gigantic structure was a kilometer, then two kilometers away. But nobody was interested in the view just then because all of Conway’s attention was on Prilicla, and Murchison and Naydrad were watching him.

“Back there,” the pathologist said suddenly, “you said that even Thornnastor could not cure Prilicla. Why did you say that?”

“Because there was nothing wrong with Prilicla,” Conway said. He ignored Murchison’s unladylike gape of surprise and Naydrad’s wildly undulating fur and spoke to the empath. “Isn’t that so, little friend?”

“I think so, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, speaking for the first time since coming on board. “Certainly there is nothing wrong with me now. But I am confused.”

“You’re confused!” Murchison began, and stopped because Conway was again at the communicator.

“Captain,” he said, “return at once to Lock Nine to take on another patient. Switch on all of your exterior lighting and ignore the traffic instructions. And please patch me through to Level One Six Three, the EGCL’s recovery room. Quickly.”

“Right,” the Captain coldly said, “but I want an explanation.”

“You’ll get one—” Conway began. He broke off as the Captain’s angry features were replaced by a view of the recovery room with the attending nurse, a Kelgian, curled like a furry question mark beside the EGCL. Its report on the patient’s condition was brief, accurate, and, to Conway, terrifying.

He broke contact and returned to the Captain. Apologetically he said, “There, isn’t much time so I would like you to listen while I explain the situation, or what I think is the situation, to the others here. I had intended that the lander be fitted with remote-controlled medical servomechs and used as an isolation unit, but there isn’t time for that now. The EGCL is waking up. All hell could break loose in the hospital at any minute.”

Quickly he explained his theory about the EGCL and the reasoning which had led to it, ending with the proof which was Prilicla’s otherwise inexplicable recovery.

“The part of this which bothers me,” he concluded grimly, is having to subject Prilicla to the same degree of emotional torture once again.”

The empath’s limbs trembled at the remembered pain, but it said, “I can accept it, friend Conway, now that I know the condition will be temporary.”

But removing the EGCL was not as easy as had been the abduction of Prilicla. The Kelgian duty nurse was disposed to the room, and it took all of Naydrad’s powers of persuasion and the combined ranks of Murchison and Conway to make it do what he was told. And while they were arguing, Conway could see the wildly rippling and twitching fur of the two nurses, the udden, almost manic changes of facial expression in Murchison, and the emotional overreaction in all of them, in spite of his earlier warning of what would happen if they did not control their feelings. By the time the transfer of the patient to Rhab-war’s litter was underway, so much fuss had been created that someone was sure to report it. Conway did not want that.

The patient was coming to. There was no time to go through proper channels, no time for long and repeated explanations. Then suddenly he had to find time, because both Edanelt and O’Mara were in the room. It was the Chief Psychologist who spoke first.

“Conway! What do you think you’re doing with that patient?”

“I’m kidnapping it!” Conway snapped back sarcastically. Quickly he went on, “I’m sorry, sir, we are all overreacting. We can’t help it, but try hard to be calm. Edanelt, will you help me transfer the EGCL’s support systems to the litter. There , isn’t much time left so I’ll have to explain while we work.”

The Melfan Senior dithered for a moment, the tapping of its six crablike legs against the floor reflecting its indecision, then it spoke. “Very well, Conway. But if I am not satisfied with your explanation the patient stays here.”

“Fair enough,” said Conway. He looked at O’Mara, whose face was showing the indications of a suddenly elevated blood pressure, and went on, “You had the right idea at the beginning, but everyone was too busy to talk to you. It should have occurred to me, too, if the GLNO tape and concern for Prilicla hadn’t confused me by—”

“Omit die flattery and excuses, Conway,” O’Mara broke in, “and get on with it.”

Conway was helping Murchison and Naydrad lift the EGCL into the litter while Edanelt and the other nurse checked the siting of the biosensors. Without looking up he went on, “Whenever we encounter a new intelligent species the first thing we are supposed to ask ourselves is how it got that way. Only the

dominant life-form on a planet has the opportunity, the security and leisure, to develop a civilization capable of interstellar travel.”

At first Conway had not been able to see how the EGCL’s people had risen to dominance on their world, how they had fought their way to the top of their evolutionary tree. They had no physical weapons of offense, and their snaillike apron of muscle which furnished locomotion was incapable of moving them fast enough to avoid natural enemies. Their carapace was a defense of sorts in that it protected vital organs, but that osseus shell was mounted high on the body, making it top-heavy and an easy prey for any predator who had only to topple it over to get at the soft underside. Its manipulatory appendages were flexible and dexterous, but too short and lightly muscled to be a deterrent. On their home world the EGCLs should have been one of nature’s losers. They were not, however, and there had to be a reason.

It had come to him slowly, Conway went on, while he was moving through the chlorine and light-gravity sections. In every ward there had been cases of patients with known and properly diagnosed ailments displaying, or at least complaining about, atypical symptoms. The demand for painkilling medication had been unprecedented. Conditions which should have caused a minor degree of discomfort were, it seemed, inflicting severe pain. He had been aware of some of this pain himself, but had put that down to a combination of his imagination and the effect of the Cinrusskin tape.

He had already considered and discarded the idea that the trouble was psychosomatic because the condition was too widespread, but then he thought about it again.

During their return from the disaster site with the sole surviving EGCL, everyone had felt understandably low about the mission’s lack of success and because Prilicla was giving cause for concern. But in retrospect there was something wrong, unprofessional, about their reactions. They were feeling things too strongly, overreacting, developing in their own fashions the same kind of hypersensitivity which had affected Prilicla and which had affected the patients and staff on the Illensan and the Nallajim levels. Conway had felt it himself; the vague stomach pains, the discomfort in hands and fingers, the ov-erexcitability in circumstances which did not warrant it. But the effect had diminished with distance, because when he vis-ited O’Mara’s office for the GLNO tape and later for the era-sure, he had felt normal and unworried except for the usual degree of concern over a current case, accentuated in this instance because the patient was Prilicla.

The EGCL was receiving the best possible attention from Thornnastor and Edanelt, so it was not on his mind to any large extent. Conway had been sure of that.

“But then I began to think about its injuries,” Conway went on, “and the way I had felt on the ship and within three levels of the EGCL operation. In the hospital while I had the GLNO tape riding me, I was an empath without empathy. But I seemed to be feeling things—emotions, pains, conditions which did not belong to me. I thought that, because of fatigue and the stress of that time, I was generating sympathetic pains. Then it occurred to me that if the type of discomfort being suffered by the EGCL were subtracted from the symptoms of the medics and patients on those six levels and the intensity of the discomfort reduced, then the affected patients and staff would be acting and reacting normally. This seemed to point toward—”

“An empath!” O’Mara said. “Like Prilicla.”

“Not like Prilicla,” Conway said firmly. “Although it is possible that the empathic faculty possessed by the preintelligent ancestors of both species was similar.”

But their prehistoric world was an infinitely more dangerous place than Cinruss had been, Conway continued, and in any case the EGCLs lacked the ability of the Cinrusskins quite literally to fly from danger. And in such a savage environment there was little advantage in having an empathic faculty other than as a highly unpleasant early warning system, and so the ability to receive emotions had been lost. It was probable that they no longer received even the emotional radiation

of their own kind.

They had become organic transmitters, reflectors and fo-cusers and magnifiers of their own feelings and those of the beings around them. The indications were that the faculty had evolved to the stage where they had no conscious control over the process.

“Think of the defensive weapon that makes,” Conway explained. The EGCL’s life support and sensors had been transferred to the litter and it was ready to leave. “If a predator tries to attack it, the anger and hunger it feels for its victim together with the fear and pain, if the victim was hurt or wounded, would be magnified, bounced back, and figuratively hit the attacker in the teeth. I can only guess at the order of emotional amplification used. But the effect on the predator, especially if there were others in the vicinity whose feelings were also being amplified, would be discouraging to say the least, also very confusing. It might have the effect of having them attack each other.

“We already know the effect of a deeply unconscious EGCL on the patients and staff three levels above and below this one,” Conway went on grimly. “Now consciousness is returning and I don’t know what will happen, or how far-reaching the effect will be. We have to get it away from here before the hospital’s patients have their own as well as the EGCL’s pain magnified to an unknown but major degree, and their medical attendants thrown into a steadily accelerating state of disorder and panic because they, too, will receive the reflected pain and—”

He broke off and tried to control his own growing panic, then he said harshly, “We have to get it away from the hospital now, without further delays or arguments.”

O’Mara’s face had lost its angry red coloration while Con-way had been talking, until now it looked gray and bloodless. He said, “Don’t waste time talking, Doctor. I shall accompany you. There will be no further delays or arguments.”

When- they reached Rhabwar’s Casualty Deck the EGCL was still not fully conscious and Prilicla was again being seriously affected by the ambient emotional radiation which was being amplified and bounced off their patient. The discomfort diminished sharply with increasing distance from the hospital, the empath told them, and the awakening EGCL was radiating only a relatively low intensity of discomfort from the sites of the recent surgery—but Prilicla did not have to tell them that because they could all feel it for themselves.

“I have been thinking about the problem of communicating with these people,” O’Mara said thoughtfully. “If they are all high-powered transmitters and reflectors of emotional radia-they may not be aware of what they are doing, only that ave an automatic, nonmaterial defense against everything and everyone wishing them harm. The job of establishing com-munications with them may not be easy and is likely to be a

long-range affair, unless our basic premise is wrong and we—”

“My first idea,” Conway broke in, “was to put it in the lander with remote-controlled medical servomechs. Then I

thought there should be one medic, a volunteer, in attendance—”

“I won’t ask who,” O’Mara said dryly, and smiled as Con-way’s embarrassment bounced off the EGCL and hit them.

“—because if ever there was case demanding isolation,” Conway ended, “this is it.”

The Chief Psychologist nodded. “What I had been about to say was that we may have miscalculated. Certainly we could never treat EGCLs in hospital where the patients surrounding them were in pain, even slight pain. But the situation here in the ship isn’t too bad. I can feel pains in the equivalent sites to where the EGCL is hurting, but nothing I can’t handle. And the rest of you are emoting concern; for the patient, and this is not unpleasant even when magnified. It seems that if you don’t think badly toward the patient, it can’t bounce anything too unpleasant back at you. It’s surprising. 1 feel just the way I always do, except more so.”

“But it is regaining consciousness,” Conway protested. “There should be an intensification of—”

“There isn’t,” O’Mara cut in. “That is very obvious, Con-way. Could the reason be because the patient is regaining consciousness? Think about it. Yes, Doctor, we can all feel you feeling 'Eureka!'”

“Of courser Conway said, and paused because his pleasure and excitement at seeing the answer, magnified by the EGCL, was causing Prilicla’s wings to go into the series of slow, rippling undulations which indicated intense pleasure in a Cin-russkin. It also counteracted the aches which he and everyone else were feeling from the pateint. He thought, What a weird experience the cultural contact specialists were going to have with this species.

Aloud he said, “The process of reflecting and magnifying the feelings, hostile or otherwise, of the people around them is a defense mechanism which would, naturally, be at its most effective when the being is helpless, vulnerable, or unconscious. With a return to consciousness the effect seems to diminish but the empathic reflections are still strong. The result is that everyone around them will have an empathic faculty not unlike Prilicla’s, and yet the EGCLs are deaf to each other’s emotional radiation because they are transmitters only.

“Being like Prilicla,” he went on, looking across at the empath, “is something of a mixed blessing. But the EGCL would be a nice perspn to have around if we were having a good time—”

“Control here,” the voice of the Captain broke in. “I have some information on your patient’s species. Federation Archives have signaled the hospital to the effect that this race—their name for themselves is the Duwetz—was contacted briefly by an exploring Hudlar ship before the formation of the Galactic Federation. Enough information was obtained for the basic Duwetz language to be programmed into the present-day translation computers, but contact was severed because of serious psychological problems among the crew. We are advised to proceed with caution.”

“The patient,” Prilicla said suddenly, “is awake.”

Conway moved closer to the EGCL and tried to think positive, reassuring thoughts toward it. He noted with relief that the biosensors and associated monitors were indicating a weak but stable condition; that the damaged lung was again working satisfactorily and the bandages immobilizing the two rejoined appendages were firmly in position. The extensive suturing on the muscular apron and ambulatory pad at the base were well up to Thornnastor and Edanelt’s high standards, as were the deftly inserted staples which gleamed in neat rows where the carapace fractures had been. Obviously the being was in considerable discomfort in spite of the painkilling medication Thonnastor had synthesized for its particular metabolism. But Pain was not the predominant feeling it was transmitting, and rear and hostility were entirely absent.

Two of its three remaining eyes swiveled to regard them while the other one was directed toward the viewport where Rector Twelve General Hospital, now almost eight kilometers Aslant, blazed like some vast, surrealistic piece of jewelry against the interstellar darkness. The feelings which washed -Tough them, so intensely that they trembled or caught their breathss or rippled their fur, were of curiosity and wonder.

“I’m not an organ mechanic like you people,” O’Mara said stiffly, “but I would say that with this case the prognosis is favorable.”

The ambulance ship Rhabwar had mad the trip from Sector General to the scene of the supposed disaster in record time and with a precision of astrogation, Conway thought, which would cause Lieutenant Dodds to exhibit symptoms of cranial swelling for many days to come. But as the information was displayed on the Casualty Deck’s repeater screens, it became clear to the watching medical team that this was not going to be a fast rescue—that this might not, in fact, be a rescue mission at all.

The fully extended sensor net revealed no sign of a distressed ship, nor any wreckage or components of such a ship. Even the finely divided, expanding cloud of debris which would have indicated a catastrophic malfunction in the veseel’s reactor was missing. All there was to be seen was the characteristic shape of a dead and partially fused distress beacon at a distance of a few hundred meters and, about three million kilometers beyond it, the bright crescent shape which was one of this systems P!anets.

Major Fletcher’s voice came from the speaker. The Captain did not sound pleased. “Doctor,” he said. “We cannot assume that this was a simple false alarm. Hyperspace radio distress beacons are highly expensive hunks of machinery for one thing, and I have yet to hear of an intelligent species who does not have an aversion to crying their equivalent of wolf. 1 think the crew must have panicked, then discovered that the condition of the ship was not as distressed as they at first thought. They may have resumed their journey or. tried for a planetary landing to effect repairs. We’ll have to eliminate the latter possibility before we leave. Dodds?”

“The system has been surveyed,” the Astrogator’s voice replied. “G-type sun, seven planets with one, the one we can see, habitable in the short term by warm-blooded oxygen breathers. No indigenous intelligent life. Course for a close approach and search, sir?”

“Yes,” Fletcher said. “Haslam, pull in your long-range sensors and set up for a planetary surface scan. Lieutenant Chen, I’ll need impulse power, four Gs, on my signal. And Haslam, just in case the ship is down and trying to signal its presence, monitor the normal and hyperradio frequencies.”

A few minutes later they felt the deck press momentarily against their feet as the artifical gravity system compensated for the four-G thrust. Conway, Pathologist Murchison, and Charge Nurse Naydrad moved closer to the repeater where Dodds had displayed the details of the target planet’s gravity pull, atmospheric composition and pressure, and the environmental data which made it just barely habitable. The empathic Doctor Prilicla clung ;o the safety of the ceiling and observed the screen at slightly longer range.

It was the Charge Nurse, its silvery fur rippling in agitation, who spoke first. “This ship isn’t supposed to land on unprepared surfaces,” Naydrad said. “That ground is—is rough.”

“Why couldn’t they have stayed in space like good little distressed aliens,” Murchison said to nobody in particular, “and waited to be rescued?”

Conway looked at her and said thoughtfully, “It is possible that their condition of distress was nonmechanical. Injury, sickness, or psychological disturbances among the crew, perhaps, problems which have since been resolved. If it was a physical problem then they should have stayed out here, since it is easier to effect repairs in weightless conditions.”

“Not always, Doctor,” Fletcher’s voice cut in sharply from the Control Deck. “If the physical problem was a badly holed hull, a breathable atmosphere around them might seem more desirable than weightless and airless space. No doubt you have medical preparations to make.”

Conway felt a surge of anger at the other’s thinly veiled suggestion that he tend to his medical knitting and stop trying to tell the Captain his business. Beside him Murchison was breathing heavily and Naydrad’s fur was tufting and rippling as if blown by a strong wind, while above them the emotion-sensitive Prilicla’s six insectile legs and iridescent wings quivered in the emotional gale they were generating. Out of consideration for the empath, Conway tried to control his feelings, as did the others.

It was understandable that Fletcher, the ship’s commander, liked to have the last word, but he knew and accepted the fact that on Sector General’s special ambulance ship he had to relinquish command to the senior medic, Conway, during the course of a rescue. Fletcher was a good officer, able, resourceful, and one of the Federation’s top men in the field of comparative extraterrestrial technology. But there were times during the short period while responsibility was being passed to Senior Physician Conway when his manner became a trifle cool, formal—even downright nasty.

Prilicla’s trembling diminished and the little empath tried to say something which would further improve the quality of the emotional radiation around it. “If the lately distressed vessel has landed on this planet,” it said timidly, “then we know that the crew belongs to one of the oxygen-breathing species and the preparations to receive casualties, if any, will be relatively simple.”

“That’s true,” Conway said, laughing.

“Only thirty-eight different species fall into that category,” Murchison said, and added dryly, “that we know of.”

Rhabwar’s sensors detected a small concentration of metal and associated low-level radiation, which on an uninhabited Pianet could only mean the presence of a grounded ship, while they were still two diameters out. As a result they were able to decelerate and enter atmosphere for a closer look after only two orbits.

The ambulance ship was a modified Monitor Corps cruiser and, as such, the largest of the Federation vessels capable of aerodynamic maneuvering in atmosphere. It sliced through the brown, sand-laden air like a great white dart, trailing a sonic Shockwave loud enough to wake the dead or, at the very least, to signal its presence to any survivors capable of receiving audio stimulus.

Visibility was nil as they approached the grounded ship. The whole area was in the grip of one of the sandstorms which regularly swept this harsh, near-desert world, and the picture of the barren, mountainous surface was a sensor simulation rather than direct vision. It accurately reproduced the succession of wind-eroded hills and rocky outcroppings and the patches of thorny vegetation which clung to them. Then suddenly they were above and past the grounded ship.

Fletcher pulled Rhabwar into a steep climb which became a ponderous loop as they curved back for a slower pass over the landing site. This time, as they flew low over the other ship at close to stalling speed, there was a brief cessation in the storm and they were able to record the scene in near-perfect detail.

Rhabwar was climbing into space again when the Captain said, “I can’t put this ship down anywhere near that area, Doctor. I’m afraid we’ll have to check for survivors, if there are any, with the planetary lander. There aren’t any obvious signs of life from the wreck.”

Conway studied the still picture of the crash site on his screen for a moment before replying. It was arguable whether the ship had made a heavy landing or a barely controlled crash. Much less massive than Rhabwar, it had been designed to land on its tail, but one of the three stabilizer fins had collapsed on impact, tipping the vessel onto its side. In spite of this the hull was relatively undamaged except for a small section amidships which had been pierced by a low ridge of rock. There was no visible evidence of damage other than that caused by the crash.

All around the wreck at distances varying from twenty to forty meters there were an number of objects—Conway counted twenty-seven of them in all—which the sensor identified as organic material. The objects had not changed position between the first and second of Rhabwar’s thunderous fly-bys, so the probability was that they were either dead or deeply unconscious. Conway stepped up the magnification until the outlines became indistinct in the heat shimmer, and shook his head in bafflement.

The objects had been, or were, living creatures, and even though they had been partly covered by windblown sand, he could see a collection of protuberances, fissures, and angular projections which had to be sensory organs and limbs. There was a general similarity in shape but a marked difference in size of the beings, but he thought they were more likely to be representatives of different subspecies rather than adults and their young at different stages of development.

“Those life-forms are new to me,” the pathologist said, standing back from the screen. She looked at Conway and the others in turn. There was no dissent.

Conway thumbed the communicator button. “Captain,"he said briskly, “Murchison and Naydrad will go down with me. Prilicla will remain on board to receive casualties.” Normally that would have been the Kelgian Charge Nurse’s job, but nobody there had to be told that the fragile little empath would last for only a few minutes on the surface before being blown away and smashed against the rocky terrain. He went on, “I realize that four people on the lander will be a tight squeeze, but initially I’d like to take a couple of pressure litters and the usual portable equipment—”

“One large pressure litter, Doctor,” Fletcher broke in. 'There will be five people on board. I am going down as well in case there are technical problems getting into the wreck. You’re forgetting that if the life-forms are new to the Federation, then their spaceship technology could be strange as well. Dodds will fetch anything else you need on the next trip down. Can you be ready at the lander bay in fifteen minutes?”

“We’ll be there,” Conway said, smiling at the eagerness in the other’s voice. Fletcher wanted to look at the inside of that wrecked ship just as badly as Conway wanted to investigate the internal workings of its crew. And if there were survivors, Rhabwar would shortly be engaged in conducting another medial first contact with all the hidden problems, both clinical and cultural, which that implied.

Fletcher’s eagerness was underlined by the fact that he rather than Dodds took the vehicle down and landed it in a ridiculously small area of flat sand within one hundred meters of the wreck. From the surface the wind-eroded rock outcroppings looked higher, sharper, and much more dangerous, but the sandstorm had died down to a stiff breeze which lifted the grains no more than a few feet above the ground. From the orbiting Rhabwar, Haslam reported occasional wind flurries passing through their area which might briefly inconvenience them.

One of the flurries struck while they were helping Naydrad unload the litter, a bulky vehicle whose pressure envelope was capable of reproducing the gravity, pressure, and atmosphere requirements of most of the known life-forms. Gravity nullifiers compensated for the litter’s considerable weight, making it easily manageable by one person, but when the sudden wind caught it, Naydrad, Dodds, and Conway had to throw themselves across it to keep it from blowing away.

“Sorry about this,” Lieutenant Dodds said, as if by studying the available information on the planet he was somehow responsible for its misdemeanors. “It is about two hours before local midday here, and the wind usually dies down by now. It remains calm until just before sunset, and again in the middle of the night when there is a severe drop in temperature. The sandstorms after sunset and before dawn are very bad and last for three to five hours, when outside work would be very dangerous. Work during the night lull is possible but inadvisable. The local animal life is small arid omnivorous, but those thorn carpets on the slope over there have a degree of mobility and have to be watched, especially at night. I’d estimate five hours of daylight calm to complete the rescue. If it takes longer than that, it would be better to spend the night on Rhabwar and come back tomorrow.”

As the Lieutenant was speaking, the wind died again so that they were able to see the wreck, the dark objects scattered around it, and the harsh, arid landscape shimmering in the heat. Five hours should be more than enough to ferry up the casualties to Rhabwar for preliminary treatment. Anything done for then) down here would be done quickly, simple first aid.

“Did they bother to name this Godforsaken planet?” the Captain asked, stepping down from the lander’s airlock.

Dodds hesitated, then said, “Trugdil, sir.”

Fletcher’s eyebrows rose, Murchison laughed, and they could

see agitated movements of Naydrad’s fur under its lightweight suit. It was the Kelgian who spoke first.

“The trugdil,” it said, “is a species of Kelgian rodent with the particularly nasty habit of—”

“I know,” the astrogator said quickly. “But it was a Kelgian-crewed Monitor Corps scoutship which made the discovery. In the Corps it is customary for the Captain of the discovering ship to give his, her, or its name to the world which has been found. But in this instance the officer waived the right and offered it to his subordinates in turn, all of whom likewise refused to give their names to the planet. Judging by the name it ended with, they didn’t think much of the place either. There was another case when—”

“Interesting,” Conway said quietly, “but we’re wasting time. Prilicla?”

Through his helmet phones, the empath’s voice replied at once. “I hear you, friend Conway. Lieutenant Haslam is relaying an overall picture of the area to me through the telescope, and your helmet vision pickups enable me to see all that you see. Standing by.”

“Very good,” Conway said. To the others he went on, “Naydrad will accompany me with the litter. The rest of you split up and take a quick look at the other casualties. If any of them are moving, or there are indications of recent movement, call Pathologist Murchison or me at once.”

As they moved off he added, “It is important that we don’t waste time on cadavers at the expense of possible survivors. But be careful. This is a new life-form to us, and we are likewise strange to it. Physically we may resemble something it fears, and there is the added factor of the survivor being weak, in pain, and mentally confused. Guard against an instinctive, violent reaction from them which, in normal circumstances, would not occur.” He stopped talking because the others were already fanning our and the first casualty, lying very still and partly covered by sand, was only a few meters away.

As Naydrad helped him scoop sand from around the body Conway saw that the being was six-limbed, with a stubby, cylindrical torso with a spherical head at one end and possibly a tail at the other extremity, although the severity of the injuries made it difficult to be sure. The two forelimbs terminated in long, flexible digits. There were two recognizable eyes, partially concealed by heavy lids, and various slits and orifices which were doubtless aural and olfactory sensors and the openings for respiration and ingestion. The tegument, which was pale brown shading to a deeper, reddish color on its top surface, showed many incised wounds and abrasions which had bled freely but had since congealed and become encrusted with sand—perhaps the sand had assisted in the process of coagulation. Even the large wound at the rear, which looked as if it might be the result of a traumatic amputation, was remarkably dry.

Conway bent closer and began going over the body with his scanner. There was no evidence of fracturing or of damaged or displaced organs, so far as he could see, so the being could” be moved without risk of complicating its injuries. Naydrad was waiting with the litter to see whether it was a survivor for immediate loading or a cadaver for later dissection, when Con-way’s scanner’s sensors detected cardiac activity, extremely feeble but undoubtedly present, and respiration so slow and shallow that he had almost missed it.

“Are you getting this, Prilicla?” he said.

“Yes, friend Conway,” replied the empath. “A most interesting life-form.”

“There is considerable tissue wastage,” he went on, still using the scanner. “Possibly the result of dehydration. And there is a similarity in degree and type of the injuries which I find strange . . .” He trailed off into silence as Naydrad helped him lift the casualty into the litter.

“No doubt it has already occurred to you, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, using the form of words which was the closest it ever came to suggesting that someone had missed the obvious, “that the dehydration and the deeper coloration on the upper areas of the epidermis may be connected with local environmental factors, and the redness is due to sunburn.”

It had not occurred to Conway, but fortunately the emotional radiation associated with his embarrassment was well beyond the range of the empath. He indicated the litter and said, “Naydrad, don’t forget to fit the sun filter.”

In his phones he heard Murchison laughing quietly, then she said, “It hadn’t occurred to me, either, so don’t feel bad about it. But I have a couple of beasties over here I’d like you to look at. Both are alive, just barely, with a'large number of incised wounds. There is a great disparity in mass between them, and the arrangement of the internal organs in the large one is, well, peculiar. For instance, the alimentary canal is—”

“Right now,” Conway broke in, “we must concentrate on separating the living and the dead. Detailed examinations and discussions will have to wait until we’re back on the ship, so spend as little time as possible on each one. But I know how you feel—my casualty has some peculiarities as well.”

“Yes, Doctor,” she replied coldly, in spite of his half apology. Pathologists, even beautiful ones like Murchison, he thought, were strange people.

“Captain? Lieutenant Dodds?” he said irritably. “Any other survivors?”

“I haven’t been looking at them closely, Doctor,” Retcher replied. There was an odd harshness in his voice. Possibly the condition of the crash victims was distressing to a nonmedical man, Conway thought, and some of these casualties were in really bad shape. But before he could reply the Captain went on, “I’ve been moving around the area quickly, counting them and looking to see if any have been covered by sand or hidden between rocks. There are twenty-seven of them in all. But the positioning of the bodies is odd, Doctor. It’s as if the ship was in imminent danger of blowing up or catching fire, and they used the last of their remaining strength to escape from it.

“The sensors show no such danger,” he added.

Dodds waited for a few seconds to be sure that the Captain had finished speaking, then said, “Three alive and showing slight movement. One that looks dead, but you’re the doctor, Doctor.”

“Thank you,” Conway said dryly. “We’ll look at them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Lieutenant, help Naydrad load the litter, please.”

He joined Murchison then, and for the next hour they moved among the casualties, assessing the degree of injury and readying them for transfer to the lander. The litter was almost full and had space for two of the medium-sized casualties, which they had tentatively classified as belonging to physiological type DCMH, or one of the large DCOJs. The very small DCLGs, which were less than half the mass of the DCMH Conway had first examined, were left for the time being because they all showed flickerings of life. As yet neither Murchison nor Conway could make sense of them physiologically. She thought the small DCLGs might be nonintelligent lab animals or possibly ship’s pets, while Conway was convinced that the large DCOJs were food animals, also nonintelligent. But with newly discovered e xtra-terrestrial life-forms, one could never be sure of anything, and all of them would therefore have to be treated as patients.

Then they found one of the small aliens who was quite definitely dead. Murchison said briskly, “I’ll work on it in the lander. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have something to tell Prilicla about their basal metabolism before the casualties begin arriving.”

A flurry of wind blew the sand disturbed by her feet ahead of her as she moved toward the lander, the small cadaver supported by her shoulder and one arm while the other hand, carrying her med kit, acted as a counterbalance. Conway was about to suggest that a proper examination on Rhabwar, where the full laboratory facilities were available, would be better. But Murchis-on would already have considered doing that and decided agai nst it, for two obvious reasons: If she returned to the ambulance ship with Dodds and Naydrad, some of the casualties already loaded would have to be left behind, and she needed to tell Prilicla only enough for the empath to provide emergency surgery and supportive treatment until the survivors were taken to Sector General.

“Captain, you overheard?” Conway said. “I’d like Dodds and Naydrad to take off as soon as Pathologist Murchison is through. It looks as if three trips will be necessary to lift all of them, and another for ourselves. We’re going to be pushed for time if th is is to be wrapped up before the sunset storm hits the area.”

There wa_s no reply from Fletcher, which usually signified assent when Conway was in command. He went on, “Murchison will stay behind and assemble another batch of casualties for the next lift. We’ll collect them where there is shelter from the sun and sand. The lee side of the wreck would do, or better still, inside it if there isn’t too much debris.”

“No, Doctor,” the Captain said. “I’m worried about what we might find on that ship.”

Conway did not reply, but the sigh he gave as he continued his examination of the casualty he was working on made his impatience clear. Fletcher was one of the Monitor Corps’ acknowledged experts in the field of alien ship technology. This was the reason he had been given command of Sector General’s most advanced ambulance ship—it had long been recognized that a rescue mission’s greatest danger was to the rescuers, who would be looking for survivors in a distressed vessel whose technology and operating principles they did not understand. Fletcher was careful, conscientious, highly competent, and did not as a rule worry out loud about his work or ability to carry it out. Conway was still wondering about the Captain’s uncharacteristic behavior when a shadow fell across the casualty he was examining.

Fletcher was standing over him and looking as worried as he had sounded. “I realize, Doctor,” the Captain said awkwardly, “that during rescue operations you have the rank. I want you to know that I go along with this willingly. But on this occasion I believe the circumstances are such that complete authority should revert to me.” He glanced back at the wreck and then down at the badly injured alien. “Doctor, do you have any experience in forensic medicine?”

Conway sat back on his haunches and simply gaped at him. Retcher took a deep breath and went on. “The distribution and condition of the casualties around the wreck seemed wrong to me,” he said seriously. “It indicated a rapid evacuation of a relatively undamaged ship, even though our sensors showed no radiation or fire hazard. As well, all of the casualties were severely injured to varying degrees and with the same type of wounding. It seemed to me that some of them would have been able to make a greater distance from their ship than others, yet sll of them collapsed within a relatively small radius from the wreck. This made me wonder whether the injuries had been sustained inside the ship or close to where they were lying.”

“A local predator,” Conway said, “which attacked them as

they came out already shocked and weakened as a result of the crash.”

The Captain shook his head. “No life-form capable of inflicting such injuries inhabits this world. Most of the injuries I’ve seen are incised wounds or those caused by the removal of a limb. This suggests the use of a sharp instrument of some kind. The user of the instrument may or may not be still on board the ship. If it is on board, it may be that the beings who escaped were the lucky ones, in which case I hate to think of what we may find inside the wreck. But you can see now why I must resume overall responsibility, Doctor.

“The Monitor Corps is the Federation’s law-enforcement arm,” he concluded quietly. “It seems to me that a very serious-crime has been committed, and I am a policeman first and an ambulance driver second.”

Before Con way could reply, Murchison said, “The condition of this cadaver, and the other casualties I’ve examined, does not preclude such a possibility.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” the Captain said. “That is why I want the medical team back on Rhabwar while Dodds and I arrest this criminal. If things go wrong, Chen and Haslam can get you back to the hospital—”

“Haslam, sir,” the Communications Officer’s voice broke in. “Shall I request Corps assistance?”

The Captain did not reply at once, and Con way began thinking that the other’s theory could very well explain why a previously undamaged ship had released a distress beacon and then left the scene to try for a planetary landing. Something had gotten loose among the crew, perhaps. Something which might have been confined had escaped, something very, very nasty. With an effort Conway brought his runaway imagination under control. “We can’t be absolutely sure that a criminal was responsible for this. A nonintelligent experimental animal which broke loose, injured and perhaps maddened with pain, could have done—”

“Animals use teeth and claws, doctor,” the Captain broke in. “Not knives.”

“This is a completely new species,” Conway replied. “We don’t know anything about them, their culture or their codes of behavior. They may be ignorant of our particular laws.”

“Ignorance of the law,” Fletcher said impatiently, “has never been an acceptable excuse for committing a criminal act against another intelligent being. Just as ignorance of law by the innocent victim does not exclude the being concerned from its protection.”

“I agree—” Conway began. “But I am not completely sure that a crime has been committed,” he went on. “Until I am sure, you, Haslam, will not send for help. But keep a close watch on this area and if anything moves, apart from the survivors or ourselves, let me know at once. Very soon Dodds will be taking off with the lander and—”

“Naydrad and the casualties,” Murchison ended for him. Quietly but firmly she went on, “Your theory scares hell out of me, Captain, but it is still only a theory. You’ve admitted as much yourself. The facts are that there are a large number of casualties all around us. They don’t know it yet but they are entitled to the protection of Federation law. Whether their injuries are due to the crash or to being carved up by some psychopathic or temporarily deranged alien, they are also entitled, under that same law, to all necessary medical assistance.”

The Captain looked toward the lander where the Pathologist was still working on the specimen, then back to the Doctor.

“I’ve nothing to add,” Conway said.

Fletcher remained silent while Murchison completed her investigation and Dodds and Naydrad transferred two casualties into the lander. He did not speak while the vehicle was taking off or when Conway selected a spot under a large outcropping of rock which would give waiting casualties shelter from the sun and windblown sand. Neither did he offer to help them carry the injured e-ts to the assembly point even though, without the litter, it was hot, back-breaking work. Instead he moved among the e-ts with his vision pickup, recording them individually before and after the ground had been disturbed around ftem by Murchison and Conway, and always positioning himself between the two medics and the wreck.

Plainly the Captain was taking his strange, new role as a Policeman and protector of the innocent bystanders very seriously indeed.

The cooling unit in his suit did not seem to be working very hard and Conway would have loved to open his visor for a few minutes. But doing that, even in the shelter of the outcropping, would have meant letting in a lot of windblown sand.

“Let’s rest for a while,” he said as they placed another casualty beside its fellows. “Time we had a talk with Prilicla.”

“That is a pleasure at any time, friends Murchison and Conway,” the empath said promptly. “While I am, of course, beyond the range of the emotional radiation being generated down there, I sympathize and hope that your feelings of anxiety about the criminal are not too unpleasant.”

“Our feelings of bewilderment are much stronger,” Conway said dryly. “But maybe you can help relieve them by going over our information, incomplete as it is, before the first casualties reach you.”

There was still a little doubt about the accuracy of the physiological classifications, Conway explained, but there were three separate but related types—DCLG, DCMH, and DCOJ. The wounds fell into two general categories, incised and abraded wounds which could have resulted when the ship’s occupants were hurled against sharp-edged metal during the crash, and a traumatic amputation of major limbs which was so prevalent among the casualties that an explanation other than the crash was needed to explain them.

All of the survivors had body temperatures significantly greater than the norm for warm-blooded oxygen breathers, indicating a high metabolic rate and a hyperactive life-form. This was supported by the uniformly deep state of unconsciousness displayed by all of the casualties, and the evidence of dehydration and malnutrition. Beings who burned up energy rapidly rarely lingered in a semiconscious state. There were also signs that the beings had an unusual ability to control bleeding from severe wounds. Coagulation in the incised wounds, perhaps assisted by the presence of the sand, was rapid but not abnormally so, while the stumps at the amputation sites showed little evidence of bleeding.

“Supportive treatment to relieve the dehydration and malnutrition is all that can be done until we get them to the hospital,” Conway went on. “Murchison has already specified the nutrients suited to their metabolism. You can also insert sutures as you see fit. If the load is too great for you, which in my opinion it is, retain Naydrad and send down only the pilot with the litter. Murchison can ride with the casualties on the next trip. She will stay with you while Naydrad comes down for the last batch.”

There was a moment’s silence, then the empath said, “I wider-stand, friend Conway. But have you considered the fact that your suggestion will mean three members of the medical team being on Rhabwar for a lengthy period and only one, yourself, on the surface where medical assistance is most urgently needed? I .am sure that, with the aid of the Casualty Deck’s handling devices and the assistance of friends Haslam and Chen, I can cope with these patients.”

It was possible that Prilicla could cope with the patients provided they remained unconscious. But if they came to suddenly and reacted instinctively to their strange and, to them, perhaps frightening surroundings, and to the giant but incredibly fragile insect medic hovering over them, Conway shuddered to think of what might happen to the empath’s eggshell body and pipestem limbs. Before he could reply, Prilicla was speaking again . . .

“I am beyond the range of your emotional radiation, of course,” the empath said, “but from long contact with the both of you I know of the strength of the emotional bond between friend Murchison and yourself. This, taking into account the strong possibility that there is a very dangerous life-form loose down there, is undoubtedly a factor in your decision to send her to the safety of the ship. But perhaps friend Murchison would suffer less emotional discomfort if she remained with you.”

Murchison looked up from the casualty she was attending. “Is that what you were thinking?”

“No,” Conway lied.

She laughed and said, “You heard that, Prilicla? He is a Person utterly lacking in consideration and sensitivity. I should have married someone like you.”

“I am highly complimented, friend Murchison,” the empath Said. “But you have too few legs.”

There was the sound of Fletcher clearing his throat disapprovingly at this sudden and unseemly levity, but the Captain did not speak. He could no doubt appreciate as well as any of the need to relieve fear tensions.

“Very well,” Con way said. “Pathologist Murchison will remain with her feet, and too few legs, on Trugdil. Doctor Prilicla, you will keep Charge Nurse Naydrad with you, since it will obviously be of greater assistance in preparing and presenting the casualties for examination and treatment than would the Engineer and Communications officer. Haslam or Dodds can return with the litter and medical supplies which we will specify later. Questions?”

“No questions, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. “The lander is docking now.”

Murchison and Conway returned their full attention to the casualties. The Captain was examining the hull of the wreck. They could hear him tapping at the outer skin and making the metallic scraping noises characteristic of magnetic sound sensors being moved across the surfaces. The wind kept changing direction so that the casualties in the shadow of the outcropping were sheltered only from the sun and not the wind-driven sand.

From Rhabwar Haslam reported that the area was being affected by a small, local sandstorm which should clear before the lander returned in half an hour. He added reassuringly that nothing was moving in the area except themselves and several patches of ambulating thorn bushes, which would lose -a race against a debilitated tortoise.

All but three of the casualties had been moved to the outcropping, and while Conway was bringing them in the pathologist was protecting the others from the wind and sand by loosely wrapping them in transparent plastic sheets after first attaching a small oxygen cylinder to each survivor. The tanks released a metered quantity of gas calculated to satisfy the metabolic requirements of the entity concerned. They had decided that encasing the casualties in makeshift oxygen tents could do no harm since the pure oxygen would assist the weak respiration and aid in the healing of the wounds, but with a completely new life-form one could never be sure of anything. Certainly the treatment showed no sign of returning any of the casualties to consciousness.

“The uniformly deep level of unconsciousness bothers me,” Murchison said as Conway returned carrying, with difficulty, one of the large aliens they had classified as DCOJ. “The level does not bear any relation to the number or severity of the wounds. Could they be in a state of hibernation?”

“The onset was sudden,” Conway said doubtfully. “They were in the process of fleeing their ship, according to the Captain. Hibernation usually occurs in a place of safety, not when the being concerned is in immediate physical danger.”

“I was thinking of an involuntary form of hibernation,” Murchison said, “perhaps induced by their injuries, which enables them to survive until help arrives—What was that?

That was a loud, metallic screeching noise which came from the wreck. It lasted for a few seconds, then there was a moment’s silence before it was repeated. They could hear heavy breathing in their suit phones so it had to be coming from Fletcher.

“Captain,” Murchison said, “are you all right?”

“No trouble, ma’am,” Fletcher replied at once. “I’ve found a hatch in what appears to be a cargo hold. It is, or was, a simple hermetically sealed door rather than an airlock. When the ship tipped over the door couldn’t open fully because the outer edge dug into the sand, which I’ve now cleared away. The hatch opens freely now but the hinges were warped in the crash, as you probably heard. Two of the occupants were trying to escape, but couldn’t squeeze through the narrow opening. They are one of the large- and one of the medium-sized types, both with amputation wounds, neither of them moving. Shall I bring them to you?”

“I’d better look at them first,” Conway said. “Give me a few minutes to finish with this one.”

As they were placing the last casualty inside its makeshift oxygen tent, Murchison said, “Have you found any trace of the criminal, Captain?”

“Other than the wounding on these two, no ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “My sensors pick up no trace of bodily movement inside the ship, nothing but a few quiet, intermittent sounds suggesting settling debris. I’m pretty sure it is outside the ship somewhere.”

“In that case,” she said, looking at Conway, “I’ll go with you.”

The wind died and the sand settled as they neared the wreck so that they could see clearly the black rectangular opening in the hull just at ground level, and the arm of the Captain waving at them from inside it. There were so many other openings caused by sprung plating and access hatches that without Fletcher’s signal they would not have known which gap was the right one. From outside it looked as if the ship was ready to fall apart, but when they crawled through the opening and stood up their helmet lights showed little evidence of internal damage.

“How did the others get out?” Conway asked. He knelt and began running his scanner over the larger of the two casualties. There was evidence of a traumatic amputation of a major limb but the other injuries were superficial.

“There is a large personnel hatch on the upper surface of the hull forward,” Fletcher replied. “At least it was on the upper side after the ship toppled. Presumably they had to slide down the curve of the hull and jump to the ground, or move along the ship to the prow, which isn’t very far from the ground, and jump from there. These two were unlucky.”

“One of them was very unlucky,” Murchison said. “The DCOJ is dead. Its injuries were not as severe as the other cases I’ve seen, but there is evidence of lung damage by a corrosive gas of some kind, according to my analyzer. What about your DCMH?”

“This one is alive,” Conway said. “Similar general condition, including the lung damage. Probably it is simply a much tougher life-form than the other two.”

“I wonder about this DCOJ life-form,” Murchison said thoughtfully. “Is it intelligent at all? The small DCLG and the DCMH almost certainly are: The limb extremities terminate in specialized manipulators, and the former seems to have developed six hands and no feet. But the big DCOJ has four feet and two clawed forward appendages, and is otherwise made up of teeth and a large system of stomachs.”

“Which is empty,” Conway said. After a moment he added, “All of the cases I’ve examined so far had empty stomachs.”

“Mine as well,” Murchison said. They stared at each other for a moment, then Conway said, “Captain,”

Fletcher had been working on what seemed to be the inboard entrance to the hold, reaching high above his head because he was standing on a wall with the floor and ceiling on each side of him. There was a loud click and a door swung downward and hung open. The Captain made a self-satisfied sound and joined them.

“Yes, Doctor.”

Conway cleared his throat and said, “Captain, we have a theory about your criminal. We think that the condition of distress which caused this ship to release its beacon was hunger. All of the casualties we’ve examined so far have had empty stomachs. It is possible, therefore, that your criminal is a crew member who turned cannibal.”

Before Fletcher could reply, the voice of Prilicla sounded in their phones.

“Friend Conway,” the empath said timidly. “I have not yet examined all of the casualties you sent up, but those I have examined display symptoms of dehydration and tissue wastage indicative of hunger and thirst. But the condition is not far enough advanced for death to be imminent. Your hypothetical criminal must have attacked the other crew members before lack of food became a serious problem. The being was hungry but not starving to death. Are you sure that the creature is intelligent?”

“No,” Conway said. “But if Murchison and I have missed it while examining the first of the casualties, and at that time we were more concerned with charting the injuries than in the contents, if any, of their stomachs, the beastie could be on Rhabwar now. So if you find a well-fed casualty, get Haslam and Chen to restrain it, quickly. The Captain has a professional interest in it.”

“That I have,” Fletcher said grimly. He was about to go on when Haslam, who had relieved Dodds as lander pilot, interrupted to say that he would be touching down in six minutes and would need help loading the litter.

By packing the litter and strapping casualties, sometimes |wo to a couch in the crew’s positions, Haslam was able to lift just over half of the remaining survivors. There was no change 'n the condition of the remaining casualties. The shadow of the outcropping had lengthened, though the air was still warm; the sky remained clear and there was no wind. Murchison said fhat she could usefully spend the time until the lander returned investigating, so far as she was able with her portable equipment, the large DCOJ cadaver they had left in the wreck. The medium-sized DCMH survivor had gone up with Haslam.

It was obvious from the start that Fletcher found the dissection distasteful, and when Murchison told him that there was enough light for the work from the helmet spots of Conway and herself, he left quickly and began climbing among the containers fastened to the now-vertical deck beside them. After about fifteen minutes he reported that his scanner showed the contents to be identical and, judging by the amount of packing used, were almost certainly cargo rather than ship’s stores. He added that he intended moving into the corridor outside the hold to explore, look for other casualties, and gather evidence.

“Do you have to do it now, Captain?” Murchison said wor-v riedly, looking up. Conway turned to regard Fletcher, too, but somehow his eyes did not rise above the level of the other’s waist and the weapon attached to it.

“Do you know, Captain,” he said quietly, “you have been wearing a sidearm ever since Rhabwar’s first mission, and I’ve barely noticed it? It was just a part of your uniform, like the cap and insignia. Now it looks even more conspicuous than your backpack.”

Fletcher looked uncomfortable as he said, “We’re taught that the psychological effect of displaying a weapon is negligible among the law-abiding, but increases in direct proportion to the guilt or harmful intentions of the criminal or potential lawbreaker. However, the effect of my weapon was purely psychological until Lieutenant Haslam brought down the charges for it a few minutes ago.” Defensively he added, “There was no need to wear a loaded weapon on an ambulance ship, and I’d no reason to believe that this would be a police operation.”

Murchison laughed softly and returned to her work, and Conway joined her. As the Captain turned to go, he said, “We can’t spend much time here, but I must make as full a report as possible of the incident and all relevant circumstances. This is a new species to the Federation, a different technology, and the purpose of this ship might have a bearing on the case. Was our criminal a responsible being, perhaps a captive, or an unintelligent animal? If it was intelligent was it deranged, and if so why? And was the distressed condition of the ship and crew a contributory factor? I know that it is difficult to conceive of extenuating circumstances for grievous wounding and cannibalism, but until all the facts are known—”

He broke off and placed his sensor against the deck beside him. A few seconds later he went on, “There is nothing other than ourselves moving inside the wreck. I’ve left the outside hatch open only a few inches. If anything tried to get in you will have plenty of warning, either from the beastie itself forcing it open against the sand or from the sensors on Rhabwar. I can get back to you in plenty of time in any case, so you have nothing to worry about.”

While they resumed the dissection they could follow every step of the Captain’s progress stern ward, because he insisted on verbally describing and amplifying the pictures he was sending up to Dodds. The corridor was low and not very roomy by Earth-human standards, he reported. He had to crawl on hands and knees and it would be difficult to turn around to come back other than at an intersection. Cable looms and air or hydraulic pipelines ran along the sidewalls of the corridor, and coarse-mesh netting was. attached to the floor and ceiling indicating that the ship did not possess an artificial gravity system.

Aft of the compartment occupied by the medics there was another cargo deck, and beyond that the unmistakable shapes of the hyperdrive generators. Further aft the reactor and thrust-ers were sealed from him and heavily shielded, but the sensor indications were that there had been a complete power shutdown—probably an automatic safety measure built into the design—when the ship had toppled. But he could detect a residue of power in some of the corridor lines which he thought might be associated with an emergency lighting circuit, and he thought he had identified a light switch.

It was a light switch, he confirmed a few seconds later. A large stretch of the corridor was illuminated. The lighting was uncomfortably bright but his eyes were adjusting to it. He was moving amidships.

They heard him pause outside their cargo hold, and suddenly the lights came on all over the ceiling beside them. Conway switched off his now-unnecessary helmet light.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said, then continuing the discussion he had been having with Murchison, went on, “There is capacity for a large brain in the cranium, but we cannot assume that all of the available'volume is used for cerebration. I don’t see how a beastie with four feet and two manipulators which are little more than claws could be a tool user, much less a crew member of a starship. And those teeth bother me. They are certainly not those of a predator. In the distant past they might have been fearsome natural weapons, but now their condition shows that they have not much to do.”

Murchison nodded. “The stomach system is overlarge in relation to the mass of the being,” she said, “yet there is no evidence of adipose or excess edible tissue which would be present if it was an animal bred for food. And the stomach resembles that of an Earth-type ruminant. The digestive system is odd, too, but I’d have to work out the whole intake to elimination cycle to make any sense out of it, and I can’t do that down here. I’d love to know what these things ate before their food ran out.”

“I’m passing a storage deck of some kind,” Fletcher said at that point. “It is divided into large racks with passages between mem. The racks are filled with containers of different colors and sizes with funnellike dispensers at one end. There are wastebins holding empties, and some of the full and empty containers have spilled out into the corridor.”

“May I have samples, please,” Murchison said quickly, “of both.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Captain replied. “Considering the starved condition of the survivors they are more likely to contain paint or lubricant than food. But I expect you have to eliminate all possibilities, like me. I am moving toward the next—Oh!”

Conway opened his mouth to ask what was happening but the Captain forestalled him.

“I switched on the lighting for this section and found two more casualties,” he reported. “One is a DCMH, one of the medium-sized ones, which was crushed by a buckled structural member and certainly dead. The other is the small, DCLG life-form, with one amputation wound, not moving. I’m fairly sure that it’s dead, too. This is the section of the ship which fell across the outcropping when she tipped over.

“The internal structure is badly deformed,” he went on, “with sprung deck and wall plating all over the place. There are also two large, wall-mounted cylinders which seem to have

been the reservoir for a hydraulic actuator system. Both have been ruptured and their connecting lines fractured, and there is a faint fog surrounding them as if some of the contents remains and is evaporating.

“Ahead the corridor is partly blocked by wreckage,” he continued. “I can move it but there will be a lot of noise, so don’t—”

“Captain,” Conway broke in. “Can you please bring us the DCLG and a sample of the hydraulic fluid with the other samples as soon as you can.” To Murchison he added, “I’d like to know if the lung damage is associated with that leakage. It would eliminate another possibility.”

Fletcher sounded irritated at having to break off his investigation of the ship. He said shortly, “They’ll be outside your hold entrance in ten minutes, Doctor.”

By the time Conway had retrieved the samples the Captain had already returned to the midships section, but once again his investigation was interrupted, this time by Lieutenant Dodds.

“The lander is ready to leave, sir,” the Astrogator said. There was a certain hesitancy in his voice as he went on, “I’m afraid there will be time for only one round trip before sunset, so would the Doctor and you decide which casualties should be lifted and which left there for retrieval tomorrow? With you three and Haslam on board just over half of the remaining casualties can be lifted, less if you bring up all portable equipment.”

“I’m not leaving unattended casualties down here,” Conway said firmly. “The drop in temperature and the sandstorms would probably finish them!”

“Maybe not,” Murchison said thoughtfully. “If we have to leave some of them, and it seems we’ve no choice, we could cover them with sand. They have a high body temperature, the sand is a good insulator, and they are already sealed up with a self-contained oxygen supply.”

“I’ve heard of doctors burying their mistakes,” Conway began dryly, but Dodds broke in again.

“Sorry, there is a problem there, Ma’am,” he said. “There 316 four large thorn patches moving toward the wreck. Slowly, af course, but we estimate their arrival just before midnight. According to my information the thorns are omnivorous and trap mobile prey by slowly encircling it, often at a distance, and allowing the animal to scratch itself on the thorns. These secrete a poison which is paralyzing or lethal, depending on the size of the prey and number of scratches. When the prey is immobilized the thorn clump inserts its roots and removes whatever nutrient material there is available.

“I don’t think your buried casualties,” he added grimly, “would survive till morning.”

Murchison swore in very unladylike fashion, and Conway said, “We could move them into the hold here and seal the hatch. We would need heaters and a medical monitor arid—I’m still not happy about leaving them unattended.”

“Obviously this is something which will have to be carefully considered, Doctor,” the Captain said. “Your casualties wilf not only have to be attended, they may have to be defended as well. Dodds, how long can you delay the launch?”

“Half an hour, sir,” the Astrogator said. “Then allowing another half hour for the trip and at least an hour on the surface to load up and make provision for the other casualties. If the lander does not leave in two and a half hours there will be serious problems with the wind and sand during take-off.”

“Very well,” Fletcher said. “We should reach a decision in half an hour. Hold the lander until then.”

But there was very little discussion and the decision was made, in spite of anything Murchison and Conway could say to the contrary, by the Captain. Fletcher stated that the two medics on Trugdil had done everything possible for the casualties and could do nothing further without the facilities of Rhabwar, except keep them under observation. The Captain insisted that he was capable of doing that, and of defending them in case they were attacked again.

He was sure that the criminal responsible for their injuries was not currently on the ship, but it might return to the shelter of the wreck when the cold and the sandstorms returned, or even to escape the advancing thorn clumps. He added that the proper place for all of the medical team was on Rhabwar where the casualties there could t?e given proper attention.

“Captain,” Conway said angrily, unable to refute his arguments, “in the medical area I have complete authority.”

“Then why don’t you exercise it responsibly, Doctor?” Fletcher replied.

“Captain,” Murchison broke in quickly, trying to head off an argument which could sour relations on the ambulance ship for weeks to come. “The DCLG specimen you found was not badly injured, compared with some of the others, but it was defunct, I’m afraid. Severe inflammation of the breathing passages and massive lung damage similar to the one you found in the hold. Both sets of lungs contained traces of the sample you took from the hydraulic reservoir. That is lethal stuff, Captain, so don’t open your visor anywhere near a leak.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I won’t,” Fletcher said calmly, and went on, “Dodds, you can see that the stretch of corridor ahead has been crushed almost flat. There is enough space for crew members to squeeze through, but I will have to cut away a lot of this jagged metal—”

Conway switched off his radio and touched his helmet against Murchison’s so that they could speak privately. He said furiously, “Whose side are you on?”

She grinned at him through her visor, but before she could reply Prilicla’s voice rustled timidly from the phones. The empath, too, was trying to calm a potentially unpleasant source of emotional radiation.

“Friend Conway,” it said, “while friend Fletcher’s arguments are valid, and I would personally welcome the presence of friend Murchison and yourself back on board, friend Naydrad and myself are coping adequately with the patients, all of whom are in a stable condition with the exception of three of the small DCLGs who are showing a slight reduction in body temperature.”

“Deepening shock, do you think?” Conway asked.

“No, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “There seems to be a slight improvement in their general condition.”

“Emotional radiation?”

“Nothing on the conscious level, friend Conway,” the empath replied, “but there are unconscious feelings of deprivation, and need.”

“They are all hungry,” Conway said dryly, “except one.”

“The thought of that one is abhorrent to me, too,” Prilicla said. “But to return to the condition of the patients: The lung damage and inflammation of the breathing passages noted by friend Murchison is repeated, to a much lesser degree of severity, in the other survivors, and the cause is correctly attributed to the damaged reservoir. But it is possible that operating in Trugdil conditions with the less sensitive portable equipment—”

“Prilicla,” Conway said impatiently, “what you mean is that we were too blind or stupid to spot an important medical: datum, but you are too nice a person to hurt our feelings. But intense impatience and curiosity can be unpleasant emotions, too, so just tell us what you discovered, Doctor.”

“I am sorry, friend Conway,” said the empath. “It is that the food passage as well as the breathing passage is similarly inflamed. The condition is relatively mild, not obvious as are the other areas of inflammation, but is present in uniform intensity in all of the survivors regardless of physiological classification. I wondered if there was anything on their ship which would explain this.

“I am also puzzled by the amputation wounds,” Prilicla went on. “I have been suturing incised wounds, none of which have penetrated to vital organs, and generally tidying up. But the stumps I have covered with sterile dressings only until the possibility of replacing the original limbs has been eliminated. Have you found anything down there which might be a missing limb or organ? Or have you given thought to the shape, size, and purpose of these missing parts?”

From amidships there were sounds of metal scraping against metal and of erratic, heavy breathing in their phones as the Captain cleared an obstruction. When it was quiet again, Murchison said, “Yes, Doctor, but I’ve formed no firm conclusions. There is a fairly complex nerve linkage to the stump in all three types and, in the case of the big DCOJ, a collapsed, tubular connection whose origin I have been unable to trace because of its close association with the very complex upper intestinal tract. But taking into account the positioning of these limbs or organs, which are at the base of the spine in the two smaller life-forms and on the medial underside of the large one, all 1 can say is that the missing parts must have been considered particularly edible by the attacker since it did not remove anything else. I have no clear idea of the size or shape of the missing parts, but my guess would be that they are probably tails, genitalia, or mammaries—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt a medical conference, ma’am,” Fletcher broke in, in a tone which suggested that he was very glad to interrupt before it could go any farther. He went on quickly, “Doctor Conway, I’ve found another DCMH. It is tangled up in bedding, not moving, and seems to be uninjured. I thought you might like to examine it here rather than have it pulled through the wreckage in the corridor.”

“I’m on my way,” Conway said.

He climbed out of the hold and crawled along the corridor in the Captain’s wake, listening as Fletcher resumed his commentary. Immediately forward of the cleared section of corridor the Captain had found the Dormitory Deck. It was characteristic of the early type of hyperships which did not have artificial gravity, and was filled with rows of sandwich-style double hammocks which retained the sleeper in weightless conditions. The hammocks were suspended on shock absorbers so as to double as acceleration couches for off-duty crew members.

There were three distinct sizes of hammock, so the ship had the DCLG, DCMH, and DCOJ life-forms in the crew—which proved that even the large and apparently unintelligent DCOJs were ship’s personnel and not lab animals. Judging by the number and size of the hammocks, the two smaller life-forms outnumbered the large one by three to one.

He had made a quick count of the hammocks, the Captain said as Conway was passing the damaged hydraulic system reservoir, and the total number, thirty, agreed with the number of casualties found outside and inside the ship, which meant that the missing criminal was almost certainly not of any of the three species who served as the crew.

It was difficult to be precise regarding occurrences on the Dormitory Deck, Fletcher explained, because loose objects, ornaments, and personal effects had collected on the wall when the ship had fallen on its side. But one third of the hammocks were neatly stowed while the remaining two thirds looked as though they had been hastily vacated. No doubt the neat hammocks belonged to the crew members on duty, but the Captain thought it strange that if the ship operated a one-watch-on, two-off duty roster the rest of the crew were in their bunks instead of half of them being outside the dormitory on a recreation deck. But then he was forgetting the fact that the safest place during the landing maneuver would be inside the acceleration hammocks.

The Captain was backing out of the dormitory as Conway reached it. Fletcher pointed and said, “It is close to the inner hull among the DCMH hammocks. Call me if you need help, Doctor.”

He turned and began crawling toward the bows again. But he did not get very far because by the time Conway reached the casualty he could hear the hiss of the cutting torch and the Captain’s heavy breathing.

It took only a few minutes to piece together what had happened. Two of the hammock’s supports had broken due to the lateral shock when the ship had fallen—they had been designed to withstand vertical G forces, not horizontal ones—and the hammock had swung downward throwing its occupant against the suddenly horizontal wall. There was an area of subcutaneous bleeding where the DCMH’s head had struck, but no sign of a fracture. The blow had not been fatal, but it had been enough to render the being unconscious or dazed until the highly lethal vapor from the damaged reservoir had invaded its lungs. This one had been doubly unlucky, Conway thought as he carefully drew it the rest of the way from its hammock and extended his examination. There was one wound, the usual one, at the base of its spine. Conway’s scalp prickled at the thought that the attacker had been inside the dormitory and had struck even at a victim in its hammock. What sort of creature was it? Small rather than large, he thought. Vicious. And fast. He looked quickly around the dormitory, then returned his attention to the cadaver.

“That’s unusuaJ,” he said aloud. “This one has what seems to be a small quantity of partially digested food in its stomach.” “You think that’s unusual.” Murchison said in a baffled tone. “The sample containers from the storage deck contain food. Liquid, a powdery solid, and some fibrous material, but all high-grade nutrient suited to the metabolisms of all three life-forms. What was the excuse for cannibalism? And why the blazes was everybody starving? The whole deck is packed with food!”

“Are you sure—?” began Conway, when he was cut off by a voice in his phones which was so distorted that he could not tell who was speaking.

“What is that thing?”

“Captain?” he said doubtfully.

“Yes, Doctor.” The voice was still distorted, but recognizable.

“You—you’ve found the criminal?”

“No, Doctor,” Fletcher replied harshly. “Another victim. Definitely another victim—”

“It’s moving, sir!” Dodds voice broke in.

“Doctor,” the Captain went on, “can you come at once. You too, ma’am.”

Fletcher was crouched inside the entrance of what had to be the ship’s Control Deck, using the cutting torch on the tangle of wreckage which almost filled the space between the ceiling and floor. The place was a shambles, Conway saw by the light coming through the open hatch above them and the few strips of emergency lighting which were still operating. Practically all of the ceiling-mounted equipment had torn free in the fall; ruptured piping and twisted, jagged-edged supporting brackets projected into the space above the control couches on the deck opposite.

The control couches had been solidly mounted and had remained in position, but they were empty, their restraining webbing hanging loose—except for one. This was a very large, deep cupola around which the other couches were closely grouped, and it was occupied.

Conway began to climb toward it, but the foothold he had been using gave way suddenly and a stub of broken-off piping dug him painfully in the side without, fortunately, rupturing his suit.

“Careful, damn it!” Fletcher snapped. “We don’t need another casualty.”

“Don’t bite my head off, Captain,” Conway said, then laughed nervously at his unfortunate choice of words.

He cringed inwardly as he climbed toward the central cupola in the wake of the Captain, thinking that the crew on duty and those in the Dormitory Deck had had to find a way through this mess, and in great haste because of the toxic vapor flooding through the ship. They were much smaller than Earth-humans, of course, but even so they must have been badly cut by that tangle of metal. In fact, they had been badly cut, with the exceptions of the DCMH in the dormitory and the new life-form above them, neither of whom had attempted to escape.

“Careful, Doctor,” the Captain said.

An idea which had been taking shape at the back of his mind dissolved. Irritably, Conway said, “What can it do except look at me and twitch its stumps?”

The casualty hung sideways in its webbing against the lower lip of the cupola, a great fleshy, elongated pear shape perhaps four times the mass of an adult human. The narrow end terminated in a large, bulbous head mounted on a walrus neck which was arched downward so that the two big, widely spaced eyes could regard the rescuers. Conway could count seven of the feebly twitching stumps projecting through gaps in the webbing, and there were probably others he could not see.

He braced himself against a control console which had remained in place and took out his scanner, but delayed beginning the examination until Murchison, who had just arrived, could climb up beside him. Then he said firmly, “We will have to remain with this casualty overnight, Captain. Please instruct Lieutenant Haslam to evacuate all the other casualties on the next trip, and to bring down the litter stripped of nonessential life-support equipment so that it will accommodate this new casualty. We also need extra air tanks for ourselves and oxygen for die casualty, heaters, lifting gear, and webbing, and anything else you think we need.”

For a long moment the Captain was silent, then he said, “You heard the Doctor, Haslam.”

Fletcher did not speak to them while they were examining the new casualty other than to warn them when a piece of loose wreckage was about to fall. The Captain did not have to be told that a wide path would have to be cleared between the big control cupola and the open hatch if the litter was to be guided in and out again carrying the large alien. It was likely to be a long, difficult job lasting most of the coming night, made more difficult by ensuring that none of the debris struck Murchison, Conway, or their patient. But the two medics were much too engrossed in their examination to worry about the falling debris.

“I won’t attempt to classify this life-form,” Conway said nearly an hour later when he was summing up their findings for Doctor Prilicla. “There are, or were, ten limbs distributed laterally, of varying thicknesses judging by the stumps. The sole exception is the one on the underside which is thicker than any of the others. The purpose of these missing limbs, the number and type of manipulatory and ambulatory appendages, is unknown.

“The brain is large and well developed,” he want on, looking aside at Murchison for corroboration, “with a small, separate lobe with a high mineral content in the cell structure suggesting one of the V classifications—”

“A wide-range telepath?” Prilicla broke in excitedly.

“I’d say not,” Conway replied. “Telepathy limited to its own species, perhaps, or possibly simple empathy. This is borne out by the-fact that its ears are well developed and the mouth, although very small and toothless, has shown itself capable of modulating sounds. A being who talks and listens cannot be a wide-range telepath, since the telepathic faculty is supplemented by a spoken language. But the being did not display agitation on seeing us, which could mean that it is aware our intentions toward it are good.

“Regarding the airway and lungs,” Conway continued, “you can see that there is the usual inflammation present but that the lung damage is minor. We are assuming that since the being was unable to move when the gas permeated the ship, it was able, with its large lung capacity, to hold its breath until most of the toxic vapor had dissipated. But the digestive system is baffling us. The food passage is extremely narrow and seems to have collapsed in several places, and with few teeth for chewing food it is difficult . . . to see how—”

Con way’s voice slowed to a stop while his mind raced on. Beside him Murchison was making self-derogatory remarks because she, too, had not spotted it sooner, and Prilicla said, “Are you thinking what I am thinking, friends?”

There was no need to reply. Conway said, “Captain, where are you?”

Fletcher had cleared a narrow path for himself to the open hatch. While they had been talking they had heard his boots moving back and forth along the outer hull, but for the past few minutes there had been silence.

“On the ground outside, Doctor,” Fletcher replied. “I’ve been trying to find the best way of moving out the big one. In my opinion we can’t swing it down the sides of the wreck, too much sprung plating and debris, and the stern isn’t much better. We’ll have to lower it from the prow. But carefully. I jarred my ankles badly when I jumped from it to the sand, which is only about an inch deep over a gently sloping shelf of rock in that area. Obviously the big life-form needed a special elevator to board and debark, because the extending ladder arrangement below the hatch is usable only by the three smaller life-forms.

“I’m about to reenter the ship through the cargo hold hatch,” he ended. “Is there a problem?”

“No, Captain,” Conway said. “But on your way here would you bring the cadaver from the Dormitory Deck?”

Fletcher grunted assent and Murchison and Conway resumed their discussion with Prilicla, stopping frequently to verify with their scanners the various points raised. When the Captain arrived pushing the dead DCMH ahead of him, Conway had just finished attaching an oxygen tank and breathing tube to the patient and covering its head in a plastic envelope against the time when, during the night, the entry hatch would be closed and the fumes produced by the cutting torch against the metal and plastic debris might turn out to be even more toxic than those from the hydraulic reservoir.

They took the cadaver from Fletcher and, holding it above their heads, fitted it into one of the control couches designed for it. The big alien did not react and they tried it in a second, then a third couch. This time the patient’s stub tentacles began to twitch and one of them made contact with the DCMH. It maintained the contact for several seconds then slowly withdrew and the big entity became still again.

Conway gave a long sigh, then said, “It fits, it all fits. Prilicla, keep your patients on oxygen and IV fluids. I don’t think they will return to full consciousness until they have food as well, but the hospital can synthesize that when we get back.” To Murchison he said, “All we need now is an analysis of the stomach contents of that cadaver. But don’t do the dissection here, do it in the corridor. It would probably, well, upset the Captain.”

“Not me,” Fletcher said, who was already at work with his cutting torch. “I won’t even look.”

Murchison laughed and pointed to the patient hanging above them. She said, “He was talking about the other Captain, Captain.”

Before Fletcher could reply, Haslam announced that he would be landing in fifteen minutes.

“Better stay with the patient while I help the Captain load the lander,” Conway

told Murchison. “Radiate feelings of reassurance at it; that’s all we can do right now. If we all left it might think it was being abandoned.”

“You intend leaving her here alone?” Fletcher said harshly.

“Yes, but there is no danger—“Conway began, when the voice of Dodds interrupted him.

“There is nothing moving within a twenty-mile radius of the wreck, sir,” he said reassuringly, “except thorn patches.”

Fletcher said very little while they were helping Haslam move the casualties from the outcropping into the lander and while they were pushing the litter with its load of spare equipment to the wreck. It was unlike the Captain, who usually spoke his mind no matter who or what was bothering him, to behave this way. But Conway’s mind was too busy with other things to have time to probe.

“I was thinking,” Conway said when they reached the open cargo hatch, “that according to Dodds the thorn patches are attracted to food and warmth. We are going to create a lot of warmth inside the wreck, and there is a storage deck filled with food containers as well. Suppose we move as much food as we can from the wreck and scatter it in front of the thorn clumps—that might make them lose interest in the wreck for a while.”

“I hope so,” Fletcher said.

The lander took off in a small, self-created sandstorm as Conway was dragging the first containers of food toward the edge of the nearest thorn patch, which was about four hundred meters astern of the wreck. They had agreed that Fletcher would move the containers from the storage deck to the ground outside the hatch, and Conway would scatter them along the front of the advancing thorns. He had wanted to use,the litter with its greater capacity and gravity neutralizers, but Naydrad had stated in its forthright fashion that the Doctor was unused to controlling the vehicle and if the gravity settings were wrong or a part of the load fell off, the litter would disappear skyward or blow weightlessly away.

Conway was forced to do it the hard way.

“Make this the last one, Doctor,” the Captain said as he was coming in from his eighth round trip. “The wind is rising.”

The shadow of the wreck had lengthened steadily as he worked and the sky had deepened in color. The suit’s sensors showed a marked drop in the outside temperature, but Conway had been generating so much body heat himself that he had not noticed it. He threw the containers as far in front and to each side of him as he could, opening some of them to make sure that the thorns would know that the unopened containers also held food, although they could probably sense that for themselves. The thorn clumps covered the sand across a wide front like black, irregular crosshatching, seemingly motionless. But every time he looked away for a few minutes then back again, they were closer.

Suddenly the thorn patches and everything else disappeared behind a dark-brown curtain of sand and a gust of wind punched him in the back, knocking him to his knees. He tried to get to his feet but an eddy blew him onto his side. Half crawling and half running, he headed back toward the wreck, although by then he had no clear idea where it was. The storm-driven sand was hissing so loudly against his helmet that he could barely hear Dodds’ voice.

“My sensors show you heading toward the thorns, Doctor,” the astrogator said urgently. “Turn right about one hundred ten degrees and the wreck is about three hundred meters distant.”

Fletcher was outside the cargo hatch with his suit spotlight turned to maximum power to guide him in. The Captain pushed him through the hatch and closed it behind him. The crash had warped the hatch so that sand continued to blow in around the edges, except near the bottom where it came through in a steady trickle.

“Within a few minutes the outside of the hatch will be sealed by a sand drift,” Fletcher said without looking at Conway. “It will be difficult for our cannibal to get in. Dodds will spot it on the sensors anyway and I’ll have time to take the necessary steps.”

Conway shook his head and said, “We’ve nothing to worry about except the wind, sand, and thorn patches.” Silently he added, If that wasn’t enough.

The Captain grunted and began climbing through the hatch leading to the corridor, and Conway crawled after him. But it was not until Fletcher slowed to pass the leaking hydraulic reservoir, which was steaming very faintly now, that Conway spoke.

“Is there anything else bothering you, Captain?”

Fletcher stopped and for the first time in over an hour looked directly at the Doctor. He said, “Yes, there is. That creature in the Control Deck bothers me. Even in the hospital, what can you do for it, a multiple amputee? It will be completely helpless, little more than a live specimen for study. I’m wondering if it would not be better just to let the cold take it and—”

“We can do a great deal for it, Captain,” Conway broke in, “if we can get it safely through the night. Weren’t you listening to Murchison, Prilicla, and me discussing the case?”

“Yes and no, Doctor,” Fletcher said, moving forward again. “Some of it was quite technical, and you might as well have been talking untranslated Kelgian so far as I was concerned.”

Conway laughed quietly and said, “Then I had better translate.”

The alien vessel had released, its distress beacon, he explained, not because of a technical malfunction but because of serious illness on board which had affected the entire crew. Presumably the least affected crew members were on duty on the Control Deck while the rest were confined to their hammocks. It was still not clear why the ship had to put down on a planet. Possibly there were physiological reasons why a planetary gravity or atmosphere was needed, or maybe the weightless conditions on board aggravated the condition and they could not provide artificial gravity by using their thrusters because the crew were fast losing consciousness. Whatever the reason they had made an emergency landing on Trugdil. There were much better landing sites on the planet, but their degree of urgency must have been extreme and they had landed here.

Conway broke off as they entered the Control Deck because Murchison was high above them closing the personnel hatch. She said, “Don’t let me interrupt you, but now that we will be using the cutting torches in a confined space, I’m going to take the patient off pure oxygen. It seems to be breathing easily now. Would one part oxygen to four inert.be suitable, Doctor?”

“Fine,” Conway said. “I’ll help you.”

The hissing of sand against the outer hull rose suddenly and the whole ship seemed to lurch sideways. There was a screeching and banging sound from amidships, which halted suddenly as a section of hull plating tore free and blew away.

“A piece of the wreck has blown away,” Dodds reported unnecessarily, then went on, “The thorn patches have halted over the food containers, and those nearby are converging on the area. But there are other large clumps off to the side which are still heading directly for the wreck. They are moving quite fast. The wind is behind them and they are letting it carry them forward using only enough of their root system to maintain a loose hold on the ground. At this rate they could be at the ship in half an hour.”

It was as if an enormous, soft pillow struck the side of the ship. The deck tilted under their feet, then righted itself. This time it sounded as if maniacs with sledgehammers were attacking three different sections of the hull until, a few seconds later, the banging ceased. But to the sound of the sand beating against the hull plating was added the discordant moaning and whistling of the wind as it forced its way into the wreck.

“Our defenses,” the Captain said worriedly, “have become decidedly porous. But go on, Doctor.”

“The ship made an emergency landing here,” Conway resumed, “because they had no time to look for a better spot. It was a good landing, all things considered, and it was sheer bad luck that they toppled and as a result ruptured that hydraulic reservoir. If they hadn’t done so it is possible that their illness, whatever the cause, would have run its course and in time they would have taken off again. Or maybe the first sandstorm would have knocked them over anyway. But instead they crash-landed and found themselves suddenly in a wreck which was rapidly filling with toxic fumes. Weakened by their condition as they were, they had to get out fast and, because the escape routes aft led past the source of the contaminant and were partly blocked by wreckage from the fall, they had to evacuate through the Control Deck here and along the upper surface of the hull, then slide to the ground.

“They injured themselves very seriously in doing so,” Con-way added.

He paused for a moment to help Murchison change over the patient’s air supply. From the stern there was a clanking sound which reverberated steadily and monotonously throughout the ship. One of the pieces of wreckage was refusing to become detached. Conway raised his voice.

“The reason they did not move far from their ship was probably two-fold,” he continued. “As a result of the debilitating effects of their illness, they did not have the strength to move farther, and I suspect there were strong psychological reasons for remaining close to their ship. Their physical condition, the high temperatures, and the indications of malnutrition observed, which we mistakenly assumed to be due to enforced starvation, were symptoms of the disease. The state of deep unconsciousness may also have been a symptom, or possibly some kind of hibernation mode which they adopt when injured or otherwise distressed and assistance is likely to be delayed, and which slows the metabolic rate and reduces bleeding.”

Fletcher was readying his cutting torch and looking baffled. He said, “Disease and injuries caused by escaping from the wreck I can believe. But what about the missing limbs and—”

“Dodds, sir,” Rhobwar’s astrogator broke in. “I’m afraid the midnight drop in wind strength will not affect your area. There are local weather disturbances. Three large thorn patches have reached the stern and sections of the peripheral growth are entering the food storage deck. A lot of hull plating is missing there. Once they open that concentrated store of food they’ll probably lose interest in anything else.” His optimism sounded forced.

Murchison said, “We’re not completely sure that it was a disease that caused the trouble, Captain. From the analysis of the stomach contents of the cadaver from the dormitory deck the indications are that it was a severe gastrointestinal infection caused by a bug native to their home planet, and the symptom which led us to suspect malnutrition was total regurgitation of stomach contents in all of the other cases. The casualty from the dormitory had been knocked unconscious before the process was complete and was asphyxiated shortly afterward so that involuntary regurgitation did not take place. But it is also possible that the ship’s own food supply was contaminated and that caused the trouble.”

Conway wondered if it was possible for a mobile omnivorous vegetable to get food poisoning, and if it would take effect in time to save them from the thorns. He rather doubted it.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Fletcher said, and went on, “About the missing limbs?”

“There are no missing limbs. Captain,” she replied. “Or perhaps the crew are all missing the same organ, their head. The large number of the other injuries concealed the truth at first, but there are no missing limbs, and there is no criminal.”

Fletcher looked at Conway, too polite to express his disbelief to the pathologist in words, and the Doctor took over the explanation. But he had to work as he talked because he and Murchison were faced with the long, difficult job of transferring the big alien from its cupola to the litter.

It was hard to imagine the set of environmental circumstances which had caused such an essentially helpless life-form to evolve, become dominant, and in time achieve a culture capable of star travel, Conway said, but these gross, limbless, and all too obviously immobile creatures had done just that. It was a host-symbiote, they now knew, who had developed multiple symbiotes specialized so as to act as short-and long-range manipulators and sensors. Its stumps and the areas which on the casualties had been mistaken for amputation sites were the interfaces which joined the host creature to its symbiotes when physical activity became necessary or the host required sustenance.

It was likely that a strong mental as well as physical bond existed between the host Captain and its crew, but continuous contact was not needed because in and around the wreck there had been three times the number of crew members as there were organic connectors on the host. It was also probable that the host entity did not sleep and provided continual, nonphys-ical support to its symbiotes. This was borne out by the type of emotional radiation being picked up on Rhabwar by Prili-cla—confusion and feelings of loss. The host Captain’s telepathic or empathic faculty did not reach as far as the ambulance ship’s orbit.

“The smallest, DCLG life-form is independently intelligent and performs the finer, more intricate manipulative operations,” Murchison joined in, clarifying the situation in her own mind as well as for the Captain, who had disappeared briefly into the corridor to check on the position of the thorns. “As is the slightly larger DCMH. But the function of the big DCOJ is purely that of eating and supplying predigested food to the host. There is evidence, however, that all three of these life-forms have their own ingestion, digestion, and reproductive systems, but one of them must figure in the transfer of sperm or ova between immobile host creatures—”

She broke off as the Captain returned, his cutter in one hand and what looked like a short, tangled piece of barbed wire in the other. He said, “The thorns have grown out of the food storage deck and are halfway along the corridor. I brought you a sample, ma’am.”

She took it from him carefully and Conway joined her for a closer look. It was like a dark-brown, three-dimensional zigzag with fine green thorns growing out of every angle, except one which sprouted a long, tapering hollow tube like the vegetable equivalent of a hypodermic needle, and which was probably a root. She snipped off the thorns with surgical scissors and let them drop into her analyzer.

“Why did we have to wear lightweight suits?” she said a few minutes later. “A scratch from a thorn won’t kill you, but three or four would. What are you doing, Captain?”

Fletcher was unclipping the signal flare from his backpack. He said, “You can see from the charring on the stem that they burn. I removed that sample with the cutting torch. But the flame isn’t self-sustaining. Maybe this will stunt its growth for a while. Stay clear of the corridor entrance, both of you. These things were not meant to be used in a confined space.”

He set the timer on the flare and threw it as hard as he could into the corridor. The beam of light which poured out of the entrance was so intense that it looked almost solid, and the hissing of the flare was louder even than the sand lashing against the outer hull. The beam maintained its intensity but began to flicker as smoke poured from the entrance. The thorns were burning, Conway thought excitedly, and hoped that the pyrotechnics were not worrying their patient too much. It seemed to be unusually agitated—

There was a sudden, crashing detonation. Pieces of the flare, burning thorn branches, and parts of the dissected DCMH erupted from the corridor entrance, and the cupola edge Conway was gripping seemed to jerk in his hands. He hung on desperately as the vertical deck swung toward him, accompanied by the. screech of tearing metal. There was a softer shock and the metallic noises ceased. The emergency lighting had died but there was enough illumination from the sputtering pieces of flare and their helmet lights to show that the patient had fallen out of its cupola and was hanging directly above him, suspended only by its webbing, sections of which were beginning to tear.

“The litter!” Conway shouted. “Help me!”

There was so much smoke from the flare that all he could see clearly were Murchison’s and the Captain’s helmet lights. He let go his hold with one hand and felt around for the litter, which had been left drifting weightlessly with repulsors set to one negative G so as to make the vehicle easier to maneuver in the confined space. He found it and a few seconds later felt other hands steadying it. Above him the alien hung like a great organic tree trunk with its stumps projecting between the webbing, ready to fall and crush him and probably kill itself on the charred but still poisonous thorns below them.

Suddenly it sagged closer. Conway flinched, but the rest of the webbing was holding it. He felt for the control panel of the litter. “Get it under the things!” he shouted. “Right under its center of gravity, that’s it.”

Gradually he increased the repulsion until the litter was pressing firmly against the underside of the patient, and again until the being’s entire weight was being supported and the webbing was simply holding it against any lateral movement. He became aware of the voice of Dodds in his phones, asking over and over again what had happened and were they all right.

“We’re all right,” Fletcher said angrily. “And you tell us what happened, Lieutenant. What are your sensors for?”

“An explosion at the site of the damaged hydraulic reservoir, sir,” DQdds said, sounding relieved. “The stuff is highly inflammable as well as toxic, it seems, and the flare set it off. The explosion broke the back of the ship where it lies across that rock outcropping, and now the prow is lying on the sand, too. Amidships and stern sections have been stripped of plating by the explosion and the wind. The ship looks very open, sir.”

The smoke had cleared but fine clouds of sand were blowing through the Control Deck from somewhere. Fletcher said dryly, “I believe you, Dodds. It is also very cold. How long until pickup?”

“Just under three hours, sir,” Dodds replied. “Sunrise is in two hours and the wind should have abated an hour later.”

The two portable heaters and spare cutting torch had been shaken loose by the explosion and had fallen into the thorns. One of the heaters was still functioning but its .effect was severely reduced by the icy, sand-laden wind sweeping out of the corridor. Conway shivered and clenched his teeth, both to stop them chattering and in reaction to the indescribable noise of the wind screaming through the bare bones of the stern section and the irregular, thunderous din of the remaining plating shaking itself loose. He resiled the portable lights, which had survived the explosion, so that they were within a few feet of the litter. They gave a little warmth.

More than an hour was spent completing the transfer of the alien from its cupola to the litter and securing it in the vehicle. The being, too, was suffering from the cold—its organic connectors twitched continuously and patterns of wrinkles marched across its smooth, featureless body. Conway tried to find something to wrap around it, but all that was available was the control cupola webbing from its own and the crew’s positions. By the time he had finished, the being was virtually cocooned in the stuff and the few areas of skin visible were still twitching and wrinkling.

They moved it up to the sealed personnel hatch, hoping that the available heat would rise and it would be fractionally warmer UP there. The difference, to Conway, was indetectable. He wondered if it would be possible to rescue the other heater, but when he looked down he saw that a fresh, uncharred tangle of thorns had grown in from the corridor and was climbing toward them.

“Doctor,” said Fletcher quickly, indicating a large ceiling panel which was held in position by a single remaining support strut. “Hold onto that while I cut it free.”

They dropped the panel onto the thorns and knotted loose pieces of webbing together into a rope so that the Captain could lower himself onto its center. The panel buckled slightly under his weight but the thorns beneath the plate were forced down by two meters or more. Fletcher kneeled carefully on his makeshift raft and unlimbered his cutting torch. With,the flame focused down to a long, thin needle he attacked the thorns all around him.

After nearly six hours of constant use the power pack was exhausted. When the flame dimmed and died, Fletcher got carefully to his feet and began flexing and straightening his legs, bouncing the section of plating up and down. The thorns were forced lower. He paused for a rest and still the plate continued to sink. But now the needle-sharp thorns were growing in from the edges of the raft, slowly submerging it.

The rope of webbing was barely within reach. Fletcher steadied himself, jumped, and caught the end in a double grip as the plate teetered and disappeared sideways under the thorns. Conway climbed down as far as he could and pulled the rope close so that Fletcher could get his feet onto the edge of a projecting cabinet.

“Did you see the way that thing moved itself from under the plate and surrounded you, Captain?” Murchison said when they rejoined her. “It’s very slow, but do you think we are hurting a potentially intelligent vegetable life-form?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the Captain said with feeling, “but not nearly enough.”

“Eighty minutes to go, sir,” Dodds said.

They detached the few pieces of wreckage and equipment that could be dislodged by hand and dropped them onto the thorns, but with little effect. Fletcher and Conway took turns hacking at the growth with a metal support strut, but still it grew slowly toward them. Soon there was not enough space to move around freely or exercise to keep warm, or more accurately, less cold. They could only huddle close to the personnel hatch, teeth clenched together to keep from chattering, and watch the thorns creep closer.

The scene was being relayed to Rhabwar and was causing increasing concern. Lieutenant Haslam said suddenly, “I can launch now, sir, and—”

“No,” the Captain said firmly. “If you touch down before it is safe to do so and the lander is blown over, nobody here will get out of this mess—”

He broke off because his voice had suddenly sounded very loud.

The wind had died.

“Open up,” Fletcher said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The dark-blue morning sky showed through the opening hatch and a negligible quantity of sand blew in. They maneuvered the litter and its trussed-up casualty through the opening and onto the upper surface of the hull.

“The lull may be temporary, sir,” Dodds warned. “There are still a few squalls running through your area.”

The rising sun was still hidden behind sand clouds, but there was more than enough light to see that the surface had been drastically altered overnight by the shifting of many sand drifts. From midships to stem the wreck was denuded of plating, but the skeleton had been filled out by a tightly packed tangle of thorns. The upper surface of the ship forward to the prow was intact, and the rocky shelf ahead was clear of thorns.

“One large squall will hit you in about twelve minutes,” Dodds added.

They jammed the litter against the open hatch and attached its magnetic grapples to the hull. Then they secured their suit safety lines to the massive hinge and threw themselves across the litter, hooking their fingers into the webbing around the casualty. It was just one more physical indignity for the alien captain, Conway thought, but by now the being was probably Past caring about such things.

Abruptly the sky was dark again and the wind and sand tore M them, threatening to lift them bodily off the hull. Conway desperately gripped the webbing as he felt the magnetic grap-begin to slide and the litter slue around. He wondered if the wind would blow him beyond the surrounding thorns were he to let go his grip and his safety line. But his fingers were locked in a cramp and he felt that his arms, like those of the alien Captain, were about to be separated from his torso. Then as suddenly as it had come the wind died and it was light again.

He saw that Murchison, Fletcher, and the patient were still safely attached to the litter. But he did not move. It grew brighter and he could feel the sun warming his side when the sand lashed at them again, accompanied by a high-pitched, screaming thunder.

“Extrovert!” Murchison yelled.

Conway looked up to see the lander hovering ahead of the ship and blasting sand in all directions with its thrusters. Haslam touched down on the shelf of rock which was clear of thorns, barely fifty meters from them.

There were no problems while moving the litter to the other ship, and no shortage of time to do it even though the thorns were already inching toward it. Before loading it on board, Conway removed the extra webbing and the makeshift eye protection from the patient and gave it a thorough examination. In spite of everything it had gone through it was alive and, in Conway’s opinion, very well.

“How about the others, Prilicla?” he asked.

“The temperatures of all of them have come down, friend Conway,” the empath replied. “They are radiating strong feelings of hunger, but not on the level of distress. Since the food supply on the wreck has been lost, and may have been contaminated anyway, they will have to wait until the hospital’s synthesizers provide some. Otherwise they are emoting feelings of confusion and loss.

“But they will feel much better,” Prilicla added, “when they rejoin their Captain.”

COMBINED OPERATION

They emerged into normal space at a point whose coordinates placed them far out on the galactic rim and where the brightest object to be seen was a nearby sun burning coldly against a faint powdering of stars. But as Conway stared through Control’s direct vision port, it became obvious that the emptiness was only apparent, because suddenly both the radar and long-range sensor displays were indicating two contacts, very close together and just under two thousand kilometers distant. For the next few minutes Conway expected to be ignored.

“Control, Power Room,” Captain Fletcher said briskly. “I Want maximum thrust in five minutes. Astrogator, give me the numbers to put us alongside that trace, and the ETA.”

Lieutenants Chen and Dodds, seven decks below and a few feet away respectively, acknowledged. Then Lieutenant Has-tam, from the Communications position, joined in.

“Sir,” he said without taking his attention from his displays, “the sensor readings suggest that the larger trace has the mass, ^nfiguration, and antennae deployment of a scoutship engaged °n survey duty. The other trace is currently unidentifiable, but relative positions might indicate a recent collision.”

“Very well,” the Captain said. He touched his transmit stud and, speaking slowly and distinctly, he went on, “This is the ambulance ship Rhabwar, operating out of Sector Twelve General Hospital, responding to your distress beacon released six plus hours ago. We will close with you in—”

“Fifty-three minutes,” Dodds supplied.

“—If you are able to communicate, please identify yourselves, specify the nature of your trouble, and list the type and number of casualties.”

In the supernumerary’s position Con way leaned forward intently, even though the difference of a few centimeters could not affect the clarity of any incoming message. But when the voice did come it sounded apologetic rather than distressed . . .

“The Monitor Corps scoutship Tyrell here, Major Nelson commanding,” it said. “It was our distress beacon, but we released it on behalf of the wreck you see beside us. Our medical officer isn’t sure, you understand, because its medical experience covers only three species, but it thinks that there may still be life on board.”

“Doctor—” the Captain began, looking across at Conway. But before he could go on, Haslam was reporting again.

“Sir! Another, no, two more traces. Similar mass and configuration as the distressed vessel. Also smaller, widely scattered pieces of metallic wreckage.”

“That’s the other reason why we released our beacon,” Nelson’s voice sounded from Tyrell. “We don’t have your long-range sensor equipment—our stuff is chiefly photooptical and computing gear associated with survey work—but this area seems to be littered with wreckage and, while I don’t entirely agree with my medic that some of it must contain survivors, the possibility does exist that—”

“You were quite right to call for help, Captain Nelson,” Conway said, breaking in. “We would much rather answer a dozen false alarms than risk missing one which might mean a rescue. Space accidents being what they are, most distress calls are answered too late in any case. However, Captain, as a matter of urgency we need the physiological classification of the wreck’s survivors and the nature and extent of their injuries so that we can begin making preparations for accommodating and treating them.

“I am Senior Physician Conway,” he enaea. may i apvan ;to your medical officer?”

There was a long, hissing silence during which Haslam reported several more traces and added that, while the data were far from complete, the distribution of the wreckage was such that he was fairly certain that the accident had happened ; to a very large ship which had been blown apart into uniform pieces, and that the wreckage alongside Tyrell and the -other similar pieces which were appearing all over his screens were lifeboats. Judging by the spread of the wreckage so far detected, the disaster had not been a recent occurrence.

Then the speaker came to life again with a flat, emotionless voice, robbed of all inflection by the process of translation. “I am Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul, Doctor Conway,” it said. “My knowledge of other-species physiology is small, since I have had medical experience with only the Earth-human, Ni-dian, and my own Orligian life-forms, all of which, as you know, fall within the DBDG warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing classification.”

The fact that the natives of Orligia and their planetary neighbor Nidia had a marked disparity in physical mass and one of them possessed an overall coat of tight, curly red fur was too small a difference to affect the four-letter classification coding, Conway thought as the other doctor was talking. Just like the small difference which had, in the early days of their stellar exploration, caused Orligia and Earth to fight the first, brief, and so far only interstellar war.

For this reason the Orligians and Earth-humans were more than friendly—nowadays they went out of their way to help each other—and it was a great pity that Krach-Yul was too professionally inexperienced to be really helpful. All Conway could hope for was that the Orligian medic had had sense enough to restrain its professional curiosity and not poke its friendly, furry nose into a situation which was completely beyond its experience.

“We did not enter the wreck,” the Orligian was saying, “because our crew members are not specialists in alien technology and there was the danger of them inadvertently contributing to the problem rather than its solution. I considered telling through die hull and withdrawing a sample of the wreck’s atmosphere, in the hope that the survivor was a warm-blooded oxygen breather like ourselves and we could pump in air. But I decided against this course in case their atmosphere was an exotic mixture which we could not supply and we would then have reduced their ship’s internal pressure to no purpose.

“We are not certain that there is a survivor, Doctor,” Krach-Yul went on. “Our sensors indicate pressure within the wreck, a small power source, and the presence of what appears to be one large mass of organic material which is incompletely visible through the viewports. We do not know if it is living.”

Conway sighed. Where extraterrestrial physiology and medicine were concerned this Krach-YuI was uneducated, but it certainly was not unintelligent. He could imagine the Orligian qualifying on its home planet, moving to the neighboring world of Nidia, and later joining the Monitor Corps to further increase its e-t experience and, while treating the minor ills and injuries of an Earth-human scoutship crew, hoping for something just like this to happen. The Orligian was probably one great, furry lump of curiosity regarding the organic contents of the wreck, but it knew its professional limitations. Conway was already developing a liking for the Orligian medic, sight unseen.

“Very good, Doctor,” Conway said warmly. “But I have a request. Your vessel has a portable airlock. To save time would you mind—”

“It has already been deployed, Doctor,” the Orligian broke in, “and attached to the wreck’s hull over the largest entry port we could find. We are assuming it is an entry port, but it could be a large access panel because we did not try to open it. The wreck was spinning about its lateral axis and this motion was checked by Tyrell’s tractor-beams, but otherwise the vessel is as we found it.”

Conway thanked the other and unstrapped himself from his couch. He could see several new traces on the radar display, but it was the picture of Tyrell and the wreck growing visibly larger on the forward screen which was his immediate concern.

“What are your intentions, Doctor?” the Captain asked.

Indicating the image of the wreck, Conway said, “It doesn’t seem to be too badly damaged and there isn’t much sharp metal in sight so, in the interests of a fast recovery, my people will wear lightweight suits. I shall take Pathologist Murchison and

Doctor Prilicla. Charge Nurse Naydrad will remain in the Casualty Deck lock with the litter, ready to pressurize it with the survivors’ atmosphere as soon as Murchison analyzes it. You, sir, will come along to pick the alien airlock?”

Rhabwar was the first of its kind. Designed as a special ambulance ship, it had the configuration and mass of a Federation light cruiser, which was the largest type of Monitor Corps vessel capable of aerodynamic maneuver within a planetary atmosphere. As he pulled himself aft along the gravity-free central well, Conway was visualizing its gleaming white hull and delta wings decorated with the Occluded Sun, the Brown Leaf, the Red Cross, and the many other symbols which represented the concept of aid freely given throughout the worlds of the Federation.

It was a Traltha-built ship with all the design and structural advantages which that implied, and named Rhabwar after one of the great figures of Tralthan medical history. The ship had been designed for operation by an Earth-human crew, whose quarters were immediately below Control on Deck Two. The medical team occupied similar accommodation on Three except in the matter of furniture and bedding for the Kelgian Charge Nurse and reduced artificial gravity for the Cinrusskin empath.

Deck Four was a compromise, Conway thought as he pulled himself past it, a combination Messdeck and recreation room where the people who worked together were expected, regardless of physiological classification, to play together—even though there was barely enough room to play a game of chess when everyone was present. The whole of Five was devoted to the ship’s consumables, which comprised not only the food required by six Earth-humans, a Kelgian, and a Cinrusskin of classifications DBDG, DBLF, and GLNO respectively, but the storage tanks whose contents were capable of reproducing or synthesizing the atmosphere breathed by any species known to the Galactic Federation.

Six and Seven, where Conway was headed, were the Casualty Deck and underlying lab and treatment ward. Here the gravity, atmospheric pressure, and composition could be varied to suit the life-support requirements of any survivors who might be brought in. Deck Eight was the Power Room, the province of Lieutenant Chen, who controlled the ship’s hyperdrive generators and normal space thrusters, the power supply for the artificial gravity grids, tractor and pressor beams, communications, sensors, and everything which made the energy-hungry ship live.

Conway was still thinking of the diminuitive Chen and the frightful powers available at the touch of one of his stubby fingers when he arrived on the Casualty Deck. He did not have to speak because his earlier conversation with the Captain had been relayed to Casualty, as were the more interesting and important displays on Control’s screens. There was nothing for him to do except climb into his spacesuit—he had a very good medical team who kept their equipment and themselves at instant readiness, and who tried constantly to make their leader feel redundant.

Murchison was bending and stretching to check the seals of her lightweight spacesuit, and Naydrad was inside the casualty entrance lock testing a pressure litter, its beautiful silver fur rippling in slow waves along its caterpillarlike body as it worked. The incredibly fragile Prilicla, aided by its gravity nullifiers and a double set of iridescent wings, was hovering close to the ceiling where it would not be endangered by an accidental collision with one of its more massive colleagues. Its eight, pipestem legs were twitching slowly in unison, indicating that it was being exposed to emotional radiation of a pleasurable kind.

Murchison looked from Prilicla to Conway and said, “Stop that.”

Conway knew that it was Murchison, albeit indirectly, and himself who were responsible for the Cinrusskin’s twitchings. Prilicla, like the other members of its intelligent and sensitive race, possessed a highly developed empathic faculty which caused it to react to the most minute changes and levels of feeling in those surrounding it. Pathologist Murchison possessed that combination of physical attributes which made it extremely difficult for any Earth-human male DBDG to regard her with anything like clinical detachment—and while she was Wearing a contour-hugging lightweight suit it was downright impossible.

“Sorry,” Conway said, laughing, and began climbing into his own suit.

The wreck looked like a long section of metal tree trunk with a few short, twisted branches sprouting from it, Conway thought as they launched themselves from Rhabwar’s casualty lock toward the distressed alien ship, but apart from those pieces of projecting metal the vessel seemed to have retained its structural integrity. He could see two small viewports reflecting the ambulance ship’s floodlights like two tiny suns. One of the ports was set about two meters back from the bows of the wreck and the other a similar distance from the stern, although it was impossible to say just then which was which, and he had learned that there were another two viewports in identical positions on the side hidden from him.

He could also see the loose, transparent folds of Tyrell’s portable airlock clinging to the hull like a wrinkled limpet and, beside it, the tiny figure of what could only be the scoutship’s Orligian medic, Krach-Yul.

Fletcher, Mufchison, and Conway landed beside the Orligian. They did not speak and they tried hard not to think so that Prilicla, who was slowly circling the distressed vessel, would be able to feel for survivors with the minimum of emotional interference. If anything lived inside that wreck, no matter how faintly the spark of life glowed, the little empath would detect it.

“This is very strange, friend Conway,” said Prilicla after nearly fifteen minutes had passed and they were all radiating feelings of impatience in spite of themselves. “There is life on board, one source only, and the emotional radiation is so very faint that I cannot locate it with accuracy. And contrary to what I would expect in these circumstances, there are no indications that the survivor is in a distressed condition.”

“Could the survivor be an infant?” Krach-Yul asked, “Left in a safe place by adults who perished, and too young to realize that there is danger?”

Prilicla, who never disagreed with anyone because to do so might give rise to unpleasant emotional radiation from the other party, said, “The possibility cannot be dismissed, friend Krach-Yul.”

“An embryo, then,” Murchison said, “who still lives within its dead parent?”

“That is not impossible, either, friend Murchison,” Prilicla replied.

“Which means,” the Pathologist said, laughing, “that you don’t think much of that idea, either.”

“But there is a survivor,” the Captain said impatiently, “so let’s go in and get it out.”

Fletcher wriggled through the double seal of the portable airlock and under the folds of tough, transparent plastic which, when inflated, would form a chamber large enough for them to work at extricating the survivor and, if necessary, provide emergency treatment. Murchison and Conway, meanwhile, spenf several minutes at each of the tiny viewports, which were so deeply recessed that their helmet lights showed only areas of featureless leathery tegument.

When they joined the Captain in the lock, Fletcher said, “There are only so many ways of opening a door. It can hinge inward or outward, unscrew in either direction, slide open, or dilate. The actuator for this one appears to be a simple recessed lever which—Oh!”

The large metal hatch was swinging open. Conway tensed, waiting to feel the outward rush of the ship’s air tugging at his suit and inflating the portable lock, but nothing else happened. The Captain grasped the edge with both hands, detached his foot magnets so that his legs swung away from the hull, and drew his head deep inside the opening. “This isn’t an airlock but a simple access hatch to mechanisms and systems situated between the inner and outer hulls. I can see cable runs, plumbing, and what looks like a—”

“I need an air sample,” Murchison said, “quickly.” “Sorry, ma’am,” Fletcher said. He let go with one hand and pointed carefully, then went on, “It seems obvious that only the inner hull is airtight. It should be safe enough for you if you site your drill in the angle between that support bracket and cable loom just there. I don’t know how efficient their insulation is, but that cable is too thin to carry much power. The color coding suggests that their visual range is similar to ours, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would,” Murchison agreed.

Conway said quickly, “If you use a Five drill it will be wide enough to take an Eye.”

“I intend doing that,” she said dryly.

The drill whirred briefly, the sound conducted through the metal of the hull and the fabric of Conway’s suit, and a sample of the ship’s atmosphere hissed through the hollow drill-head and into the analyzer.

“The pressure is a little low by our standards,” she reported quietly, “but that could be dangerously low or normal so far as the survivor is concerned. Composition, the proportion of oxygen to inert gases, makes it a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-form. I shall now insert the Eye.”

Conway saw her detach the analyzer from the hollow drill and, so expertly that she could not have lost more than a few cubic centimeters of ship’s atmosphere in the process, replace it with the Eye. Very carefully she threaded in the transparent tube containing the lens, light source, and vision recorder through the hollow center of the drill, then attached the eyepiece and magnifier which_ would enable her to use the instrument while wearing a space helmet.

For what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten minutes she swiveled the lens and varied the light intensity, without speaking. Then she wriggled backward out of the opening to give Conway and the others a look.

“It’s big,” she said.

The interior of the wreck was a hollow cylinder completely free of compartment dividers or structural crossmembers and the floor—Conway was assuming it was the floor because it was flat and ran the length of the ship—had a double line of closely spaced holes three or four inches in diameter running down the middle. Seven or eight pairs of the survivor’s feet disappeared into the holes so they were probably part of the vessel’s system of safety restraints, as were the broad bands of torn webbing which floated loosely about its body.

The Eye was positioned close to floor level so that Conway could see the being’s flank along the section whose feet were held in the deck holes. Farther along, where the feet had been pulled free by the force of the accident to its ship, he could see in detail the double line of stubby, centipedal legs and the pale-gray underside. In the opposite direction—he could not tell whether it was toward the being’s head or tail—he could make out part of the upper surface of the creature and a single line of dorsal tentacular appendages. The long, cylindrical compartment did not give the being much room to maneuver arid the twists and curves of the weightless, flaccid body seriously hampered viewing, but at the limit of his vision Conway could just make out three lengths of tubing, pencil thin, transparent, and apparently flexible, which sprouted from a container attached to the wall to disappear into the body of the survivor.

Despite the multiplicity of the being’s arms and legs there seemed to be very little if anything for it to do. Apart from a large number of wall-mounted storage cabinets, the interior of the ship was bare of anything resembling control and indication systems or any obvious means by which the vessel could be guided by its occupant—unless, of course, there was a small control center forward in the area concealed by the survivor’s body.

Conway must have been thinking aloud because the Captain, who had just returned

from an external examination of the ship, said seriously, “There is nothing for it to do, Doctor. Except for a very unsophisticated power cell which, at present, is not being used to power anything, there is nothing. No propulsion unit, no attitude control jets, no recognizable external sensors or communications, no personnel lock. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a ship or some kind of survival pod. This would explain the odd configuration of the vessel, which is a cylinder of constant diameter with a perfectly flat face at each end. However, when I sighted along the hull in an effort to detect minor protrusions which could have housed sensor equipment, I observed that the cylinder was very slightly curved along its longitudinal axis. This opens up another possibility which—”

“What about power sources and comm equipment mounted outboard?” Conway broke in before the Captain’s observations could develop into a lecture on ship design philosophy. “We have matched hyperdrive generators on our wingtips and perhaps these people had a similar idea.”

“No, Doctor,” Fletcher said in the cool, formal tone he used when he thought someone was trying to tell him his business. “I examined those external spars, which have been broken off too short to give any indication of the type of structure they supported, but the wiring still attached to them is much too thin to carry power to a hyperspace generator. In fact, I seriously doubt if these people had either hyperdrive or artificial gravity, and the general level of technology displayed is pretty elementary for a star-traveling race. Then there is the apparent absence of an entry port. An airlock for this beastie would have to be almost as long as the vessel itself.”

“There are a few star-traveling species who do not use them,” Conway said. “For purely physiological reasons they do not indulge in extravehicular activity, entering and leaving their ships only at time of departure and arrival.”

“Suppose,” Murchison said, “this vehicle is the being’s spacesuit.”

“A nice idea, ma’am, but no,” Fletcher said apologetically. “Apart from the four viewports, whose angles of vision are severely limited because of their small size and the space between the outer and inner hulls, there is no sensory input of any kind known to me and, more important, no external manipulators. But there must be some easy way of getting that beastie into and out of that thing, whether it is a ship, a survival pod, or something else.”

There was a long silence, then Conway said, “I’m sorry, Captain. A few minutes ago you were about to mention a third possibility when I interrupted you.”

“I was,” Fletcher said in the tone of one graciously receiving an apology. “But you will understand, Doctor, that the theory is based on my initial visual observation only and not, as yet, supported by accurate measurements. Nevertheless, as I have already stated, this vessel is not a true cylinder but appears to be curved slightly along its longitudinal axis.

“Now, an explosion or collision sufficiently violent to warp the cylinder out of true,” he went on, slipping into his lecturing manner, “would buckle and open up seams in the hull plating, and leave evidence of heat discoloration and indentations from flying debris. There are no such indications. So if the longitudinal axis of the vessel is, in fact, a very flat curve rather than a straight line, then the curvature was deliberate, built in. This would explain the lack of power and control linkages and an artificial gravity system because they used—”

“Of course!” Conway broke in. “The hull beneath the flat deck was outward facing and free of structural projections, which means that they got their gravity the old-fashioned way by—”

“Will one of you,” Murchison said crossly, “kindly tell me what you are talking about?”

“Certainly,” Conway said. “The Captain has convinced me that this structure is not a ship or a lifeboat, but a section of a space station, an early Wheeltype of very large diameter, which suffered a collision.”

“A space station away out here?” Murchison sounded incredulous. Then she began to realize the implications and added feelingly, “In that case we could have an awful lot of work ahead of us.”

“Maybe not, ma’am,” Fletcher said. “Admittedly there is a strong possibility of finding many more space station segments, but the survivors may be very few.” His tone became suddenly forceful. “Transferring that creature to our Casualty Deck is out of the question. Instead I suggest we attach it to our hull, extend Rhabwar’s hyperspace envelope accordingly, and whisk it back to Sector General where their airlocks can easily handle a patient extraction problem of this size. I am not the e-t medical specialist, of course, but I think we should do this at once, leaving Tyrell to search for other survivors, and then return as soon as possible for the others.” “No,” Conway said firmly.

“I don’t understand you, Doctor.” Behind his helmet visor Fletcher’s face had gone red.

Conway ignored him for a moment while he addressed Murchison and Prilicla, who had drifted closer in spite of the strong emotional radiation being generated in the area. He said, “The survivor, so far as we are able to see, is linked to what appears to be some kind of life-support system by three separate sets of tubing. It is deeply unconscious but not physically distressed. There is also the fact that its vessel contains a reservoir of power which is not presently being used. Now, would either of you agree that the observed emotional radiation and apparent lack of physical injury could be the result of it being in a hibernation anesthesia condition?”

Before either of them could reply, Conway added, “Since there is no evidence of the presence of the power-hungry, complex refrigeration systems which we associate with suspended animation techniques, just three sets of tubing entering its body, would you also agree that the life-form is a natural hibernator?”

There was a short silence, then Murchison said, “We are familiar with the idea of long-term suspended animation being associated with star travel—that used to be the only way to do it, after all, and the cold-sleeping travelers would require neither air nor food during their trips. In the case of a life-form with the ability to go periodically into a state of hibernation for planetary environmental reasons, a minimal supply of food and air would be required. It is quite possible that the natural process of hibernation could be artificially initiated, extended, and counteracted by specific medication and the food supplied intravenously, as seems to be the case with our friend here.”

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said, “the survivor’s emotional radiation pattern agrees in every particular with the hypothesis of hibernation anesthesia.”

Captain Fletcher was not slow on the uptake. He said, “Very well, Doctor. The survivor has been in this condition for a very long time, so there is no great urgency about moving it or the other survivors we might find to the hospital. But what are your immediate intentions?”

Conway was aware of a multiple, purely subjective silence as the party on the alien’s hull and the communications officers who were listening in on Rhabwar and Tyrell held their collective breath. He cleared his throat and said, “We will examine this section of space station, if that is what it is, as closely as possible without entering it, and simultaneously make as detailed a visual examination of the survivor as we can using the Eye, and then we will all try to think.”

He had the feeling, very strong and not at all pleasant to judge by the trembling of Prilicla’s spidery limbs, that this was not going to be an easy rescue.

For a little over three hours, the duration remaining to their lightweight suits, they did nothing but think as they examined the exterior of the wreck and what little they could see of its occupant, slowly adding data which might or might not be important. But they thought as individuals, increasingly baffled individuals, so that it was not until they met on Rhabwar’s Messdeck and recreation level that they were able to think as an equally baffled group.

Tyrett was represented by its Captain, Major Nelson, .and Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul, while Major Fletcher and the astrogation officer, Lieutenant Dodds, furnished the required military balance for Rhabwar. Murchison, Prilicla, Naydrad, and Conway—who were, after all, mere civilians—filled the remainder of the deck space with the exception of the empath, who was clinging to the safety of the ceiling.

It was Prilicla, knowing that nobody else felt ready to contribute any useful ideas, who spoke first.

“I feel that we are all agreed,” it said in the musical trills and clicks of the Cinrusskin tongue, which emanated from their translator packs as faultless if somewhat toneless speech in the languages of Kelgia, Orligia, and Earth, “that the being is in a state of suspended animation, that there is a high probability that it is not a patient but a survivor who should be returned to its home world as soon as convenient if this planet can be found, and that the need to move it is not an urgent one.”

Lieutenant Dodds looked at Fletcher for permission to speak, then said, “It depends on what you mean by urgent, Doctor. I ran a vectors and velocities check on this and the other pieces of wreckage within detector range. These bits of alien vessel or space station occupied roughly the same volume of space approximately eighty-seven years ago, which is when the disaster must have occurred. If it was a ship I don’t think it was heading for the nearby sun since there are no planets, but a lot of the dispersed wreckage will either fall into the sun or pass closely enough to make no difference to any other survivors in hibernation. This will begin to occur in just over eleven weeks.”

They digested that for a moment, then Tyrell’s Captain said, “I still say a space station way out here is impossible, especially one traveling at such a clip that its wreckage will reach the sun, there, in eleven weeks. It is far more likely that the survivor is in a lifeboat with suspended animation extending the duration of its consumables.”

Fletcher glared at his fellow captain, then he noticed Prilicla beginning to tremble. He visibly calmed himself as he said.

“It is not impossible, Major Nelson, although it is unlikely. Let us suppose that the survivor’s race, which is at the interplanetary flight level of technology, was beginning to experiment with hyperspace generation on its space station and inadvertently performed a random Jump and found themselves very far indeed from home, and subsequently went into hibernation for the reason you have stated. Many such accidents have occurred during early experiments with hypertravel. In any case, I think we are drawing too many conclusions from what is, after all, only one small piece of a very large jigsaw.”

Conway decided to join in before this spirited exchange of technical views could devolve into a quarrel. He said placatingly, “But what conclusions, however few and tentative, can we draw from the piece you have examined, Captain? And what,

however vaguely, can you see of the complete picture?”

“Very well,” said Fletcher. He quickly inserted his vision spool from the wreck into the Recreation Deck’s display unit and began to describe everything he had observed and deduced during his examination of the distressed vessel, which he preferred to think of as a simple, pressurized container rather than a ship. It was a cylinder just over twenty meters in length and approximately three meters in diameter, with ends which were flat except for a, set of eight couplings which would enable it to be connected at either end to other similar containers. The couplings had been designed to break open before any external shock or force applied to adjacent structures could damage or deform the container. If the dimensions of the other containers or space station sections were the same as the one examined, and if the longitudinal curvature was uniform in all of them, then approximately eighty of these sections would form a Wheel just under five hundred meters in diameter.

He paused, but Major Nelson still had his lips pressed tightly together, and the others, knowing that a reaction was expected of them, kept perversely silent.

The section had a double hull with only the inner one pressurized, Fletcher resumed, but it possessed no control, sensor, or power systems other than those associated with the suspended animation equipment. The level of technology displayed was advanced interplanetary rather than interstellar, so the station had no business being where it was in the first place.

But the most puzzling feature of the container was the method used to enter and leave it.

They had already seen that there were no openings on the hull large enough to allow entry or exit by the survivor, which meant that it had to enter and leave via the flat, circular plate at each end of the cylinder. In Fletcher’s opinion the creature went in one end and came out the other because physically it was too massive to turn itself around inside its container. But there was nothing resembling a door at either end of the cylinder, just the two large circular plates whose edges were set inside the thick rims which supported the couplings.

“So far as I can see there is no operating mechanism for these endplates,” Fletcher went on with the hint of an apology creeping into his tone. “There are only so many ways for a door to open, and there has to be a door into and out of that thing, but I can’t find one. I even considered explosive bolts, with the extraterrestrial sealed in until it arrived or was taken by its rescuers to an environmentally suitable position—either a planet or the hold of a rescue ship—whereupon it would blow the hatch fastenings and crawl out. But there are no hatch fastenings that I can see and the rim structure surrounding the hatches, if that is what they are, would not allow them to be blown open. Neither can they be opened inward because the diameter of the inner, pressurized hull is much smaller than that of the endplates.”

Fletcher shook his head in bafflement and ended, “I’m sorry, Doctor. Right now I can see no way for you to get to your survivor without cutting its ship apart. What I need is another piece of this jigsaw puzzle to examine, a broken piece which will let me see how the other undamaged pieces were put together.”

There was silence for a few seconds, during which Prilicla trembled in sympathy with the Captain’s embarrassment, then Murchison spoke.

“I would like to examine a broken piece as well,” she said quietly. “Specifically, a piece containing a nonsurvivor which would let me see how our survivor is put together.”

Con way turned to Dodds. “Are there many pieces which look as if they had been broken up?”

“A few,” replied the astrogator. “Most of the traces give sensor readings similar to the first piece. That is, a vehicle of similar mass retaining internal pressure and containing a small power source. All of the pieces, including the few damaged ones, are at extreme sensor range. It is a long way to go on impulse drive, but if we jumped through hyperspace we would probably overshoot.”

“How many pieces altogether?” asked Nelson.

“Twenty-three solid traces so far,” said Dodds, “plus a few masses of what appears to be loose, structural debris. There is also one largish mass, unpressurized and radioactive, which I’d guess was part of a power center.”

From its position on the ceiling, Prilicla said, “If I might make a suggestion, and if Major Nelson is willing to interrupt his survey mission . . . ?”

Nelson laughed suddenly and the other Corps officers present smiled. With great feeling he went on, “There isn’t a scout-ship crew on survey duty anywhere in the Galaxy who would not rather be doing something, anything, else! You only have to ask and give me half an excuse for accepting, Doctor.”

“Thank you, friend Nelson,” said the empath with a slow tremor of pleasure. “My suggestion is that Rhabwar and Tyrell act independently to seek out other survivors and return them to this area, using tractor beams if the distance is short enough for impulse drive or by extending the hyperspace envelopes to include them if a Jump is necessary. My empathic faculty enables me to identify sections containing living occupants and, because of the large mass of these beings, Doctor Krach-Yul and Nurse Naydrad should accompany me to assist with treatment, should this be possible. Pathologist Murchison and you, friend Conway, are well able to identify living casualties by more orthodox means if the ship’s sensors are uncertain.

“This will halve the time needed to search for other survivors,” Prilicla ended apologetically, “even though the period will still be a lengthy one.”

Tyrell’s medical officer spoke for the first time, its whining and barking speech translating as “I always assumed that a space rescue by ambulance ship would be a fast, dramatic, and decisive operation. This one appears to be disappointingly slow.”

“I agree, Doctor,” said Conway. “We need help if this job is not to take months instead of a few days. Not one scoutship but a flotilla, or better yet a squadron of them to search the entire—”

Captain Nelson began to laugh, then broke off when he saw that Conway was serious. He said, “Doctor, I’m just a major in the Monitor Corps and so is Captain Fletcher. We haven’t got the rank to whistle up a flotilla of scoutships no matter how much you think we need them. All we can do is explain the situation and put in a very humble request.”

Fletcher looked at his fellow Captain and opened his mouth to speak, then changed his mind.

Conway smiled and said, “I am a civilian, Captain, with no rank at all. Or considered in another way, I, as a specialist member of the public, have ultimate authority over people like yourselves who are public servants—”

Clearing his throat noisily, Fletcher said, “Please spare us the political philosophy, Doctor. Do you wish me to get off a subspace signal to Sector base requesting massive assistance because of a large number of widely scattered potential survivors of a hitherto unknown life-form?”

“That’s it,” said Conway. “And would you also take charge of assigning search areas to the scoutships if and when they arrive? In the meantime we’ll do as Prilicla suggests, except that Murchison and I will go in Tyrell, if that is agreeable to you, Captain.”

“A pleasure,” said Nelson, looking at Murchison.

“Because your crew aren’t used to our fragile friend scampering about on their ceilings and there might be an accident,” he continued. “But right now we’ll need help to transfer some of our portable equipment to your ship.”

While their gear was being moved to the scoutship and Conway was trying hard to keep Murchison from transferring the Casualty Deck’s diagnostic and treatment equipment in toto, Tyrell’s portable airlock was detached from the alien vessel and restowed on board in case it would be needed on one of the other widely scattered sections. Several times as they worked, Rhabwar’s lighting and gravity control fluctuated in momentary overload, indicating that Conway’s subspace signal was going out.

He knew that Fletcher was keeping the signal as brief as possible because the power required to punch a message through the highly theoretical medium of subspace from a vessel of Rhabwar’s relatively small size would have Lieutenant Chen in the Power Room chewing his nails. Even so, that signal would be splattered with interstellar static and have audible holes blown through it by every intervening cloud of ionized gas, star, or quasistellar object, and for that reason the message had been speeded up many times and repeated so that the people at the receiving end would be able to piece together a normal-speed coherent message from the jumble reaching them.

But their response to the signal was an entirely different matter, Conway thought worriedly. Despite his seeming confidence before the others, he did not know what would happen because this was the first time he had made such a request.

Nelson had invited Murchison and Conway to Control so that they could observe Tyrell’s approach to the second section of alien space station to be investigated, and so that his crew could observe the pathologist. Since the subspace signal had gone out six hours earlier, the Captain had been regarding Conway with a mixture of anxiety and awe as if he did not know whether the Doctor was seriously self-deluded or a highly potent individual indeed.

The messages which erupted from his Control Room speaker shortly afterward, and which continued with only a few minutes’ break between them for the best part of the next hour, resolved his doubts but left him feeling even more confused.

“Scoutship Tedlin to Rhabwar. Instructions please.”

“Scoutship Tenelphi to Rhabwar, requesting reassignment instructions.”

“Scoutship Torrance, acting flotilla leader. I have seven units and eighteen more to follow presently. You have work for us, RhabwarT'

Finally Nelson muted the speaker and the sound of Captain Fletcher assigning search areas to the newly arrived scoutships, which were being ordered to search for sections of the alien space station and bring them to the vicinity of Rhabwar. With so much help available, Fletcher had decided that the ambulance ship would not itself join in the search but would instead remain by the first section to coordinate the operation and give medical assistance. Confident that the situation was under control, Conway relaxed and turned to face Captain Nelson, whose curiosity had become an almost palpable thing.

“You—you are just a doctor, Doctor?” he said.

“That’s right, Captain,” Murchison said before Conway could reply. She laughed and went on, “And stop looking at him like that, you’ll give him an inflated sense of his own importance.”

“My colleagues are constantly on guard against the possibility of that happening,” Conway said dryly. “But Pathologist Murchison is right. I am not important, nor are any of the Monitor Corps officers or the medical team on Rhabwar. It is our job which is important enough to command the reassignment of a few flotillas of scoutships to assist.”

“But it requires the rank of subfleet Commander or highej to order such a thing—” Nelson began, and broke off as Con-way shook his head.

“To explain it I must first fill in some background, Captain,” he said. “Some of this information is common knowledge. Much of it is not because the relevant decisions of the Federation Council and their effects on Monitor Corps operational priorities are too recent for it to have filtered down to you. And you’ll excuse me, I hope, if some of it is elementary, especially to a scoutship Captain on a survey mission . . .”

Only a tiny fraction of the Galaxy had been explored by the Earth-humans or by any of the sixty-odd other races who made up the Galactic Federation, so that the member races were in the peculiar position of people who had friends in far countries but had no idea who was living in the next street. The reason for this was that travelers tended to meet each other more often than the people who stayed at home, especially when the travelers exchanged addresses and visited each other regularly.

Visiting was comparatively easy. Providing there were no major distorting influences on the way and the exact coordinates of the destination were known, it was almost as easy to travel through hyperspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other side of the galaxy. But first one had to find a system containing a planet with intelligent life before its coordinates could be logged, and finding new inhabited systems was proving to be no easy task.

Very, very slowly a few of the blank areas in the star maps were being surveyed and explored, but with little success. When survey scoutship like Tyrell turned up a star with planets it was a rare find, even rarer if one of the planets harbored life. And if one of these life-forms was intelligent then jubilation, not unmixed with concern over what might possibly be a future threat to the Pax Galactica, swept the worlds of the Federation, and the cultural contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were assigned the tricky, time-consuming, and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.

The cultural contact people were the elite of the Monitor Corps, a small group of specialists in extraterrestrial communications, philosophy, and psychology. Although small, the group was not, regrettably, overworked.

“During the past twenty years,” Conway went on, “they have initiated first-contact procedure on three occasions, all of which were successful and resulted in the species concerned joining the Federation. There is no need to bore you with such details as the fantastically large number of survey missions mounted, the ships, personnel, and material involved, or shock you with the cost of it all. I mention the cultural contact group’s three successes simply to make the point that within the same period Sector Twelve General Hospital, our first multienviron-ment medical treatment center, became fully operational and initiated first contacts which resulted in seven new species joining the Federation.

“This was accomplished,” he explained, “not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by giving medical assistance to a sick alien.”

This was something of an oversimplification, Conway admitted. There were the medical and surgical problems inherent in treating a hitherto unknown life-form. Sector General’s translation computer, the second largest in the Federation, was available, as was the assistance of the Monitor Corps’ hospital-based communications specialists, and the Corps had been responsible for rescuing and bringing in many of the extraterrestrial casualties in the first place. But the fact remained that the hospital, by giving medical assistance, demonstrated the Federation’s goodwill toward e-ts much more simply and directly than could have been done by any time-consuming exchange of concepts.

Because all Federation ships were required to file course and passenger or crew details before departure, the position of a distress signal was usually a good indication of the ship and therefore the physiological classification of the beings who had run into trouble, and an ambulance ship with matching crew and life-support equipment was sent from Sector General or from the ship’s home planet to assist it. But there had been instances, far more than was generally realized, when the disasters involved beings unknown to the Federation in urgent need of help, help which the would-be rescuers were powerless to give.

Only when the rescue ship concerned had the capability of extending its hyperspace envelope to include the distressed vessel, or the survivors could be extricated safely and a suitable environment provided for them within the Federation ship, could they be transported to Sector General for treatment. The result was that many hitherto unknown life-forms, entities of high intelligence and advanced technology, were lost except as interesting specimens for dissection and study.

But an answer to this problem had been sought and, hopefully, found.

“It was decided to build and equip a very special ambulance ship,” Conway continued, “which would give priority to answering distress signals whose positions did not agree with the flight plans filed by Federation vessels. The First Contact people consider Rhabwar to be the near-perfect answer in that we involve ourselves only with star^traveling species, beings who are expecting to encounter new and to them alien life-forms and who, should they get into trouble, would not be expected to display serious xenophobic reactions when we try to help them. Another reason why the cultural contact people prefer meeting star travelers to planetbound species is that they can never be sure whether they are helping or hindering the newly discovered culture’s natural development, giving them a technological leg up or a crushing inferiority complex.

“Anyway,” Conway said, smiling as he pointed at Nelson’s main display where the newly arrived scoutships covered the screen, “now you know that it is Rhabwar which has the rank and not any member of its crew.”

Nelson was looking only slightly less impressed, but before he could speak the voices of two scoutship commanders reporting to Rhabwar sounded in quick succession. Both vessels had emerged from hyperspace close to sections of alien space station and were already returning to the rendezvous point with them in tow on long-focus tractor beams. In both cases the sections gave sensor indications of life on board.

“The news isn’t all good, however,” Nelson said, pointing at his main display where an enlarged picture of the section toward which they were heading filled the screen. “That one has taken a beating and I don’t see how the occupant could have survived.”

Conway nodded, and as the wrecked section turned slowly to present an end view, Murchison added, “Obviously it didn’t.”

The, alien cylinder had been dented and punctured by multiple collisions with some of the structural members which had furnished the supporting framework of the original space station and which was still drifting nearby. Amid the loose tangle of debris was one of the section’s circular endplates, and from the open end of .the compartment the body of its occupant protruded like an enormous, dessicated caterpillar.

“Can you relay ihis picture to RhabwarT Conway asked.

“If I can get a word in edgewise,” Nelson replied, glancing at his speaker, which was carrying a continuous, muted conversation between, Fletcher and the scoutships.

Murchison had been staring intently at the screen. She said suddenly, “It would be a waste of time examining that cadaver out here. Can you put a tractor on it, Captain, and take us back to RhabwarT

“We’ll need to bring back the wreck for study as well,” Conway said. “The life-support and suspended animation systems will give us important information on the being’s physiology and—”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” Nelson said. For several seconds the voices from Rhabwar and the scoutships had been silent and the Captain had seized the chance to send a message of his own. He went on, “Tyrell here. Will you accept a visual relay, Rhabwarl Doctor Conway thinks it’s important.”

“Go ahead, Tyrell” Fletcher’s voice said. “All other traffic wait out.”

There was a long silence while Rhabwar’s Captain studied the image of the slowly rotating wreck and the attached cadaver, long enough for it to make three complete revolutions, then Fletcher spoke. The tone and words were so uncharacteristic that they scarcely recognized his voice. “I’m a fool, a stupid damned fool for not seeing it!”

It was Murchison who asked the obvious question. “For not seeing how that endplate opened,” Fletcher replied. He made several more self-derogatory remarks in an undertone, then went on, “It drops out, or there is probably a spring-loaded actuator which pushes it out through the slot which you can see behind the coupling collar. No doubt there is an internal air pressure sensor linked to the actuator to keep the endplate from popping out accidentally when the section is in space or the adjoining section is airless. Do you intend returning with this section and not just the cadaver?”

The tone of the question suggested that if such was not the Doctor’s intention, then forceful arguments would be forthcoming to make him change his mind.

“As quickly as possible,” Conway said dryly. “Pathologist Murchison is just as keen to look inside that alien as you are to look inside its ship. Please ask Naydrad to stand by the Casualty Lock.”

“Will do,” Fletcher said. He paused for a moment, then went on seriously, “You realize, Doctor, that the manner in which these cylinders open means that their occupants were sealed into their suspended animation compartments while in atmosphere, almost certainly on their home planet, and the cylinders were not meant to be opened until their arrival on the target world. These people are members of a-sublight colonization attempt.”

“Yes,” Conway said absently. He was thinking about the probable reaction of the hospital to receiving a bunch of outsize, hibernating e-ts who were not, strictly speaking, patients but the survivors of a failed colonization flight. Sector General was a hospital, not a refugee camp. It would insist, and rightly, that the colonists be transferred either to their planet of origin or destination. Since the surviving colonists were in no immediate danger there might be no need to involve the hospital at all—or the ambulance ship—except in an advisory capacity. He added, “We are going to need more help.”

“Yes,” Fletcher said with great feeling. It was obvious that his thinking had been parallelling Conway’s. “Rhabwar out.”

By the time Tyrell had returned to the assembly area, it was beginning to look congested. Twenty-eight hibernation compartments—all of which, according to Prilicla, contained living e-ts—hung in the darkness like a gigantic, three-dimensional picture showing the agglutinization of a strain of rod-shaped bacilli. Each section had been numbered for later identification and examination. There were no other scoutships in the area because they were busy retrieving more cylinders.

Even with the Casualty Deck’s artificial gravity switched off and tractor beams aiding the transfer, it took Murchison, Naydrad, and Conway more than an hour to extricate the cadaver from its wrecked compartment and bring it into Rhabwar.

Once inside it flowed over the examination table on each side and on to intrument trolleys, beds, and whatever else could be found around the room to support its massive, coiling body.

Fletcher paid them a visit some hours later to see the cadaver at close range, but he had chosen a moment when Murchison’s investigation was moving from the visual examination to the dissection stage and his stay was brief. As he was leaving he said, “When you can be spared here, Doctor, would you mind coming up

to Control?”

Conway nodded without looking up from his scanner examination of one of the alien’s breathing orifices and its tracheal connection. The Captain had left when he straightened up a few minutes later and said, “I just can’t make head or tail of this thing.”

“That is understandable, Doctor,” Naydrad said, who belonged to a very literal-minded species. “The being appears to have neither.”

Murchison looked up from her microscopic examination of a length of nerve ganglia and rubbed her eyes. She said, “Naydrad is quite right. Both head and tail sections are absent and may have been surgically removed, although I cannot be certain of that even though there are indications of minor surgery having taken place at one extremity. All that we know for sure is that it is a warm-blooded oxygen breather and probably an adult. I say 'probably' despite the fact that the creature in the first cylinder was relatively more massive. Genetic factors generally make for size differences among the adults of most species, so I cannot assume that it is an adolescent or younger. Of one thing I am sure—Thornnastor is going to enjoy itself with this one.”

“So are you,” Conway said.

She smiled tiredly and went on, “I don’t wish to give the impression that you are not helping, Doctor. You are. But I had the distinct feeling back there that the Captain was just being polite, and he wants to see you very urgently.”

Prilicla, who had been resting on the ceiling between trips outside to monitor the emotional radiation of newly arrived survivors, made trilling and clicking noises which translated as “For a nonempath, friend Murchison, your feeling was re^ markably accurate.”

When Conway entered Control a few mintues later, both captains were present and they looked relieved to see him. It was Nelson who spoke first.

“Doctor,” he said quickly, “I think this rescue mission is getting out of hand. So far thirty-eight contacts have been made and the sensors report the presence of life on all but two of them, and more cylinders are being reported every few minutes. They are all uniform in size and the present indications are that there are many more sections out there than would be necessary to complete one Wheel.”

“If, for technical or physiological reasons, the alien vessel had to have the configuration of a Wheel,” Conway said thoughtfully, “then it could have been built, as were some of our early space stations, in a series of concentric circles, as wheels within wheels.”

Nelson shook his head. “The longitudinal curvature on all sections is identical. Could there have been two Wheels, separate but identical vessels, which were in collision?”

“I disagree with the collision theory,” Fletcher said, joining in for the first time. “At least between two or more Wheels. There are far too many survivors and undamaged sections for that. Their vessel seems to have fallen apart. I think there was a high-velocity collision with a natural body, the shock of which shook the hub and central support structure apart.”

Conway was trying to visualize the finished shape of this alien jigsaw puzzle. He said, “But you still think there was more than one Wheel?”

“Not exactly,” Fletcher replied. “Two of them mounted side by side, with a different alien or set of aliens in each. Right now we don’t know whether we are retrieving single aliens who have been surgically modified for travel or pieces of much larger creatures, and we won’t know how many we are dealing with until the scoutships begin bringing back heads and tails. I’m assuming that all of the occupants were in suspended animation and their ship ran itself, accelerating or decelerating along its vertical axis. If I’m right then the hub wreckage should contain the remains of just one propulsion unit and one section which contained the automatic navigation and sensor equipment.”

Conway nodded. “A neat theory, Captain. Is it possible to prove it?”

Fletcher smiled and said, “All of the pieces are out there, even though some of them will be smashed into their component parts and difficult to identify, but given time and the necessary assistance we could fit them together.”

“You mean reconstruct it?”

“Perhaps,” Fletcher replied in an oddly neutral tone. “But is it really any of our business?”

Conway opened his mouth, intending to tell the other exactly what he thought of a damn fool question like that, then closed it again when he saw the expressions on both captains’ faces.

For the truth was that the situation which was developing here was no longer any of their business. Rhabwar was an ambulance ship, designed and provisioned for short-duration missions aimed at the rescue, emergency treatment, and transfer to the hospital of survivors of accident or disease in space. But these survivors did not require treatment or fast transport to the hospital. They had been in suspended animation for a long time and would be capable of remaining in that condition without harm for a long time to come. Reviving them and, more important, relocating them on a suitable planet would be a major project.

The sensible thing for Conway to do would be to bow out gracefully and dump the problem in the laps of the cultural contact specialists. Rhabwar could then return to its dock and the medical team could go back to treating the weird and wonderful variety of patients who turned up at Sector General while they waited for the next distress call for their special ambulance ship.

But the two men watching him so intently were a scoutship commander on survey duty, who would be lucky if he turned up one inhabited system in ten years of searching, and Major Fletcher, Rhabwar’s Captain and a recognized authority in the field of extraterrestrial comparative technology—and the rescue of this e-t sublight colonization transport could well be the biggest problem to face the Federation since the discovery and treatment of the continent-girdling strata creature of Drambo/

Conway looked from Nelson to Fletcher, then said quietly, “You’re right, Captain, this isn’t our responsibility. It is Cultural Contact’s problem, and they would not think any the less of us, in fact they would expect us to hand it over to them. But I get the impression that you don’t want me to do that.”

Fletcher shook his head firmly and Nelson said, “Doctor, if you have any friends in authority, tell them I would willingly give an arm or a leg to be allowed to stay on this one.”

A cool, logical portion of Conway’s mind was urging him to do the sensible thing, to think about what he was letting himself in for and to remember who would be blamed if things went wrong, but it never had any hope of winning that argument.

“Good,” Conway said, “that makes it unanimous.”

They were both grinning at him in a manner totally unbefitting their rank and responsibilities, as if he had bestowed some great favor instead of condemning them to months of unremitting mental and physical hard labor. He went on, “As the ship responsible for making the original find, Tyrell would be justified in remaining, and as the medical team in attendance, the same applies to Rhabwar. But we are going to need a lot of help, and if we are to have any hope of getting it you will have to give me detailed information on every aspect of this problem, not just the medical side, and answers to the questions which are going to be asked.

“To begin with, I shall need to know a great deal more about the physiology of the survivors, and you will have to find me a couple of additional cadavers for Thornnastor, the hospital’s Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology. It has six feet and weighs half a ton and if Murchison and I don’t come up with some sensible conclusions about this life-form, and specimens for Thorny to investigate independently, it will walk all over me. And what O’Mara and Skempton will do—”

“They’re public servants, Doctor,” Nelson said, grinning. “You have the rank.”

Conway got to his feet and said very seriously, “This is not simply a matter of whistling up another flotilla of scoutships, gentlemen, and something more than a hyperspace signal will be needed this time. To get the help we need I’ll have to go back to the hospital and argue and plead, and probably thump the table a bit.”

As he entered the gravity-free central well and began pulling himself toward the Casualty Deck he could hear Fletcher saying, “That wasn’t much of an inducement, Nelson. Most of his highly placed friends have more arms and legs than they know what to do with.”

Leaving Rhabwar and the rest of the medical team at the disaster site, Conway traveled to Sector General in Tyrell. He had requested an urgent meeting with

the hospital’s big three—Skempton, Thornnastor, and O’Mara—as soon as the scoutship had emerged into normal space. The request had been granted but Chief Psychologist O’Mara had told him curtly that there would be no point trying to start the meeting prematurely by worrying out loud over the communication channel, so Conway had to curb his impatience and try to marshal his arguments while Sector General slowly grew larger in the forward view-screen.

When Conway arrived in the Chief Psychologist’s office, Thornnastor, Skempton, and O’Mara were already waiting for him. Colonel Skempton, as the ranking Monitor Corps officer in the hospital, was occupying the only other chair, apart from O’Mara’s own, which was suitable for the use of Earth-humans; Thornnastor, like the other members of the Tralthan species, did everything including sleeping on its six, elephantine feet.

The Chief Psychologist waved a hand at the selection of e-t furniture ranged in front of his desk and said, “Take a seat if you can do so without injuring yourself, Doctor, and make your report.”

Conway arranged himself carefully in a Kelgian relaxer frame and began to describe briefly the events from the time Rhabwar had arrived in response to Tyrell’s distress beacon. He told of the investigation of the first section of the fragmented alien vessel which was the product of a race in the early stage of spaceship technology, possessing sublight drive and gravity furnished by rotating their ship. Every undamaged section found had contained an e-t in suspended animation. For this reason additional scoutships had been requested to help find and retrieve the remaining survivors as a matter of urgency because the majority of these widely scattered suspended animation' compartments would, in just under twelve weeks’ time, fall into or pass so close to a nearby sun that the beings inside them would perish.

While Conway was speaking, O’Mara stared at him with eyes which opened into a mind so perceptive and analytical that it gave the Chief Psychologist what amounted to a telepathic faculty. Thornnastor’s four eyes were focused equally on Conway and Colonel Skempton, who was staring down at his scratch pad where he was drawing a circle and going over it repeatedly without lifting his stylus. Conway found himself watching the pad as well, and abruptly he stopped talking.

Suddenly they were staring at him with all of their eyes, and Skempton said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, does my doodling distract you?”

“To the contrary, sir,” Conway said, smiling, “you have helped a lot.”

Ignoring the Colonel’s baffled expression, Conway went on, “Our original theory was that a sublight vessel with the configuration of a rotating wheeltype space station suffered a catastrophic malfunction or collision which carried away its hub-mounted propulsion and navigation systems, and jarred the rim structure apart; the subsequent dispersal of the suspended animation containers was aided by the centrifugal force which furnished their ship with artificial gravity. But the number of sections found just before I left the area were more than enough to form three complete Wheels and, because I have been bothered by the fact that no head segments have been found so far,

I have decided to discard the Wheel or multiple Wheel theory in favor of the more simple configuration suggested by the Colonel’s sketch of a continuous—”

“Doctor,” Thornnastor broke in firmly. As the Diagnosti-cian-in-Charge of Pathology it had a tendency toward single-mindedness where its specialty was concerned. “Kindly describe in detail and give me the physiological classification of this life-form and, of course, your assessment of the number of casualties we will be required to treat. And are specimens of this life-form available for study?”

Conway felt his face reddening as he made an admission no Senior Physician on the staff of Sector General should ever have to make. He said, “We cannot classify this life-form with complete certainty, sir. But I have brought you two cadavers in the hope that you may be able to do so. As I have already said, the survivors are still inside their suspended animation compartments and the relatively few who did not survive are in a badly damaged condition—in several pieces, in fact.”

Thornnastor made untranslatable noises which probably signified approval, then it said, “Had they not been in pieces, I would soon have rendered them so. But the fact that neither Murchison nor yourself are sure of their classification surprises and intrigues me, Doctor. Surely you are able to form a few tentative conclusions?”

Conway was suddenly glad that Prilicla was still on board Rhabwar because his embarrassment would have given the little empath a bad fit of the shakes. He said, “Yes, sir. The being we examined was a warm-blooded oxygen breather with the type of basic metabolism associated with that physiological grouping. The cadaver was massive, measuring approximately twenty meters in length and three meters in diameter, excluding projecting appendages. Physically it resembles the DBLF Kelgian life-form, but many times larger and possessing a leathery tegument rather than the silver fur of the Kelgians. Like the DBLFs it is multipedal, but the manipulatory appendages are positioned in a single row along the back.

“There were twenty-one of these dorsal limbs, all showing evidence of early evolutionary specialization. Six of them were long, heavy, and claw-tipped and were obviously evolved for defense since the being was a herbivore, and there were fifteen

in five groups of three spaced between the six heavier tentacles. Each of the thinner limbs terminated in four digits, two of which were opposable, and were manipulatory appendages originally evolved for gathering and transferring food to the mouths, of which there are three on each flank opening into three stomachs. Two additional orifices on each side open into a very large and complex lung. The structure inside these breathing orifices suggests that expelled air could be interrupted and modulated to produce intelligence-bearing sounds. On the underside were three openings used for the elimination of wastes.

“The mechanism of reproduction was unclear,” he continued, “and the specimen showed evidence of possessing both male and female genitalia on the forward and rear extremities, respectively. The brain, if it was the brain, took the form of a cable of nerve ganglia with localized swellings in three places, running longitudinally through the cadaver like a central core. There was another and much thinner nerve cable running parallel to the thicker core, but below it and about twenty-five centimeters from the underside. Positioned close to each extremity were two sets of three eyes, two of which were mounted dorsally and two on the forward and rear flanks. They were recessed but capable of limited extension and together gave the being complete and continuous vision vertically and horizontally. The type and positioning of the visual equipment and appendages suggest that it evolved on a very unfriendly world.

“Our tentative classification of the being,” Conway ended, “was an incomplete CRLT.”

“Incomplete?” Thornnastor said.

“Yes, sir,” Conway said. “The cadaver we examined had sustained minimum damage since it had died during a slow decompression while in suspended animation. We could be wrong, but there were signs of some kind of radical surgery having taken place, a double removal of what may have been the head and tail of the being. This was not a traumatic amputation caused by the disaster to their ship, but a deliberate procedure which may have been required to fit the being into its suspended animation container for the colonization attempt. The body tegument overall is thick and very tough, but at the extremities the only protection is a hard, transparent layer of organic material, and the underlying protrusions, fissures, orifices, and musculature look raw. This suggests—”

“Conway,” O’Mara said sharply, with a glance toward the suddenly paling Colonel. “With respect to Thornnastor, you have moved too quickly from the general to the particular. Please confine yourself at this stage to a simple statement of the problem and your proposed solution.”

Colonel Skempton was the man responsible for making Sector General function as an organization—but, as he was fond of telling his medical friends when they started to talk shop in grisly detail, he was a glorified bookkeeper, not a bloody surgeon! The trouble was that there was no way Conway could state his problem simply without offending the sensibilities of the overly squeamish Colonel.

“Simply,” Conway said, “the problem is a gigantic, worm-like entity, perhaps five kilometers or more in length, which has been chopped into many hundreds of pieces. The indicated treatment is to join the pieces together again, in the correct order.”

The Colonel’s stylus stopped in mid-doodle, Thornnastor made a loud, untranslatable sound, and O’Mara, normally a phlegmatic individual, said with considerable vehemence, “Conway, you are not considering bringing that—that Midgard Serpent to the hospital?”

Conway shook his head. “The hospital is much too small to handle it.”

“And so,” Skempton said, looking up for the first time, “is your ambulance ship.”

Before Conway could reply, Thornnastor said, “I find it difficult to believe that the entity you describe could survive such radical amputation. However, if Prilicla and yourself state that the separate sections so far recovered are alive, then I must accept it. But have you considered the possibility that it is a group entity, similar to the Telphi life-form which are stupid as individuals but highly intelligent as a gestalt? Physical fragmentation in those circumstances would be slightly more credible, Doctor.”

“Yes, sir, and we have not yet discarded that possibility—” Conway began.

“Very well, Doctor,” O’Mara broke in dryly. “You may restate the problem in less simple form.”

The problem . . . thought Conway.

He began by asking them to visualize the vast, alien ship as it had been before the disaster—not the multiple Wheel shape first discussed but a great, continuous, open coil of constant diameter and similar in configuration to the shape on the Colonel’s pad. The separate turns of the coil had been laced together by an open latticework of metal beams which held the vessel together as a rigid unit and provided the structural support needed along the thrust axis during take-off, acceleration, and landing. Assembled in orbit, the ship had been approximately five hundred meters in diameter and close on a mile long, with its power and propulsion system at one end of an axial support structure and the automatic guidance system and sensors at the other.

The exact nature of the accident or malfunction was not yet known, but judging by the observed effects it had been caused by a collision with a large natural object which, striking the vessel head-on, had taken out the guidance system forward, the axial structure, and the stern thrusters. The shock of the collision had shaken the great, rotating coil into its component suspended animation compartments, and centrifugal force had done the rest.

“This being—or beings—is so physiologically constituted,” Conway went on, “that to assist it we must first rebuild its ship and land it successfully. Fitting the pieces together again can be done most easily in weightless conditions. The fact that the twenty-meter sections of the coil have flown apart but retained their positions with respect to each other will greatly assist the reassembly operation—”

“Wait, wait,” the Colonel said. “I cannot see this operation being possible, Doctor. For one thing, you will need a very potent computer indeed to work out the trajectories of those expanding sections accurately enough to return them to their original positions in this—this jigsaw puzzle—and the equipment needed to reassemble it would be—”

“Captain Fletcher says it is possible,” Conway said firmly-"Piecing together the remains of an extraterrestria] ship has been done before, and much valuable knowledge was gained in the process. Admittedly, on previous occasions there were no living survivors to be pieced together as well and the work was on a much smaller scale.”

“Much smaller,” O’Mara said dryly. “Captain Fletcher is a theoretician and Rhabwar is his first operational command. Is he happy ordering three scoutship flotillas around?”

The Chief Psychologist was considering the problem in the terms of his own specialty, Conway knew, and as usual O’Mara was a jump ahead of everyone else.

“He seems to enjoy worrying about it,” Conway said carefully, “and there are no overt signs of megalomania.”

O’Mara nodded and sat back in his chair.

But the Colonel could jump to correct conclusions as well, if not always as quickly as the Chief Psychologist. He said, “Surely, O’Mara, you are not suggesting that Rhabwar direct this operation? It’s too damned big, and expensive. It has to be referred up to—”

“There isn’t time for committee decisions,” Conway began.

“—the Federation Council,” the Colonel finished. “And anyway, did Fletcher tell you how he proposed fitting this puzzle together?”

Conway nodded. “Yes, sir. It is a matter of basic design philosophy . . .” Captain Fletcher was of the opinion—an opinion shared by the majority of the Federation’s top designers—that any piece of machinery beyond a certain degree of complexity, be it a simple groundcar or a spaceship one kilometer long, required an enormous amount of prior design work, planning and tooling long before the first simple parts and subas-semblies could become three-dimensional metal on someone’s workbench. The number of detail and assembly drawings, wiring diagrams, and so on for even a small spaceship was mind-staggering, and the purpose of all this paperwork was simply to instruct beings of average intelligence how to manufacture and fit together the pieces of the jigsaw without knowing, or perhaps even caring, anything about the completed picture.

If normal Earth-human, Tralthan, Illensan, and Melfan practice was observed—and the engineers of those races and many others insisted that there was no easier way—then those drawings and the components they described must include instructions, identifying symbols, to guide the builders in the correct placing of these parts within the jigsaw.

Possibly there were extraterrestrial species which used more exotic methods of identifying components before assembly, such as tagging each part with an olfactory or tactile coding system, but this, considering the tremendous size of the coil ship and the number of parts to be identified and joined, would represent a totally unnecessary complication unless there were physiological reasons for doing things the hard way.

The cadaver had possessed eyes which operated within the normal visible spectrum, and Captain Fletcher was sure that the alien shipbuilders would do things the easy way by marking the surface of the components with identifying symbols which could be read at a glance. Following a detailed examination of a damaged suspended animation cylinder and the remains of its supporting framework, Fletcher found that the system of identification used was groups of symbols vibro-etched into the metal, and that adjoining components bore the same type and sequence of symbols except for the final letter or number. “Clearly they think, and put their spaceships together, much the same as we do,” Conway concluded.

“I see,” the Colonel said. He sat forward in his chair. “But decoding those symbols and fitting the parts .together will take a lot of time.”

“Or a lot of extra help,” Conway said. Skempton sat back, shaking his head. Thornnastor was silent also, but the slow, impatient thumping of its massive feet indicated that it was not likely to remain so for long. It was O’Mara who spoke first.

“What assistance will you need, Doctor?” Conway looked gratefully at the Chief Psychologist for getting straight to the point as well as for the implied support. But he knew that O’Mara would withdraw that support without hesitation if he had the slightest doubt about Conway’s ability to handle the problem. If Conway was to be confirmed in this assignment, he would have to convince O’Mara that he knew exactly what he was doing. He cleared his throat.

“First,” he said, “we should initiate an immediate search for the vessel’s home world so that we can learn as much as possible about this entity’s culture, environment, and food requirements, as well as having somewhere to put it when the rescue is complete. It is almost certain that the disaster caused a large deviation in the coilship’s course, and it is possible that the vessel suffered a guidance malfunction not associated with the accident which fragmented it, and it has already overshot the target world. This would complicate the search and increase the number of units conducting it.”

Before the Colonel could react, Conway went on quickly, “I also need a search of the Federation Archives. For many centuries before the Federation came into being there were species who possessed the startravel capability and did a lot of independent exploration. There is a slight chance that one of them may have encountered or heard reports of an entity resembling an intelligent Midgard Serpent—”

He broke off, then for Thornnastor’s benefit he explained that the Midgard Serpent was a creature of Earth-human mythology, an enormous snake which was supposed to have encircled the planet with its tail in its mouth. Thornnastor thanked him and expressed its relief that the being was mythological.

“Until now,” the Colonel said sourly.

“Second,” Conway went on, “comes the problem of rapid retrieval and placement of the scattered suspended animation cylinders. Many more scoutships will be required, supported by all of the available specialists in e-t languages and technical notation systems, and computer facilities capable of analyzing this material. A large, ship-borne translation computer should be able to handle the job—”

“That means Descartes'” Skempton protested.

“—In the time remaining to us,” Conway resumed, “and I hear Descartes recently completed its first contact program on Dwerla and is free. But the third and most technically difficult part of the problem is the reassembly. For this we need fleet auxiliaries with the engineering facilities and space construction personnel capable of rapidly rebuilding those parts of the alien vessel’s supporting framework which cannot be salvaged from the wreckage. Ideally the people concerned should be experienced Tralthan and Hudlar space construction teams.

“Four,” he continued, allowing no time for objections, “we need a ship capable of coordinating the reassembly operation and mounting a large number of tractor and pressor beam batteries with officers highly trained in their use. This will reduce the risk of collision in the assembly area between the retrieved sections and our own ships. The coordinating vessel will have its own computer capable of handling the logistic—”

“Vespasian, he wants,” Skempton said dully.

“Yes, its tactical computer would be ideal,” Conway replied. “It also has the necessary tractor and pressor batteries and, I believe, a very large cargo lock in case I have to withdraw some of the CRLTs from their suspended animation compartments. Remember, several segments of the entity were destroyed and surgery may be required in these areas to close the gaps. But until we know a great deal more about this entity’s, physiology and environment I have no clear idea of the type and quantity of medical assistance which will be needed.”

“At last,” Thornnastor growled through its translator, “you are about to discuss the needs of the patient.”

“The delay was intentional, sir,” Conway said, “since we must repair the ship before we can help the occupant. Regarding this entity, or entities, Pathologist Murchison and myself have examined one cadaver and we seek confirmation of our preliminary findings and as much additional physiological data as you can provide from the specimens brought back in Tyrell, and from the contents of the intravenous infusion equipment which is used, apparently, to induce, extend, and reverse the suspended animation process. Specifically, we require much more information on the nervous system, the linkages to the voluntary and involuntary musculature, the degree and rapidity of tissue regeneration we can expect if surgical intervention is necessary and additional data on the transparent material which covers and protects the raw areas at the forward and rear extremities. Naturally, sir, this information is required the day before yesterday.”

“Naturally,” Thornnastor growled. Its six elephantine feet, which had been silent while Conway was speaking, resumed their slow thumping. Clearly-the Tralthan was eager to go to work on those specimens of the completely new life-form.

O’Mara waited for precisely three seconds, then he scowled up at Conway and said, “And that is all you require. Doctor?”

Conway nodded. “For the present.”

Colonel Skempton leaned forward and said caustically, “'For the present he needs the services of a Sector subfleet, including Descartes and Vespasian. Before we can recommend the deployment of so many Service units we should refer the matter to the Federation Council for—” He broke off because the thumping of Thornnastor’s feet was making conversation difficult.

“Your pardon, Colonel,” the Tralthan said, “but it seems to me that if we refer this matter to the Council they will ponder on it at great length and then decide to make it the responsibility of the beings best able to understand and solve the problem, who are the entities comprising the technical and medical crew of Rhabwar. The special ambulance ship program was designed to deal with the unexpected, and the fact that this problem is unexpectedly large is beside the point.

“This is an entity, or entities, of a hitherto unknown species,” it went on, “and I recommend that Senior Physician Conway be given the assistance he requires to rescue and treat it. However, I have no objection to you recommending this course and referring the matter to the Council for discussion and ratification, and for amendment should they come up with a better idea. Well, Colonel?”

Skempton shook his head. He said doggedly, “It’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, for a newly appointed ship commander and a medic to be given so much authority. But the Rhabwar people are the only ones who know what they are doing at the moment. Reluctantly, I agree. O’Mara?”

All their eyes, the Colonel’s and Conway’s two and Thorn-nastor’s four, were on the Chief Psychologist, who kept his steadily on Conway. Finally he spoke.

“If you have nothing else to say, Doctor,” he said dryly, “I suggest you return to Rhabwar as quickly as possible before the area becomes so congested that you can’t find your own ship.”

The reaction time of the Monitor Corps to an emergency large or small was impressively fast. In Tyrell’s forward view-screen the area resembled a small, untidy star cluster in which Rhabwar’s beacon flashed at its center like a short-term variable. Apart from acknowledging their arrival and giving them permission to lock on, Fletcher did not speak to them because, he explained, fifteen more scoutships had arrived unexpectedly and he was busy fitting them into his retrieval program. For this reason Conway did not get an opportunity to tell him about the other unexpected things which were about to happen until he was back on board the ambulance ship, and by that time it was too late.

“Rkabwar,” a voice said from the wall speaker as Conway entered Control, “this is the survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes, Colonel Okaussie commanding. I’m told you have work for us, Major Fletcher.”

“Well, yes, sir,” the Captain said. He looked appealingly at Conway, then went on, “If 1 might respectfully suggest, sir,, that your translation specialists—”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Colonel Okaussie broke in. “Respectfully suggest, I mean. When I know as much about this situation as you do I’ll accept suggestions, respectful or otherwise. But until then, Major, stop wasting time and tell me what you want us to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Fletcher said. Speaking quickly, concisely, and, out of habit, respectfully, he did just that. Then a few seconds after he broke contact the radar screen showed a new trace which was even larger than Descartes. It identified itself as the Hudlar-crewed depot ship Motann, a star-going engineering complex normally used to bring technical assistance to vessels whose hyperdrive generators had failed noncatastrophically leaving them stranded in normal space between the stars. Its captain, who was not a Monitor Corps officer, was also happy to take his instructions from Fletcher. But then ah even larger blip appeared on the screen, indicating that a very large ship indeed had just emerged from hyperspace. Automatically Lieutenant Haslam fed the bearing to the telescope and tapped for maximum magnification.

The tremendous, awe-inspiring sight of an Emperor-class battlecruiser filled the screen.

“Rhabwar, this is Vespasian.”

Fletcher paled visibly at the thought of giving instructions to the godlike entity who would be in command of that ship, whose communications officer was relaying the compliments of Fleet Commander Dermod and a request for full vision contact as soon as convenient. Conway, who had not had time to tell the Captain what to expect because it was already happening, got to his feet.

“I’ll be in the Casualty Deck lab,” he said. Grinning, he reached across to clap Fletcher reassuringly on the shoulder and added, “You’re doing fine, Captain. Just remember that, a long, long time ago, the Fleet Commander was a major, too.”

The conversation between Fletcher and the Fleet Commander, complete with visuals, was on the Casualty Deck’s repeater when he arrived, but the sound was muted because Prilicla was on another frequency giving instructions to one of the scoutship medical officers regarding a cadaver the other had found and which Murchison wanted brought in for examination. Murchison and Naydrad were still working on the first specimen, which had been reduced to what seemed to be its component parts.

Murchison nodded toward the repeater screen and said, “You seem to have been given everything you needed. Was O’Mara in a good mood?”

“His usual sarcastic, helpful self,” Conway said, moving to join her at the dissection table. “Do we know anything more about this outsize boa constrictor?”

“I don’t know what we know,” she said crossly, “but I know a little more and feel more than a little confused by the knowledge. For instance . . .”

The thick pencil of nerve ganglia with its localized bunch-ings and swellings which ran through the center of the cylindrical body was, almost certainly, the CRLT’s equivalent of a brain, and the idea of a missing head or tail was beginning to seem unlikely—especially since the transparent material which covered the raw areas fore and aft was, despite its appearance, equally as tough as the being’s leathery body tegument.

She had been successful in tracing the nerve connections between the core swellings and the eyes, mouths, and manipulatory appendages, and from both ends of the axial nerve bundle to the puzzling system of muscles which underlay the raw areas on the forward and rear faces of the creature.

The specimen appeared to be male—at least, the female genitalia at the other end were shrunken and seemed to be in a condition of early atrophy—and she had identified the male sperm generator and the method of transfer to a female.

“. . . There is evidence of unnatural organ displacement,” she went on, “which can only be caused by weightlessness. Gravity, real or artificial, is a physiological necessity for this life-form. During hibernation the absence of weight would not be fatal, but weightlessness while conscious would cause severe nausea, sensory impairment, and, I feel sure, intense mental and physical distress.”

Which meant that the being would have to be in position on the rim of its rotating vessel or affected by natural gravity, that of its target world, when it was revived. It isn’t a doctor this patient needed, Con way thought wryly, it’s a miracle worker!

“With the Captain’s help,” Murchison continued, “we have established that the medication which produces and or extends the hibernation anesthesia occupies the larger volume of a dispenser mechanism which also contains a smaller quantity of the complex organic secretion which can only be the reviver. Fletcher also traced the input to the automatic sensor and actuator which switches the mechanism from the hibernation to the resuscitation mode and found that it reacted to the combined presence of gravity and external pressure. The same actuator mechanism is also responsible for ejecting the endplates of its hibernation compartment which would enable the CRLT to disembark.

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to revive one of these things,” she ended worriedly, “and we’ll have to be very sure that we know what we are doing.”

Conway was already out of his spacesuit and climbing into his surgical coveralls. He said, “Anything in particular you’d like me to do?”

They worked on the cadaver while the hours flickered past on the time display to become days, then weeks. From time to time a terse, subspace message from Thornnastor would arrive confirming their findings or suggesting new avenues of investigation, but even so it seemed that their rate of progress was slow to nonexistent.

Occasionally they would look up at the Control Room repeater, but with decreasing frequency. Fletcher, a Hudlar space construction specialist, and variously qualified Monitor Corps officers were usually showing each other pieces of twisted metal via their vision channels, comparing identification symbols and talking endlessly about them. No doubt it was all vitally important stuff, but it made boring listening. Besides, they had their own organic jigsaw puzzle to worry about.

A pleasant break in the routine would occur when they had to go outside to look at one of the other cadavers which had been brought in and attached to the outer hull, there being room for only one CRLT at a time inside Rhabwar. On these occasions the investigations were conducted in airless conditions and only the organic material which was of special interest to them was excised for later study. As a result they found a bewildering variety of age and sex combinations which seemed to indicate that the older CRLTs were well-developed males whose raw areas at each extremity had a brownish coloration, while the younger beings were clearly female and the areas concerned were a livid pink under the transparent covering.

Once there was a break in the investigative routine which was not pleasant.' For several hours they had been studying a flaccid, purplish lump of something which might have been the organic trigger for the being’s hibernation phase, and making very little progress with it, when Prilicla broke into their angry, impatient silence.

“Friend Murchison,” the empath said, “is feeling tired.”

“I’m not,” the pathologist said, with a yawn which threatened to dislocate her firm but beautifully formed lower mandible. “At least, I wasn’t until you reminded me.”

“As are you, friend Conway—” Prilicla began, when there was an interruption. The furry features of Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul replaced the pieces of alien hardware which had been filling the repeater screen.

“Doctor Conway,” the Orligian medic said, “I have to report an accident. Two Earth-human DBDGs, simple fractures, no decompression damage—”

“Very well,” said Conway, clenching his teeth on a yawn. “Now’s your chance to get in some more other-species surgical experience.”

“—And a Hudlar engineer, physiological classification FROB,” Krach-Yul went on. “It has sustained a deep, incised, and lacerated wound which has been quickly but inadequately treated by the being itself. There has been a considerable loss of body fluid and associated internal pressure, diminished sen-soria, and—”

“Coming,” Conway said. To Murchison he muttered, “Don’t wait up for me.”

While Tyrell was taking him to the scene of the accident, an area where three of the coilship sections were being fitted together, Conway reviewed his necessarily scant surgical experience with the Hudlar life-form.

They were a species who rarely took sick, and then only during preadolescence, and they were fantastically resistant to physical injury, with eyes which were protected by a hardv transparent membrane, tegument like flexible armor, and no body orifices except for the temporary ones opened for mating and birth.

The FROBs were ideally suited to space construction projects. Their home planet, Hudlar, pulled four Earth gravities, and its atmospheric pressure—if that dense, soupy mixture of oxygen, inerts, and masses of microscopic animal and vegetable nutrient in suspension could be called an atmosphere—was seven times Earth-normal. At home they absorbed the food-laden air through their incredibly tough yet porous skin, while offplanet they sprayed themselves regularly and frequently with nutrient paint. Their six flexible and immensely strong limbs terminated in four-digited hands which, when the fingers were curled inward and the knuckles presented to the ground, served also as feet.

Environmentally, the Hudlars were a very adaptable species, because the physiological features which protected them against their own planet’s crushing gravity and pressure also enabled them to work comfortably in any noncorrosive atmosphere of lesser pressure right down to and including the vacuum of space. The only item of equipment a Hudlar space construction engineer needed, apart from its tools, was a communicator which took the form of a small, air-filled blister enclosing its speaking membrane and a two-way radio.

Conway had not bothered to ask if there was an FROB medic on the Hudlar ship. Curative surgery had been a completely alien concept to that virtually indestructible species until they had joined the Federation and learned about places like Sector General, so that medically trained Hudlars were about as rare outside the hospital as physically injured ones inside it.

Captain Nelson placed Tyrell within fifty meters of the scene of the accident. Conway headed for the injured Hudlar. Krach-Yul had already reached the Earth-human casualties, one of whom was blaming himself loudly and unprintably for causing the accident and tying up the suit frequency in the process.

Conway gathered that the two Earth-humans had been saved from certain death by being crushed between two slowly closing ship sections by the Hudlar interposing its enormously strong body, which would have escaped without injury if the jagged-edged stump of an external bracing member had not snagged one of the FROB’s limbs close to the point where it joined the body.

When Conway arrived, the Hudlar was gripping the injured limb with three of its hands, tourniquet fashion, while the two free hands remaining were trying to hold the edges of the wound together—unsuccessfully. Tiny, misshapen globules of blood were forming between its fingers to drift weightlessly away, steaming furiously. It could not talk because its air bag had been lost, leaving its speaking membranes to vibrate silently in the vacuum.

Conway withdrew a limb sleeve-piece, the largest size he carried, from his Hudlar medical kit and motioned for the casualty to bare the wound.

He could see that it was a deep wound by the way the dark red bubbles grew suddenly larger before they broke away, but he was able to snap the sleeve-piece in position before too much blood was lost. Even so there was a considerable leakage around both ends of the sleeve as the Hudlar’s high internal pressure tried to empty it of body fluids. Conway quickly attached circlips at each end of the sleeve and began to tighten one while the Hudlar itself tightened the other. Gradually the fluid loss slowed and then ceased, the casualty’s hands drifted away from the injured limb, and its speaking membrane ceased its silent vibrating. The Hudlar had lost consciousness.

Ten minutes later the Hudlar was inside Tyrell’s cargo lock and Conway was using his scanner to search for internal damage caused by the traumatic decompression. The longer he looked

the less he liked what he saw, and as he was concluding the examination Krach-Yul joined him.

“The Earth-humans are simple fracture cases, Doctor,” the Orligian reported. “Before setting the bones I wondered if you, as a member of their own species, would prefer to—”

“And rob you of the chance to increase your other-species experience?” Conway broke in. “No, Doctor, you treat them. They’re on antipain, I take it, and there is no great degree of urgency?”

“Yes, Doctor,” Krach-Yul said.

“Good,” Conway said, “because I have another job for you—looking after this Hudlar Until you can move it to Sector General. You will need a nutrient sprayer from the Hudlar ship, then arrange with Captain Nelson to increase the air pressure' and artificial gravity in this cargo lock to levels as close to Hudlar-normal as he can manage. Treatment will consist of spraying the casualty with nutrient at hourly intervals and checking on the cardiac activity, and periodically easing the tightness of the sleeve-piece if your scanner indicates a serious reduction of circulation to the injured limb. While you are doing these things you will wear two gravity neutralizers. If you were wearing one and it failed under four-G conditions there would be another seriously injured casualty, you.

“Normally I would travel with this patient,” he went on, stifling a yawn, “but I have to be available in case something urgent develops with the CRLT. Hudlar surgery can be tricky so I’ll tape some notes on this one for the operating team, including the suggestion that you be allowed to observe if you wish to do so.”

“Very much,” Krach-Yul said, “and thank you, Doctor.”

“And now I’ll leave you with your patients and return to Rhabwar” Conway said. Silently he added, to sleep.

“Tyrell was absent for eight days and was subsequently assigned to courier duty, taking specimens to Sector General and returning with information, advice, and detailed lists of questions regarding the progress of their work from Thomnas-tor. The great, spiral jigsaw puzzle which was the alien ship was beginning to take shape—or more accurately, to take a large number of semicircular and quarter-circular shapes—as the hibernation cylinders were identified, positioned, and coupled. Many of the cylinders were still missing because they had been so seriously damaged that their occupants had died or they had still to be found and retrieved by the scoutships.

Conway was worried because the incomplete coilship and the motley fleet of Monitor Corps vessels and auxiliaries were on a collision course with the nearby sun, which was growing perceptibly brighter every day. It was clearly evident that the growth rate of the alien vessel was much less perceptible. When he worried about it aloud to the Fleet Commander, Dermod told him politely to mind his own medical business.

Then a few days later Tyrell returned with information which made it very much his medical business.

Vespasian’s communications officer, who was usually a master of the diplomatic delaying tactic, put him through to the Fleet Commander in a matter of seconds instead of forcing him to climb slowly up the ship’s entire chain of command. This was not due to any sudden increase in Conway’s standing with the senior Monitor Corps officer, but simply that while Conway was trying to reach Dermod, the Fleet Commander was trying to contact the Doctor.

It was Dermod who spoke first, with the slight artificiality of tone which told Conway that not only was the other in a hurry and under pressure but that there were other people present beyond the range of the vision pickup. He said, “Doctor, there is a serious problem regarding the final assembly phase and I need your help. You are already concerned over the limited time remaining to us and, frankly, I was unwilling to discuss the problem with you until I was able to present it, and the solution, in its entirety. This can now be done, in reverse order, preferably. My immediate requirement is for another capital ship.

Claudius is available and—”

“Why—” Conway began, shaking his head in momentary confusion. He had been about to list his own problems and requirements and found himself suddenly on the receiving end.

“Very well, Doctor, I’ll state the problem first,” The Fleet Commander said, frowning as he nodded to someone out of sight. The screen blanked for a few seconds, then it displayed a black field on which there was a thick, vertical gray line. At the lower end of the line a fat red box appeared and on the opposite end a blue circle. Dermod went on briskly, “We now have a pretty accurate idea of the configuration of the alien ship, and I am showing you a very simple representation because 1 haven’t time to do otherwise right now.

“The ship had a central stem, the gray line,” Dermod explained, “with the power plant and thrusters represented by the red box aft and the forward-mounted sensors and navigation systems shown as a blue circle. Since the ship’s occupant was unconscious, all of these systems were fully automatic. The stem also provided the anchoring points for the structure which supported the inhabited coil. You will see that the main supports are angled forward to compensate for stresses encountered while the vessel was under power and during the landing maneuver.”

A forest of branches grew suddenly from the stem, making it look like a squat, cylindrical Christmas tree standing in its red tub and with a bright-blue fairy light at the top. Then the continuous spiral of linked hibernation compartments was attached to the ends of the branches, followed by the spacing members which separated each loop of the coil, and the picture lost all resemblance to a tree.

“The coil diameter remains constant throughout at just under five hundred meters,” the Fleet Commander’s voice continued. “Originally there were twelve turns of the coil and, with each hibernation cylinder measuring twenty meters in length, this means there were roughly eighty hibernating CRLTs in every loop of the coil and close on one thousand of the beings on the complete ship.

“Every loop of the coil was separated by a distance of seventy meters, so that the total height of the coilship was just over eight hundred meters. We were puzzled by this separation since it would have been structurally much simpler laying one on top of the other, but we now believe that the open coil configuration was designed both to reduce and localize meteorite collision damage and remove the majority of the hibernation compartments as far as possible from radiation leakage from the reactor at the stern. While encased in its rather unusual vessel we think the creature traveled tail-first so that its thinking end was at the stern to initiate disembarkation following the landing. Unfortunately, the stern section had to be heavier and more rigid than the forward structure since it had to support the weight of the vessel during deceleration and landing, and so it was the stern which sustained most of the damage when the collision occurred, and most of the CRLT casualties were from the sternmost loop of the coil.”

According to Vespasian’s computer’s reconstruction, the vessel had been in direct head-on collision with a large meteor, and the closing velocities involved had been such that the whole central stem had been obliterated, as if an old-time projectile hand weapon had been used to remove the core of an apple. Only a few scraps of debris from the power unit and guidance system remained—enough for identification purposes but not for reconstruction—and the shock of the collision had shaken the overall coil structure apart.

On the screen the widely scattered hibernation compartments came together again into a not quite complete coil: There were several sections missing, particularly near the stern. Then the stem, its power and guidance systems, and the entire support structure disappeared from the display leaving only the incomplete coil.

“The central core of that vessel is a mass of pulverized wreckage many light-years away,” Dermod continued briskly, “and we have decided that trying to salvage and reconstruct it would be an unnecessary waste of time and materiel when there is a simpler solution available. This requires the presence of a second Emperor-class vessel to—”

“But why do you want—?” Conway began.

“I am in the process of explaining why, Doctor,” the Fleet Commander said sharply. The image on the screen changed again and he went on, “The two capital ships and Descartes will take up positions in close line-astern formation and lock onto each other with matched tractor and pressor beams. In effect this will convert the three ships into a single, rigid structure which will replace the alien vessel’s central stem, and the branching members which supported the coil will also be non-material but equally rigid tractors and pressors.

“In the landing configuration Vespasian will be bottom of the heap,” Dermod continued, with a tinge of pride creeping into his voice. “Our thrusters are capable of supporting the other two ships and the alien coilship during deceleration and landing, with Claudius and Descartes furnishing lateral stability and taking some of the load with surface-directed pressors.

After touchdown, the power reserves of all three vessels will be sufficient to hold everything together for at least twelve hours, which should be long enough, I hope, for the alien to leave its ship. If we can find somewhere to put it, that is.”

The image flicked off to be replaced by the face of the Fleet Commander. “So you see, Doctor, I need Claudius to complete this—this partly nonmaterial structure and to test its practicability in weightless conditions before working out the stresses it will have to undergo during the landing maneuver. Of equal urgency are the calculations needed to extend the combined hyperspace envelope of the three ships to enclose the coil and Jump with it out of here before this damn sun gets too close.”

Conway was silent for a moment, inwardly cringing at the thought of some of the things which could go catastrophically wrong when three linked ships performed a simultaneous Jump. But he could not voice his concern because ship maneuvers were most decidedly the Fleet Commander’s and not the Doctor’s business, and Dermod would tell him so with justification. Besides, Conway had his own problems and right now he needed help with them.

“Sir” he said awkwardly, “your proposed solution is ingenious, and thank you for the explanation. But my original question was not regarding the reason why you wanted Claudius, but why you needed my help in the matter.”

For a moment the Fleet Commander stared at him blankly, then his expression softened as he said, “My apologies, Doctor, if I seemed a trifle impatient with you. The position is this. Under the new Federation Council directive covering extraterrestrial rescue operations by Rhabwar, I am required in a large-scale combined medical and military operation of this kind to obtain your approval for additional personnel and materiel, specifically another capital ship. I assume it is forthcoming?”

“Of course,” Conway said.

Dermod nodded pleasantly despite his obvious embarrassment, but the lines of impatience were beginning to gather again around his mouth as he said, “It will be sufficient if you tape a few words as the physician-in-charge of the case to the effect that Claudius is urgently required to ensure the present safety and continued well-being of your patient. But you were calling me, Doctor. Can I help you?”

“Yes, sir,” Conway said, and went on quickly, “You have been concentrating on joining the coilship sections in proper sequence. Now I have to begin putting the patient together, with special emphasis on the joining of segments which are not in sequence. That is, the ones which were separated by the hibernation compartments whose occupants died. We are now sure that the being is a group entity whose individual members are independently intelligent and may be capable of linking up naturally to their adjoining group members when the conditions are right. This is the theory, sir, but it requires experimental verification.

“The entities who are out of sequence could pose serious problems,” Conway concluded. “They will have to be removed from their hibernation compartments and presented to each other so that I may determine the extent of the surgical work involved in reassembling the group entity.”

“Sooner you than me, Doctor,” Dermod said with a brief grimace of sympathy. “But what exactly do you need?”

He is like O’Mara, Conway thought, impatient with confused thinking. He said, “I need two small ships to bring in the CRLT segments I shall specify and to return them to their places in the coil. Also a large cargo hold which can accommodate two of the hibernation cylinders joined end to end and the two beings which will be withdrawn from them. The hold is to be fitted with artificial gravity grids and nonmaterial restraints in case the conscious CRLTs become confused and aggressive, and personnel to operate this equipment. I know this will mean using the cargo lock and hold in one of the largest ships, but I require only the hold; the vessel can go about its assigned duties.”

“Thank you,” the Fleet Commander said dryly, then paused while someone offscreen spoke quietly to him. He went on, “You may use the forward hold in Descartes, which will also provide the personnel and its two planetary landers for fetching and carrying your CRLTs. Is there anything else?”

Conway shook his head. “Only an item of news, sir. The Federation archivists think they have found the CRLTs home planet, although it is no longer habitable due to major orbital changes and associated large-scale seismic disturbances. The Department of Colonization has a new home for them in mind and will give us the coordinates as soon as they are absolutely sure that the environment and the CRLTs physiological classification are compatible. So we have somewhere to take Humpty-Dumpty when we’ve put it together again.

“However,” Conway ended very seriously, “all the indications are that this was not simply a colony ship which ran into trouble, but a planetary lifeboat carrying the last surviving members of the race.”

Conway stared anxiously around the enormous interior of Descartes’s forward hold and thought that if he had known there were going to be so many sightseers he would have asked for a much larger operating theater. Fortunately one-of them was the ship’s commanding officer, Colonel Okaussie, who kept the others from getting in the way and ensured that the area of deck containing the two joined hibernation cylinders was clear except for Murchison, Naydrad, Prilicla, Fletcher, and Okaussie himself. Conway was sure of one thing: Whether the initial CRLT link-up attempt was a success or a failure, there would be no chance at all of keeping the result a secret.

He wet his lips and said quietly, “Uncouple the cylinders and move the joined faces three meters apart. Bring the artificial gravity up to Earth-normal, slowly, and the atmosphere to normal pressure and composition for the life-form. You have the figures.”

The fabric of his lightweight spacesuit began to settle against Conway’s body and there was mounting pressure against the soles of his feet as he watched the facing ends of the two cylinders. Then abruptly the circular endplates jumped out of their slots to clank onto the deck and come to rest like enormous, spinning coins. The hibernation cylinders were now open at both ends, enabling the two CRLTs to move toward or away from each other, or from one compartment to the next.

“Neat!” Fletcher said. “When the coilship is spinning in its space-traveling mode, centrifugal force holds the being against the outboard surface of the cylinder, and when the spin ceases in the presence of real gravity and an atmosphere the airtight seals drop away, the individual compartments are opened to all of the others and the beastie, the complete group entity, that is, exits by working down the stern-facing wall until all

of it reaches the surface. The gravity and pressure sensors are linked to the medication reservoirs, Doctor, so you have just reproduced the conditions for resuscitation following a planetary landing.”

Conway nodded. He said, “Prilicla, can you detect anything?”

“Not yet, friend Conway.”

They moved closer so as to be able to look into the two opened cylinders, dividing their attention between the occupants who were lying flaccidly with their dorsal manipulators hanging limply along their sides. Then one of the enormous, tubular bodies began to quiver, and suddenly they were both moving ponderously toward each other.

“Move back,” Conway said. “Prilicla?”

“Consciousness is returning, friend Conway,” the empath replied, trembling with its own as well as everyone else’s excitement. “But slowly; the movements are instinctive, involuntary.”

As the forward extremity of one CRLT approached the rear of the other, the organic film which protected the raw areas on each creature softened, liquefied, and trickled away. At the center of the forward face a blunt, conical shape began to form surrounded by systems of muscles which twitched themselves into mounds and hollows and deep, irregular fissures. The rear face of the other CRLT had grown its own series of hollows and orifices which exactly corresponded with the protuberances of the other, as well as four large, triangular flaps which opened out like the fleshy petals of an alien flower. Then all at once there was just one double-length creature with a join which was virtually invisible.

And I was worried about joining them together, Conway thought incredulously. The problem might be to keep them apart!

“Are we observing a physical coupling for the purpose of reproduction?” Murchison said to nobody in particular.

“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, “the emotional radiation of both creatures suggests that this is not a conscious or involuntary sex act. A closer analogy would be that of an infant seeking the physical reassurance of its parent. However, both beings are seeking physical and mental reassurance, and have feelings of confusion and loss, and these feelings are so closely matched that the only explanation is shared mentation.”

“Tractor beamers,” Conway said urgently. “Pull them apart, gentlyl”

He had been delighted to find that the beings who made up the vast group entity would link together naturally when the conditions were right, although that might not be the case if too many intervening segments had been destroyed in the accident, but he most certainly did not want a premature and permanent link-up between these two at this stage. They would have to be returned to a state of hibernation and resume their positions in the coil, otherwise they might find themselves permanently separated, orphaned, from the group entity.

Even though the tractor beamers were no longer being gentle, the two CRLTs stubbornly refused to separate. Instead they were becoming more physically agitated, they were trying to emerge completely from their hibernation cylinders, and their emotional radiation was seriously inconveniencing Prilicla.

“We must reverse the process—” Conway began.

“The sensors react to gravity and air pressure,” Fletcher broke in quickly. “We can’t evacuate the hold without killing them, but if we cut the artificial gravity only it might—”

“The endplate release mechanism was also linked to those sensors,” Conway said, “and we can’t replace them in their slots without chopping the two beasties apart, in the wrong place.”

“It might stop the flow of resuscitation medication,” Fletcher went on, “and restart the hibernation sequence. The needles are still sited in both creatures and the connecting tubing is flexible and still unbroken, although it won’t be for long if we don’t stop them from leaving their cylinders. If we put a clamp on the resuscitation line of each beastie, Doctor, I believe I could bypass the endplate actuator and restart the hibernation medication.”

“But you will be working inside the cylinders,” Murchison said, “beside two very massive and angry e-ts.”

“No, ma’am,” the Captain said. “1 am neither foolhardy nor a xenophobe, and I shall work through an access panel in the outer skin. It should take about twenty minutes.”

“Too long,” Conway said. “They will have disconnected

themselves from the tubing by then. We can calculate the dosage needed to put them back to sleep. Can you drill through the wall of the container, ignoring the sensors and actuators, and withdraw the required quantity of medication directly?”

For a moment there was silence while Fletcher’s features fell into an angry, why-didn’t-I think-of-that? expression, then he said, “Of course, Doctor.”

But even when injections of the CRLTs own hibernation medication were ready their troubles were far from over. The pressor beam operators who were responsible for immobilizing the creatures could not hold down the two joined e-ts without also flattening the medics who were trying to work on them. Their best compromise was to leave a two-meters clearance on each side of the operative field wherein the medical team would not be inconvenienced by the pressors. But this meant that there was no restraint placed on the movements of the creature along a four-meter length of its body, which wriggled and humped and lashed out with its dorsal appendages and generally made it plain that it did not want strange beings climbing all over it and sticking it with needles.

Several times Conway was knocked away from the patient and once, if it had not been for a warning from Fletcher, he would have lost his helmet and probably the head inside it. Murchison observed crossly that the big advantage in dealing with cadavers was that, regardless of their physiological classifications, they did not assault the pathologist and leave her normally peachlike skin pigmentation black and blue. But with Naydrad’s long, caterpillarlike body wrapped around one appendage and both Fletcher and Colonel Okaussie hanging onto the other limb which threatened the operative field, and with Murchison steadying the scanner for him while he sat astride the creature like a bareback horserider, Conway was able to guide his hypo into the correct vein and discharge its contents before a particularly violent heave pulled the needle free.

Within a few seconds Prilicla, whose fragile body had no place in this violent muscular activity announced from its position on the ceiling that the being was going back to sleep. When they withdrew to turn their attention to its companion, its movements were already growing weaker.

By the time they had dealt similarly with the other CRLT, the two creatures had separated. The hollows and protuberances and flaps of muscle had collapsed and smoothed themselves out, and the raw interface areas began exuding the clear liquid which congealed into a thin, transparent film. Gently the tractor and pressor beam men lifted and pushed the two beings back into their respective hibernation cylinders. Conway signaled for the artificial gravity to be reduced to zero and, as expected, they were able to replace the cylinder endplates without trouble. The cargo hold’s air pressure was reduced gradually so that they could check whether the premature opening of the hibernation compartments had caused a leak. It had not.

“So far so good,” Conway said. “Return them to their positions in the coil and bring in the next two.”

The first two had been the occupants of adjoining cylinders and their linking up had been automatic, a natural process in all respects. But the second two had been separated by a compartment which had been ruptured by a piece of flying debris and its occupant killed. The affinity between these two might not be so strong, Conway thought.

However, they merged as enthusiastically and naturally as had the first two. The resuscitation process was reversed before they were fully conscious so as to eliminate the multispecies wrestling match needed to put them into hibernation again. Prilicla reported a minor variation in the emotional radiation associated with the initial body contact—a feeling, very faint and temporary . . . of disappointment. But the two segments of the group entity were compatible and that particular break in continuity in the coil could be closed up.

Conway felt uneasy. Too much good luck worried him. Something was bothering Prilicla, too, because he had long since learned to recognize the difference between the little empath’s reaction to its own feelings and those of the beings around it.

“Friend Conway,” Prilicia said, while they were awaiting the arrival of the third set of CRLTs. “The first two beings were relatively immature and taken from the forward section of the coil, that is, from the tail segments of this multiple creature, and the second two came from a position considerably aft of amidships. Our own deductions, supported by the information on the creatures’ probable planet of origin which arrived with Tyrell, suggest that the tail segments are immature beings, perhaps very young adults, and the head segments aft to be composed of the older, more experienced, and most highly intelligent of the beings since they are responsible for ship operations and disembarkation following a stern landing.”

“Agreed,” Conway said, wishing Prilicla would get to the point, no matter how unpleasant it was, instead of talking all around it.

“Aft of amidships, friend Conway,” Prilicla went on, “the CRLTs should be older. The two who have just left us, judging by their emotional radiation, were even less mature than the first set.”

Conway looked at Murchison, who said defensively, “I don’t know why that should be, I’m sorry. Do the data on their home planet, if it is their home planet, suggest an answer?”

“I’m pretty sure it was their home planet,” Conway replied thoughtfully, “because there couldn’t possibly be another like it. But the data are old and sparse and predate the assembly and launching from orbit of the coilship, and we’ve been too busy since Tyre’ll brought back the information to discuss it properly.”

“We have half an hour,” Murchison observed, “before the next two CRLTs arrive.”

Many centuries before the formation of the Galactic Federation, the Eurils had ranged interstellar space, driven by a curiosity so intense and at the same time hampered by a caution so extreme that even the Cinrusskin race to which Prilicla belonged was considered brave, even foolhardy, by comparison. Physiologically they were classification MSVK—a low-gravity, tripedal, and vaguely storklike life-form, whose wings had evolved into twin sets of multidigited manipulators. They had been and still were the galaxy’s prime observers, and they were content to look and learn and record through their long-range probes and sensors without making their presence known to the large and dangerously overmuscled specimens, intelligent or otherwise, who were under study.

During their travels the Eurils had come upon a system whose single, life-bearing planet pursued a highly eccentric orbit about its primary which forced its flora and fauna to adapt to environmental conditions ranging from steaming polar jungles in summer to an apparently lifeless winter world of ice. Seeing it for the first time in its frigid, winter mode, the Eurils had been about to dismiss it as being uninhabitable until their probes showed evidence of a highly technical culture encased in the winter ice. Closer investigation revealed that the civilization was current and was awaiting the spring, like every other animal and vegetable life-form on the planet, to come out of hibernation.

It was not until the polar spring was far advanced that the members of this hibernating culture were identified as the large, loglike objects which had been lying in and around the cities under the ice.

“It is clear from this that the overall being is a group entity* which, for reasons we do not yet understand, must separate into its individual parts before hibernation can take place,” Conway went on. “Since hibernation is natural to them, the problem of artificially extending it and reversing the process for the purpose of interstellar migration was, medically speaking, relatively easy to solve.

“The following year a number of the beings were observed by the Eurils in a fully conscious state,” he continued, “going about their business in small group gestalts inside heated domes under the winter ice, which indicates that they do not go into hibernation unless or until it is forced on them. It is unnecessary, therefore, to duplicate the extremes of temperature of their planet of origin on their new home since any world closely resembling their summer environment would suit them. Had this not been so, the near impossibility of finding another and identical planetary environment to the one they were trying to leave would have made the migration hopeless from the start. And the reasons for the CRLT life-form becoming a group entity, initially a small-group entity, are also becoming clear.” Even at the time of the Eurils’ visit the CRLTs, despite their advanced technology, were not having things all their own way. They lived on an incredibly savage world which had no clear division between its animal and vegetable predators. In order to have any chance of survival at all, the young CRLTs had to be born physically well developed and remain under the protection of the parent for as long as possible. In the CRLT’s case, parturition was delayed until the offspring was a young adult who had learned how to survive and how to aid the continued survival of its parent.

Separation took place every winter, when everything went to sleep and there was no physical threat, and the young one rejoined its parent in the spring to continue its lessons in survival. The young one, who at this stage was invariably female, reached physical maturity early and produced a child of its own. And so it went with the original adult, who had begun to change its sex to male, trailing a long tail of beings of diminishing degrees of masculinity and experience behind it as it moved up the chain of the group entity toward the head.

“The CRLT brain forms part of the central nerve core which during fusion is linked to the brains of the individuals ahead of and behind it via the interfaces at each end of the body,” Conway went on, “so that an individual segment learns not only by its own experience but from those of its predecessors farther up the line. This means that the larger the number of individuals in the group, the smarter will be its male head and forward segments. Should the head segment, who is the elder of the group and probably its decision maker, die from natural or other causes, the male next in line takes over.”

Murchison cleared her throat delicately and said, “If anyone wishes at this juncture to make a general observation regarding the superiority, physical or intellectual, of the male over the female, be advised that I shall spit in his, her, or its eye.”

Conway smiled and shook his head. He said seriously, “The male head will, naturally, fertilize a number of young female tail segments of other group entities, but there is a problem. Surely there would be serious psychological difficulties, sex-based frustrations, with so many of the intervening segments neither fully male or female and unable to—”

“There is no problem,” Murchison broke in, “if all mentation and, presumably, the pain and pleasure stimuli are shared by every individual in the group.”

“Of course, I’d forgotten that aspect,” Conway said. “But there is another. Think of the length of our survivor. If mentation and experience are shared, then this could be a very long-lived and highly intelligent group entity indeed—”

The discussion was cut short at that point by the lock cycling warning. The third pair of CRLTs had arrived, these two had been taken from the sternmost loops of the coilship where the casualties among the most senior and intelligent CRLTs had been heaviest. According to Vespasian’s tactical computer and the findings of Descartes’s specialists in e-t written languages and numerical systems, fifty-three of the CRLT hibernation cylinders—and their occupants—had been destroyed as a result of the collision, and between these two segments there had been seventeen members of the group entity who had not made it.

The other breaks in the coil were much smaller—the largest missing five segments and the rest only three or four each. Conway hoped that if the largest gap could be closed successfully, then the smaller ones should pose fewer problems.

As with the previous two CRLTs, the combination of artificial gravity and atmospheric pressure triggered the actuators which opened the cylinders and reversed the hibernation process. Conway had already sited the IV needles which would put them back to sleep again should they become disorderly, and Prilicla reported that they were reviving and their emotional radiation indicated that they were beings who were fully mature, healthy, and highly intelligent. As consciousness returned they began moving out of their cylinders and toward each other.

They touched, and jerked apart.

“What?” Conway began. But Prilicla was already answering the question.

“There are feelings of intense discomfort, friend Conway,” the empath said, trembling violently. “Also of confusion, disappointment, and rejection. There is background emotion, a combination of anxiety and curiosity, which is probably regarding their present surroundings.”

Because he could think of nothing to say, Conway moved to a position directly between the forward and rear interfaces of the two CRLTs. He did not consider the position dangerous because, if Prilicla’s emotional readings were correct, they were unlikely to come together. He began examining the two interfaces, both visually and with his x-ray scanner, and taking measurements. A few minutes later Murchison joined him, and

Prilicla dropped to hover cautiously a few meters above the area.

“Even with unaided vision you can see that the two interfaces are not compatible,” Conway said worriedly. “There are three areas which cannot be made to join without surgical intervention. But I am reluctant to start cutting without having a clearer idea of how to proceed. I wish I could obtain the consent and cooperation of the patients.”

“That might be difficult,” Colonel Okaussie said. “But I could have my men try to—”

“Lift them on tractor beams and force another contact,” Conway finished for him. “I need one more attempted joining, at least, with vision recorders catching it in close-up from the anterior, posterior, and lateral aspects. I also need Prilicla to monitor their emotional radiation closely during the attempt so that we will know which particular areas give the most discomfort and are, therefore, most in need of surgical attention. During surgery, instead of using an anesthetic, we can return them into hibernation. Yes, Doctor?”

“Have you considered, friend Conway—” began Prilicla, but Conway cut it short.

“Little friend,” he said, “I know of old your roundabout manner of expressing disagreement as well as your feelings regarding the causing of unnecessary discomfort to patients, and you know that I share those feelings. But much as I dislike causing pain, in this case it is necessary.”

“Doctor Con way,” Colonel Okaussie said, with an impatient edge to his tone, “a few moments ago I had been about to suggest that since the beings are fully conscious, intelligent, and their visual range is similar to our own, we should be able to obtain their cooperation by explaining the situation to them graphically. I think it is worth a try.”

“It most certainly is,” Conway said. He caught Fletcher’s eye and muttered, “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

Descartes’s commanding officer smiled and said, “I’ll have a projection screen set up as quickly as possible, Doctor.” Conway began assembling the instruments he would need while Murchison and Naydrad took over the job of measuring the interfaces and Prilicla hovered above them radiating reassurance to the patients.

It was a large screen, set between the angle of the*ceiling and the aft wall of the hold so that the dorsally mounted eyes of both CRLTs would be able to view it without distortion. Descartes’s officers were specialists in e-t communications and the presentation was short, simple, and very much to the point. The opening sequence was familiar since it was part of the material the Fleet Commander had used during his recent briefing to Conway. It showed a diagrammatic reconstruction of the CRLTs great, coillike interstellar transport complete with central stem, coil supporting structure, thrusters, and guidance system moving slowly against a starry backdrop. Suddenly a large meteor appeared at the edge of the screen, heading directly' for the coilship. It struck, moving along the inside of the coil and carrying away the thrusters, guidance system, and all of the central supporting structure for the continuous spiral of hibernation compartments. The impact shook the coil apart, and the individual hibernation cylinders, because of the vessel’s rotation, went flying off in all directions like shrapnel from a slow-motion explosion.

Because of the greater rigidity of the structure aft, the shock in this area was much more severe and the casualties among the hibernating CRLTs were heavy; the cylinders whose occupants had not survived were shown in red. Then there was a two-minute shot of the scene as it actually was, with Vespasian, Claudius and Descartes with a shoal of smaller vessels busy reassembling the coil followed by a longer sequence, displayed graphically, which showed a modified coilship coming in to land on a fresh, green world with the two capital ships and Descartes linked together so as to replace the missing support structure and thrusters.

The presentation ended by showing the coilship with the missing segments indicated in throbbing red, then with the red sections removed and the gaps closed up to make a slightly shorter coil, and the final scene showed the successful link-up of the first two CRLTs.

As a piece of visual communication it left very little room for misunderstanding, and Conway did not need Prilicla’s em-pathic faculty to tell him that the message had been understood—the two CRLTs were already moving cautiously toward each other.

“Recorders?” Conway said urgently.

“Running,” Murchison said.

Conway held his breath as once again the two massive creatures attempted fusion. The movements of their stubby, caterpillarlike legs were barely perceptible and their dorsal appendages were tensely still, making them resemble two enormous, alien logs being pushed together by the current of an invisible river. When they were separated by about six inches, the forward face of the rearmost creature had grown the pattern of bumps and fleshy projections which they had seen during the first two link-ups, and the rear interface of its companion had twitched itself into a pattern of fissures and a single deep recess. Around the periphery of the interface four wide, triangular flaps of muscle tipped with osseus material, features which had not appeared to be of any importance when examined on sleeping or dead CRLTs, had grown suddenly to nearly four times their size in the unconscious state and opened out like fleshy, horn-tipped petals. But with these two the interfaces did not correspond. They touched, held contact for perhaps three seconds, then jerked apart.

Before Conway could comment, they were coming together again. This time the forward creature remained still while the second twisted its forward interface into a slightly different position to try again, but with the same result.

It was obvious that the contacts were intensely uncomfortable, and the resultant pain had triggered off the involuntary movement which had jerked them apart. But the CRLTs were not giving up easily, although it appeared at first as if they had. They withdrew until their bodies were again inside their hibernation cylinders, then their stubby legs blurred into motion as they drove themselves at each other seeking, it seemed, by sheer brute force and bodily inertia to force a fusion. Conway winced as they came together with a sound like a loud, multiple slap.

But to no avail. They broke contact to lie a few feet from each other with their dorsal appendages twitching weakly and air hissing loudly as it rushed in and out of their breathing orifices. Then slowly they began to move together again.

“They are certainly trying,” Murchison said softly.

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said, “the emotional radiation from both creatures has become more complex. There is deep anxiety but not, I would say, personal fear. Also a feeling of understanding and great determination, with the determination predominating. I would say that both entities fully understand the situation and are desperately anxious to cooperate. But these unsuccessful attempts at fusion are causing great pain, friend Conway.”

It was characteristic of the little empath that it did not mention its own pain, which was only fractionally less severe than that of the emoting CRLTs. But the uncontrollable trembling of its pipestem legs and fragile eggshell of a body spoke more eloquently than words.

“Put them to sleep again,” Conway said.

There was silence while the hibernation medication was taking effect, broken finally by Prilicla who said, “They are losing consciousness, but there is a marked change in the emotional radiation. They are feeling both anxiety and hope. I think they are expecting us to solve their problem, friend Conway.”

They were all looking at him, but it was Naydrad, whose mobile, silvery fur was registering its bafflement and concern, who put the question everyone else was too polite to ask.

“How?”

Conway did not reply at once. He was thinking that two highly intelligent elder CRLTs from the coilship’s stern, following their first abortive attempt at fusion, would have realized that a link-up was impossible for them. But they had made two further attempts—one when the rearmost creature had tried to twist itself and its interface into a new position, and again when it had tried to achieve fusion by sheer brute force. He was beginning to wonder whether the recent attempt at communicating with the aliens had been strictly one way. Until the Descartes linguists could be given the opportunity to learn the CRLTs language, an accurate exchange of ideas was impossible. But it had already been shown that pictures were very effective in putting across a message, and they were all forgetting that actions, like pictures, often spoke louder than words.

Recalling those three unsuccessful attempts at fusion. Con-way wondered if the two CRLTs had in fact been trying to demonstrate that the link-up was impossible for them without assistance, but that by changing the positions and perhaps the dimensions of some of the surface features on the interfaces and forcing things a little, then a join might be achieved.

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla announced, “is having feelings of optimism.”

“Perhaps,” Murchison said, “in his own good time, of course, he will explain to us nonempaths the reason for his optimism.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Conway briefly outlined his recent thinking, although he personally would have described his feeling as one of forlorn hope rather than optimism. He went on, “So I believe that the CRLTs were trying to tell us that surgical intervention is necessary for them to achieve fusion, not brute force. And it has just occurred to me that there is a precedent for this procedure. One of the cadavers examined on Rhabwar showed evidence of surgery on its forward interface and this could mean—”

“But that was a very youthful, although physically mature CRLT,” Murchison broke in, “and the surgery was minor. We agreed that it had probably been performed for cosmetic reasons.”

“I think we were wrong,” Conway said. Excitedly he went on, “Consider the physical organization of this group entity. At the head is the most mature, male adult and at the tail the most recently born infant, although as we know the infant grows to physical maturity without separating from the parent. Between the head and the tail there is a gradual and steady progression from the most elderly and intelligent male entities down to the increasingly youthful and female segments which form the tail sections. But Prilicla has reported an anomaly in this progression. Young CRLTs positioned relatively close to the tail show evidence of greater physical age and brain development than entities in the midsections. Until now 1 could see no reason for this anomaly.

“But now let us suppose that this group entity,” he continued quickly, “forming as it does a complete colonization project, has been artificially lengthened. The extraordinarily large number of individuals in this group entity has always bothered me, and now there is a simple explanation for it. Let us assume that there is one head or. more accurately, a fairly large number of linked elders forming the leading segments, and several tails connected one behind the other. These would be very youthful tails because it must be much easier to carry out the surgical modifications on young CRLTs which enable them to link up. So we have this colonist group entity with intelligence and experience at its head and linked to a number of young and inexperienced subgroups forming an artificially lengthened tail. The joins between these subgroups are surgically assisted and, I feel sure, temporary, because once established on the target planet they would be able to separate again, and in time the young heads would grow to full adulthood and the dangers from inbreeding would be avoided.

“Perhaps the head on this group entity has also been artif-ically extended,” Conway added, “so as to include elder CRLTs with specialist experience relating to the colonization project who would be available initially to protect the younger group entities, and subsequently to teach and train them and pass on the knowledge of their race’s history and science.”

Prilicla had flown closer while Conway had been speaking and was hovering a few inches above the Doctor’s head. It said happily, “An ingenious theory, friend Conway. It fits both the facts as we know them and the type of emotional radiation received from the beings.”

“I agree,” Murchison said. “I, too, found difficulty in accepting the extreme length of this group entity, but the idea of a wise old head acting as guide and mentor to an as yet unknown number of young tails is much easier to believe. However, I can’t help remembering that it was the head segments which suffered most of the casualties. Perhaps the head is no longer as wise as it should have been and an awful lot of vital knowledge has been lost to this multiplegroup entity.”

Colonel Okaussie waited for a moment to see if anyone in the medical team would speak, then he cleared his throat and said, “Maybe not, ma’am. Most of the head segments who were killed in the collision were very close to the stern and to the ship’s control and propulsion centres. One could reasonably expect that these segments were the beings charged with the responsibility for operating the ship and carrying out the landing maneuvers, functions which are now the responsibility of the Monitor Corps. It is likely that the scientist and teacher segments were positioned a little farther back in the chain and the majority of the casualties were suffered by the vessel’s crew, whose specialist knowledge would no longer be of vital importance to the colonization project after the vessel had landed.” Before Murchison could reply Naydrad gave an impatient, modulated growl which translated as “Why don’t we stop talking and get on with the job?”

The screen which had been used to communicate with the CRLTs was continuously displaying distant and close-up views of spacesuited figures of various physiological classifications busily at work on the final stages of the coilship’s reassembly. Conway could not decide whether Descartes'^ commanding officer was screening the material to be helpful and informative or as a means of suggesting, very subtly, that the medical team display a similar degree of industry. The attempt was a failure in either event, Conway thought, because the Rhabwar medics were far too busy to look at Okaussie’s pictures. They were concentrating instead on measuring and remeasuring the features on the CRLT interfaces and charting with their scanners the paths of underlying blood vessels and the distribution of the nerve ganglia. And with great care and accuracy they were marking the areas where surgical intervention was possible without causing either a major hemorrhage or sensory impairment.

It was slow, tedious work and visually not very dramatic. Colonel Okaussie could be forgiven for thinking that the ambulance ship personnel had gone to sleep on the job.

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said at one particularly awkward stage, “the physical differences between these two entities are so marked that I cannot help wondering if they belong to different subspecies.”

All of Con way’s attention at that moment was concentrated on what seemed to be the main sphinctor muscle on the rear interface of the forward CRLT, so that by the time he was ready to reply Murchison had done it for him.

“In a sense you are right, Doctor Prilicla,” she said. “It is a natural result of their method of reproduction. Think of this forward CRLT when it was the last and female link in its group-entity chain. In due time it grew to maturity and, still attached to its parent, it was fertilized by the male head of another group entity. Its own infant grew and became mature and in turn produced another, and the process continued with different male heads adding their individual sets of genes at every stage. 'The physical connection between any given CRLT and its offspring is perfect,” she continued, “and perfect fusion may even be possible between a parent and its grandchild or greatgrandchild. But the effect of different males fertilizing each new endlink in the chain would be cumulative. So it is understandable when you think about it, Doctor, that the differences between the fusion interfaces of these two, which were separated by seventeen intervening segments, are considerable.”

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” Prilicla said. “My brain seems not to be functioning properly.”

“Probably,” Murchison replied in a sympathetic tone, “because your brain is more than half asleep, like mine.” “And mine,” Naydrad joined in.

Con way, who had been trying not to think of how long it had been since he had last eaten or slept, decided that the best way to deal with an impending mutiny among his overworked medics was to ignore it. He indicated a small area on the rear interface of the first alien, midway between the central conical depression and the upper rim of the interface, then pointed to the corresponding area on the forward face of the second one. He said, “We can safely ignore these reproductive organs in both creatures, since this kind of link-up is temporary and physiologically independent of the parent-offspring fusion mechanism. As 1 see it the three areas we must concentrate on are the central conical projection and its corresponding recess, which are the connecting points for the central nerve core and our primary concern. Second is this narrow, semirigid tongue with the fleshy mushroom at its tip which locates with this slit in the other—”

“That connection is also of vital importance,” Murchison broke in, “since it links up the nerve networks controlling the voluntary and involuntary muscles which move each CRLTs legs and enable the group entity to walk in unison. There would be small advantage to the group entity if it could share mentation but a number of its segments were unable to walk.” “Friend Murchison,” Prilicla said timidly, “it seems to me that the original nerve impulse from the head segment, or whichever individual CRLT was responsible for initiating the movement, would not be sufficiently strong to trigger the ambulatory muscles throughout the enormous length of this group entity.”

“That is true,” the pathologist replied. “But there is an organic amplifier, consisting of a bunching of nerve ganglia situated just above the womb, or the position where the womb had been in the males, in an area where the surrounding tissue has a high mineral content and is particularly rich in copper salts. This biological booster ensures that the ambulatory muscles receive their signals with undiminished strength throughout the length of the chain.”

“Third,” Conway said, raising his voice slightly to discourage further interruptions, “there are these four flaps of muscle which terminate at their apexes in osseous hooks which locate in these four bone-reinforced orifices in the second creature. This is the primary mechanism by which the individual segments are held together nose to tail, and in this instance—”

“It is also the method by which the CRLT female at the end of the line held onto its developing offspring,” Murchison broke in again. “At that stage the offspring had no choice in the matter. But as it matured, produced its own offspring, and moved farther up the line I feel sure that voluntary separation

became possible. In fact, separation would be necessary during activities which did not require the entire group entity for their performance.”

“That is most interesting, friend Murchison,” Prilicla said. “I should think that the first time such a voluntary separation took place a certain amount of psychological trauma would be present. It would be analogous to a coming-of-age ceremony, perhaps, even though the separation might not be permanent—”

Before Conway could speak, Prilicla fell silent and began trembling in reaction to the Doctor’s feelings of irritation and impatience. He said, “This is all very interesting, friends, but we do not have the time just now for a general discussion. In any case, following the type of temporary separation you mentioned, the young adult would rejoin its original parent segment and not a—I suppose you could describe it as an ancestor seventeen times removed, which is the problem currently facing us. And now, if you don’t mind, we will concentrate on this problem and on the surgical procedures necessary to solve it.

“Feel free to interrupt at any time,” he added dryly.

But the interruptions were few and pertinent, and very soon it became obvious even to the watching tractor beamers, Des-cartes’s commanding officer, and Fleet Commander Dermod, whose face appeared briefly but with increasing frequency on the overhead screen, that the medical team was also working hard.

Because Sector General was the Federation’s foremost emergency hospital, the kind of surgery performed there, whether the patient was Earth-human or extraterrestrial, tended to be curative rather than cosmetic. It felt very strange to Conway, and he knew that his feelings were being shared by the other members of the team, to be operating on a perfectly healthy e-t with the purpose of simply modifying the size and contours of certain physiological features. But the operation itself was far from simple.

The greater proportion of the surgical work had to be performed on the second alien whose forward nerve coupling cone was too wide at its base to be retained by the sphincter muscle surrounding the corresponding orifice in the first CRLT. With the semiflexible tongue and groove connection which joined the two beings’ locomotor nerve networks, the solution was much simpler. The deep recess in the first alien was surgically widened until measurement showed that it would accommodate the tongue comfortably, after which reinforcing sutures were inserted to prevent further accidental widening. But the four triangular flaps with their bony, hooklike extensions posed a completely different and more difficult problem.

Together the four members formed the principal organic coupling which held the considerable mass of the second e-t against the first, and they did not fit because the hooks did not quite reach the apertures meant to receive them.

Elongating the four triangular members was contraindicated since this would have entailed surgical interference and consequent serious weakening of the muscle systems concerned, and they could not foresee the effect on the network of blood vessels which became engorged and extended the members to quadruple their size when the being returned to consciousness.

Instead they made molds of the four hooks and made artificial ones using a hard, biologically neutral plastic at the tips and a wide band of thinner, more flexible material around the bases. The result was a set of hollow, hook-tipped gloves which, when a little of the original hooks were filed away to make them fit, were slipped over the original members and secured in position with rivets and sutures.

Suddenly there was nothing left to do, but hope.

Above the two unconscious CRLTs the vision screen was displaying an overall picture of their coilship, complete now except for the segments whose occupants were awaiting surgical attention, and the dense but orderly mass of shipping moving in and around it. The thought came to Conway, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, that the tremendous fleet of Monitor Corps and other units, from the great capital ships and auxiliaries down to the swarms of scoutships and the army of specialists in engineering and communications they represented, were all wasting their time here if this particular operation was not a success.

For this responsibility he had argued long and eloquently with Thornnastor, O’Mara, and Skempton at Sector General. He must have been mad.

Harshly, he said, “Wake them up.”

They watched anxiously as once again the two CRLTs came out of hibernation and began moving toward each other. They touched once, a brief, exploratory contact, then they fused. Where there had been two massive, twenty-meter caterpillarlike creatures there was now one of twice that length.

The join was visible, of course, but one had to look very carefully to see it. Conway forced himself to wait for ten interminable seconds, and still they had not pulled away from each other.

“Prilicla?”

“They are feeling pain, friend Conway,” the empath replied, trembling slightly. “It is within bearable limits. There are also feelings of acceptance and gratitude.”

Conway gave a relieved sigh which ended in an enormous, eye-watering yawn. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Thank you, everyone. Put them back to sleep, check the sutures, and reseal them in their hibernation cylinders. They will not have to link up again until after the landing, by which time the wounds should have healed to a large extent so that the fusion will be more comfortable for them. As for ourselves, I prescribe eight hours solid sleep before—”

He broke off abruptly as the features of Fleet Commander Dermod appeared on the screen.

“You appear to have successfully repaired a major break in our alien chain, Doctor,” he said seriously, “but the time taken to do so was not short. There are many other breaks and we have three days during which a concerted Jump is possible, Doctor, after which the gravitational distortion effects caused by that rapidly approaching sun will make an accurate Jump out of the question even for single ships.

“Should we overrun the three-day deadline,” he went on grimly, “single-ship Jumping within operational safety limits will be possible for an additional twenty hours. During this twenty-hour period, if the coilship is not to be abandoned to fall into the sun, it will have to be dismantled into sections small enough to be accommodated by the hyperspheres of the units available in the area. This, you will understand, would of necessity be a very hurried operation and our own accident casualties as well as those of CRLTs would be heavy?

“What I am saying, Doctor,” he ended gravely, “is that if you cannot complete your organic link-ups within three days, tell me now so that we can begin dismantling the coilship in a safer and more orderly fashion.”

Con way rubbed his eyes and said, “There were seventeen missing segments between the join which we have just effected, and this makes it the most difficult job of the lot. The remaining breaks are of two, three, or at most five segments, so that those linking operations will be correspondingly easier. We know the drill now and three days should be ample time, barring an unforeseen catastrophe.”

“I cannot hold you responsible for one of those, Doctor,” the Fleet Commander said dryly. “Very well. What are your immediate intentions?”

“Right now,” Conway said firmly, “we intend to sleep.”

Dermod looked vaguely surprised, as if the very concept of sleep was one that had become alien to him over the past few days, then he nodded grudgingly and broke contact.

Feeling rested, alert, and much more human—and, of course, more Kelgian and Cinrusskin—they returned to Descartes’s cargo hold to find another two CRLTs already waiting for them and the remaining segments to be joined clamped to the outer hull. The Fleet Commander, it was clear, was a man who believed in maintaining the pressure.

But achieving fusion with these two was remarkably easy. Only two intervening segments were missing so that the surgery required was minor indeed. The next pair were more difficult, nevertheless a satisfactory link-up was achieved within two hours and, with their growing confidence and expertise, this was to become the average time required for the job. So well did they progress that they became almost angry with themselves when they were forced to break for meals or sleep.

Then suddenly they were finished and there was nothing to do but watch the screen while the last gap in the coil was being closed and hundreds of spacesuited figures swarmed all over it to give a final check to the sensor actuators on each hibernation cylinder which would expel their endplates and initiate resuscitation on landing.

With the exception of Rhabwar and one of Descartes’s planetary landers, the great fleet of scoutships and auxiliaries withdrew to a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers, which was far enough to relieve the traffic congestion in the area but close enough for them to return quickly should anything go wrong.

“I do not foresee anything going seriously wrong at this end,” the Fleet Commander said when the coilship was in one tremendous, spiral piece. “You have given us enough time, Doctor, to carry out all the necessary pre-Jump calculations and calibrations. This will be a time-consuming process since our three vessels, whose hyperspace envelopes will have to be extended to enclose the coilship, are Jumping in concert. Should a problem arise and we are unable to make this Jump, the units standing by will move in, dismantle the coilship as quickly as possible, and Jump away with the pieces and salvage what we can from this operation.

“There will be enough Monitor Corps medics on these ships to deal with the expected casualties,” he went on, “and for this reason I would like Rhabwar to leave at once and position itself close to the CRLTs new target planet. If trouble develops it is much more likely to be at that end.”

“I understand,” Conway said quietly.

The Fleet Commander nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. From now on this is purely a transport problem and my responsibility.”

Sooner yours than mine, Conway thought grimly as Dermod broke contact.

He was thinking about the Fleet Commander’s problem while they were wishing Colonel Okaussie and the Descartes’s tractor beam crew good-by and good luck, and it remained in his mind after the medical team boarded Rhabwar and the ambulance ship was heading out to Jump distance from the combined CRLT and Federation vessels.

Conway understood Dermod’s problem all too well and the strong but unspoken reason why the Fleet Commander wanted the ambulance ship positioned in the target system. They both knew that the majority of single-ship accidents occurred because of a premature emergence into normal space when one of the unfortunate vessel’s matched set of hyperdrive generators was out of synchronization. A single generator pod emerging into normal space while the rest of the vessel was in the hy-perdimension could tear the ship apart and leave wreckage strewn across millions of kilometers. Timing, therefore, was : ritical even on a single ship where only two or perhaps four generators had to be matched. The Fleet Commander’s problem was that Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes together with the jnormous coilship of the CRLTs were linked together by tractor and pressor beams into a single rigid structure.

The Emperor-class cruisers were the largest ships operated by the Monitor Corps, and each required six generators to move its tremendous mass into and out of hyperspace, while the survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes needed only four. I"his meant that sixteen generators in all would be required to perform a simultaneous Jump and subsequent emergence into normal space. And the problem was further complicated by the Fact that all of the generators would be operating under controlled overload conditions because their coombined hyperspace envelope had to be extended to enclose the coilship.

As Rhabwar made its Jump into hyperspace Conway was overcome by such an intense, gnawing anxietty that even Prilicla could not reassure him out of it. He had the awful feeling that they were about to witness the worst spactdisasaster in Federation history.

The new home chosen for the CRLIs had been known to the Federation for nearly two centurie and was listed as a possible colony world for the Chalders.however, the denizens of Chalderescol Three—a water-breathing life-form resembling an outsize, tentacled crocodile which combined physical inaction with mental agility—were not very enthusiastic about it since they already possessed two colony worlds and their home planet was far from overcrowded So when they learned of the plight of the CRLT colonists they willlingly relinquished their claim to a planet which was of marginal interest to them anyway.

It was a warm, pleasant world with a continent, largely desert, encircling its equator like a wide, ragged belt and two relatively small bands of ocean separating the equatorial land-mass from the two large continents centred 3 at each pole; these were green, temperate, and free of icecaps . . .

Following exhaustive investigations of tthe cadavers available to them at Sector General both Murchison and Thornnastor were firmly of the opinion that this would be an ideal home for the CRLT life-form—moreover it was an environment which would not force them into periodic hibernation . . .

The landing area, a large clearing on the shore of a vast, inland sea, had already been marked with beacons. It awaited only the arrival of the CRLTs—as, vith mounting anxiety, did the personnel on board Rhabwar. On t the Casualty Deck Conway and the other members of the medical team each picked a direct visionport, hoping in some obscure fashion that by watching and worrying hard they might ensre the safe arrival of the coilship.

It was no surprise, considering the distances involved, that they learned of its emergence from the Control Room repeaters.

“Trace, sir!” Haslam’s voice sounded excitedly. “The bearing is—“

“Are you sure it’s them?”

“A single trace that size couldn’t be anything else, sir. And yes, the sensors confirm.”

“Very well,” the Captain’s voice replied, trying unsuccessfully to hide its relief. “Lock the scope on your radar bearing and give me full magnification. Dodds, contact astrogation on Vespasian and arrange a rendezvous. Power Room, stand by.”

The rest of the crewmen’s conversation was ignored as the medical team crowded around the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. One look was enough to tell them that their preparations to receive large numbers of casualties from the expected emergence accident had been wasted effort, but they did not care because it was immediately obvious that the concerted Jump had been completely successful.

Centered on the repeater screen was a small, sharp image of the coilship with its three Monitor Corps vessels spaced along its axis, looking like an exercise in alien three-dimensional geometry. Vespasian, the stern component, was already applying thrust, and the three linked ships were beginning to turn around their longitudinal axes in order to reproduce the original rate of rotation and centrifugal force conditions ofthe coilship before its accident. Gradually a voice from Control made itself heard above the sound of the medics’ human and extraterrestrial jubilation.

“. . . Rendezvous in four hours thirteen minutes,” Haslam was saying. “No preliminary orbital maneuvering, sir. They intend going straight in.”

Rhabwar, in its hypersonic glider configuration, circled the descending coilship at a distance of three kilometers using its thrusters only when necessary to maintain the same rate of descent. Rotating slowly and illuminated to near- incandescent brightness by the system’s sun and noontime reflection from the planet’s cloud blanket, it seemed to Conway as if it were boring its way into the lower reaches of the atmosphere like some gigantic, alien drill. Inside the enormous, dazzling coil the three Federation ships in their drab service liveries were virtually invisible except for the flare of Vespasian’s thrusters, which were supporting the weight not only of the coilship but the two vessels stacked above it. The great alien and Monitor Corps composite continued its descent until, three kilometers from the surface, tangential thrust was applied to begin killing its spin.

Vespasian’s flare lengthened suddenly and brightened, slowing the descent until the ship was hovering a meter above the ground. Then simultaneously the coilship’s rotation ceased, Vespasian’s stabilizers came to rest on the fused and blackened soil, and the sternmost segment of the coilship touched down.

For perhaps five seconds nothing happened, then, reacting to the cessation of spin and the presence of a suitable atmosphere, the sensor-actuators on every hibernation cylinder performed their function. The endplates which kept the individual CRLTs apart were ejected to fall like a shower of giant coins to the ground, and resuscitation of the group entity was initiated. Conway could imagine the individual CRLTs awakening, stretching, and linking up, the occupants of close on nine hundred hibernation compartments which had survived the eighty-seven years past collision. Then he began to worry in case some of them could not link up and there was an organic log-jam somewhere inside the coil trapping CRLTs above it . . .

But within a surprisingly short time the great group entity was leaving its ship, the leading head segments walking carefully around the fused earth under Vespasian’s stern and toward the vegetation on the edge of the clearing. And, like an endless, leathery caterpillar the younger segments emerged carrying equipment and stores and following the tracks of their elders.

When at last the tail was clear of the coilship, the power to the supporting tractor and pressor beams was gradually reduced so that the towering, open spiral collapsed slowly onto itself to lie like a great, loose coil of metal rope on the ground. A few minutes later Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes took off and separated, the two capital ships to go into orbit and Descartes to land again a few kilometers along the shoreline to await formal contact with the CRLT group entity. Contact would occur, they knew, because the individual CRLTs who had undergone surgery knew that the beings inside the Federation ships wished them well and, since the CRLT life-form had shared mentation, the whole group would be aware of these good intentions.

By this time Rhabwar’s lander had also touched down and its medics were on the surface standing as close as they possibly could to the being who was marching endlessly past them. Ostensibly they were there to furnish any medical assistance which might be required. Actually they were simply satisfying their curiosity regarding a being which must surely have been the strangest life-form yet encountered.

Conway, as was his wont, was indulging in a bout of postoperative worrying. He waved, indicating the endless line of dorsal appendages which were either gathering pieces of edible vegetation or waving back at him, and said, “I realize that one or more of the head segments must have tried the local vegetation with no ill effects, and now the whole group entity knows what is safe to eat, but the procedure seems a bit slapdash to me. And I haven’t been able to spot any of our surgical joins going past. There is bound to be a certain amount of muscular weakness in those areas, and perhaps an impairment in sensory communication and—What the blazes is that\”

That was a low, moaning and caterwauling sound which ran up and down the length of the kilometers-long entity, rising in volume suddenly until it became deafening. It sounded as if each and every CRLT was suffering intense physical or mental anguish. But strangely the outpouring of emotional radiation which must have accompanied it was not bothering Prilicla.

“Do not feel concern,” the little empath said. “It is an expression of group pleasure, gratitude, and relief. They are cheering, friend Conway.”

Sector General 6—Star Healer

James White

CHAPTER 1

Something struck Conway as odd about the latest bunch of trainees as he stood aside to allow them to precede him into the observation gallery of the Hudlar Children’s Ward. It was not that among the fourteen of them they comprised five widely different life-forms or that their treatment of him—he was, after all, a Senior Physician attached to the galaxy’s largest multienvironment hospital—was condescending to the point of rudeness.

To be accepted for advanced training at Sector Twelve General Hospital a candidate—in addition to possessing a high degree of medical and surgical ability—had to be able to adapt to and accept people and circumstances which, back in their home-planet hospitals, they could barely have imagined. At home an off-planet patient would be a rarity indeed, while at Sector General they would be treating nothing else. Furthermore, many of them would find it difficult to make the transition from highly respected member of the local medical fraternity to mere trainee at Sector General, but they would soon settle in.

His mind was playing tricks on him, Conway decided—probably because he had so much on it at the present time. A rumor was going around about changes in his ambulance ship setup, and he was scheduled for an hour early that afternoon with the Chief Psychologist, always an unsettling prospect.

Conway was also irritated because he seemed to be coming in for more than his fair share of short-term projects and medical odd jobs—such as giving the trainees their initial orientation tour. His special ambulance-ship team had had very few calls in recent months.

“The patients in the ward below are infant Hudlars,” Conway explained when the trainees had formed an untidy crescent around and behind him. “They belong to an immensely strong species and, as adults, are extremely resistant to physical injury and disease. So much so that the concept of curative medical treatment has been foreign to them. No medical profession exists on Hudlar, and the high infant mortality rate of the recent past was simply accepted. Their young fall prey to a large number of indigenous pathogens from the moment they are born, and those which do not quickly develop or inherit resistance to them perish. The hospital is trying to develop a wide-spectrum immunization procedure to be carried out during the prenatal stage, but so far with limited success.”

He indicated a young Hudlar standing just below them, looking up. “You will already have deduced from this individual’s general stance and musculature that the species evolved on a world with very heavy gravity and proportionately high atmospheric pressure, both of which have been reproduced in the ward. You will also observe no beds or rest furniture; patients who can move simply roam about at will. This is because their body tegument is so tough that padded rest areas are unnecessary. Because of the difficulty other species have in telling Hudlars apart, patient ID and case history are impressed magnetically on the metal band attached to the left forelimb. The Hudlars’ six limbs can serve as either manipulatory or locomotor appendages.

“While gravity and atmospheric pressure have been duplicated here,” Conway went on, “the exact constituents of their atmosphere have not been reproduced. Their home world’s air is a thick, semiliquid soup laden with tiny, airborne food particles which are absorbed and excreted by specialized areas of the skin. We find it more convenient to spray them periodically with a nutrient paint, as two of the armored medical attendants are doing now.

“With the facts now in your possession,” he said, turning to regard them, “would anyone like to classify this life-form?”

For a moment there was no verbal response. The Orligian DBDGs moved restively, but the expressions on their humanoid features were concealed by facial hair. The silvery fur of the caterpillarlike Kelgian DBLFs was in constant motion, but the emotions which the movements expressed were readable only by a fellow member of the species or by a being carrying a Kelgian tape in its mind. As for the elephantine Tralthan FGLIs and the diminutive Dewatti EGCLs, their features were too decentralized to be visible in their entirety, while the hard, angular mandibles and deeply recessed eyes of the Melfan ELNTs were completely expressionless.

One of the four Melfan trainees first broke the silence, Its translator hummed briefly, “They belong to physiological classification PROB.”

It was difficult to tell Melfans apart at the best of times, since all adult ELNTs possessed similar body mass and the only visible differences were the subtle variations in marking on the upper carapace. To make identification even more difficult, two of the four Melfan trainees seemed to be identical twins. One of these had spoken.

“Correct,” Conway said approvingly. “Your name, Doctor?”

“Danalta, Senior Physician.”

Polite, too, Conway thought. “Very well, Danalta. But you were slow in making the identification even though your colleagues were even slower. All of you must learn to quickly and accurately classify—”

“With respect, Senior Physician,” the Melfan broke in, “I did not wish to offer gratuitous display of my medical knowledge, woefully limited as it is at present, until my colleagues had a chance to respond. I have studied all that was available to me regarding your physiological classification system. But I come from a backward world where the level of technology is low and intercultural communication has been limited, particularly where medical data on this hospital was concerned.

“Besides,” it concluded, “the Hudlar life-form is distinctive, unique, and could only be FROB.”

Conway would not have described Melf as a backward world and neither would any other member of the Galactic Federation, so this Danalta must have come from one of the colonies recently seeded by Melf. To qualify for Sector General with a background like that required determination as well as professional competence. It did not matter that the Melfan was turning out to be an odd combination of polite, self-effacing smart aleck—the operative word was “smart,” and the best assistants an overworked Senior could have were those who strived to render their superiors redundant. He decided that he would keep a close watch on Danalta’s progress, for purely selfish reasons.

“Since it is possible,” Conway said dryly, “that a number of your colleagues are less well-informed on this subject than you, I shall outline very briefly the system of life-form identification which we use here. Your various specialist tutors will take you through it in more detail.”

He looked for Danalta, but the trainees had changed their positions and Conway could no longer tell which of the two identical Melfans was which. He went on, “Unless you have already been attached to a multienvironment hospital, you will normally have encountered off-world patients one species at a time, probably on a short-term basis as the result of a ship accident or some emergency, and you would refer to them by their planets of origin. But here—where rapid and accurate identification of incoming patients is vital because all too often they are in no condition to furnish physiological data themselves—we have evolved a four-letter physiological classification system. It works like this.

“The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution reached by the species when it acquired intelligence,” he continued. “The second indicates the type and distribution of limbs, sense organs, and body orifices, and the remaining two letters refer to the combination of metabolism and food and air requirements associated with the home planet’s gravity and atmospheric pressure, which in turn gives an indication of the physical mass and protective tegument possessed by the being.”

Conway smiled, although he knew that a long time would elapse before any of the trainees would be able to recognize that peculiarly Earth-human facial grimace for what it was. “Usually I have to remind some of our extraterrestrial candidates at this point that the initial letter of their classification should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, because the degree of physical evolution is controlled by environmental factors and bears little relation to the level of intelligence . . .

Species with the prefix A, B, or C, he went on to explain, were water-breathers. On most worlds life had originated in the sea, and these beings had developed intelligence without having to leave it. D through F were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, into which group most of the intelligent races of the Federation fell, and the G and 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 0 and P groups, and after these came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically and the downright weird types. Into these categories fell the radiation-eaters, the cold-blooded or crystalline beings, and entities capable of modifying their physical structures at will. However, those beings possessing extrasensory powers sufficiently well developed to make ambulatory or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V regardless of their size or shape.

“There are anomalies in the system,” Conway went on, “and these must be blamed on a lack of imagination and foresight by the originators. The AACP life-form, for instance, has a vegetable metabolism. Normally the A prefix denotes a water-breather, there being nothing lower on the evolutionary scale than the piscatorial lifeforms, but the AACPs are intelligent vegetables and plant-life came before the fish.”

Conway pointed suddenly at a nurse who was spraying nutrient onto a young Hudlar at the other end of the ward, then turned toward Danalta. “Perhaps you would like to classify that life-form, Doctor.”

“I am not Danalta,” the Melfan Conway was addressing protested. Even though the process of translation tended to filter the emotional overtones from messages, the ELNT sounded displeased.

“My apologies,” Conway said, looking around for its twin, in vain. He decided that Danalta, for reasons known only to itself, had hidden behind the group of Tralthan trainees. Before he could redirect the question, one of the Tralthans answered it.

“The being you indicate is encased in a heavy-duty protective suit,” the big FGLI said, this deep modulated rumblings of its native speech reinforcing the ponderous and pedantic style of the translated words. “The only part of the being visible to me is the small area behind the visor, and this is indistinct because of reflections from the ward lighting. Since the protective suit is self-propelled, there is no evidence available as to the number and type of the locomotor appendages. But the overall size and shape of the suit together with the positioning of the four mechanical manipulators spaced around the base of the conical head section—assuming that for ergonomic reasons these mechanical extensions approximate the positions of the underlying natural limbs—leads me to state with a fair degree of certainty that the entity in question is a Kelgian of physiological classification DBLF. Glimpses of a gray, furry tegument and what appears to be one of the Kelgian visual sensors revealed, however unclearly, through the small area of the visor, supports this identification.”

“Very good, Doctor!” But before Conway could ask the Tralthan its name, the entrance lock of the ward swung open and a large, spherical vehicle mounted on caterpillar treads rolled in. The sphere was encircled equatorially by a variety of remote handling and sensory devices, and prominently displayed on the forward upper surface was the insignia of a Diagnostician. Instead, Conway pointed to the vehicle and said, “Can you classify that one?”

This time one of the Kelgians spoke first.

“Only by inference and deduction, Senior Physician,” it said as slow, regular waves rippled along its fur from nose to tail. “Plainly the vehicle is a self-powered pressure vessel which, judging by the external bracing evident on the sphere, is designed to protect the ward patients and medical staff as well as the occupant. The walking limbs, if there are any, are concealed by the pressure envelope, and I would say that the number of external handling and sensory devices is so large that it is probable the being has only a small number of natural manipulators and sensors, and operates the external devices as required. The walls of the pressure vessel are of unknown thickness, so that there is no accurate data available to me regarding the size and physical configuration of the occupant.”

The Kelgian paused for a moment and sat back on its rearmost legs, looking like a fat, furry question mark. Silvery ripples continued to move slowly along its back and flanks, while the fur of its three fellow DBLFs twitched and tufted and flattened randomly as if there were a strong wind blowing in the observation gallery.

An air of restlessness, of low-key agitation, seemed to pervade the other members of the group. The Tralthans were each raising and lowering their stumpy, elephantine feet in turn. The continuous clicking and scraping sound was the Melfans tapping their crablike legs against the floor, while the teeth of the Orligians showed whitely in their dark, furry faces. Conway hoped they were smiling.

“I am aware of two life-forms which use a pressure vessel of this kind,” the Kelgian went on. “They are utterly dissimilar in environmental requirements and physiology, and both would be considered by the more common oxygen- and chlorine-breathing species to be among the exotic categories. One is a frigid-blooded methane-breather who is most comfortable in an environment at a few degrees above absolute zero, and who evolved on the perpetually dark worlds which have been detached from their original solar systems and drift through the interstellar spaces.

“Physically they are quite small,” the Kelgian continued, “averaging one-third of the body mass of a being like myself. But during contact with other species, the highly refrigerated life-support and sensory translation systems which they are forced to wear are large and complex and require frequent power recharge . . .

Three of them! Conway thought. He looked around for the Tralthan who had correctly tagged the suited DBLF, and Danalta, the Melfan trainee who had identified the FROB, to observe their reactions to the very knowledgeable Kelgian—but the group was milling about so much that he could not tell who was who. Certainly he had sensed something unusual about this bunch shortly after taking charge of them at the hospital’s staff entry port.

The other life-form,” the Kelgian was saying, “inhabits a heavy-gravity, watery planet which circles very close to its parent sun. It breathes superheated steam and has a quite interesting metabolism about which I am incompletely informed. It, also, is a small life-form, and the large size of its pressure envelope is necessitated by its having to mount heaters to render the occupant comfortable, and surface insulation and refrigerators to keep the vicinity habitable by other life-forms.

“The environment of the Hudlar ward is warm with a high moisture content,” the Kelgian continued, “and some measure of the low internal temperature required by a methane-breathing SNLU would be conducted, no matter how efficient the insulation to the outer fabric of the vehicle, where condensation would be apparent. Since condensation is not present, the probability is high that the vehicle contains the high-temperature life-form, a member of which species is said to be a Diagnostician at the hospital.

“This identification is the result of deduction, guesswork, and a degree of prior knowledge, Senior Physician,” the Kelgian ended, “but I would place the entity in physiological classification TLTU.”

Conway looked closely at the slow, regular fur movements of the unusually unemotional and well-informed DBLF, and then at the agitated pelts of its Kelgian colleagues. Speaking slowly, because his mind was moving at top speed and little of it was free for speech, he said, “The answer is correct, no matter how you arrived at it.”

He was thinking about the DBLF classification, and in particular about their expressive fur. Because of inadequacies in the speech organs, the Kelgian spoken language lacked emotional expression. Instead the beings’ highly mobile fur acted, so far as another Kelgian was concerned, as a perfect but uncontrollable mirror to the speaker’s emotional state. As a result the concept of lying was totally alien to them, and the idea of being tactful or diplomatic or even polite was utterly unthinkable. A DBLF invariably said exactly what it meant, and felt, because its fur revealed its feelings from moment to moment and to do otherwise would be sheer stupidity.

Conway was also thinking about the Melfan ELNTs and their mechanism of reproduction which made twinning an impossibility, and about the phrasing of the answers volunteered by Danalta and the other two, particularly that of the Kelgian who had implied that the TLTU life-form was not particularly exotic. From the moment they had arrived, he had felt that something was distinctly unusual about the group. He should have trusted his feelings.

He thought back to his first sight of the newcomers and of how they had looked and acted at different times since then, especially their nervousness and the general lack of questioning about the hospital. Was some kind of conspiracy afoot? Without being obtrusive about it, he looked at each of them.

Four Kelgian DBLFs, two Dewatti EGCLs, three Tralthan FGLIs, three Melfan ELNTs, and two Orligian DBDGs—fourteen in all. But Kelgians are never polite or respectful or capable of much control over their fur, Conway thought as he deliberately turned away from them and looked into the ward.

“Who’s the joker?” he said.

No one replied, and Conway, still without looking at them, said, “I have no previous knowledge of the life-form concerned, and my identification is based, therefore, on inference, deduction, and behavioral observation . . .

The sarcasm in his voice was probably lost in the translation, and the majority of extraterrestrials were literal-minded to a fault, anyway. He softened his tone as he went on. “I am addressing that entity among you whose species is amoebic in that it can extrude any limbs, sense organs, or protective tegument necessary to the environment or situation in which it finds itself. My guess is that it evolved on a planet with a highly eccentric orbit, and with climatic changes so severe that an incredible degree of physical adaptability was necessary for survival. It became dominant on its world, developed intelligence and a civilization, not by competing in the matter of natural weapons but by refining and perfecting the adaptive capability. When it was faced by natural enemies, the options would be flight, protective mimicry, or the assumption of a shape frightening to the attacker.

“The speed and accuracy of the mimicry displayed here,” he continued, “particularly in the almost perfect reproduction of behavior patterns, suggests that the entity may be a receptive empath. With such effective means of self-protection available, I would say that the species is impervious to physical damage other than by physical annihilation or the application of ultrahigh temperatures, so that the concept of curative surgery would be a strange one indeed to members of that race. Virtual physical indestructibility would mean that they did not require mechanisms for selfprotection, so they are likely to be advanced in the philosophical sciences but backward in developing their technology.

“I would identify you,” Conway said, swinging around to face them, “as physiological classification TOBS.”

He walked rapidly toward the three Orligians, for the good reason that there should have been only two of them. Quickly but gently he reached out to their shoulders and slipped a finger between the straps of their harnesses and the underlying fur. On the third attempt he could not do it because the harness and the fur would not separate.

Dryly, Conway said, “Do you have any future plans or ambitions, Doctor Danalta, other than playing practical jokes?”

For a moment the head and shoulders melted and slumped into what could have been the beginnings of a Melfan carapace—the sort of disquieting metamorphosis, Conway thought, which he would have to get used to—before it firmed back to the Orligian shape.

“I am most sincerely sorry, Senior Physician,” Danalta said, “if my recent actions have caused you mental distress. The matter of physical shape is normally of complete indifference to me, but I thought that adopting the forms of the people within the hospital would be more convenient for purposes of communication and social intercourse, and I also wished to practice my mimicry as soon and as often as possible before a being who was most likely to spot any inconsistencies. On the ferrycraft I discussed it with the other members of the group, and they agreed to cooperate.

“My chief purpose in seeking a position at the hospital,” Danalta went on quickly, “was to have the opportunity of working with so large and varied a group of life-forms. To a mimic of my capabilities—and at this point I should say that they are considered greater than average among my people—this establishment represents a tremendous challenge, even though I fully realize that there will be life-forms which I may not be able to reproduce. Regarding the word ‘joker,’ this does not seem to translate into my language. But if I have given offense in this matter, I apologize without reservation.”

“Your apology is accepted,” Conway said, thinking of some of the harebrained stunts his own group of trainees had been up to many years ago—activities which had only the most tenuous connection with the practice of medicine. He looked at his watch and added, “If you are interested in meeting a large number of different life-forms, Doctor, you will shortly have your wish. All of you, please follow me.”

But the Orligian who was not an Orligian did not move. It said, “As you rightly deduced, Senior Physician, the practice of medicine is completely foreign to our species. My purpose in coming here is selfish, even pleasurable, rather than idealistic. I shall merely be using my abilities to reassure beings who are suffering from physical malfunctions by mimicking them if there are no members of their own race present to give such reassurance. Or to adapt quickly to environments which others would find lethal so that urgent treatment would not be delayed because of time wasted in the donning of protective envelopes. Or to extrude limbs of a specialized shape or function which might be capable of repairing otherwise inaccessible areas where an organic malfunction had occurred. But I am not, and should not be called, a Doctor.”

Conway laughed suddenly. He said, “If that is the kind of work you plan to do here, Danalta, we won’t call you anything else.”

CHAPTER 2

Like a gigantic, cylindrical Christmas tree Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in the interstellar darkness between the rim of the parent Galaxy and the densely populated star systems of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. In its three hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum ranging from the ultraftigid methane life-forms through the more common oxygen-breathing types up to the weird and wonderful beings who did not breathe, or even eat, but existed by the direct absorption of hard radiation.

Sector General represented a two-fold miracle of engineering and psychology. Its supply and maintenance were handled by the Monitor Corps—the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm—which also saw to its nonmedical administration. But the traditional friction between military and civilian members of the staff did not occur, and neither were there any serious problems among its ten thousand-odd medical personnel, who were composed of nearly seventy differing life-forms with as many different mannerisms, body odors, and ways of looking at life.

But space was always at a premium in Sector General, and whenever possible the beings who worked together were expected to eat together—though not, of course, of the same food.

The trainees were lucky enough to find two adjoining tables, unlucky in that the furniture and eating utensils were designed for the use of dwarflike Nidian DBDGs. The vast dining hail catered to the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing members of the staff, and one look around made plain that different species dined or talked shop or simply gossiped together at the same table. Wrong-size furniture was a discomfort which the newcomers would get used to and, in this instance, things could have been much worse.

The Melfan’s mandibles were at the right height above the table, and it was no inconvenience for the ELNTs to eat while standing. The Tralthans did everything including sleeping on their six blocky feet. The Keigians could adapt their caterpillar shapes to any type of furniture, and the Orligians, like Conway himself, could sit without too much discomfort on the armrests of the chairs. The tiny Dewatti had no problems at all, and the polymorphic Danalta had taken the shape of a Dewatti.

“The food-ordering and delivery system is standard,” Conway said, looking from one table to the other, “and the same as that used on the ships which brought you here. If you punch in your physiological classification, the menu will be displayed in your own written language. Except for Danalta. There are no special dietary requirements for the TOBS life-form, I suspect, but no doubt you have preferences? Danalta’

“Your pardon, Senior Physician,” the TOBS said. While it watched the dining hall entrance, its body was twisted into a shape impossible for a Dewatti. “My attention was taken by the incredible assortment of beings who come and go here.”

“What would you like to eat?” Conway asked patiently.

The TOBS spoke without turning its Dewatti head. “Virtually anything which is not radioactive or chemically corrosive, Senior Physician. Were nothing else available I could, in a short time, metabolize the material of this dining furniture. But I eat infrequently and will not need to do so again for several of your days.”

“Fine.” Conway tapped for a steak before going on. “And Danalta, while it is very pleasant, and rare in this establishment, to be addressed properly and with respect, it can be cumbersome. So it is customary to address interns, Junior and Senior Physicians, and even Diagnosticians as Doctor. Have you seen a physiological type which you cannot reproduce?”

Conway was beginning to feel irritated at the way Danalta kept looking at the entrance while he was speaking, and wondered if it was a trait peculiar to the species and the impoliteness unintentional. Then he nearly choked when he saw that the TOBS had extruded a small eye from the back of its head to watch him.

“I have certain limitations, Doctor,” it replied. “Shape changing is relatively easy, but I cannot discard physical mass. This . . .”—it indicated itself—“is a small but very heavy Dewatti. And the entity who has just entered would be very difficult to reproduce.”

Conway followed the direction of its other eyes, then stood up suddenly and waved.

“Prilicla!”

The little being who had just entered the dining hall was a Cmrusskin GLNO—a six-legged, exoskeletal, multiwinged, incredibly fragile insect. The gravity of its home world was one-twelfth Earth normal, and only double sets of gravity nullifiers kept it from being smashed flat against the floor, enabled it to fly or, when the unthinking movements of its more massive colleagues threatened life and ultrafragile limb, to scamper safely along the walls or ceiling. It was impossible for off-worlders to tell Cinrusskins apart; even Cmrusskins could only differentiate between members of the species by the identification of individual emotional radiation. But there was only one GLNO empath on the hospital staff; this one had to be Senior Physician Prilicla.

The occupants of both tables were watching the little empath as it flew slowly toward them on its wide, iridescent, almost transparent wings. As it came to a gentle halt above them, Conway noticed a faint, erratic trembling in the six pipestem legs and its hover showed definite signs of instability.

Something was distressing the little Cinrusskin, but Conway did not say anything, because he knew that his own concern was already obvious to the empath. He wondered suddenly if the sight of the GLNO had triggered some deep-seated phobia in one of the new arrivals and it was radiating fear or revulsion with sufficient intensity to affect Prilicla’s coordination.

He would have to put a stop to that.

“This is Senior Physician Prilicla,” he said quickly, as if he was making a simple introduction. “It is a native of Cinruss, a GLNO, and possesses a highly developed empathic faculty which, among other uses, is invaluable in detecting and monitoring the condition of deeply unconscious patients. The faculty also makes it highly sensitive to the emotional radiation of colleagues such as ourselves who are conscious. In Prllicla’s presence we must guard against sudden and violent mental reactions, even involuntary reactions such as instinctive fear or dislike at meeting a life-form which, on another species’ home planet, is a predator or the object of a childhood phobia. These feelings and reactions must be controlled and negated to the best of your abilities because they will be experienced with greater intensity by the empath. When you become better acquainted with Prilicla, you will find that it is impossible to have unpleasant feelings toward it.

“And I apologize, Prilicla, for making you the subject of that impromptu lecture without first asking your permission.”

“No need, friend Conway. I am aware of your feeling of concern, which was the reason for giving the lecture, and I thank you for it. But no unpleasant feelings exist among this group. Their emotional radiation is composed of surprise, incredulity, and intense curiosity, which I will be pleased to satisfy—”

“But you’re still shaking Conway began quietly. Uncharacteristically the Cinrusskin ignored him.

I am also aware of another empath,” it went on, drifting along between the tables until it hovered above the psuedo-Dewatti with the extra eye. “You must be the newly arrived polymorph lifeform from Fotawn. I look forward to working with yoñ, friend Danalta. This is my first encounter with the extremely gifted TOBS classification.”

“And I with a GLNO, Doctor Prilicla,” Danalta replied as its Dewatti shape slumped and began to overflow the chair in what had to be a pleased reaction at such words from a Senior Physician. “But my empathic faculty is not nearly as sensitive and well developed as yours. It evolved with the shape-changing ability as an early warning of the intentions of nearby predators. Unlike the faculty possessed by your race, which is used as the primary system of nonverbal communication, mine is under voluntary control so that the level of emotional radiation reaching my receptors can be reduced or even cut off at will should it become too distressing.”

Prilicla agreed that a shutoff was a useful option, and ignoring Conway, they turned to discussing their homeworld environments, the gentle, light-gravity world of Cinruss and Fotawn, the utterly frightful and inimicable planet of the TOBS. The others, to whom Cinruss and Fotawn were little more than names, listened with great interest, only occasionally breaking in with questions.

Conway, who could be as patient as anyone when all other options were closed to him, concentrated on finishing his meal before the downwash from Prilicla’s wings cooled it into inedibility.

He was not surprised that the two empaths were getting on well together—that was a law of nature. An emotion-sensitive who by word, deed, or omission caused hostility in the people around it had those same feelings bounced back in its face, so it was in an empath’s own interest to make the atmosphere as pleasant as possible for all concerned. Danalta, apparently, was somewhat different in that it could switch off incoming emotional radiation at will.

Neither was Conway surprised that the TOBS knew so much about Cinruss and its empathic natives—Danalta had already demonstrated its wide-ranging knowledge about everything and everybody. What did surprise him was that Prilicla seemed to know a lot about Fotawn that had not come up in the present conversation, and Conway had the impression that the knowledge was recently acquired. But from whom?

Certainly it was not common knowledge in the hospital, Conway thought as he kept his eyes on his dessert, with an occasional glance upward to where Prilicla was maintaining its unstable hover. From habit he did not look at the various unsavory, foul-smelling messes which the others were busy ingesting. Had news of Fotawn and its visiting TOBS leaked, the hospital grapevine would have been twitching with it in its every leaf and branch. So why had Prilicla alone been given the information?

“I’m curious,” Conway stated during the next lull in the conversation.

“I know.” The trembling in Prilicla’s limbs increased momentarily. “I am an empath, friend Conway.”

“And I,” Conway replied, “after the number of years we have worked together, have developed a degree of empathy where you are concerned, little friend. There is a problem.”

It was a statement rather than a question, and Prilicla’s flying became even more unstable, so that it had to alight on an unoccupied space at the table. When it spoke it seemed to be choosing the words with great care, and Conway reminded himself that the empath was not in the least averse to lying if in so doing it could maintain a pleasant level of emotional radiation in the area.

“I have had a lengthy meeting with friend O’Mara,” Prilicla said, “during which I was given some disturbing news.

“Which was?” Conway felt that he should have obtained a degree in extraterrestrial dentistry; on this occasion getting information out of Prilicla was Like pulling teeth.

“I am sure that I will adjust to it in time,” the empath replied. “Do not be concerned for me. I . . . I have been promoted to a position of much greater responsibility and authority. Please understand, friend Conway, I accepted with reluctance.”

“Congratulations!” Conway was delighted. “And there was no need for the reluctance, or for you to feel badly about it. O’Mara would not give you the job unless he was absolutely sure you could do it. What exactly will you be doing?”

“I would rather not discuss it here and now, friend Conway.” Prilicla’s tremor was increasing as it forced itself to say something which verged on the disagreeable. “This is not the time or the place to talk shop.”

Conway choked on his coffee. In this place shop was normally the only subject of conversation, and they both knew it. What was more, the presence of the newcomers should have been no bar, because they would have been interested in listening to a discussion between senior members of staff of matters which they did not quite understand, but which they soon would. He had never known Prilida to behave like this before, and the intensity of his curiosity was making the empath shake even harder.

“What did O’Mara say to you?” Conway asked firmly, and added, “Exactly.”

“He said,” Prilicla replied quickly, “that I should assume more responsibility, learn to give orders, and generally throw my weight around. Friend Conway, my physical mass is inconsiderable, my musculature virtually nonexistent, and I feel that the thought processes of the Chief Psychologist are, well, difficult to fathom. But right now I must excuse myself. There are some routine matters to which I must attend on Rhabwar, and I had, in any case, planned on having Lunch in the ambulance ship.”

Conway did not have to be an empath to know that the empath was uncomfortable and did not want to answer any more questions.

A few minutes after PriLicla departed, he handed over the trainees to the instructors who had been waiting patiently for them to finish lunch, and he had a few more minutes in which to think before a trio of KeLgian nurses joined the next table and began moaning and twitching their fur at each other. He switched off his translator so that their conversation, a highly scandalous tale about another member of their species, would not distract him.

Prilicla would not display continuous emotional disturbance simply because it had received news of a promotion. It had borne heavy medical and surgical responsibilities on many previous occasions. Neither would it mind giving orders. True, it had no weight to throw about, but then it always gave its instructions in such a polite and inoffensive way that its subordinates would have died rather than make it feel unhappy by refusing to obey. And the newcomers had not been emoting unpleasantly and neither had Conway.

But suppose Conway would have felt badly if Prilicla had told him the details of its new job? That would explain the empath’s uncharacteristic behavior, because the thought of hurting another being’s feelings would be highly unpleasant for it—especially if the person concerned was a close friend like Conway. And for some reason Prilicla would not, or could not, speak about its new position in front of the newcomers, or perhaps before one of the newcomers.

Maybe it was not its new job which was worrying Prilicla but something it had learned during its meeting with O’Mara, something which concerned Conway himself and which the Cinrusskin was not at liberty to divulge. He checked the time and stood up quickly, excusing himself to the nurses.

The answers—and, he knew from long experience, very likely a whole new set of problems—would be found in the office of the Chief Psychologist.

CHAPTER 3

The inner office of the Chief Psychologist resembled in many respects a medieval torture chamber, and the resemblance was heightened not only by the wide variety of extraterrestrial couches and relaxers fitted with physical restraints, but by the graying, granite-featured Torquemada in Monitor Corps green who presided over it. Major O’Mara indicated a physiologically suitable chair.

“Sit down, Doctor,” he said with a completely uncharacteristic smile. “Relax. You’ve been dashing about in that ambulance ship of yours so much recently that I’ve scarcely seen you. It is high time that we had a good, long talk.”

Conway felt his mouth go dry. This is going to be rough. But what had he done or left undone to merit this sort of treatment?

The other’s features were as unreadable as a lump of rock, but the eyes which were studying him, Conway knew from long experience, opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave the Major what amounted to a telepathic faculty. Conway did not speak and neither, for a long moment, did O’Mara.

As Chief Psychologist of the Federation’s largest multienvironment hospital, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a huge medical staff belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of major—which had been conferred on him for purely administrative reasons—did not place him high in the hospital’s chain of command, there were no clear limits to his authority. To O’Mara the medical staff were potential patients, and a large part of the Psychology Department’s work was the assignment of the right kind of doctor to a given patient.

Even with the highest degrees of tolerance and mutual respect, dangerous situations could arise among the staff because of ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia—in spite of the strict psychological screening every Sector General candidate had to undergo before being accepted for training—to a degree which threatened to affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for example, who had a strong subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if someone like Prilicla were to treat such an Earth-human patient.

A large part of O’Mara’s responsibility was to detect and eradicate such trouble among the medical staff while the other members of his department saw to it that the problems did not arise again—to such an extent that Earth-humans knowledgeable in matters of planetary history referred to the process as the Second Inquisition. According to O’Mara himself, however, the true reason for the high level of mental stability among his charges was that they were all too frightened of him to risk publicly displaying even a minor neurosis.

O’Mara smiled suddenly and said, “I think you are overdoing the respectful silence, Doctor. I would like to talk to you and, contrary to my usual practice, you will be allowed to talk back. Are you happy with ambulance ship duty?”

Normally the Chief Psychologist’s manner was caustic, sarcastic, and abrupt to the point of rudeness. He was fond of saying by way of explanation—O’Mara never apologized for anything—that with his colleagues he could relax and be his usual bad-tempered, obnoxious self while with potential patients he had to display sympathy and understanding. Knowing that, Conway did not feel at all reassured by his uncharacteristically pleasant Chief Psychologist.

“Quite happy,” Conway said guardedly.

“You weren’t happy in the beginning.” O’Mara was watching him intently. “As I remember, Doctor, you thought it beneath the dignity of a Senior Physician to be given medical charge of an ambulance ship. Any problems with the ship’s officers or the medical team? Any personnel changes you might care to suggest?”

“That was before I realized what a very special ambulance ship Rhabwar was,” Conway said, answering the questions in order. “There are no problems. The ship runs smoothly, the Monitor Corps crew are efficient and cooperative, and the members of the medical team are . . . No, I cannot think of any possible change that should be made in the personnel.”

“I can.” For an instant there was a caustic edge to the Chief Psychologist’s tone, as if the O’Mara that Conway knew and did not particularly love was trying to break through. Then he smiled and went on. “Surely you must have considered the disadvantages, the inconvenience and disruption caused by constantly remaining on ambulance ship standby, and you must have felt a degree of irritation that every operation you perform at Sector General requires that a surgical understudy be prepared in case you were to be suddenly called away. And the ambulance ship duty means that you cannot take part in some of the projects which your seniority would warrant. Research, teaching, making your experience available to others instead of dashing all over the Galaxy on rescue missions and—”

“So the change will be me,” Conway broke in angrily. “But who will be my?

“Prilicla will head Rhabwar’s medical team,” O’Mara replied, “but it accepted only on condition that in so doing it did not cause its friend Conway serious mental distress. It was quite adamant about that, for a Cinrusskin. Even though I told it not to say anything to you until you had been told officially, I expected it to go straight to you with the news.”

“It did. But it only mentioned a promotion, nothing else. I was with a party of new trainees and Prilicla seemed more interested in an empathic polymorph called Danalta. But I could see that something was troubling our little friend.”

“Several things were troubling Prilicla,” O’Mara said. “It knew that when you moved from Rhabwar, it moved up to your job, and that Danalta had already been chosen to fill its vacancy. But the TOBS doesn’t know about this yet, so Prilicla couldn’t tell you the details of its new job, because if Danalta learned about its appointment at second hand it might decide that it was being insulted by being taken for granted. The TOBS are a very able species and justifiably proud of their abilities, and its psych profile indicates that it would certainly take umbrage in a situation like that. But the job it is being offered is physiologically challenging to a polymorph, and I expect Danalta to jump at it.

“Have you any serious objections to these changes, Doctor?” he added.

“No.” Conway wondered why he did not feel angrier and more disappointed at losing a position which was the envy of his colleagues, and which he himself found exciting and professionally demanding. He added sourly, “If the changes are necessary in the first place.”

“They are necessary,” O’Mara said seriously, and went on. “I am not in the habit of paying compliments, as you know. My job here is to shrink heads, not swell them. Neither do I discuss my reasons for taking particular actions or decisions. But this is not a routine matter.”

The psychologist’s square, stubby hands were spread out on the desk before him, and his face was bent forward, looking at them as he spoke,

“First,” he said, “you were the medical team leader on Rhabwar’s maiden flight. Since then there have been many successful rescue missions, the procedures for the recovery and treatment of survivors have been perfected, and you are leaving a most efficient ambulance ship in which nothing serious can go wrong because of a small change in operating personnel. Prilicla, Murchison, and Naydrad will still be there, remember. And Danalta . . . Well, with two empaths on the team, one of whom has muscles, can change shape at will, and get into normally inaccessible areas of a wrecked ship, there might even be an improvement in the rescue times.

“Second, there is Prilicla. You know as well as I do that it is one of our best Senior Physicians. But, for purely psychological and evolutionary reasons, it is incredibly timid, cowardly, and utterly lacking in self-assertion. Placing it in a position where it has overall responsibility and authority, at the site of a disaster, will accustom it to the idea of giving orders and making decisions without help from superiors. I realize that its orders may not sound like orders, and that they will be obeyed because nobody will want to hurt its feelings by objecting. But in time it should acquire the habit of command, and during the periods between rescue missions the habit will carry over to its work in the hospital. You agree?”

Conway tried to smile as he said, “I’m glad our little friend isn’t here because my emotional radiation is anything but pleasant. But I agree.”

“Good,” the Major said. He went on briskly. “Third, there is Senior Physician Conway. We should be striving for objectivity in this matter, which is the reason why I am referring to you in the third person. He is a strange character in some ways, and has been since he joined us. A bit of a brat and very sure of himself in the early days, but he showed promise. In spite of this he remained a loner, didn’t mix socially, and seemed to prefer the company of his extraterrestrial colleagues. Psychologically suspect behavior, that, but it conferred distinct advantages in a multispecies hospital where—”

“But Murchison isn’t Conway began.

. . . An extraterrestrial,” O’Mara finished for him. “I realize that. The processes of senile decay are not so advanced in me that I would fail to notice that she is an Earth-human DBDG female, and then some. But apart from Murchison, your close friends are people like the Kelgian charge nurse Naydrad, the Melfan Senior Edanelt, Prilicla, and, of course, that SNLU dietician with the unpronounceable name from Level Three Oh Two, and even Diagnostician Thornnastor. This is highly significant.”

“What does it signify?” Conway asked, wishing desperately that the other would stop talking and give him time to think.

“You should be able to see that for yourself,” O’Mara said sharply, then went on. “Add to this the fact that Conway has performed excellently over the years, has seen many important and unusual cases through to their successful conclusions, and has not been afraid to take personal responsibility for his professional decisions. And now there are indications that he may be losing his fine edge.

“It isn’t serious as yet,” the psychologist went on quickly before Conway could react. “In fact, neither his colleagues nor the man himself has noticed it, and there is no diminution of professional competence. But I have been studying his case very closely, and it has been apparent to me for some time that Conway is slipping into a rut, and must.

“A rut! In this place?” Conway laughed in spite of himself.

“All things are relative,” O’Mara said irritably. “Let us call it the increasingly routine response to the completely unexpected, if rut is too simple for you. But to resume, it is my considered opinion that this person requires a complete change of assignment and duties. This change should be preceded by the immediate removal from the ambulance ship responsibilities, some minor psychiatric assistance, and a period of mental reappraisal . . .

“Agonizing reappraisal,” Conway said, laughing again without knowing why. “Reappraisals are always supposed to be agonizing.”

O’Mara studied him intently for a moment, then he exhaled slowly through his nose. Caustically, he said, “I don’t approve of unnecessary suffering, Conway, but if you want to agonize while you’re reappraising, feel free.”

The Major’s normally abrasive manner had returned, Conway noted. Apparently O’Mara no longer regarded him as a patient—which was pleasantly, or rather unpleasantly, reassuring. But his mind was fairly seething as it tried to assimilate and consider all the implications of this sudden and dramatic change in his situation, and he knew that he was temporarily incapable of responding coherently.

“I need time to think about this,” he said. “Naturally,” O’Mara said.

“And I’d like to spend some time on Rhabwar to advise Prilicla on—”

“No!” O’Mara’s open hand slapped the desk top. “Prilicla will have to learn to do the job in its own way, as you had to do, for the best results. You will stay away from the ambulance ship and not speak to the Cinrusskin except to wish it goodbye and good luck. In fact, I want you out of this hospital as quickly as possible. There is a Monitor Corps scoutship on courier duty leaving in thirty hours from now, so you won’t have time for long goodbyes.

“I do not believe,” he went on sardonically, “that there is any way that I can stop you saying a long goodbye to Murchison. Prilicla will already have broken the news of your imminent departure to her, and I can’t think of anyone who could break it more gently, since it has been told what is going to happen to you over the next few months.”

“I wish,” Conway said sourly, “that somebody would tell me.”

“Very well,” the Chief Psychologist said, sitting back in his chair. “You are being assigned for an indefinite period to a planet which, in its most widely used language, is called Goglesk. They have a problem there. I don’t know the details, but you will have plenty of time to brief yourself on it when you arrive, if it interests you. In this case you will not be expected to solve the problem; you will simply rest and—”

O’Mara’s intercom buzzed, and a voice said, “Sorry, sir, but Doctor Fremvessith is here, early for its appointment. Shall I ask it to return later?”

“That’s the PVGJ for the Kelgian tape erasure,” O’Mara replied. “There are problems there. No, ask it to wait and administer sedation if necessary.”

To Conway he went on. “As I was saying, while you are on Goglesk I want you to take things easy and think very carefully about your professional future, and take plenty of time to decide what you want to do or not do at Sector General. To assist the process, I’ll provide some medication designed to enhance the memory and aid dream recall. There are no long-term side effects. If you are going to take a mental inventory, the least I can do is supply a light for the darker recesses.

“But why?” Conway said, and suddenly he was not at all sure that he wanted the answer.

O’Mara was watching him intently, his mouth a tight, expressionless line, but the look in his eyes was sympathetic. He said, “You are beginning to realize the purpose of this meeting at last, Conway. But to save wear and tear on your overworked brain, I’ll make it simple for you.

“The hospital is giving you the chance,” he ended very seriously, “to try for Diagnostician.”

A Diagnostician! . . .

Many times Conway had had the disquieting experience of having his mind shared with an alien alter ego, as had the majority of the medics at Sector General. He had even, for one relatively short period, had his mind apparently taken over by several extraterrestrials. But after that experience O’Mara had spent several days putting the mental pieces of the original Conway personality together again.

The problem was that although the hospital was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, no single person could hold in his or its mind even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity was a product of experience and training, but the complete physiological information on a patient had to be furnished by means of an Educator tape, which was simply the brain record of some great medical genius belonging to the same or a similar species to that of the patient being treated.

If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took a DBLF physiology tape until treatment was completed, after which the tape was erased. The exceptions to this rule were the Senior Physicians of proven stability with teaching duties, and the Diagnosticians.

A Diagnostician was one of the medical elite, a being whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently six, seven, and in some cases ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To the datacrammed minds of the Diagnosticians were given the initiation and direction of original research in xenological medicine in addition to the practice and teaching of their considerable art.

But the tapes did not impart only the physiological data—the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to an extreme form of multiple schizophrenia. The entities apparently sharing one’s mind could be aggressive, unpleasant individuals—geniuses were rarely charming people—with all sorts of peeves and phobias. Usually these did not become apparent during the course of an operation or treatment. Often the worst times were when the possessor of the tape was relaxing, or sleeping.

Alien nightmares, Conway had been told, were really nightmarish. And alien sexual fantasies or wish-fulfillment dreams were enough to make the person concerned wish, if he was capable of wishing coherently for anything, that he were dead. Conway swallowed.

“A response of some kind is called for,” O’Mara said sarcastically, his manner indicating that he was back to being his usual, unlovable self and that the Conway interview was no longer a matter for concern. “Unless that gape is an attempt at nonverbal communication?”

“I . . . I need time to think about it,” Conway said.

“You will have plenty of time to think about it,” O’Mara said, standing up and looking pointedly at the desk chronometer, “on Goglesk.”

CHAPTER 4

The officers of the Monitor Corps scoutship Trennelgon knew Conway, both by reputation and by the fact that on three separate occasions he had given instructions to their communications officer during the search and retrieval operation on the widely scattered life capsules of the gigantic coilship belonging to the CRLT group entity.

Virtually every scoutship in three Galactic Sectors had been called on to assist in that operation, and Conway had communicated with the majority of them at some stage, but this tenuous connection made Trennelgon’s crew act toward him as if he were a famous relative. So much so that there was no time to think, or feel morbid, or do anything but respond to their friendly curiosity regarding Rhabwar and its rescue missions until he began yawning uncontroflably in their faces.

He was told that the trip would require only two Jumps and that they were estimating arrival in the Goglesk system in just under ten hours, after which he was reluctantly allowed to retire.

But when he stretched out on the narrow Service bunk, it was inevitable that he would start thinking of Murchison, who was not stretched out beside him. And his recollections were sharp and clear as they always were of anything they had said or done together, so that O’Mara’s memory-enhancing medication was superfluous.

She had begun by discussing the implications of Prilicla’s new appointment and the effect of Danalta’s shape-changing faculty on the established rescue procedures. Only gradually had she worked the conversation around to Conway’s possible advancement to Diagnostician. It had been obvious that she was as reluctant to bring up the subject as Conway had been, but Murchison was less of a moral coward.

“Prilicla has no doubt about you making it,” he heard her saying again, “and neither have I. But if you were unable to adjust, or could not for some reason accept the position, it is still a high professional compliment to have been considered.”

Conway did not reply, and she turned toward him, raising herself on one elbow. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll be gone for a few weeks, maybe months, and you’ll hardly even miss me.”

They both knew that was untrue. He looked up at her faintly smiling but concerned features and said, “As a Diagnostician I might not be the same person anymore. That’s what is worrying me. I might end up not feeling the same toward you.”

“I’ll make damned sure that you do!” she said fiercely. More quietly, she went on, “Thornnastor has been a Diagnostician for nearly thirty years. I’ve had to work very closely with it as my head of department, and apart from gossiping and purveying information on all and sundry on the sexual misdemeanors of every species on the hospital staff, no serious personality changes have been apparent to . . .”

A non-Tralthan like you,” Conway finished for her.

It was her turn to be silent. He went on. “A few years back I had a multiple carapacial fracture on a Melfan. It was a lengthy procedure, done in stages, so that I had the ELNT tape riding me for three days. The Melfans have a great appreciation of physical beauty, so long as the physique concerned is exoskeletal and has at least six legs.

“Assisting me was OR Nurse Hudson,” he continued. “You know Hudson? By the time the op was completed, I was much impressed with Hudson, and I and my Melfan alter ego were regarding her as a very pleasant personality, professionally most competent, but physically as a shapeless and unlovely bag of dough. I’m worried that—”

“Some members of her own species,” Murchison put in sweetly, “also regard Hudson as a shapeless and unlovely bag—”

“Now, now,” Conway said.

“I know, I’m being catty. I’m worried about that, too, and sorry that I cannot fully appreciate the problems you will be facing, because the Educator tapes are not for the likes of me.

She drew her features into a mock scowl and tried to reproduce the deep, rasping voice of O’Mara at its most bitingly sarcastic as she went on. “Absolutely not, Pathologist Murchison! I am well aware that the Educator tapes would assist you in your work. But you and the other females or extraterrestrial female equivalents on the staff will have to continue using your brains, such as they are, unaided. It is regrettable, but you females have a deep, ineradicable and sex-based aversion, a form of hyperfastidiousness, which will not allow you to share your minds with an alien personality which is unaffected by your sexual . . .”

The effort of maintaining the bass voice became too much for her, and she broke into a fit of coughing.

Conway laughed in spite of himself, then said pleadingly, “But what should I, what should we, do?”

She placed her hand lightly on his chest and leaned closer. Reassuringly, she said, “It might not be as bad as we think. I cannot imagine anyone or anything changing you if you don’t want to be changed. You’re far too stubborn, so I suppose we have to give it a try. But right now we should forget it and get some sleep.”

She smiled down at him and added, “Eventually.”

* * *

He had been given the supernumerary’s position on the control deck—a courtesy not often offered to non-Service personnel—and was watching the main screen when Trennelgon emerged from hyperspace in the Goglesk system. The planet itself was a bluish, cloudstreaked globe similar in all respects, at this distance, to all the other worlds of the Federation which supported warm-blooded oxygenbreathing life. But Conway’s primary interest was in the world’s intelligent life-forms, and as diplomatically as possible he made that clear.

The Captain, an Orligian Monitor Corps Major called SachanLi, growled at him apologetically while its translator annunciated the words, “I’m sorry, Doctor. We know nothing of them, or of the planet itself beyond the perimeter of the landing area. We were pulled off survey duty to take the available Goglesk language data to the master translator in Sector General for processing, and to bring you and the translator program back here.

“Having you on board, Doctor,” the Captain went on, “was a very welcome break in the monotony of a six-month mapping mission in Sector Ten, and I hope we didn’t give you too hard a time with all our questions.”

“Not at all, Captain,” Conway said. “Is the perimeter guarded?”

“Only by wire netting,” Sachan-Li replied. “To keep the nonintelligent grazers and scavengers from being cooked by our tailblasts. The natives visit the base sometimes, I hear, but I’ve never seen one.

Conway nodded, then turned to watch the screen where the major natural features of the planet were becoming visible. He did not speak for several minutes, because Sachan-Li and the other officers—a diminutive, red-furred Nidian and two Earth-humans—were engaged in the pre-landing checks. He watched as the world overflowed the edges of the screen and its surface changed gradually from being a vertical wall ahead of them to the ground below.

Trennelgon, in its hypersonic glider configuration, shuddered its way through the upper atmosphere, slowing as it lost altitude. Oceans, mountains, and green and yellow grasslands swept past below them, still looking normal and familiar and Earth-like. Then the horizon dropped suddenly below the bottom edge of the screen. They climbed, lost velocity, and began dropping and decelerating tail-first for a landing.

“Doctor,” Sachan-Li said after they had touched down, “would you mind delivering this language program to the base commander? We are supposed to drop you and take off at once.

“Not at all,” Conway said, slipping the package into a tunic pocket.

“Your personal gear is inside the air lock, Doctor,” the Captain said. “It was a pleasure meeting you.

They did not take off at once, but the heat from Trennelgon’s tail-flare as it took off half a mile behind him warmed the back of Conway’s neck. He continued walking toward the three closely grouped hemispheres which were the accommodation normally used for a non-permanent base with minimum personnel. He had not taken a gravity float for his gear, because his belongings fitted easily into a backpack and a large handgrip, but the late evening sun was warm, and he decided to put down his grip for a moment and rest—the degree of urgency on this job, after all, was zero.

It was then that the strangeness hit him.

He looked down at the earth which was not of the Earth; at the grass which was subtly different from that of his home world; and at the undergrowth, wildflowers, vegetation, and distant trees which, although looking superfically similar, were the products of a completely different evolutionary process. He shivered briefly despite the heat as the feeling of intrusion which he always felt on these occasions washed over him, and he thought of the less-subtle differences which would soon become manifest in this world’s dominant lifeform. He lifted the handgrip and began walking again.

When he was still a few minutes away from the largest of the three bubble buildings, its main entrance slid open and a figure came hurrying out to meet him. The man was wearing the uniform and insignia of a lieutenant in the Monitor Corps’s Cultural Contact section, and was capless—he was either a naturally sioppy person or one of the Corps’s academics who had little time for worrying about their uniforms or any other clothing they might be wearing. He was well built, with fair, receding hair and highly mobile features, and he spoke when they were still more than three meters apart.

“I’m Wainright,” he said quickly. “You must be the Sector General medic, Conway. Did you bring the language program?”

Conway nodded and reached into his tunic pocket with his left hand while proffering the right to the Lieutenant. Wainright drew back quickly.

“No, Doctor,” he said apologetically but firmly. “You must get out of the habit of shaking hands here, or of making any other kind of physical contact. It isn’t done on this planet, except in certain rare circumstances, and the natives find it, well, disquieting if they see us doing it. But that bag looks heavy. If you place it on the ground and move away, I’ll be happy to carry it for you.”

“I can manage, thanks,” Conway said absently. There were several questions lining up in his mind, jostling each other for priority in vocalization. He began to walk toward the bubble with the Lieutenant at his side, but still separated from him by a distance of three meters.

“That tape will be very useful, Doctor,” Wainright said. “Our translation computer should be able to handle the language now, with a lot fewer misunderstandings. But we weren’t expecting someone from Sector General to be sent out so quickly. Thanks for coming, Doctor.”

Conway waved away the thanks with his free hand and said, “Don’t expect me to solve your problem, whatever it is, as easily as all that. I’ve been sent here to observe the situation, and think about it, and He thought of the principal reason O’Mara had sent him to Goglesk, to think about his future at the hospital, but he did not feel like telling the Lieutenant about that just yet, so he ended,

And to rest.’’

Wainright looked at him sharply, his expression registering concern. But it was obvious that the Lieutenant was much too polite to ask Conway why a Senior Physician from the Federation’s largest hospital, where every conceivable medical and psychological treatment was available, had come here to rest.

Instead, he said, “Speaking of rest, Doctor, where were you on ship time? Is it after breakfast, the middle of your day, or long past your bedtime? Would you like to rest now? It is late afternoon here, and we can easily talk in the morning.”

Conway said, “I slept well and wakened less than two hours ago, and I want to talk now. In fact, if you don’t stop me asking questions, Lieutenant, it is you who are going to miss a lot of sleep.”

“I won’t stop you, Doctor.” Wainright laughed. “I don’t want to suggest that my assistants are not always entertaining people, or that their digital dexterity is sometimes used to influence the laws of probability while playing cards, but it will be nice having someone new to talk to. Besides, the natives disappear at sunset, and there is nothing to do except talk about them, and that hasn’t gotten us very far up until now.”

He entered the building in front of Conway. There was a narrow corridor inside with a nearby door which had the Lieutenant’s name on it. Wainright stopped in front of the door, looked quickly in both directions, and then asked Conway for the tape.

“Come in, Doctor,” he said then, sliding open the door and walking across the large office to a desk which had a translator terminal on its top. Conway looked around the office, which was lit by the warm, orange light of the near-to-setting sun. Most of the floor space was empty of furniture, with the desk, filing and retrieval systems, projection equipment, and even the visitors’ chairs crowded against the wall opposite to the window. Beside the window there was a large, dumpy cactuslike plant whose spikes and hair were richly colored in a pattern which seemed less random the more he looked at it.

He became aware of a faint odor coming from the planet, a smell which seemed to be a combination of musk and peppermint, and he moved across the office for a closer examination.

The cactus moved back.

“This is Khone.” The Lieutenant switched on the translator. He indicated the Doctor and said, “This is Conway. He, too, is a healer.”

While Wainright was talking, the translator had been producing a harsh, sighing sound which had to be the being’s language. Conway thought for a moment, discarding in turn a number of polite, diplomatic phrases his own species used on occasions like this. It was better to be positive and unambiguous.

“I wish you well, Khone,” he said.

“And I, you,” the extraterrestrial said.

Wainright said quickly, “You should know, Doctor, that names are used only once during a conversation for the purposes of introduction, identification, or recognition. After the initial use, try to speak as impersonally as possible so as to avoid giving offense. Later, we can discuss this matter more fully. This Gogleskan person has waited until nearly sunset just to meet you, but now . . .

“. . . It must leave,” the being ended.

The Lieutenant nodded and said, “A vehicle with a rear loading ramp has been provided, so that the passenger may board and travel while avoiding close physical proximity with the driver. The passenger will be home long before dark.”

“Consideration has been shown,” the Gogleskan said as it turned to go, “and gratitude is expressed.”

During the conversation Conway had been studying the extraterrestrial. The mass of unruly hair and spikes covering its erect, ovoid body were less irregular in their size and placing than he had at first thought. The body hair had mobility, though not the high degree of flexibility and rapid mobility of the Kelgian fur, and the spikes, some of which were extremely flexible and grouped together to form a digital cluster, gave evidence of specialization. The other spikes were longer, stiffer, and some of them seemed to be partially atrophied, as if they had been evolved for natural defense, but the reason for their presence had long since gone. There were also a number of long, pale tendrils lying amid the multicolored hair covering the cranial area, but the purpose of these was unclear.

There was a thin band of dull metal encircling the domelike neckless head, and a few inches below the metal band were two widely spaced and recessed eyes. Its voice seemed to come from a number of small, vertical breathing orifices which encircled its waist. The being sat on a flat, muscular pad, and it was not until it turned to leave that Conway saw that it had legs as well.

These members were stubbly and concertinalike, and when the four of them were in use they increased the height of the being by several inches. He also saw that it had two additional eyes at the back of its head—obviously this species had had to be very watchful in prehistoric times—and he suddenly realized the purpose of the metal band. It was used to suspend a corrective lens over one of the Gogleskan’s eyes.

Despite the physical configuration the being was a warmblooded oxygen-breather and not an intelligent vegetable, and Conway classified it physiologically as FOKT. As it was leaving the room, it paused in the doorway, and a group of its digits twitched briefly.

“Be lonely,” it said.

CHAPTER 5

Goglesk had been a borderline case so far as the Cultural Contact people were concerned. Full contact with such a technologically backward culture was dangerous, because when the Monitor Corps ships dropped out of their skies, they could not be sure whether they were giving the Gogleskans a future goal toward which to aim or a devastating inferiority complex. But the natives, in spite of their backwardness in the physical sciences and the obscure racial psychosis which forced them to remain so, were psychologically stable as individuals, and the planet had not known war for many thousands of years.

The easiest course would have been to withdraw and leave the Gogleskan culture to continue as it had been doing since the dawn of its history, and write their problem off as being insoluble. Instead, Cultural Contact had made one of its very rare compromises.

They had established a small base to accommodate a handful of observers, their supplies and equipment, which included a flyer and two general-purpose ground vehicles. The purpose of the base was to observe and gather data, nothing more. But Wainright and his team had developed a liking for those sorely tried natives and, contrary to their instructions, wanted to do more.

Problems had been encountered in obtaining accurate translations with their relatively simple equipment-the Gogleskan wordsounds were made by producing minor variations in the quantity of air expelled through four separate breathing orifices, and several potentially dangerous misunderstandings had occurred. They had decided to send their language data for checking and reprocessing to the big multitranslation computer at Sector General. So as not to disobey their instructions directly, they accompanied the material with a brief statement on the Gogleskan situation and a request to the hospital’s Department of E-T Psychology for information on any similar life-form or condition which Sector General might have encountered in the past.

“. . . But instead of sending information,” the Lieutenant went on as he lifted the groundcar over a fallen tree which was blocking the path they were following through the forest, “they sent us Senior Physician Conway, who is—”

“Here simply to observe,” Conway broke in, “and to rest.”

Wainright laughed. “You didn’t rest much during the past four days.”

“That’s because I was too busy observing,” Conway said dryly. “But I wish Khone had come back to see me. You think I should visit it now?”

“That could be the correct behavior in these circumstances,” the other replied. “They have some odd rules and, intensely individualistic as they are, they may consider two consecutive and uninvited visits to be an unwarranted intrusion. If a person’s first visit is welcome, you may simply be expected to return it. We’re entering the inhabited area now.”

Gradually the forest floor had become clear of small trees and bushes, leaving only a thin carpet of grasslike vegetation between the massive trunks which served as the main structural supports for the Gogleskan dwellings. To Conway they looked like the log cabins of ancient history-but roofless because the overhanging branches provided all the necessary weather protection-and the wide variation in style and quality of workmanship made it clear that they had been built by their occupiers rather than by an organization specializing in home construction.

If a species’ progress was based on group and tribal cooperation, it was easy to understand why there had been so little of it on Goglesk. But why, Conway wondered for the hundredth time since his arrival, did they refuse to cooperate with each other when they were so obviously intelligent, friendly, and nonaggressive?

“And highly accident-prone,” the Lieutenant said, making Conway realize that he had been thinking aloud. “This looks like a good place to ask questions.”

“Right,” Conway said, opening the canopy. They had drawn level with three Gogleskans who were grouped, very loosely, around one of their spindly-legged draught animals and the contraption of unknown purpose to which it was harnessed. He went on. “Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant. I’ll wander around and talk to a few people in addition to Khone, if I can find it, then walk back to base. If I get lost I’ll call you.”

Wainright shook his head and cut the vehicle’s power, letting it settle to the ground. He said, “You aren’t in your hospital now, where everybody is either a medic or a patient. The rule is that we go around in pairs. There is no danger of giving offense provided you don’t move too close to them, or me. After you, Doctor.”

Followed at a distance by the Lieutenant, Conway climbed down and walked toward the three natives, stopping several paces before he came to the nearest one. Not looking at anyone in particular, he said, “Is it possible to be given directions to the dwelling place of the entity Khone?”

One of the Gogleskans indicated the direction with two of its long spikes. “If the vehicle proceeds in that direction,” it sighed at them, “a clearing will be encountered. More precise directions may be obtained there.”

“Gratitude is expressed,” Conway said, and returned to the groundcar.

The clearing turned out to be a wide crescent of grass and rocky outcroppings on the shore of a large inland lake, judging by the absence of sand and the small size of the waves. There were several jetties projecting into the deeper water, and most of the small craft tied alongside had thin smokestacks as well as sails. The buildings clustered near the water’s edge were tall, three or four stories high, built of stone and wood, and with ascending ramps running up and around all four faces, so that from certain angles they looked like thin pyramids, an effect which was enhanced by their tall, conical roofs.

If it had not been for the all-pervading noise and smoke, the overall effect would have been one of picturesque, medieval charm.

“It is the town’s manufacturing and food-processing center,” the Lieutenant said. “I’ve seen it several times from the flyer. The fish smell will hit you in a minute.”

“It’s hitting me already,” Conway said. He was thinking that if this was what passed for an industrial area, then the healer, Khone, was probably the equivalent of a factory medic. He was looking forward to talking to the being again, and perhaps seeing it at work.

They were directed past a large building whose stonework and wooden beams were smoke-blackened and still smelling of a recent fire, to the edge of the lake where a large boat had sunk at its moorings. Opposite the wreck there was a low, partially roofed structure with a stream running under it. From their elevated position on the groundcar they could see into a mazelike system of corridors and tiny rooms which was Khone’s dwelling and, presumably, an adjoining hospital.

A Gogleskan patient was having something done to its breathing orifices-a nonsurgical investigation, Conway saw, using long wooden probes and dilators, followed by the oral administration of medication also by a long-handled instrument. The patient occupied one cubicle during this procedure and the healer another. It was several minutes before Khone came outside and acknowledged their presence.

“Interest is felt,” Conway said when the three of them were on the ground and standing at the points of an invisible equilateral triangle more than three meters on the side, “in the subject of healing on Goglesk. Comparisons of other-world knowledge and treatments might be made, of illnesses, injuries, and nonphysical disorders, and particularly of surgical procedures and anatomical studies.”

Khone’s center of attention was in the space between Wainright and Conway as it replied, “There is no curative surgery on Goglesk. Anatomical work is possible only on cadavers stripped of stings and residual poisons. Personal physical contact, except for the purposes of procreation or the care of nonadults, is dangerous for both the healer and patient. A certain minimum distance is essential for the performance of my work.”

“But why?” Conway said, moving instinctively toward the healer.

Then he saw that Khone’s fur was agitated and that the spikes all over its body were twitching. He turned toward the Lieutenant, ostensibly addressing Wainright when he spoke.

“An instrument in my possession enables a trained healer to observe the position and workings of internal organs and to chart the locations of bones and principal blood vessels,” Conway said, and withdrew the scanner from its pouch at his side.

He began passing it slowly along his other arm, then moved it to his head, chest, and abdomen, describing in his most impersonal, lecturing voice the function of the organs, bone structure, and associated musculature revealed on the scanner’s screen. Then he pulled the instrument’s telescoping handle to full extension and moved it closer to Khone.

“The instrument provides this information without touching the patient’s body,” he added, “if that should be a requirement.”

Khone had moved a little closer while he had been demonstrating the scanner, and the being had rotated its body so that the eye with the spectacle could be brought to bear on the instrument. Conway had angled the screen so that the Gogleskan could see its own internal structure while he could not. But he had also set the scanner to record so that he would be able to study the material later.

He watched the healer’s spikes twitching and the long, multicolor hair rising up stiffly to lie flat again, several times in a minute. Some of the colored strands lay at right angles to the others, giving a plaid effect. The breathing orifices were making an urgent, hissing sound, but Khone was not moving away from the scanner, and gradually the being was growing calmer.

“Enough,” it said. Surprisingly, it looked straight at Conway with its ridiculous, bespectacled eye. There was a long silence, during which it was obvious that the Gogleskan was coming to a decision.

“On this world,” it said finally, “the art of the healer is a unique one, and the probability exists that this is true in other places. A healer may, while treating a patient, explore delicate areas and states of mind, and pry into material which is distressful or even shameful, but invariably personal. This normally forbidden and dangerous behavior is allowed because the speaker may not speak of anything learned, except to another healer who is being consulted in the interests of the patient . . .

Hippocrates, Conway thought, could not have said it better.

And it might be possible,” Khone went on, “to discuss such matters with an off-world healer. But it must be understood that these matters are for the ears only of another healer.”

“As a layman,” the Lieutenant said, smiling, “I know when I’m not wanted. I’ll wait in the groundcar.”

Conway got down on one knee so that his eyes were on a level with those of the Gogleskan. If they were to speak together as equals, he thought, the process might be aided considerably if Conway did not tower over the other healer, whose hair and spikes were again twitching in agitation. They were less than two meters apart now. He decided to take the initiative.

He had to be careful not to overawe Khone with gratuitous accounts of medical superscience, so he began by describing the work of Sector General in very simple terms, but continually emphasizing the multispecies aspects and stressing the high degree of professional cooperation required for its performance. From there he worked gradually around to the subject of cooperation in general and its importance in fields other than medicine.

“. . . Observations have been made,” Conway went on, “which suggest that progress here has been retarded for reasons which, considering the high intelligence of individual Gogleskans, are not clear. Is an explanation possible?”

“Progress is impossible because cooperation is impossible,” Khone replied, and suddenly it became less impersonal. “Healer Conway, we are constantly fighting ourselves and the behavior patterns imposed on us by survival instincts evolved, I suspect, at the time when we were the nonintelligent food source of every seadwelling predator on Goglesk. To successfully fight these instincts requires self-discipline in our thinking and actions if we are not to lose the very modest, nay, backward, level of culture that we now possess.

“If the exact nature of the problem could be explained in detail,” Conway began, and then he, too, slipped into a more personal mode, “I would like to help you, Healer Khone. It might be that a completely strange healer, one who has a completely new and perhaps even an alien viewpoint, could suggest a solution which would not otherwise have occurred to the entities concerned . . .

He broke off because an irregular, urgent drumming sound had started up from somewhere further inland. Khone drew away from him again. “Apologies are tendered for the immediate departure,” it said loudly. “There is urgent work for a healer.”

Wainright leaned out of the groundcar. “If Khone is in a hurry he began, then corrected himself. “If rapid transport is required, it is available.”

The rear storage compartment was already open and the loading ramps extending groundward.

They reached the scene of the accident after ten minutes of the most hair-raising driving that Conway had ever experienced-the Gogleskan, probably because of its naturally slow method of ambulation, did not give directions for turning corners until they were abreast of the intersection concerned. By the time Wainright had grounded the vehicle beside the partly demolished three-story building indicated by Khone, Conway was wondering if for the first time in his adult life he would succumb to motion sickness.

But all subjective considerations were driven from his mind when he saw the casualties hobbling or tumbling down the cracked or slowly collapsing external ramps, or struggling out of the large, ground-level doorway which was partly blocked by fallen rubble. Their many-colored body hair was hidden beneath a layer of dust and wood splinters, and on a few of the bodies he could see the wet, red gleam of fresh wounds. But all of them were ambulatory, he saw as he jumped down from the vehicle, and they were all moving as fast as they could away from the damaged building to join the wide and surprisingly distant circle of onlookers.

Suddenly he caught sight of a Gogleskan shape protruding from the debris around the doorway, and heard the untranslatable sounds it was making.

“Why are they standing there?” he yelled at Khone, waving toward the onlookers. “Why don’t they help it?”

“Only a healer may closely approach another Gogleskan when it is in distress,” Khone said as its tiny manipulators drew thin wooden rods from a pouch strapped to its middle and began slotting them together. It added, “Or a person with sufficient mental selfcontrol not to be affected by that distress.”

Conway was following the healer as it moved toward the casualty. He said, “Perhaps a being of a completely different species could bring to bear on the case the required degree of clinical detachment.”

“No,” Khone said firmly. “Physical contact or even a close approach must be avoided.”

The Gogleskan’s rods had fitted together into a set of longhandled tongs to which, as the examination of the casualty proceeded, Khone added a series of interchangeable probes, spatulas, and lenses which were later substituted for fine brushes and swabs soaked in what must have been antiseptics for cleaning the wounds. This was followed by suturing of the larger incisions, using an ingenious device clipped to the end of the tongs. But the treatment was superficial and very, very slow.

Conway quickly extended the telescopic handle of his scanner until it was the same length as Khone’s tongs, then went down onto his hands and knees and pushed the instrument toward the healer.

“Internal injuries may be present,” he said. “This instrument will reveal them.”

Thanks were not expressed-probably Khone was too busy to be polite-but the Gogleskan laid down its tongs at once and began using Conway’s scanner. Its manipulators were awkward at first, but very soon they had adapted to the grips which had been designed for Earth-human fingers so that Khone began varying the focus and magnification in a manner that was almost expert.

“There is minor bleeding from the buried section of the body,” the Gogleskan said a few minutes later. “But it will be observed that the greatest danger to the casualty is the interruption of the blood supply to the cranial area, just here, which is caused by pressure from a wooden beam lying across and compressing the main cranial artery. This has also caused unconsciousness, which explains the lack of recent sounds and body movements which will also have been observed.”

“Rescue procedure?” Conway asked.

“Rescue is not possible in the time available,” Khone replied. “There is no knowledge regarding the time units used by the offworld healer, but the conditions will be terminal in approximately one-fiftieth of the time period between our dawn and dusk. However, the attempt must be made . . .

Conway looked at Wainright, who said quietly, “About fifteen minutes.”

“. . . To immobilize the beam with a wedge,” the Gogleskan went on, “and remove the rubble from under the casualty so that the being will subside into a position where the constriction from the beam will be removed. There is also the risk of a further collapse of the structure, so the removal of beings other than the casualty and its healer is urgently requested in the interest of their safety.”

It returned the scanner to Conway long handle first, and when he took it back the Gogleskan began fitting soil-moving claws to its tongs.

Conway had the nightmarish feeling of being faced with a simple problem requiring a minimal amount of manual activity, and having both hands tied behind his back. It was impossible for him to stand by and watch an injured being die when there were so many ways that he could try to save it. And yet he had been expressly forbidden to go near the creature, even though its fellow Gogleskan knew that he wanted only to help. It was stupid, of course, but there had to be something in this species’ culture which made sense of the apparent stupidity.

He looked helplessly at Wainright, and at the stocky, heavily muscled body which made the Lieutenant’s coveralls look tight, and tried again.

“If a casualty is unconscious,” he said desperately, “it should not be adversely affected by the close presence or touch of other beings. It might be possible for the off-worlders to lift the beam sufficiently high for the casualty to be drawn free.”

“Many others are watching,” Khone said, and its indecision was shown by the way it raised and then lowered its tongs. Then it fitted a new set of tips to them, produced a coil of light rope from somewhere, and began using the tongs to loop it around the casualty’s feet. It went on. “Very well. But there are risks. And the casualty and its healer must not be closely approached by off-worlders, or be seen by others to make such an approach, no matter how wellintentioned it is.”

Conway did not ask how close “closely” was as he preceded the Lieutenant into the wide, low entrance, each putting a shoulder under the beam which was supporting one side of it. No doubt the physical proximity of Wainright and Conway was offensive to the onlookers, but the doorway was shadowed and perhaps the watching Gogleskans could not see them clearly. Right then Conway was too busy pushing to care what they thought.

Dust and fine rubble rained down on them as they lifted their end of the beam by three, four, and then nearly six inches. But at the other end where the casualty was trapped, it rose by barely two inches. Khone’s tongs had successfully looped the rope around the casualty’s legs, and it had wrapped the other end several times around its own middle. It took up the slack, braced its feet, and leaned against the rope like the anchorman in a tug-of-war team, but without effect. The Gogleskan FOKT life-form was too lightly built and physiologically unsuited to the application of the required traction.

“Can you hold it up yourself for a moment?” Wainright asked, crouching suddenly and disappearing further into the entrance. “I can see something that might help us.”

It seemed much longer than a moment while the Lieutenant dug among the rubble inside the entrance and the beam dug into Conway’s shoulder. His straining back and leg muscles were knotted in a continual, fiery cramp. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and saw that Khone had changed its approach to the problem. Instead of pulling continuously, it had begun returning as close as was allowable to the casualty and then waddling as fast as it could away from it until the rope was pulled taut, trying to jerk the other Cogleskan free.

With every jerk the injured FOKT moved a little, but some of the sutures had opened and it was bleeding freely again.

Every single vertebra in his back was being compressed into a single osseous column, Conway thought angrily, which any second now would break.

“Hurry, dammit!”

“I am hurrying,” Khone said, forgetting to be impersonal.

“Coming,” the Lieutenant said.

Wainright arrived with a short, thick piece of timber which he quickly wedged between the beam and the ground. Conway collapsed thankfully onto his knees, easing his maltreated shoulder and back, but only for a moment. The Lieutenant’s idea was for them to lift with a few seconds of maximum effort, and then use the prop to keep from losing the extra height gained, repeating the process until the casualty could be pulled free.

It was a very good idea, but the intermittent falls of dust and rubble were becoming a steadily increasing shower. The casualty was almost free when there was a low rumble and the sound of splintering timber from inside the building.

“Get clear!” Khone shouted as it got ready to give one last, desperate jerk on the rope. But as the healer came to the end of its waddling run, the loop slipped off the casualty’s feet and Khone went tumbling and rolling away, entangled in its own rescue rope.

Later, Conway was to spend a long and agonizing time wondering whether he had done the right or the wrong thing just then, but there was simply no time to evaluate and compare extraterrestrial social behavior with that of Earth-humans-he did it because he could not do anything else. He checked his stumbling run away from the collapsing entrance, turned and grabbed the unconscious FOKT casualty by the feet.

With his greater weight and strength it came away easily, and crouched double and moving backward, he dragged it clear of the subsiding building. As the dust began to settle, he pulled it gently onto a patch of soft grass. Nearly all of Khone’s sutures had pulled free, and the casualty had acquired a number of new wounds, all of which were bleeding.

The being opened its eyes suddenly, stiffened, then began making a loud, continuous, hissing sound which wavered up and down in pitch so that at times it was almost a whistle.

“No!” Khone said urgently. “There is no danger! It is a healer, a friend’

But the irregular hissing and whistling grew louder, and Conway was aware that the circle of onlookers, no longer distant, had joined in. He could scarcely hear himself think. Khone was stumbling around the casualty, sometimes approaching to within a few inches, then moving away again, as if it was performing an intricate ritual dance.

“Yes,” Conway said reassuringly, “I’m not an enemy. I pulled you out.”

“You stupid, stupid healer!” Khone said, sounding angry as well as personal. “You ignorant off-worlder! Go away! . . .

What happened then was one of the strangest sights Conway had ever witnessed, and at Sector General he had seen many of those. The casualty rolled and jerked itself to its feet, still emitting the undulating whistling noises. Khone had begun to make the same sound, and the long, stiff body hair on both beings was standing out straight, so that the plaid effect caused by the different colors lying at right angles to each other was lost. Suddenly Khone and the casualty touched and were instantly welded or, more accurately, tightly woven together where they had made contact.

The stiff hairs covering their sides had insinuated into and through each other, like the warp and weft of an old-time woven rug, and it was plain that no outside agency would be able to separate them without removing the hair of both creatures and probably the underlying tegument as well.

“Let’s get out of here, Doctor,” Wainright said from the top of the groundcar, pointing at the Gogleskans who were closing in from all sides.

Conway hesitated, watching a third FOKT join itself in the same incredible fashion to Khone and the casualty. The long spikes whose purpose he had not known were projecting stiffly from the cranium of every Gogleskan, and there was a bright yellow secretion oozing from the tips. As he climbed into the vehicle, one of the spikes tore the fabric of his coveralls, but without penetrating the underlying clothing or skin.

While the Lieutenant moved the vehicle to higher ground for a better view of what was going on, Conway used his analyzer on the traces of yellow secretion which had been left along the edges of the tear in his suit. He was able to calculate that the contents of one of those stings introduced directly into the bloodstream would be instantly disabling, and that three or more of them would be fatal.

The Gogleskans were joining themselves into a group-entity which was growing larger by the minute. Individual FOKTs were hurrying from nearby buildings, moored ships, and even from the surrounding trees to add themselves to this great, mobile, spiky carpet which crawled around large buildings and over small ones as if it did not know or care what it was doing. In its wake it left a trail of smashed equipment, vehicles, dead animals, and even one capsized ship. The vessel had been tied up, and when the periphery of the group-entity has stumbled on board it had flipped onto its side, smashing the masts and superstructure against the jetty.

But the Gogleskans who had fallen into the water did not seem to be inconvenienced, Conway saw, and the movement of the landbased constituents of the group-entity pulled them out again within a few minutes.

“They’re not blind,” Conway said, aghast at the wholesale destruction. He stood on his bucket seat to get a better view and went on. “There are enough unobscured eyes around the periphery for them to see where they’re going, but they seem to have great difficulty making up their mind. Oh, man, they’re fairly wrecking that settlement. Can you put up the flyer and get me a detailed, highlevel record of this?”

“Can do,” the Lieutenant said. He spoke briefly into his communicator, then went on. “It isn’t making straight for us, Doctor, but it’s trying to get nearer. We’d better change position.”

“No, wait,” Conway said, gripping the edge of the open canopy and leaning out, the better to see the edge of the group-entity which had stumbled to within six meters’ distance. Dozens of eyes regarded him coldly, and the long, yellow-tipped stings were like a thinly stubbled hayfield. “They are hostile, yet Khone itself was friendly. Why?”

His voice was almost drowned by the rushing, whistling sound made by the group, a sound which their translators did not register. But somewhere in that unintelligible mush there was a whisper of intelligence trying to fight its way out, the voice of the Gogleskan healer.

“Go away,” it said. “Go away.”

Conway had to drop quickly into his seat before Wainright closed the canopy on him and they moved away. Angrily, the Lieutenant said, “You can’t do anything!”

CHAPTER 6

There was no need for the memory-enhancing medication I which Conway had been taking since leaving Sector General to recall the incident-it was there in his mind, complete in every detail. And there was no arguing against the evidence, no escaping the damning conclusion that he alone was responsible for the whole sorry mess.

The vision tapes from the flyer had shown an immediate decrease in the destructive activity of the rampaging Gogleskans as soon as the groundcar carrying Wainright and Conway had left the scene. And within an hour the group-entity had fragmented into its individual members, who had stood immobile, widely separated from each other and giving the impression that they were suffering from extreme exhaustion.

He had gone over the visual material again and again, together with his scanner’s playback of the self-examination by Khone and the later material on the FOKT whose rescue had precipitated the fusion of all the Gogleskans in the area. He tried to find a clue, a mere indication, the most tenuous of hints which would explain the reason for the FOKTs’ incredible reaction to his touching one of their number, but without success.

At one stage the thought came that he was here to rest, to clear his mind so that he could make important decisions regarding his future. The Gogleskan situation was a nonurgent problem which, according to O’Mara, he could think about or ignore. But he could not ignore it, because, apart from making it fractionally worse, he had been presented with a puzzle so alien that even his long experience of extraterrestrial behavior and thought processes at the hospital was not of much help.

As an individual, Khone had been so normal.

Irritably he dropped into his bunk, still holding his scanner at eye level and trying to squeeze some meaning out of the FOKT recordings. In theory it was impossible to feel discomfort in a bunk with gravity controls set to a tiny fraction of one Earth-C, but Conway wriggled and tossed and managed to feel very uncomfortable indeed.

He was able to trace the shallow roots of the four FOKT stings, which at the time Khone had been examining itself had been lying flat against the upper cranium and partially concealed by the surrounding hair, and chart the positions of the fine ducts which connected the spikes to the poison sac which supplied them. There was also a nerve linkage between the base of the brain and the muscles for erecting the stings and for compressing the reservoir of venom, but he had no idea of the kind of stimulus which would trigger this activity. Neither had he any ideas regarding the function of the long, silvery strands which lay among the coarser cranial hair.

His first thought, that they were simply an indication of advancing age, had to be revised when closer study showed that the follicle structure was completely unlike that of the surrounding hair and that they, like the stings, had underlying muscle and nerve connections which gave them the capability of independent movement. Unlike the stings, they were much larger, finer, and more flexible.

Unfortunately he could not trace the subdermal nerve connections, if such were present, because his scanner had not been set for such fine work. His intention had been simply to impress the Cogleskan healer by showing it pictures of its own major organs operating, and no amount of magnification during playback could bring up details which were not already there.

Even so, had it not been for the utterly strange behavior of the FOKTs, Conway would have been highly satisfied with the physiological data he had obtained. But in this case he was not satisfied. He badly wanted to meet Khone again and examine it more closely-both clinically and verbally.

After today’s debacle the chance of that happening was small indeed.

“Go away!” Khone had told him from somewhere within that rampaging mob of Gogleskans. And the Lieutenant, too, had been angry when he had shouted, “You can’t do anything!”

Conway knew that he had slipped into sleep when he became aware that he was no longer on Goglesk. His surroundings had changed, but they were still familiar, and the problems occupying his mind had become much simpler. He did not dream very often- or, as O’Mara was fond of reminding him, he dreamed as frequently as any other so-called intelligent being, but was fortunate in that he recalled very few of his dreams. This particular dream was pleasant, uncomplicated, and bore no relation to his present situation.

At least, so it seemed at first.

The chairs were enormous and had to be climbed into instead of being sat upon, and the big dining table, which was also handbuilt, required him to stand on tiptoe if he was to see onto the deeply grained and highly polished planking of its top. That, thought the mature, dreaming Conway, placed him at the age of about eight.

Whether the effect was due to O’Mara’s medication or a psychological quirk which was all his own, Conway did not know, but he was viewing the dream as a mature and fully informed adult while his feelings about it were those of a not very happy eightyear- old.

His parents had been third-generation colonists on the mineral-rich, Earth-seeded world of Braemar which, at the time of their deaths, had been explored, tamed, and made safe-at least, so far as the areas occupied by the mining and agricultural towns and the single spaceport were concerned.

He had lived on the outskirts of that spaceport city, which was a great, sprawling complex of one-, two-, and three-story buildings, for all of his young life. He had not thought it strange that the log cabins greatly outnumbered the towering white blocks of the manufacturing complexes, the administration center, the spacefield buildings, and the hospital; or that the furniture, nonmetal household equipment, pottery, and ornaments were all home-produced.

With his mature hindsight he knew that wood was plentiful and cheap on Braemar while imported Earth furniture and gadgetry were very expensive and, in any case, the colonists took pride in their own handiwork and wanted it no other way.

But the log cabins were powered and lit by modern fusion generators, and the hand-built furniture supported sophisticated vision transceivers whose chief purposes were, so far as the young Conway was concerned, to educate during the day and entertain in the evening. Ground and air transportation was also modern, fast, and as safe as it was possible to make it, and only very occasionally did a flyer drop out of the sky with the loss of all on board.

It was not the loss of his parents which was making him unhappy. He had been too young to remember them as anything but vague, comforting presences, and when they had been called to the emergency at the mine he had been left in the charge of a young couple who were close neighbors. He had remained with them until after the burial, when his father’s oldest brother had taken him to live with his family.

His aunt and uncle had been kindly, responsible, and very busy people who were no longer young. Their own children were young adults, so except for a period of initial curiosity, they had very little time for him. Not so the grandmother of the house, Conway’s greatgrandmother, who had decided that the newly orphaned infant would be her sole responsibility.

She was incredibly old-anyone who dared ask her age did not do it a second time-and as fragile as a Cinrusskin, but was still physically and mentally active. She had been the first child born to the Braemar colony, and when Conway began taking an interest in such things, she had an endless supply of stories about those early days of the colony which were far more exciting, if perhaps a little less factual, than the material in the history tapes.

Without understanding what they had been talking about at the time, Conway had heard his uncle tell a visitor that the kid and the old lady got on very well together because they were the same mental age. Except when she chastised him, which was not very often and not at all during the later years, she was always good fun. She covered for him when accidents occurred which were not entirely his fault, and she defended his pet-pen when it began to grow from a small, wired-in enclosure in the back garden to something resembling a miniature wildlife park, although she was most insistent that he not acquire pets which he could not care for properly.

He had a few Earth pets as well as a collection of the small and harmless native Braemar Herbivores-who sometimes took sick, frequently injured themselves, and multiplied practically all the time. She had called up the relevant veterinary tapes for him-such material was considered too advanced for a child-and with her advice and by his using practically all of his nonstudy time the inhabitants of his pet-pen prospered and, much to his aunt and uncle’s surprise, showed a fair profit when the word got around that he was a prime source of healthy garden and household pets for the neighborhood children.

The young Conway was kept much too busy to realize that he was a very lonely boy-until his great-grandmother and only friend suddenly lost interest in talking about his pets, and seemed to lose interest in him. The doctor began visiting her regularly, and then his aunt and uncle took it in turn to stay in the room with her night and day, and they forbade him even to see his only friend.

That was why he felt unhappy. And the adult Conway, remembering as well as reexperiencing the whole incident, knew that there was more unhappiness to come. The dream was about to become a nightmare.

They had forgotten to lock the door one evening, and when he sneaked into the bedroom he found his aunt sitting on a chair by the bedside with her chin on her chest, dozing. His greatgrandmother was lying with her face turned toward him, her eyes and mouth wide open, but she did not speak and she did not seem to see him. As he moved toward the bed, he heard her harsh, irregular breathing, and he became aware of the smell. Suddenly he felt frightened, but he reached forward to touch the thin, wasted arm which lay outside the bedclothes. He was thinking that she might look at him or say something, or maybe even smile at him the way she had done only a few weeks ago.

The arm was cold.

The mature and medically experienced Conway knew that circulation had already failed at the extremities and that the old lady had only minutes to live, and the very young Conway knew it, too, without knowing why. Unable to stop himself, he tried to call her, and his aunt woke up. She looked at his grand-grandmother, then grabbed him tightly by the arm and rushed him from the bedroom.

“Go away!” she had said, beginning to cry. “You can’t do anything!

His adult eyes were damp when he awakened in his tiny room in the Monitor Corps base on Goglesk, and not for the first time he wondered to what extent the death of that incredibly old and fragile and warmhearted old lady had affected his subsequent life. The grief and sense of loss had faded, but not the memory of his utter helplessness, and he had not wanted to feel that way ever again. In later life, when he had encountered disease and injury and impending death, there had always been something, sometimes quite a lot, that he could do. And until his arrival on Goglesk he had never felt as helpless as that again.

“Go away,” Khone had said when Conway’s misguided attempt to help had resulted in the near-devastation of a town, and had probably caused untold psychological damage as well. And “You can’t do anything,” the Lieutenant had said.

But he was no longer a frightened, grieving young boy. He refused to believe that there was nothing he could do.

He thought about the situation as he bathed, dressed, and converted the room into its daytime mode, but ended by feeling angry with himself and even more helpless. He was a medic, he told himself, not a Cultural Contact specialist. The majority of his contacts were with extraterrestrials who were immobilized by disease or injury or examination-room restraints, and when close physical contact and investigative procedures were taken for granted. But not so on Goglesk.

Wainright had warned him about the phobic individualism of the FOKTs, and he had seen it for himself. Yet he had allowed his Earth-human instincts and feelings to take over when he should have controlled them-at least until he had understood a little more about the situation.

And now the only being who could have helped him understand the problem, Khone, would not want to meet him again except, perhaps, to offer physical violence.

Maybe he could try with another Gogleskan in a different area, presupposing that Wainright agreed to Conway’s borrowing the base’s only flyer for a lengthy period, and that the FOKTs had no means of long-distance communication. Certainly there had been nothing detected on the radio frequencies, and no evidence of visual or audible signaling systems or of messages carried by intelligent or nonintelligent runners or flyers.

But was it likely, he was thinking when his communicator beeped suddenly, that a species which so fanatically avoided close contact would be interested in keeping in touch over long distances?

“Your room sensors say that you’re up and moving around,” Wainright said, laughing. “Are you mentally awake as well, Doctor?”

Conway did not feel like laughing at anything, and he hoped the well-meaning Lieutenant was not intent on cheering him up. Irritably, he said, “Yes.”

“Khone is outside,” Wainright said, as if he was having trouble believing his own words. “It says that an obligation exists to return our visit of yesterday, and to apologize for any mental or physical distress the incident may have caused us. Doctor, it particularly wants to talk to you.

Extra terrestrials, thought Conway, not for the first time, are full of surprises. This one might have some answers, as well. As he left the room his pace could never have been described as the confident, unhurried tread of a Senior Physician. It was more like a dead run.

CHAPTER 7

In spite of the painfully slow and impersonal style of speech and the lengthy pauses between the sentences, it was obvious that Khone wanted to talk. What was more, it wanted to ask questions. But the questions were extraordinarily difficult for it to verbalize because they were of a kind which had never before been asked by a member of its species.

Conway knew of many member species of the Galactic Federation whose viewpoints and behavior patterns were utterly alien and even repugnant to an Earth-human, even to an Earth-human medic with wide extraterrestrial experience like himself. He could imagine the tremendous effort Khone was putting into trying to understand this frightful off-wonder who, among other peculiarities, thought nothing of actually touching another being for purposes other than mating and infant care. He had a lot of sympathy and patience for a being engaged in such a struggle.

During one of the seemingly endless pauses he had tried to move the conversation along by taking the blame for what had happened, but Khone dismissed the apology by saying that if the offwonders had not precipitated the calamity then some Gogleskan combination of events would have done so. It gave details of the damage which had been done. This would be repaired and the ship rebuilt in time, but it would not be surprised if a similar disaster overtook them before the work was completed.

Every time a joining occurred they lost a little ground, were left with less of their technology simple though it was by off worlder standards-so that the minor advances they had been able to achieve were being slowly eroded away. It had always been thus, according to the stories which had been handed down from generation to generation and in the scraps of written history which had somehow survived their regular orgies of self-destruction.

“If any assistance can be given,” Conway said in impersonal Gogleskan fashion, “whether it is in the form of information, advice, physical help, or mechanisms capable of furnishing such help, a simple request is all that is necessary for it to be made available.”

“The wish,” Khone said slowly, “is that this burden be lifted from our race. The initial request is for information.”

If yesterday’s events could be so graciously forgiven, surely Khone would not be too bothered by Conway omitting the cumbersome verbal niceties which were a part of the barrier between them. He said, “You may ask any question on any subject without fear of offending me.

Khone’s hair twitched at being addressed directly, but the healer’s reply was immediate. “Information is requested regarding other off-world species of your experience who have similar problems as those encountered on Goglesk. Particular interest is felt in those species who have solved them.”

The healer, too, had become slightly less impersonal in its mode of speech. Conway marveled at the effort it must have cost the other to break, or at least bend a little, its lifelong conditioning. The trouble was that he did not have the information required.

To give himself time to think, Conway did not reply directly, but began by describing some of the more exotic life-forms who made up the Federation-but not as he had described them earlier. Now he drew on his hospital experience to describe them as patients undergoing surgical or nonsurgical treatments for an incredible variety of diseases. He was trying to give Khone hope, but he knew that he was doing little more than stalling by describing clinical pictures and procedures to a being, albeit a doctor of sorts, who could not even touch its patients. Conway had never believed in misinforming his patients, by word or deed or omission, and he did not want to do so to another medic.

“. . . However,” he went on, “to my own certain knowledge the problem afflicting your species is unique. If a similar case had been encountered, it would have been thoroughly investigated and discussed in the literature and be required reading for the staff of a multispecies hospital.

“I am sorry,” he continued, “but the only helpful suggestion I can make is that the condition be studied as closely as possible by me, with the cooperation of an entity who is both a patient and a doctor, you.”

As he waited for Khone’s reaction, Conway heard Wainright moving behind him, but the Lieutenant did not speak.

“Cooperation is possible, and desirable,” the Gogleskan said finally, “but not close cooperation.”

Conway gave a relieved sigh. “The structure behind me contains a compartment designed for the confinement and study of local fauna under conditions of minimum physical restraint. For the protection of observers, the compartment is divided by an invisible but extremely hard wall. Would a close approach for purposes of physical examination be possible in those conditions?”

“Provided the strength of the invisible wall is demonstrated,” the Gogleskan said cautiously, “a close approach is possible.”

Wainright cleared his throat and said, “Sorry, Doctor. Until now there has been no need to use that room and I’ve been storing fuel cells in it. Give me twenty minutes to tidy up.”

While Khone and Conway walked slowly around to the rear of the building, he explained that the compartment had, as the healer could see, an external opening which allowed confined life-forms to return to their own environment quickly after release. No restraints whatsoever would be placed on Khone, Conway reassured the other, and it could break off any discussion or examination at will.

His intention was to try to find some explanation for the Cogleskan behavior by a close study of the physiology of the species, with particular emphasis on the cranial area, which displayed features completely new to Conway and which, for this reason, might suggest a line of investigation. But it was not his intention to cause physical or mental distress.

“Some discomfort is expected,” the FOKT said.

To further reassure Khone, Conway entered the compartment first, and while the Gogleskan watched from the external entrance, he demonstrated with his fists and feet the strength of the transparent wall. Indicating the ceiling, he briefly described the purpose of the two-way communicator and the projectors of the nonmaterial restraining and manipulation devices, which would be used only with Khone’s express permission. Then he went through the small door, outlined in white for visibility in that totally invisible wall, and left the FOKT to get used to the place.

Wainright had already moved the fuel cells from the observer’s half of the compartment, and had replaced them with a tri-di projector, recordings made the previous day as well as basic information tapes of the type used during other-species first contacts, and all of Conway’s medical equipment.

“I’ll monitor and record from the comm center next door,” Wainright said, pausing for a moment in the internal entrance. “Khone has already seen the information tapes, but I thought you might want to rerun the five-minute sequence on Sector General. If you need anything else, Doctor, let me know.”

They were left alone in the compartment, separated only by a thin, transparent wall and about three meters of distance, which was much too far.

Conway placed the palm of one hand against the transparent surface at waist level, and said, “Please approach as closely as possible and try to place a manipulatory appendage on the other side of the transparent wall occupied by mine. There is no urgency. The purpose is to accustom you to close proximity to me without actual physical contact.

He went on talking reassuringly as Khone came closer and, after several attempts and withdrawals, placed its cluster of digits opposite Conway’s hand. They were now separated by less than half an inch. Slowly he used his other hand to bring out his scanner and place that, too, against the wall on a level with the FOKT’s cranium. Without being asked, the Gogleskan pressed the side of its head section against the invisible surface.

“Excellent!” Conway said, refocusing his scanner. He went on. “While there are elements of the Gogleskan physiology which are completely strange to me, as a whole the life-form is similar to many warm-blooded oxygen-breathing species. The differences are centered in the cranial area, and it is this which requires examination and an explanation which might not have a purely physical basis.

“In short,” he went on, “we are examining a fairly normal lifeform that occasionally behaves abnormally. Now, if we accept that behavior patterns are established by environmental and evolutionary factors, we should begin by examining your past.”

He gave Khone a moment to think, then continued. “Lieutenant Wainright, who admits to being a fairly good amateur archeologist, tells me that your world has been remarkably stable since the time your presapient ancestors evolved. There have been no orbital changes, no major seismic disturbances, no ice ages or any marked alterations in the climatology. All of which indicates that your particular behavior pattern, the one which is presently hampering your progress as a culture, was evolved in response to a very early threat from natural enemies. What are, or were, these enemies?”

“We have no natural enemies,” Khone replied promptly. “There is nothing on Goglesk which threatens us except ourselves.”

Conway had trouble believing that. He moved his scanner to one of the areas where a sting lay partially hidden by cranial hair and then followed its connections to the poison sac while an enlarged picture of the process was projected onto the screen for Khone’s benefit. He said, “That is a potent natural weapon whether it was used for attack or defense, and it would not have evolved without reason. Are there any memories, any written or spoken history, any fossil remains of a life-form so ferocious that it caused such a deadly defense to evolve?”

The answer was again no, but Conway had to ask the help of Wainright to explain fossils to the Gogleskan. It transpired that Khone had seen fossil remains from time to time but had not realized what they were or considered them of any importance. As a science archeology was unknown to its people. But now that Khone knew what the odd-shaped marks and objects in certain rocks signified, it seemed likely that the healer would father a new science.

“Have you experienced any dreams or nightmares about such a beast?” Conway asked, without looking up from his scanner.

“Only the phantasms of childhood,” Khone said quickly, giving Conway the impression that it wanted to change the subject. “They rarely trouble adult minds.”

“But when you do dream about them,” Conway persisted, “is it possible to remember and descril—e this creature or creatures?”

Almost a full minute passed before the Gogleskan replied, and during that time Conway’s scanner showed a perceptible bunching of the muscles surrounding the poison sac and at the base of the stings. Plainly he was moving into a very sensitive area. This answer, he thought, was going to be an important one.

But when it came the answer was disappointing, and seemed to invite only more questions.

“It is not a creature with a definite physical form,” the FOKT said. “In the dreams there is a feeling of great danger, a formless threat from a fast-moving, ferocious entity which bites and tears and engulfs. It is a phantasm which frightens the young, and the thought of it distresses adults. The young may give way to their fears and join together for mutual comfort, because they lack the physical strength to inflict major damage to their surroundings. But adults must avoid such mental bad habits and remain mentally and physically apart.”

Baffled, Conway said, “Are you telling me that young Gogleskans may link together at will, but not the adults?”

“It is difficult to stop them doing so,” the FOKT replied. “But it is discouraged lest a habit develops which would be too difficult to break in adulthood. And while I realize that you are anxious to study the joining process without subjecting our artifacts to damage, to closely observe a joining between children without causing mental distress in the parents concerned, followed by an involuntary adult joining, would be impossible.”

Conway sighed. Khone was way ahead of him, because that would have been his next request. Instead, he said, “Does my race in any way resemble this phantasm of your youth?”

“No,” Khone replied. “But your close approach of yesterday, and in particular your physical contact with a Gogleskan, appeared to be a threat. The reaction and emission of the distress call was instinctive, not logical.”

Helplessly, Conway said, “If we knew exactly what was responsible for what is clearly a species-wide panic reaction, we could try to negate it. But what is this bogeyman of yours?”

The lengthy silence which followed was broken by Wainright clearing his throat. Hesitantly, he said, “Considering the vague description, the speed and silence of its approach, and the fact that it rends and engulfs its prey, could it have been a large, airborne predator?”

Conway thought about that while he charted the nerve connections between the thin, shining tendrils lying in the coarser hair and the small, mineral-rich lobe at the center of the brain where they originated. He said, “Is there fossil evidence for such a creature? And isn’t it possible, if this memory goes back to presapient times to the period when the FOKTs were sea-dwellers, that the predator was a swimmer rather than a flyer?”

The communicator was silent for a moment; then Wainright said, “I found no evidence of large avians on the few sites I examined, Doctor. But if we are going really far back to the time when all Gogleskan life was in the oceans, then some of it was very large indeed. There is an area of seabed which was thrown up fairly recently, in geological terms, about twenty miles south of here. I deepprobed a fossil-rich section which was once a deep subsea valley, meaning to work up a computer reconstruction whenever I had a few hours to spare. It made a very confusing picture, because a large number of the fossil remains are damaged or incomplete.”

“Distortion due to seismic activity, do you think?” Conway asked.

“It’s possible,” the Lieutenant said doubtfully. “But my guess would be that it was inflicted by a contemporary agency. But the tape is in my room, Doctor. Shall I fetch it and see if the pictures, confusing as they are to me, jog our friend’s racial memory?”

“Yes, please,” Conway said. To Khone he went on. “If the recollection is not too distressing, can you tell me the number of times you have joined with other adults in response to a real or imagined threat? And can you describe the physical, mental, and emotional stages before, during, and subsequent to a joining? I do not wish to cause you pain, but it is important that this process be studied and understood if an answer to the problem is to be found.”

It was obvious that the recollection was causing discomfort to Khone, and equally plain that the healer was going to cooperate to the best of its ability. Before yesterday, it told Conway, there had been three previous joinings. The sequence of events was, firstly, the accident or sudden surprise or physical threat which caused the being endangered to emit an audible distress signal which drew all of its fellows within hearing to it as well as placing them in the same emotional state. If one being was threatened then everyone within audible range was threatened and was under the same compulsion to react, to join and overcome the threat. Khone indicated the organ which produced the signal, a membrane which could be made to vibrate independent of the respiratory system.

The thought occurred to Conway that the membrane would have been even more effective under water, but he was too busy listening to interrupt.

Khone went on to describe the sense of increased safety as the body hair of the beings wove them together, and the pleasant, exciting feeling of increased intellect and awareness as the first few Gogleskans joined and shared minds. But that feeling died as more and more beings linked up and mentation became progressively more difficult and confused until it was submerged by the one, overwhelming need to protect the group by attacking anything and everything in the vicinity. Coherent thought at the individual level was impossible.

“. . . When the threat has been neutralized,” Khone went on, or the incident which initiated the fusion is over and even to the dim understanding of the group-entity no longer poses a threat, the group slowly breaks up. For a time the individuals feel mentally confused, physically tired, and ashamed of themselves and of the destruction they have caused. To survive as an intelligent race, every Gogleskan must strive to be a lonely person.

Conway did not reply. His mind was still trying to adjust to the sudden realization that the Gogleskans had telepathy.

CHAPTER 6

The telepathic faculty had limitations, because the distress signal which triggered the joining was an audible rather than a mental one. It had to be telepathy by touch, then. He thought of the fine tendrils concealed by the coarse cranial hair. There were eight of them, which was more than enough to make contact with those of the beings pressed tightly around during a linkup.

He must have been thinking aloud, because Khone announced very firmly that such contact with another Gogleskan was acutely painful, and that the tendrils lay alongside those of the other group members but did not touch. Apparently the tendrils were organic transmitting and receiving antennae which operated by simple induction.

But the problem with telepathic races-and there were several of them in the Galactic Federation-was that the faculty worked only between members of the same species; with other races whose telepathic equipment operated on different frequencies or who did not possess the faculty, it worked rarely if at all. Conway had had a few experiences with projective telepaths-it was thought that Earth-humans had a latent ability but had evolved away from it- and the images he had received had been of short duration and accompanied by prior mental discomfort. It was also thought that races possessing a spoken and written language rather than a mental one tended to progress further and faster in the physical sciences.

The Gogleskans possessed both, and for some reason had been stopped dead in their cultural tracks.

“Is it agreed,” Conway asked, very impersonally and carefully because he was about to suggest something unpleasant, “that it is the instinctive linkup, when there is no longer a major threat to make it necessary, which is the basis of your problem? Is it further agreed that the tendrils, which are almost certainly the mechanism which initiates and maintains the group as a single entity, require close and detailed study if the problem is to be solved? However, a visual examination is not sufficient, and tests requiring direct contact would be necessary. These would include nerve conductivity measurements, the withdrawal of minute tissue samples for analysis, the introduction of external stimuli to ascertain if . . . Khone! None of these tests are painful!”

In spite of his hasty reassurance the Gogleskan was displaying signs of growing panic.

“I know that the thought of any kind of physical contact is distressing,” Conway went on quickly as he thought of a new approach, beautiful in its simplicity provided the personal dangers were ignored, “because there is an instinctive reaction to anyone or anything which might be a threat. But if it were demonstrated, on the instinctive as well as the cerebral level, that I am not a threat, then it might be possible for you to overcome this instinctive reaction.

“What I propose is this . . .

Wainright returned while he was talking. The Lieutenant stood listening, the tape gripped tightly in his hand, until Conway had finished. Then he said in a frightened voice, “Doctor, you’re mad.”

It took a much longer time to obtain the Lieutenant’s agreement than to get Khone’s, but finally Conway had his way. Wainright drew a litter from stores and the Doctor was placed on it and securely restrained with straps around the feet, legs, arms and body-the restraints had a quick-release capability which could be remotely operated by the Lieutenant; Wainright had insisted on that-and he was moved into Khone’s half of the observation compartment. The litter was set at a comfortable height for the Gogleskan healer to work, if it was able.

The idea was that if he could not physically examine Khone then the Gogleskan would examine Conway, while he was utterly helpless and incapable of any threatening behavior. It would accus torn the healer to the idea of physical examination and investigation against the time when it would be Conway’s turn. But that time, it soon became obvious, would be long delayed.

Khone approached him closely without too much distress and, under Conway’s direction, used the scanner with a fair degree of skill. But it was the instrument which touched him, not Khone itself. Conway remained absolutely still on the litter, moving only his eyes to watch Khone’s hesitant movements, or the Lieutenant, who was projecting his tape onto the big screen.

Suddenly he felt a touch, so light that it might have been a feather falling onto the back of his hand and then sliding off again. Then the touch was repeated, more firmly this time.

He tried not to move even his eyes lest Khone shy away, so he was aware from his peripheral vision of an expanse of stiff, Gogleskan hair and three of Khone’s manipulators, two of which were holding the scanner, moving along the side of his head. He felt another light touch in the area of the temporal artery; then very gently, the tip of a manipulator began exploring the convolutions of his ear.

Abruptly Khone withdrew, its membrane vibrating softly in muted distress.

Conway thought of the strength of the conditioning Khone had been fighting just to touch him the first time, and he felt an admiration for the dumpy little creature so great, and concern for its species as a whole so intense, that he found it difficult to speak for a few minutes.

“Apologies for the mental distress,” Conway said finally, “but it should lessen as the contacts are repeated. But audible distress signals are being generated even though you know that I have neither the wish nor the ability to endanger you. With your agreement the external door of this compartment should be closed lest members of your species within audible range think that you are being threatened and come to join with you.”

“There is understanding,” Khone said without hesitation, “and agreement.”

On the big screen the Lieutenant was playing back the tape which showed the dense mass of fossilized remains revealed by his deep probes, rotating the viewpoint and overlaying a scale grid so that a true idea of the shapes and sizes could be shown. Khone paid little attention to the display because, Conway realized, a species with such a primitive level of technology would not immediately comprehend the solid reality represented by a few thin lines on a dark screen. It was much more interested in the three-dimensional reality of the Doctor and it was approaching him again.

Conway, however, was intensely interested in the images on the screen.

He kept his eyes on it while two of Khone’s manipulators gently parted the hair on his scalp. To the Lieutenant, he said, “Those incomplete fossils look as if they have been torn apart, and I wouldn’t mind betting that if you ask that computer to reconstruct one of them using the data available from the Khone physiological material, you will have a recognizable presapient FOKT. But what is that . . . that overgrown vegetable hanging in the middle of them?”

Wainright laughed. “I was hoping you would tell me, Doctor. It looks like a deformed, stemless rose, with spikes or teeth growing from the edges of some of the petals, and it’s big.”

“The shape doesn’t make sense,” Conway said quietly as the Gogleskan shifted its attention to one of his hands. “As a mobile sea-dweller it should have fins rather than limbs, but there is no sign of streamlining along its direction of motion, or even a basic symmetry about its center of . . .

He broke off to answer a question from Khone regarding the hair on his wrist, and he took the opportunity of weakening the other’s conditioning a little more by suggesting that it perform a simple surgical procedure on him. It would involve removing a small area of hair, and using a fine needle in conjunction with the scanner to withdraw a small quantity of blood from a minor vein at the back of Conway’s hand. He assured Khone that the procedure would be painless and no harm would be done even if the needle were not positioned with complete accuracy.

He explained that it was the kind of test which was done countless times every day at Sector General on a wide variety of patients, and later analysis of the sample taken revealed a great deal about the condition of these patients, and in many cases, the data obtained was instrumental in curing them.

There would be very little direct physical contact involved in taking the sample, because Khone would be using the scanner, swab, scissors, and a hypodermic, he added encouragingly. Just as there would be minimal body contact if or when Conway performed similar tests on the Gogleskan.

For a moment Conway thought that he had rushed things too much, because Khone had backed away until it was pressing against the inside of the closed external door. It remained there, its hair twitching while it fought another battle with its conditioning, then it slowly returned to the litter. While he waited for it to speak, Conway took a quick look at the amazingly lifelike picture which was taking form on Wainright’s screen.

The Lieutenant had incorporated in the display all of the FOKT data as well as information he had gleaned earlier on the subsea vegetation of prehistoric times. The fossil remains, which the computer had reconstructed as slightly smaller versions of present-day Gogleskans, lay singly and in small, linked groups among the gently waving marine vegetation, lit by bright, greenish yellow sunlight which filtered down from the wave-wrinkled surface above. Only in the enormous, roselike object which lay in the center of the picture was there a lack of detail. An idea about it began to take shape at the back of Conway’s mind, but Khone spoke suddenly before it could form.

The Gogleskan was still not taking any interest in the screen.

“If this test were to cause pain,” Khone asked, “what would be the procedure then? And would it be preferable, in the present circumstances, for the blood sample to be taken by and from oneself?”

A helpful but cautious entity, this Khone, Conway thought, trying not to laugh. He said, “If a procedure is expected to cause discomfort, a quantity of the material contained in one of the phials colored in yellow and black diagonal bands is withdrawn and injected into the site. The quantity required is dependent on the period and degree of discomfort which one is expecting to cause.

“The material concerned is a painkiller for my species,” he went on, “as well as a muscle relaxant. But it is not required in this instance . . .

While he continued to give the directions for withdrawing the blood sample, he told Khone that it was much easier to perform such work on a subject other than oneself. He did not, at that time, make any mention of the fact that if he was to obtain a specimen of FOKT blood from Khone, the first thing he would have wanted to discover was if the yellow and black marked medication, or one of the other similar preparations in his supply, was suited to the Gogleskan metabolism. If one of them was suitable and there was an opportunity of injecting it, Khone would be left in such a painfree, relaxed, and massively tranquilized state that subsequent and more revealing tests would have been no problem at all.

A muscle relaxed, he thought, his eyes going back to Wainright’s display, as opposed to a muscle in spasm! . . .

The large object centering the screen lacked the symmetry and structural repetition of a vegetable-it looked like a sheet of paper which had been crushed and twisted into a loose ball. But if that idea was correct, the predator must have pulled itself into that shape. Conway shivered in spite of himself.

That Gogleskan venom was potent stuff.

To Wainright, he said quickly, “How does this sound? The FOKT fossils were those beings who did not survive the initial attack of the creature, and some of them are linked, indicating that they were part of a larger group. This FOKT group-entity attacked or defended itself against the predator with its stings, all of them. The quantity of venom injected must have sent the beastie into multiple muscular spasm, and it must have literally tied itself into a knot as it died. Can you get your computer to unravel that knot?”

Wainright nodded, and soon the twisted, convoluted shape at the center of the screen was surrounded by a fainter image of itself which was slowly unfolding. This had to be the answer for that weird shape, Conway thought, because nothing else made sense. Occasionally he asked for expanded views of the enormous fossil’s skeletal structure, and each one supported his theory. But the Lieutenant was forced to reduce the size several times as the ghostly, unfolding image overran the edges of the screen.

“It’s beginning to look like a bird,” Wainright said. “Parts of the wing are very fragile. In fact, it seems to be all wing.”

“That’s because the fossil remains are of the skeleton and skin only,” Conway replied. “There must have been almost total wastage of muscle and soft tissue which was attached to that bone structure. In the areas where you are indicating the wing . . . Now you’ve got me thinking of it as a bird . . . The wing thickness should be increased by a factor of five or six. But with that bone structure the wing could not have been rigid. I’d say that it undulated rapidly rather than flapping, and propelled the beastie forward at great speed. And that lateral split in the wing inboard leading edges is interesting. It reminds me of the engine intakes of the old jet aircraft, except that these intakes have teeth . . .

He broke off because Khone was jabbing hesitantly at the back of his hand with the hypo. For the first time Conway understood what a patient had to go through at the hands of a trainee medical technician.

“The jointing at the base of the wings,” he went on when the Gogleskan had found the proper vein, “suggests that the mouths on the wing leading edges opened and closed as it swam, eating everything that got in its way and passing the food through two alimentary canals to the stomach housed in that cylindrical bulge along the center line. The tegument was thicker along the leading edges, and probably sting-proof, and the stomach was probably capable of dealing with the FOKT venom even though it is lethal when injected through softer areas of tegument into the bloodstream.

“The only defense the FOKTs could offer was to link up and present themselves as a solid wall in its path,” he continued excitedly. “Quite a few of them would die before the group entity folded around the predator and stung it to death. The incomplete fossil remains indicate that. But I hate to think of what it must have been like for the group-members as a whole while they were mentally linked to their dying friends . . .

He cringed inwardly as he thought of how they all must have suffered, and died, every time one of their group did so. And they would have done so many times if the predator’s attacks were a regular occurrence. What was worse, prior to an attack they all knew what was ahead of them through the minds of previous survivors- all the fear and pain and multiple dying by proxy.

At last he understood the severity of the racial psychosis which gripped the whole Gogleskan species. As individuals they feared and hated a joining, or any close physical or mental contact or cooperation which might lead to the possibility of a linkup. Subconsciously to join was to suffer remembered pain, pain which could only be assuaged by a blind, berserker rage which in turn blotted out the capacity to think or to control their actions. Their fear of that particular species of predator must have been extreme, and even though their old enemy was extinct or was still a sea-dweller, they had not been able to forget it or develop a less self-defeating method of self-defense.

The main trouble was that the defense mechanism was so hypersensitive, even after the elapsed millennia since it was needed, that it could be triggered by an imagined or potential threat as well as an actual one.

Khone had finally completed withdrawing the blood sample. The back of Conway’s hand felt like a pincushion, but he said highly complimentary things about the FOKT healer’s first off-planet surgical procedure, and meant every word of them. While the other was carefully transferring the contents of the syringe into a sterile phial, he returned his attention to the screen.

The creature was completely unfolded now, and the Lieutenant had reduced the image again so that it would fit within the limits of the screen. Wainright had also added all the available data and theory on coloration, probable method of locomotion, and the wing-synchronized mouth and teeth movements. It moved slowly in the center of the big screen, a vast, dark gray, dreadful shape more than eighty meters across, undulating and flapping ponderously like an enormous, Earthly stingray, sucking in, tearing apart, and eating everything in its path.

This was the Gogleskan nightmare from their prehistoric past, and the figures of the reconstructed FOKT fossils were tiny blobs of color near the lower edge of the screen.

“Wainright!” Conway said urgently. “Kill that picture! . . .

But he was too late. Khone, its work completed, had turned to look at the screen-and was confronted with the three-dimensional picture of a moving and seemingly living creature which up until then had inhabited only its subconscious. In the confined space of the compartment its distress call was deafening.

Conway cursed his own stupidity as the panic-stricken Gogleskan stumbled about the floor within a few feet of his litter. Khone had shown little interest in the display when it had been a collection of fine lines, since it lacked the experience to appreciate the three-dimensional reality which they represented. But the Lieutenant’s final picture was much too realistic for any Gogleskan to view and remain wholly sane.

He saw the FOKTs dumpy body come toward him, then lurch past. Its multicolor hair was standing on end and twitching, its four stings were fully extended, dropletes of venom oozing from the tips, but the sound coming from its membranes seemed fractionally less deafening. Conway lay rigid, not even swiveling his eyes as the being moved away and then came back again.

The reduction in the volume of its distress call made it obvious that Khone was fighting its conditioning and Conway had to help it in the only way possible, by remaining absolutely motionless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Gogleskan stop, one of its stings only inches away from the side of his face and the stiff, bristling hair touching his coveralls. He could feel its breath puffing gently across his forehead and smell the faint, peppermint smell which seemed to be its body odor. Khone was trembling, whether with fear at the Lieutenant’s display or in indecision over whether or not to attack, Conway did not know.

If he stayed absolutely still, he told himself desperately, he should not represent a threat. If he moved, however, he knew with a dreadful certainty that the Gogleskan would sting him, instinctively, without thinking. But there was another aspect of the FOKT behavior pattern which he had forgotten.

They blindly attacked enemies, but any being who was not a threat and had managed to remain in such close physical proximity as Conway had done had to be a friend.

At times like this, friends linked up.

Conway was suddenly aware of the stiff bristles scratching against his clothing and trying to weave themselves into the fabric of his coveralls in the area of his neck and shoulder. The sting was still too close to the side of his face for comfort, but somehow it seemed to be less threatening. He held absolutely still, anyway. Then he saw, clearly because it was moving just two inches above his eyes, one of the long, fine tendrils. He felt it fall, feather-light, across his forehead.

A Gogleskan joining was mental as well as physical, Conway knew, but he did not foresee any more success for the telepathic linkup than for the physical one.

He was wrong.

It began as a deep, unlocalized itch inside his skull, and if his hands and arms had not been immobilized he would have been poking desperately at his ears with his fingers. He was aware, too, of a maddening confusion of sounds, pictures, and feelings which were not his own. He had experienced the same sensation many times, after taking extraterrestrial physiology tapes at the hospital, but on those occasions the alien impressions had been coherent and orderly. He felt now as if he were watching a tri-di show with sensory augmentation when the channel selector control was malfunctioning. The bright but chaotic images and impressions became more intense, and he wanted to close his eyes in the hope that they would go away, but he dared not even blink.

Suddenly the picture held steady and the feelings were sharp and clear, and for a few seconds Conway knew what it was like to be the intensely lonely and intellectually frustrated entity that was an adult Gogleskan. The breadth of intelligence and sensitivity of Khone’s mind awed him, and he was aware of the many ways in which the Gogleskan healer had used that mind, long before the Monitor Corps or Conway had arrived on Goglesk, to fight and circumvent the mind-destroying conditioning which their evolution had imposed on them.

He was sure, because he was in Khone’s mind and the healer was sure, that its mind was nothing extraordinary so far as FOKT mental capacity was concerned. But their high intelligence could not be shared except by the slow, impersonal, and imprecise spoken language, and a true meeting of minds was possible only during the brief period between the initial linkup and the coarsening and confusion of intellect which immediately followed it. His admiration for this individual member of a race of intensely reluctant individualists was great indeed.

There is no coarsening or loss of definition in the thoughts we are exchanging.

The words which appeared in Conway’s mind were overlaid by feelings of pleasure, gratitude, curiosity . . . and hope.

The process of establishing the mental linkup between your people must trigger an area of your endocrine system which desensitizes the entire cerebral process, probably to reduce the pain which was suffered in prehistoric times following a linkup and during the predator attack. But I am not a Gogleskan, so the desensitizing mechanism is absent. However, a precise study of the endocrinology involved should be undertaken without delay and the gland isolated, and if surgical intervention is indicated.

Too late he realized where that line of thought was taking him and the wide-and to Khone frightening-surgical associations it opened up. With a tremendous mental effort the Gogleskan had adapted to the close presence and physical contact with an offworlder, and Conway knew precisely how much of an effort that had been. But now the healer was sharing Conway’s mind, sharing his thoughts and feelings and experience of entities who staffed or were being cured at Sector General and who made the seagoing nightmare from Goglesk’s past seem like a domestic pet by comparison.

Khone could not take it, and its distress signal, which had grown quieter over the past few minutes, roared out again at full, frantic intensity. But the little being was maintaining contact in spite of the alien nightmare its thought tendril was receiving, and Conway was suffering with it.

He tried to think reassuring thoughts, tried to make the Gogleskan’s mind as well as his own change the mental subject. He had blinked several times but had otherwise remained still, and he thought, or rather he hoped, that Khone would continue to treat him as an immobile and helpless nonthreat. But was it his imagination or had Khone’s appearance changed suddenly?

The stiff, multicolor hair was more clearly defined and the nearest sting had developed new highlights. For a moment his fear became even greater than Khone’s as he realized what was happening.

“No, don’t’ he began, as loudly as he could without moving his lips. But the Gogleskan membrane was vibrating too loudly for Wainright to hear him.

“I’ve opened the outer door, Doctor,” the Lieutenant shouted, the communicator volume turned high so that he would be heard over the noise Khone was making. “I’m cutting your restraints, now. Get out of there!”

“I’m not in danger,” Conway called, but his voice was drowned out by that earsplitting distress signal and the overamplified Wainright. And he was lying anyway, because when the straps dropped away he was in terrible danger.

He was potentially mobile again, no longer helpless, and had therefore become a threat.

In the instant before the tendril was withdrawn Conway knew that Khone did not want to sting him, but that made no difference at all to what was a purely reflex action. As he rolled desperately onto the floor, he felt the jab of the blunt point of the sting thudding into his shoulder. One of his ankles was entangled in the foot restraints as he tried to crawl away, and another jab tore his coveralls and scratched his thigh. Again he tried to crawl toward the outer entrance, but first his arm and then his leg doubled up in muscular spasm, and he toppled onto his side, unable to move and facing the transparent partition. The two affected limbs seemed to be on fire.

The muscles in his neck and in the area of the scapula were knotting in cramp, and the fire was spreading from the hip puncture to the abdominal muscles. He wondered if the venom would affect the involuntary muscle systems as well, specifically those operating his heart and lungs. If it did then he had not long to live. The pain was so intense that the thought did not frighten him as badly as it should have. Desperately he tried to think of something he should do before he passed out.

“Wainright he began weakly.

Khone’s distress call had reduced in volume, and the healer had not tried to sting him again-obviously he was no longer a threat. The Gogleskan stood a few feet from him, its hair agitated by its stings lying flat against its head, looking like a harmless multicolored haystack. He tried again.

“Wainright,” he said slowly and painfully. “The yellow and black phial. Inject all of it . . .

But the Lieutenant was not at the other side of the partition, and the connecting door was still closed. Maybe Wainright intended coming around to the external door to drag Conway out, but he could not move himself around to see. It was becoming difficult to see anything.

Before he passed out, Conway was aware of regular fluctuations in the lighting which reminded him of something. A heavy power drain, he thought weakly, of the kind required to punch a signal through hyperspace . . .

CHAPTER 9

He seemed to be attached to every sensor and monitoring device in the unit, Conway thought as he looked up at the displays from the unfamiliar viewpoint of a patient, and luxuriated in the feeling of his limbs stretched to full extension and free of the excruciating cramp. He moved his eyes to see Prilicla regarding him from its position on the ceiling and the figures of Murchison and Naydrad at one side of his bed, also looking down at him. Between them was a large eye supported by a long tubular appendage which had been extruded by Danalta with the same purpose in mind. Conway moistened his lips.

“What happened?” he said.

“That,” Murchison said, “is supposed to be the second question. The first is ‘Where am I?’”

“I know where I am, dammit. On the casualty deck of Rhabwar. And why am I still wired up to that thing? Surely you can see that the biosensors are indicating optimum levels on all vital functions. What I want to know is how I got here.”

The pathologist breathed gently through her nose. “Mentation and memory seem unimpaired, and you are your usual shorttempered self. But you must rest. The Gogleskan venom has been neutralized, and in spite of what the displays are showing, there is marked physical debility and the likelihood of delayed shock as a result of severe mental trauma. Massive rest is indicated, at least until we return to the hospital and you are given a thorough checkout.

“And don’t think you can pull your Senior Physician’s rank on me to get up,” she said sweetly as Conway opened his mouth to do just that. “In this instance you are the patient and not the doctor, Doctor.”

“This is a good time,” Prilicla broke in at that moment, “for us to withdraw and so enable you to get the rest you require, friend Conway. We are all feeling pleased and relieved that you are recovering, and I think it would be less exhausting for you if we left and allowed friend Murchison to answer your questions.

Prilicla scuttled across the ceiling toward the entrance, Naydrad growled something which did not translate and followed the empath, and Danalta withdrew its eye support limb, stabilized as a dark green, lumpy ball, and rolled after them. Murchison began removing the unnecessary biosensors and switching off the monitors, silently and with more concentration than the work warranted.

“What did happen?” he asked quietly. When there was no response he went on. “That venom, I was trying to tie myself into knots. I wanted Wainright to inject the muscle relaxant, but he wasn’t there. Then I seem to remember the lights dimming, and I knew he was using the hyperspace radio. But I didn’t expect to wake up on Rhabwar . . .

Or wake up ever again, he finished silently.

Still without looking at him she explained that the ambulance ship had been testing new equipment just beyond the Jump distance from Sector General, and with the full medical team on board. Because they knew the exact coordinates of Goglesk when the Lieutenant’s hypersignal came in, they were able to emerge close to the planet, with their lander ready to launch, and they had been able to reach him in just under four hours.

They had found him still trying to tie himself in knots, but the muscular spasm had been reduced significantly by a massive dose of the relaxant DM82, so the knots were loose enough for him not to have broken any bones or torn any muscles or tendons. He had been very lucky.

Conway nodded and said seriously, “So the Lieutenant was able to get to me with the muscle relaxant in time. I’d say with seconds to spare.

Murchison shook her head. “It was the native Gogleskan, Khone, who administered the DM82. After damn well nearly killing you, it saves your life! It kept asking if you would be all right when we were taking you away, shouting at us until the entry port was sealed. You make some peculiar friends, Doctor.”

“It had to make a tremendous mental effort to give me that shot,” Conway said, “a bigger effort, perhaps, than I could have made in similar circumstances. How close did it come while you were transferring me to the lander?”

Murchison thought for a moment, then said, “When Lieutenant Haslam, who was piloting, and I met Wainright at the lock, it came to within twenty meters. When Naydrad, Prilicla, and Danalta came out with the litter, it became nervous and moved back to about twice that distance. Wainright told us what had happened between it and you, but we did not act or say anything which could be construed as hostile even though, personally, I would have liked to give it a quick kick in whatever it uses as a gluteus maximus for what it did to you. Maybe it simply feared retribution.”

“Knowing its feelings as I do,” Conway said seriously, “I think it would have welcomed retribution.”

Murchison breathed through her nose once again and sat down on the edge of the litter, twisting around so as to face him and placing her hands on the pillow beside his shoulders. Her face lost its cool, clinical expression and she said shakily, “Damn you, Doctor, you nearly got yourself killed.”

Suddenly her arms were around him and her face was close to his. Conway moved his head away quickly, without thinking. She straightened up, looking surprised.

“I’m m not feeling like myself today,” he said. Again without thinking he had used the stock phrase which, at Sector General, was the acceptable excuse for strange or uncharacteristic behavior.

“You mean,” she said furiously, “that you’ve an Educator tape riding you, and O’Mara sent you to Goglesk without erasing it? What are you carrying, a Tralthan, a Melfan? I know both of those species consider the Earth-human female body to be something less than desirable. Or did you volunteer to take an Educator tape on vacation? Some vacation!”

Conway shook his head. “It isn’t a physiology tape, and O’Mara had nothing to do with it. There was a very close, and quite intense, telepathic contact with Khone. It was unexpected, an accident, but the Gogleskan FOKT classification has some remarkable behavior characteristics which include . . .

Before Conway could stop himself he was describing the whole Gogleskan situation and his experience with the town-wrecking group entity and with Khone as an individual. As one of the hospital’s leading pathologists, second only to the great Thornnastor itself, her professional interest should have been aroused, and it would be, in time. But right then it was obvious that she was not thinking about anything except the state in which she had found Conway a few hours earlier.

“The important thing,” she said, trying to smile, “is that you don’t want anyone to come close to you, unless it looks like a multicolor haystack. As an excuse it certainly beats having a headache.”

Conway smiled back. “Not at all. Bodily contact can be made without initiating a Joining, at any time, provided the intention is associated with reproduction.” He reached up with one hand, and with the palm pressed gently against the back of her neck he pulled her face down toward his. “Would you like to rerun that last bit again?”

“You are severely debilitated,” she said, looking relieved and trying to duck from under his hand—but not working very hard at it. Conway spread his fingers through her hair and did not let go even when their faces were only a few inches apart. She went on softly. “You’re making an awful mess of my hair.”

Conway slipped his other hand around her waist and said, “Don’t worry. It makes you look much more like a desirable haystack . . .

He had no discomfort and he did not feel particularly debilitated, but suddenly he began to shake as the delayed shock from the Khone incident hit him, and with it the memory of those excruciating muscle spasms and the knowledge of just how close to death he had been. She held him tightly until the shaking had stopped, and for a long time afterward.

They both knew that the gentle and understanding Prilicla, from its quarters two decks above them, was aware of the emotional radiation of every being in the ship. The telepath would ensure that nobody interrupted them until curative therapy was concluded.

It was ten hours later-Rhabwar had not needed to break any records on the return trip-that they locked on to the Casualty Admission Port on Level 103. Charge Nurse Naydrad, who could be fanatical at times about the regulations, insisted on bringing him into the observation ward on the litter. Conway was equally insistent about sliding back the canopy and sitting up during the transfer, to reassure the Earth-human and extraterrestrial colleagues who were waiting inside the entry port to inquire worriedly about his condition. Murchison had left him to make her report to Thornnastor, and Prilicla had gone on ahead to escape the somewhat turbulent emotional radiation being generated in the vicinity of Conway’s litter.

But it took less than an hour in the observation ward for the Physician-in-Charge and its staff to complete their examination and agree with Conway’s self-diagnosis that he was in all respects physically fit.

An hour later he was in the office of Major O’Mara, who was not overly concerned with things physical.

“This is not the usual Educator tape impression,” the Chief Psychologist said when Conway had described his experiences with Khone. “Normally a tape contains the complete mind record of the being who donated it, and in spite of the psychological tricks which the recipient plays on himself or itself, the taped-in personality of that of the being receiving the tape is completely distinct. The recording is not subject to alteration. For this reason an erasure can be performed without any ill-effects on the recipient’s personality or mental state. But you, Doctor, had a full, two-way exchange with this Khone character, which means that you have assimilated a fairly large body of memories, feelings, and thought processes into the Conway mind matrix and, God help its future sanity, Khone has been impressed with quite a lot of your material, and the minds of both parties were aware of and were modified by the process. For this reason I cannot see any way that we can selectively remove the Gogleskan material without the risk of personality damage. In psychological terms there has been feedback from both minds.

“There is a possibility, a small one,” O’Mara went on gruffly, “that if Khone could be persuaded to come here and donate its own Educator tape for study, something could be tried which—”

“It wouldn’t come,” Conway said.

“Judging by what you’ve told me, I’m inclined to agree,” the Chief Psychologist said, a tinge of sympathy creeping into his tone. “This means that you are stuck with your Gogleskan alter ego, Conway. Is it . . . bad?”

Conway shook his head. “It is no more alien than a Melfan tape, except that there are times when I’m not sure whether it is Khone or myself reacting to a given situation. I think I can handle it without psychiatric assistance.”

“Good,” O’Mara said dryly, and added, “You’re afraid the treatment might be worse than the condition, and you’re probably right.”

“It isn’t good,” Conway said firmly. “The Gogleskan business, I mean. Their whole species is being held back by what amounts to a racial conditioned reflex! We will have to do something about that berserker group-entity problem.”

“You will have to do something about it,” O’Mara said, “between a few other jobs we have lined up for you. After all, you are the Senior Physician with the most knowledge of the Gogleskan situation, so why should I assign anyone else? But first, I assume you found a little time between wrecking Gogleskan towns and being stung nearly to death by your FOKT colleague to decide whether or not you want to try for Diagnostician? And that you discussed some of the, er, ramifications with your personal pathologist?”

Conway nodded. “We’ve discussed it, and I’ll give it a try. But these other jobs you mentioned, I’m not sure that I’m able to—”

The Chief Psychologist held up a hand. “Of course you are able. Both Senior Physician Prilicla and Pathologist Murchison have pronounced you in all respects psychologically and physically fit.” He looked steadily at Conway’s reddening face for a moment, then added, “She did not go into detail, just said that she was satisfied. You have another question?”

Warily, Conway asked, “How many other jobs?”

“Several,” O’Mara replied. “They are detailed in the tape which you can pick up from the outer office. Oh, yes, Doctor, I expected you to decide as you have done. But now you will have to accept a greater measure of responsibility for your diagnoses, decisions, and treatment directives than you have been accustomed to as a Senior Physician, and for patients which only your subordinates will see unless something goes badly amiss. Naturally, you will be allowed to seek the help and advice of colleagues at Diagnostician or any other level, but only if you can satisfy me, and yourself, that you can no longer proceed without such assistance.

“Knowing you, Doctor,” he added sourly, “it would be difficult to say which of us would be harder to satisfy on that point.”

Conway nodded. It was not the first time that O’Mara had criticized him for being too professionally proud, or pigheaded. But he had been able to avoid serious trouble by also being right on most of the occasions. He cleared his throat.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “But it still seems to me that the Gogleskan situation requires early attention.”

“So does the problem in the FROB geriatric unit,” O’Mara said. “Not to mention the urgent need to design accommodation for a pregnant Protector and its offspring, as well as sundry teaching duties, lectures in theater, and any odd jobs which may come up and for which your peculiar qualities suit you. Some of these problems have been with us for a long time, although not, of course, for as many thousands of years as those of your Gogleskan friends. As a would-be Diagnostician you also have the responsibility for deciding which case or cases should be given priority. After due consideration, of course.”

Conway nodded. His vocal chords seemed to have severed communications with his brain while it tried to absorb all the implications of a multiple assignment the individual sections of which were just this side of impossible. He knew of some of those problems and the Diagnosticians who had worked on them, and the hospital grapevine had carried some bloodcurdling accounts of some of the failures. And now, for the period of assessment as acting Diagnostician, the problems were his.

“Don’t sit there gaping at me,” O’Mara said. “I’m sure you can find something else to do.”

CHAPTER 10

It was an unusual meeting for Conway in that he was the only medic present-the others were exclusively Monitor Corps officers charged with the responsibilities for various aspects of hospital maintenance and supply, and Major Fletcher, the Captain of the Rhabwar. It was doubly unusual in that Conway, wearing his goldedged acting Diagnostician’s armband with a nonchalance he did not feel, was solely and completely himself.

There were no Educator tapes which could help him with this problem, only the experience of Major Fletcher and himself.

“The initial requirement,” he began formally, “is for accommodation, food supply, and treatment facilities for a gravid FSOJ life-form better known to some of us as one of the Protectors of the Unborn. It is an extremely dangerous being, nonintelligent in the adult stage, which on its home planet is continuously under attack from the time it is born until it dies, usually at the tentacles and teeth of its last-born. Captain, if you please .

Fletcher tapped buttons on his console, and the briefing screen lit with the picture of an adult Protector taken during one of Rhabwar’s rescue missions, followed by material on other FSOJs collected on their home world. But it was the way that the Protector’s snapping teeth and flailing tentacles warped and dented the ambulance ship’s internal plating which caused the watchers to grunt in disbelief.

“As you can see, Conway resumed, “the FSOJ is a large, immensely strong, oxygen-breathing life-form with a slitted carapace from which protrude those four heavy tentacles and a tail and head. The tentacles and tail have large, osseous terminations resembling organic spiked clubs, and the principal features of the head are the recessed and heavily protected eyes, and the jaws. You will also note that the four stubby legs which project from the underside of the carapace possess bony spurs which make these limbs additional weapons of offense. On their planet of origin all of these weapons are needed.

“Their young remain in the womb until physical development is sufficiently advanced for them to survive birth into their incredibly savage environment, and during the embryo stage they are telepathic. But this aspect of the problem is not in your area.

“Constant and savage conflict is such a vital part of their lives,” Conway went on, “that they sicken and die without it. For that reason the preparation of accommodation for this life-form will be much more difficult than any you have been asked to provide hitherto. The compartment will have to be structurally robust. Captain Fletcher, here, will be able to give you information on the beastie’s physical strength and degree of mobility, and if he sounds as if he is exaggerating, believe me, he is not. The cargo chamber on Rhabwar had to be completely rebuilt after the FSOJ had been confined in it during an eleven-hour trip to the hospital.”

“My tibia needed repairing, too,” Fletcher said dryly.

Before Conway could go on there was another interruption. Colonel Hardin, who was the hospital’s Dietician-in-Chief, said, “I get the impression that your FSOJ fights and eats its food, Doctor. Now, you must be aware of the rule here that live food is never provided, only synthesized animal tissue or imported vegetation if the synthesizers can’t handle it. Some of the food animals used in the Federation bear a close resemblance to other sentient Galactic citizens, many of whom find the eating of nonvegetable matter repugnant and—”

“No problem, Colonel,” Conway broke in. “The FSOJ will eat anything. Your biggest headache will be the accommodation, which is going to resemble more closely a medieval torture chamber than a hospital ward.”

“Are we to be given information regarding the purpose of this project?” asked an officer whom Conway had not seen before. He wore the yellow tabs of a maintenance specialist and the insignia of a major. He smiled as he went on. “It would help guide us in the initial design work, as well as satisfying our curiosity.”

“The work is not secret,” Conway replied, “and the only reason I would not like it to be discussed widely is that we may fall short of our expectations. This, considering the fact that I have been given charge of the project, could cause personal embarrassment, no more than that.

“Continuous conception takes place within every member of this species,” he went on briskly, “and the intention is to closely study this process with the ultimate aim of inhibiting the effects of the mechanism which destroys the sentient and telepathic portion of the embryo’s brain prior to its birth. If a newly born Protector retained its sentience and telepathic faculty, it could in time communicate with its own Unborn and, hopefully, establish a bond which would make it impossible for them to harm each other. We will also be trying to gradually reduce the violence of the environmental beating they take and stimulate, medically rather than physically, the release of the complex secretions which are triggered by this activity. That way they should gradually get out of the habit of trying to kill and eat everything they see. Also, the answers we find must enable the FSOJs to continue to survive on their frightful planet, and help them escape from the evolutionary trap which has rendered impossible any chance of the species’ developing a civilized culture.”

They have a lot in common with the Gogleskans, he thought. Smiling, he added, “But this is one of my problems. Another is making sure that you fully understand yours.”

There followed a long and at times overheated discussion at the end of which they understood all of the problems-including the need for urgency. Their captive Protector could not be held indefinitely in the old Tralthan Observation Ward on Level 202 with a couple of FROB maintenance engineers taking turns at beating it with metal bars. The two Hudlars, despite their immense strength and fearsome aspect, were kindly souls, and the work-in spite of constant reassurances that the activity was necessary for the Protector’s well-being-was causing them serious psychological discomfort.

Everybody had problems, Conway thought. But his own most immediate one, hunger, was easily solved.

He had timed his visit to the dining hall to coincide with the meal schedule of Rhabwar’s medical team, primarily to see Murchison, and he found Prilicla, Naydrad, and Danalta with her at a table designed for Melfan ELNTs. The pathologist did not speak until he had finished tapping out his food selection, an enormous steak with double the usual accessories.

“Obviously you are still yourself,” she said, looking enviously at his plate, “or your alter egos are nonvegetarian. Synthetics are still fattening, you know. Why is it you don’t grow an abdomen like a pregnant Crepellian?”

“It’s my psychological approach to eating which is responsible,” Conway said with a grin as he initiated major surgery on the steak. “Food is simply a fuel which has to be burned up. It must be obvious to you all that I am not enjoying this.”

Naydrad made an untranslatable Kelgian noise and continued eating. Prilicla maintained its stable hover above the table without comment, and Danalta was in the process of growing a pair of Melfan manipulators while the rest of its body resembled a lumpy green pyramid with a single eye on top.

“I’m still myself,” he said to Murchison, “with just a shade of Gogleskan FOKT. I’ve been given the Protector case, among others, and that is what I wanted to talk to you about. Temporarily I’m an acting Diagnostician, with full responsibility and authority regarding treatment, and may call on any assistance I require. I do need help, badly, but I don’t know exactly what kind as yet. Neither do I want to pester other Diagnosticians, even politely, and certainly not the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology. So I shall have to be devious and approach Thornnastor through you, its chief assistant, to get the sort of advice I need.”

Murchison watched his refueling operation for a moment without speaking, then she said seriously, “You don’t have to be circumspect with Thornnastor, you know. It badly wants to be involved in the Protector case, and would have been placed in charge if it hadn’t been for the fact that you were the Senior with firsthand experience of the beastie, and you were already being considered for Diagnostician status. Thorny will be happy to assist you in every way possible.

“In fact, if you don’t ask for its help,” she ended, smiling, “our Chief of Pathology will walk all over you with its six outsize feet.”

“I, too, would like to assist you, friend Conway,” Prilicla joined in. “But considering the massive musculature of the patient, my cooperation will not be close.”

“And I,” Danalta said.

“And I,” Naydrad said, looking up from the green mess which its Kelgian taste buds were finding so delectable, “will continue doing as I’m told.”

Conway laughed. “Thank you, friends.” To Murchison, he said, “I’ll go back to Pathology with you and talk to Thornnastor. And I’m not proud. If I were to mention the Gogleskan problem, and the FROB geriatrics, and the other odds and ends which—”

“Thornnastor,” Murchison said firmly, “likes to know, and stick its outsize olfactory sensor into everything.”

He felt much better after the meeting with the Chief of Pathology which, because the Tralthan’s waking and sleeping cycle was much longer than that of an Earth-human, took the remainder of his duty period. Thornnastor was the biggest gossip in the hospital; it just could not keep any of its mouths shut, but its information on virtually every aspect of extraterrestrial pathology, as well as in many areas not considered to be within its specialty, was completely dependable.

Thornnastor wanted to know everything, and it was certainly not reticent, about anything.

“As you are already aware, Conway,” it said ponderously as he was about to leave, “we Diagnosticians are generally held in high regard among the members of our profession, and the respect shown us, insofar as it can be shown in a madhouse like this, is tempered by pity for the psychological discomfort we experience, and an almost lighthearted acceptance of the medical miracles we produce.

“We are Diagnosticians and, as such, medical miracles are expected of us,” the Tralthan went on. “But the production of true medical miracles, or radical surgical procedures, or the successful culmination of a line of xenobiological research, can be personally unsatisfying to certain types of doctor. I refer to those practitioners who, although able and intelligent and highly dedicated to their art, require a fair apportionment of credit for the work they do.”

Conway swallowed. He had never before heard the Diagnosticianin-Chief of Pathology talk to him like this, and the words would have been more suited to a lecture on his personal shortcomings from the Chief Psychologist. Was Thornnastor, knowing of his fondness for reaching solutions and initiating treatments with the minimum of consultation, suggesting that he was a grandstander and was therefore unsuitable material for a Diagnostician? But apparently not.

“As a Diagnostician one rarely obtains complete satisfaction from producing good work,” the Tralthan went on, “because one can never be wholly sure that the work performed or the ideas originated are one’s own. Admittedly the Educator tapes furnish other-species memory records only, but purely imaginary personality involvement with the tape donor leaves one feeling that any credit due for new work should be shared. If the doctor concerned is in possession of three, five, perhaps ten, Educator tapes, well, the credit is spread very thinly.”

“But nobody in the hospital,” Conway protested, “would dream of withholding the credit due a Diagnostician who had—”

“Of course not,” Thornnastor broke in. “But it is the Diagnostician itself who withholds the credit, not its colleagues. Unnecessarily, of course, but that is one of the personal problems of being a Diagnostician. There are others, for the circumvention of which you will have to devise your own methods.”

All four of the Tralthan’s eyes had turned to regard Conway, a rare occurrence and proof that Thornnastor’s vast mind was concentrating exclusively on his particular case. Conway laughed nervously.

“Then it is high time I visited O’Mara to take a few of those tapes,” he said, “so that I will have a better idea of what my problems will be. I think initially a Hudlar tape, then a Melf and a Kelgian. When I’m accustomed, if I ever become accustomed to them, I’ll request some of the more exotic . . .

“Some of the mental stratagems used by my colleagues,” Thornnastor continued ponderously, ignoring the interruption, “are such that they might conceivably tell their life-mates about them, but certainly no person with a lesser relationship. In spite of my overwhelming curiosity regarding these matters, they have not confided in me, and the Chief Psychologist will not open its files.”

Two of its eyes curved away to regard Murchison and it went on. “A few hours’ or even days’ delay in taking the tapes is not important. Pathologist Murchison is free to go, and I suggest that you take full advantage of each other while you are still able to do so without otherspecies psychological complications.”

As they were leaving, Thornnastor added, “It is the Earthhuman taped component of my mind which has suggested this . . .

CHAPTER 11

The theory is that if you are to accustom yourself to the confusion of alien thought patterns,” O’Mara growled at him as Conway was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, “it is better in the long run to confuse you a lot rather than a little at a time. You have been given the tapes during four hours of light sedation, during which you snored like a demented Hudlar, and you are now a fiveway rugged individualist.

“If you have problems,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “I don’t want to know about them until you’re absolutely sure they’re insoluble. Be careful how you go and don’t trip over your own feet. In spite of what your alter egos tell you to the contrary, you only have two of them.”

The corridor outside O’Mara’s office was one of the busiest in the hospital, with medical and maintenance staff belonging to a large variety of physiological classifications walking, crawling, wriggling, or driving past in both directions. Seeing his Diagnostician’s armband and realizing, rightly in his case, that a certain amount of mental confusion and physical uncoordination might be present, they gave him as wide a berth as possible. Even the TLTU inside a pressure sphere mounted on heavy caterpillar treads passed him with more than a meter to spare.

A few seconds later a Tralthan Senior he knew passed by, but the big FGLI was not known to Conway’s other selves, so his reaction time was slowed. When he swiveled his head to return the Tralthan’s greeting, he was overcome suddenly by vertigo, because the Hudlar and Melf components of his mind were of beings whose heads did not swivel. Instinctively he reached toward the corridor wall to steady himself. But instead of a hard, tapering Hudlar tentacle or a shiny black Melfan pincer, the member supporting him was a flaccid pink object with five lumpy digits. By the time he had steadied himself both physically and mentally, he had become aware of an Earth-human DBDG in Monitor green waiting patiently to be noticed.

“You were looking for me, Lieutenant?” Conway asked.

“For the past couple of hours, Doctor,” the officer replied. “But you were with the Chief Psychologist on a taping session and could not be disturbed.”

Conway nodded. “What’s the trouble?”

“Problems with the Protector,” the Lieutenant said, and went on quickly. “The Exercise Room-that’s what we’re calling it now even though it still looks like a torture chamber-is underpowered. Tapping into the main power line for the section would necessitate going through four levels, only one of which is inhabited by warmblooded oxygen-breathers. The structural alterations in the other three areas would be very time-consuming because of our having to guard against atmosphere contamination, especially where the Illensan chlorine-breathers are concerned. The answer would be a small power source sited within the Exercise Room. But if the Protector broke free, the shielding around the power unit might not survive, and if the shielding went, the radiation hazard would necessitate five levels’-above and below the area-being evacuated, and a lot more time would be wasted cleaning the—”

“The room is close to the outer hull,” Conway said, feeling that a lot of time was being wasted right now by asking a medical man’s advice on purely technical questions, and fairly simple ones at that. “Surely you can set up a small reactor on the outer hull, safe from the Protector, and run a line into—”

“That was the answer I came up with, too,” the Lieutenant broke in, “but it gave rise to other problems, administrative rather than technical. There are regulations regarding what structures can and cannot be placed on the outer hull, and a reactor there, where one had never been before, might necessitate alterations in the hospital’s external traffic flow patterns. In short, there is a major tangle of red tape which I can unravel given time, and if I asked all of the people concerned nicely and in triplicate. But you, Doctor, considering the urgency of your project, could tell them what you need.”

Conway was silent for a moment. He was remembering one of the Chief Psychologist’s remarks prior to the taping session and just before the sedation had taken effect. O’Mara had smiled sourly and said, “You have the rank now, Conway, even though it may turn out to be temporary. Go out and use it, or even abuse it. Just let me see you doing something with it.”

Striving to make his tone that of a Diagnostician to whom nobody in the hospital would say no, Conway said, “I understand, Lieutenant. I’m on my way to Hudlar Geriatric, but I’ll deal with it at the first communicator I pass. You have another problem?”

“Of course I have problems,” the Lieutenant replied. “Every time you bring a new patient to the hospital, the whole maintenance division grows ulcers! Levitating brontosaurs, Drambon rollers, and now a patient who hasn’t even been born yet inside a . . . a berserker!”

Conway looked at the other in surprise. Usually the Monitor Corps officers were faultless in matters of discipline and respect toward their superiors, whether military or medical. Dryly, he said, “We can treat ulcers.”

“My apologies, Doctor,” the other said stiffly. “I’ve been in charge of a squad of Kelgians for the past two years, and I’ve forgotten how to be polite.”

“I see.” Conway laughed. Since he was carrying a Kelgian tape himself right then, the Lieutenant had his sympathy. “That problem I cannot help you with. Are there others?”

“Oh, yes,” the other replied. “They are insoluble, but minor. The two Hudlars are still objecting to their continuous beating of the Protector. I asked O’Mara if he could find someone else for the job, someone who would suffer less mental distress while carrying it out. O’Mara told me that if such a person had escaped his screening and was currently working in the hospital, he would resign forthwith. So I’m stuck with the Hudlars, and their damn music, until the new accommodation is ready.

“They insist that it helps keep their minds off what they’re doing, but have you ever had to listen to Hudlar music, continuously, day after day?”

Conway admitted that he had not had that experience, that a few minutes of it had been more than enough for him.

They had arrived at the interlevel lock, and he began climbing into one of the lightweight suits for the journey through the foggy yellow levels of the Illensan chlorine-breathers and the water-filled wards of the aquatic denizens of Chalderescol which lay between him and the Hudlar wards. He double-checked all the fastenings and reread the checklist, even though he had donned such pieces of hospital equipment thousands of times and could do it with his eyes shut. But he was not entirely himself just then, and the regulations stated that all medical personnel carrying Educator tapes, and as a consequence laboring under a degree of mental confusion, must use the checklist with their eyes wide open.

The Lieutenant was still standing patiently beside him. Conway said, “There’s more?”

The officer nodded. “A fairly easy one, Doctor. Hardin, the Dietician-in-Chief, is asking about the consistency of the Protector’s food. He says he can reproduce a synthetic mush tailored to fit its dietary requirements in all respects, but that there is a psychological aspect to the ingestion of food which may be important to the overall well-being of this particular patient. You had a brief telepathic contact with one of them and so have firsthand information on the subject. He would like advice.”

“I’ll talk to him later,” Conway said, pausing before pulling the helmet over his head. “But in the meantime you can tell him that it rarely eats vegetation, and the food that it does eat is usually wrapped in a thick hide or exoskeleton and is fighting back. I suggest that he encases the food in long, hollow tubes with edible walls. The tubes can be incorporated into the exercise machinery and used to beat the patient in the interests of greater environmental realism. Its mandibles are capable of denting steel plating, and Hardin is right. It would not be happy eating the equivalent of thin, milky cereal.”

He laughed again and added, “We wouldn’t want to risk rotting its teeth.”

The Hudlar Geriatric Ward was a comparatively new addition to Sector General’s facilities, and it was the closest the hospital came to providing treatment for psychologically disturbed patients, and even then the treatment was available to only a statistically chosen few. This was because the solution to the problem, if one could be found, would have to be put into effect on a planet-wide scale on Hudlar itself.

The ward’s artificial gravity had been set at the Hudlar normal of nearly four Earth-Gs, and the atmospheric pressure was a compromise which caused the minimum of inconvenience to both patients and nursing staff. There were three Kelgian nurses on duty, their fur twitching restlessly under their lightweight suits and gravity neutralizer harnesses as they sprayed nutrient paint onto three of the five patients. Conway buckled on a C-neutralizer suited to his Earth-human mass, signaled that he did not require a nurse to attend him, and moved toward the nearest unoccupied patient.

Immediately the Hudlarian component of his mind came surging up, almost obliterating the Melfan, Tralthan, Kelgian, and Gogleskan material and threatening to engulf Conway’s own mind in a great wave of pity and helpless anger at the patient’s condition.

“How are you today?” Conway asked ritually.

“Fine, thank you, Doctor,” the patient replied, as he knew it would. Like the majority of other life-forms possessing immense strength, the Hudlarian FROBs were a gentle, inoffensive, and selfeffacing race, none of whom would dream of suggesting that his medical ability was somehow lacking by saying that it was not well.

It was immediately obvious that the aging Hudlar was not at all well. Its six great tentacles, which normally supported its heavy trunk in an upright position for the whole of its waking and sleeping life, and which served as both manipulatory and ambulatory appendages, hung limply over the sides of its supporting cradle. The hard patches of callus, the knuckles on which it walked while its digits were curled inward to protect them against contact with the ground, were discolored and cracking. The digits themselves, usually so strong, rock-steady, and precise in their movements, were twitching continually into spasm.

The Hudlars lived in a heavy-gravity, high-pressure environment whose superdense air teemed with so much airborne vegetable and microanimal life-forms that it resembled a thick soup, which the inhabitants absorbed directly through the tegument of the back and flanks. But the absorption mechanism of the patient had begun to fail, so large areas of the skin were caked with discolored nutrient paint which would have to be washed off before the next meal could be sprayed on. But the condition was worsening, the patient’s ability to absorb nourishment was diminishing, and that, in turn, was accelerating the deterioration in the skin condition.

Chemical changes caused by the incomplete absorption process caused the residual nutrient to smell. But even worse was the odor from the waste elimination area, no longer under voluntary control, whose discharge formed like milky perspiration on the patient’s underside before dripping into the cradle’s suction pan. Conway could not really smell anything at all, because his suit had its own air supply. But the FROB personality sharing his mind had experienced this situation many times in its life, and psychosomatic smells were, if anything, worse than the real kind.

The patient’s mind was still clear, however, and there would be no physical deterioration in the brain structure until a few minutes after its double heart stopped beating, and therein lay the real tragedy. Rare indeed was the Hudlar mind that could remain stable inside a great body which was disintegrating painfully all around it, especially when the mind was fully and intensely aware of the process.

Hopelessly he searched for an answer, going through the material on gereology available at the time his tapes were donated as well as the painful data associated with his own childhood memories and subsequent medical experience. But there was no answer to be found anywhere in his multiple mind, and the consensus of all of them was that he should increase the dosage of painkilling medication so as to make the patient as comfortable as possible.

While he made the addition to the treatment chart, the Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated stiffly, but that organ, too, was deteriorating, and this time the sounds it made were too distorted for his translator to make any sense of them. He murmured reassurances, which they both knew to be empty, and moved to the next cradle.

Its condition was fractionally better than the previous one, and its conversation with him was animated and covered every subject under the Hudlar sun except what ailed it. Conway was not fooled, much less his Hudlarian alter ego, and he knew that this particular FROB was enjoying-although that was scarcely the right word in these circumstances-its last few hours of sanity. The next two patients did not speak to him at all, and the last one was loudly articulate but no longer sane.

Its speaking membrane was vibrating continually inside the wide, cylindrical muffler which had been attached to reduce both the sound and the mental discomfort of those within earshot, but enough was escaping to make Conway feel very uncomfortable indeed. It was in poor physical shape as well. In addition to the breakdown of the absorption system over a large area of the body surface, the incontinence, and the marked deterioration evident in all of the limb extremities, two of the tentacles had lost mobility and resembled nothing so much as a couple of withered tree-trunks.

“Those limbs require urgent surgical attention, Doctor,” the nurse engaged in spraying the patient with nutrient said, having first turned off its translator. In the forthright manner of all Kelgians it added, “Amputation is indicated to prolong the patient’s life, if that is considered desirable.”

In ordinary circumstances the prolongation of the patient’s life was desirable and, in fact, was the prime consideration, and his mind was being flooded with information and suggestions for treating the equivalent condition in Melfans, Kelgians, Tralthans, and Earth-humans. But to the physiological classification FROB the very concept of curative medicine had been unknown until the discovery of Hudlar by the Federation, and to that species any major surgical intervention was hazardous in the extreme. On a heavy gravity, high-pressure world like Hudlar, the internal pressure and metabolic rate of its dominant life-form had to be correspondingly high.

The control of bleeding, both during a procedure and postoperatively, was difficult. And the internal decompression which was an unavoidable side effect of an operation could cause deformation and serious damage to major organs adjacent to the operative field. As a result the Hudlar information in his mind together with Conways own experience of FROB surgery suggested caution, while the other mass of extraterrestrial experience advocated operating without delay. But a double amputation on a geriatric and dangerously weakened patient . . . Angrily he shook his head and turned away.

The Kelgian nurse was watching him closely. It said, “Does that movement of the cranium indicate a yes or a no answer to my question, Doctor?”

“It means that I haven’t yet made up my mind,” Conway said as he turned and escaped thankfully into the infants’ ward.

While it was true that for the greater proportion of their lifetimes the Hudlars were impervious to disease and all but the most severe injuries-which was the primary reason why medicine had been an unknown science on their world-this did not hold during the first and final few years of life. His recent harrowing experience had shown all too clearly the ills to which aged Hudlars were prone, and now he was seeing the other and much less distressing end of the clinical spectrum.

Infant FROBs seemed to catch every Hudlarian pathogen present in their atmospheric soup until, if they were able to survive the first few encounters with them, their bodies built up the natural resistance which lasted for the greater part of their very long lives. Fortunately, the majority of the diseases were spectacular in their symptomology but individually nonfatal. Federation medical science had been able to provide cures for several of them and was working on the others. Unfortunately, while no single disease could be considered fatal in itself, all were potentially lethal because the ailments which the infants contracted were cumulatively weakening, and it was the order in which they were contracted and the number of diseases present at a given time which determined the lethality. A complete solution was not possible until specifics against all of the diseases were produced.

As Conway entered and looked around the furiously busy ward, the Hudlar material in his mind suggested that mass immunization was not the proper solution. There was a strong feeling that protecting the FROB children in that way would ultimately lead to a weakening of the species as a whole. But the Hudlar who had donated his tape had not been a member of the medical profession, there being no such profession on Hudlar, and had instead been a strange combination of philosopher, psychiatrist, and teacher. Even so, the feeling bothered Conway until a six-legged, half-ton infant came charging down on him shouting that it wanted to play, and drove everything from his mind but the need to take urgent evasive action.

He set his gravity controls to one-quarter G and jumped straight upward to the rail of the observation catwalk, barely two seconds before the young Hudlar hit the wall with a crash which must have severely tested both the ward’s soundproofing and its structure. From his elevated viewpoint Conway could see that there were fewer than twenty patients in the ward, and in spite of the four Cs at floor level, they were all moving so fast that there seemed to be at least three times that number. When they occasionally stopped to change direction, he could see that the majority of them were displaying a variety of horrifying skin conditions.

An adult Hudlar with nutrient tanks strapped to its back finished spraying an infant it had cornered and immobilized at the far end of the ward, then turned and moved ponderously toward him.

It bore the insignia of a nurse-in-training, and it was, on this duty at least, little more than a baby-minder. But Conway knew that it was one of three FROBs undergoing medical training at Sector General, and the first members of that species chosen to introduce to their world the concepts of preventive and curative medicine. It was in female mode a remarkably handsome specimen and, unlike the Kelgian nurse in the geriatrics section, very polite and respectful.

“May I help you, Doctor?” it said, looking up at him. A sudden rush of memories from his alter ego’s life on Hudlar invaded his mind so that he could not speak.

“Patient Seven, young Metiglesh, the one who wanted to play with you,” it went on, “is responding well to the new treatment devised by Diagnostician Thornnastor. I can quite easily immobilize it for you if you wish to make a scanner examination.”

It would be easy, Conway thought wryly, for a Hudlar nurse. That was the reason why an FROB trainee was in charge there-it knew exactly how much force to use on the little terrors, while equally or higher-qualified nurses of other species would be afraid to use the amount of force required in case they might injure the patients.

Young Hudlars were incredibly tough, and some of the adults were unbelievably beautiful.

“I’m just passing through, Nurse,” he managed to say finally.

“You seem to have everything under control here.”

As Conway stared down at the being, his own knowledge of the FROB classification was being augmented by data on what it actually felt like to be a Hudlar in the male mode, as the donor had been at the time of making its tape, and he had memories only slightly less intense of being a female. He could remember the arrival of a recent offspring and how the birth process had drastically altered the hormone balance so that he became a male again. On Hudlar they were uniquely fortunate in that both life-mates were enabled to have their children in turn.

“Many life-forms carrying the Hudlar physiology tape visit here from the geriatric section,” the nurse went on, unaware of the mental havoc it was causing him. His Hudlar alter ego was bringing up data, memories, experiences, wish-fulfillment fantasies of courtship, love-play, and of gargantuan couplings which made his Earthhuman mind recoil in horror. But it was not Conway’s mind that had control just then.

He tried desperately to regain possession, to fight against the overwhelming waves of raw instinct which were making it impossible for him to think. He tried to look only at his thinly gloved, non-Hudlar digits as they gripped the guardrail while the nurse went on. “It is distressing for a Hudlar, or for an entity bearing the Hudlar tape, to visit the geriatric section. I myself would not enter unless requested to do so, and I have the greatest respect and admiration for those of you who do so purely out of a sense of professional duty. Coming in here, it is said, frequently helps the overly distressed mind to think of something more pleasant.

“You are, of course, at liberty to remain as long as you deem necessary, Doctor. For whatever reason,” it added sympathetically. “And if there is anything I can do to help you, you have only to ask.”

His Hudlar component was doing its equivalent of baying at the moon. Conway croaked something which his translator was probably unable to handle and began moving along the catwalk toward the exit at a near run.

For Heaven’s sake get control of yourself he raged silently at himself. It’s six times bigger than you are! . . .

CHAPTER 12

The Menelden system was no stranger to catastrophe. It had been discovered some sixty years earlier by a Monitor Corps scoutship whose Captain had exercised the traditional right to name it because there were no indications that the system harbored indigenous intelligent life with its own name for the world. If such life had been present in the distant past, then all traces of it had been obliterated when a large, planet-size chunk of metal ore entered the system, colliding with the largest outer planet and causing havoc and ultimately further collision with the others, all in tight orbits around their primary.

When the system eventually restabilized itself, Menelde was an aging yellow sun tightly surrounded by a rapidly spinning cloud of asteroids, a large proportion of which were solid metal. Immediately following its discovery, life came to the Menelden system in the shape of mining and metal processing complexes and their operating crews from all over the Federation, and in that cosmic illustration of the Brownian movement of gases, accidents occurred.

The details of one did not become known until many weeks later, nor was the final responsibility for it ever determined.

An enormous multispecies accommodation module for housing mining and metal-processing workers was being moved by tugs from an exhausted area to a fresh one, and was ponderously following a path between the slowly moving or relatively motionless asteroids and the other mining traffic which was engaged in similar delicate exercises in three-dimensional navigation.

One of the vessels, whose course would take it safely but uncomfortably close to the accommodation module and its tugs, was a carrier fully loaded with finished metal girders and sheets. Between the thrusters aft and the tiny control module forward the structure of the carrier was completely open to facilitate the loading and unloading of its cargo. This meant that the clearly visible mass of metal held, apparently none too securely, to its lashing points was exerting undue psychological pressure on the senior tug Captain, who told the carrier Captain to sheer off.

The carrier Captain demurred, insisting that they would pass in perfect safety, while his ship and the vast accommodation module crept ponderously toward each other. The senior tug Captain, who was charged with the safety of a structure incapable of independent maneuver and containing more than one thousand people, as opposed to the carrier with its three-man crew, had the last word.

Very slowly, because of the tremendous weight and inertia of its cargo, the carrier began to swing broadside-on to the module, intending to use its main thrusters to drive it clear long before their paths could intersect. The two vessels were closing, but slowly. There was plenty of time.

It was at that point that the accommodation module’s supervisor, although not really worried, decided that it would be a very good time to hold an emergency drill.

The urgent flashing of hazard lights and the braying of alarm sirens, heard in the background while he was in communication with the module, must have had an unsettling effect on the senior tug Captain. He decided that the carrier was turning too slowly and despatched two of his tugs to assist the process with their pressor beams. In spite of the caustic reassurances from the carrier Captain that there was ample time for the maneuver and that everything was under control, the carrier was quickly pushed broadside-on to the approaching module-the position from which a brief burn on its thrusters would take it clear within a few seconds.

The thrusters did not fire.

Whether the failure was due to the effect of the hastily focused pressor beams on the carrier’s uncovered control linkages which ran between the crew pod and the thrusters astern-they may well have been warped into immobility-or Fate had decreed that the system would malfunction at precisely that moment would never be known. But there were still a few minutes remaining before the collision would occur.

Ignoring the orderly confusion on board the module, where the supervisor was trying desperately to make his people realize that the practice emergency drill had suddenly become a real one, the carrier used its attitude control jets at maximum overload in an attempt to return the vessel to its original and safe heading. But the tremendous weight of a ship fully laden with a cargo of dense metal was too much for them, and slowly, almost gently, the stern of the carrier made contact with the forward section of the accommodation module.

The carrier, whose structure had been designed to withstand loadings only in the vertical plane, broke up when subjected to the sudden, lateral shock. Gigantic lengths of metal tore free from their lashing points, the metal retaining bands snapping like so much thread, and the long, open racks which held the sheet metal disintegrated with the collapse of the ship’s main structure, sending their contents spinning toward the accommodation module’s side like a slow-moving flight of throwing-knives. And mixed with the spinning metal plates and beams and pieces of the carrier’s structure was the radioactive material of its power pile.

Many of the plates struck the module edge-on, inflicting long, deep incisions several hundred meters long in the hull before bouncing away again. The metal beams smashed against the already weakened hull, opening dozens of compartments to space, or drove deep into the module’s interior like enormous javelins. The collision abruptly checked the structure’s forward motion and left it a slowly spinning half-wreck, which presented in turn a flank which was unmarked and another which showed a scene of utter devastation.

One of the tugs took off after the expanding cloud of metal which had been the carrier and its cargo, to chart its course for later retrieval and to search for possible survivors among its crew. The remaining tugs checked the spin on the accommodation module, then gave what help they could until the emergency teams from nearby mining installations, and ultimately Rhabwar, arrived.

Except for a few Hudlars who were not inconvenienced by vacuum conditions, and a number of Tralthans who could also survive airlessness for short periods by going into hibernation mode and sealing all their body orifices, nobody along the stricken side of the module had survived. Even the immensely strong and toughskinned Hudlars and Tralthans could not live in zero pressure when their bodies had been traumatically opened to space, and massive explosive decompression was not a condition which could be cured, even in Sector General.

The Hudlar and Tralthan quarters had suffered worst in the collision. Elsewhere the structure had retained its air even though the emergency drill condition meant that the occupants were in spacesuits anyway, so a pressure drop would not have been a problem. But in these areas it was the sudden deceleration and spin following the collision which had caused the casualties-hundreds of them which, because of the protection given by the suits, were serious rather than critical. When the module’s artificial gravity was restored, the majority of these were treated by the Menelden complex’s same-species medics and held in makeshift wards to await transfer to their home planets for further treatment or recuperation.

Only the really serious cases were sent to Sector General.

News of the Menelden accident had reached the hospital just in time to allow Conway to avoid having to face another serious problem, although regarding a major accident as a handy excuse for postponing a particularly worrying meeting was, he thought, neither admirable nor unselfish.

His Educator tapes were becoming so well established that it was difficult to tell when a set of feelings and reactions were his own or those of one or all of the Others. So much so that the next meeting with Murchison, when they would be together in their quarters in circumstances which would inevitably lead to physical intimacy, was something he had been dreading with increasing intensity as their next off-duty period drew closer. He just did not know how he would react to her, how much if any control he would have of the situation, and, most important of all, how she would react to his reactions.

Then suddenly Rhabwar was despatched to the Menelden system to coordinate the rescue operation and bring back the more serious casualties, and Murchison, a key member of its medical team, was on board.

Conway was greatly relieved, at first. But as the ship’s former medical team leader he was aware of the danger she was in, from the kind of accident which could so easily occur during a large-scale rescue mission, and he began to worry. Instead of being glad that he would not have to see her for a day or so, he found himself heading for the casualty reception lock just before the ambulance ship was due to dock after its first return trip.

He spotted Naydrad and Danalta standing by the transfer lock and keeping well clear of the casualty reception team, who needed no help at all in doing their job.

“Where is Pathologist Murchison?” Conway asked as a litter containing what looked like a Tralthan multiple traumatic amputation went past. The FGLI tape material in his mind was pushing to the fore, urgently suggesting methods of treatment for this patient. Conway shook his head in an instinctive attempt to clear it, and said more firmly, “I want to see Murchison.”

Beside the uncharacteristically silent Naydrad, Danalta began to assume the bodily contours of an Earth-human female similar in shape and size to that of the pathologist. Then, sensing Conway’s disapproval, it slumped back into shapelessness.

“Is she on board?” Conway asked sharply.

The nurse’s fur was rippling and pulling itself into irregular patterns of tufting in a manner which, to his Kelgian alter ego, indicated an extreme reluctance to answer combined with the expectation of unpleasantness.

“I have a Kelgian tape,” he said quietly, pointing at the other’s telltale fur. “What’s bothering you, Nurse?”

“Pathologist Murchison chose to remain at the disaster site,” Naydrad replied finally, “to assist Doctor Prilicla with the triage.”

“The triage!” Conway burst out. “Prilicla shouldn’t be subjecting itself to . . . Dammit, I’d better go out there and help. There are more than enough doctors here to treat the casualties and if . . . You have an objection?”

Naydrad’s fur was tufting and undulating in a new and more urgent sequence.

“Doctor Prilicla is the leader of the medical team,” the Kelgian said. “Its proper place is at the disaster site, coordinating the rescue operation and disposition of casualties, regardless of the physical or mental trauma which might result. The presence of a former team leader could be considered as an implied criticism of its professional handling of the situation, which up until now has been exemplary.”

Watching the movements of that expressive Kelgian fur, Conway was not really surprised at the strength of feeling that was being shown toward a superior who had been in the job for only a few days. By the nature of things, superiors were respected, sometimes feared, and usually obeyed with reluctance by their subordinates. But Prilicla had proved that it was possible to lead and instill absolute loyalty by making subordinates obey through another kind of fear, that of hurting the boss’s feelings.

When Conway did not reply, Naydrad went on. “Your offer of assistance was foreseen, which is the reason why Pathologist Murchison remained to help Prilicla. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty does not, as you well know, require that it work in close proximity to the injured, so it can remain in comparative safety while Murchison moves among the casualties as you would have done if you’d gone out there.”

“Doctor,” Danalta said, breaking its long silence, “Pathologist Murchison is in turn being assisted by several large, heavily muscled entities of its own and other species who are trained in heavy rescue techniques. These entities are charged with the responsibility for removing casualties from the wreckage at the Pathologist’s direction, and for seeing that the same wreckage does not endanger Murchison.

“I mention this, Doctor,” Danalta added, “so as to reassure you regarding the safety of your life-mate.”

The polite and respectful tone of Danalta sounded almost obsequious after that of the more blunt-spoken Naydrad. But the TOBS, too, had developed a measure of empathy as a necessary adjunct to their species’ faculty for defensive and offensive protective mimicry, and respectfulness made a nice change whether it was real or simulated.

“Thank you, Danalta. That is considerate of you,” Conway said, but then turned to Naydrad. “But Prilicla, on triage’

The thought of it was enough to make Conway, and anyone else who knew the little empath, cringe.

The range and sensitivity of the Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty had been invaluable when the empath had been a member of Rhabwar’s medical team, and now that Prilicla was heading that team the same circumstances would apply. The empath could feel among the casualties of a wrecked ship, especially those who were physically motionless, grievously injured and apparently lifeless, and state with absolute accuracy which protective suits held cadavers and which still-living survivors. It did so by attuning itself to the residual emotional radiation of the casualty’s often deeply unconscious brain, and by feeling what the survivor’s unconscious mind felt and analyzing the results, it could decide whether there was any hope of reviving the spark of life which remained. Space accidents had to be dealt with quickly if there was to be anyone left alive to rescue, and on countless occasions Prilicla’s empathic faculty had saved vital time and a great many lives.

A high price had to be paid for this ability, because Prilicla had in many cases to suffer with each of the casualties, for a short or a lengthy period, before such diagnoses or assessments could be made. But triaging the Menelden accident would mean encountering emotional distress of a whole new order of magnitude, so far as Prilicla was concerned. Fortunately, Murchison’s feelings toward the little empath could only be described as fanatically maternal, and she would ensure that the storm of emotional radiation-the pain and panic and grief of the injured and their bereaved friends-which raged within that devastated accommodation module was experienced by the empath at the longest possible range, and for the shortest possible duration.

Triage called for the presence of a Senior Surgeon at the disaster site. Prilicla was one of the hospital’s finest surgeons, and it was being assisted by a pathologist who was second only to those of Diagnostician rank. Together they should be able to do that particularly harrowing job of casualty assessment without delay or indecision.

They would be following procedures laid down in the distant past to cover large-scale medical emergencies, from the time when air attacks, bombardments, terrorist bombings, and similar effects of the interracial mass psychosis called war had added unnecessarily to the death tolls of purely natural disasters. At times like these, medical resources could not be wasted, or time and effort devoted to hopeless cases. That had been the thinking behind triage.

Casualties were assessed and placed into three groups. The first contained the superficially or nonfatally injured, those suffering from psychological trauma, the people who would not die should treatment be delayed and who could wait until transportation was available to their home-planet hospitals. The second group comprised those beings who were so seriously injured that their condition would prove fatal no matter what was done for them, and who could only be made as comfortable as possible until they terminated. The third and most important of the groups contained those whose injuries were grievous, but who stood a fair chance of survival if the indicated treatment could be given without delay.

It was the Group Three injuries which were being sent to Sector General, Conway thought as he watched another litter go by with its pressure envelope inflated and its organic contents so hidden by life-support equipment that it was difficult even to be sure of its physiological classification. His own opinion was that this was a borderline case between Groups Two and Three.

“That is the last casualty on this trip, Doctor,” said Naydrad quickly. “We must leave at once to bring back another batch.”

The Kelgian turned and began undulating towards Rhabwar’s boarding tube. Danalta’s shape became that of a dark green ball again, featureless except for an eye and a mouth which regarded him and spoke.

“You will already have noticed, Doctor,” it said, “that Senior Physician Prilicla has a very high regard for the surgical ability of its colleagues and it is, moreover, extremely averse to placing any of the casualties in the hopeless category.”

The mouth smoothed out and the eye withdrew as the TOBS rolled quickly away in Naydrad’s wake.

CHAPTER 13

He learned of the return of Rhabwar with its last batch of Menelden casualties as he was about to attend his first Meeting of Diagnosticians. As he was the most recent probationary member, his sudden withdrawal for the purpose of exchanging a few words with Murchison would most certainly be considered impolite and downright insubordinate, and so their next meeting would again be delayed. His feelings about that were mostly of relief, and of shame at feeling relieved. He took his place, not expecting to make any important contribution to such august proceedings.

Nervously he looked across at O’Mara, the only other nonDiagnostician present, who sat dwarfed by the massive Thornnastor on one side and the coldly radiating spherical pressure envelope of Semlic, the SNLU methane-breathing Diagnostician from the cold levels. The Chief Psychologist stared back at him without expression. The features of the other Diagnosticians ranged around the room, sitting, crouching, hanging from or otherwise occupying the furniture designed for their bodily comfort, were likewise unreadable even though several of them were watching him.

Ergandhir, one of the Melfan ELNTs present, spoke first. “Before we discuss the Menelden casualties to be assigned to us, work which of necessity has the greatest priority, are there any less urgent matters requiring general discussion and guidance? Conway, as the most recent recruit to the ranks of the voluntary insane, you must be encountering a few problems.”

“A few,” Conway agreed. Hesitantly, he added, “At present they are mechanical, temporarily beyond my scope, or completely insoluble.”

“Please specify,” an unidentified entity said at the other side of the room. It could have been one of the Kelgians, whose speaking orifices barely moved during a conversation. “It is to be hoped that all of these problems are temporarily insoluble.”

For a moment Conway felt like a junior intern again, being criticized by a senior tutor for loose and emotional thinking, and the criticism was well deserved. He had to get a grip on himself and start thinking straight, with all five of his minds.

He said clearly, “The mechanical problems arise from the necessity of providing a suitable environment and treatment facilities for the Protector of the Unborn, before it gives birth and—”

“Pardon the interruption, Conway,” Semlic broke in, “but it is unlikely that we can help directly with this problem. You were instrumental in rescuing the being from its wrecked ship, you had brief telepathic communication with the intelligent embryo, and you are therefore the only entity with sufficient firsthand knowledge to solve it. May I say, with sympathy, that you are welcome to this problem.”

“While I cannot help you directly,” Ergandhir joined in, “I can make available physiological and behavioral data on a similar Melfan life-form which, like the young Protector, is born fully formed and capable of defending itself. Birth takes place only once in the parent’s lifetime, and there are invariably four young as a result. They attack and endeavor to eat the parent, who usually manages to defend itself sufficiently well if not to survive, then at least to kill one or two of its offspring, who sometimes try to kill one another. Were this not so they would long since have overrun my planet. The species is not sentient . . .

“Thank heaven for that,” O’Mara murmured.

“. . . Or ever likely to become so,” Ergandhir went on. “I have studied your reports on the Protector with great interest, Conway, and shall be pleased to discuss this material with you if you think it might be helpful. But you mentioned other problems.”

Conway nodded as the Melfan material in his mind surfaced with pictures of the tiny, lizardlike creatures which infested the foodgrowing areas of Melf, and which had survived in spite of the most large-scale and sophisticated efforts at extermination. He could see the parallels between them and the Protectors, and would certainly talk to the Melfan Diagnostician as soon as the opportunity arose.

He went on. “The apparently insoluble problem is Goglesk. This is not an urgent problem, except to me, because there is personal involvement. For this reason I should not waste your time by—”

“I was not aware,” one of the two Illensan PVSJs present said, twitching restively inside its chlorine envelope, “that a Gogleskan tape was available.”

Conway had forgotten for a moment that “personal involvement” was one of the phrases used by Diagnosticians and tapebearing Senior Physicians to inform each other that their minds were carrying the memory-record of a member of the species under discussion. Before he could reply, O’Mara spoke quickly.

“There is no tape available,” he said. “The memory transfer was accidental and involuntary, and occurred when Conway was visiting the planet. He may wish to discuss the details with you at some future date, but I agree with him that such a discussion now would be time-consuming and inconclusive.”

They were all staring at him, but it was Semlic, who had changed lenses on its external vision pickup so as to see him more closely, who asked the question first.

“Am I to understand that you possess a memory record which cannot be erased, Conway?” it said. “This is a most disquieting thought for me. I myself am gravely troubled by my overcrowded mind and have seriously considered returning to Senior Physician status by drastically reducing the number of my tapes. But my alter egos are guests who can always be forced to leave should their presence become unbearable. But one memory record in permanent residence, without the possibility of erasure, is more than enough. None of your colleagues would think any less highly of you if you were to do as I am about to do and have the other tapes erased . . .

“Semlic has been about to do that,” O’Mara said quietly, with his translator switched off so that only Conway could hear him, “every few days for the past sixteen years. But it is right. If there are serious problems as a result of the Gogleskan presence reacting against the others, erase them. There would be no discredit attached, no inadequacy of personality implied, and it would, in fact, be the sensible course. But then, nobody could describe you as being sensible.”

. . . And among my mind-guests,” Semlic was saying when Conway returned his attention to the SNLU, “are a number of entities who have had, well, very interesting and unorthodox lives. With all this nonmedical experience available I may be able to advise you should you encounter personal problems with Pathologist Murchison—”

“With Murchjson’ Conway said, incredulously.

“It is possible,” Semlic replied, missing or ignoring the overtones. “All here have the greatest respect for its professional competence and its personal disposition, and I, personally, would not like to think that it would suffer any emotional trauma because I had omitted to advise you, Conway. You are fortunate indeed to have such an entity as your life-mate. Naturally, I have no personal physical interest in this being . . .

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Conway said, looking frantically to O’Mara for help. It was beginning to sound as if the SNLU Diagnostician was going out of its super-cooled, crystalline mind. But the Chief Psychologist ignored him.

“. . . My enthusiasm stems from the DBDG Earth-human tape which has been occupying an undue portion of my mind since I began talking to you,” the SNLU went on, “and which belonged to a very fine surgeon who was inordinately fond of activities associated with reproduction. For this reason I find your DBDG female most disturbing. It possesses the ability to communicate nonverbally, and perhaps unconsciously, during ambulation, and the mammary area is particularly—”

“With me,” Conway broke in hastily, “it is that Hudlar trainee in the FROB infants’ ward.”

It turned out that several of the Diagnosticians present were carrying Hudlar physiology tapes and were not averse to discussing the nurse’s professional competence and physical attributes at length, but the SNLU cut them short.

“This discussion must be giving Conway the wrong impression about us,” Semlic said, its external vision pickups swiveling to include everyone in the room. “It might conceivably lower the high opinion Conway has of Diagnosticians, whose deliberations it would expect to be on a more rarefied professional level. Let me reassure it on your behalf that we are simply showing our latest potential member that the majority of its problems are not new and have been solved, in one way or another, and usually with the help of colleagues who are more than willing to assist it at any time.”

“Thank you,” Conway said.

“Judging by the continued silence of the Chief Psychologist,” Semlic went on, “you must be coping fairly well up to now. But there is some small assistance I may be able to render you, and it is environmental rather than personal. You may visit my levels at any time, the only proviso being that you remain in the observation gallery.

“Few, indeed, are the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathers who take a professional interest in my patients,” the SNLU added, “but if you should be the exception, then special arrangements will have to be made.”

“No, thank you,” Conway said. “I could not make any useful contribution to subzero crystalline medicine just now, if ever.”

“Nevertheless,” the methane-breather went on, “should you visit us, be sure to increase your audio sensitivity and switch off your translator, then listen. A number of your warm-blooded colleagues have derived a certain amount of comfort from the result.”

“Cold comfort,” O’Mara said dryly, and added, “We are devoting an unfair proportion of our time to Conway’s personal problems rather than to those of his patients.”

Conway looked around at the others, wondering how many of them were carrying FROB physiology tapes. He said, “There is the Hudlar geriatric problem. Specifically, the decision whether to involve the patient in a dangerous multiple amputation procedure which, if successful, will prolong life for a comparatively short time, or to allow nature to take its course. In the former event the quality of the prolonged life leaves much to be desired.”

Ergandhir’s beautifully marked exoskeletal body moved forward in its frame, and the lower mandible moved in time with its translated words. “That is a situation I have run against many times, as have we all, and with species other than the Hudlars. The result in my own case has been, to use a Melfan metaphor, a badly chipped carapace. Essentially it is an ethical decision, Conway.”

“Of course it is!” one of the Kelgians said before Conway could reply. “The decision will be a close and personal one. However, from my knowledge of the Doctor concerned the probability is that Conway will opt for surgical intervention rather than a clinical observation of the patient to the terminal phase.”

“I am inclined to agree,” Thornnastor said, speaking for the first time. “If a situation is inherently hopeless, it is better to do something rather than nothing. And with an operating environment making it difficult for other species to work effectively, an experienced Earth-human surgeon might expect good results.”

“Earth-human DBDGs are not the best surgeons in the Galaxy,” the Kelgian joined in again, its rippling fur indicating to those carrying DBLF tapes the feelings which were concealed by its unsubtle mode of speech. “The Tralthans, Melfans, Cinrusskins, we Kelgians are more surgically adept in certain circumstances. But there are situations where this dexterity cannot be brought to bear because of environmental conditions . . .

“The operating theater must suit the patient,” a voice broke in, “and not the Doctor.”

“. . . Or physiological factors in the surgeon,” the Kelgian went on. “Protective garments or vehicles required to work in hostile environments inhibit the finer movements of manipulatory appendages and digits, and remotely controlled manipulators lack precision or are subject to malfunction at the most critical times. The DBDG hand, however, can be protected against a large number of hostile environments by a ridiculously thin glove which does not inhibit digital movements, and the supporting musculature is such that they can operate with minimal loss of efficiency in the presence of elevated pressure and gravity. The hands remain operational even when projecting a short distance beyond the field of the gravity nullifiers. Although crudely formed and comparatively restricted in their movements, the DBDG hands can go anywhere, surgically speaking, and—”

“Not everywhere, Conway,” Semlic broke in. “I’ll thank you to keep your superheated hands off my patients.”

“Diagnostician Kursedth is being diplomatic, for a Kelgian,” Ergandhir said. “It is complimenting you while explaining why you are likely to get more than your share of the nasty jobs.”

“I guessed as much,” Conway said, laughing.

“Very well,” Thornnastor said. “We shall now consider the urgent matter of the Menelden casualties. If you will kindly regard your displays, we will discuss their present clinical condition, projected treatment and the assignments of surgical responsibility . . .

The polite inquiries, sympathy, and advice which, Conway now realized, had cloaked a searching examination of his feelings and professional attitudes, were over for the time being. Thornnastor, the hospital’s most experienced and senior Diagnostician, had taken charge of the meeting.

“. . . You can see that the majority of the cases,” the Tralthan went on, “have been assigned to Senior Physicians of various physiological classifications whose capabilities are more than equal to the tasks. Should unforeseen difficulties arise, one of ourselves will be called on to assist. A much smaller number of casualties, the really nasty cases, will be our direct responsibility. Some of you have been given only one of these patients, for reasons which will become obvious when you study the case notes, and others have been given more. Before you begin organizing your surgical teams and planning the procedures in detail, are there any comments?”

For the first few minutes they were all too busy studying the details of the cases assigned to them to have anything useful to say, and the initial comments were more in the nature of complaints.

“These two cases you’ve given me, Thornnastor,” Ergandhir said, tapping one of its hard, sharply tapered pincers against its display screen. “They have so many compound and comminuted fractures between them that if they survive at all, they will be carrying so much wiring, pins, and plating that induction will elevate their body temperatures every time they approach a power generator. And what were two Orligian DBDGs doing there anyway?”

“Wreckage subsistence casualties,” the pathologist replied. “They were members of the rescue team from the nearby Orligian processing plant. You are always complaining that you never get enough DBDG surgical experience.”

“You’ve given me just one case,” Diagnostician Vosan said. The Crepellian octopod turned to regard Thornnastor, then it made a noise which did not translate before adding, “Rarely have I seen such a discouraging clinical picture, and I shall certainly have my hands full, all eight of them, with this one.”

“It was the number and dexterity of your manipulatory appendages,” Thornnastor replied, “which impelled me to assign the case to you in the first place. But the time for discussion grows short. Are there any other comments before we move to procedures?”

Ergandhir said quickly, “During the intercranial work, on one of my patients in particular, emotional radiation monitoring would be distinctly advantageous.”

“And I,” Vosan said, “would find it useful during the preoperative phase to check on the level of unconsciousness and required anesthesia.”

“And I! And I!” clamored several of the others, and for a moment there were too many voices talking at once for the translators to handle them. Thornnastor gestured for silence.

“It seems,” the Tralthan said, “that the Chief Psychologist must remind you once again of the physiological and psychological capabilities of our one and only medically qualified empath. Major?”

O’Mara cleared his throat and said dryly, “I have no doubt that Doctor Prilicla would be willing and anxious to help all of you, but as a Senior Physician who is being considered for elevation to Diagnostician status, it is in the best position to judge where and when its empathy can be used to best effect. There is also the fact that while it is useful to have an empathic sensitive constantly monitoring the condition of a deeply unconscious patient during an operation, the patient does not really require it and the only benefit lies in the mental comfort and reassurance of the surgeon.

“There is also the fact,” the Chief Psychologist went on, ignoring the untranslatable sounds of protest from around the table, “that our empath functions best when among people who like and fully understand it. This being so, it should be clear to you that Prilicla is allowed a wide degree of latitude in its choice, not only in the cases it takes but in the surgeons it agrees to assist. And so, if the person who has worked with Senior Physician Prilicla since it joined us as a junior intern, and who helped it during its early medical training, if this Doctor requested the assistance of Prilicla during an operation, it would not be refused. Isn’t that so, Conway?”

“I, yes, I expect so,” Conway stammered. He had not been listening closely for the past few minutes, because his mind had been on his cases, his close to hopeless cases, and on thoughts of open professional rebellion.

“Do you need Prilicla?” O’Mara asked quietly. “You have first refusal. If you do not need, as opposed to merely want, the assistance of your empathic friend, say so. A line of your colleagues who do need Prilicla will form rapidly on the left.”

Conway thought for a moment, trying to coordinate and evaluate the input from his other mind components. Even the friendly and perpetually frightened Khone was radiating sympathy for his cases, and previously the mere sight of an uninjured Hudlar was sufficient to throw it into a panic reaction. Finally, he said, “I do not think that an empath would be of much help to these cases. Prilicla cannot work miracles, and at least three separate acts of supernatural intervention would be needed if these cases are to make it. And even then, well, I very much doubt that the patients or their close relatives will thank us.”

“You can refuse the cases,” O’Mara said quietly, “but you will have to give us a better reason than that they appear to be hopeless. As we have mentioned before, as a Diagnostician on probationary status you will be given what seems like an unfair share of such cases. This is to accustom you to the idea that the hospital must deal with partial successes and failures as well as nice, tidy, and complete cures. Up until now you have never had to concern yourself with problems of aftercare, have you, Conway?”

“I realize that,” he replied angrily, because it sounded as though he was being criticized for past successes, or being accused of grandstanding in some obscure fashion. And then he began to wonder if his anger was due to there being a certain amount of truth in the accusation. More quietly, he went on, “Perhaps I’ve been lucky . . .”

“As well as surgically adept,” Thornnastor interjected.

. . . In the past with cases which could only be complete successes or utter failures,” he went on. “But these patients . . . Even with the life-support systems in continuous operation it seems to me that they are only technically alive, and I would need Prilicla’s empathic faculty simply to verify that fact.”

“Prilicla sent these casualties to us,” one of the Kelgians said who had not previously spoken. “Clearly, it did not consider them hopeless. Are you in difficulties deciding on procedure, Conway?”

“Certainly not!” Conway said sharply. He went on. “I know Prilicla and Cinrusskins tend to be incurable optimists. Unpleasant ideas like the thought of failure with a patient, or a case that is hopeless from the start, are utterly foreign to it. There have been times when it shamed me into feeling the same way. But now I am being realistic. It appears to me that two, perhaps three of these four cases are little more than not quite dead specimens for investigation by Pathology.”

“At last you are showing signs of accepting your situation, Conway,” Thornnastor said in its slow, ponderous voice. “You may never again be able to concentrate your entire mind and capabilities on a single patient, and you must learn to accept failure and make your failures contribute to your future successes. It is possible that you will lose all four of your patients, or you may save all of them. But no matter what procedure and treatment you decide upon, and the good or bad results which ensue, you will use your multiply augmented mind to learn whether or not that same mind is stable enough to endure and maintain control over your procedures, whether personally performed or delegated.

“You will also bear constantly in mind,” the senior Diagnostician went on, “the fact that while treating your four cases from the Menelden emergency list, you have other concerns. The FROB geriatric problem, our presently unsatisfactory organ replacement postoperative difficulties, the approaching parturition of your Protector, and even, if its presence suggests a new viewpoint or procedure on any of these problems, the data provided by the nonerasable mind of your Gogleskan friend. And if you are bearing all these things in mind, and my own Earth-human mind partner is unhappy with that phrase because it is what your DBDGs call a pun, you have already realized that FROB replacement surgery will play a vital part in the treatment of your four cases, and any failure could provide ready access to the organs needed to ensure the success of a not quite so hopeless case.

“We all find it difficult to accept failure, Conway,” Thornnastor continued, “and your past record will make it less easy for you. But these cases are not being assigned to you for psychological reasons. Your level of competence as a surgeon warrants—”

“What our overtalkative colleague is saying, once again,” one of the Kelgians broke in, its fur tufting with impatience, “is that good Doctors are given the worst patients. And now, may I discuss my two cases before they both terminate, from old age?”

CHAPTER 14

The first three hours were spent on preparatory work, tidying up the traumatic amputations performed by flying metal at the accident site, charting the extent of the internal injuries, checking on the readiness of the operating teams, and, in spite of the cooling unit in his suit, sweating.

At this stage in the proceedings his work was chiefly supervisory, so his increased output of perspiration was unconnected with physical activity and was what O’Mara referred to as psychosomatic sweating, a condition which the Chief Psychologist would tolerate only on rare occasions.

When one of the patients died preoperatively, Conway’s feelings lacked the intensity he had been expecting in that situation. The prognosis on that particular Hudlar had been very poor in any event, so when the sensors indicated termination it was not a surprise. The Melfan, Illensan, Kelgian, Tralthan, and Gogleskan components of his mind registered low-key professional regret at the loss; the Hudlar alter ego felt more strongly, but its sorrow was tinged with relief because it knew how drastically curtailed would have been the patient’s quality of life had it survived, and because the other three cases were occupying so much of his attention, Conway’s own reaction lay somewhere in between.

He maintained the cadaver’s respiration and cardiac functions so that its undamaged organs and limbs, what few of them remained, would be in optimum condition for transplantation. A small part of his mind wondered if the Hudlar’s parts were used for replacement surgery on its more fortunate colleagues, could it truly be considered to be dead? Which led, inevitably, to a minor conflict within his multiple mind between the Hudlar component and the others regarding the treatment of the physical remains after death.

For reasons which were not fully understood even by the members of the species themselves, the Hudlars, although in all other respects a race of highly intelligent, sensitive, and philosophically advanced beings, were unique in that they did not honor or show the slightest degree of respect for their recently deceased. The memory of the person while alive was treasured by its friends, and commemorated in various fashions, but these records invariably omitted any reference to the fact that the being concerned had died. The life and accomplishments of the entity were remembered; the death was studiously ignored, and the deceased disposed of quickly and without ceremony, as if it was a piece of unsightly litter.

In this case the Hudlar idiosyncrasy was a distinct advantage, because it removed the often time-consuming necessity for obtaining the consent of the next of kin for organ removal and transplant.

Realizing suddenly that he was mentally sidetracking himself and wasting time, Conway gave the signal to begin.

He joined the operating frame around FROB-Three, who was the patient with the fractionally better chance of making it, taking the observer’s position beside Senior Physician Yarrence, the Kelgian surgeon who had charge of the team. His original intention had been to head the team on the recently deceased FROB-Eighteen’s operation, but that patient’s demise meant that he could now keep a close watch on the three operations, all of which were urgent and critical enough to require simultaneous rather than consecutive performance. The members of his original team had been divided up between Yarrence, Senior Physician Edanelt, the Melfan in charge of FROB-Ten, and the Tralthan Senior Hossantir who had taken FROB-Forty-three.

Even though the FROB life-form was capable of living and working in gravity-free and airless conditions, this was only possible when the immensely tough and flexible tegument remained intact. When the skin had been pierced and the underlying blood vessels and organs exposed, as had occurred in several areas with this patient, deep surgery was impossible unless the natural gravity and pressure environment was reproduced. To do otherwise was to invite massive hemorrhaging and organ displacement due to the high pressure of the internal fluids. For this reason the OR staff were forced to wear gravity repulsors set to four Gs and heavy-duty protective suits whose gauntlets had been replaced by tight-fitting operating membranes designed to minimize the effects of the high external pressure.

They clustered around the patient like a shoal of ungainly fish, Conway thought, about to begin their surgical nibbling.

“The rear limbs have escaped with superficial damage and will heal naturally,” Yarrence said, more for the benefit of his recorders than for Conway. “The two midlimbs and left forelimb have been lost, and the stumps will require surgical trimming and capping in preparation for the fitting of prosthetics. The right forelimb is still attached but has been so badly crushed that in spite of efforts to reestablish circulation to the affected areas, necrosis has taken place. This limb will also require removal and capping . . .

The FROB in his mind stirred restively and seemed to be raising objections, but Conway did not speak because he had no clear idea of what it was objecting to.

Of the stump,” the Kelgian Senior went on. “There is a metal splinter which has been driven into the right thoracic area with associated damage to a major vein, the bleeding from which has been incompletely controlled by the application of external pressure. This situation must be rectified urgently. There is also cranial damage, a large depressed fracture which is compressing the main nerve trunk and affecting mobility in the rear limbs. Subject to approval” . . . Yarrence glanced briefly in Conway’s direction we shall remove the damaged forelimb, which will allow easier access for the teammembers working in the cranial area, and prepare the stumps for—”

“No,” Conway said firmly. He could not see anything but the Kelgian’s conical head inside the heavy protective garment, but he could imagine the silvery fur tufting in anger as he went on. Do not cap the forelimb stumps, but prepare them instead for a transfer and transplant of the rear limbs. Otherwise your procedure as outlined is approved.”

“The risk to the patient is increased,” Yarrence said sharply, “and the operational time will be extended by at least twenty percent. Is this desirable?”

Conway was silent for a moment, thinking about the quality of life of the patient following the success of the simple as opposed to the more complex operation. Compared with the immensely strong and precisely controlled forelimbs possessed by a normal FROB, the telescoping, hinged, and swiveling prosthetic was ridiculously weak and inefficient. As well, Hudlar amputees found them aesthetically displeasing and distressing when the forelimbs-which were the members most conveniently placed to the eyes and used for the more delicate physical manipulations, including the long and involved preliminaries to mating-were artificial. Transplanting the rear limbs forward, although risky considering the weakened state of the patient, was infinitely preferable, because if the operation were successful, it would provide the FROB with forelimbs which would be only fractionally less sensitive and precise than the originals. Since the limbs would be coming from the same entity, there would be no immune system involvement or tissue rejection problems.

The Hudlar material in Conway’s mind was insisting that he disregard the risks, while his own mind was trying desperately to find ways of reducing them.

He said, “Leave the forelimb transplant until the cranial and abdominal work is successfully completed; otherwise the transplant would be wasted effort. Don’t forget to clean the tegument frequently and respray with anesthetic. In cases like this the absorption mechanism is affected by the general condition of—”

“I know that,” Yarrence said.

“Of course you do,” Conway went on. “You have the Hudlar tape, too, probably the same one as I have. The operation carries a strong element of risk, but it is well within your capabilities, and if the patient were conscious I have no doubt that—”

“It would want to take the risk, too,” Yarrence broke in again. “But if the Hudlar in my mind feels that way, I, as the surgeon, feel obliged to express caution on its behalf. But I agree, Conway, the operation is desirable.”

Conway detached himself from the operating frame, paying Yarrence the compliment of not watching the opening stages of the operation. In any case, incising an FROB’s ultratough tegument required the tools of an engineering workshop rather than an operating theater, because the cauterization effects of using fine laser cutters, which were so necessary during internal surgery, seriously inhibited healing along the faces of tegument incisions. The blades which had to be used were two-handed Kelgian Six scalpels, and they required a lot of physical effort as well as a high degree of mental concentration in use, and frequently the medic was in greater danger from the blade than the patient. It was a good time to remove all unnecessary distractions from Yarrence, which included the presence of a would-be Diagnostician, and move to FROB-Ten.

It was obvious from the first look that this patient would never again see its home planet. Five of the six limbs had either been traumatically severed during the accident or damaged beyond the possibility of surgical reconstruction. In addition there was a deep incised wound in the left flank which had penetrated to and destroyed the function of the absorption organ on that side. Decompression, brief as it had been before the victim’s self-sealing safety bubble had deployed inside its room, had damaged the organ’s twin on the right side because of the sudden rush of body fluid toward the area which had been opened to zero pressure. As a result FROBTen was able to receive barely enough sustenance to continue living, providing that it did not exert itself in any way.

An FROB perpetually at rest was difficult to imagine. If such a thing were possible, it would certainly be a very unhappy Hudlar.

“A multiple replacement job,” Senior Physician Edanelt said, curling an eye to regard Conway as he approached. “If we have to replace a major internal organ, there is no point in fitting prosthetic limbs rather than real ones. But it bothers me, Conway. My Hudlar alter ego suggests that we don’t try too hard with this one, while my own purely selfish Melfan mind is concerned chiefly with gaining more other-species surgical experience.”

“You are being too harsh with yourself,” Conway said, then added thoughtfully, “At the same time, I’m very glad that the hospital discourages visits from patients’ relatives. The postoperative talk with the patient, especially in a case like this one, is bad enough.”

“If the prospect causes you serious mental distress,” Edanelt said quickly, “I would willingly relieve you of it.”

“Thank you, no,” Conway said, feeling tempted. “It is supposed to be my job.” He was, after all, the acting Diagnostician-in-Charge.

“Of course,” said Edanelt. “Presumably the replacements are immediately available?”

“Patient Eighteen terminated a few minutes ago,” Conway said. “The absorption and food-processing organs are intact, and there are three usable limbs. Thornnastor will let you have more as and when you need them. This was one accident which left us with no shortage of spare parts.”

As he finished speaking, Conway attached himself to the operating frame beside Edanelt and began discussing the special problems which would be encountered with this case, and in particular the necessity for performing three major operations concurrently.

Because of the nature of FROB-Ten’s injuries there was less than fifty percent of the patient’s absorption system functioning, and that situation was being maintained with difficulty and with no certainty that there would not be further deterioration within the next few hours. The absorption mechanism could be used to assimilate the anesthetic or food, but not both, so it was essential that the patient’s period under anesthesia be as short as possible. And while the limb replacements were relatively simple microsurgical procedures, removing the damaged organ from Ten and the healthy one from the deceased Eighteen was going to be tricky and only fractionally less difficult than resiting the donor organ in the receiving patient.

The organs of absorption of the physiological classification FROB were unique among the warm-blooded oxygen-breathing lifeforms known to the Galactic Federation-even though, properly speaking, the Hudlars did not breathe. Situated under the skin of each flank, the organs were large semicircular and extraordinarily complex structures covering more than one-sixth of the body area and separated along their upper edges by the spinal column. The organs were integral with the skin, which was pitted in those areas by several thousands of tiny slits whose opening and closure was controlled by a network of voluntary muscles, and extended deeply into the body to a depth which varied between nine and sixteen inches.

Serving as it did the functions of both stomach and lungs, the combination of nutrition and air which was the dense, souplike atmosphere of Hudlar was taken in by the two large organs, and in a remarkably short period of time, the usable content of the gaseous liquid and solid mixture was abstracted and the residue passed into a single smaller and biologically less complex organ sited on the underside where the wastes were evacuated as a milky liquid.

The two hearts, situated in tandem between the organs of absorption and protected by the central vertebrae, circulated the blood at a rate and pressure which had made the early attempts at Hudlar surgery extremely hazardous for the patients. Now, however, much FROB surgical experience had been amassed since the planet’s inception into the Federation, and what was more important, a Hudlar was very hard to kill.

Unless, as in this case, it was more than half-dead already.

The team’s one big advantage was that all of the procedures, the multiple replacements of limbs and organs of absorption, would be open surgery. There would be no delving and cutting and suturing in tiny, restricted interorgan spaces. More than one surgeon could enter the operative field when required, and Conway knew with certainty that the operating frame around FROB-Ten would shortly be the busiest place in the hospital.

Edanelt was giving final directions regarding the presentation of the patient to its nurses when Conway left to visit FROB-Forty-three. He was beginning to feel that he was in the way again, a feeling to which he had become increasingly accustomed as his growing seniority in recent years had necessitated greater delegation of authority and responsibility. But he knew that Edanelt, as one of the hospital’s foremost Senior Physicians, was itself too responsible a Doctor to hesitate about calling for Conway’s assistance should it get into trouble.

A superficial examination of FROB-Forty-three would have suggested that there was not very much wrong with the patient. All six of the limbs were present and clearly in an undamaged condition, the porous tegument covering its organs of absorption was intact, and it was apparent that the cranial casing and spine had retained their structural integrity in spite of this particular Hudlar having been in a section of the wrecked accommodation module which had sustained the heaviest casualties. The case notes made brief mention of the fact that it had been shielded by the body of another FROB who had little chance of survival.

But the sacrifice on the part of Forty-three’s companion-in all probability its life-mate-could have been wasted. Just inside the midlimb on the right underside there was a pressure cap and temporary dressing which concealed the opening of a deep, punctured wound made by a length of bar metal which had penetrated the tegument like a blunt spear. It had torn the side of the womb-the patient had been in Hudlar female mode at the time of the accident-and while it had missed the major blood vessels in the area, it had stopped within a fraction of an inch of the rearmost heart.

The fetus seemed to be in good condition in spite of the metal bar having passed within a few inches of its spine. While the heart itself had not been damaged, the blunt end of the metal bar had pinched off the circulation to the heart muscles on that side to the point where irreversible deterioration had taken place. Cardiac activity was being maintained by the life-support system, but even with that assistance the heart was in imminent danger of arrest, and replacement was strongly indicated. Conway sighed, foreseeing yet another emotionally painful postoperative experience for himself.

“A replacement is available from Eighteen,” he said to Hossantir, the Tralthan Senior in charge of Forty-three’s surgery. “We are already taking its absorption organ and all of its undamaged limbs, so donating a heart as well should not worry it.”

Hossantir turned one of its four eyes to regard Conway and said, “Since Eighteen and Forty-three were life-mates, you are almost certainly correct.”

“I didn’t know that,” Conway said uncomfortably, sensing an implied criticism of his flippancy by the Tralthan whose species, unlike the Hudlars, held their recently deceased in high reverence. He went on. “How will you proceed?”

Hossantir’s intention was to leave the section of metal bar still present in the wound in place. It had been cut where it passed beneath the skin by the rescuers to facilitate movement of the casualty, but they had wisely not removed the entire bar in case they might complicate the injuries. Since the inner end of the bar was performing a useful function in controlling some of the deeper hemorrhaging, the prior suturing of the tear in the womb would mean that the instruments necessary for the later heart replacement procedure would be able to pass it without risk of endangering the fetus.

The external wound was not in the position Hossantir would have chosen for a heart replacement operation, but it was close enough for the purpose following surgical enlargement-a course which would avoid subjecting the patient to the additional trauma of another deep incision.

When the Tralthan had finished speaking, Conway looked around the operating frame and at the surgical team drifting weightlessly nearby. There was a Melfan, two Orligians, and another Tralthan who were all junior surgeons, and five Kelgian and two Ian nurses, all of whom were watching him silently. He knew that Senior Physicians could be very touchy about seeming infringements of their authority, and especially when they were ordered to do something as a result of a simple omission on their own part. His Kelgian alter ego wanted him to come straight to the point, while the Tralthan component of his mind advised a more diplomatic approach.

“Even with surgical enlargement of the wound,” he said carefully, “access to the operative field will be restricted.”

“Naturally,” Hossantir replied. Conway tried a more direct approach.

“No more than two surgeons will be able to operate at any given time,” he went on, “so there will be a high degree of team redundancy.”

“Of course,” Hossantir said.

“Senior Physician Edanelt,” Conway said firmly, “needs help.”

Two of Hossantir’s eyes curled around to regard the preparations going on around Edanelt’s frame, then it quickly detailed his two Orligian and the Tralthan medics to help the other Senior with instructions to call on whatever nursing support as and when needed.

“That was unforgivably selfish and thoughtless of me,” Hossantir went on to Conway. “I thank you for the tactful way in which you reminded me of the transgression in the presence of my subordinates. But please be more direct in future. I carry permanently a Kelgian Educator tape and will not take offense over any seeming infringement of my authority. Frankly, I am greatly reassured by your presence, Conway, since my experience of deep Hudlar surgery is not extensive.”

If I were to detail my own experience of Hudlar surgery, Conway thought wryly, you might not frel reassured at all.

Then he smiled suddenly, remembered how O’Mara had sardonically described the function of a Diagnostician in an operating theater as being largely psychological-the being was there principally to worry and accept the responsibilities its subordinates might not be able to carry.

As he moved between the three patients, Conway recalled his first few years after promotion to Senior Physician and of how he had accepted, and at times jealously guarded, his responsibilities. While working under supervision he had attempted to show that the Diagnostician concerned was redundant. In time he had been successful, because the supervision had become minimal and at times nonexistent. But there had also been a few times when Thornnastor or one of the other Diagnosticians who had been breathing down his neck and causing an irritating distraction during surgery had stepped in and saved a patient’s life as well as the professional career of a very new Senior Physician whose enthusiasm verged on the irresponsible.

How those Diagnosticians had been able to watch without intervening, or suggesting alternative procedures, or giving step-bystep instructions at every stage, Conway did not know, because he himself was finding it just barely possible to do so.

He managed to continue doing the near-impossible while the hours slid past, dividing his attention between the operating stations of Yarrence, Edanelt, and Hossantir as well as the activity around the deceased Eighteen, where the surgery required to withdraw the donor organs and limbs was as painstaking and precise as that being performed on the recipients. There were several aspects of the work he could have commented upon, although not in overly critical terms, so he remained silent and gave advice only when it was requested. But while the three Seniors were doing very well and he was careful to divide his time equally among them, the one he watched most carefully was Hossantir. If any of the patients were going to cause problems, it would be FROB-Forty-three.

It happened in the fifth hour of the operations. The depressed cranial fracture and arterial repair on Three had gone well, and the less critical work of limb replacement was proceeding in satisfactory fashion. On FROB-Ten the absorption organ replacement work was completed and the decompression damage had been repaired so that it, too, had only the time-consuming microsurgical work on the limbs to undergo. It was natural, therefore, for Conway to hook himself to Forty-three’s frame to watch Hossantir performing the highly delicate initial stages of reconnecting the replacement heart.

There was a sudden, silent explosion of Hudlar blood.

CHAPTER 15

Hossantir made a sound which did not translate, and its manipulators holding the long-handled instruments moved with incredible slowness as they felt about in the totally obscured operative field. Its assistant, also moving with a lack of urgency which could only have been subjective to Conway’s racing mind, introduced a clamp but could not find the vessel which was hemorrhaging. Trained as he was to react quickly and positively to such emergencies, Conway did not move slowly.

He could not move at all.

His hands, his stupid five-fingered, Earth-human, and utterly alien hands, trembled uncontrollably while his multiple mind tried desperately to decide what to do with them.

He knew that this kind of thing could happen to medics who were carrying too many tapes, but that it should not happen too often if the Doctor concerned hoped to make it as a Diagnostician. Frantically, he tried to impose order on the warring factions within his mind by calling up the memory of O’Mara, who was totally unsympathetic where disorderly thinkers were concerned-in particular, the memory of the Chief Psychologist telling him what the Educator tapes were and, more importantly, what they were not.

No matter how he felt subjectively, his mind was not being taken over by the alien personalities who were apparently sharing it-his Earth-human mind had simply been given a large quantity of extraterrestrial knowledge on which it could draw. But it was very difficult to convince himself of that when the other-species material in his mind belonged to medical people with their own individual ideas on how he should react to this emergency.

The ideas were very good, particularly those of the Melfan and Tralthan components. But they required the use of ELNT pincers or FGLI primary manipulators, not Earth-human fingers, and he was being urged to do too many things at once with the wrong organic equipment.

Hossantir’s Melfan assistant whose ID, like everything else in the immediate area, was obscured by the bloody spray, said urgently, “I can’t see. My visor is—”

One of the nurses quickly cleaned the helmet in front of the eyes, not wasting time on the rest of the transparent bubble. But the fine red spray was re-covering it as Conway watched. And that was not the only problem, because, deep inside the operative field, the light sources on the instruments were likewise obscured.

The Tralthan Senior had been closest so that only the front of its bubble helmet had been affected. One of its eyes curled back to regard Conway through the still transparent rear section.

“We require assistance, Conway. Can you suggest a . . .” Hossantir began; then it noticed the trembling hands and added, “Are you indisposed?”

Conway clenched his fists slowly—everything seemed to be happening in the slowest of slow motion-and said, “It is temporary.”

Silently he added, I hope.

But the alien personalities who were not really there were still clamoring for attention. He tried to ignore all but one of them at a time, thinking vaguely of the principle of divide and rule, but that did not work either. All of them were offering medical or surgical advice, all of it had potential value in the present situation, and all of it called for an immediate response. The only available material which did not force itself forward was the Gogleskan data accidentally provided by Khone, and that was of little value anyway. But for some reason his mind kept returning to it, holding on to that frightened but strong-willed alien personality as if it were some kind of psychological life-raft.

Khone’s presence was not at all like the sharp, intense, and artificially enhanced impressions produced by the Educator tapes. He found himself concentrating on the little being’s mental imprint, even though the strange and visually terrifying creatures around the operating frame threatened to throw it into a panic reaction. But the Gogleskan data also included material on Conway’s work at the hospital, transferred to its mind during the mishap on Goglesk, and this to a certain extent had prepared Khone for just this kind of experience. It was also a member of a race of individualists whose mental processes were adept at avoiding contact with, or of negating the influence of, other beings around them.

More than any other entity in Conway’s experience, Khone knew how to ignore people.

All at once his hands were no longer shaking and the alien babel within his mind had quieted to an insistent murmur which he could choose to ignore. He tapped the Melfan assisting Hossantir sharply on its carapace.

“Please withdraw and leave your instruments in position,” he said. To the Tralthan Senior he added, “The bleeding is obscuring everything in the operative field, including the magnifiers and light sources of the instruments and, if we approach closely, our visors. We must . . .

“Suction isn’t working, Conway,” Hossantir broke in, “and won’t until the flow has been checked at source. But we can’t see the source!”

. . . Use the scanners,” Conway continued quietly, enclosing the tiny, hollow-coned handles of the Melfan clamp with his Earthhuman fingers, “in conjunction with my hands and your eyes.

Since normal vision was useless because of his helmet’s close proximity to the spray from the wound, Conway’s idea was that Hossantir use two scanners angled so as to bear on the operative field from two viewpoints as far apart as possible. This would give an accurate stereoscopic picture of what was happening which the Senior could describe for him and guide the movements of his clamp. He would be operating blind, but only long enough to find and seal off the bleeder, after which the operation would proceed in the normal way. It would be a very uncomfortable few minutes for Hossantir, two of whose four eyes would be extended laterally to the limits of its flattened, ovoid helmet. It would also have to withdraw temporarily from the operation, Conway told it apologetically, so that its scanners and helmet would not be affected by the spray.

“This could give me a permanent squint,” Hossantir said, “but no matter.”

None of his alter egos saw anything funny in the idea of a great, elephantine Tralthan with a squint in two of its widely extensible eyes. Fortunately, a smothered Earth-human laugh was not translatable.

His hands and the instruments felt heavy and awkward, and not just because he was using Melfan clamps. The gravity nullification field surrounding him did not, of necessity, extend to the patient, so that everything at the operating site weighed four times heavier than normal. But the Tralthan used its scanners to guide him verbally to the blood vessel which had to be origin of the massive hemorrhaging, and considering the elevated blood pressure of the Hudlar life-form, he expected to feel resistance as he clamped it off.

There was none, and the bleeding continued with undiminished force.

One of his alter egos had encountered something like this situation during a transplant on an entirely different life-form, a diminutive Nidian whose blood pressure had been only a fraction of that of this Hudlar. On that occasion the blood flow had also been a fine spray rather than the pulsing stream characteristic of arterial bleeding, and the trouble had been due to a mechanical failure rather than to faulty surgical technique.

Conway was not sure if that was the problem here, but a part of his multiple mind felt sure, and he decided to trust that part.

“Stop the artificial heart,” he said firmly. “Cut off the blood supply to the area.

“We can easily make good the blood loss,” Hossantir objected, “but cutting off circulation for more than a few minutes could kill the patient.”

“Do it now,” Conway said.

Within a few seconds the bright red spray had subsided and died. A nurse cleaned Conway’s visor while Hossantir used suction to clear the operative field. They did not need the scanners to see what had happened.

“Technician, quickly,” Conway said.

Before he had finished speaking there was a furry little Nidian, looking like a gift-wrapped teddy bear in its transparent OR suit, hovering beside his elbow.

“The nonreturn valve of the connector is jammed in the closed position,” the Nidian said in its staccato, barking speech. “This was caused, I would say, by the valve setting being altered accidentally when it was struck by one of the surgical instruments. The flow from the artificial heart has been blocked and was forcing its way out via the recess of the valve setting control, hence the fine, highpressure spray. The valve itself isn’t damaged, and if you will raise the organ so that I will have space to reset the valve . . .”

“I’d rather not move the heart,” Conway said. “We are very short of time.”

“I am not a doctor,” the Nidian said crossly. “This repair should properly be performed on a workbench, or at least in an area with room for my admittedly small elbows. Working in close contact with living tissue is . . . is repugnant to me. However, my tools are sterile in readiness for such emergencies.”

“Do you feel nauseous?” Conway asked worriedly. He had visions of the little being choking inside its helmet.

“No,” the Nidian said, “just irritated.”

Conway withdrew his Melfan instruments to give the technician more room to work. A nurse had clipped a tray of Earth-human DBDG instruments to the frame beside him, and by the time he had selected the ones he would need the Nidian had freed the jammed valve. Conway was thanking the little being for the speed of the repair when Hossantir broke in.

“I’m restarting the artificial heart,” it said.

“No, wait,” Conway said sharply. He was looking at the monitor and getting a feeling-a very vague feeling that was not strong enough even to be called a hunch-that any delay at all would be dangerous. “I don’t like the vital signs. There is nothing there which should not be there, considering that the flow from the artificial heart was interrupted, initially by the jammed connector valve and later when the system was shut down during the repair. I realize that if the artificial heart is not restarted within the next few minutes, irreversible changes leading to termination will take place in the brain. Even so, I have the feeling that we should not restart but go instead for an immediate resection of the replacement orgao . . .

He knew that Hossantir would want to object and take the safer course, that of restarting the artificial heart and waiting until they were sure that the patient’s circulation had returned to optimum, and then proceed as originally planned. Normally Conway would not have argued against this, because he, too, preferred not to take unnecessary risks. But there was something niggling at the back of his mind, or one of his minds, something about the effect of longterm trauma on certain gravid, heavy-gravity life-forms, and the feeling was so persistent that he had to act on it. And while he had been speaking, Conway had unclipped his instruments to show Hossantir, nonverbally so that the Senior’s feelings would not be hurt too much, that he was not about to argue the point.

“. . . Will you work on the connection to the absorption organ, please,” he ended, “and keep an eye on the monitor.”

Sharing the operative field with the Tralthan, Conway worked quickly and carefully in the restricted space, clamping off the artery beyond the artificial heart connection, detaching it, and reconnecting it to the arterial stub projecting from the replacement organ. Unlike the first, shocking seconds of the earlier hemorrhaging, time seemed to have speeded up. His hands and instruments were well outside the field of the nullifiers, being acted on by four Earth-Gs, so they felt incredibly slow and awkward. Several times his instruments clinked loudly against those of Hossantir. He could sympathize with the surgeon, whoever it had been, who had accidentally knocked that connector valve off its setting. He had to concentrate hard to keep his instruments from leading a life of their own.

He did not watch Hossantir’s work, because the Tralthan knew its stuff and there was no time for surgical sightseeing.

He inserted retaining sutures to hold the artery in position on each end of the connector, which was designed both to hold the ends firmly in position when circulation was restored and to keep the sections of original and replacement tissue apart so as to reduce postoperative rejection problems. There were times when, immunologically speaking, he wondered why a highly evolved and complex organism should be its own worst enemy. Next he began the linkup of the vessel which supplied nutrient from the absorption organ to one of the major heart muscles.

Hossantir had completed its connection and had turned its attention to the minor vessel which supplied one half of the womb when the Hudlar was in female mode-the second, undamaged heart had been performing double duty since the start of the operation. They were short of time, but as yet not dangerously so, when the Tralthan indicated the Monitor with a free appendage.

“Ectopics,” Hossantir said. “One in five, no, one in four. Pressure is reducing. The indications are that the heart will go into fibrillation and arrest very quickly. The defibrillator is ready.”

Conway took a quick look at the visual display where the irregular, ectopic heartbeat broke into the normal rhythm once in every four beats. From experience he knew how soon it could degenerate into a rapid, uncontrollable flutter and, with the subsequent loss of the pumping function, failure. The defibrillator would almost certainly shock it into action again, but that device could not be used while the operation on the replacement heart was in progress. He resumed his work with desperate, careful speed.

So deep was his concentration that all of his minds were becoming involved again, contributing their expertise and at the same time their irritation that it was a set of Earth-human hands which were doing the work and not the assorted manipulators, pincers, and digits of his alter egos. He looked up finally to find that Hossantir and he had finished their connections at the same time. But a few seconds later the other heart went into fibrillation, then arrest. Their time was really short now.

They eased the clamps on the main artery and secondary vessels and watched the flaccid replacement organ swell slowly as it was filled with Forty-three’s blood, checking with their scanners for the formation of air embolisms. There were none, so Conway placed the four tiny electrodes in position preparatory to restarting the replacement heart. Unlike the defibrillator charge needed for the other heart, which would have to penetrate more than ten inches of hard, Hudlar tegument and underlying tissue, these electrodes would be acting directly on the surface muscles of the replacement organ and would be carrying a relatively mild charge.

The defibrillator brought negative results. Both hearts fluttered unsteadily for a few moments and then subsided.

“Again,” Conway said.

“The embryo has arrested,” Hossantir said suddenly.

“I was expecting that,” Conway said, not wanting to sound omniscient, but neither did he have the time for explanations.

Now he knew why he had wanted to complete the replacement connections so fast after the emergency with the valve. It had been not a hunch but a memory from the past when he had been a very junior intern, and the memory was one of his own.

ft had happened during his first lecture on the FROB life-form, which had been given by the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, Thornnastor. Conway had made a remark to the effect that the species was fortunate in having a standby heart if one should fail. Conway had meant it as a joke, but Thornnastor had jumped on him, figuratively speaking, with all six of its feet for making such a remark without first studying the Hudlar physiology in detail. It had gone on to describe the disadvantages of possessing two hearts, especially when the possessor was a gravid female-mode Hudlar nearing parturition, and the nerve network which controlled the involuntary muscle system was maintaining a delicate balance between the impulses to four hearts, two parental and two embryonic. At that particular stage the failure of one heart could quickly lead to the arrest of the other three.

“And again,” Conway said worriedly. The incident had not been worth remembering then, because major surgery on FROBs was considered to be impossible in those days. He was wondering if survival for this particular Hudlar was impossible now when both of its hearts twitched, hesitated, then settled into a strong, steady beat.

“The fetal hearts are picking up,” Hossantir said. A few seconds later it added, “Pulse-rate optimal.”

On the sensor screen the cerebral traces were showing normal for a deeply unconscious Hudlar, indicating that there had been no brain damage as a result of the few minutes cessation of circulation, and Conway began to relax. But oddly, now that the emergency was over the other occupants of his mind were becoming uncomfortably obtrusive. It was as if they, too, were relieved and were reacting with too much enthusiasm to the situation. He shook his head irritably, telling himself once again that they were only recordings, simply stored masses of information and experience which were available to his, Conway’s, mind to use or ignore as he saw fit. But then the uncomfortable thought came to him that his own mind was simply a collection of knowledge, impressions, and experience collected over his lifetime, and what made his mind data so much more important and significant than that of the others?

He tried to ignore that suddenly frightening thought by reminding himself that he was still alive and capable of receiving new impressions and continuously modifying his total experience as a result of them, while the taped material had been frozen at the time it had been donated. In any case, the donors were long since deceased or far removed from Sector General. But Conway’s mind felt as though it was beginning to doubt its own authority, and he was suddenly afraid for his sanity.

O’Mara would be furious if he knew Conway was indulging in this kind of thinking. So far as the Chief Psychologist was concerned, a Doctor was responsible for his work and for the tools, both physical and psychological, which enabled him to do that work. If the Doctor could not perform satisfactorily, then the person concerned should seek a less demanding job.

There were few jobs more demanding than that of a Diagnostician.

His hands were beginning to feel wrong again, and the fat, pink, and strangely awkward fingers were trembling. Conway stowed away his DBDG instruments and turn—ed to Hossantir’s Melfan assistant, whose ID was still smeared with blood and only partly readable, and said, “Would you like to resume, Doctor?”

“Thank you, sir,” the ELNT said. Obviously it had been worrying in case Conway, as a result of his intervention, had thought the Melfan incapable of doing the work. Right now, he thought grimly, the opposite is true.

“It is not expected,” Hossantir said gravely, “that you should do everything yourself, Conway.”

Plainly the Tralthan knew that something was wrong with him- Hossantir’s eyes missed nothing, even when all four of them seemed to be looking in other directions. Conway watched for a few minutes until the team had closed up, then he left Forty-three to check on the progress of the other two patients. Psychologically he felt unwell.

The organ of absorption had been successfully transplanted into Ten, and Edanelt and his team were busy with the microsurgery required on the replacement limbs. The patient was out of danger, however, because the new organ had been tested with an application of nutrient paint and the sensors showed that it was performing satisfactorily. While he was complimenting the team on its work, Conway stared at the heavy staples which held the edges of the wound together-so closely sutured were they that the wound looked like an enormous zip-fastener. But nothing less would serve to hold an FROB’s hard, thick, and incredibly tough hide together, and the material of the staples was molecularly unstable so that they could be rendered flexible for withdrawal when the healing process was complete.

But an almost invisible scar, the Hudlar component of Conway’s mind insisted, would be the least of this patient’s problems.

All at once Conway wanted to run away from all this major surgery and its attendant postoperative problems, instead of having to make yet another examination of a third Hudlar patient.

Yarrence had concentrated its efforts on the cranial injury, leaving FROB-Three’s abdominal wound to the medics freed by the demise of FROB-Eighteen, while the remaining members of both teams were deployed on the limb amputation and replacement work. It was obvious after the first few minutes that they were engaged in performing a very complex but smooth-running operation.

From the talk around the frame he gathered that it was also an operation without precedent. To Conway it had seemed to be an obvious solution to FROB-Three’s problem, replacing the missing forelimbs with two from the rear. While not as precise as the originals they would be much more satisfactory in every way than the prosthetics, and there would be no rejection problems. He had read in the old medical texts of Earth-human arm amputees learning to draw, write, and even eat with their feet, and the Hudlar feet were much more adaptable than those of an Earth-human DBDG. But the admiration that simple solution had aroused among the team was making Conway feel embarrassed, because, given the present circumstances, anyone could have thought of it.

It was the circumstances which were without precedent-the Menelden disaster with its aftermath of massively injured Hudlars requiring transplant surgery together with the ready availability of spare parts. The possibility of one of the transplant cases being able to return to its home planet with the bonus of a pair of forelimbs which were almost as good as the originals was an idea which would have occurred to any moral coward like himself, who dreaded those postop conversations with patients whose transplants were from normal donors rather than from themselves.

Conway made a mental note to separate FROB-Three from Ten and Forty-three before they returned to consciousness and could begin talking together. The atmosphere between Three and its two less fortunate colleagues would be strained to say the least, and their convalescence would be difficult enough without two of the three being eaten up with envy.

Consideration of the FROB’s problems had brought his Hudlar component into prominence again, and it was difficult not to sympathize and suffer at the thought of his patient’s postoperative lifestyle. He tried to bring forward the material on the Tralthan, Melfan, and Kelgian components who, as other-species medics, should have been more clinical regarding the situation. But they, too, were overly sympathetic and their responses painful. In desperation he called up the material of Khone, the Gogleskan, who retained its sanity and intelligence by isolating itself from all close contacts with its fellows.

The Gogleskan material was not at all like that of an ordinary Educator tape. It had more texture, more immediacy, as if another person were truly sharing his mind, however reluctantly. With this degree of understanding between them, he wondered how it would feel to meet and talk to Khone again.

It was unlikely to happen in the hospital, Conway was sure, because the experience of staying in Sector General would probably drive Khone insane, and O’Mara would never allow it anyway. One of the Chief Psychologist’s strictest rules was that tape donors and carriers must never be allowed to meet because of the psychological trauma, incalculable in its intensity, which would result if two entities of widely different species, but possessing identical personalities, tried to communicate.

In the light of what had happened to Conway on Goglesk, O’Mara might have to modify that rule.

And now even the problems of the Gogleskans were clamoring for Conway’s attention, as were the Tralthan, Kelgian, Melfan, and Illensan occupants of his mind. Conway moved back to a position where he could watch the activity around all three operating frames without the team-members being able to see his distress. But the alien babel in his mind was so bad that he could scarcely speak, and it was only with a great effort that he could comment on some aspect of the work or give a word of praise to one of the medics. All at once he wanted out, and to escape from his too-demanding selves.

With a tremendous effort he guided his alien fingers to the transmit key for his general communication and said carefully, “You people are too good and there is nothing here for me to do. If a problem should arise, call me on the Red Three frequency. There is a matter which I must attend to at once on the methane level.”

As he was leaving, Hossantir bent an eye-stalk in his direction and said gravely, “Stay cool, Conway.”

CHAPTER 16

The ward was cold and dark. Heavy shielding and insulation protected it against the radiation and heat given off by the ship traffic in the vicinity of the hospital, and there were no windows, because even the light which filtered in from the distant stars could not be allowed to penetrate to this level. For this reason the images appearing on his vehicle’s screen had been converted from the nonvisible spectrum which gave the pictures the unreal quality of fantasy, and the scales covering Diagnostician Semlic’s eightlimbed, starfish-shaped body shone coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, making it resemble some wondrous, heraldic beast.

Conway had often studied pictures and scanner records of the SNLU life-form, but this was the first time he had seen Semlic outside its refrigerated life-support vehicle. In spite of the proven efficiency of Conway’s own insulated vehicle, the Diagnostician was keeping its distance.

“I come in response to your recent invitation,” Conway said hesitantly, “and to escape from that madhouse up there for a while. I have no intention of examining any of your patients.”

“Oh, Conway, it’s you inside that thing!” Semlic moved fractionally closer. “My patients will be greatly relieved by your lack of attention. That furnace you insist on occupying makes them nervous. But if you would park to the right of the observation gallery, just there, you will be able to see and hear everything that goes on. Have you been here before?”

“Twice,” Conway replied. “Purely to satisfy my curiosity on both occasions, as well as to enjoy the peace and quiet.”

Semlic made a sound which did not translate, then said, “Peace and quiet are relative, Conway. You have to turn the sensitivity of your outside microphone right up to hear me with sufficient volume for your translator to be able to handle my input, and I am speaking loudly for an SNLU. To a being like you, who are nearly deaf, it is quiet. I hope that the environment, busy and noisy as it is to me, will help bring the peace and calm which your mind requires so badly.

“And don’t forget,” it said as it moved away, “turn your sound sensitivity up and your translator off.”

“Thank you,” Conway said. For a moment the jeweled starfish shape of the Diagnostician aroused in him an almost childlike sense of wonder, so that a sudden wave of emotion misted his eyes and added to the blurring effect of the methane fog filling the ward as he added, “You are a kind, understanding, and warmhearted being.”

Semlic made another untranslatable sound and said, “There is no need to be insulting . . .

For a long time he watched the activity in the busy ward and noticed that a few of the low-temperature nursing staff attending the patients wore lightweight protective suits, indicating that their atmosphere requirements were somewhat different from the ward in general. He saw them doing things to and for their charges which made no sense at all, unless he was to take an SNLU tape, and they worked in the almost total silence of beings with a hypersensitivity to audible vibrations, and at first there was nothing to hear. But the more deeply he concentrated the more aware he became of delicate patterns of sound emerging, of a kind of alien music which was cold and pure and resembled nothing he had ever heard before, and eventually he could distinguish single voices and conversations which were like the cool, passionless, delicate, and ineffably sweet chiming of colliding snowflakes. Gradually the peace and beauty and utter strangeness of it all reached him and the other components of his mind, and gently dissolved away all the stress and conflict and mental confusion.

Even Khone, in whom xenophobia was an evolutionary imperative, could find nothing threatening in these surroundings, and it, too, found the peace and calm which enables the mind either to float without thinking or to think clearly and coolly and without worrying.

Except, that was, for a small, niggling worry over the fact that he had been here for several hours while there was important work awaiting his attention, and besides which, it had been nearly ten hours since he had eaten.

The cold level had served its purpose very well by leaving him in all respects cool. Conway looked around for Semlic, but the SNLU had disappeared into a side ward. He turned on his translator, meaning to ask two nearby patients to pass on his message of thanks to the Diagnostician, but hastily changed his mind.

The delicate chiming and tinkling speech of the two SNLU patients translated as . . . Nothing but a whining, hypochondriac cow! If it wasn’t such a kindly being, it would tell you so and probably kick you out of the hospital. And the shameless way you try to get its sympathy is not far short of seduction . . .” and, in reply, “You have nothing to be seductive with, you jealous old bitch! You’re falling apart. But it still knows which one of us is really ill, even when I try to hide it . . .

As he left Conway made a mental note to ask O’Mara what the uItrafrigid SNLUs did about cooling a situation which had become emotionally overheated. And what, for that matter, could he do to calm down the perpetually pregnant Protector of the Unborn he would be calling on as soon as he had something to eat. But he had the feeling that the answer would be the same in both cases, nothing at all.

When he had returned to the normal warmth and light of the interlevel corridors, he stopped to think.

The distance between his present position and the level occupied by the Protector was roughly the same as that to the main dining hall which lay in the opposite direction, which meant that he would have a double journey no matter which area he visited first. But his own quarters were between him and the Protector, and Murchison always liked to have food available-a habit dating back to her nursing days-in case a sudden emergency or sheer fatigue kept her from visiting the dining hall. The menu was not varied, but then all he wanted to do was refuel.

There was another reason for avoiding the dining hall. In spite of the fact that his limbs no longer seemed quite so foreign to him, and the people passing him in the corridor were not nearly so unsettling as they had been before his visit to Semlic’s wards, and he felt in control of his alter egos, he was not sure that he could remain so if he were to be exposed to the proximity of masses of food which his taped entities might find nauseating.

It would not look good if he had to pay another visit to Semlic so soon. He did not think that the type of cold comfort he had received was habit-forming, but the law of diminishing returns would most certainly apply.

When he arrived Murchison was dressed, technically awake, but in a powered-down condition, and about to go on duty. They both knew, and they were careful not to mention to each other that they knew, that O’Mara had arranged their free periods to coincide as seldom as possible-the assumption being that it was sometimes better to put off a problem rather than cause unnecessary grief by trying to solve it too soon. Murchison yawned at him and wanted to know what he had been doing and what, apart from sleeping, he intended doing next.

“Food, first,” Conway said, yawning in sympathy. “Then I have to check on the condition of the FSOJ. You remember that Protector? You were in at its birth.”

She remembered it, all right, and said so in terms which were less than ladylike.

“How long is it since you’ve had any sleep?” she went on, trying to hide her concern by pretending to be cross. “You look worse than some of the patients in intensive care. Your taped entities will not feel fatigue, because they weren’t tired when they donated their brain recordings, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that you are tireless.”

Conway fought back another yawn, then reached forward suddenly to grab her around the waist. He was pretty sure that his arms were not trembling as he held her, even though his arousal was being matched by equivalent feelings in his alter egos, but the kiss was much less lingering than was usual. Murchison pushed him away gently.

“Do you have to go right away?” he asked, fighting another mammoth yawn.

Murchison laughed. “I’m not going to fool about with you in that condition. You’d probably arrest. Go to bed before you go to sleep. I’ll fix you something before I leave, something hidden inside a sandwich so that your mind-friends won’t object to what you’re eating.”

As she busied herself at their food dispenser, she went on, “Thorny is very interested in the birth process in the Protector, and it has asked me to check the patient at frequent intervals. I’ll call you if anything unusual develops there, and I’m sure the Seniors in Hudlar OR will do the same.”

“I really ought to check them myself,” Conway said.

“What’s the use of having assistants,” she said impatiently, “if you insist on doing all the work yourself?”

Conway, with the remains of his first sandwich in one hand and an unspecified but no doubt nutritious cup of something in the other, sat down on their bed. He said, “Your argument is not without merit.”

She gave him an almost sisterly peck on the cheek, a kiss designed to cause minimal arousal in his alter egos as well as his own, and left without another word. O’Mara must have lectured her pretty thoroughly regarding her behavior toward a life-mate who had recently become an acting Diagnostician and who still had to adjust to the attendant emotional confusion.

If he did not adjust soon, he could not look forward to having much fun. The trouble was, Murchison was not giving him much of an opportunity to try.

He awoke suddenly with her hand on his shoulder and the remains of a nightmare, or it might have been an alien wishfulfillment dream, dissolving into the comfortable reality of their living quarters.

“You were snoring,” she said. “You’ve probably been snoring for the past six hours. The Hudlar OR and Protector teams left recorded messages for you. They obviously didn’t think them urgent or important enough to awaken you, and the rest of the hospital continues to go about its business much as usual. Do you want to go back to sleep?”

“No,” Conway said, and reached up to grab her around the waist. Her resistance was a token one.

“I don’t think O’Mara would approve of this,” she said doubtfully. “He warned me that there would be emotional conflicts, serious enough to permanently affect our relationship, if the process of adaptation is not slow and carefully controlled, and—”

“And O’Mara isn’t married to the most pulchritudinous female DBDG in the hospital,” Conway broke in, and added, “And since when have I been fast and uncontrolled?”

“O’Mara isn’t married to anything but his job,” she said, laughing, “and I expect his job would divorce him if it could. But our Chief Psychologist knows his stuff, and I would not want to risk prematurely overstimulating your—”

“Shut up,” Conway said softly.

It was possible that the Chief Psychologist was right, Conway thought as he gently rolled her onto the bed beside him; O’Mara usually was right. His alter egos were becoming increasingly aroused, and were looking with other-species disfavor on the features occupying the forward skull and the softly curving mammaries of the Earth-human DBDG in such close proximity to them. And when tactile sensations were added to the visual sensory input, their disfavor became extreme.

They reacted with mental images of what should have been going on in the Hudlar, Tralthan, Kelgian, Melfan, Illensan, and Cogleskan equivalent situation, and they insisted that this was utterly and quite revoltingly wrong. What was worse, they tried to make Conway feel that it was wrong, too, and that the life-mate beside him should have been of an entirely different physiological classification, the exact species being dependent on the emotional intensity of the entity who was protesting the most.

Even the Gogleskan was insisting that this activity was all wrong, but it was disassociating itself from the proceedings. Khone was a rugged individualist, a perfect example of a loner among a species which had evolved to the point where solitude was a prime survival characteristic. And suddenly Conway realized that he was using Khone’s Gogleskan presence and ability, that he had already used it on several previous occasions to ignore those thoughts and feelings which had to be ignored and to focus his Earth-human mind on those which required the utmost concentration.

The alien protests were still strong, but the protestors were being put in their places and given a low order of priority. Even the Cogleskan objections were being noted but otherwise ignored. He was using the FOKTs unique ability against itself as well as the others, and Khone’s race certainly knew how to concentrate on a subject.

“We shouldn’t . . . be doing . . . this,” Murchison said breathlessly.

Conway ignored her words but concentrated on everything else. There were times when other-species responses to equivalent situations obtruded, insisting that his partner was too large, too tiny, too fragile, the wrong shape, or in the wrong position. But his visual and tactile sensors were those of a male Earth-human, and the stimuli they were receiving overwhelmed the purely mental interference of the others. Sometimes his alter egos suggested certain actions and movements. These he ignored as well, except in a few instances when he was able to modify them to his own purpose. But toward the end all of the alien interference was swamped out, and the hospital’s primary reactor could have blown and he would scarcely have noticed it.

When their elevated pulse and respiration rates had returned to something approaching normal, she continued to hold him tightly, not speaking and even more reluctant to let go. Suddenly she laughed softly.

“I was given precise instruction,” she said in a tone which contained both puzzlement and relief, “regarding my behavior toward you for the next few weeks or months. The Chief Psychologist said that I should avoid intimate physical contact, maintain a professional and clinical manner during all conversations, and generally consider myself a widow until you had either come to terms with the tapes riding you, or you had been forced to resume your former Senior Physician status. It was an extremely serious matter, I was told, and great amounts of patience and sympathy would be required to see you through this difficult time. I was to consider you a multiple schizophrenic, with the majority of the personalities concerned feeling no emotional bond with me, and in many cases reacting toward me with physical revulsion. But I was to ignore all this because to do otherwise would be to subject you to the risk of permanent psychological damage.”

She kissed the tip of his nose and gave a long, gentle sigh. She went on. “Instead I find no evidence of physical revulsion and . . . Well, you don’t seem to be entirely your old self. I can’t say exactly what the difference is, and I’m not complaining, but you don’t appear to be having any psychological difficulties at all and . . . and O’Mara will be pleased!”

Conway grinned. “I wasn’t trying to please O’Mara he began, when the communicator beeped urgently at them.

Murchison had set it to record any nonurgent messages so that he could sleep undisturbed, and obviously someone thought his problem urgent enough to wake him. He escaped from her clutches by tickling her under the arms, then directed the communicator’s vision pickup away from the devastated bed before answering. It was possible that there was an Earth-human male DBDG at the other end.

Edanelt’s angular, chitinous features filled the screen as the Melfan Senior said, “I hope I did not disturb you, Conway, but Hudlar’s Forty-three and Ten have regained consciousness and are pain-free. They are feeling very lucky to be alive and have not yet had time to think about the disadvantages. This would be the best time to talk to them, if you still wish to do so.

“I do,” Conway said. He could not think of anything he wanted to do less just then, and the watching Edanelt and Murchison both knew it. He added, “What about Three?”

“Still unconscious but stable,” the Senior replied. “I checked its condition a few minutes before calling you. Hossantir and Yarrence left some hours ago to indulge in these periods of physical and mental collapse which you people seem to need at such ridiculously short intervals. I shall speak to Three when it comes to. The problems of adjustment there are not so serious.”

Conway nodded. “I’m on my way.

The prospect of what lay ahead of him had brought the Hudlar material rushing in to fill virtually all of his mind, so that his goodbye to Murchison was nonphysical and lacked even verbal warmth. Fortunately, she had come to accept this kind of behavior from him and would ignore it until he was his old self again. As he turned to go, Conway wondered what there was so special about this pink, flabby, ridiculously weak and unbeautiful entity with whom he had spent most of his adult life.

CHAPTER 17

you have been very fortunate,” Conway said, “very fortunate indeed that neither the baby nor you have suffered permanent damage.”

Medically that was quite true, Conway told himself. But the Hudlar in his mind thought otherwise, as did the members of the recovery ward staff who had withdrawn to a discreet distance to enable the patient and its physician to talk privately.

“Having said that,” Conway went on, “I regret to tell you that you, personally, have not escaped the long-term and perhaps emotionally distressing effects of your injuries.”

He knew that he was not being very subtle in his approach, but in many ways the FROB life-form was as direct and forthright as the Kelgians, although much more polite.

“The reason for this is that organ replacement surgery was necessary to keep both of you alive,” he continued, appealing to the patient’s maternal instincts in the hope that the good news about the young Hudlar would in some measure diminish the misfortune which would shortly befall the older one. “Your offspring will be born without complications, will be healthy, and will be fully capable of leading a normal life on or off its home planet. You, regrettably, will not.”

The Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated with the expected question.

Conway thought for a moment before replying, not wanting to pitch the explanation at too elementary a level. This Hudlar was a mining specialist and highly intelligent; otherwise it and its life-mate would not have been working the Menelden asteroids. So he told Forty-three that while infant Hudlars sometimes fell seriously ill and a few might even die, adults were never sick, nor were they anything but physically perfect until the advent of senility. The reason for this was that they developed an immunity to their home planet’s pathogens which was as complete and perfect as any purely biochemical system could be, and no other species known to Federation medical science could match it. The FROB immune system was such that it would not allow foreign biological material of any kind to attach itself to their bodies without instantly initiating the process of rejection. Fortunately, their superefficient immune system could be neutralized when necessary, and one of these occasions was when vital organs or limbs from a donor were used as surgical replacements.

He had been trying to make the explanation as simple and accurate as possible, but it was apparent that Forty-three’s mind was going its own way.

“What about my life-mate?” it said, as if Conway had not been speaking.

Momentarily a mind picture of Eighteen’s devastated body took form between the patient and himself, his own medical knowledge combining with that of his Hudlar component to suddenly involve his emotions. He cleared his throat and said, “I am deeply sorry, but your life-mate was so seriously injured that we were unable to maintain life, much less undertake curative surgery.”

“It tried to shield us with its body. Did you know that?” the Hudlar said.

Conway nodded sympathetically, then realized that the small movement of an Earth-human head meant nothing to an FROB. His next words were chosen carefully, because he was sure that Forty-three-weakened by the recent major surgery, gravid, close to delivering its offspring, and in its ultimate female mode-would be susceptible to an emotional approach. His Hudlar alter ego was of the opinion that, at worst, some temporary psychological distress might result, while his own experience with other life-forms in similar situations suggested that he might do some good. But the situation was unique so far as this patient was concerned, and he could not be sure of anything.

Of one thing he was very sure. Somehow he had to keep the patient from becoming too deeply introspective regarding its own situation, so that it would be thinking of its unborn rather than itself when the really bad news had to be faced. But the idea of deliberately manipulating the other’s emotions in this fashion was making him feel like a very low form of life indeed, somewhere on the level of an Earthly louse.

He wondered why he had not thought of discussing the case with O’Mara before proceeding further-it was potentially serious enough for the Chief Psychologist to be consulted. He might still need to if he made a mess of things now.

“We are all aware,” Conway said finally, “of the action of your life-mate in trying to protect you. This type of behavior is common among the members of the more highly intelligent species, especially when the entity concerned is sacrificing itself to save the life of a loved one or a child. In this instance it was able to do both, and what is more, it was instrumental in giving life and unimpaired mobility to two very seriously injured survivors, one of whom is you, who would otherwise have died in spite of its earlier sacrifice.”

This time, he thought, the patient is paying attention.

“Your life-mate donated its undamaged limbs and one lobe of its nutrient absorption organ to the patient you can see at the other side of the ward,” Conway went on. “That patient, like you, will continue to live in a state of perfect physical health, except for some irksome restrictions regarding environment and own-species group activities. And in addition to its protecting you and your unborn child during the accident, you are both continuing to live because one of your hearts was also donated by your life-mate.”

“While its presence is gone from you except as a memory, Conway added quietly, “it would not be completely true to say that it had died.”

He watched closely to see how Forty-three was taking this blatantly emotional onslaught, but the tegument of the body was too hard and featureless to give any indication of its feelings.

“It tried very hard to keep you alive,” he went on, “and so I think you owe it to your life-mate’s memory to continue trying very hard to stay alive, although there will be times when this will not be easy.

And now for the bad news, Conway thought.

Gently, he went on to describe the effects of knocking out the FROB immune system-the aseptic environment which the patient would require, the specially prepared and treated food, and the barrier nursing and isolation ward procedures needed to guard against the possibility of any FROB infection invading the body which had been rendered utterly defenseless. Even the infant would have to be removed from the parent immediately after birth. Only visual contact with it would be possible, because the child would be normal in all respects and would therefore be a health hazard to the defenseless parent.

Conway knew that the child would be raised and well cared for on Hudlar-the FROB family and social structures were both highly complex and flexible, and the concept of “orphan” was completely unknown to them. The infant would be deprived of nothing.

“If you yourself were to return to your home world,” Conway said in a firmer tone, “the same protective measures would be necessary to keep you alive, and at home your friends would not have the facilities and experience possessed by this hospital. You would be confined to your own quarters, you would have no physical contact with another Hudlar, and the normal range of exercise and work activities would be forbidden. There would also be the constant worry that your protective envelope would be breached or your nutrient infected and, with no natural defense against disease, you would die.”

The native Hudlars were not yet medically advanced enough to maintain such a sophisticated facility, so its death would be certain.

The patient had been watching him steadily while he was speaking. Suddenly its membrane began to vibrate in reply.

“In the situation you describe,” it said, “I might not worry too much about dying.”

Conway’s first inclination was to remind Forty-three of all the work that had gone into keeping it alive, the implication being that it was displaying a lack of gratitude. But the Hudlar component of his mind was making comparisons with the normal FROB life-style and that which Conway was offering it. From the patient’s viewpoint he might not have done it a favor, other than by saving the life of its child-to-be. Conway sighed.

“There is an alternative,” he said, trying to put some enthusiasm into his tone. “There is a way in which you could lead an active working life, without physical constraints on your movements. In fact, you could travel all over the Federation, return to asteroid mining if you like, or do anything else you have a mind to do so far as your working life is concerned, provided that you do not return to Hudlar.”

The patient’s membrane vibrated briefly, but the translator was silent. Probably it was a sound of surprise.

Conway had to spend the next few minutes explaining the basic tenets of multispecies medicine to the patient, and how disease and infection was transmissible only among the members of a species with a common evolutionary history and environment. An Ian or a Melfan or a member of any other species would be quite safe with an Earth-human with the most contagious and virulent Earthly diseases, because the victim’s pathogens were ineffective against-in fact they would completely ignore and be ignored by-the tissues of any other off-planet species. An ailment could, therefore, only be contracted from a being’s own world or people.

“You can see what this means,” Conway went on quickly. “After your wounds are healed and the child is born, you will be discharged from the hospital. But instead of confining you to an aseptic prison on your home world and severely restricting your activities, you could elect to go to another planet, where your lack of resistance to Hudlar diseases would be unimportant, because the pathogens on that world would have no interest in you.

“Your nutrient would be synthesized locally and would not be a source of infection,” he continued. “However, immunity suppressant medication will be required periodically to ensure that your immune system does not restart and begin to reject your artificial organs. This will be administered by a medic from the nearest Monitor Corps office, which will be given full instructions regarding your case. The Corps medic will also warn you of impending visits by members of your own species. When this happens you must not go anywhere near them. Do not occupy the same building as they do or, if possible, even the same town.”

Unlike the transplant patients of many other species, who could accept donor organs with no rejection problems after a short time on suppressants, the Hudlar immune system had to be permanently neutralized. But this was not the time, Conway thought, to add another misfortune to the list.

“Exchanges of news between you and your friends at home should be by communicator only,” Conway went on. “I must stress this point. A visitor of your own species, or even a package sent from home, would harbor the only kind of pathogens capable of infecting and killing you, and they would do so very quickly.”

Conway paused to allow the full meaning of his words to sink

in. The patient continued to regard him for a long time, its membrane showing no indication of it wanting to speak. This was a Hudlar in full female mode, and its present major concern would be for the safe delivery and future health and happiness of its offspring.

When the birth was successfully accomplished, as it would be, the deceased male-mode life-mate should have been present to take care of the child and to slip gradually into female mode. Because of the death of its partner, that function would be taken over by close relatives. Immediately following the birth, however, this patient would begin the inevitable changeover to full male mode, and in that condition the absence of its life-mate would be particularly distressing.

People of many intelligent species had lost life-mates before now. They had learned to live with it or they had gone out and found another who would accept them. The trouble here was that FROB-Forty-three would not be able to make physical contact with any other member of its species, and would therefore remain in full male mode for the remainder of its life. That, for a young adult Hudlar, would be an intensely frustrating and unhappy condition to be in.

Through the torrent of sex-related Hudlar material which was flooding his mind, a purely Earth-human thought rose to the surface. What would it be like to be forever separated from Murchison and every other member of his species? If he could have Murchison he would not mind having only a bunch of extraterrestrials to talk to and work with-that was the everyday situation at Sector General. But to be cut off from the one form of warm, human, intimate, and mentally as well as physically stimulating contact which he had been taking for granted for so many years-he did not know what he would be able to do about that. The question was unanswerable because the situation was unthinkable.

“I understand,” the patient said suddenly, “and thank you, Doctor.”

His first thought was to refuse its thanks and instead apologize to it. He had the taped insight which made him in effect another Hudlar, and he wanted to tell how truly sorry he was for subjecting it to the trauma of this highly complex and professionally demanding operation which would give it so many more years of mental suffering. But he knew that his mind was oversensitized to the Hudlar material right now, and a Doctor should not speak to his patient in such a maudlin and unprofessional fashion.

Instead he said reassuringly, “Your species is very adaptable regarding working environments, and much in demand throughout the Federation on planetary and space projects, and your recovery will be complete. With certain personal restrictions, which will require a high order of mental discipline to negate, you can look forward to leading a very active and useful life.”

He did not say a happy life, because he was not that big a liar.

“Thank you, Doctor,” the patient said again.

“Please excuse me,” Conway said, and escaped.

But not for long. The rapid, irregular tapping of six hard-tipped Melfan legs signaled the approach of Senior Physician Edanelt.

“That was well done, Conway,” the Senior said. “A nice blend of clinical fact, sympathy, and encouragement, although you did spend a lot more time with the patient than is usual for a Diagnostician. However, there was a message for you from Thornnastor requesting a meeting as soon and wherever is convenient for you. It did not specify other than saying that it concerned your Protector and that it was urgent.”

“If the time and place are of my choice,” Conway said slowly, his mind still on the future troubles of FROB-Forty-three, “it can’t be too urgent. What about Three and Ten?”

“They, too, are urgently in need of reassurance,” Edanelt replied. “Three was the responsibility of Yarrence, who did some delicate and quite brilliant work relieving its depressed cranial fracture and underlying repairs, but no replacement surgery was necessary. Visually, Three will not be an aesthetically pleasing entity to its fellows, but unlike Ten and Forty-three, neither will it be a permanent exile from its home world and people.

“Ten will have the same long-term problems as Forty-three,” the Melfan went on. The procedures for the multiple limb and absorption organ replacements went well, and the prognosis is for a full recovery under the usual strict regimen of suppressants. Since you are short of time, perhaps I should talk to one of them while you speak to the other?

“I am a Senior Physician, Conway,” it added, “and not a fledgling Diagnostician like you. But I would not want to keep Thornnastor waiting too long.”

“Thank you,” Conway said, “and I’ll talk to Ten.”

Unlike Forty-three, Ten was in male mode and would not be susceptible to emotional manipulation and arguments as the previous patient. He hoped that Thornnastor was being its usual impatient self and not really in a hurry to see him . . .

When it was over he felt in much worse mental shape than the patient, who seemed to have taken the first steps toward the acceptance of its lot without too much emotional distress, probably because it did not have a life-mate. Conway desperately wanted to clear his mind of all things pertaining to the Hudlar life-form, but it was proving extremely difficult to do so.

“Surely it is theoretically possible for two suppressees, living away from their home planet, to meet without endangering each other?” he asked Edanelt when they were out of earshot of the Hudlar patients. “If both had their immune systems suppressed, they should be free of own-species pathogens which would otherwise infect each other. It might be possible to arrange periodic meetings of such exiles which would benefit—”

“A nice, softhearted, and, may I say, softheaded idea,” Edanelt broke in. “But if one of these suppressees had an inherited immunity to a pathogen not directly involved with the rejection process, to which the other members of this group had no immunity, they would be in serious danger. But try the idea on Thornnastor, who is the recognized authority on—”

“Thornnastor!” Conway burst out. “I’d forgotten. Has it been?”

“No,” Edanelt said. “But O’Mara came in to see if you needed help talking to the replacement patients. It advised me regarding my approach to Three’s problems, but said that you did not need help and seemed to be enjoying yourselves too much to be disturbed. Was that a remark denoting approval, or not? From my experience of working among Earth-human DBDGs I assume this was one of those occasions when incorrect verbal data is passed on in the belief that the listener will assume the opposite meaning to be true, but I do not understand this concept you call sarcasm.

“One never knows whether O’Mara is approving or otherwise,” Conway said dryly, “because he is invariably uncomplimentary and sarcastic.”

Nevertheless it gave him a warm feeling to think that the Chief Psychologist had thought enough of his handling of the postoperative interview with Ten not to interfere. Or maybe he had thought Conway was making such an unholy mess of things that O’Mara was unable, for reasons of discipline, to tell a probationary Diagnostician how abysmally wrong he was in front of junior members of the staff.

But the doubt Conway felt was being swamped by a feeling which was even stronger, a physical need which was being reinforced by the sudden realization that he had had nothing but a sandwich to eat during the past ten hours. He turned quickly to the ward terminal and called up the on- and off-duty rosters of the warmblooded, oxygen-breathing members of the Senior Staff. He was in luck, their duty rosters coincided.

“Would you contact Thornnastor, please,” Conway said as he turned to leave the ward, “and tell it that I will meet it in thirty minutes in the dining hall.”

CHAPTER 18

Conway knew the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology well enough to tell it apart from all the other Tralthans using the dining hall, and he was pleasantly surprised to see Murchison at the same table. Thornnastor, as was its wont, was purveying some interspecies gossip to its assistant, and so engrossed in it were they that they did not notice his approach.

. . . One would not think it likely or even possible,” the Tralthan was rumbling pedantically through its translator, “for the urge toward indiscriminate procreative activity to be strong in a life-form which is only a few degrees above absolute zero. But believe me, a fractional elevation in body temperature, even when it is accidentally produced by the treatment, can cause acute embarrassment among the other SNLU genders present. Four genders in one species tends to be confusing anyway, even when one is carrying the SNLU tape, and a certain Melfan Senior, you know who I mean, was sufficiently disturbed emotionally to use its external manipulators to signal its readiness to—”

“Frankly, sir, my trouble is somewhat different Murchison began.

“I realize that,” Thornnastor replied. “But really, there does not appear to be any great emotional, physical, or psychological problem. Naturally, the mechanics of this particular mating process are distasteful to me personally, but I am willing to consider the matter clinically and give what advice I can.”

“My difficulty,” Murchison said, “is the distinct feeling I experienced while it was happening that I was being unfaithful five times over.

They’re talking about us! Conway thought, feeling his face beginning to redden. But they were still too deeply engrossed to notice either him or his embarrassment.

“I will gladly discuss this matter with my fellow Diagnosticians,” Thornnastor resumed ponderously. “Some of them may have encountered similar difficulties. Not myself, of course, because the FGLI species indulges in this activity during a very small proportion of the Tralthan year, and during that period the activity is, well, frenetic and not subject to subtle self-analysis.” All of its eyes took on faraway looks for a moment, then it went on. “However, a brief reference to my Earth-human component suggests that you do not concern yourself with minor and unnecessary emotional hairsplitting, and just relax and enjoy the process. In spite of the subtle differences which you mentioned earlier, the process is enjoyable? . . . Oh, hello, Conway.”

Thornnastor had raised the eye which had been regarding its food to look at him. It said, “We were just talking about you. You seem to be adapting very well to your multiple tape problems, and now Murchison tells me that—”

“Yes,” Conway said quickly. He looked appealingly into the Tralthan’s one and Murchison’s two eyes and went on. “Please, I would greatly appreciate it if you would not discuss this very personal matter with anyone else.”

“I don’t see why not,” Thornnastor said, bringing another eye to bear on him. “Surely the matter is of intrinsic interest, and would no doubt prove enlightening to colleagues who have faced or are about to face similar problems. Sometimes your reactions are difficult to understand, Conway.”

He glared at Murchison, who, he felt, had been far too free in talking about her intrinsically interesting problems with her Chief. But she smiled sweetly back at him, then said to Thornnastor, “You’ll have to excuse him, sir. I think he is hungry, and hunger affects his sensorium as well as his blood sugar levels and sometimes makes him behave with a degree of irrationality.”

“Ah, yes,” the Tralthan said, returning the eye to its plate. “It has the same effect on me.”

Murchison was already tapping instructions into the food console for one of his visually noncontroversial sandwiches. He said, “Make it three, please.”

He was attacking the first one as Thornnastor, who had the advantage of being able to speak with all four of its mouths, went on. “It seems I must compliment you on the way you are adapting to operative procedures requiring other-species surgical data. Not only were you calling up this data with little or no delay; the indications are that you were initiating new procedures derived from a combination of different entities’ experiences. The OR Seniors were most impressed, I have been told.”

Chewing furiously, Conway swallowed and said, “It was the Seniors who did all the real work.”

“That isn’t the way Hossantir and Edanelt tell it,” Thornnastor said. “But I suppose it is in the nature of things that Seniors do most of the work and the Diagnostician-in-Charge gets most of the credit, or all of the discredit if things go wrong. And speaking of cases which might not go well, I would like to discuss your plans for the birth of your Unborn. The endocrinology of its parent and Protector is quite complex, and I am most interested in this one. However, I can foresee a few purely physical problems which . . .”

Conway nearly choked at the understatement, and it was a moment before he was able to speak.

“Must all verbal communication cease while it is eating?” said Thornnastor impatiently, using the mouth closest to Murchison. “Why wasn’t your species foresighted enough to evolve at least one additional orifice for the ingestion of food?”

“Pardon me,” Conway said, smiling. “I would be delighted to have any assistance and advice you can give me. The Protectors of the Unborn are the most untreatable life-form we’ve encountered, and I don’t think we have discovered all the problems yet, much less found solutions to them. In fact, I would be most grateful if your commitments would allow you to be present during the birth.”

“I thought you’d never ask, Conway,” Thornnastor rumbled.

“There are several problems,” Conway said, rubbing his middle gently and wondering if one of them was going to be an attack of indigestion through eating his food too quickly. Apologetically, he went on. “But right now my mind is still sensitized to the Hudlar material and the questions which have arisen as a result of my recent experiences in the Hudlar OR and Geriatric wards. The questions are psychological as well as physiological, and so insistent that I find it very difficult to clear my mind for consideration of the Protector case. This is ridiculous!”

“But understandable, considering your recent total involvement with FROB life-forms,” Thornnastor said. “But if you have unresolved problems regarding these Hudlars, the simplest way of clearing your mind of this troublesome material is to ask the questions at once and obtain as many answers as possible, even though they may be unsatisfactory or incomplete answers, so that you will have taken the matter as far as it is possible to go with it at the present time. Your mind will accept this and allow you to think of other things, including your perpetually pregnant Protector.

“Your particular mental quirk is far from rare, Conway,” the Tralthan went on, slipping into its lecturing voice. “There must be a very good reason why your mind doesn’t want to leave the subject. Perhaps it is close to drawing significant conclusions, and if the question is shelved now the pertinent data might fade and be lost. I realize that I am beginning to sound like a psychologist, but one cannot practice medicine without acquiring some knowledge in that field. I can, of course, help you with the physiological questions on the Hudlar life-form, but I suspect that it is the psychological aspect which is crucial. In which case you should consult the Chief Psychologist without delay.”

“You mean,” Conway said faintly, “call O’Mara right now?”

“Theoretically,” the Tralthan replied, “a Diagnostician may request the assistance of any member of the hospital staff at any time, and vice versa.”

Conway looked at Murchison, who smiled sympathetically and said, “Call him. On the intercom he can only indulge in verbal violence.”

“That,” Conway said as he reached for the communicator, “doesn’t reassure me at all.”

A few seconds later the scowling features of the Chief Psychologist filled the tiny screen, making it impossible to tell how or if he was fully dressed. O’Mara said coldly, “I can tell from the background noise and the fact that you are still masticating that you are calling from the main dining hall. I would point out that I am in the middle of my rest period. I do rest occasionally, you know, just to fool you people into thinking that I’m only human. Presumably there is a good reason for your making this call, or are you complaining about the food?”

Conway opened his mouth, but the combination of facing an angry O’Mara and a mind which was still too busily engaged in formulating his questions kept any words from coming out.

“Conway,” O’Mara said with exaggerated patience, “what the blazes do you want?”

“Information,” he replied angrily. Then he softened his tone and went on. “I need information which might help in the Hudlar geriatric work. Diagnostician Thornnastor, Pathologist Murchison, and I are presently in consultation regarding . . .

“Which means,” O’Mara said sourly, “that you’ve dreamed up some harebrained scheme over lunch.”

. . . A proposed method of treating their condition,” Conway went on. “Regrettably, little can be done for the present occupants of the ward, since the degenerative condition is too far advanced in them. But early preventive treatment might be possible provided my idea has physiological and psychological support. Thornnastor and Murchison can give me detailed information on the former, but the key to their treatment, and any hope of its ultimate success, depends on the behavior under stress, adaptive ability, and potential for reeducation in aged but pregeriatric FROBs. I have not yet discussed the clinical problems which would be encountered, because to do so would be a waste of time if the answers you give me preclude further investigation.”

“Go on,” O’Mara said, no longer sounding half-asleep.

Conway hesitated, thinking that his period of intensive Hudlar surgery, the visits to the FROB geriatric and infant wards, some old memories from his early childhood, and possibly material from his other-species mind partners had all contributed to an idea which was very likely unworkable, ethically questionable, and so ridiculous that O’Mara might well have second thoughts regarding his suitability as a future Diagnostician. But it was too late now to hold back.

“From my FROB tape and lectures at various times on Hudlar pathology,” he went on, nodding in acknowledgment toward Thornnastor, “it is clear that the various painful and incurable conditions to which the aged of that species are prey are traceable to a common cause. The loss of function in the limbs and the abnormal degree of calcification and fissuring at the extremities can be ascribed to the simple deterioration in circulation which is common to the aged of any species.

“This is not a new idea,” Conway said, glancing quickly toward Thornnastor and Murchison. “However, as a result of working on a large number of Hudlar limb and organ replacement operations from the Menelden accident, it occurred to me that the deterioration I observed in the organs of absorption and evacuation among the aged FROBs was very similar to the temporary condition which occurred during the replacement of a heart, although at the time I was too busy to note the signs consciously. In short, the problems of the FROB geriatrics are due to circulatory impairment or madequacy.

“If the idea isn’t new,” O’Mara said with a flash of his characteristic sarcasm, “why am I listening to it?”

Murchison was watching him in silence. Thornnastor continued to watch its food, Murchison, O’Mara, and Conway, also without speaking.

“The Hudlars are a very energy-hungry species,” Conway went on. “They have an extremely high metabolic rate which requires a virtually continuous supply of nutrient via their organs of absorption. The food thus metabolized serves the major organs, such as the two hearts, the absorption organs themselves, the womb when the entity is in gravid female mode, and, of course, the limbs.

“I had learned from the pathology lectures,” he continued, “that these six immensely strong limbs are the most energy-hungry system of the body, and demand close to eighty percent of the nutrient metabolized. But it was not until the recent Hudlar experience that my mind was drawn forcibly to this data, and to the fact which is also widely recognized, that it is the ultrahigh metabolic rate and excessive food requirement which enables the adult Hudlar to be so fantastically resistant to injury and disease.”

O’Mara was getting ready to interrupt again, and Conway went on quickly. “With the onset of old age their troubles invariably begin in the limbs, which demand an even greater proportion of the body’s available resources to fight it. This places increasing stress on the twin hearts, absorption, and evacuation organs, all of which require their share of and are interdependent on the circulatory system’s nutrient content. As a result these systems go into partial failure, which further reduces the blood supply to the limbs, and the body as a whole slides into a degenerative spiral.”

“Conway,” O’Mara said firmly, “I assume this lengthy but no doubt oversimplified clinical picture is for the benefit of the poor, ignorant psychologist so that he will understand the psychological questions when they come, if they ever come.

Continuing with its meal, Thornnastor said, “The clinical picture is oversimplified, I agree, but essentially correct, although your method of describing it suggests a new approach to the problem. I, too, am impatient to know what it is that you intend.”

Conway took a deep breath and said, “Very well. It seems to me that the drain on the age-reduced resources of these Hudlars, represented by the irreversible limb conditions, can be alleviated before onset. With reduced stress and a greater share of the available nutrient supply, the hearts and organs of absorption and elimination could maintain their functions for an additional several years while keeping up optimum levels of circulation to the remaining limb or limbs.”

All at once it seemed that O’Mara’s face in the screen had become a still picture; Murchison was staring at him with a shocked expression, and all four of Thornnastor’s eyes had turned to regard him.

“Naturally the procedure would be one of elective surgery, Conway went on, “and would not take place except at the request and the expressed permission of the entity concerned. The surgical problems involved in the removal of four or five limbs are relatively simple. It is the psychological preparation and aftereffects which are paramount and which would determine whether or not the procedure should be tried.”

O’Mara exhaled loudly through his nose, then said, “So you want me to tell you if it is possible to sell the pregeriatric Hudlars on the idea of voluntary multiple limb amputations?”

“The procedure,” Thornnastor said, “does seem, well, radical.”

“I realize that,” Conway said. “But from the Hudlar material available to me it is obvious that there is a general and abject fear of growing old among that species, caused by the quite appalling clinical picture of the average geriatric FROB. The fear is increased by the knowledge that the minds of the aging Hudlars remain clear and active, although there is the tendency common to all aging entities to want to live in the past. But it is the situation of a normal mind being trapped inside a rapidly degenerating and often painracked body which causes the greatest distress. It is possible that the Hudlars may not have a lot of sales resistance to the idea, and may even welcome it.

“But my information is purely subjective,” he went on, “and comes from recent personal experience and from the feelings of the Hudlar who donated my tape, so my thinking may not be completely trustworthy. It requires the objective viewpoint of a psychologist with extraterrestrial experience, including that of the FROB life-form, to decide whether or not my idea has merit.”

O’Mara was silent for a long time; then he nodded and said, “What can you offer these close-to-limbless Hudlars, Conway? What could they do which would make their extended, less painful lives worth living?”

“I have had time to consider only a few of the possibilities,” he replied. “Their situation would be similar to that of the Hudlar amputees we will be sending home in a few weeks’ time. They will have limited mobility on prosthetics, one or two of their forelimbs will remain fully functioning, and they should remain mentally and physically effective until shortly before termination. I shall have to discuss the physiological details with Thornnastor before I can be certain of this, but—”

“It is a fair assumption, Conway,” the Tralthan broke in. “I have no doubt that you are right.”

“Thank you, sir,” Conway said, feeling his face growing warm at the compliment. To O’Mara he went on, “On Hudlar medical science is in the early stages and for some time it will be primarily concerned with the treatment of diseases in the very young, since the adult members of the species do not take sick. These pediatric cases, although ill, remain very active and require only minimal restraint and supervision while the administered medication is doing its work. Our aged amputees will still be physically capable of withstanding without injury the enthusiasm and playfulness of the halfton Hudlar toddlers, and we are already training the first of a line of FROB pediatric nurses who will be able to instruct them . . .

Mention of that very personable female-mode nurse had excited his Hudlar mind-partner, so Conway had to spend a few seconds telling it to behave itself. But when he tried to return his mind to what he had been about to say, memories of his extremely aged but alert great-grandmother and, at the time, only friend welled up in his mind. That touched off a sudden, intensely strong feeling of sorrow from Khone over the loss of parental physical contact, which was so necessary for the maintenance of mental coherency in Cogleskan society, and which occurred at a very early age. He felt with Khone the past loss of that love and warmth and the expectation of future loss when its offspring would be born and remain close all too briefly before it departed. And strangely, although Khone’s presence had been reacting against nearly all of the material being thrown up by Conway and his other mind-partners, the little Cogleskan was able to consider the sight and sounds and memories of Conway’s incredibly old and fragile first friend without the slightest hint of distress.

This was important, he knew, because there were indications that the Gogleskan’s mind was not entirely repelled by the thought of the geriatric FROBs, either. A bridge was being built between Khone and the other species, and Conway began blinking rapidly because his tear ducts seemed suddenly to have developed a leak.

He felt Murchison’s hand squeezing his arm as she said urgently, “What’s wrong?”

“Conway,” O’Mara said, sounding concerned, “are you still with us?”

“Sorry, my mind went off at a tangent,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m all right. In fact, I feel very well indeed.”

“I see,” O’Mara said. “But I would like to discuss the reasons for and the content of your tangential thinking at a more convenient time. Continue.”

“In common with elderly members of the majority of the intelligent species,” Conway resumed, “the very old Hudlars have a close affinity with the very young, and a great deal of benefit can be derived from this relationship by both parties if they are placed together. The aged entities are at the stage loosely described as second childhood, when the memories and feelings of their own younger days are thrown into prominence, and they have nothing much to do with their remaining time. The children would have an adult playmate who understands them, who enjoys their company, and who is not, like the younger adults and parents, perhaps too deeply concerned with the day-to-day business of life to have enough time to spend with them.

“Provided the geriatric amputee idea is acceptable to them,” he continued, “I think they would be prime candidates for pediatric nursing training. The less elderly, whose mental age would be significantly greater, could be trained as teachers of older children and preadolescents. They might also be usefully engaged in supervising automated production processes, or on watch-keeping duty on the weather control stations, or as- “Enough!” O’Mara said, holding up one hand. He went on caustically. “Leave me something to do, Conway, to justify my existence. At least, your uncharacteristic behavior of a few minutes ago is no longer a mystery. The childhood material in your psych file and your suggestion regarding the geriatric Hudlars fully explain your temporary loss of control.

“Regarding your original question,” O’Mara went on, “I cannot give you a quick answer, but I shall call up my Hudlar material at once and start work on it. You’ve given me too much to think about for me to be able to go back to sleep now.”

“I’m sorry,” Conway said, but the Chief Psychologist’s face had already gone from the screen.

“And I’m sorry for the delay as well,” he said to Thornnastor. “But now at last we can talk about the Protector . . .

He broke off as the blue “Vacate” light began flashing on their table, indicating that they had remained for longer than was necessary to consume the food which had been ordered, and that they should move away so as to release the table for other would-be diners, of which there was a large number waiting.

“Your office or mine?” Thornnastor said.

CHAPTER 19

First contact with the species known as the Protectors of the Unborn had been made by Rhabwar when the ambulance ship had answered a distress signal from a vessel which had been transporting two members of that species under restraint. It discovered that the Protectors had broken free, and while they had been killing the ship’s crew, one of them had died as well.

The surviving Protector had delivered itself of its Unborn shortly before it, too, died. That newly born Protector was the patient who, after more than a year’s sojourn in Sector General, was about to give birth in its turn. The body of its parent had been thoroughly investigated by Pathology and had furnished information which might enable them to deliver the Unborn without it suffering complete obliteration of the higher functions of its mind.

“. . . The primary purpose of the forthcoming operation is to save the mind of the Unborn,” he repeated, looking around the crowded observation gallery before he returned his attention to the ward below, where the furiously battling Protector was engaging its life-support system and two Hudlar attendants in total war. “The problems are physical, surgical, and endocrinological, and Diagnostician Thornnastor and I have discussed little else for the past two days. And now, for the benefit of the support and after-care team members who have just joined us, as well as for the observers and the others who will be studying the recordings later, I shall briefly summarize the available information on this case.

“The adult, nonintelligent Protector is physiological classification FSOJ,” Conway went on. “As you can see, it is a large, immensely strong being with a heavy, slitted carapace from which protrude four thick tentacles, a heavy, serrated tail, and a head. The tentacles terminate in a cluster of sharp, bony projections so that they resemble spiked clubs. The main features of the head are the well-protected, recessed eyes, the upper and lower mandibles, and teeth which are capable of deforming all but the strongest metal alloys.

“Flip it over, please,” Conway said to the two Hudlars working on the patient with thin steel bars. “And hit it harder! You won’t hurt it and will, in fact, maintain it in optimum condition prior to the birth.” To the observers he went on. “The four stubby legs also have osseous projections which enable these limbs to be used as weapons as well. While the underside is not armored, as is the carapace, this area is rarely open to attack, and is covered by a thick tegument which apparently gives sufficient protection. In the center of the area you can see a thin, longitudinal fissure which opens into the birth canal. It will not open, however, until a few minutes before the event.

“But first, the evolutionary and environmental background . . .”

The Protectors had evolved on a world of shallow, steaming sea and swampy jungles where the line of demarcation between animal and vegetable life, so far as physical mobility and aggression were concerned, was difficult to define. To survive there at all, a life-form had to fight hard and move fast, and the dominant species on that hellish world had earned its place by fighting and moving and reproducing their kind with a greater potential for survival than any of the others.

At an early stage in their evolution the utter savagery of their environment had forced them into a physiological configuration which gave maximum protection to the vital organs. The brain, heart, lungs, and womb were all sited deep within that fantastically well-muscled and protected body, and compressed into a relatively small volume. During gestation the organ displacement was considerable, because the fetus had to grow virtually to maturity before birth. It was rarely that they were able to survive the reproduction of more than three of their kind, because an aging parent was usually too weak to defend itself against the attack of a hungry lastborn.

But the principal reason why the Protectors of the Unborn had risen to dominance on their world was that their young were already educated in the techniques of survival before they were born.

The process had begun simply as the transmission of a complex set of survival instincts at the genetic level, but the close juxtaposition of the brains of the parent and the developing embryo led to an effect analogous to induction of the electrochemical activity associated with thought.

The fetuses became short-range telepaths receiving everything the parents saw or felt or in any other way experienced.

And even before the growth of the fetus was complete, there was another embryo beginning to take form inside the first one, and the new one was also increasingly aware of the world outside its self-fertilizing grandparent. Gradually the telepathic range had increased so that communication became possible between embryos whose parents were close enough to see each other.

To minimize damage to the parent’s internal organs, the growing fetus was paralyzed while in the womb, with no degradation of later muscle function. But the prebirth deparalyzing process, or possibly the birth itself, also caused a complete loss of sentience and telepathic ability. A newborn Protector, it seemed, would not last very long in its incredibly savage environment if the purity of its survival instincts was clouded by the ability to think.

. . . With nothing to do but receive information from their outside world,” Conway went on, “and exchange thoughts with other Unborn, and try to widen their telepathic range by tuning to nonsentient life-forms around them, the embryos developed minds of great power and intelligence. But they cannot build anything, or engage in any cooperative physical activity, or keep written records, or, indeed, do anything at all to influence their parents and Protectors who have to fight and kill and eat continuously to maintain their unsleeping bodies and the Unborn within them.”

There was a moment’s silence which was broken only by the muffled clanking and thumping sounds made by the mechanical life-support system and the Hudlars, who together were laboring hard to make the FSOJ parent-to-be feel right at home. Then the Lieutenant in charge of the technical support team spoke up.

“I have asked this question already,” he said quietly, “but I have trouble accepting the answer. Is it really true that we must continue beating the patient even while the birth is taking place?”

“Correct, Lieutenant,” Conway said. “Before, during, and after. The only advance warning we will have of the event will be a marked increase in the Protector’s activity level approximately half an hour before the birth. On its home world this activity would be aimed at clearing the immediate area of predators so as to give the young one an increased chance of survival.

“It will come out fighting,” Conway added, “and its life-support must be the same as that needed by its parent except that the violence we administer will be scaled down, very slightly, because of its smaller size.”

There were several beings in the gallery making untranslatable sounds of incredulity. Thornnastor gave a peremptory rumble and added its considerable weight, both physical and intellectual, to Conway’s previous remarks.

“You must all realize and accept without question,” the Diagnostician said ponderously, “that continual violence is normal for this creature. The FSOJ must remain in a condition of stress in order that its quite complex endocrine system will function properly. It requires, and has evolved the ability to accept, the continuous release of a hormone into its system which is the equivalent of Kelgian thullis or Earth-human adrenaline.

“Should the release of this hormone be inhibited,” the Tralthan went on, “by the withdrawal of the ever-present threat of imminent injury or death, the Protector’s movements become sluggish and erratic, and if the attack is not quickly resumed, unconsciousness follows. If the period of unconsciousness is prolonged, irreversible changes take place in the endocrine systems of both Protector and Unborn leading to termination.”

This time the words were followed by an attentive silence. Conway indicated the ward below and said, “We shall now take you as close to the patient as it is possible to go in safety. You observers will be shown the details of the Protector’s life-support mechanisms, and of the smaller version in the side-ward which will accommodate the young one when it arrives, both of which resemble nothing so much as the instruments of interrogation used during a very unsavory period in Earth’s history. You new team-members will familiarize yourselves with these mechanisms and with the work expected of you, and ask as many questions as necessary to ensure that you fully understand your duties. But above all, do not be kind or gentle with this patient. That will not help it at all.”

The various feet, tentacles, and pincers were beginning to shuffle, slither, and scrape along the floor as they turned toward the gallery exit. Conway held up his hand.

“Let me remind you once again,” he said very seriously. “The purpose of this operation is not simply to assist at the FSOJ’s birth, which will take place with or without our assistance, believe me. It is to ensure that the Unborn and soon-to-be new Protector retains the same level of intelligence and the telepathic ability it now possesses within the womb.”

Thornnastor made a quiet sound which to the Tralthan component of Conway’s mind signified pessimism and anxiety. Following two days of consultations with the Diagnostician, the precise details of the forthcoming operative procedure had still to be finalized. Radiating a confidence which he did not feel, he discussed the functioning of the combination operating frame and gimbalmounted cage which accommodated the Protector before taking them through to the side-ward designed to receive its offspring.

Nicknamed the Rumpus Room by the maintenance engineers responsible for its construction, the ward was more than half-filled by a hollow, cylindrical structure, wide enough to allow unrestricted passage of the FSOJ infant, which curved and twisted back on itself so that the occupant would be able to use all of the available floor area of the ward in which to exercise. The entry point into this continuous cylinder was a heavily reinforced door in the side-wall, which was otherwise composed of an immensely strong open latticework of metal. The cylinder floor was shaped to reproduce the uneven ground and natural obstacles, such as the mobile and voracious trip-roots found on the Protector’s home planet, and the open sections gave the occupant a continuous view of the screens positioned around the outer surface of the cylinder. Onto these screens were projected moving tri-di pictures of indigenous plant and animal life which the occupant would normally encounter.

The open structure also enabled the medical team to bring to bear on their patient the more positive aspects of life-support system-the fearsome-looking mechanisms positioned between the projection screens which were designed to beat, tear, and jab at the occupant with any desired degree of frequency or force.

Everything possible had been done to make the new arrival feel at home.

“As you are already aware,” Conway went on, “the Unborn, by virtue of its telepathic faculty, is constantly aware of the events taking place outside its parent. We are not telepaths and may not be capable of receiving its thoughts, even during the period of intense mental stress which occurs just prior to birth, when it is transmitting at maximum power because it knows that its mind and personality are about to be obliterated.

“There are several telepathic races known to the Federation,” he continued, his mind returning to its one and only contact with a telepathic Unborn. “These are usually species who have evolved this faculty so that their common organic receiver/transmitters are automatically in tune. For this reason telepathic contact between the members of different telepathic races is not always possible. When mental contact occurs between one of these entities and a nontelepath, it usually means that the faculty in the nontelepath is either dormant or atrophied. When such contact occurs the experience can be highly uncomfortable, but there are no physical changes in the brain affected, nor is there any lasting psychological damage.”

As he switched on the Rumpus Room’s screens and began projecting the visual record of that first, incredibly violent birth, his mind was adding the extra-sensory dimension of his own, minuteslong telepathic contact with the Unborn so soon to be born.

Conway was aware that his fists were clenched, and that beside him Murchison’s face was pale as she watched the screen. Once again the rampaging Protector tried to get at them by battering at the partly open inner seal of the air lock. The opening was five or six inches wide, just enough for the pathologist, Rhabwar’s injured Captain, and Conway to see and hear and record everything which was happening. But their position was not a secure one. The Protector’s hard-tipped tentacles had already wreaked havoc in the lock antechamber, tearing out sections of metal plating and deforming the underlying structure, and the lock’s inner seal was not all that thick.

Their only safety lay in the fact that the lock antechamber was weightless, and the flailing tentacles of the Protector sent it spinning helplessly away from every wall or obstruction they encountered, which simply increased its anger and the savagery of its attack. It also made it more difficult to observe the birth which was taking place. But the violence of the Protector’s attack was beginning to diminish. Weightlessness combined with physical damage sustained during encounters with the ship’s now-dead crew and the subsequent malfunctioning of the on-board life-support system had left it with barely enough strength to complete the birth process, which was already well advanced as the parent spun slowly to give a good if intermittent view of the emergence of the Unborn.

Conway’s mind was on an aspect of the birth which the recording could not reproduce-the last few moments of telepathic contact with the fetus before it left its parent and became just another vicious, insensate, completely nonsentient young Protector- and for a moment he could not speak.

Thornnastor must have sensed his difficulty because it reached past him and froze the picture. In its ponderous, lecturing manner it said, “You can see that the head and most of the carapace have appeared, and that the limbs which project from it are limp and unmoving. The reason for this is that the secretions which are released to reverse the prebirth paralysis of the Unborn, and at the same time obliterate all cerebral activity not associated with survival, have not yet taken effect. Up to this point the expulsion of the Unborn is solely the responsibility of the parent Protector.”

In the characteristically forthright manner of a Kelgian, one of the nurses asked, “Is the nonsentient parent to be considered expendable?”

Thornnastor curled an eye to regard Conway, whose mind was still fixed immovably on the circumstances of that earlier birth.

“That is not our intention,” the Tralthan said when he did not respond. “The parent Protector was once a sentient Unborn, and is capable of producing anything up to three more sentient Unborn. Should the circumstances arise where a decision is needed whether to assist the birth of the sentient infant at the expense of the life of the presently nonsentient parent, or to allow the birth to proceed normally so that we end with two nonsentient Protectors, that must be the decision of the Surgeon-in-Charge.

“If the latter decision was to be considered,” it went on, with one eye still fixed on Conway, “it could be argued in support that with two Protectors, a young and an old one who will both produce telepathic embryos in time, we will have another chance or chances to solve the problem. But this would mean subjecting the two FSOJs to lengthy gestation periods in a highly artificial life-support system, which might have long-term ill effects on the new embryos, and would simply mean deferring the decision. The whole procedure would have to be repeated with, in all likelihood, the same decision having to be taken by a different Surgeon-in-Charge.”

Murchison’s eyes were on him as well, and she was looking worried. Those last few words had been something more than a not particularly direct answer to the nurse’s question; they were in the nature of a professional warning. Conway was being reminded that he was still very much on probation, and that the Diagnostician-inCharge of Pathology did not, in spite of its seniority, bear the ultimate responsibility for this case. But still he could not speak.

“You will observe that the Unborn’s tentacles are beginning to move, but slowly,” Thornnastor continued. “And now it is beginning to pull itself out of the birth canal . . .

It had been at that moment that the soundless telepathic voice in Conway’s mind had lost its clarity. There had been a feeling of pain and confusion and deep anxiety muddying up the clear stream of communication, but the final message from the Unborn had been a simple one.

To be born is to die, friends, the silent voice had said. My mind and my telepathic faculty are being destroyed, and I am becoming a Protector with my own Unborn to protect while it grows and thinks and tries to make contact with you.

Please cherish it.

The trouble with telepathic communication, Conway thought bitterly, was that it lacked the ambiguity and verbal misdirection and diplomatic lying which was possible with the spoken word. A telepathic promise had no loopholes. It was impossible to break one without a serious loss of self-respect.

And now the Unborn with whom he had experienced mind-tomind contact was his patient, a Protector with the Unborn he had promised to cherish about to enter the highly complex and alien world of Sector General. He was still not sure how best to proceed- or, more accurately, which of several unsatisfactory options to adopt.

To nobody in particular he said suddenly, “We don’t even know that the fetus has grown normally in hospital conditions. Our reproduction of the environment may not have been accurate enough. The Unborn may not have developed sentience, much less the telepathic faculty. There have been no indications of . . .

He broke off as a series of musical trills and clicks came from the ceiling above their heads, and from their translators came the words, “You may not be entirely correct in your assumption, friend Conway.”

“Prilicla!” Murchison said, and added unnecessarily, “You’re back!”

“Are you . . . well?” Conway asked. He was thinking of the Menelden casualties and the hell it must have been for an empath to be placed in charge of classifying them.

“I am well, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied, the legs holding it to the ceiling twitching slowly as it baffled in the emotional radiation of friendship and concern emanating from those below. “I was careful to direct operations from as great a distance as possible, just as I am remaining well clear of your patient in the outer ward. The Protector’s emotional radiation is unpleasant to me, but not so the radiation from the Unborn.

“Mentation of a high order is present,” the Cinrusskin went on. “Regrettably, I am an empath rather than a true telepath, but the feelings I detect are of frustration which is caused, I would guess, by its inability to communicate with those outside, together with feelings of confusion and awe which are predominating.”

“Awe?” Conway said, then added, “If it has been trying to communicate, we’ve felt nothing, not even the faintest tickle.”

Prilicla dropped from the ceiling, executed a neat ioop, and fluttered to the top of a nearby instrument cabinet so that the DBLFs and DBDGs present would not have to strain their cervical vertebrae watching it. “I cannot be completely sure, friend Conway, because feelings are less trustworthy for the conveyance of intelligence than coherent thoughts, but it seems to me that the trouble may simply be one of mental overcrowding. During your original contact with the then Unborn and present Protector, the being had only three minds to consider, those of friends Murchison, Fletcher, and yourself. The other crew and medical team members were aboard Rhabwar and at extreme telepathic range.

“Here there may be too many minds,” the empath went on, “minds of a bewildering variety and degree of complexity, including two -its eyes turned to regard Thornnastor and Conway—”which seem to contain a multiplicity of entities, and which might be truly confusing, and awe-inspiring.”

“You’re right, of course,” Conway said. He thought for a moment, then went on. “1 was hoping for telepathic contact with the Unborn before and during the birth. In this case the assistance of a conscious and cooperating patient would be of great help indeed. But you can see the size of the operating room staff and technical support people. There are dozens of them. I can’t simply send them all away.

Prilicla began to tremble again, this time in agitation over the additional worry it was causing Conway, when its intention had been only to reassure him regarding the mental health of the Unborn. It made another attempt to improve the quality of its friend’s emotional radiation.

“I called in at the Hudlar ward as soon as I got back,” the Cinrusskin said, “and I must say that your people did very well. Those were bad cases I sent in, as nearly hopeless as it is possible to be, friend Conway, but you lost only one of them. It was very fine work, even though friend O’Mara says that you have handed him another freshly boiled vegetable.”

“I think,” Murchison said, laughing as she translated the translated words, “it means another hot potato.”

“O’Mara?” Conway asked.

“The Chief Psychologist was talking to one of your patients,” Prilicla replied, “and assessing its nonmedical condition after visiting one of the Hudlars in the geriatric section. Friend O’Mara knew that I was coming to see you, and it said to tell you that a signal from Goglesk has arrived to the effect that your friend Khone wants to come to the hospital as soon as- “Khone is sick, badly injured?” Conway broke in, the persona of his Gogleskan mind-partner and his feelings for the little being pushing everything and everybody else out of his mind. He knew, because Khone had known, of the many diseases and accidents to which the FOKTs were prey, and for which very little could be done because to approach each other for help was to invite disaster. Whatever had happened to Khone, it must have been pretty bad for it to want to come to Sector General, where the worst nightmares of its mind were a physical actuality.

“No, no, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, trembling again with the violence of his emotional radiation. “Khone’s condition is neither serious nor urgent. But it has asked that you, personally, collect it and convey it to the hospital lest fear of your physically monstrous friends causes it to change its mind. Friend O’Mara’s precise words were that you seem to be attracting some odd maternity cases these days.”

“But it can’t be volunteering to come here!” Conway protested. He knew that Khone was mature and capable of producing offspring. There was nothing in the Gogleskan’s mind regarding recent sexual encounters, which meant that it must have happened since Conway had left Goglesk. He began doing calculations based on the FOKT gestation period.

“That was my reaction as well, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. “But friend O’Mara pointed out that you had lived with and adapted to the presence of your Gogleskan friend and that it, Heaven help it, had been similarly influenced by your Earth-human mind. That was the second boiled vegetable; the other was the geriatric Hudlar business.

“Sorting out the psychoses of a FOKT parent-to-be and offspring scared of their prehistoric shadows was not going to be easy, the empath went on, “and the geriatric Hudlar problem had grown to the stage where it was taking up practically all of his time. It sounded very irritated and at times angry, did friend O’Mara, but its emotional radiation was at variance with the spoken words. There were strong feelings of anticipation and excitement, as if it was looking forward to the challenge . . .

It broke off and began trembling again. Beside the instrument cabinet it was clinging to, Thornnastor was lifting and lowering its six elephantine feet one at a time and in no particular sequence. Murchison looked at the Diagnostician, and even though she was not an empath, she knew her chief well enough to be able to recognize a very impatient Tralthan.

“This is all very interesting, Prilicla,” she said gently, “but unlike that of Khone, the condition of the patient awaiting our attention in the outer ward is both serious and urgent.”

CHAPTER 20

In spite of everyone else’s sense of urgency the Protector seemed to be in no particular hurry to deliver its Unborn. Conway was secretly relieved. It gave him more time to think, to consider alternative procedures and, if he was honest with himself, more time to dither.

The normally phlegmatic Thornnastor, with three eyes on the patient and one on the scanner projection, was slowly stamping one foot as it watched the lack of activity in the area of the Protector’s womb. Murchison was dividing her attention between the screen and the Kelgian nurse who was in charge of the patient’s restraints, and Prilicla was a distant, fuzzy blob clinging to the ceiling at the other end of the ward, where the emotional radiation from the Protector was bearable if not comfortable, and linked to the OR Team by communicator.

It was there purely out of clinical curiosity, the little empath had insisted. But the true reason was probably that it sensed Conway’s anxiety regarding the coming operation and it wanted to help.

“Of the alternative procedures you have mentioned,” Thornnastor said suddenly, “the first is slightly more desirable. But prematurely enlarging the birth opening and withdrawing the Unborn while at the same time clamping off those gland ducts . . . It’s tricky, Conway. You could be faced with an awakened and fully active young Protector tearing and eating its way out of the parent. Or have you now decided that the parent is expendable?”

Conway’s mind was filled again with the memory of his telepathic contact with an Unborn, an Unborn who had been born as a mindless Protector, this Protector. He knew that he was not being logical, but he did not want to discard a being whose mind he had known so intimately simply because, for evolutionary reasons, it had suffered a form of brain death.

“No,” Conway said firmly.

“The other alternatives are even worse,” the Tralthan said.

“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” Conway said.

“I understand,” Thornnastor said. “But neither am I greatly in favor of your primary suggestion. The procedure is radical, to say the least, and unheard-of when the species concerned possesses a carapace. Such delicate work on a fully conscious and mobile patient is—”

“The patient,” Conway broke in, “will be conscious, and immobilized.”

“It seems, Conway,” it said, speaking quietly for a Tralthan, “that there is some confusion in your mind due, perhaps, to the multiplicity of tapes occupying it. Let me remind you that the patient cannot be immobilized for any lengthy period of time, either by physical restraint or anesthetics, without irreversible metabolic changes taking place which lead quickly to unconsciousness and termination. The FSOJ is constantly moving and constantly under attack, and the response of its endocrine system is such that . . . But you know this as well as I do, Conway! Are you well? Is there psychological, perhaps temporary, distress? Would you like me to assume charge for a time?”

Murchison had been listening to her communicator and had missed Thornnastor’s earlier words. She looked worriedly at Conway, obviously wondering what was wrong with him, or what her Chief thought was wrong with him; then she said, “Prilicla called me. It didn’t want to interrupt you during what might have been an important clinical discussion between its superiors, but it reports a steady increase and change in the quality of emotional radiation emanating from both the Protector and its Unborn. The indications are that the Protector is preparing itself for a major effort, and this in turn has caused an increase in the level of mentation in the Unborn. Prilicla wants to know if you have detected any signs of an attempt at telepathic contact. It says the Unborn is trying very hard.”

Conway shook his head. To Thornnastor he said, “With respect, this information was contained in my original report on the FSOJ life-form to you, and my memory is unimpaired. I thank you for the offer to take charge, and I welcome your advice and assistance, but I am not psychologically distressed, and my mental confusion is at a similar level to that at which I normally operate.”

“Your remarks about immobilizing the patient suggested otherwise,” Thornnastor said after a short pause. “I’m glad that you feel well, but I am not completely reassured regarding your surgical intentions.”

“And I’m not completely sure that I’m right,” Conway replied. “But my indecision has gone, and my intended procedure is based on the assumption that we have been too heavily influenced by the FSOJ’s life-support machinery and the insistence on physical mobility . . .

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the figure of Prilicla grow more blurred as it began to tremble violently. He broke off and said into his communicator, “Withdraw, little friend. Keep in contact but move out into the corridor. The emotional radiation around here is going to be pretty savage stuff, so move back quickly.”

“I was about to do so, friend Conway,” it replied. “But the quality of your own emotional radiation is not pleasant for either of us. There is determination, anxiet¾ and the feeling that you are forcing yourself to do something which normally you would not do. My apologies. In my concern for a friend I am discussing material which should properly be considered privileged. I am leaving now. Good luck, friend Conway.”

Before he could reply one of the Kelgians, its fur rippling with urgency, reported that the birth opening was beginning to enlarge.

“Relax,” he said, studying the scanner picture. “Nothing is happening internally as yet. Please position the patient on its left side with a right upper dorsal presentation. The operative field will be centered fifteen inches to the right of the carapacial median line in the position marked. Continue with the present life-support arrangements, but with a bit more enthusiasm if you can manage it, until I tell you to stop. On my signal the restraints team will immobilize the patient’s limbs, being particularly careful to stretch the tentacles to full lateral extension and to anchor them with clamps and pressor beams. I have just decided that this job will be difficult enough without the patient jerking and wriggling all over the table while we are operating. ‘While the operation is in progress, I want the minimum number of OR and support staff present, and those who are present must discipline their thinking as I will direct. Do you understand your instructions?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the Kelgian replied, but its fur was showing doubt and disapproval. A series of shocks transmitted through his shoes from the floor told him that Thornnastor was stamping its feet again.

“Sorry about the interruptions,” he said to the Tralthan. “I had been about to suggest that complete immobilization might be possible during the period necessary to complete the operation without serious damage to the patient. To follow my reasoning in this we must first consider what happens before, during, and after a major operation on any of the life-forms who, unlike the FSOJ, become periodically and frequently unconscious in the condition we know as sleep. In such cases—”

“They are tranquilized to minimize preoperative worry,” Thornnastor broke in, its feet still displaying its impatience, “anesthetized during the procedure, and monitored postoperatively until the metabolism and vital signs have stabilized. This is elementary, Conway.

“I realize that,” he replied, “and I’m hoping that the solution to the problem is also elementary.”

He paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts, then went on.You will agree that a normal patient, even though it is deeply anesthetized, reacts against the surgical intervention which is taking place. If it was conscious it would want to do what the Protector is trying to do to our operating staff, that is, trying to kill them and! or escape from the threat they represent. Even when anesthetized the normal patient is reacting unconsciously to a condition of severe stress, its system has been flooded with its equivalent of adrenaline, the available supplies of blood, sugars, and oxygen have been stepped up, and it is ready to fight or flee. This is a condition which our Protector enjoys, if that is the correct word, permanently. It is constantly fighting and fleeing because it is constantly under attack.”

Thornnastor and Murchison were watching him intently, but neither spoke.

“Because we are showing it pictures in three dimensions and in quite terrifying detail of its natural environment,” Conway went on, “and we will be attacking it, surgically, with an intensity that it has certainly not experienced before, I am hoping to fool it and its endocrine system into believing that its limbs are still engaged in fighting off the attack or trying to flee from it. The limbs are, after all, fighting against the restraints, and the muscular effort needed is comparable.

“We will be attacking it,” he concluded, “with a major cesarean procedure through the carapace rather than in the abdominal area, without benefit of anesthesia, and I expect that there will be enough pain and confusion in its mind to make it forget that its body is not in motion, at least for the relatively short time it will take to complete the operation.”

Murchison was staring at him, her face expressionless but as pale as her white uniform. The full meaning of what he had just been saying dawned on Conway, and he felt sick and ashamed. The words were in direct contradiction to everything he had been taught as a healer and a bringer of comfort. You must be cruel to be kind, someone had told him once, but surely they had not meant this cruel.

“The Earth-human DBDG component of my mind,” Thornnastor said slowly, “is feeling shock and disgust at such unheard-of behavior.”

“This DBDG,” Conway said, tapping himself angrily on the chest, “feels the same way. But your taped DBDG never had to deliver a Protector.”

“Neither,” Thornnastor said, “has anyone else.”

Murchison was about to speak when there was a double interruption.

“The birth opening is beginning to widen,” the Kelgian charge nurse reported, “and there is a small change in the position of the fetus.”

“The emotional radiation from both entities is reaching a peak,” Prilicla said on the communicator. “You will not have long to wait, friend Conway. Please do not distress yourself. Your clinical thinking is usually trustworthy.”

The Cinrusskin invariably said the right thing, Conway thought gratefully as Thornnastor followed him to the operating frame.

They checked the underside first, moving as close as they could while still avoiding the Protector’s wildly thrashing legs and the Hudlar who was jabbing at them with a metal bar to reproduce the attacks of the small, sharp-toothed predators of its home world. The musculature associated with the limbs was in constant, writhing motion, and in the medial area the birth opening was slowly lengthening and widening.

For the recorders, Conway said, “Junior will not be coming out this way. Normally, a cesarean procedure calls for a long, abdominal incision through which the fetus is removed. That course is contraindicated in this case for two reasons. It would involve cutting through several of the leg muscles, and because this being is incapable of resting a damaged limb while healing takes place, the clinical injury would never heal and the limbs concerned would be permanently affected. Secondly, we would be going in very close to the two glands which, we are virtually certain, contain the secretions which reverse the prebirth paralysis and obliterate the mind. Both, as you can see in the scanner, are connected to the umbilical and are compressed, and their contents discharged into the fetus, during the later stages of the birth process. In this physiological classification, a traditional cesarean entry would almost certainly compress these glands prematurely, and the purpose of the operation, the delivery of an intelligent Unborn, would be defeated. So we’ll have to do it the hard way, by going through the carapace at an angle which will cause minimum disturbance to the underlying vital organs.

While the charge nurse had been positioning the Protector for the operation, the movements of the Unborn had been imperceptible, but now the scanner showed a slow, steady motion toward the birth canal. He forced himself to walk around to the other side of the operating frame, when his instinct was to break into an undignified gallop; then he checked that Thornnastor and Murchison were in position and said quietly, “Immobilize the patient.”

The four dorsal tentacles were at full extension, motionless except for the barest tremor caused by their efforts to overcome the restraints. He tried not to think of the devastation even one of those limbs would cause among the OR staff if it succeeded in pulling free, or that he was closest and would be the first casualty.

“It is desirable-in fact it may be vitally necessary-that we establish telepathic contact with the Unborn before the operation is completed,” Conway said above the buzzing of his surgical saw. “The first time such contact took place, there was only one physiological classification present, the Earth-human DBDGs Pathologist Murchison, Captain Fletcher of Rhabwar, and I. A multiplicity of physiological types and thought patterns may be making it difficult to make contact, or it may be that DBDGs are fractionally easier to communicate with telepathically. For this reason.

“Do you wish me to leave?” Thornnastor asked.

“No,” Conway said very firmly. “I need your assistance, as both a surgeon and an endocrinologist. But it would be helpful if you tried to bring forward the DBDG component of your mind and concentrated on its thought processes.”

“I understand,” the Tralthan said.

Working quickly, Thornnastor and Conway excised a large, triangular section of carapace, then paused to control some minor bleeding from the underlying vessels. Murchison was not assisting directly, but was concentrating all of her attention on the scanner so that she could warn them if the trauma of the operation was giving indications of triggering premature delivery. They went deeper, cutting through the thick, almost transparent membrane which enclosed the lungs, clamping it back.

“Prilicla?” Conway asked.

“The patient is feeling anger, fear, and pain in steadily increasing intensity. It does not seem to be aware of anything other than that it is being savagely attacked and is defending itself. Apparently it has not realized that it isn’t moving, and there are no emotional indications of endocrine misfunction . . .

“The effect of this attack on the Unborn,” the empath went on, “is of markedly heightened sensation and mentation levels. There is greater awareness and intense effort. It is trying very hard to contact you, friend Conway.”

“It’s mutual,” he replied. But he knew that too much of his mind was being devoted to the surgical aspect just then and not enough to communication for there to be any hope of success.

In the FSOJ the heart was not situated between the lungs, but there were several major blood vessels traversing the area, and these with their associated digestive organs had to be moved out of the way without cutting-surgery had to be kept to the irreducible minimum when the patient would be mobile minutes after the operation was completed. As he pressed them carefully apart and locked the dilators in position, he knew that the circulation in several of those vessels was being seriously impaired, and that he was constricting one of the lungs and rendering it little more than sixty percent effective.

“It will be for a short time only,” he said defensively in answer to Thornnastor’s unspoken comment, and the patient is on pure oxygen, which should make up the deficiency . . .

He broke off as his exploring fingers moved deeper and encountered a long, flat bone which had no business being there. He looked quickly at the position of his hand in the scanner and saw that he was, in fact, touching not a bone but one of the muscles of a dorsal tentacle. The muscle had locked in spasm as the patient tried to pull the limb free of the restraints. Or perhaps it was simply reacting-as did the members of other species who locked mandibles or clenched fists-to unbearable pain.

Suddenly his hands were trembling as all of his medically trained and caring alter egos reacted to that thought.

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said, its voice distorted by more than the translator, “you are distressing me. Concentrate on what you are doing and not on what you are feeling!”

“Don’t bully me, Prilicla!” he snapped. Then he laughed as he realized the ridiculous thing he had just said, and went back to work. A few minutes later he was feeling out the contours of the Unborn’s upper carapace and its limp dorsal tentacles. He grasped one of them and began to pull gently.

“That entity,” Thornnastor rumbled at him, “is supposed to come out of the womb fighting and able to inflict serious damage with those particular limbs. I don’t think the tentacle would come off if you were to pull a little harder, Conway.”

He pulled harder and the Unborn moved, but only a few inches. The young FSOJ was no lightweight, and Conway was already sweating with the effort. He slipped his other hand down into the opening and found another dorsal tentacle; then he began a two-handed pull with one knee braced against the operating frame.

He had performed more delicate feats of surgery and manipulation in his time, Conway thought sourly, but even with this unsubtle procedure the little beastie was refusing to budge.

“The passage is too tight,” he said, gasping. “So tight I think suction is holding it in. Can you slide a long probe between the inner face of the dilator and the inner surface of the carapace, just there, so that we can release . . .

“The Protector is beginning to weaken, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, the mere fact that it had been impolite enough to interrupt its Seniors stressing the urgency of its report.

But Thornnastor was moving in before the empath had finished speaking, using the slim, tapering extremity of a manipulatory tentacle instead of the probe. There was a brief hissing sound as suction was released. The Tralthan’s tentacle moved deeper, curled around the Unborn’s rear legs, and began helping Conway to lift and slide it out. Within a few seconds it was clear, but still connected to its parent by the umbilical.

“Well,” Conway said, placing the newly born Unborn on the tray Murchison had already placed to receive it, “that was the easy part. And if ever we needed a conscious and cooperative patient, now is the time.”

“The Unborn’s feelings are of intense frustration verging on despair, friend Conway,” Prilicla reported. “It must still be trying to contact you. The Protector’s emotional radiation is weakening, and there is a change in the texture which suggests that it is becoming aware of its lack of motion.”

To Thornnastor, Conway said quickly, “If we reduce the dilation, which is unnecessary now that the Unborn is out, that will enable the constricted lung to operate more effectively. How much room do we need to work in there?”

Thornnastor made a noise which did not translate, then went on. “I require a fairly small opening through which to work, and I am the endocrinologist. Those ridiculous DBDG knuckles and wrists are physiologically unsuited to this particular job. With respect, I suggest that you concentrate on the Unborn.”

“Right,” Conway said. He appreciated the Tralthan’s recognition of the fact that he was in charge even though he was, at best, only a temporary Diagnostician whose recent operative behavior would almost certainly ensure the temporary nature of his rank. Without looking up he went on. “All non-DBDG members of the OR and support teams move back to the ward entrance. Do not talk, and try to keep your minds as blank as possible by looking at and thinking about a clear area of wall or ceiling, so as to make it easier for the telepath to tune in to the three of us here. Move quickly, please.”

The scanner was already showing two of the Tralthan’s slim tentacles sliding down into the womb on each side of the umbilical. They came to rest above two ovoid swellings which, over the past few days, had grown to the size and coloration of large, red plums. There was adequate space inside the now-empty womb for a number of different surgical procedures to be carried out, but Thornnastor, of necessity, was doing nothing.

“The two glands are identical, Conway,” the Tralthan said, “and there is no rapid method of telling which secretes the deparalyzing agent and which the mind destroyer. There is one chance in two of being right. Shall I apply gentle pressure, and to which one?”

“No, wait,” Conway said urgently. “I’ve had second thoughts about that. If the birth had been normal, both glands would have been compressed while the Unborn was exiting and the secretions discharged through ducts directly into the umbilical. Considering the degree of swelling present and the tightly stretched appearance of the containing membranes, it is possible that even the most gentle pressure would cause a sudden rather than a gradual discharge of the secretions. My original idea of metering the discharge by applying gentle pressure and observing the effect on the patient was not a good one. As well, there is the possibility that both glands secrete the same agency and that it performs both functions.”

“Highly unlikely,” Thornnastor said, “the effects are so markedly different. Regrettably, the material has a complex and unstable biochemical structure which breaks down very quickly; otherwise the cadaver of your first Protector would have contained sufficient residual material for us to have synthesized it. This is the first occasion that samples have been available from a living Protector, but the analysis would be a lengthy process and the patients might not survive for long in their present condition.”

“I completely agree,” Prilicla said, sounding unusually vehement for a Cinrusskin. “The Protector is going into a panic reaction, it is becoming aware of its abnormal condition of immobility and the indications are of general and rapid deterioration. You must withdraw and close up, friend Conway, and quickly.”

“I know,” Conway replied, then went on fiercely.

“Think! Think at the Unborn, of the situation it is in, of our problems, of what we are trying to do for it. I need telepathic contact before I can risk—”

“I feel irregular, spasmodic contractions increasing in severity,” Thornnastor broke in. “The movements are probably abnormal and associated with the panic reaction, but there is the danger of them compressing the glands prematurely. And I don’t think that establishing telepathic contact with the Unborn will help identify the correct gland. A newly born infant, however intelligent, does not usually possess detailed anatomical knowledge of its parent.”

“The Protector,” Murchison said from the other side of the operating frame, “is no longer fighting against its restraints.”

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said, “the patient is losing consciousness.

“All right!” Conway snapped. He was trying desperately to think at the Unborn and for himself, but all his alter egos were trying desperately to think as well and were confusing him. Some of the answers they were throwing up did not apply, some were ridiculous, and one-he had no idea who originated it-was so ridiculously simple that it had to be tried.

“Clamp the umbilical as close as possible to those glands so as to guard against accidental discharge,” Conway said quickly, “then sever the cord on the other side of the clamp to separate the parent and infant. I’ll draw out the remainder of the umbilical, and you go into the glands with two needles. Evacuate the contents of each by suction and store the secretions in separate containers for later use. You might have to speed up the process by compressing the glands as well. I’d help you, but there isn’t much room down there.”

Thornnastor did not reply. It was already lifting one of the suction needles from its instrument tray while Murchison was switching on the pump to test it and attaching two small, sterile containers. Within a few minutes the suction needles had been introduced and both of the bulging glands were visibly growing smaller.

When the scanner showed them as flattened, red patches on opposite sides of the birth canal, Conway said, “That’s enough. Withdraw. I’ll help you close up. And if there’s an unoccupied corner of your mind, please use it to think at the Unborn.”

“All the corners of my mind are occupied by other people,” Thornnastor said, “but I shall try.”

Withdrawing was much easier than the entry had been because the Protector was unconscious, its muscles were relaxed, and there were no internal tensions trying to pull the sutures apart while they were being inserted. Thornnastor repaired the incision they had made in the womb; then together they eased the temporarily displaced organs back into position and sutured the thick membrane enclosing the lungs. All that remained was the replacement of the triangular section of carapace with the inert metal staples used on the hard and flexible hide of the FROB Hudlars.

The Hudlar operations felt as if they had happened years ago, Conway was thinking, when Thornnastor began stamping its feet in agitation.

“I am suffering intense discomfort in the cranial area,” the Diagnostician said. While it was speaking, Murchison put a finger in her ear and began to waggle it frantically, as if trying to relieve a deep itch. Then Conway felt it, too, and gritted his teeth, because his hands were otherwise engaged.

The sensations were exactly the same as those he had experienced when the Protector, then an Unborn, had made telepathic contact during that earlier ship rescue. It was a combination of pain and intense irritation and a kind of discordant, unheard noise which mounted steadily in intensity. He had theorized about it after that first experience, and decided that a faculty which was either dormant or atrophied was being forced to perform. As in the case of a muscle long unused, there was soreness and stiffness and protest against the change in the old, comfortable order of things.

On that first occasion the discomfort had built up to a climax, and then . . .

I have been aware of the thoughts of the entities Thornnastor, Murchison, and Conway since a few moments before I was removed from my Protector, a clear, silent, and urgent voice said in their minds, from which the maddening mental itch was suddenly gone. I am aware of your purpose, that of birthing a telepathic Unborn to become a young Protector without loss of faculties, and I am most grateful for your efforts no matter what the eventual outcome may be. I am also aware of the entity Conway’s present intentions, and I urge you to act quickly. This will be my only chance. My mental faculties are dimming.

“Leave the parent for the time being,” he said firmly, “and set up to infuse Junior.”

He did not tell them to make it fast, because both Murchison and Thornnastor had received that same telepathic message. With luck there might not be any permanent impairment of the Unborn’s faculties, he thought, because the effect could be due to the newly born FSOJ being immobile like its parent. While the other two were working, he removed the surplus length of the umbilical and moved the infant’s transporter cage to a more convenient position in readiness, should the procedure he planned be successful, to receive a suddenly active and dangerous young Protector. By the time he had done that, Thornnastor and Murchison had the infusion needle sited in the stub of the Unborn’s umbilical and a length of fine tubing connecting it to one of the sterile containers of withdrawn gland secretion.

It might be the wrong one, Conway thought grimly as he eased open the delivery valve and watched the oily, yellowish secretion ooze slowly along the tube, but now the chances were much better than fifty-fifty.

“Prilicla,” he said into the communicator, “I am in telepathic contact with the Unborn, who will, I hope, be able to tell me of any physical or psychological changes caused by this infusion which, because of its irreversible effects, will be delivered in minute doses until I know that I have the right one. But I need you, little friend, to serve as backup by reporting changes in its emotional radiation, changes of which it itself may not be aware. If the Unborn should break off contact, or lose consciousness, you could be its only hope.”

“I understand, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, moving along the ceiling toward them so as to decrease the range. “From here I can detect quite subtle changes in the Unborn’s radiation, now that it is no longer being swamped by the Protector’s emotional output.”

Thornnastor had returned to suturing the parent’s carapace, but with one eye on the scanner and another on Conway as he bent over the infusion equipment. He delivered the first minute dose.

I am not aware of any changes in my thinking other than an increasing difficulty . . . difficulty in maintaining contact with you, the silent voice sounded in his mind. Neither am I conscious of any muscular activity.

Conway tried another minute dose, then another followed, in desperation, by one which was not so minute.

No change, thought the Unborn.

There was no depth to the thinking, and the meaning was barely perceptible through a rush of telepathic noise. The precontact itching somewhere between his ears was returning.

“There is fear Prilicla began.

“I know there is fear,” Conway broke in. “We’re in telepathic contact, dammit!”

. . . On the unconscious as well as the conscious level, friend Conway,” the Cinrusskin went on. “It is consciously afraid because of its physical weakening and loss of sensation due to its continued immobility. But at a lower level there is . . . Friend Conway, it may not be possible for a mind to regard itself other than subjectively, and perhaps a failing or occluded mind cannot subjectively perceive that failure.”

“Little friend,” Conway said, disconnecting the container he had been using and replacing it with the other one, “you’re a genius!”

This time it was no minute dose because they were fast running out of time, for both patients. Conway straightened up to better observe the effect on the Unborn, then ducked frantically to avoid one of its tentacles which was swinging at his head.

“Grab it before it falls off the tray!” Conway shouted. “Forget the transporter. It’s still partially paralyzed, so hold it by the tentacles and carry it to the Rumpus Room. I’d help you, but I want to protect this container . . .

I am aware of an increasing feeling of physical well-being, the Unborn thought.

With Murchison gripping one of its tentacles and Thornnastor the other three, the Unborn was flopping up and down between them in its efforts to break free as Conway followed them to the door of the smaller scale FSOJ life-support complex. Using Tralthan tentacles, female Earth-human hands, and one of Conway’s large feet, they were able to hold it still while he administered the remainder of the deparalyzing secretion, after which they pushed the patient inside and sealed the door.

The young Protector and recently Unborn began moving rapidly along the hollow cylinder, lashing out at the bars, clubs, and spikes which were beating and jabbing at it.

“How do you feel?” Conway asked and thought anxiously.

Fine. Very well indeed. This is exhilarating, came the reply. But I am concerned about my parent.

“So are we,” Conway said, and led the way back to the operating frame where Prilicla was clinging to the ceiling directly above the Protector. The fact that the empath was at minimum range indicated both its concern for the patient’s condition and the weakness of the FSOJ’s emotional radiation.

“Life-support team!” Conway called to the beings who were waiting at the other end of the ward. “Get back here! Loosen the restraints on all limbs. Let it move, but not enough to endanger the operating team.”

The suturing of the carapace had still to be completed, and with Thornnastor and him both working on it, that took about ten minutes. During that time there was no movement from the Protector other than the tiny quiverings caused by the blows and jabs being delivered by the life-support machinery. In deference to the patient’s gravely weakened postoperative state, Conway had ordered the equipment to be operated at half-power and that positive pressure ventilation be used to force the FSOJ to breathe pure oxygen. But by the time the remaining sutures were in place and they had conducted a detailed scanner examination of their earlier internal work, there was still no physical response.

Somehow he had to awaken it, get through to its deeply unconscious brain, and there was only one channel of communication open. Pain.

“Step up life-support to full power,” he said, concealing his desperation behind an air of confidence. “Is there any change, Prilicla?”

“No change,” the empath said, trembling in the emotional gale which could only have been coming from Conway.

Suddenly he lost his temper.

“Move, dammit!” he shouted, bringing the edge of his hand down on the inside of the root of the nearest tentacle, which was still lying flaccidly at full extension. The area he struck was pink and relatively soft, because few of the Protector’s natural enemies would have been able to make such a close approach and the tegument there was thin. Even so, it hurt his hand.

“Again, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. “Hit it again, and harder!”

“. . . What?” Conway asked.

Prilicla was quivering with excitement now. It said, “I think—no, I’m sure I caught a flicker of awareness just then. Hit it! Hit it again!”

Conway was about to do so when one of Thornnastor’s tentacles curled tightly around his wrist. Ponderously, the Tralthan said, “Repeated misuse of that hand will not enhance the surgical dexterity of those ridiculous DBDG digits, Conway. Allow me.”

The Diagnostician produced one of the dilators and brought it down heavily and accurately on the indicated area. It repeated the blows, varying the frequency and gradually increasing the power as Prilicla called, “Harder! Harder!”

Conway fought back the urge to break into hysterical laughter.

“Little friend,” he said incredulously, “are you trying to be the Federation’s first cruel and sadistic Cinrusskin? You certainly sound as if . . . Why are you running away?”

The empath was ducking and weaving its way between the lighting fixtures as it raced across the ceiling toward the ward entrance. Through the communicator it said, “The Protector is rapidly regaining consciousness and is feeling very angry. Its emotional radiation . . . Well, it is not a nice entity to be near when it is angry, or at any other time.”

The relatively weak structure of the operating frame was demolished as the Protector came fully awake and began striking out in all directions with its tentacles, tail, and armored head. But the life-support machinery enclosing the frame had been designed to take such punishment, as well as hitting back. For a few minutes they stood watching the FSOJ in awed silence until Murchison laughed with evident relief.

“I suppose we can safely say,” she said, “that parent and offspring are doing fine.”

Thornnastor, who had one of his eyes directed at the Rumpus Room, said, “I wouldn’t be too sure. The young one has almost stopped moving.”

They ran and lumbered back to the scaled-down life-support system of the young Protector. A few minutes earlier they had left it charging around the system, happily battering at everything mechanical that moved. Now, Conway saw with a sudden shock of despair, it was stationary inside its cudgel-lined tunnel, and only two of its tentacles were wrapped around a thick, projecting club trying to tear it free of its mounting while the other two hung perfectly still. Before Conway could speak, there was a cool, clear, and undistressed thought floating silently in his mind.

Thank you, my friends. You have saved my parent, and you have succeeded in achieving the birth of the first intelligent and telepathic Protector. I have, with great difficulty, tuned in to the thoughts of several different life-forms in this great hospital, none of whom, with the exceptions of the entities Conway, Thornnastor, and Murchison, have been able to receive me. But there are two additional entities with whom I shall be able to communicate fully and without difficulty, because of your efforts. They are the next Unborn, who is already taking form in my parent, and the other, which I myself am carrying. I can foresee a future when a growing number of Unborn will continue their mental growth as telepathic Protectors, with the technical, cultural, and philosophical development which that will make possible . . .

The clear, calm, and quietly joyous stream of thought was suddenly clouded by anxiety.

“I am assuming that this delicate and difficult operation can be repeated?”

“Delicate!” Thornnastor said, and made an untranslatable sound. “It was the crudest procedure I have ever encountered. Difficult, yes, but not delicate. On future occasions we will not have to play guessing games with the gland secretions. We will have the correct one synthesized and ready, and the element of risk will be greatly reduced.

“You will have your telepathic companions,” the Tralthan ended. “That I promise you.

Telepathic promises were very hard to keep and even more difficult to break. Conway wanted to warn the Tralthan against making such promises too lightly, but somehow he knew that Thornnastor understood.

Thank you, and everyone else who was and will be concerned. But now I must break off contact, because the mental effort required to stay in tune with your minds is becoming too much for me. Thank you again.

“Wait,” Conway said urgently. “Why have you stopped moving?”

I am experimenting. I had assumed that I would have no voluntary control over my bodily movements, but apparently this is not so. For the past few minutes, and with much mental effort, I have been able to direct all of the energy necessary to my well-being into trying to destroy this one piece of metal rather than striking out at everything. But it is extremely difficult, and I must soon relax and allow my involuntary system to resume control. That is why I am so optimistic regarding future progress for our species. With constant practice I may be able to avoid attacking, for perhaps a whole hour at a time, those around me. The fear of attack is more difficult to reproduce, and I may need advice . . .

“This is great! Conway began enthusiastically, but for a moment the thinking resumed.

. . . But I do not wish to be released from this mechanism, and risk running amok among your patients and staff My physical selfcontrol is far from perfect, and I realize that I am not yet ready to mix with you socially.

There was an instant of itching between his ears, then a great, mental silence, which was slowly filled by Conway’s own and strangely lonely thoughts.

CHAPTER 21

His second meeting of Diagnosticians was different in that Conway thought he knew what to expect-a searching and mercilessly professional interrogation regarding his recent surgical behavior. But this time there were two non-Diagnosticians present, the Chief Psychologist and Colonel Skempton, the Monitor Corps officer in charge of the hospital’s supply and maintenance. It was these two who seemed to be the center of attention, interrogation, and criticism, to such an extent that Conway felt sorry for them as well as grateful for the extra time they were giving him to prepare his defense.

Diagnostician Semlic required reassurance regarding the power source for a new synthesizer which was being set up two levels above its dark and incredibly cold domain, particularly about the adequacy of the existing shielding against the increased risk of heat and radiation contamination of its wards. Diagnosticians Suggrod and Kursedth both wanted to know what, if any, progress had been made about providing additional accommodation for the Kelgian medical staff. Some of them were occupying the former Illensan accommodation, which, in spite of everything that had been done, still stank of chlorine.

While Colonel Skempton was trying to convince the two Kelgians that the smell was purely psychosomatic, because it did not register on his department’s most sensitive detectors, Ergandhir, the Melfan Diagnostician, was already beginning to list a number of admittedly minor faults in ELNT ward equipment which were causing growing annoyance to both patients and staff. The Colonel replied that the replacement parts had been ordered, but because of their highly specialized nature, delays were to be expected. While they were still talking, Vosan, the water-breathing AMSL, began to question O’Mara regarding the desirability of assigning the diminutive and birdlike Nallajim to a ward designed for the thirty meters long, armored and tentacled Chalders, who were likely to inadvertently ingest them.

Before the Chief Psychologist could reply, the polite, sibilant voice of the PVSJ, Diagnostician Lachlichi, said that it, too, had similar reservations about the Melfans and Tralthans who were appearing in increasing numbers in the chlorine-breathing levels. It said that in the interests of saving time, O’Mara’s answer might be modified to answer both questioners.

“A correct assumption, Lachlichi,” O’Mara said. “Both questions have the same general answer.” He waited until there was silence before going on. “Many years ago my department initiated a plan which called for the widest possible other-species experience being made available to those staff members with what I judged to be the required degree of psychological adaptability and professional aptitude. Rather than specializing in the treatment of patients belonging to their own or a similar physiological classification, these people were assigned an often-bewildering variety of cases and given responsibility for them which was not always commensurate with their rank at the time. The success of the plan can be measured by the fact that two of the original selectees are at this meeting”-he glanced at Conway and at someone else who was concealed by the intervening bulk of Semlic’s life-support system—”and the others are coming along nicely. The degree of success achieved warranted the enlargement of the original project without, however, lowering the original high requirements.”

“I had no knowledge of this,” Lachlichi said, its spiny, membranous body stirring restively inside its envelope of yellow fog. Ergandhir clicked its lower mandible and added, “Nor I, although I suspected that something like this might be going on.

Both Diagnosticians were staring toward the head of the table, at Thornnastor.

“It is difficult to keep secrets in this place,” the Senior Diagnostician said, “and particularly for me. The requirements are a much greater than average ability to understand, generally get along with, actually like, and instinctively do the right thing where a large number of different intelligent species are concerned. But it was decided that neither the entities selected nor their colleagues and immediate superiors should be made aware of the plan lest candidates displaying many of the required qualities fall short of reaching the top and end up as respected and professionally gifted Senior Physicians. In many cases, these entities are capable of better work than their, at times, multiply absentminded superiors; they have no reason to feel ashamed or dissatisfied.

I’ve flunked it, Conway thought bitterly, and Thorny is trying to tell me as gently as possible.

. . . And in any case,” Thornnastor went on, “there is a fair chance that they will make it in time. For this reason the existence of the Chief Psychologist’s plan and selection procedure must not, for obvious reasons, be discussed with anyone other than those here present.”

Maybe there was still a chance for him, Conway thought, especially as he was being told of O’Mara’s plan. But another part of his mind was still trying to accept the strange idea of a closemouthed and secretive Thornnastor instead of the being who was reputed to be the worst gossip in the hospital, when O’Mara resumed speaking.

“It is not the intention,” the Chief Psychologist said, “to promote people beyond the level of their professional competence. But the demands on this hospital make it necessary for us to put the medical and”-he glanced at Colonel Skempton—”maintenance resources to the fullest possible use. Regarding the Nallajim invasion of the Chalder wards, I have found that if a Doctor or nurse is in more danger from the patient than the patient is from the disease or, as will be the case in the chlorine wards, the patient is in greater danger from the sheer physical mass of its medical attendants than its disease, a great deal of extra care is exercised all around and there is a beneficial effect on the Doctor-patient relationship.

“And while we are on the subject of the plan,” O’Mara went on, “I have a short list of names which, in my opinion, and subject to your judgment on their professional competence, merit a rise in status to Senior Physician. They are Doctors Seldal, Westimorral, Shu, and Tregmar. A Senior Physician who should be considered for elevation to Diagnostician is, of course, Prilicla . . . Your mouth is open, Conway. Do you have a comment?”

Conway shook his head, then stammered, “I . . . I was surprised that a Cinrusskin would be seriously considered. It is fragile, overly timid, and the mental confusion caused by the multiple personalities would endanger it further. But as a friend I would be biased in its favor and would not want to—”

“There is no entity on the hospital staff,” Thornnastor said ponderously, “who would not be biased in favor of Prilicla.”

O’Mara was staring at him with eyes, Conway knew, which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave the Chief Psychologist what amounted to a telepathic faculty. Conway was glad that his empath friend was not present, because his thoughts and feelings were nothing to be proud of-a mixture of hurt pride and jealousy. It was not that he was envious of Prilicla or that he wished to belittle the empath in any way. He was honestly delighted that its future prospects were so good. But to think of it being groomed for a position among the hospital’s elite while he might well remain just an able and respected Senior Physician! . . .

“Conway,” O’Mara said quietly, “suppose you tell me why Prilida is being considered for Diagnostician status. Be as biased or unbiased as you like.”

For a few seconds Conway was silent as he strove for objectivity in the minds of his alter egos as well as his own-when he was thinking petty thoughts his mind partners kept bringing forward their equivalents. Finally, he said, “The added danger of physical injury might not be as great, since Prilicla has spent its whole lifetime in avoiding physical and psychological damage, and this situation would continue even if it was confused initially by a number of mind-partners. The confusion might not be as bad as I had first assumed, because, as an empath, it is already familiar with the feelings of a very wide range of physiological types, and it is the presence of these alien thoughts and feelings which causes most of the mental confusion in us nonempaths.

“During many years’ close professional association with this entity,” Conway went on, “I have observed its special talents in use and have noted that it has assumed increased responsibilities which have, on many occasions, involved it in severe emotional discomfort. The most recent incidents were its organizing and direction of the Menelden rescue and its invaluable assistance during the delivery of the Unborn. When the Gogleskan Khone arrives I can think of nobody better able to reassure and . . .

He broke off, aware that he was beginning to wander off the subject, and ended simply, “I think Prilicla will make a fine Diagnostician.”

Silently, he added, I wish someone were here saying nice things about me.

The Chief Psychologist gave him a long, searching look, then said dryly, “I’m glad we agree, Conway. That little empath can obtain maximum effort from both its subordinates and superiors, and without being the slightest bit obnoxious about it the way some of us are forced to be.” He smiled sourly and went on. “However, Prilicla will need more time, another year at least in charge of the medical team on Rhabwar, and additional responsibilities on the wards between ambulance calls.”

Conway was silent, and O’Mara went on. “When your FOKT friend is admitted to the hospital and I have it available for the full spectrum of psych tests, I’m pretty sure that I will be able to eradicate its mind impression, and the one you left in its mind. I won’t go into the details now, but you won’t be burdened with that troublesome Gogleskan material for much longer.”

O’Mara stared at him, obviously expecting a word of thanks, or some kind of response, but Conway could not speak. He was thinking about the lonely, long-suffering, nightmare-ridden, and yet not entirely unhappy individual who shared his thoughts and influenced his actions, so subtly on occasions that he was scarcely aware of it, and of how uncomplicated life would be if his mind were completely his own again-except, that was, for the taped entities, who could be erased at any time. He thought of the presence of Khone, who got the twitches every time a non-Gogleskan life-form went past, which was very often at Sector General, and of the implication its visit had toward the finding of a solution to its species-wide psychosis. But mostly he thought of its unique ability to withdraw and compartmentalize its thinking and its perpetually curious and careful viewpoint which made Conway want to double-check everything he thought and did and which would no longer be there to slow him down. He sighed.

“No,” he said firmly, “I want to keep it.”

There were a number of untranslatable sounds from around the table while O’Mara continued to watch him unblinkingly. It was Colonel Skempton who broke the silence.

“About this Gogleskan,” he said briskly. “What particular problems will it give my department? After the Protector and Junior’s Rumpus Room and the sudden demand for Hudlar prosthetic limbs—”

“There are no special requirements, Colonel,” Conway broke in, smiling, “other than a small isolation compartment with a restricted visitors list and normal environment for a warm-blooded oxygenbreather.”

“Thank Heaven for that,” Skempton said with feeling.

“Regarding the Hudlar prosthetics,” Thornnastor said, turning an eye toward the Colonel. “There will be an additional requirement there due to the pregeriatric amputation procedure suggested by Conway, which has since received the approval of the Chief Psychologist and, apparently, every aging FROB that O’Mara has approached. There are going to be far too many voluntary amputees for the hospital to accommodate, so your department will not be involved in the large-scale manufacture of Hudlar prosthetics, but . . .

“I’m even more relieved,” the Colonel said.

We will have our designs mass-produced on Hudlar itself,” Thornnastor went on. “The operations will be performed there as well, by Hudlar medics who will be trained at this hospital in the necessary surgical techniques. This will take time to organize, Conway, but I am making it your responsibility, and I would like you to give it a high degree of priority.”

Conway was thinking of their one and only Hudlar medic under training, and the large numbers of same-species trainees who would be joining it, and wondering if their personalities and dispositions would be as attractive and friendly. But then he thought of the living hell the patients in Hudlar Geriatric were going through, with the fully functioning brains trapped inside their disease-ridden, degenerating, and pain-racked bodies, and he decided that the training program would be given a high degree of priority indeed.

“Yes, of course,” he said to Thornnastor. To O’Mara he added, “Thank you.”

Thornnastor’s eyes curled disconcertingly to regard everyone at the same time, and it said, “Let us conclude this meeting as soon as possible so that we can get back to running the hospital instead of talking interminably about it. O’Mara, you have something to say?”

“Only the completion of my suggested list of promotions and appointments,” the Chief Psychologist said. “I’ll be brief. One name, Conway, subject to satisfactory completion of the verbal examination by those present, to be confirmed in his present status and appointed to the position of Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery.”

Thornnastor’s eyes waved briefly along the table before returning to O’Mara. It said, “Not necessary. No dissent. Confirmed.”

When the congratulations were over, Conway sat staring at the Chief Psychologist while their more massive colleagues cleared the exit, thinking that he would feel very pleased with himself when the shock wore off. O’Mara was staring back at him, his expression as grim and sour-faced as ever, but with a look in his eyes which was very much like paternal pride.

“The way you’ve been hacking through patients these past few weeks,” O’Mara said gruffly, “what else did you expect?”

Sector General 7—Code Blue Emergency

James White

CHAPTER 1

The ruler of the ship sat beside Cha Thrat at the recreation deck’s viewscreen while the fuzzy blob of light that was the space hospital grew into a gigantic, complex structure ablaze with every color and intensity of light that her eyes could detect. She had strong feelings of awe, wonder, excitement, and great embarrassment.

Ruler Chiang, she had learned, carried the rank of major in the Monitor Corps Extraterrestrial Communications and Cultural Contact division. But the ruler seriously confused her at times by behaving like a warrior. Now it was sitting beside her because it felt some strange, Earth-human obligation to do so. It had wanted to pay her the compliment of allowing her to watch the approach to the hospital from its control deck, but as she was physiologically unable to enter that small and already crowded compartment, it had felt obliged to desert its post and sit with her here.

The compliment was a completely unnecessary piece of time-wasting nonsense, considering wide disparity in the social and professional levels of the people involved, but Chiang seemed to derive some pleasure from the foolishness and it had, after all, been a patient of hers.

The muted conversation in Control was being relayed with the image on the repeater screen and, while ChaThrat’s translator gave her the equivalent of every word, the particular technical jargon that the ship’s warriors were using made the total meaning of what they were saying unclear. But suddenly there was a new, amplified voice whose words were simple and unambiguous, accompanied by a picture of the disgustingly hairy being who was speaking them.

“Sector General Reception,” it said briskly. “Identify yourself, please. Patient, visitor, or staff; degree of urgency; and physiological classification, if known. If uncertain, please make full visual contact and we will classify.”

“Monitor Corps courier vessel Thromasaggar,” a voice from Control responded. “Short-stay docking facilities to unload patient and staff member. Crew and patient classification Earth-human DBDG. Patient is ambulatory, convalescent, treatment nonurgent. Staff member is classification DCNF and is also a warmblooded oxygen-breather with no special temperature, gravity, or pressure requirements.”

“Wait,” the obnoxious creature said, and once again the image of the hospital filled the screen. A definite improvement, she thought.

“What is that thing?” she asked the ruler. “It looks like a . . . a scroggila. You know, one of our rodents.”

“I’ve seen pictures of them,” the ruler said, and made the unpleasant barking sound that denoted amusement with these people. “It is a Nidian DBDG, about half the body mass of an Earth-human with a very similar metabolism. Its species is highly advanced technologically and culturally, so it only looks like an outsize rodent. You’ll learn to work with much less beautiful beings in that place—”

It broke off as the image of the Nidian returned.

“Follow the blue-yellow-blue direction beacons,” the receptionist said. “Debark patient and staff member at Lock One Zero Four, then proceed to Dock Eighteen via the blue-blue-white beacons. Major Chiang and the Som-maradvan healer are expected and will be met.”

By what? she wondered.

The ruler had given her a great deal of helpful advice and information about SectorTwelveGeneralHospital, most of which she did not believe. And when they entered the lock antechamber a short time later, she could not believe that the smooth, waist-high hemisphere of green jelly occupying the deck between the two waiting Earth-humans was a person.

Ruler Chiang said, “This is Lieutenant Braithwaite of the Chief Psychologist’s Office, and Maintenance Officer Timmins, who is responsible for preparing your accommodation, and Doctor Danalta, who is attached to the ambulance ship, Rhabwar . . .”

Except for minor differences in the insignia on their uniforms, she could not tell the two Earth-humans apart. The large blob of green stuff on the floor, she guessed, was some kind of practical joke, or perhaps part of an initiation ritual for newcomers to the hospital. For the time being she decided not to react.

“. . . And this is Cha Thrat,” it went on, “the new healer from Sommaradva, who is joining the staff.”

Both Earth-humans moved their right hands up to waist level, then lowered them as the ruler shook its head. Cha Thrat had already told Chiang that grasping a strange person’s appendage was considered quite vulgar where she came from, and it would have been much more considerate of them if they had given her some indication of their status. Ruler Chiang had spoken to them as equals, but then it had often done that whileaddressing subordinates on the ship. It was very careless of the ruler and most confusing for her.

“Timmins will see that your personal effects are moved to your quarters,” the ruler went on. “I don’t know what DanaJta and Braithwaite have in mind for us.”

“Nothing too onerous,” Braithwaite said as the other Earth-human was leaving. “On hospital time it is the middle of the day, and the healer’s accommodation will not be ready until early evening. In midafternoon you are due for a physical, Major. Cha Thrat is expected to be present, no doubt to receive the compliments of our medics for what was obviously a very tidy piece of, for a Sommaradvan, other-species surgery.”

It looked in her direction and for some reason inclined its head forward from the neck, then went on. “Immediately following the examination both of you have appointments in Psychology: Cha Thrat for an orientation talk with O’Mara, and you for an investigation, purely a formality in your case, to ensure that there is no non-physical trauma resulting from your recent injuries. But until then . . . Have you eaten recently?”

“No,” said Chiang, “and I would welcome a change from ship food.”

The other Earth-human made soft barking sounds and said, “You haven’t tasted a hospital meal yet. But we try hard not to poison our visitors . . .”

It broke off to apologize and explain hastily that it was making an in-hospital joke, that the food was quite palatable, and that it had been given full instructions regarding Cha Thrat’s dietary requirements.

But she was only vaguely aware of what it was saying because her attention was on the hemisphere of green stuff, the surface of which had begun to ripple andpucker and grow pseudopods. It wobbled sluggishly and heaved itself upright until it was as tall as she was, its skin coloration became mottled, the wet gleam of what could only be eyes appeared, the number of short, crudely formed appendages increased until it looked like something a young child on Sommaradva might make from modeling clay. She felt sudden nausea, but her feelings of curiosity and wonder were even stronger as the body firmed out, became more finely structured, and the features appeared. Then the clothing and equipment pouch grew into place, and there was standing before her the figure of another female Sommaradvan identical in every detail to herself.

“If our Earth-human friends intend subjecting you to the environment of a multispecies dining hall within minutes of your arrival,” it said in a voice that was not, thankfully, hers, “I must counteract their lack of consideration by providing you with something familiar, and friendly, to whom you can relate. It is the least I can do for a new member of the staff.”

“Doctor Danalta,” Braithwaite said, barking again, “is not as altruistic as it would have you think, Cha Thrat. Due to the incredibly savage environment of its planet of origin, the species evolved protective mimicry of a very high order. There are few warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-forms in Sector General that it cannot accurately reproduce within a few minutes, as you’ve seen. But we suspect that any new, intelligent life-form to arrive at the hospital, be it patient, visitor, or staff, is regarded by Danalta as a challenge to its powers of physical mimicry.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I am impressed.”

She stared eye to eye at her utterly alien but identical twin, thinking that the being had displayed concern forher present mental well-being by using its incredible talent to make her feel more comfortable. It was the action of a healer of rulers, and it might even be a ruler itself. Instinctively she made the gesture of respect to superiors, then belatedly realized that neither the Earth-humans nor her Danalta-copy would recognize it for what it was.

“Why, thank you, Cha Thrat,” said Danalta, returning the gesture. “With protective mimicry there is an associated empathic faculty. While I don’t know what the limb gesture means exactly, I could feel that I was being complimented.”

Danalta, she had no doubt, was also aware of her embarrassment, but as they followed the two Earth-humans from the compartment the shape-changer did not speak of it.

The corridor outside was thronged with a menagerie of creatures, a few of whom resembled, in shape if not in size, nonintelligent species found on Sommaradva. She tried not to flinch as one of the small, red-furred bipeds of the species she had seen in charge of Reception brushed past, and she felt acutely anxious when enormous, six-limbed, multitentacled monsters of many times her body mass bore down on her. But not all of the creatures were frightening, or even ugly. A large crustacean with a beautifully marked carapace and hard exo-skeletal limbs clickedpast, its pincers opening and closing slowly as it talked to a truly lovely being who had at least thirty short, stubby legs and an overall coat of rippling, silvery fur. There were others she could not see clearly because of their protective envelopes and, in the case of the occupant of a mobile pressure vessel from which steam was escaping, she had no idea what weird or wonderful shape the vehicle was concealing.

The cacophony of hooting, chirping, gobbling, and moaning conversation could not be described, because it was totally unlike anything she had previously experienced.

“There is a much shorter route to the dining hall,” Danalta said as a spiney, membraneous being who looked like some kind of dark, oily vegetable shuffled past, its physical details clouded by the thick yellow fog inside its transparent suit. “But it would mean a trip through the water-filled Chalder wards, and your protective envelopes won’t be ready for another six, maybe seven days. How do you feel, and what do you think of the place so far?”

It was disconcerting and embarrassing to have Danalta, who could be nothing less than a wizard-healer of rulers, ask such questions of a mere warrior-surgeon. But the questions had been asked, and answers were expected. If the being wished to practice its art in the middle of a crowded corridor, it was certainly not her place to criticize.

Promptly she replied, “I feel confused, frightened, repelled, curious, and unsure of my ability to adapt. My confusion is such that I am unable to be more specific. I’m beginning to feel that the two Earth-humans walking in front of us, member of a species that a short time ago I would have considered totajly alien, have an almost welcome normality about them. And I feel that you, because you have made yourself the most familiar and reassuring entity in the hospital, are by your very nature the most alien of all. I haven’t had enough time, nor have I sufficient direct experience, to form any useful impressions or opinions about the hospital, but it may well be that the empathic faculty you possess has already made you aware of my feelings.

“Is the environment of the dining hall,” she added worriedly, “much worse than this?”

Danalta did not reply at once, and the two Earth-humans had been silent for some time. The one called Braithwaite had fallen slightly behind the other, and its head was turned to one side so that the fleshy protuberance that was one of its auricular organs would be better able to pick up her words. It seemed that her feelings were of interest not only to the shape-changer. When Danalta did speak, its words resembled a lecture rather than a simple reply to her question.

“A low level of empathy is common in most intelligent life-forms,” it said, “but only in one species, the natives of Cinruss, is there a perfect empathic faculty. You will meet one of them soon because it, too, is curious about newly discovered life-forms and will want to seek you out at the first opportunity. You can then compare my limited empathic faculty with Prilicla’s.

“My own limited faculty,” it went on, “is based on the observation of body movements, tensions, changes in skin coloration, and so on, rather than the direct reception of the subject’s emotional radiation. As a healer you, too, must have a degree of empathy with your patients, and on many occasions are able to sense their condition, or changes in their condition, without direct physical investigation. But no matter how refined the faculty may be, your thoughts are still private, exclusively your own property, and it is simply your stronger feelings that I detect—”

“The dining hall,” Braithwaite said suddenly. It turned into the wide, dooriess entrance, narrowly avoided colliding with a Nidian and two of the silver-furred beings who were leaving, and barked softly as they made derogatory remarks about its clumsiness. It pointed. “Over there, an empty table!”

For a moment Cha Thrat could not move a single limb as she stared across the vast expanse of highly polished floor with its regimented islands of eating benches and seats, grouped by size and shape to accommodate the incredible variety of beings using them. It was much, much worse than her experience of the corridors, where she had encountered the creatures two or three at a time. Here there were hundreds of them, grouped together into species or with several different life-forms occupying the same table.

There were beings who were terrifying in their obvious physical strength and range of natural weapons, others who were frightening, horrifying, and repugnant in the color and slime-sheen and nauseous growths covering their teguments; and many of them were the phantasms of Sommaradvan nightmare given frightful solidity. At a few of the tables were entities whose body and limb configurations were so utterly ridiculous that she had trouble believing her eyes.

“This way,” said Danalta, who had been waiting for Cha Thrat’s limbs to stop trembling. It led the way to the table claimed by Braithwaite, and she noticed that the furiture suited neither the physiologies of the Earth-humans nor the trio of exoskeletal crustaceans who were vacating it.

She wondered if she would ever be able to adapt to the ways of these chronically disorganized and untidy beings. At least on Sommaradva the people knew their place.

“The mechanism for food selection and delivery is similar to that on the ship,” Braithwaite said as she lowered herself carefully into the dreadfully uncomfortable chair and her weight made the menu display light up. “You tap in your physiological classification and it will list the food available. Until the catering computer hasbeen programmed with details of the combinations, consistencies, and platter displays you favor, it is likely to come in unsightly but nutritious lumps. You’ll soon get used to the system, but in the meantime I’ll order for you.”

“Thank you,” she said.

When it arrived the biggest lump looked like an uneven block of tasam. But it smelled like roasted cretsi, had the consistency of roasted cretsi, and, she found after trying a small corner, it tasted like roasted cretsi. She realized suddenly that she was hungry.

“It sometimes happens,” Braithwaite continued, “that the meals of your fellow diners, or even the diners themselves, are visually distressing to the point where it is affecting your appetite. You may keep one eye on your platter and close all the others; we won’t be offended.”

She did as it suggested, but kept one eye slightly open so that she could see Braithwaite, who was still watching her intently while pretending, for some odd, Earth-human reason, not to do so. While she ate, her mind went back to the incident with the ship ruler on Som-maradva, the voyage, and her reception here, and she realized that she was becoming suspicious, and irritated.

“On the subject of your stronger feelings,” Danalta said, seemingly intent upon resuming the lecture it had broken off at the entrance, “do you have any strong feelings against discussing personal or professional matters in the presence of strangers?”

The ship ruler, Chiang; paused with what looked like a piece of what had once been a liying creature halfway to its eating orifice. It said, “On Sommaradva they prefer to hear directly what other people think of them. And conversely, the presence of interested witnesses during a discussion of their affairs is often considered beneficial.”

Braithwaite, she saw, was concentrating too much attention on its disgusting meal. She turned as many eyes as would bear on the shape-changer, ignoring the many things she did not want to see in the background.

“Very well,” Danalta said, turning its alien mimic’s eyes on her. “You must already have realized, Cha Thrat, that your situation is unlike that of the other staff members who join the hospital for a probationary period. Appointments to Sector General are much sought after, and candidates must pass rigorous professional examinations and deep psychological investigation on their home worlds to ensure that they will have a fair chance of adapting to a multispecies hospital environment so that they will profit from our training.

“You were not screened in this manner,” her alien twin went on. “There were no professional examinations, no birth-to-maturity psych profiles, no objective measure of your worth as a healer. We know only that you come with a very high recommendation, from the Cultural Contact department of the Monitor Corps and, presumably, your professional colleagues on Sommaradva, a world and society about which we know little.

“You appreciate our difficulty, Cha Thrat?” it continued. “An untrained, unprepared, single-species-oriented being could cause untold harm to itself and to the hospital staff and patients. We have to know what exactly it is that we’re getting, and quickly.”

The others had stopped eating and so did she, even though there was a mouth free for speaking. She said, “As a stranger arriving and expecting to take up an appointment here, I thought that my treatment showed a lack of sensitivity, but I decided that alien behavior patterns, of which I have very limited experience, were to blame. Then I began to suspect that the harsh and insen-sitive treatment was deliberate, and I was being tested in some fashion. You have confirmed this suspicion, but I am seriously displeased that I was not informed of the test. Secret tests, to my mind, can often show a failure in the examiner.”

There was a long silence. She looked at Danalta and away again. The shape-changer’s body and features and expression were the mirror of her own, and told her nothing. She turned her attention to Braithwaite, who had been taking such a continuous and covert interest in her, and waited for a reaction.

For a moment the Earth-human’s two recessed eyes looked calmly into her four, and she began to feel very sure that the being was, in fact, a ruler and not a warrior as it said, “A secret test is sometimes given to avoid the unpleasantness of telling a candidate that it has failed. By pretending that no test took place, another and more acceptable reason, one that does not imply any lack of professional competence or psychological or emotional weakness, can be given for refusing the candidate an appointment. I’m sorry that you are displeased by the covert nature of the test, but in the circumstances we decided that it was better to . . . to . . .”

It broke off and began to bark quietly, as if there was something humorous in the situation, then went on. “We Earth-humans have an expression that covers your position very well. We threw you in at the deep end of the pool.”

“And what,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting the gesture of politeness due a ruler, “did you discover from this secret test?”

“We discovered,” Braithwaite said, and this time it did not bark, “that you are a very good swimmer.”

CHAPTER 2

BRAITHWAITE left before the others had finished eating, saying that O’Mara would have its intestines for hosiery supports if it was late back from lunch two days in a row. Cha Thrat knew nothing of the entity other than that it was a greatly respected and feared ruler of some kind, but the punishment for tardiness sounded a bit extreme. Danalta said that she should not worry about it, that Earth-humans frequently made such ridiculously exaggerated statements, that there was no factual basis to the remark, and that it was some kind of

linguistic code they used among themselves which had a tenuous connection with the mental associative process they called humor.

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

“I don’t,” Danalta said.

Ship ruler Chiang barked quietly but did not speak.

As a result, the shape-changer was their only guide on an even longer and more complicated journey to the place where Chiang was to undergo its examination— one of the casualty reception and observation wards, she was informed, reserved for the treatment of warmblooded, oxygen-breathing patients. Danalta had returned to its original body configuration of a large, dark-green, uneven ball that guided itself, with surprising speed and accuracy, through the wheeled and walking traffic in the corridors. Was the Sommaradvan form too difficult to maintain, she wondered, or did it now feel that such psychological props were no longer necessary?It was a surprisingly large compartment, rendered small by the number and variety of examination tables and associated equipment covering the floor and walls. There was an observation gallery for the use of visitors and trainees, and Danalta suggested that she choose the least uncomfortable chair while they were waiting. One of the silver-furred beings had already taken Chiang away to be prepared for the examination.

“We shall be able to see and hear everything that is happening,” Danalta said, “but they will not hear us unless you press the transmit button, just there, on the side of your chair. You may have to use it if they ask questions.”

Another silver-furred being, or perhaps it was the same one, undulated into the compartment, performed a seemingly purposeless act on an as-yet incomprehensible piece of equipment, then looked up at them briefly as it was leaving.

“And now we wait,” Danalta went on. “But you must have questions, Cha Thrat. There is enough time to answer a few of them.”

The shape-changer had retained the form of'a lumpy green hemisphere, featureless except for one bulbous eye and a small fleshy protuberance that seemed to combine the functions of hearing and speech. In time, she thought, one could become used to anything—except the lack of discipline among these people, and their unwillingness to define properly their areas of authority and responsibility.

Choosing her words with care, she said, “As yet I am too ignorant and confused by all this to ask the rightquestions. But could 1 begin by asking for a detailed clarification of your own duties and responsibilities, and the class of patient you treat?”

The answer left her feeling more confused than ever.

“I don’t treat patients,” Danalta replied, “and unless there was a major surgical emergency, I would not be asked to do so. As for my duties, I am part of the medical team on Rhabwar. That is the hospital’s special ambulance ship, which carries an operational crew of Monitor Corps officers and a medical team that assumes overall authority once the ship has reached the location of the vessel in distress or, as the case may be, the site of the disaster.

“The medical team,” it went on, ignoring Cha Thrat’s confusion, “which is led by the Cinrusskin empath, Prili-cla, also comprises Pathologist Murchison, an Earth-human female; Charge Nurse Naydrad, a Kelgian experienced in space rescue work; and myself. My job is to use the shape-changing ability to reach and render first aid to casualties who might be trapped in areas inaccessible to beings of limited physical adaptability, and do whatever I can to help the injured until the rescue crew is able to extricate and move them to the ambulance ship for rapid transfer to the hospital here. You will understand that by extruding limbs and sensors of any required shape, useful work can be done in the very restricted conditions found inside a badly damaged space vessel, and there are times when I can make a valuable contribution. But in honesty I must say that the real work is done by the hospital.

“And that,” it concluded, “is how I fit into this medical madhouse.”

With every word, Cha Thrat’s confusion had increased. Able and physically gifted this entity might be,but was it, in truth, merely a servant? But if Danalta had j sensed her confusion, it mistook the reason for it.

“I have other uses, too, of course,” it went on, and \ made a very Earth-human barking sound with its un-Earthly mouth. “As a comparative newcomer to the hospital, they send me to meet new arrivals like you on the assumption that—Pay attention, Cha Thrat! They’re bringing in your ex-patient.”

Two of the silver-furred beings, identified by Danalta as Kelgian operating room nurses, moved Chiang in on a powered litter, even though the ship ruler was quite capable of walking and was constantly reminding them of this fact. The Earth-human’s torso was draped in a green sheet so that only its head was visible. Chiang’s protests continued while they were transferring it to the examination table, until one of the nurses, in a manner completely lacking in the respect due a ruler, reminded it that it was a fully grown, mature entity who should stop acting like an infant.

Before the nurse had*finished speaking, a six-legged, exoskeletal being with a high, richly marked carapace entered and approached the examination table. Silently it held out its pincers and waited while a nurse sprayed them with something that dried into a thin, transparent film.

“That is Senior Physician Edanelt,” Danalta said. “It is a Melfan, physiological classification ELNT, whose reputation as a surgeon is—”

“Apologies for my personal ignorance,” Cha Thrat broke in. “Beyond the fact that I am a DCNF, the Earth-human is a DBDG, and the Melfan is an ELNT, I know nothing of your classification system.”

“You’ll learn,” the shape-changer said. “But for now, just watch and be ready for questions.”

But there were no questions. While the examinationproceeded, Edanelt did not speak and neither did the nurses or the patient. Cha Thrat learned the purpose of one of the mechanisms, a deep scanner that showed in minute detail the subdermal blood supply network, musculature, bone structure, and even the movement of the deepest underlying organs. The images were relayed to the observation gallery’s screen, together with a mass of physiological data that was presented graphically but in a form that was completely unintelligible to her,"That is something else you will learn,” Danalta said. Cha Thrat had been watching the screen closely, so captivated by Edanelt’s meticulous charting of her surgical repair work that she had not realized that she had been thinking aloud. She looked up in time to see the arrival of yet another and even more incredible being. “That,” Danalta said simply, “is Prilicla.” It was an insect, an enormous, incredibly fragile, flying insect that was tiny in comparison with the other beings in the room. From its tubular, exoskeletal body there projected six pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately formed manipulators, and four sets of wide, iridescent wings that were beating slowly as it flew toward the examination table and hovered above it. Suddenly it flipped over, attached its sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, and curved its extensible eyes down to regard the patient.

From somewhere in its body came a series of musical clicks and trills, which her translator relayed as “Friend Chiang, you look as if you’ve been in a war.”

“We’re not savages!” Cha Thrat protested angrily. “There hasn’t been a war on Sommaradva for eight generations—”

She stopped abruptly as the long, incredibly thin legs and partly folded wings of the insect began to shake. It was as if there were a strong wind blowing through theroom. Everyone on and around the examination table was staring at the little being, and then they were turning to look up at the observation gallery. At her.

“Prilicla is a true empath,” Danalta said sharply. “It feels what you are feeling. Please control your emotions!” It was very difficult to control her emotions: not only her anger at the implied insult to her now unwarlike race but also the feeling of utter disbelief that such control was necessary. She had often been forced to hide her feelings before superiors or patients, but trying to control them was a new experience. With a great effort, which in some obscure fashion seemed to be a negation of effort, she made herself calm.

“Thank you, new friend,” the empath trilled at her. It was no longer trembling as it returned its attention to Chiang.

“I’m wasting your valuable time, Doctors,” the Earth-human said. “Honestly, I feel fine.”

Prilicla dropped from the ceiling to hover above the site of Chiang’s recent injuries, and touched the scar tissue with a cluster of feather-light digits. It said, “I know how you feel, friend Chiang. And we are not wasting our time. Would you refuse us, a Melfan and a Cinrusskin who are both keen to enlarge our other-species experience, the opportunity of tinkering with an Earth-human, even a perfectly healthy one?”

“I suppose not,” Chiang said. It made another soft, barking sound and added, “But you would have found it more interesting if you’d seen me after the crash.”

The empath returned to the ceiling. To the Melfan it said, “What is your assessment, friend Edanelt?”

“The work is not as I would have performed it,” the Melfan replied, “but it is adequate.”

“Friend Edanelt,” the empath said gently, with a briefglance in the direction of the gallery, “we are all aware, with the exception of the newest member of our staff, that you consider as merely adequate the kind of surgery which Conway himself would describe as exemplary. It would be interesting to discuss the pre- and postoperative history.”

“That was my thought as well,” the Melfan said. There was a rapid, irregular tapping of its six boney feet, and it turned to face the observation gallery. “Will you join us, please.”

Quickly Cha Thrat disentangled herself from the alien chair and followed Danalta into the ward and across to the group at the table, aware that it was now her turn to undergo an even more searching examination, one that would establish her professional rather than her physical fitness to practice in Sector General.

The prospect must have worried her more than she realized because the empath was beginning to tremble again. And it was disconcerting, even frightening, to be so close to the Cinrusskin. On Sommaradva, large insects were to be avoided because they invariably possessed lethal stings. Her instincts told her to swat or run away from this one. She had hated insects and always avoided looking closely at them. Now she had no choice.

But there was a subtle visual attraction in the intricate symmetry of the extraordinarily fragile body and trembling limbs, whose dark sheen seemed to be reflecting colors that were not present in the room. The head was an alien, convoluted eggshell, so finely structured that the sensory and manipulatory organs that it supported seemed ready to fall off at the first sudden movement. But it was the complex structure and coloration of the partially folded wings, seemingly made of iridescent gossamer stretched across a framework of impossibly thin twigs, that made her realize that, alien or not, this insectwas one of the most beautiful creatures she had ever-seen—and she couid see it very clearly because its limbs] were no longer trembling.

“Thank you again, Cha Thrat,” the empath said. “Youi learn quickly. And don’t worry. We are your friends and| are wishing for your success.” “Edaneit’s feet were making irregular clicking noises against the floor, a sound that might possibly be indicating impatience. It said, “Please present your patient, Doctor.”

For a moment she looked down at the Earth-human,: at the pink, oddly formed alien body that, as a result of the accident, had become so familiar to her. She remembered how it had looked when she first saw it: the bleeding, open wounds and the fractured, protruding bones; the general condition that strongly indicated the immediate use of comforting medication until casualty termination. Even now she could not find the words to explain why she had not ended this Earth-human’s life. She looked up again at the Cinrusskin.

Prilicla did not speak, but she felt as if waves of reassurance and encouragement were emanating from the little empath. That was a ridiculous idea, of course, and probably the result of wishful and not very lucid thinking, but she felt comforted nonetheless.

“This patient,” Cha Thrat said calmly, “was one of three occupants of an aircraft that crashed into a mountain lake. A Sommaradvan pilot and another Earth-human were taken from the wreck before it sank, but they were already dead. The patient was taken ashore and looked at by a healer who was insufficiently qualified, and, knowing that I was spending a recreation period in the area, he sent for me.

“The patient had sustained many incised and lacerated wounds to the limbs and torso caused by violentcontact with the metal of the aircraft,” she went on. “There was continuing blood loss. Differences in the appearance of the limbs on the right and left sides indicated the presence of multiple fractures, one of which was visible where it projected through the tegument of the left leg. There was no evidence of blood coming from the patient’s breathing and speaking orifices, so it was assumed that no serious injuries had been sustained in the lung and abdominal areas. Naturally, very careful consideration had to be given before I agreed to take the case.” “Naturally,” Edanelt said. “You were faced with treating a member of an off-planet species, one possessing a physiology and metabolism of which you had no previous experience. Or had you previous experience? Did you consider sending for same-species medical assistance?”

“I had not seen an Earth-human before that time,” Cha Thrat replied. “I knew that one of their ships was in orbit around Sommaradva and that the process of establishing friendly contact was well advanced. I had heard that they were traveling widely among our principal cities, and that they often used our air transport, presumably to gain some experience of our level of technology. I sent a message to the nearest city hoping that they would relay it to the Earth-humans, but it was unlikely that it would arrive in time. The area is remote, mountainous, heavily forested, and thinly populated. The facilities were limited and time was short.”

“I understand,” Edanelt said. “Describe your procedure.”

Remembering, Cha Thrat looked again at the network of scars and the dark, contused areas where the subder-mal bleeding had not completely dispersed.

“At the time of treatment I was not aware of the fact that native pathogens have no effect on life-forms which evolved on a different planet, and it seemed to me thatthere was a grave danger of infection. It was also thought] that Sommaradvan medication and anesthetics would bel ineffective if not lethal. The only indicated procedur^. was to thoroughly irrigate the wounds, particularly those] associated with the fractures, with distilled water. While j reducing the fractures, some minor repairs were required to damaged blood vessels in the area. The incised, wounds were sutured, covered, and the fractured limbs immobilized. The work was done very quickly because the patient was conscious and . . .”

“Not for long,” Chiang said in a low voice. “I passed out.”

“. . . and the pulse seemed weak and irregular,” she went on, “even though I didn’t know the normal rate. The only means available to counteract shock and the effects of blood loss were external heating, provided by wood fires placed downwind so that smoke and ash would not contaminate the operative field, and pure water given intravenously when consciousness was lost. 1 was unsure whether our saline solution would be beneficial or toxic. I realize now that I was being overcautious, but I did not want to risk losing a limb.”

“Naturally,” Edanelt said. “Now describe your postoperative treatment.”

“The patient regained consciousness late that evening,” Cha Thrat went on. “It appeared to be mentally and verbally lucid, although the exact meaning of some words were unclear since they referred to the consigning of the faulty aircraft, the whole current situation, and myself to some hypothetical but extremely unpleasant afterlife. Since the native edible vegetation was likely to prove harmful, only water administered orally could be given. The patient complained of severe discomfort at the site of the wounds. Native pain-relief medication could not be given because it might prove toxic, so thatthe condition could only be treated, however inadequately, by verbal reassurance and encouragement—”

“For three days she never stopped talking,” Chiang said. “Asking questions about my work, and what I would be doing after I returned to active duty, when I was pretty sure that I would be returning in a box. She talked so much, sometimes, that I just fell asleep.”

There was a slight tremor apparent in Prilicla’s limbs. Cha Thrat wondered if the Cinrusskin was sensitive even to the Earth-human’s remembered pain.

She resumed. “In response to several urgent requests, five members of the patient’s species, one of whom was a healer, arrived with supplies of suitable food and supportive medication. Progress toward recovery was rapid thereafter. The Earth-human healer gave advice on diet and medication dosage, and it was free to examine the patient at any time, but I would not allow further surgical intervention. I should explain that on Sommaradva, a surgeon will not share or in any other way avoid personal responsibility for a patient. There was strong criticism, both personal and professional, of my standpoint, particularly from the Earth-human healer. I would not allow the patient to be moved to its ship until eighteen days after the operation, when I was convinced that full recuperation was assured.”

“She watched over me,” Chiang said, barking softly, “like an old mother hen.”

There was silence for what seemed to Cha Thrat to be a very long time, during which everyone looked at the Melfan while it regarded the patient. It was tapping one hard-tipped leg against the floor, but the sound it made was a thoughtful rather than an impatient one.

Finally it said, “Without immediate surgical attention you would undoubtedly have died as a result of your injuries, and you were fortunate indeed to receive thenecessary attention from an entity completely unfamiliar j with your physiological classification. Fortunate, too, in that the entity concerned was not only skilled, resource-, ful, and deeply concerned with your aftercare, but made the proper use of the limited facilities available to it. I can find no serious fault with the surgical work performed here, and the patient is, indeed, wasting the hospital’s time.”

Suddenly they were all looking at her, but it was the empath who spoke first.

“From Edanelt,” Prilicla said, “that is praise indeed.”

CHAPTER 3

THE private office of the Earth-human O’Mara was large, but the floor area was almost entirely covered by a variety of chairs, benches, recliners and frames designed for the use of the entities having business with the Chief Psychologist. Chiang took the indicated Earth-human chair and Cha Thrat chose a low, convoluted cage that looked as if it might not be too uncomfortable, and sat down.

She saw at once that O’Mara was an old Earth-human. The short, bristling fur covering the top and sides of its head, and the two thick crescents above its eyes, were the gray color of unpainted metal. But the heavy muscle structure apparent in the shoulders, upper limbs, and hands was not that of the other aged Earth-humans she had seen. The flexible, fleshy covers of its eyes, which were similar in color to its hair, did not droop as it studied her in every physical detail.

“You are a stranger among us, Cha Thrat,” it said abruptly. “1 am here to help you feel less strange, to answer questions you have been unable or unwilling to ask of others, and to see how your present abilities can be trained^and extended so that they may be put to the best possible use by the hospital.”

It turned its attention to Chiang. “My intention was to interview you separately, but for some reason you wish to be present during my initial talk with Cha Thrat. Can it be that you have heard, and believed, some of the things the staff say about me? Do you have delusions of being a gentleman and Cha Thrat a lady, albeit of a different physiological classification, who if not actually in distress is a friend in need of moral support? Is that it,Major?”

Chiang barked quietly but did not speak.

“A question,” Cha Thrat said. “Why do Earth-humans make that strange barking sound?”

O’Mara turned its head to regard her for a long moment, then it exhaled loudly and said, “I had expected your first question to be more . . . profound. But very well. The sound is called laughing, not barking, and in most cases it is a psychophysical mechanism for the release of minor degrees of tension. An Earth-human laughs because of a sudden relief from worry or fear, or to express scorn or disbelief or sarcasm, or in response to words or a situation that is ridiculous, illogical, or funny, or out of politeness when the situation or words are nor funny but the person responsible is of high rank. I shall not even try to explain sarcasm or the Earth-human sense of humor to you, because we don’t fullyunderstand them ourselves. For reasons that will become clearer the longer you stay here, I rarely laugh.”

For some reason Chiang barked—laughed—again.

Ignoring it, O’Mara went on. “Senior Physician Edan-elt is satisfied regarding your professional competence and suggests that I assign you to a suitable ward as soon as possible. Before that happens you must become more familiar with the layout, operation, and work of the hospital. You will find that it is a very dangerous and frightening place to the uninformed. At present, that is you.”

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

“The people who will impart this very necessary information,” it went on, “are of many different physiological types and medical and technical specialities. They will range from Diagnosticians, Senior Physicians, and healers like, or totally unlike, yourself, to nursing staff, and laboratory and maintenance technicians. Some of them will be your medical or administrative superiors, others will be nominally subordinate to you, but the knowledge they impart is equally valuable. I’m told that you are averse to sharing patient responsibility. While learning you may, at the discretion of the doctor in charge, be allowed to practice, but under close supervision. Do you understand, and agree?”

“I do,” Cha Thrat said unhappily. It was going to be her first year in the School for Warrior-Surgeons on Sommaradva all over again but, hopefully, without the attendant nonmedical problems.

“This interview,” O’Mara went on, “will not decide whether or not you are accepted as a permanent member of the hospital staff. I cannot tell you what or what not to do in every situation that will arise; you must learn by observation and attention to the words of your tutors and decide that for yourself. But if there are really serious problems that you are unable to solve for yourself, youmay come to me for guidance. Naturally, the fewer visits you make to this office the better disposed I shall feel toward you. I shall be receiving continuous reports on your progress, or lack of it, and it is these that will decide whether or not you remain here.”

It paused briefly and moved the digits of one hand through the short gray head-fur. She watched carefully but saw no sign of dislodged parasites, and decided that the movement was an unthinking one.

“This interview,” O’Mara continued, “is intended to explore some of the nonmedical aspects of your treatment of Chiang. In the short time available I would like to learn as much as possible about you as a person: your feelings, motivations, fears, likes, and dislikes, that sort of thing. Is there any area in which you would not want to answer questions, or would give obscure or false answers, because of moral or parental or community tribal conditioning during childhood or maturity? I must warn you that I am capable of detecting a lie, even the weird and wonderfully complicated lies that some of our extraterrestrials tell, but it takes time and 1 have none of thatto waste.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “There are matters involving sexual encounters that I would rather not discuss, but all other answers will be complete andtruthful.”

“Good!” O’Mara said. “I have no intention of entering that area and, hopefully, may never have to do so. At present I am interested in your thoughts and feelings between the time you first saw your patient and the decision to operate, any relevant discussion between the healer who was first on the scene and yourself, and the reason for the delay in starting the operation when you did take charge. If you had any strong feelings at thattime, please describe and explain them if you can, and speak as the thoughts come to you.”

For a moment Cha Thrat tried to recall her exact feelings at the time, then she said, “I was spending but not enjoying an enforced vacation in the area, because I would have preferred to continue working in my hospital instead of trying to devise ways of wasting time. When I heard of the accident I was almost pleased, thinking at first that the survivor was a Sommaradvan, and there was proper work for me to do. Then I saw the Earth-human’s injuries and knew that the local healer would not dare touch it because he was a healer of serviles. Even though the survivor was not a Sommaradvan warrior, it was plainly a warrior injured in the course of its duty.

“I am uncertain about your units of time measurement,” she went on. “The crash occurred just before sunrise, and 1 reached the shore of the lake where Chiang had been placed shortly before the time of the morning meal. Without proper medication or knowledge of the body structure, many things had to be considered. The sensible course would have been to allow the survivor to bleed to death or, out of kindness, expedite matters by immersing it in the lake . . .”

She stopped for a moment because O’Mara seemed to have a temporary blockage of the breathing passages, then she resumed. “After several examinations and evaluations of the risks, surgery was begun early in the afternoon. At the time I did not know that Chiang was the ruler of a ship.”

The two Earth-humans exchanged looks, and O’Mara said, “That was five, maybe six hours later. Do you usually take as long as that to reach a professional decision? And would it have made any difference if you had known of Chiang’s importance?”

“There were many risks to consider—I did not want to risk losing a limb,” she replied sharply, sensing a criticism. “And yes, it should have made a difference. A warrior-surgeon is in the same position to a ruler as the servile-healer is in relation to a warrior. I am forbidden to practice beyond my qualifications. The penalties are most severe, even allowing for the increasingly lax standards so prevalent these days. But in this instance, well, it was a unique situation. I felt frightened, and excited, and I would probably have acted in the same way.”

O’Mara said, “I’m glad you don’t normally practice surgery beyond your level of competence . . .”

“It’s a good thing she did,” Chiang said softly.

“. . . And your tutors will be relieved as well,” O’Mara went on. “But I’m interested in this stratification of the Sommaradvan medical profession. Can you tell me aboutthat?”

Puzzled by what seemed to be a nonsense question, she replied, “We are not forbidden to talk about anything. On Sommaradva there are three levels of persons —serviles, warriors, and rulers—and three levels of healers to care for them . . .”

At the bottom were the serviles, the people whose work was undemanding and repetitious—important in many respects, but completely without risk. They were a contented group, protected from gross physical damage, and the healers charged with their care used very simple procedures and medication such as herbs, poultices, and other traditional remedies. The second level, less numerous than the serviles, were the warriors, who occupied positions of responsibility and often great physicaldanger.

There had been no war on Sommaradva for many generations, but the warrior class had kept the name. They were the descendants of the people who had fought toprotect their homelands, hunted for food, raised city defenses, and generally performed the dangerous, responsible jobs while the serviles saw to their physical needs. Now they were the engineers, technicians, and scientists who still performed the high-risk jobs associated with mining, power generation, large-scale construction, and the protection of rulers. For that reason the injuries sustained by warriors were and always had been traumatic in nature, requiring surgical intervention or repair, and this work was the responsibility of the warrior-surgeons.

The ruler-healers had even greater responsibilities and, at times, much less reward or satisfaction in their work.

Protected against all physical accident or injury, the ruler class were the administrators, academics, researchers, and planners on Sommaradva. They were the .j people charged with the smooth running of the cities and the continents and the world, and the ills that affected them were invariably the phantasms of the mind. Their healers dealt in wizardry, spells, sympathetic magic, and all the other aspects of nonphysical medicine.

“Even from the earliest times the practice of healing has been so divided,” Cha Thrat concluded, “into physicians and surgeons and wizards.”

When she finished speaking, O’Mara looked down for a moment at its hands, which were placed palms down on its desktop, and said quietly, “It’s nice to know that I would rate the top level of the Sommaradvan medical profession, but I’m not sure that I like being called a wizard.” It looked up suddenly. “What happens if one of your warriors or rulers gets a simple tummyache, instead of a traumatic injury or an emotional problem? Or if a servile should accidentally break a leg? Or what if a servile or a warrior is dissatisfied and wants to better itself?”

“The Cultural Contact people sent you a full report onall this,” Chiang broke in, “as background material on the new medic.” Apologetically it added, “The decision to send Cha Thrat was taken at the last moment, and possibly the report arrived with us on Thromasaggar,”

O’Mara exhaled loudly, and she wondered if it was an expression of irritation at the interruption, then said, “And the hospital’s internal mail system operates at a speed considerably less than that of light. Please go on, Cha Thrat.”

“In the highly unlikely event of a servile having such an accident,” she said, “a request for treatment would be made to a warrior-surgeon who, depending on assessment of the injuries, would or would not agree to do the work. Responsibility for a patient is not taken lightly on Sommaradva, as is shown by the delay in treating Chiang, and the loss of a life, an organ, or a limb has serious repercussions for the surgeon.

“Should a warrior or ruler require simple medical attention,” she continued, '"a servile-healer would be instructed, and would indeed be honored, to provide thenecessary assistance.

“If a discontented servile or warrior is able as well as ambitious,” she went on, “elevation to a higher level is possible. But the examinations are wide-ranging and difficult, and it is much easier to remain at the level traditionally occupied by the family or tribe or, if a release from problems and responsibilities is desired, to go down a level. Promotions, even minor promotions within a level, are not easy on Sommaradva.”

“Nor are they easy here,” O’Mara said. “But why did you come to Sector General? Ambition, curiosity, or a release from problems at home?”

This was an important question, Cha Thrat knew, and the quality and accuracy of the answer would have an important bearing on whether or not she was accepted by the hospital. She tried to frame the answer so that it would be accurate, truthful, and brief, but before she could reply the ship ruler was talking again.

“We were grateful to Cha Thrat for saving my life,” Chiang said, speaking very quickly, “and we told her colleagues and superiors so in no uncertain language. The subject of treatment by other-species medics came up, and Sector General, where it was the rule rather than the exception. It was suggested to us, and we agreed, that Cha Thrat should come here. The Sommaradvan cultural contact is going very well and we didn’t want to risk offending, perhaps insulting, them by refusing.

“I realize that we bypassed the normal candidate selection procedure,” it continued. “But her already-proven ability to perform other-species surgery, on- me, made us sure that you would be interested in—”

O’Mara was holding up one hand, and it had not taken its attention from Cha Thrat while the other Earth-human had been speaking. It said, “Is this a political appointment, then, which we must accept whether we like it or not? But the original question remains. Why did you want to come here?”

“I didn’t want to come here,” she replied. “I was sent.”

Chiang covered its eyes suddenly with one hand, a gesture she had never seen it make before. O’Mara looked at her for a moment, then said, “Explain.”

“When the warriors of the Monitor Corps told us of the many different intelligent species who make up the Galactic Federation,” she replied, “and talked to me at great length about Sector General, where I could meet and work with many of these life-forms, I was curious and interested, but much too frightened by the prospect of meeting not one but nearly seventy different species to risk undergoing an experience that might give me a ruler’s disease. I told everyone who would listen my feelings, and reminded them of my utter lack of competence in relation to the level of surgery practiced here. I was not pretending to modesty. I really was, and am, ignorant. Because I was warrior level, I could not be forced, but it was strongly suggested by my colleagues and local rulers that I come.”

“Ignorance can be a temporary condition,” O’Mara said. “And it must have been a pretty strong suggestion. Why was it made?”

“In my hospital I am respected but not liked,” she went on, hoping that the anger in her voice was not reproduced by the translator. “In spite of being one of the first female warrior-surgeons, an innovation in itself, 1 am a traditionalist. I will not tolerate the reduced standards of professional behavior that are becoming increasingly prevalent, and I am critical of colleagues and superiors alike if they become lax. It was suggested to me that if I did not take advantage of the opportunity being offered by the Earth-humans, there would be a continuing increase of the nonmaterial pressures associated with my work as a surgeon. The situation was too complex for me to describe briefly, but my rulers made suggestions to the Monitor Corps, who were very reassuring and persuasive. The Earth-humans pulled while my superiors pushed, and I am here.

“Now that I am here,” she ended, “I shall use my limited abilities, under direction, as best I can.”

O’Mara was looking at the ship ruler now. Chiang had taken its hand away from its eyes, but its pink face was a deeper color than she had ever seen before.

“The Sommaradvan contact was widening nicely,” Chiang said, “but it was at a delicate stage. We didn’t | want to risk refusing what seemed to them to be such a small favor. And anyway, we were pretty sure that they were giving Cha Thrat a hard time and we—I—thought she would be happier here.”

“So,” O’Mara said, still looking at the ship ruler, whose face was now an even deeper shade of pink, “we have not only a political appointee but an unwilling volunteer and possibly a misfit. And, out of a misplaced sense of gratitude, you tried to conceal the true situation from me. That’s great!”

It turned to face Cha Thrat again and said, “I appreciate your truthfulness. This material will be useful in the preparation of your psych profile but it does not, in spite of what your misguided friend may think, preclude your acceptance by the hospital provided the other requirements are satisfied. Those you will learn during training, which will begin first thing in our morning.”

The words were coming faster than before, as if O’Mara’s time for talking were limited, as it went on. “In the outer office you will be given an information package, maps, class schedules, general rules, and advice, all printed in the most widely used language on Sommar-adva. Some of our trainees will tell you that their first and most difficult test was finding their rooms.

“Good luck, Cha Thrat.”

As she was picking her way between the alien furniture toward the door, O’Mara was saying “I’m primarily interested in your postoperative emotional condition, Major Chiang. Have there been any waking fears, recurrent nightmares, unexplained episodes of tension, with or without accompanying perspiration, associated with the operation? Any feelings of drowning, strangulation, increasing and unreasoning fear of the dark? . . .”

Truly, she thought, O’Mara was a great wizard.

In the outer office, the Earth-human Braithwaite gave verbal as well as printed advice together with a white band to wear on one of her upper arms. It signified to all that she was a trainee, it said, laughing, and likely to become confused and lost. Should that happen she could ask any member of the hospital staff for directions. It, too, ended by wishing her well.

Finding the way to her room was a nightmare worse, she was sure, than any that Chiang might be relating to O’Mara. She needed directions on two occasions, and each time she asked groups of the silver-furred Kelgians who seemed to be everywhere in the hospital, rather than any of the great, lumbering monsters or the squishy beings in chlorine envelopes who crowded past her. But on both occasions, in spite of the respectful manner of her request, the information was given in a most rude and abrupt fashion.

Her immediate feeling was one of severe personal offense. But then she saw that the Kelgians were rude and short-tempered even to other members of their own species, and she decided that it might be better not to upbraid them for their extreme lack of politeness toward astranger.

When she at last located her room, the door was wide open and the Earth-human Timmins was lying prone on the floor and holding a small metal box that was making quiet noises and winking its lights.

“Just testing,” Timmins said. “I’ll be finished in a moment. Look around. The operating instructions for everything are on the table. If there is anything you don’t understand, use the communicator to call Staff Training, they’ll help you.” It rolled onto its back and got to its feet in a way that was physically impossible for a Som-maradvan, and added, “What do you think of the place?”

“I’m—I’m surprised,” Cha Thrat said, feeling almostJMIWCS WHII fflshocked by its familiarity. “And delighted. It’s just likfl my quarters at home.”

“We aim to please,” Timmins said. It raised one hand! in a gesture she did not understand, and was gone.

For a long time she moved about the small room ex-j amining the furniture and equipment, not quite believing i what she saw and felt. She knew that photographs and i measurements had been taken of her quarters in the war- j rior-surgeon level at the Calgren House of Healing, but ' she had not expected such close attention to detail in the reproduction of her favorite pictures, wall coverings, ' lighting, and personal utilities. There were differences, too, some obvious and others subtle, to remind her that this place, despite appearances to the contrary, was not on her home world.

The room itself was larger and the furniture more comfortable, but there were no joints visible in the construction. It was as if every item had been fabricated in one piece. All the doors and drawers and fastenings in the replicas worked perfectly, which the originals had never done, and the air smelled different—in fact, it did not smell at all.

Gradually her initial feelings of pleasure and relief were being diluted by the realization that this was nothing more than a tiny, familiar bubble of normality inside a vast, alien, and terrifyingly complex structure. The fear and anxiety she was beginning to feel were greater than she had ever experienced on her incredibly distant home planet, and with them was a growing degree of loneliness so acute that it felt like an intense, physical hunger.

But she was not liked or wanted on far Sommaradva, and here, at least, they had taken positive measures to welcome her, so much so that she had to remain in this terrible place if only to discharge the obligation. And she would try to learn as much as she could before the hospital rulers decided that she was unsuitable and sent her home.

She should start learning now. Was the hunger real, she wondered, rather than imaginary? She had not been able to eat to repletion during the earlier visit to the dining hall because her mind had been on matters other than food. She began to plan the route there, and to the location of her first lecture in the morning, from her present position. But she did not feel like another trip along the hospital’s weirdly populated corridors just yet. She was very tired, and the room had a limited-menu food dispenser for trainees who did not wish to interrupt their studies by going to the dining hall. She referred to the list of foods suited to her metabolism and tapped for medium-to-large portions. When she was feeling comfortably distended, she tried to sleep.

The room and the corridor outside were full of quiet, unidentifiable sounds, and she did not know enough to be able to ignore them. Sleep would not come and she was beginning to feel afraid again, and to wonder if her thoughts and feelings were of the kind to interest the wizard O’Mara, and that made her even more fearful for her future at Sector General. While still lying at rest, physically if not mentally, she used the ceiling projection facility of the communicator to see what was happening on the entertainment and training channels.

According to the relevant information sheet, ten of the channels continuously screened some of the Galactic Federation’s most popular entertainment, current interest, and drama programs with a translator output, if required. But she discovered that while she could understand the words that the different physiological types were saying to and about each other, the accompanying actions were in turn horrifying, mystifying, ridicu-lous, or downright obscene to Sommaradvan eyes. Sh switched to the training channels.

There she had a choice of watching displays of cur-rently meaningless figures and tabulations on the temper atures, blood pressures, and pulse rates of about fif different life-forms, or surgical operations in progress that were visually disquieting and not calculated to luJ anyone to sleep.

In desperation, Cha Thrat tried the sound-only chan-nels. But the music she found, even when the volums was reduced to bare audibility, sounded as if it were coming from a piece of malfunctioning heavy machinery So it was a great surprise when the room alarm began reminding her, monotonously and with steadily increas-ing volume, that it was time to awaken if she required breakfast before her first lecture.

CHAPTER 4

The lecturer was a Nidian who had been introduced as Senior Physician Cresk-Sar. While it was speaking, it prowled up and down the line of trainees like some small, hairy, carnivorous beast, which meant that every few minutes it passed Cha Thrat so closely that she wanted to either fold her limbs in defensive mode or run away.

“To minimize verbal confusion during meetings with other-species entities,” it was saying, “and to avoid in-advertently giving offense, it is assumed that all members of the medical and support staff who do not belong to your own particular species are sexless. Whether you are addressing them directly or discussing them in their absence, you will always think of them as an 'it'. The only exception to this rule is when an other-species patient is being treated for a condition directly related to its sex, in which case the doctor must know whether it is male or female, or one of the multisexed species, if the proper treatment is to be carried out.

“I am a male Nidian DBDG,” Cresk-Sar went on, “but do not think of me as ‘he’ or ‘him’. Think of me as ‘it’.”

As the disgusting, hairy shape moved to within a few paces of her before turning away again, Cha Thrat thought that she would have no difficulty in thinking of this Senior Physician as “it.”

With the intention of finding someone less repulsive to look at, she turned her eyes toward the trainee closest to her—one of the three silver-furred Kelgians attending the lecture. It was strange, she thought, how the Ni-dian’s fur made her cringe inwardly while the equally alien covering of the Kelgian relaxed and calmed her like a work of great art. The fur was in constant motion, with long, slow ripples moving from the creature’s conical head right down to its tail, with occasional cross-eddies and wavelets appearing, as if the incredibly fine pelt was a liquid stirred by an unfelt wind. At first she thought the movements were random, but a pattern of ripples and eddies seemed to be developing the more closely shewatched.

“What are you staring at?” the Kelgian said suddenly, its translated words overlaid by the moaning and hissing sounds of its native speech. “Do I have a bald patch, or something?”

“I’m sorry, I had not meant to give offense,” Cha Thrat said. “Your fur is beautiful and I couldn’t help admiring it the way it moves—”

“Pay attention, you two!” the Senior Physician saidj sharply. It moved closer, looked up at each of them in turn, then went prowling down the line again.

“Cresk-Sar’s fur,” the Kelgian said softly, “is a sight. It makes me think that invisible and no doubt imaginary parasites are about to change their abode. It gives me a terrible psychosomatic itch.”

This time Cresk-Sar gave them another long look, made an irritated, snuffling sound that did aot translate, and continued with what it was saying.

“. . . There is a great deal of illogical behavior associated with sexual differences,” it went on, “and I must emphasize once again, unless the sex of a particular entity has a direct bearing on its course of treatment, the subject must be ignored if not deliberately avoided. Some of you may consider that such knowledge of another species would be helpful, conversationally useful during off-duty meetings or, as often happens in this place, when a particularly interesting piece of gossip is circulating. But believe me, in this area, ignorance is a virtue.”

“Surely,” said a Melfan trainee halfway down the line, “there are interspecies social occasions, shared meals or lectures, when it would be a gross act of bad manners to ignore another intelligent and socially aware person’s gender. I think that—”

“And I think,” Cresk-Sar said with a bark, or laugh, “that you are what our Earth-human friends call a gentleman. You haven’t been listening. Ignore the difference. Consider everyone who is not of your own species as neuter. In any case, you would have to observe some of our other-species people very closely to tell the differ-ence, and that in itself could cause serious embarrassment. In the case of Hudlar life-mates, who alternate between male and female mode, the behavior patterns are quite complex.”

“What would happen,” the Keigian beside her said, “if they should go, completely or partly, out of synchronization?”

From the line of trainees there were a number of different sounds, none of which registered on her translator. The Senior Physician was looking at the Kelgian, whose fur, for some reason, had begun to move in rapid, irregular ripples.

“I shall treat that as a serious question,” Cresk-Sar said, “although I doubt that it was intended as such. Rather than answer it myself, I shall ask one of you to do so. Would the Hudlar trainee please step forward.” So that, Cha Thrat thought, is a Hudlar. It was a squat, heavy life-form with a hard, almost featureless dark-gray skin, discolored by patches of the dried paint she had seen it spraying on itself before they had entered the lecture theater, and she had decided then that it was extremely careless in its application of cosmetics. The body was supported on six heavy tentacles, each of which terminated in a cluster of flexible digits, curled inward so that the weight was borne on heavy knuckles and the fingers remained clear of the floor.

There were no body openings that she could see, not even in the head, which contained eyes protected by hard, transparent shells and a semicircular membrane that vibrated to produce the creature’s words as it turned toward them.

“It is very simple, respected colleagues,” the Hudlar said. “While I am presently male, Hudlars are all sexually neutral until puberty, after which the direction taken is dependent on social-environmental influences,sometimes quite subtle influences that do not involva body contact. A picture of an attractive male-mode Hudi lar might impel one from neuter toward female mode, or the other way around. A conscious choice can be made if the career one intends to follow favors a particular sex. Unless one is mated, the postpuberty sex choice is fixed for the remainder of one’s life.

“When two adults become life-mates,” the Hudlar went on, “that is, when they join for the purpose of becoming parents and not simply for temporary pleasure, the sex changes are initiated shortly after conception. By the time the child is born the male has become much less aggressive, more attentive and emotionally oriented ward its mate, while its mate is beginning to lose the female characteristics. Following parturition, the process continues, with the father-that-was taking responsibility for the child while progressing to full female mode, and the mother develops all the male characteristics that will enable it to be a father-to-be.

“There is, of course, a time during which both life-mates are emotional neuters,” the Hudlar added, “but this is a period of the pregnancy when physical coupling is contraindicated.”

“Thank you,” the Senior Physician said, but held up a small, hairy hand to indicate that the Hudlar should remain where it was. “Any further comments, questions?”

It was looking at the Kelgian beside her, the one who had asked the original question, but Cha Thrat spoke on impulse.

“It seems to me that the Hudlars are fortunate,” she said, “in that they are not troubled by the situation of the members of one sex considering themselves innately superior to the other, as is the case on Sommaradva . . .

“And on too many other worlds of the Federation,” the Kelgian interjected, the fur rising into tufts behind itshead.

“. . . I thank the Hudlar for its explanation,” Cha Thratwent on, “but I was surprised to find that it is presently a male. My first thought, based on observation of what I mistakenly assumed to be cosmetic paint on its body, was that it was female.”

The Hudlar’s speaking membrane began to vibrate, but Cresk-Sar held its hand up for silence and said, “What are your second thoughts?”

Confused, she stared at the hairy little creature, wondering what she was expected to say.

“Come, come,” Cresk-Sar barked. “Tell us what other thoughts, observations, assumptions, mistaken or otherwise, have been going through your Sommaradvan mind regarding this life-form. Think and speak clearly.”

Cha Thrat turned all her eyes on it in a way that, had it been a Sommaradvan, would have elicited an immediate verbal and physical response. She said, “My first thoughts were as described. My second was that it might be Hudlar males rather than females, or perhaps both, who wear decorative paint. Then I observed that the being’s movements were careful, as if it was afraid of injuring nearby people and equipment, the movements of a gentle being of immense physical strength. That taken in conjunction with the low, squat form of the body, with six rather than two or four limbs, suggested that it was a native of a dense, heavy-gravity world with comparable atmospheric pressure, where an accidental fall would be damaging. The very hard but flexible skin, which is unbroken by any permanent body orifices for the intake or elimination of food, suggested that the paint which I had observed the Hudlar spraying onto itself might be a nutrient solution.”

The eyes of Cresk-Sar, and the variegated visual sen-sors of the other trainees, were watching her steadily. Nobody spoke.

Hesitantly she added, “Another thought, wonderful and exciting but, I expect, pure supposition, is that if this heavy-gravity, high-pressure creature can live unprotected in the hospital surroundings, its body must be capable of containing its own very high internal pressures, and an even lower pressure environment should not inconvenience it . . .

“It might be possible,” she went on, expecting a storm of ridicule from the Nidian Senior, “for it to work unprotected in space. This would mean that—”

“At any moment,” Cresk-Sar said, holding its hand up, “you will give me its physiological classification coding, even though we haven’t covered that yet. Is this the first time you’ve seen a Hudlar?”

“I saw two of them in the dining hall,” she replied, “but at the time I was too confused to know what I was seeing.”

“May your confusion continue to diminish, Cha Thrat,” Cresk-Sar said. Turning its head toward the others, it went on, “This trainee has displayed the qualities of observation and deduction that, when trained and refined, will enable you to live among, understand, and . treat your other-species colleagues and patients. However, I would advise you not to think of a particular life-form as a Nidian, a Hudlar, a Kelgian, a Melfan, or a I Sommaradvan, that is, by their planets of origin, but by • their physiological classifications, DBDG, FROB, DBLF, ELNT, or DCNF. That way you will always be ; reminded of their pressure, gravity, and atmosphere requirements, basic metabolism and other physiological needs, and know immediately when there is a potential environmental threat to them or to yourselves.”

It continued, “Should a PVSJ, a chlorine-breathingnative of Illensa, accidentally rupture its pressure envelope, the risk to the being concerned and to any oxygen-breathing D, E, and F prefixes in the vicinity would be extreme. And, if you are ever called to a space rescue situation, there may be times when an urgent and accurate identification of the casualty’s physiological classification, and therefore its life-support requirements, may depend on a single limb or small area of body surface glimpsed under shifting wreckage.

“You must train yourselves to be aware, instinctively, of all the differences of the people around you,” Cresk-Sar went on, giving a low laugh-bark, “if only to know whom it is safe to jostle in the corridors. And now I will take you to the wards for your initial patient experience before my next class in—”

“What about the classification system?” said the silver-furred Kelgian—the DBLF, Cha Thrat corrected herself—beside her. “If it is as important as you say it is, surely you are lacking in the qualities of a teacher not to have explained it to us.”

Cresk-Sar walked slowly toward the speaker, and she wondered if she could possibly reduce the verbal violence to come by asking the Senior Physician another and more politely worded question. But for some reason the Nidian completely ignored the DBLF and spoke instead to Cha Thrat.

“You will already have observed,” it said, “that these Kelgian DBLF life-forms are outspoken, ill-mannered, rude, and completely lacking in tact . . .”

You should talk, Cha Thrat thought.

“. . . But there are good psychophysiological reasons for this,” it went on. “Because of inadequacies in the Kelgian speech organs, their spoken language lacks modulation, inflection, and all emotional expression. But they are compensated by their highly mobile fur that acts, so far as another Kelgian is concerned, as a perfect but uncontrollable mirror to the speaker’s emotional state. As a result the concept of lying, of being diplomatic, tactful, or even polite is completely alien to them. A DBLF says exactly what it means or feels, because the fur reveals its feelings from moment to moment and to do otherwise would be sheer stupidity. The opposite also holds true, because politeness and the verbal circumlocution used by many species confuses and irritates them.

“You will find some of the personalities here as alien as the persons,” it continued. “Considering the fact that you have met only one other-species being before your arrival here, your behavior today makes me sure that you will have not trouble in adapting to—”

“Teacher’s pet,” the DBLF said, its fur tufting into spikes. “I was the one who asked the question, remember?”

“That you did,” Cresk-Sar replied, looking at the wall chronometer. “Tapes covering the life-form physiological classification system will be sent to your quarters sometime today. You must study the visual material they con- -| tain, carefully and repeatedly, and use your translators on the spoken commentary. But now I have time only to outline the basics of the system.”

It turned suddenly and resumed its place facing them, > Plainly the answer to the question was being directed,! toward everyone.

“Unless you have already been attached to one of the smaller, multienvironment hospitals,” Cresk-Sar said, “you will normally have encountered off-world patients one species at a time, probably on a short-term basis as a result of a ship accident, and you would refer to them by their planets of origin. But I must stress once again, the rapid and accurate identification of incoming patients isvital, because all too often they are in no condition to furnish the necessary physiological data themselves. Here we have evolved a basic, four-letter physiological classification system that enables us to provide the required life-support and initial treatment pending a more detailed investigation, if that should be necessary, by Pathology. It works like this.

“The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution reached by the species when it acquired intelligence,” it continued. “The second indicates the type and distribution of limbs, sense organs, and body orifices, and the remaining two letters refer to the combination of metabolism and food and air requirements associated with the home planet’s gravity and atmospheric pressure, which in turn gives an indication of the physical mass and protective tegument possessed by the being.”

Cresk-Sar barked softly before saying “Usually I have to remind our other-species trainees at this point that the initial letter of their classification should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, because the degree of physical evolution is controlled by environmental factors and bears little relation to the degree of intelligence . . .”

Species with the prefix A, B, or C, it went on to explain, were water-breathers. On most worlds, life had originated in the sea, and these beings had developed intelligence without having to leave it. D through F were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, into which group most of the intelligent races of the Federation fell, and the G and 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 these came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically, and the downright weird types. Into these categories fell the radiation-eaters, the ultra-cold-blooded or crystalline beings, and entities ca-pable of modifying their physical structure at will. However, those beings possessing extrasensory powers, telekinesis, or teleportation sufficiently well developed to make ambulatory or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V regardless of their size, shape, or environmental background.

'There are anomalies in the system,” the Senior Physician continued, “and these must be bjamed on the lack of imagination and foresight of the originator. The AACP life-form, for example, has a vegetable metabolism. Normally the A prefix denotes a water-breather, there being nothing lower on our evolutionary coding scale than the piscatorial life-forms. But the double-A prefix, the AACPs, are mobile, intelligent vegetables, and plant life evolved before the fish.

“And now,” it said, looking at the chronometer again, “you will meet some of these weird and wonderful and perhaps horrifying creatures. It is the hospital’s policy to give you the earliest possible opportunity of getting to know and work with the patients and staff members. Regardless of your position or seniority in your home-planet hospitals, your rank here will be that of Junior or Trainee Nurse—until, that is, you can convince me that your professional competence warrants a higher rating.

“I am not easy to convince,” Cresk-Sar added as it began moving toward the exit. “Follow me, please.”

It was not easy to follow the Senior Physician because it moved fast for such a small being, and Cha Thrat had the feeling that the other trainees were more experienced in navigating the hospital corridors than she was. But then she noticed that the Hudlar—the FROB—was falling behind as well.

“For obvious reasons,” the FROB said as they drew level, “the people here give me plenty of room. If youwere to stay directly behind me, together we might significantly increase our speed.”

She had a sudden and shocking feeling of unreality, as if she had been plunged into a nightmare world that was both terrifying and wonderful, a world in which courtesy was being shown by a horrendous beast that was capable of tearing her apart without straining a muscle on one of its six tentacles. But even if this were a dream, the proper response had to be made.

“You are most considerate,” she said. “Thank you.” The being’s membrane vibrated but the sound did not translate. Then it said, “About the nutrient paint you noticed earlier, to complete your information and to show how close your deductions were to the actuality, the paint is not necessary at home. There the atmosphere is so dense and thickly packed with edible, floating organisms that it resembles a semiliquid soup, a food source that, because of our high metabolic rate, is absorbed continuously. As you can see, the last paint application has almost disappeared and is due for renewal.”

Before she could reply, one of the Kelgian DBLFs fell back and said, “I was nearly walked on by a Tralthan just now. This looks like a good idea. There’s room for one more.”

It moved closer to Cha Thrat so that they were both protected by the Hudlar’s massive body. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “I do not wish to give offense, but I cannot tell the difference between one Kelgian and another. Are you the DBLF whose fur I was admiring during the lecture?”

“Admiring, you used the right word!” the Kelgiansaid, its fur running in concentric waves from head totail. “Don’t worry about it. If we had more than oneSommaradvan, I couldn’t tell the difference either.”

Suddenly the Hudlar stopped and, looking past itsspeaking membrane, she saw why. The whole group ofl trainees had halted and Cresk-Sar was beckoning to af Melfan and the other two Kelgians.

“This is a Tralthan post-op recovery ward,” it said.l You two will report here after lectures every day until] instructed otherwise. You don’t need protective suits,; the air is breathable, and trace quantities of Tralthan) body odor should be ignored. Go in, you’re expected.”

When the party was on its way again she noticed aJ few of the trainees detaching themselves without being told, and assumed that they had joined the class earlier and had already been assigned wards. One of them was her Hudlar crowd controller. Very soon the group had shrunk until there was only the DBLF and herself left, and Cresk-Sar was pointing at the Kelgian.

“This is a PVSJ medical ward,” it said briskly. “You will be met inside the lock antechamber and instructed in the use of your protective envelope before going through. You will then—”

“But they’re chlorine-breathers in there!” the Kelgian protested, its fur standing out in spikes. “Can’t you give me a ward where I can at least breathe the air? Do you try to make it as difficult as possible for the new people? What happens if I accidentally rupture my suit?”

“To answer your questions in turn,” the Senior Physician replied, “No. You’ve discovered that. And the nearby patients would have their existing injuries complicated by oxygen contamination.”

“What about me, stupid?”

“You,” Cresk-Sar said, “would suffer chlorine poisoning. And what the Charge Nurse would do to you if you recovered doesn’t bear thinking about.”

She had to concentrate so hard on keeping pace with the Senior Physician as they descended three levels, and traversed seemingly endless and overpopulated corri-dors, that there was no chance to ask what she would be expected to do. But then Cresk-Sar stopped at an enormous lock entrance that was visually identified in the Galactic Federation’s principal written languages—but which did not, of course, include Sommaradvan—and answered the unasked question.

“This is the hospital’s AUGL ward,” it said. “You will find that the patients, all natives of the ocean work! of Chalderescol, are among the most visually fearsome beings you are ever likely to encounter. But they are harmless so long as you—”

“The A prefix” Cha Thrat broke in urgently, “denotes water-breathers.”

“Correct,” the Nidian said. “What’s wrong? Is there a problem O’Mara didn’t tell me about? Are you uncomfortable or afraid in water?”

“No,” Cha Thrat said. “1 enjoy swimming, on the surface. The problem is my lack of a protective garment.”

Cresk-Sar barked and said, “There is no problem. The more complex protective equipment for heavy-gravity, high-pressure, and elevated temperature work needs time to produce, but a simple, water-impermeable, contoured envelope with air and communication systems is an easy job for the fabricator. Your suit is waiting for youinside.”

This time the Senior Physician went with her, explaining that, as she was a new life-form to the hospital, it had to ensure that her equipment functioned properly and comfortably. But in the event, it was the being waiting for them in the lock antechamber who immediately took charge and did all the talking.

“Cha Thrat,” it said briskly, “I am Charge Nurse Hredlichli, a PVSJ. Your protective envelope is in two pieces. Climb into the lower half, pulling on one leg at a time, in whichever order you find most convenient,using the heavier arms encircling your waist. Use the same four arms to pull on the top half, inserting the head; and four shoulder-mounted arms first. You will think that the limb end-sections are small, but this is to ensure a tight fit and maximum sensitivity for the digits. Don’t seal the waist joint until you know that your air supply is working. When you are sealed in, I’d show you the systems checks that must be performed at every dressing. Then you will remove the envelope and put it on again, repeating the process until we are both happy with your performance. Please begin.”

Hredlichli circled her, giving advice and directions during the first three dressings, and then seemed to ignore her while it talked to the Senior Physician. The spiney, membraneous body, looking like a haphazard collection of oily, unhealthy vegetation, was obscured by the yellow chlorine fog inside the being’s protective envelope. It was impossible to tell where the Charge Nurse’s attention was directed, because Cha Thrat had been unable to locate its eyes.

“We are seriously understaffed at present,” Hredlichli was saying, “with three of my best nurses on special post-op recovery cases to the exclusion of all else. Are you hungry?”

Cha Thrat felt that the question was for her, but was unsure of the type of answer to give—the subservient, self-negating reply expected by a ruler or the accurate, truthful kind due a warrior-level colleague. Ignorant as she was of Hredlichli’s exact status, she did her best to combine the two.

“I am hungry,” she replied, using the opportunity to test her suit’s communicator, “but the condition is not yet so advanced that it would impair me physically.”

“Good!” said Hredlichli. “As a junior-in-training you will soon discover that practically everyone and every-thing takes precedence over you. If this causes emotional tension, which may be expressed as verbal resentment or anger, try not to release it until you are out of my ward. You will be allowed to visit your dining hall, for a strictly limited period, as soon as someone returns to relieve you. And now I think you know how your suit works . . .”

Cresk-Sar turned toward the entrance. Lifting one tiny, hairy hand, it said, “Good luck, Cha Thrat.”

“. . . So we’ll go inside to the Nurses’ Station,” it went on, seeming to ignore the departing Nidian. “Double-check your suit seals and follow me.”

She found herself in a surprisingly small compartment that had one transparent wall giving a view into a dim green world where the difference between the inhabitants and the decorative vegetation designed to make them feel at home was unclear. The other three sides of the room were covered by storage units, monitor screens, and equipment whose purpose she could not even guess at. The entire ceiling was devoted to brightly colored signs and geometrical shapes.

“We have a very good staff and patient safety record in this ward,” the Charge Nurse went on, “and I don’t want you to spoil it. Should you damage your suit and be in danger of drowning, however, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is not advisable between oxygen- and chlorine-breathers, so you must move quickly to one of the emergency air chambers marked so"—she indicated one of the ceiling designs—"and await rescue. But the accident, or should I say the serious inconvenience, that you must guard against is pollution by patient body wastes. Filtration or replacement of the water volume in a ward this size is a major maintenance operation that would hamper our work and get us talked about in derogatory fashion all over the hospital.”

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

Why had she come to this awful place, she wondered, ] and could she justify to herself her immediate resignation? In spite of the warnings from O’Mara and Cresk-Sar that she would be starting at the lowest level, this was not work for a Sommaradvan warrior-surgeon. If word of what she was expected to do were to get back to her erstwhile colleagues, she would be forced into the life of a recluse. But these people were not likely to tell her people about it because, to them, such activities were so commonplace as to be unworthy of mention. Perhaps she would be found unsuitable or incompetent and dismissed from the hospital with this demeaning and unpleasant episode secret and her honor intact. But she was dreading what was coming next.

But it was not nearly as bad as she had expected.

“The patients usually know in advance when they need to evacuate,” Hredlichli went on, “and will call the nurse with time to spare. Should you be called for this purpose, the equipment you require is stored in the compartment with its door marked like this.” A frondlike arm appeared inside its protective envelope, pointing to another distinctively marked panel on the ceiling, then to its distant, brightly lit twin that shone through the green dimness of,the ward. It went on, “But don’t worry, the patient will know all about the operation of the equipment and will prefer to help itself. Most of them dislike using the thing, you’ll find that Chalders embarrass easily, and any who are not immobilized will prefer to use the room marked with that symbol. It is a long, narrow compartment barely large enough to contain one Chalder and is operated by the user. Extraction and filtration of the wastes is automatic, and if anything goes wrong it is a Maintenance problem.”

Hredlichli’s appendage rose again to point toward theconfusion of shapes at the other end of the ward. “If you need help with a patient, ask Nurse Towan. Most of its time is being spent with a seriously ill patient, so don’t distract it unnecessarily. Later today I shall instruct you on the Chalder optimum pulse rate, pressure, and body temperature, and how and where to obtain them. The vital signs are taken and recorded at regular intervals, the frequency depending on the condition of the patient. You will also be shown how to sterilize and dress surgical wounds, which is not a simple job on a water-breather, and in a few days you may be allowed to do it yourself. But first you must get to know your patients.”

The appendage was pointing at a doorless opening into the main ward. A sudden paralysis seemed to be affecting all twelve of Cha Thrat’s limbs, and she tried desperately to delay any movement by asking questions. “Nurse Towan,” she said. “What species is it?” “An AMSL,” the Charge Nurse replied. “A Creppel-lian octopoid, and Sector General qualified, so you have nothing to worry about. The patients know that we are being assigned a new-species trainee and are expecting you. Your body configuration is well suited to the water medium, so I suggest that you go in and begin by teaching yourself how to move about the ward.”

“Please, a further question,” Cha Thrat said desperately. “The AMSL is a water-breather. Why aren’t all of the medical attendants here water-breathers? Wouldn’t it be simpler if they were Chalders, the same species astheir patients?”

“You haven’t even met a patient and already you’re trying to reorganize the ward!” Hredlichli said, producing another appendage from somewhere and gesticulating with them both. “There are two reasons why we don’t do as you suggest. One is that very large patients can be effectively treated by small medics, and SectorGeneral was designed with precisely that situation in mind. The second is structural. Personnel accommodation and recreation space is at a premium here, and can you imagine how much of it would be taken up by the life-support requirements of, say, a basic medical and nursing staff of one hundred water-breathing Chalders?"But enough of this,” the Charge Nurse said impatiently. “Go into the ward and act as if you know what you’re doing. We’ll talk later. If I don’t go for lunch this instant, they’ll find me in a corridor dead from malnutrition . . .”

It seemed like a very long time before she was able to venture into the green immensity of the ward, and then she swam only as far as a structural support less than five body-lengths from the entrance. The harsh, angular contours of the metal had been visually softened by irregular areas of paint and the attachment of artificial foliage, Cha Thrat saw as she swam around it, no doubt to make it resemble the vegetation of the home world.

Hredlichli had been right; she was able to adapt quickly to movement in water. When she kicked out with her feet and simultaneously swept the four mid-arms downward, she spurted forward and coasted for three body-lengths. When one or two of the mid-arms were held steady and the hands angled, quite delicate directional and positional control was possible. Previously she had never been able to remain under water for more than a few moments, and she was beginning to really enjoy the sensation. She continued to circle the structural member, moving up and down its entire length and examining the artificial vegetation even more closely. There were clusters of what could have been underwater fruit, which glowed with multihued light at her approach, revealing themselves to be a part of the ward lighting system. But the pleasures of discovery were short-lived.

One of the long, dark-green, motionless shadows lying along the floor of the ward had detached itself and was rushing silently toward her. It slowed, took monstrous, terrifying, three-dimensional form and began to circle her slowly as she had been circling the structuralsupport.

The creature was like an enormous, armored fish with a heavy, knife-edged tail, a seemingly haphazard arrangement of stubby fins, and a thick ring of ribbon tentacles projecting from the few gaps in its organic body-armor. The tentacles lay flat along its sides when it was moving forward, but they were long enough to reach beyond the thick, blunt wedge of the head. One tiny, lidless eye watched her as it circled closer.

Suddenly the head divided to reveal a vast pink cavern of a mouth edged with row upon row of enormous white teeth. It drifted closer, so that she could even see the periodic fogging of the water around its gills. The mouth opened even wider. “Hello, Nurse,” it said shyly.

CHAPTER 5

ChaThrat was not sure whether the AUGL ward’s duty roster had been drawn up by Charge Nurse Hredlichli or a seriously deranged computer overlooked by the Maintenance staff, and she could not ask without calling into question someone’s level of mental compe-tence. It was unbalanced, she thought, whether “it” referred to the roster, some anonymous Maintenance entity, or Hredlichli itself. After six days and two and a half nights darting about like an overworked minnow among her outsized Chalders, she had been given two whole days in which she could do whatever she liked— provided that part of the free time was spent at her studies.

The proportion suggested by their noxious Nidian tutor, Cresk-Sar, was ninety-nine percent.

Sector General’s corridors held fewer terrors for her now, and she was trying to decide whether to go exploring or continue studying when her door signal sounded.

“Tarsedth?” she called. “Come in.”

“I hope that question refers to my purpose in calling,” the Kelgian trainee said as it undulated into the room, “and not another expression of doubt regarding my ideality. You should know me by new!”

Cha Thrat also knew that no reply was often the best reply.

The DBLF came to a halt in front of the viewscreen and went on. “What’s that, an ELNT lower mandible? You’re lucky, Cha Thrat. You’ve gotten the hang of this physiological classification business a lot faster than the rest of us, or is it just that you study every waking minute? When Cresk-Sar pulled that three-second visual on us and you identified it as a blow-up of an FGLI large metatarsal and phalange before the picture was off the screen—”

“You’re right, I was lucky,” Cha Thrat broke in. “We had Diagnostician Thornnastor in the ward two days earlier. There was a small misunderstanding, a piece of clumsiness on my part, while we were presenting the patient for examination. For a few moments I had a veryclose look at a Tralthan large toe while the foot was trying not to step on me.”

“And I suppose Hredlichli jumped on you with all five of those squishy things it uses for feet?”

“It told me . . .” Cha Thrat began, but Tarsedth’s mouth and fur had not stopped moving.

“I’m sorry for you,” it went on. “That is one tough chlorine-breather. It was Charge Nurse on my PVSJ ward before it applied for other-species duty with the Chalders, and I’ve been told all about it, including something that happened between it and a PVSJ Senior Physician on Level Fifty-three. I wish I knew what did happen. They tried to explain it to me but who knows what is right, wrong, normal, or utterly scandalous behavior where chlorine-breathers are concerned? Some of the people in this hospital are strange.”

Cha Thrat stared for a moment at the thirty-limbed, silvery body that sat like a furry question mark in front of the viewscreen. “I agree,” she said.

Returning to the original question, Tarsedth said, “Are you in trouble with Hredlichli? About your clumsiness when a Diagnostician was in the ward, I mean? Will it report you to Cresk-Sar?”

“I don’t know,” Cha Thrat replied. “After we’d finished the evening surgical round, it said that I should take myself out of its sight for the next two days, and no doubt I would enjoy that as much as it would. Did I tell you that it allows me to change some of the surgical dressings now? Under its supervision, of course, and the wounds concerned are almost healed.”

“Well,” Tarsedth said, “your trouble can’t be too serious if it’s having you back again. What are you going to do with your two days? Study?”

“Not all the time,” she replied. “I want to explore the hospital, the areas where my protective suit will take me,that is. Cresk-Sar’s high-speed tour and lecture sessions don’t give me enough time to stop and ask questions.”

The Kelgian dropped another three or four sets of limbs to the floor, a clear indication that it was about to leave.

“You’ll be living dangerously, Cha Thrat,” it said. “I’m content to learn about this medical madhouse a little at a time; that way I’m less likely to end up as one of the casualties. But I’ve been told that the recreation level is well worth a visit. You could start your explorations from there. Coming?”

“Yes,” she said. “There at least the heavies will be relaxing and at rest, and not charging along the corridors like mobile disasters waiting to happen to us.”

Later, Cha Thrat was to wonder how she could have been so wrong.

The signs over the entrance read: recreation level, species DBDG, DBLF, DBPK, DCNF, EGCL, ELNT, FGLI, & FROB. species GKMN & GLNO at own risk.

For members of the staff whose written languages were not represented, the same information was repeated endlessly via translator.

“DCNF,” Tarsedth said. “They’ve got your classification up there already. Probably a routine updating by Personnel.”

“Probably,” Cha Thrat said. But she felt very pleased and, for the first time,

important.

After days spent in crowded hospital corridors, her tiny room, and the even more cramped confines of the suit she had to wear in the tepid, green depths of the AUGL ward, the sheer size of the place made her feel insecure and unsteady. But the spaciousness, the opensky, and the long distances were apparent rather than real, she soon realized, and the initial shock diminished quickly to become a feeling of pleased surprise.

Trick lighting and some inspired landscaping had given the recreation level its illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to a sea that stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the water of the bay was deep blue shading to turquoise where the waves ran onto the bright, golden sand of the beach.

Only the light from the artificial sun, which was too reddish for Cha Thrat’s taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and cliffs kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Sommaradva.

But then, space was at a premium in Sector General, she had been told before her first visit to the dining hall, and the people who worked together had to eat together. Now it seemed that they were expected to play togetheras well.

“Realistic cloud effects are difficult to reproduce,” Tarsedth volunteered, “so rather than risk them looking artificial, they don’t bother trying. The Maintenance person who suggested I come here told me that. It also said that the best thing about the place was that the gravity was maintained at half Earth-normal, which is close enough to half Kelgia- and Sommaradva-normal. The people who like to rest actively can be more active, and the others find the sand softer to lie on—Watch out!”

Three Tralthans on a total of eighteen massive feet went thundering past them and plowed into the shallows, scattering sand and spray over a wide area. The half-G conditions that allowed the normally slow and ponderous FGLIs to jump about like bipeds also kept the sand theyhad disturbed airborne for a long time before it settled back to the beach. Some of it had not settled because Cha Thrat was still trying to blink it out of her eyes.

“Over there,” Tarsedth said. “We can shelter between the FROB and the two ELNTs. They don’t look as if they are very active resters.”

But Chat Thrat did not feel like lying still and doing nothing but absorb artificial sunlight. She had too much on her mind, too many questions of the kind that could not be asked without the risk of giving serious offense, and she had found in the past that strenuous physical activity rested the mind—sometimes.

She watched a steep, low-gravity wave roll in and break on the beach. Not all of the turbulence in the bay was artificial—it varied in proportion to the number, size, and enthusiasm of the swimmers. The most favored sport, especially among the heaviest and least streamlined life-forms, was jumping into the bay from one of the springboards set into the cliff face. The boards, which seemed to her to be dangerously high until she remembered the reduced gravity, could be reached through tunnels concealed within the cliff. One board, the highest of them'all, was solidly braced and without flexibility, probably to avoid the risk of an overenthu-siastic diver fracturing its cranium on the artificial sky.

“Would you like to swim?” she asked suddenly. “That is, I mean, if DBLFs can.”

“We can, but I won’t,” the Kelgian said, deepening the sandy trench it had already dug for itself. “It would leave my fur plastered flat and unable to move for the rest of the day. If another DBLF came by I wouldn’t be able to talk to it properly. Lie down. Relax.”

Cha Thrat folded her two rear legs and gently collapsed into a horizontal position, but it must have beenobvious even to her other-species friend that she was not relaxed.

“Are you worried about something?” Tarsedth asked, its fur rippling and tufting in concern. “Cresk-Sar? Hred-lichli? Your ward?”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, wondering how a Sommaradvan warrior-surgeon could explain the problem to a member of a species whose cultural background was completely different, and who might even be a servile. But until she was sure of Tarsedth’s exact status, she would consider the Kelgian her professional equal, and speak.

“I do not wish to offend,” she said carefully, “but it seems to me that, in spite of the wide-ranging knowledge we are expected to acquire, the strange and varied creatures we care for, and the wonderful devices we use to do it, our work is repetitious, undignified, without personal responsibility, invariably performed under direction, and well, servile. We should be doing something more important with our time, or such a large proportion of it, than conveying body wastes from the patients to the disposal facility.”

“So that’s what’s bothering you,” Tarsedth said, twisting its conical head in her direction. “A deep, incised wound to the pride.”

Cha Thrat did not reply, and it went on. “Before I left Kelgia I was a nursing superintendent responsible for the nursing services on eight wards. Same-species patients, of course, but at lettst I had come up through nursing. Some of the other trainees, yourself included, were doctors, so I can imagine how they—and you—feel. But the servile condition is temporary. It will be relieved when or if we complete our training to Cresk-Sar’s satisfaction. Try not to worry about it. You are learning other-speciesmedicine, if you excuse the expression, from the bottom up.

“Try taking more interest in the other end of the patient,” Tarsedth added, “instead of concerning yourself with the plumbing all the time. Talk to them and try to understand how their minds work.”

Cha Thrat wondered how she could explain to the Kelgian, who was a member of what seemed to be an advanced but utterly disorganized and classless civilization, that there were things that a warrior-surgeon should and should not do. Even though the medical fraternity on Sommaradva could not have cared less what happened to her, in Sector General she had been forced by circumstances into behavior that was wrong, in both the negative and positive sense, for someone of her professional status. She was acting above and below her level of competence, and it worried her.

“I do talk to them,” she said. “One especially, and it says that it likes talking to me. I try not to favor any particular patient, but this one is more distressed than the others. I shouldn’t be talking to it as I’m not qualified to treat it, but nobody else can or will do anything for the patient.”

Tarsedth’s fur rippled with concern. “Is it terminal?” “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Cha Thrat replied. “It’s been a ward patient for a very long time. Seniors examine it sometimes with advanced trainees present, and Thornnastor spoke to it when the Diagnostician was in the ward with another patient, but not to ask about its condition. I haven’t access to its case history, but I’m pretty sure that the medication prescribed for it is palliative rather than curative. It is not neglected or ill treated so much as politely ignored. I’m the only one who will listen to its symptoms, so it talks to me at every opportu-nity. I shouldn’t talk to it, not until I know what’s wrong with it, because I’m not qualified.”

The movement of Tarsedth’s fur settled down to a more even rhythm as it said, “Nonsense! Everybody is qualified to talk, and a bit of verbal sympathy and encouragement can’t harm your patient. But if its condition is incurable, your ward water would be teeming with Diagnosticians and Seniors intent on proving otherwise. That’s the way things work here; nobody gives up on anybody. And your patient’s problem will give you something to think about while you do the less attractive jobs. Or don’t you want to talk to it?”

“Yes,” Cha Thrat said, “I’m very sorry for the great, suffering brute, and I want to help it. But I’m beginning to wonder if it is a ruler, in which case I should not be talking to it.”

“Whatever it is, or was, on Chalderescol,” Tarsedth said, “has no bearing, or shouldn’t have, on its treatment as a patient. What harm can a little nonmedical sympathy and encouragement do either of you? Frankly, I don’t see your difficulty.”

Patiently Cha Thrat said again, “I’m not qualified.”

Tarsedth’s fur was moving in a manner that denoted impatience. “I still don’t understand you. Talk, don’t talk to it. Do whatever you want to do.”

“I have talked to it,” Cha Thrat said, “and that’s what worries me— Is something wrong?”

“Can’t it leave me alone!” said Tarsedth, its fur tufting into angry spikes. “I’m sure that’s Cresk-Sar coming this way, and it’s seen our trainee badges. The first question it will ask is why we aren’t studying. Can’t we ever escape from its infuriating ‘I have questions for you’ routine?”

The Senior Physician detached itself from a group of two other Nidians and a Melfan who had been movingtoward the water’s edge and stopped, looking down at them.

“I have questions for both of you,” it said inevitably, but unexpectedly went on. “Are you able to relax in this place? Does it enable you to forget all about your work? Your Charge Nurses? Me?”

“How can we forget about you,” Tarsedth said, “when you’re here, and ready to ask us why we’re here?”

The Kelgian’s seeming rudeness was unavoidable, Cha Thrat knew, but her reply would have to be more diplomatic.

“The answer to all four questions is, not entirely,” she said. “We were relaxing but were discussing problems relating to our work.”

“Good,” Cresk-Sar said. “I would not want you to forget your work, or me, entirely. Have you a particular problem or question that I can answer for you before I rejoin my friends?”

Tarsedth was burrowing deeper into the artificial sand and pointedly ignoring their tutor who, now that it was off duty, seemed to Cha Thrat to be a much less obnoxious Nidian. Cresk-Sar deserved a polite response, even though the recent topic of discussion, the psychological and emotional problems associated with the removal of other-species body wastes, was not an area in which a Senior Physician would have firsthand experience. Perhaps she could ask a general question that would satisfy both the social requirements of the situation and her own curiosity.

“As trainees,” Cha Thrat said, “we are assigned to the less pleasant, nonmedical ward duties, in particular those involving organic wastes. These are an unpleasant but necessary by-product common to all species whose food is ingested, digested, and eliminated. However,there must be wide differences in the chemical composition of other-species wastes. Since the hospital was designed so far as was possible to be a closed ecological system, what becomes of all this material?”

Cresk-Sar seemed to be having difficulty with its breathing for a moment, then it replied, “The system is not completely closed. We do not synthesize all our food or medication and, 1 am pleased to tell you, there are no intelligent life-forms known to us who can exist on their own or any other species’ wastes. As for your question, I don’t know the answer, Cha Thrat. Until now the question has never come up.”

It turned away quickly and went back to its Melfan and Nidian friends. Shortly afterward the ELNT started to make clicking sounds with its mandibles while the furry DBDGs barked, or perhaps laughed, loudly. Cha Thrat could not find anything humorous in the question. To the contrary, she found the subject actively unpleasant. But the loud, untranslatable noises coming from the group showed no sign of stopping—until they were drowned out by the sharp, insistent,

and even louder sounds coming from the public address system.

“Emergency,” it blared across the recreation level and from her translator. “Code Blue, AUGL ward. All named personnel acknowledge on nearest communicator and go immediately to the AUGL ward. Chief Psychologist O’Mara, Charge Nurse Hredlichli, Trainee Cha Thrat. Code Blue. Acknowledge and go at once to—”

She missed the rest of it because Cresk-Sar had come back and was glaring down at her. It was neither barking nor laughing.

“Move yourself!” it said harshly. “I’ll acknowledge the message and go with you. As your tutor I am responsible for your medical misdeeds. Hurry.”

As they were leaving the recreation level it went on, “A Code Blue is an emergency involving extreme danger to both patients and medical staff, the kind of trouble during which untrained personnel are ordered to stay clear. But they have paged you, a trainee, and, of all people, Chief Psychologist O’Mara. “What have you done!

CHAPTER 6

Cha Thrat and the Senior Physician arrived at the AUGL ward minutes before O’Mara and Charge Nurse Hredlichli, and joined the other three nurses on duty—two Kelgian DBLFs and a Melfan ELNT—who had abandoned their patients to take shelter in the Nurses’ Station.

This normally reprehensible behavior was not being considered as a dereliction of medical duty, the tutor explained, because it was the first time in the hospital’s wide experience in staff-patient relations that a Chalder had become violently antisocial.

In the green dimness at the other end of the ward a long, dark shadow drifted slowly from one side-wall to the other, as Cha Thrat had seen many of the mobile, bored, and restless Chalders doing while she had been on duty. Except for a few pieces of decorative greenery detached and drifting untidily between the supports, the ward looked peaceful and normal.

“What about the other patients, Charge Nurse?”

Cresk-Sar asked. As the Senior Physician present it had overall medical responsibility. “Is anyone hurt?”

Hredlichli swam along the line of monitors and said, “Disturbed and frightened, but they have sustained no injuries, nor has their food and medication delivery system been damaged. They’ve been very lucky.”

“Or the patient is being selective in its violence—” O’Mara began, then broke off.

The long shadow at the other end of the ward had foreshortened and was enlarging rapidly as it rushed toward them. Cha Thrat had a glimpse of fins blurred by rapid motion, ribbon tentacles streaming backward, and the serried ranks of gleaming teeth edging the enormous, gaping mouth before it crashed against the transparent wall of the Nurses’ Station. The wall bulged inward alarmingly but did not collapse.

It was too large for the dooriess entrance, she saw, but it changed position and moved three of its tentacles inside. They were not long enough or strong enough to pull anyone outside to the mouth, although one of the Kelgian nurses had a few anxious moments. Disappointed, the Chalder turned and swam away, with detached vegetation eddying its wake.

O’Mara made a sound that did not translate, then said, “Who is the patient, and why was trainee Cha Thrat called?”

“It is the long-stay patient, AUGL-One Sixteen,” the Melfan nurse replied. “Just before it became violent it was calling for the new nurse, Cha Thrat. When I told the patient that the Sommaradvan would be absent for a few days, it stopped communicating and has not spoken to us since, even though its translator is still in position and working. That is why the trainee’s name was included when I called in the Code Blue.”

“Interesting,” the Earth-human said, turning its atten-lion to Cha Thrat. “Why did it want you especially, and why should it start taking the ward apart when you weren’t available? Have you established a special relationship with AUGL-One Sixteen?”

Before she could reply, the Nidian said urgently, “Can the psychological ramifications wait, Major? My immediate concern is for the safety of the ward patients and staff. Pathology will give us a fast-acting anesthetic and a dart gun to pacify the patient, and then—you can—”

“A dart gun!” one of the Kelgians said, its fur rippling in scorn. “Senior Physician, you are forgetting that your dart has to travel through water, which will slow it down, and then penetrate that organic suit of armor One Sixteen wears! The only sure way of placing the dart effectively would be to shoot it into the soft tissues of the inner mouth. To place it accurately, the person using the gun would have to be very close and might find itself following the dart into the open mouth, with immediately fatal results. 1 am not volunteering!”

Before Cresk-Sar could reply, Cha Thrat turned to the Senior Physician and said, “If you will explain what exactly it is that I must do, I shall volunteer for this duty.”

“You lack the training and experience to—” began the Nidian, and broke off as O’Mara held up its hand for silence.

“Of course you will volunteer,” O’Mara said quietly. “But why, Cha Thrat? Are you exceptionally brave? Are you naturally stupid? Do you have an urge to commit suicide? Or are you, perhaps, feeling a measure of responsibility and guilt?”

“Major O’Mara,” Hredlichli said firmly, “this is not the time for apportioning responsibility or undertaking deep analysis. What is to be done about Patient One Sixteen? And my other patients?”

“You’re right, Charge Nurse,” O’Mara said. “I shalldo it my way, by attempting to pacify and reason with One Sixteen. I’ve spoken to it many times, enough for it to tell me apart from other Earth-humans if I wear this lightweight suit. While I’m working with it I may also need to talk to Cha Thrat, so stay by the communicator, trainee.”

“No need, I’ll go with you,” Cha Thrat said firmly. Silently she began the mental and moral exercises that were supposed to help reconcile her to an untimely ending of her life.

“And I,” O’Mara said, making another sound that did not translate, “will be too busy with our demented friend to stop you. Come along, then.”

“But it is only a trainee, O’Mara!” Cresk-Sar protested. “And in a lightweight suit it might recognize you, all right, as a convenient piece of plastic-wrapped meat. This life-form is omnivorous and until recently they—”

“Cresk-Sar,” the Earth-human said, as it swam toward the entrance. “Are you trying to worry me?”

“Oh, very well,” the Nidian said. “But I, too, shall do things my way, in case you can’t talk yourselves through this problem. Charge Nurse, signal immediately for a four-unit patient transfer team with heavy-duty suits, dart guns, and physical restraints suitable for a fully conscious and uncooperative AUGL . . .”

The tutor was still talking as Cha Thrat swam into the ward behind O’Mara.

For what seemed a very long time they hung silent and motionless in the middle of the ward, watched by an equally still and silent patient from the cover of a patch of torn artificial greenery. O’Mara had told her that they should not do

anything that One Sixteen might construe as a threat, that they must therefore appear defenseless before it, and that the first move was up to the patient. Cha Thrat thought that the Earth-Human was probablyright, but her whole body was slippery with perspiration, and much warmer than could be explained by the temperature of the green, lukewarm water outside her protective suit. Plainly she was not yet completely reconciled to the ending of her existence.

The voice of the Senior Physician in her suk 'phones made her twitch in every limb.

“The transfer team is here,” Cresk-Sar said quietly. “Nothing much is happening at your end. Can I send them in to move the other patients into OR? It will be a tight squeeze in there, but they will be able to receive treatment and be comfortable for a few hours, and you will have One Sixteen all to yourselves.”

“Is the treatment urgent?” O’Mara asked softly.

“No,” Cha Thrat said, answering the question before Cresk-Sar could relay it to the Charge Nurse. “Just routine observation and recording of vital signs, wound dressing changes, and administration of supportive medication. Nothing really urgent.”

“Thank you, Trainee,” Hredlichli said in a tone as corrosive as the atmosphere it breathed, then went on. “I have been Charge Nurse here for a short time, Major O’Mara, but I feel that I, too, have the patient’s trust. I would like to join you.”

“No, to both of you,” the Earth-human said firmly. “I don’t want our friend to be frightened or unsettled by too many comings and goings within the ward. And Hredlichli, if your protective suit were to rupture, contact with water is instantly lethal to a chlorine-breather, as you very well know. With us oxygen-breathers, we can drown in the stuff if help doesn’t reach us in time, but it isn’t poisonous or— Uh-oh!”

Patient AUGL-One Sixteen was silent but no longer still. It was rushing at them like a gigantic, organic tor-pedo, except that torpedoes did not have suddenly opening mouths.

Frantically they swam apart so as to give the attacking Chalder two targets instead of one, the theory being that while it was disposing of one the other might have enough time to make it to the safety of the Nurses’ Station. But this was planning for a remote contingency, the Earth-human had insisted. O’Mara would not believe that AUGL-One Sixteen, who was normally so shy and timid and amenable, was capable of making a lethal attack on anyone.

On this occasion it was right.

The vast jaws snapped shut just before the Chalder swept through the gap that had opened between them. Then the great body curved upward and over them, dove, and began swimming around them in tight circles. Turbulence sent them spinning and twisting like leaves at the center of a whirlpool. Cha Thrat did not know whether it was circling them in the vertical or horizontal plane, only that it was so close that she could feel the compression waves every time the jaws snapped shut, which was frequently. She had never felt so helpless and disoriented and frightened in all her life.

“Stop this nonsense, Muromeshomon!” she said loudly. “We are here to help you. Why are you behavinglike this?”

The Chalder slowed but continued to circle them closely. It mouth gaped open and it said, “You cannot help me, you have said that you are not qualified. Nobody here can help me. I do not wish to harm you, or anyone else, but I am frightened. I am in great pain. Sometimes I want to hurt everyone. Stay away from me or I will hurt you . . .”

There was a muffled, underwater clang as its tail flicked out and struck her air tanks a glancing blow,sending her spinning again. An Earth-human hand grasped one of her waist limbs, steadying her, and she saw that the patient had returned to its dark corner and was watching them.

“Are you hurt?” O’Mara asked, releasing its grip. “Is your suit ail right?”

“Yes,” Cha Thrat said, and added, “It left very quickly. I’m sure the blow was accidental.”

The Earth-human did not reply for a few moments, then it said, “You called Patient One Sixteen by name. I am aware of its name because the hospital requires this information for possible notification of the next-of-kin, but I would not consider using its name unless there were very exceptional circumstances, and then only with its permission. But somehow you have learned its name and are using it as lightly and thoughtlessly as you would Cresk-Sar’s or Hredlichii’s, or my name. Cha Thrat, you must never—”

“It told me its name,” Cha Thrat broke in. “We exchanged names while we were discussing my observations regarding the inadequacy of its treatment.”

“You discussed . . .” O’Mara said incredulously. It made an untranslatable noise and went on. “Tell me what exactly you said to it.”

Cha Thrat hesitated. The AUGL had left its dark corner and was moving toward them again, but slowly. It stopped halfway down the ward and hung with its fins and tail still and the ribbon tentacles spread like an undulating, circular fan around it, watching and probably listening to every word they said.

“On second thought, don’t tell me,” O’Mara said angrily. “I’ll tell you what I know about the patient first, then you can try to reduce my level of ignorance. That way we will avoid repetition and save time. I don’t know how much time it will give us to talk without anotherinterruption. Not a lot, I suspect, so I’ll have to speak quickly . . .”

Patient AUGL-One Sixteen was a long-stay patient whose time in Sector General exceeded that of many of the medical staff. The clinical picture had been and still remained obscure. Several of the hospital’s top Diagnosticians had examined it, finding signs of strain in certain areas of the patient’s body plating that partly explained its discomfort—a being who was largely exoskeletal, lazy, and something of a glutton could only put on weight from the inside. The generally agreed diagnosis was hypochondria and the condition incurable.

The Chalder had become seriously ill only when there was talk of sending it home, and so the hospital had acquired a permanent patient. It did not mind. Visiting as well as hospital medics and psychologists had given it a going over, and continued to do so, as did the interns and nurses of all the life-forms represented on the staff. It had been probed, pried into, and unmercifully pounded by trainees of varying degrees of gentleness, and it loved every minute of it. The hospital’s teaching staff were happy with the arrangement and so was the Chalder.

“Nobody mentions going home to it anymore,” O’Mara ended. “Did you?”

“Yes,” Cha Thrat said.

O’Mara made another untranslatable noise and she went on quickly. “This explains why the nurses ignored it when other patients needed treatment, and supports my own diagnosis of an unspecified ruler’s disease that—”

“Listen, don’t speak!” the Earth-human said sharply. The patient seemed to be drifting closer. “My depart-mep^has tried to get to the root causes of One Sixteen’s hypochondria, but I was not required to solve its problem so it remained unsolved. This sounds like an excuse,and it is. But you must understand that Sector General is not and can never be a psychiatric hospital. Can you imagine a place like this where a large proportion of the multispecies patients, the mere sight of which gives sane people nightmares, are physically fit and mentally disturbed? Can you imagine the problems of other-species treatment and restraint? It is difficult enough to be responsible for the mental well-being of the staff without adding disturbed patients, even a harmlessly disturbed patient like One Sixteen, to my load. When a medically ill patient displays signs of mental instability it is kept under close observation, restrained if necessary, and returned to its own people for the appropriate treatment as soon as it is physically well enough to be discharged.”

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said. “The explanation excuses you.”

The Earth-human grew pinker in the face, then said, “Listen carefully, Cha Thrat, this is important. The Chalders are one of the few intelligent species whose personal names are used only between mates, members of the immediate family, or very special friends. Yet you, an other-species stranger, have been told, and have spoken aloud, One Sixteen’s personal name. Have you done this in ignorance? Do you realize that this exchange of names means that anything you may have said to it, or any future action you may have promised, is as binding as the most solemn promise given before the highest imaginable physical or metaphysical authority?”

“Do you realize now how serious this is?” O’Mara went on in a tone of quiet urgency. “Why did it tell you its name? What, exactly, was said between you?”

She could not speak for a moment because the patient had moved very close, so close that she could see the individual points of its six rows of teeth. A strangely detached and uncaring portion of her mind wonderedwhat evolutionary imperative had caused the upper three rows to be longer than the lower set. Then the jaw snapped shut with a boney crash that was muffled by the surrounding water, and the caring part of her mind wondered what it would sound like if a limb or her torso were between those teeth.

“Have you fallen asleep?” O’Mara snapped. “No,” she said, wondering why an intelligent being had asked such a stupid question. “We talked because it was lonely and unhappy. The other nurses were busy with a post-op patient and I was not. I told it about Som-maradva and the circumstances that led to me coming here, and some of the things I would be able to do if I qualified for Sector General. It said that I was brave and resourceful, not sick and old and increasingly fearful likeitself.

“It said that many times it dreamed of swimming free in the warm ocean of Chalderescol,” she went on, “instead of this aseptic, water-filled box with its plastic, inedible vegetation. It could talk about the home world to other AUGL patients, but much of their post-op recovery time was spent under sedation. The medical staff were pleasant to it and would talk, on the rare occasions when they had time to do so. It said that it would never escape from the hospital, that it was too old and frightened and sick.”

“Escape?” O’Mara said. “If our permanent patient has begun to regard the hospital as a prison, that is a very healthy sign, psychologically. But go on, what were you saying to it?”

“We spoke of general subjects,” she replied. “Our worlds, our work, our past experiences, our friends and families, our opinions—”

“Yes, yes,” the Earth-human said impatiently, looking at One Sixteen, who was edging closer. “I’m not inter-ested in the small talk. What did you say that might have brought on this trouble?”

Cha Thrat tried to choose the words that would describe the situation concisely, accurately, and briefly as she replied, “It told me about the space accident and injuries that brought it here originally, and the continuing but irregular episodes of pain that keep it here, and of its deep unhappiness with its existence generally.

“I was uncertain of its exact status on Chalderescol,” she went on, “but from the way it had described its work I judged it to be an upper-level warrior, at least, if not a ruler. By that time we had exchanged names, so I decided to tell it that the treatment being provided by the hospital was palliative rather than curative, and it was being treated for the wrong sickness. I said that its malady was not unknown to me and, although I was not qualified to treat the condition, there were wizards on Sommaradva capable of doing so. I suggested, on several occasions, that it was becoming institutionalized and that it might be happier if it returned home.”

The patient was very close to them now. Its massive mouth was closed but not still, because there was a regular chewing motion that suggested that the teeth were grinding together. The movement was accompanied by a high-pitched, bubbling moan that was both frightening and strangely pitiful.

“Go on,” O’Mara said softly, “but be very careful what you say.”

“There is little more to tell,” Cha Thrat said. “During our last meeting I told it that I was leaving for a two-day rest period. It would speak only of the wizards, and wanted to know if they could cure its fear as well as the pains. It asked me as a friend to treat it, or send for one of our Sommaradvan brothers who would be able to cureit. I told it that I had some knowledge of the spells of the wizards, but not enough to risk treating it, and that I lacked the status and authority to summon a wizard to the hospital.”

“What was the response to that?” O’Mara asked.

“None,” Cha Thrat said. “It would not speak to methereafter.”

Abruptly they were looking into the AUGL’s open mouth, but it was keeping its uncomfortably short distance as it said, “You were not like the others, who did nothing and promised nothing. You held out the hope of a cure by your wizards, then withdrew it. You cause me pain that is many times worse than that which keeps me here. Go away, Cha Thrat. For your own safety, goaway.”

The jaws crashed shut and it swept around them and headed for the other end of the ward. They could not see clearly but, judging by the voices coming from the Nurses’ Station, it seemed intent on wrecking the place.

“My patients!” Charge Nurse Hredlichli burst out. “My new treatment frames and medication cabinets . . .”

“According to the monitors,” Cresk-Sar broke in, “the patients are still all right, but they’ve been lucky. I’m sending in the transfer team now to knock out One Sixteen. It will be a bit tricky. Both of you get back here,quickly.”

“No, wait,” O’Mara said. “We’ll try talking to it again. This is not a violent patient and I don’t believe that we are in any real danger.” On Cha Thrat’s frequency it added, “But there is always a first time for being wrong.”

For some reason a picture from Cha Thrat’s childhood rose suddenly to the surface of her adult mind. She saw again the tiny, many-colored fish that had been herfavorite pet, as it circled and butted desperately and hopelessly against the glass walls of its bowl. Beyond those walls, too, lay an environment in which it would quickly asphyxiate and die. But that small fish, like this overlarge one, was not thinking of that.

“When One Sixteen gave you its name,” O’Mara said with quiet urgency, “it placed a binding obligation on both of you to help the other in every way possible, as would a life-mate or a member of your family. When you mentioned the possibility of a cure by your Sommarad-van wizards, regardless of the efficacy of such other-species treatment, you were expected to provide the wizard regardless of any effort, cost, or personal danger to yourself.”

There were noises of tearing metal and the complaining voices of the other AUGLs being transmitted through the green water, and Hredlichli sounded very agitated. O’Mara ignored them and went on. “You must keep faith with it, Cha Thrat, even though your wizards might not be able to help One Sixteen any more than we can. And I realize that you haven’t the authority to call in one of your wizards. But if Sector General and the Monitor Corps were to put their combined weight behind you—”

“They wouldn’t come to this place,” Cha Thrat said. “Wizards are notoriously unstable people, but they are not stupid— It’s coming back!”

This time One Sixteen was coming at them more slowly and deliberately, but still too fast for them to swim to safety, nor could the transfer team with their anesthetic darts reach them in time to do any good. There was no sound from the patients in the ward and the beings watching from the Nurses’ Station. As the AUGL loomed closer she could see that its eyes had theferal, manic look of a wounded predator, and slowly it was opening its mouth.

“Use its name, dammit!” O’Mara said urgently. “Mu-Muromeshomon,” she stammered. “My—my friend, we are here to help you.”

The anger in its eyes seemed to dim a little so that they reflected more of its pain. The mouth closed slowly and opened again, but only to speak.

“Friend, you are in great and immediate danger,” the AUGL said. “You have spoken my name and told me that the hospital cannot cure me with its medicines and machines, and it no longer tries, and you will not help me even though you have said that a cure is possible. If our positions were reversed I would not act, or refuse to act, as you have done. You are an unequal friend, without honor, and I am disappointed and angry with you. Go away, quickly, and protect your life. I am beyond help.”

“No!” Cha Thrat said fiercely. The mouth was opening wider, the eyes were showing a manic gleam once more, and she realized that when the AUGL attacked, she would be its first victim. Desperately she went on. “It is true that I cannot help you. Your sickness does not respond to the healer’s herbs or the surgeon’s knife, because it is a ruler’s disease that requires the spells of a wizard. A Sommaradvan wizard might cure you but, since you are not yourself a Sommaradvan, there is no certainty. Here there is the Earth-human, O’Mara, a wizard with experience of treating rulers of many different life-forms. I would have approached it about your case at once but, being a trainee and unsure of the procedure, I was about to request a meeting for another, an unimportant, reason during which I would have spoken of you in detail . . .”

The AUGL had closed its mouth but was moving its jaws in a way that could be indicating anger or impatience. She went on quickly. “In the hospital I have heard many people speak of O’Mara and his great powers of wizardry—”

“I’m the Chief Psychologist, dammit,” O’Mara broke in, “not a wizard. Let’s try to be factual about this and not make more promises we can’t possibly keep!”

“You are not a psychologist!” Cha Thrat said. She was so angry with this Earth-human who would not accept the obvious that for a moment she almost forgot about the threat from One Sixteen. Not for the first time she wondered what obscure and undefined ruler’s disease it was that made beings who possessed high intelligence, and The Power in great measure, behave so stupidly at times. Less vehemently, she went on. “On Sommaradva a psychologist is a being, neither servile-healer nor warrior-surgeon, who tries to be a scientist by measuring brain impulses or bodily changes caused by physical and mental stress, or by making detailed observations of behavior. A psychologist tries to impose immutable laws in an area of spells and nightmares and changing realities, and tries to make a science of what has always been an art, an art practiced only by wizards.”

They were both watching her, eyes unblinking, motionless. The patient’s expression had not changed but the Earth-human’s face had gone a much deeper shade of pink.

“A wizard will use or ignore the instruments and tabulations of the psychologist,” she continued, “to cast spells that influence the complex, insubstantial structures of the mind. A wizard uses words, silences, minute observation, and intuition to compare and graduallychange the sick, internal reality of the patient to the external reality of the world. That is the difference between a psychologist and a wizard.”

The Earth-human’s face was still unnaturally dark. In a voice that was both quiet and harsh it said, “Thank you for reminding me.”

Formally Cha Thrat said, “No thanks are required for that which needs to be done. Please, may I remain here to watch? Before now I have never had the chance to see £ wizard at work.”

“What,” the AUGL asked suddenly, “will the wizard do to me?”

It sounded curious and anxious rather than angry, and for the first time since entering the ward she began to feel safe.

“Nothing,” O’Mara said surprisingly. “I shall do nothing at all . . .”

Even on Sommaradva the wizards were full of surprises, unpredictable behavior and words that began by sounding irrelevant, ill chosen, or stupid. What little of the literature that was available to one of the warrior-surgeon level, she had read and reread. So she composed herself and, with great anticipation, watched and listened while the Earth-human wizard did nothing at all.

The spell began very subtly with words, spoken in a manner that was anything but subtle, describing the arrival of AUGL-One Sixteen at the hospital as the commanding officer and sole survivor of its ship. The vessels of water-breathing species, and especially those of the outsize denizens of Chalderescol, were notoriously unwieldy and unsafe, and it had been exonerated of all blame for the accident both by the Monitor Corps investigators and the authorities on Chalderescol—but not by itself. This was realized when the patient’s physical inju-ries had healed and it continued to complain of severe psychosomatic discomfort whenever the subject of returning home was discussed.

Many attempts were made to make the patient realize that it was punishing itself, cutting itself off from its home and friends, for a crime that was very probably imaginary, but without success—it would not con-, sciously admit that it had committed a crime, so telling it that it was not guilty had no effect. A Chalder’s most prized possession was its personal integrity, and as an authority that integrity was unassailable. AUGL-One Sixteen was a sensitive, intelligent, and highly qualified being who, outwardly, was a submissive and cooperative patient. But where its particular delusion was concerned it was as susceptible to influence as the orbit of a major planet.

And so Sector General had acquired a permanent patient, an AUGL specimen in perfect health and a continuing and strictly unofficial challenge to its Department of Psychology, because only in the hospital could it be pain-free and relatively happy.

Silently Cha Thrat apologized to the Earth-human for thinking that it had been negligent, and listened in admiration as the speil took positive form.

“And now,” O’Mara went on, “due to a combination of circumstances, a significant change has occurred. The talks with transient AUGL patients have made you increasingly homesick. Your anger over your neglect by the medical staff has been growing because, subconsciously, you yourself were beginning to suspect that you were not sick and their attention was unnecessary. And then there was the unwarranted, but for you fortunate, interference by Trainee Cha Thrat, who confirmed your suspicion that you were not being treated as a patient. “You have much in common with our outspokentrainee,” it continued. “Both of you have reasons, real or imaginary, for not wanting to go home. On Sommaradva as on Chalderescol, personal integrity and public honor are held in high regard. But the trainee is woefully ignorant of the customs of other species and, when you took the unprecedented step of saying your name to a non-Chalder, it disappointed and hurt you grievously by continuing to act toward you as had the other members of the staff. You were driven to react violently but, because of the constraints imposed by your personality type, the violence was directed at inanimate objects.

“But,” the Earth-human went on, “the simple act of giving your name to this sympathetic and untutored Sommaradvan, whom you had known only a few days, is the clearest possible indication of how badly you wanted help to get away from the hospital. You do still want to go home?”

AUGL-One Sixteen replied with another high-pitched, bubbling sound that did not translate. Its eyes watched only the Earth-human, and the muscles around its closed jaws were no longer clenched into iron rigidity.

“It was a stupid question,” O’Mara said. “Of course you want to go home. The trouble is, you are afraid and also want to stay here. A dilemma, obviously. But let me try to solve it by telling you that you are once again a patient here, subject to the hospital regimen and my own special and continuing treatment, and until I pronounce you cured you will not go home . . .”

On the surface the situation had not changed, Cha Thrat thought admiringly. The hospital still retained its permanent AUGL patient, but now there was doubt about the permanency of the arrangement. Now it fully understood its position and had been given a choice, to stay or leave, and its departure date was unspecified so as to relieve its natural fears about leaving. But it was nolonger completely satisfied with its life in the hospital, and already the Earth-human wizard was altering its internal reality by gently stressing the rehabilitative aspects of the therapy. Material would be provided by the Monitor Corps on the changes that had occurred on the home world in its absence, which would be useful if it decided to leave and informative should it stay, and there would be regular and frequent visits by O’Mara itself and other persons it would specify.

Oh, yes, she thought as it talked on, this Earth-human wizard was good.

The transfer team and their anesthetic dart guns had long since left the Nurses’ Station, which meant that Cresk-Sar and Hredlichli must have decided that the danger from AUGL-One Sixteen had passed. Looking at the passive and distress-free patient who was hanging on O’Mara’s every word, she was in entire agreement with them.

“. . . And you should now realize,” the Earth-human was saying, “that if you want to go, and can convince me that you are able to adapt to home-planet life, I shall with great pleasure and reluctance kick you out. You have been a patient for a very long time and, among many members of the senior staff, our professional concern has developed into the personal variety. But the best thing that a hospital can do for a friend is to send it away, as quickly as possible, cured.

“Do you understand?” O’Mara ended.

For the first time since the Earth-human had begun talking to it, AUGL-One Sixteen turned its attention to Cha Thrat. It said plaintively, “I am feeling much better, I think, but confused and worried by all that I must do. Was that a spell? Is O’Mara a good wizard?”

Cha Thrat tried to control her enthusiasm as she said,"It is the beginning of a very fine spell, and it is said that a really good wizard makes its patient do all the hardwork.”

O’Mara made another one of its untranslatable noises and signaled Hredlichli that it was safe for the nurses to return to their patients. As they turned to leave AUGL-One Sixteen, who was once again its friendly and docile self, the Chalder spoke again.

“O’Mara,” it said formally, “you may use my name.” When they were again in the air of the lock antechamber and all but Hredlichli had their visors open, the Charge Nurse said angrily, “I don’t want that—that interfering sitsachi anywhere near me! I know that One Sixteen is going to get better and leave sometime, and I’m glad about that. But just look at the place! Wrecked, it is! I refuse to allow that trainee in my ward. That’sfinal!”

O’Mara looked at the chlorine-breather for a moment, then in the quiet, unemotional tones of a ruler it said, “It is, of course, within your authority to accept or refuse any trainee. But Cha Thrat, whether or not it is accompanied by me, will be granted visiting facilities whenever and as often as the patient itself or myself consider it necessary. I do not foresee a lengthy period of treatment. We are grateful for your cooperation, Charge Nurse, and no doubt you are anxious to return to your duties.”

When Hredlichli had gone, Cha Thrat said, “There was no opportunity to speak until now, and I am unsure how my words will be received. On Sommaradva good work is expected of a wizard or any high-level ruler, so that the praise of a subordinate for a superior is unnecessary and insulting. But in this case—”

O’Mara held up a hand for silence. It said, “Anything you say whether complimentary or otherwise, will haveno effect on what is to happen to you, so save your breath.

“You are in serious trouble, Cha Thrat,” it went on grimly. “The news of what happened here will soon be all over the hospital. You must understand that to a Charge Nurse the ward is its kingdom, the nursing staff its subjects, and troublemakers, including trainees who exercise too much initiative too soon, are sent into exile, which can, in effect, mean home or to another hospital. I’d be surprised if there is a single Charge Nurse willing to accept you for practical ward training.”

The Earth-human paused, giving her a moment to assimilate its words, then went on. “You have two options. Go home, or accept a nonmedical and servile position with Maintenance.”

In a more sympathetic tone than she had ever heard it use before, Cresk-Sar said, “You are a most promising and diligent trainee, Cha Thrat. If you were to take such a position you would still be able to visit and talk to One Sixteen, and attend my lectures, and watch the teaching channels during your free time. But without practical ward experience you could not hope to qualify here.

“If you don’t resign,” the Senior Physician went on, “it may well be that you will discover firsthand the answer to the question you asked me this morning on the recreation level.”

Cha Thrat remembered that question very well, and the amusement it had caused among the tutor’s friends. She also remembered her initial feelings of shock and shame when her duties as a trainee nurse had been explained to her. Nothing could be more demeaning for a warrior-surgeon than that, she had thought at the time, but she had been wrong.

“I am still ignorant of the laws governing the hospi-tal,” she said. “But 1 realize that I have transgressed them in some fashion and must therefore accept the consequences. I shall not take the easy option.”

O’Mara sighed and said, “It is your decision, ChaThrat.”

Before she could reply, the Nidian Senior Physician was talking again. “Putting it into Maintenance would be a criminal waste,” the tutor protested. “It is the most promising trainee in its class. If we were to wait until the Hredlichli outcry died down, or until the grapevine is overloaded with another scandal, you might be able to find a ward that would take it for a trial period and—”

“Enough,” O’Mara said, visibly relenting. “I don’t believe in having second thoughts because the first are usually right. But I’m tired and hungry and I, too, have had enough of your trainee.

“There is such a ward,” it went on. “FROB Geriatric, which is chronically understaffed and may be desperate enough to accept Cha Thrat. It is not a ward where I would normally assign a trainee who is not of the patients’ own species, but I shall speak to Diagnostician Conway about it at the first opportunity.

“Now go away,” it ended sourly, “before I cast a spell consigning both of you to

the center of the nearest whitedwarf.”

As they were heading for the dining hall, Cresk-Sar said, “It’s a tough ward and, if anything, the work is even harder than a job in Maintenance. But you can say whatever you like to the patients and nobody will mind. Whatever else happens, you can’t get into troublethere.”

The Nidian’s words were positive and reassuring, butits voice carried undertones of doubt.

CHAPTER 7

She was given two extra days off duty, but whether they were a reward for her help with AUGL-One Sixteen or because it took that long for O’Mara to arrange for her transfer to FROB Geriatric, Cresk-Sar would not say. She paid three lengthy visits to One Sixteen in the AUGL ward, during which her reception was enough to turn its tepid water to ice, but she would not risk returning to the recreation level or exploring the hospital. There was less chance of getting into trouble if she stayed in her room and watched the teaching channels.

Tarsedth pronounced her certifiably insane and wondered why O’Mara had not confirmed this diagnosis.

Two days later she was told to present herself at FROB Geriatric in time for morning duty and to make herself known to the DBLF nurse in charge. Cresk-Sar said that it would not need to introduce her on this occasion because Charge Nurse Segroth, and probably every other being on the hospital staff, would have heard all about her by now. That may have been the reason why, on her meticulously punctual arrival, she was given no opportunity to speak.

“This is a surgical ward,” Segroth said briskly, indicating the banks of monitors occupying three walls of the Nurses’ Station. “There are seventy Hudlar patients and 90a nursing staff of thirty-two counting yourself. All the nurses are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers of various species, so you will not need environmental protection other than a gravity compensator and nasal filters. The FROBs are divided into pre- and post-op patients, segregated by a light- and soundproof partition. Until you learn your way around you will not concern yourself, or go anywhere near, a post-op patient.”

Before Cha Thrat had time to say that she understood, the Kelgian ran on. “We have an FROB trainee and classmate here who will, I’m sure, be happy to answer any questions you are afraid to ask me.”

Silvery fur puckered into irregular waves along its flanks in a way, she had learned from observing Tarsedth, that indicated anger and impatience. It continued. “From what I’ve heard of you, Nurse, you are the type who will already have studied the available Hudlar material and will be eager to make a contribution. Don’t even try. This is a special project of Diagnostician Conway, we are breaking new surgical ground here, so your'knowledge is already out of date. Except for those times when you are required by O’Mara for AUGL-One Sixteen, you will do nothing but watch, listen, and occasionally perform a few simple duties at the direction of the more experienced nurses or myself.

“I would not want to be embarrassed,” she ended, “by you producing a miracle cure on your first day.”

It was easy to pick out her FROB classmate from among the other nurses on duty—they were either Kelgian DBLFs or Melfan ELNTs—and even easier to tell it apart from all the FROB patients. She could scarcely believe that there was such a horrifying difference between a mature and an aged Hudlar.

Her classmate’s speaking membrane vibrated quietly on her close approach. It said, “I see you’ve survivedyour first encounter with Segroth. Don’t worry about the Charge Nurse; a Kelgian with authority is even less charming than one without. If you do exactly as it tells you, everything will be fine. I’m glad to see a friendly, familiar face in the ward.”

It was an odd thing to say, Cha Thrat thought, because Hudlars did not possess faces as such. But this one was trying hard to reassure her and she was grateful for that. It had not, however, called he'r by name, and whether the omission was deliberate or due to an oversight she did not know. Perhaps the Hudlars and Chalders had something in common besides great strength. Until she was sure that their names could be used without giving offense, they could call each other “Nurse” or “Hey, you!”

“I’m spraying and sponging-off at the moment,” the Hudlar trainee said. “Would you like to strap on a spare nutrient tank and follow me around? You can meet some of our patients.”

Without waiting for her reply, it went on. “This one you won’t be able to talk to because its speaking membrane has been muffled so that the sounds it makes will not distress the other patients and staff. It is in considerable discomfort that does not respond very well to the pain-killing medication, and, in any case, it is incapable of coherent speech.”

It was immediately obvious that this was not a well Hudlar. Its six great tentacles, which normally supported the heavy trunk in an upright position for the whole of its waking and sleeping life, hung motionless over the sides of its support cradle like rotted tree trunks. The hard patches of callus—the knuckles on which it walked while its digits were curled inward to protect them against contact with the ground—were discolored, dry, and cracking. The digits themselves, usually so steadyand precise in their movements, were twitching in continual spasm.

Large areas of its back and flanks were caked with partially absorbed nutrient paint, which would have to be washed off before the next meal could be sprayed on. As she watched, a milky perspiration was forming on its underside and dripping into the suction pan under its cradle.

“What’s wrong with it?” Cha Thrat asked. “Can it, is it being cured?”

“Old age,” the nurse said harshly. In a more controlled and clinical tone it went on. “We Hudlars are an energy-hungry species with a greatly elevated metabolic rate. With advancing age it is the food absorption and waste elimination mechanisms, both of which are normally under voluntary control, that are first to suffer progressive degeneration. Would you respray this area as soon as I’ve washed off the dried food, please?”

“Of course,” Cha Thrat said.

“This in turn causes a severe impairment in the circulation to the limbs,” the Hudlar went on, “leading to increasing deterioration in the associated nerve and muscle systems. The eventual result is general paralysis, necrosis of the limb extremities, and termination.”

It used the sponge briskly and moved clear to enable Cha Thrat to apply fresh nutrient, but when it resumed speaking its voice had lost some of its former clinical calm.

“The most serious problem for the Hudlar geriatric patient,” it said, “is that the brain, which requires a relatively small proportion of the available energy, remains organically unimpaired by the degenerative process until a few moments after its double heart has ceased to function. Therein lies the real tragedy. Rare indeed is the Hudlar mind that can remain stable inside a body whichC.B.E.----5is disintegrating painfully all around it. You can understand why this ward, which has been recently extended for the Conway Project, is the closest that the hospital comes to providing treatment for psychologically disturbed patients.

“At least,” it added, forcing a lighter tone as they moved to the next patient, “that was so until you started analyzing your AUGL-One Sixteen.”

“Please don’t remind me of that,” Cha Thrat said.

There was another thick, cylindrical muffler encasing the next patient’s speaking membrane, but either the sounds the Hudlar was making were too loud for it or the equipment was faulty. Much of what it was saying, which was clearly the product of advanced dementia and great pain, was picked up by her translator.

“I have questions,” Cha Thrat said suddenly. “By implication they may be offensive to you, and perhaps critical of Hudlar philosophical values and professional ethics. On Sommaradva the situation within the medical profession may be different. I do not wish to risk insulting you.”

“Ask,” the other nurse said. “I shall accept your apology, if required, in advance.”

“Earlier I asked if these patients could be cured,” she said carefully, “and you have not yet replied. Are they incurable? And if so, why were they not advised to self-terminate before their condition reached this stage?”

For several minutes the Hudlar continued to sponge stale nutrient from the second patient’s back without speaking, then it said, “You surprise but do not offend me, Nurse. I cannot myself criticize Sommaradvan medical practice because, until we joined the Federation a few generations ago, curative medicine and surgery were unknown on my world. But do I understand correctly that you urge your incurable patients to self-terminate?”

“Not exactly,” Cha Thrat replied. “If a servile-healer or warrior-surgeon or a wizard will not take personal responsibility for curing a patient, the patient will not be cured. It is given all the facts of the situation, simply, accurately, and without the kindly but misguided lying and false encouragement that seem to be so prevalent among the nursing staff here. There is no attempt to exert influence in either direction; the decision is left entirely to the patient.”

While she was speaking the other had stopped working. It said, “Nurse, you must never discuss a patient’s case with it in this fashion, regardless of your feelings about our medical white lies. You would be in very serious trouble if you did.”

“I won’t,” Cha Thrat said. “At least not until, or unless, the hospital once again gives me the position and responsibilities of a surgeon.”

“Not even then,” the Hudlar said worriedly. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If I accept total responsibility for a patient’s cure—”

“So you were a surgeon back home,” the other nurse broke in, obviously wanting to avoid an argument. “I, too, am hoping to take home a surgical qualification.”

Cha Thrat did not want an argument, either. She said, “How many years will that take?”

“Two, if I’m lucky,” the Hudlar replied. “I don’t intend going for the full other-species surgical qualification, just basic nursing and the FROB surgical course, taken concurrently. I joined the new Conway Project, so I’ll be needed at home as soon as I can possibly make it. “And to answer your earlier question,” it added. “Believe it or not, Nurse, the condition of the majority of these patients will be alleviated if not cured. They will be able to lead long and useful lives that will be pain-free, mentally and, within limits, physically active.”

“I’m impressed,” Cha Thrat said, trying to keep the incredulity she felt from showing in her voice. “What is the Conway Project?”

“Rather than listen to my incomplete and inaccurate description,” the Hudlar replied, “it would be better for you to learn about the project from Conway itself. It is the hospital’s Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery, and it will be lecturing and demonstrating its new FROB major operative techniques here this afternoon.

“I shall be required to observe the operation,” it went on. “But we will need surgeons so badly and in such large numbers that you would only have to express an interest in the project, not actually join it, to be invited to attend. It would be reassuring to have someone beside me who is almost as ignorant as I am.”

“Other-species surgery,” Cha Thrat said, “is my principal interest. But I’ve only just arrived in the ward. Would the Charge Nurse release me from duty so soon?”

“Of course,” the FROB said as they were moving to the next patient. “Just so long as you do nothing to antagonize it.”

“I won’t,” she said, then added, “at least, not deliberately.”

There was no muffler around the third patient’s speaking membrane, and a few minutes before their arrival it had been having an animated conversation about its grandchildren with a patient across the ward. Cha Thrat spoke the ritual greeting used by the healers on Sommaradva and, it seemed, by every medic in the hospital.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Well, thank you, Nurse,” the patient replied, as she knew it would.

Plainly the being was anything but well. Although it was mentally alert and the degenerative process had notyet advanced to the stage where the pain-killing medication had no effect, the mere sight of the surface condition of the body and tentacles made her itch. But, like so many of the other patients she had treated, this one would not dream of suggesting that her ability was somehow lacking by saying that it was not well.

“When you’ve absorbed some more food,” she said while her partner was busy with its sponge, “you will feel even better.”

Fractionally better, she added silently. “I haven’t seen you before, Nurse,” the patient went on. “You’re new, aren’t you? I think you have a most interesting and visually pleasing shape.”

“The last time that was said to me,” Cha Thrat said as she turned on the spray, “it was by an overardent young Sommaradvan of the opposite sex.”

Untranslatable sounds came from the patient’s speaking membrane and the great, disease-wasted body began twitching in its cradle. Then it said, “Your sexual integrity is quite safe with me, Nurse. Regrettably, I am too old and infirm for it to be otherwise.”

A Sommaradvan memory came back to her, of seriously wounded and immobilized warrior-patients of her own species trying to flirt with her during surgical rounds, and she did not know whether to laugh or cry.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I may need further reassurance in this matter when you become convalescent . . .”

It was the same with the other patients. The Hudlar nurse said very little while the patients and Cha Thrat did all the talking. She was new to the ward, a member of a species from a world about which they knew nothing, and a subject, therefore, of the most intense but polite curiosity. They did not want to discuss themselves or their distressing physical conditions, they wanted to talkabout Cha Thrat and Sommaradva, and she was pleased to satisfy their curiosity—at least about the more pleasant aspects of her life there.

The constant talking helped her to forget her growing fatigue and the fact that, in spite of the gravity compensators reducing the weight of the heavy nutrient tank to zero, the harness straps were making a painful and possibly permanent impression on her upper thorax. Then suddenly there were only three patients left to sponge and feed, and Segroth had materialized behind them.

“If you work as well as you talk, Cha Thrat,” the Charge Nurse said, “I shall have no complaints.” To the Hudlar, it added, “How is it doing, Nurse?”

“It assists me very well, Charge Nurse,” the FROB trainee replied, “and without complaint. It is pleasant and at ease with the patients.”

“Good, good,” Segroth said, its fur rippling in approval. “But Cha Thrat belongs to another one of those species that require food at least three times a day if a pleasant disposition is to be maintained, and the midday meal is overdue. Would you like to finish the rest of the patients by yourself, Nurse?”

“Of course,” the Hudlar said as Segroth was turning away.

“Charge Nurse,” Cha Thrat said quickly. “I realize that I’ve only just arrived, but could I have permission to attend the—”

“The Conway lecture,” Segroth finished for her. “Naturally, you’ll find any excuse to escape the hard work of the ward. But perhaps I do you an injustice. Judging by the conversations I have overheard on the sound sensors, you have displayed good control of your feelings while talking with the patients and, considering your surgical background, the practical aspects of the lecture should not worry you. However, if any part ofthe demonstration distresses you, leave at once and asunobtrusively as possible.

“Permission would normally be refused a newly joined trainee like yourself,” it ended, “but if you can make it to the dining hall and back inside the hour, you may attend.”

“Thank you,” Cha Thrat said to the Kelgian’s already departing back. Quickly she began loosening the nutrient tank harness.

“Before you go, Nurse,” the Hudlar trainee said, “would you mind using some of that stuff on me? I’mstarving!”

Cha Thrat was among the first to arrive and stood— Hudlars did not use chairs, so the FROB lecture theater did not provide them—as close as possible to the operating cradle while she watched the place fill up. There was a scattering of Melfan ELNTs, Kelgian DBLFs, and Tralthan FGLIs among those present, but the majority were Hudlars in various stages of training. She was hemmed in by FROBs, so much so that she did not think that she would be able to leave even if she should want to, and she assumed—she still could not tell them apart —that the one standing closest to her was her partner of the morning.

From the conversations going on around her it was obvious that Diagnostician Conway was regarded as a very important being indeed, a medical near-deity in whose mind resided, by means of a powerful spell and the instrumentation of O’Mara, the knowledge, memories, and instincts of many other-species personalities. Having seen the hapless condition of the FROB ward’s pre-op patients, she was looking forward with growing anticipation to seeing it perform.

In appearance Conway was not at all impressive. It was an Earth-human DBDG, slightly above average inheight, with head fiir that was a darker gray than the wizard O’Mara’s.

It spoke with the quiet certainty of a great ruler, and began the lecture without preamble.

“For any of you who may not be completely informed regarding the Hudlar Project, and who may be concerned with the ethical position, let me assure you that the patient on which we will be operating today, its fellows in the FROB ward, and all the other geriatric and pre-geriatric cases waiting in great distress on the home world, are all candidates for elective surgery.

“The number of cases is so great—a significant proportion of the planetary population, in fact—that we cannot possibly treat them in Sector General . . .”

As the Earth-human Diagnostician talked on, Cha Thrat became increasingly disheartened by the sheer magnitude of the problem. A planet that contained, at any given time, many millions of beings in the same horrifying condition as the patients she had been recently attending was an idea that her mind did not want to face. But it became clear that Conway had faced it and was working toward an eventual solution—by training large numbers of the medically untutored Hudlars, assisted by other-species volunteers, to help themselves.

Initially, Sector General would provide basic tuition in FROB physiology, pre- and postoperative nursing care, and training in just one simple surgical procedure. The successful candidates, unless they displayed such an unusually high aptitude that they were offered positions on the staff, would return home to establish their own training organizations. Within three generations there would be enough own-species specialist surgeons to make this dreadful and hitherto unavoidable scourge of the Hudlars a thing of the past.

The sheer scale and what appeared to be the utter,criminal irresponsibility of the project shocked and sickened Cha Thrat. Conway was not training surgeons, it was turning out vast numbers of conscienceless, organic machines! She had been surprised when the Hudlar trainee had mentioned the time required for qualification, and it was possible that the hospital’s tutors would be able to provide the necessary practical training during that short period. But what about the long-term indoctrination, the courses of mental and physical exercises that would prepare the candidates for the acceptance of responsibility and pain, and the long, presurgery novitiate? As the Diagnostician talked on, there was no mention of these things.

“This is incredible!” Cha Thrat said suddenly. Softly the Hudlar beside her said, “Yes, indeed. But be quiet, Nurse, and listen.”

“The degree and extent of the suffering among aging FROBs is impossible to imagine or describe,” the Earth-human was saying. “If the majority of the other races in the Federation were faced with the same problem, there would be one simple, if completely unsatisfactory, answer for the individuals concerned. But the Hudlars, unfortunately or otherwise, are philosophically incapable of self-termination.

“Would you bring in Patient FROB-Eleven Thirty-two, please.”

A mobile operating frame driven by a Kelgian nurse glided to a stop in front of the Diagnostician. It held the patient—one of the Hudlars she had sprayed that mom-ing—already prepared for surgery.

“The condition of Eleven Thirty-two,” the Earth-human went on, “is too far advanced for surgical intervention to reverse the degenerative processes completely. However, today’s procedure will ensure that the remainder of the patient’s life will be virtually pain-free, which, in turn, means that it will be mentally alert, and, it will be able to lead a useful if not very active

life. With Hudlars who elect for surgery before the onset of the condition, and there are few members in the age groups concerned who do not so elect, the results are immeasurably better.

“Before we begin,” it continued, unclipping the deep scanner, “I would like to discuss the physiological reasons behind the distressing clinical picture we see before us . . .”

What miracle of irresponsible and illegal surgery, Cha Thrat wondered sickly, could make Eleven Thirty-two well again?But her curiosity was outweighed by a growing fear. She did not know whether or not she could bear to hear the answers that this terrible Earth-person would give, and still retain her sanity.

“In common with the majority of the life-forms known to us,” the Diagnostician continued, “the primary cause of the degenerative process known as aging is caused by increasing loss of efficiency in the major organs and an associated circulatory failure.

“With the FROB life-form,” it went on, “the irreversible loss of function and the abnormal degree of calcification and fissuring in the extremities is aggravated by the demand for nutrient, which is no longer available.

“From your FROB physiology lectures,” it continued, “you know that a healthy adult of the species possesses an extremely high metabolic rate that requires a virtually continuous supply of nutrient, which is metabolized, via the absorption mechanism, to supply major organs such as the two hearts, the absorption organs themselves, the womb when the entity is in gravid female mode, and, of course, the limbs. These six immensely strong limbsform the most energy-hungry system of the body, and demand close to eighty percent of the total nutrient metabolized.

“If this excessive demand is removed from the energy equation,” the Diagnostician said slowly and emphatically, “the nutrient supply to less-demanding systems is automatically increased to optimum.”

There was no longer any doubt in Cha Thrat’s mind regarding the surgical intentions of the Earth-human, but still she was trying to convince herself that the situation was not quite as bad as it seemed. With quiet urgency she asked, “Do this life-form’s limbs regenerate?”

“That is a stupid question,” the Hudlar beside her said. “No, if such were the case, the limb musculature and circulation would not have degenerated to their present state in the first place. Please be quiet, Nurse, and listen.”

“I meant the Earth-human’s limbs,” Cha Thrat said insistently, “not the patient’s.”

“No,” the Hudlar impatiently said. When she tried to ask other questions, it ignored her.

Conway was saying, “The major problem encountered while performing deep surgery on any life-form evolved for heavy gravity and high atmospheric pressure conditions is, of course, internal organ displacement and decompression damage. But with this type of operation there is no real problem. The bleeding is controlled with clamps, and the procedure is simple enough for any of you advanced trainees to perform it under supervision.

“In fact,” the Diagnostician added, showing its teeth suddenly, “I shall not even lay a cutter on this patient. The responsibility for the operation will be collectively yours.”

A quiet, polite uproar greeted the Earth-human’swords and the trainees surged closer to the barrier, imprisoning Cha Thrat within a barricade of metal-hard Hudlar bodies and tentacles. So many conversations were going on at once that several times her translator was overloaded, but from what she did hear it seemed that they were all in favor of this utterly shameful act of professional cowardice, and stupidly eager rather than afraid to take surgical responsibility.

She had never in her wildest and most fearful imaginings expected anything like this, nor thought to prepare herself for such a vicious and demoralizing attack on her ethical code. Suddenly she wanted away from this nightmare with its group of demented and immoral Hudlars. But they were all too busy flapping their speaking membranes at each other to hear her.

“Quiet, please,” Diagnostician Conway said, and there was silence. “I don’t believe in springing surprises, pleasant or otherwise, but sooner or later you Hudlars will be performing multiple amputations like this on your home world hour after hour, day after day, and I feel that you should get used to the idea sooner rather than later.”

It paused to look at a white card it was holding in one hand, then said, “Trainee FROB-Severity-three, you will begin.”

Cha Thrat had an almost overwhelming urge to shout and scream that she wanted out and far away from this hellish demonstration. But Conway, a Diagnostician and one of the hospital’s high rulers, had commanded silence, and the discipline of a lifetime could not be broken—even though she was far from Sommaradva. She pushed silently against the wall of Hudlar bodies enclosing her on three sides, but her attempts to pass through were ignored if they were even noticed. Everyone’s eyes were focused exclusively on the operating cradle and pa-tient FROB-Eleven Thirty-two and, in spite of her attempts to look elsewhere, hers were turned in the same direction.

It was obvious from the start that Seventy-three’s problem was psychological rather than surgical, and caused by the close proximity of one of the hospital’s foremost Diagnosticians watching every move it made. But Conway was being both tactful and reassuring during its spoken commentary on the operation. Whenever the trainee seemed hesitant, it managed to include the necessary advice and directions without making the recipient feel stupid and even more unsettled.

There was something of the wizard in this Diagnostician, Cha Thrat thought, but that in no way excused its unprofessional behavior.

'The Number Three cutter is used for the initial incision and for removing the underlying layers of muscle,” Conway was saying, “but some of us prefer the finer Number Five for the venous and arterial work, since the smoother edges of the incisions make suturing much easier as well as aiding subsequent healing.

“The nerve bundles,” it went on, “are given extra length and covered with inert metal caps, and are positioned just beneath the surface of the stump. This facilitates the nerve impulse augmentors that will later control the prosthetics . . .”

“What,” Cha Thrat wondered aloud, “are prosthetics?”

“Artificial limbs,” the Hudlar beside her said. “Watch and listen; you can ask questions afterward.”

There was plenty to see but less to hear because Trainee FROB-Seventy-three was working much faster and no longer seemed to be in need of the Diagnostician’s covert directions. Not only could Cha Thrat lookdirectly at the operative field, but the internal scanner picture was also being projected onto a large screen above and behind the patient, so that she could watch the careful, precise movements of the instruments within the limb.

Then suddenly there was no limb—it had fallen stiffly, like the diseased brnch of a tree, into a container on the floor—and she had her first view of a stump. Desperately she fought the urge to be physically sick.

“The large flap of tegument is folded over the stub limb,” Conway was saying, “and is attached by staples that dissolve when the healing process is complete. Because of the elevated internal pressure of this life-form and the extreme resistance of the tegument to puncturing by needle, normal suturing is useless and it is advisable, in fact, to err on the generous side where the staples are concerned.”

There had been unsavory rumors of cases like this on Sommaradva, traumatic amputation of limbs during a major industrial or transportation accident, after which the casualty had survived, or insisted on surviving. The wounds had been discreetly tidied up, usually by young, nonresponsible and as yet unqualified warrior-surgeons or even, if nobody else was available, by an amenable servile-healer. But even when the warriors concerned had sustained the wounds as a result of an act of bravery, the matter was hushed up and forgotten as quickly as possible.

The casualties went into voluntary exile. They would never dream of revealing their disabilities or deformities to the public gaze, nor would they have been allowed to do so. On Sommaradva they had too much respect for their bodies. And for people to parade around with me-chanical devices replacing their limbs was abhorrent and unthinkable.

“Thank you, Seventy-three, that was well done,” the Earth-human said, glancing once again at its white card. “Trainee Sixty-one, would you like to show us what you can do?”

Abhorrent and repulsive though it was, Cha Thrat could not take her eyes from the operating cradle while the new FROB demonstrated its surgical prowess. The depth and positioning of every incision and instrument was burned into her memory as if she were watching some horrid but fascinating perversion. Sixty-one was followed by two other advanced trainees, and patient FROB-Eleven Thirty-two was left with only two of its six limbs remaining in place.

“There is still a fair degree of mobility in one of the forelimbs,” Conway said, “and, considering the advanced age and reduced mental adaptability, I feel that it should be left intact for psychological as well as physiological reasons. It may well be that the increased blood and available nutrient supply due to the absence of the other limbs will partially improve the muscle condition and circulation in this one. As you can see, the other forelimb has degenerated virtually to the point of necrosis and must be removed.

“Trainee Cha Thrat,” it added, “will perform the amputation.”

Suddenly they Were all looking at her, and for a moment Cha Thrat had the ridiculous feeling that she was in the center of a three-dimensional picture, frozen in this nightmare for all eternity. But the real nightmare lay a few minutes in the future, when she would be forced into a major professional decision.

Her partner from the ward vibrated its speaking mem-brane quietly. “This is a great professional compliment, Nurse.”

Before she could reply, the Diagnostician was speaking again, to everyone.

It said, “Cha Thrat is a native of a newly discovered world, Sommaradva, where it was a qualified surgeon. It has prior experience of other-species surgery on an Earth-human DBDG, a life-form that it had encountered for the first time only a few hours earlier. In spite of this, the work was skillfully done, Senior Physician Edanelt tells me, and undoubtedly saved the entity’s limb and probably its life. And now it can further increase its other-species surgical experience with a much less difficult procedure on an FROB.”

Encouragingly it ended, “Come forward, Cha Thrat. Don’t be afraid. If anything

should go wrong, I will be here to help.”

There was a great, cold fear inside her mixed with the helpless anger of having to face the ultimate challenge without adequate spiritual preparation. But the Diagnostician’s concluding words, suggesting that her natural fear might somehow keep her from doing the work, filled her with righteous anger. It was a hospital ruler and, no matter how misguided and irresponsibile its orders to her had seemed, they would be obeyed—that was the law. And no Sommaradvan of the warrior class would show fear before anyone, and that included a group of other-species strangers. But still she hesitated.

Impatiently the Earth-human said, “Are you capable of performing this operation?”

“Yes,” she said.

Had it asked her if she wanted to perform the operation, Cha Thrat thought sadly as she moved toward the cradle, the answer would have been different. Then, jwith the incredibly sharp FROB Number Three cutter in her hand, she tried again.

“What,” she asked quickly, “is my precise responsibility in this case?”

The Earth-human took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then said, “You are responsible for the surgical removal of the patient’s left forelimb.”

“Is it possible to save this limb?” she asked hesitantly. “Can the circulation be improved, perhaps by surgical enlargement of the blood vessels, or by—”

“No,” said Conway firmly. “Please begin.”

She made the initial incisions and proceeded exactly as the others had done, without further hesitation or need of prompting by the Diagnostician. Knowing what was to happen, she suppressed her fear and steadfastly refused to worry about or feel the pain until the moment it would engulf her. She was utterly determined now to show this strange, highly advanced but seemingly nonre-sponsible medic how a truly dedicated warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva was expected to behave.

As she was inserting the last few staples into the flap covering the stump, the Diagnostician said warmly, “That was fast, precise, and quite exemplary work, Cha Thrat. I am particularly impressed by— What are you doingT’she thought that her intentions were obvious as soon as she lifted the Number Three cutter. Sommaradvan DCNFs did not possess forelimbs as such but, she thought proudly, the removal of a left-side medial limb would satisfy the professional requirements of the situation. One quick, neat slice was enough, then she looked at it lying in the container among the Hudlar limbs and gripped the stump tightly to control the bleeding.

Her last conscious memory of the episode was ofDiagnostician Conway shouting above the general uproar into the communicator.

“FROB lecture theater on the double,” it was saying urgently. “One DCNF, a traumatic amputation, self-inflicted. Ready the OR on Level Forty-three, dammit, and assemble a microsurgery team!”

CHAPTER 8

She could not be sure about the time required for her post-op recuperation, only that there had been lengthy periods of unconsciousness and a great many visits from Chief Psychologist O’Mara and Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway. The DBLF nurse assigned to her made caustic comments about the special attention she was receiving from the hospital’s hierarchy, the quantity of food she was moving for a supposedly sick patient, and about a newly arrived Nidian trainee whose furry little head had been turned by Cresk-Sar of all people. But when she tried to discuss her own case it was obvious from the Kelgian nurse’s agitated fur that that was a forbidden subject.

It did not matter because, by accident or design, the medication she was receiving had the effect of making her feel as if her mind was some kind of dirigible airship, moving at her direction but detached and floating free of all mundane problems. It was, she realized, a very comfortable but suggestible state.

During one of its later visits, O’Mara had suggested that, regardless of her reasons for acting as she had, she had discharged her particularly strict professional obligations, so that no further action was required on her part. The limb had been completely severed and removed from the torso. The fact that Conway and Thornnastor had together performed some very fancy microsurgery to reattach it, with no loss of function or feeling, was a piece of good fortune that she should accept gratefully and without guilt.

It had taken a long time to convince the wizard that she had already arrived at the same conclusion, and that she was grateful, not only for her good fortune, but to Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor for giving her back the limb. The only part of the incident that continued to puzzle her, she had told O’Mara, was the adverse reaction of everyone to the noble and praiseworthy thingshe had done.

O’Mara had seemed to relax then, and it had proceeded with a long, devious spell that involved subjects which Cha Thrat had considered too personal and sensitive to be discussed with a fellow Sommaradvan, much less a stranger. Perhaps it was the medication that reduced her feelings of shock and outrage, and made the suggestions of the wizard seem worthy of consideration rather than outright rejection.

One of its suggestions had been that, when viewed nonsubjectively, the action she had taken had been neither noble nor praiseworthy, but a little bit silly. By the end of that visit she almost agreed with it, and suddenly she was allowed visitors.

Tarsedth and the Hudlar trainee were the first callers. The Kelgian came bustling forward to ask how she was feeling and to examine her scars, while the FROB remained standing in silence just inside the entrance. ChaThrat wondered if there was anything bothering it, forgetting for the moment that her medication frequently caused her to vocalize her thoughts.

“Nothing,” said Tarsedth. “Just ignore the big softie. When I arrived it was outside the door, don’t know for how long, afraid that the mere sight of another Hudlar would give you some kind of emotional relapse. In spite of all that

muscle, Hudlars are sensitive souls. According to what O’Mara told Cresk-Sar, you are unlikely to do anything sudden or melodramatic. You are neither mentally unbalanced nor emotionally disturbed. Its exact words were that you were normally crazy but not certifi-ably mad, which is the condition of quite a few people who work in this place.”

It turned suddenly to regard the FROB, then went on. “Come closer! It is in bed, with a limb and most of its body immobilized, it has been blasted into low orbit with tranquilizers, and it isn’t likely to bite you!”

The Hudlar came forward and said shyly, “We all, everyone who was there, wish you well. That includes Patient Eleven Thirty-two, who is pain-free now and making good progress. And Charge Nurse Segroth whose good wishes were, ah, more perfunctory. Will you recover the full use of the limb?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tarsedth broke in. “With two Diagnosticians on the case it doesn’t dare not make a complete recovery.” To Cha Thrat it went on. “But so much has been happening to you recently that I can’t keep up. Is it true that you ticked off the Chief Psychologist in front of everybody in the Chalder ward, called it some kind of witch-doctor, and reminded it of its professional duty toward Patient AUGL-One Sixteen? According to the stories going around—”

“It wasn’t quite as bad as that,” Cha Thrat said.

“It never is,” the DBLF said, its fur subsiding in dis-appointment. “But the business during the FROB demonstration, now. You can’t deny or diminish what happened there.”

“Perhaps,” the Hudlar quietly said, “it would rather not talk about that.”

“Why not?” Tarsedth asked. “Everyone else is talking about it.”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment as she looked up at the head and shoulders of the Kelgian projecting like a silver-furred cone over one side of her bed and the enormous body of the Hudlar looming over the other. She tried to make her unnaturally fuzzy mind concentrate on what she wanted to say.

“I would prefer to talk about all the lectures I’ve missed,” she said finally. “Was there anything especially interesting or important? And would you ask Cresk-Sar if I could have a remote control for the viewscreen, so I can tune in to the teaching channels? Tell it that I have nothing to do here and I would like to continue with my studies as soon as possible.”

“Friend,” Tarsedth said, its fur rising into angry spikes, “I think you would be wasting your time.”

For the first time she wished that her Kelgian classmate was capable of something less than complete honesty. She had been expecting to hear something like this, but the bad news could have been broken more gently.

“What our forthright friend should have told you,” the Hudlar said, “is that we inquired about your exact status from Senior Physician Cresk-Sar, who would not give us a firm answer. It said that you were guilty not so much of contravening hospital rules but of breaking rules that nobody had dreamed of writing. The decision on what to do with you has been< referred up, it said, and you could expect a visit from O’Mara quite soon.

“When asked if we could bring you lecture material,” it ended apologetically, “Cresk-Sar said no.”

It did not make any difference how it was broken, she thought after they had gone, the news was equally bad. But the sudden, raucous sound of her bedside communicator kept her from dwelling for too long on her troubles.

It was Patient AUGL-One Sixteen who, with Charge Nurse Hredlichi’s cooperation, was shouting into one of the Nurses’ Station communicators from the entrance to the Chalder ward. It began by apologizing for the physiological and environmental problems that kept it from visiting her in person, then told her how much it was missing her visits—the Earth-human wizard O’Mara, it said, lacked her sympathetic manner and charm—and it hoped she was recovering with no physical or mental distress.

“Everything is fine,” she lied. It was not a good thing to burden a patient with its medic’s troubles, even when the medic was temporarily a patient. “How are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” the Chalder replied, sounding enthusiastic in spite of the fact that its words were reaching her through two communicators, a translator, and a considerable quantity of water. “O’Mara says that I can leave and rejoin my family very soon, and can start contacting the space administration on Chalder about my old job. I’m still young for a Chalder, you know, and I do really feel well.”

“I’m very happy for you, One Sixteen,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting its name because others might be listening who were not entitled to use it. She was surprised by the strength of her feelings toward the creature.

“I’ve heard the nurses talking,” the Chalder went on, “and it seems like you are in serious trouble. I hope all goes well for you, but if not, and you have to leave thehospital . . . Well, you are so far from Sommaradva out here that if you felt like seeing another world on your way home, my people would be pleased to have you for as long as you liked to stay. We’re pretty well advanced on Chalderescol and your food synthesis and life-support would be no problem.

“It’s a beautiful world,” it added, “much, much nicer than the Chalder ward . . .”

When the Chalder eventually broke contact, she settled back into the pillows, feeling tired but not depressed or unhappy, thinking about the ocean world of Chalderescol. Before joining the AUGL ward she had studied the library tape on that world with the idea of being able to talk about home to the patients, so she was not completely unfamiliar with the planet. The thought of living there was exciting, and she knew that, as an off-planet person entitled to call Muromeshomon by name, its family and friends would make her welcome however long or short her stay. But thoughts like that were uncomfortable because they presupposed that she would be leaving the hospital.

Instead she wondered how the normally shy and gentle Chalder had been able to prevail upon the acid-tongued Hredlichli to use the Nurses’ Station communicator as it had done. Could it have forced cooperation by threatening to wreck the place again? Or, more likely, had the Chalder’s call to her been supported, perhaps even suggested, by O’Mara?That, too, was an uncomfortable thought, but it did not keep her awake. The continuing spell of the Earth-human wizard or the medication it had prescribed, or both, were still having their insidious effect.

During the days that followed she was visited singly and, where physiological considerations permitted, in small groups by her classmates. Cresk-Sar came twicebut, like all the other visitors, the tutor would not talk about medical matters at all. Then one day O’Mara and Diagnostician Conway arrived together and would discuss nothing else.

“Good morning, Cha Thrat, how are you feeling?” the Diagnostician began, as she knew it would.

“Very well, thank you,” she replied, as it knew she would. After that she was subjected to the most meticulously thorough physical examination she had ever experienced.

“You’ve probably realized by now that all of this wasn’t strictly necessary,” Conway said as it replaced the sheet that had been covering her body. “However, it was my first opportunity to have a really close look at the DCNF physiological classification as a whole, as opposed to one of the limbs. Thank you, it was interesting and most instructive.

“But now that you are completely recovered,” it went on, with a quick glance toward O’Mara, “and will require only a course of exercises before you would be fit for duty, what are we going to do with you?”

She suspected that it was a rhetorical question, but she badly wanted to reply to it. Anxiously she said, “There have been mistakes, misunderstandings. They will not occur again. I would like to remain in the hospital and continue my training.”

“No!” Conway said sharply. In a quieter voice it went on. “You are a fine surgeon, Cha Thrat—potentially a great one. Losing you would be a shameful waste of talent. But keeping you on the medical staff, with your peculiar ideas of what constitutes ethical behavior, is out of the question. There isn’t a ward in the hospital that would accept you for practical training now. Segroth took you only because O’Mara and I requested it.

“I like to make my surgery lectures as interesting andexciting as possible for the trainees,” Conway added, “but there are limits, dammit!”

Before either of them could say the words that would send her from the hospital, Cha Thrat said quickly, “What if something could be done that would guarantee my future good behavior? One of my early lectures was on the Educator tape system of teaching alien physiology and medicine that, in effect, gives the recipient an other-species viewpoint. If I could be given such a tape, one with a more acceptable, to you, code of professional behavior, then I would be sure to stay out of trouble.”

She waited anxiously, but the two Earth-humans were looking at each other in silence, ignoring her.

Without the Educator or physiology tape system, she had learned, a multispecies hospital like Sector General could not have existed. No single brain, regardless of species, could hold the enormous quantity of physiological knowledge required to successfully treat the variety of patients the hospital received. But complete physiological data on any patient’s species was available by means of an Educator tape, which was simply the brain record of some great medical mind belonging to the same or a similar species as the patient to be treated.

A being taking such a tape had to share its mind with a completely alien personality. Subjectively, that was exactly how it felt; all of the memories and experiences and personality traits of the being who had donated the tape were impressed on the receiving mind, not just selected pieces of medical data. An Educator tape could not be edited and the degree of confusion, emotional disorienta-tion, and personality dislocation caused to a recipient could not be adequately described even by the Senior Physicians and Diagnosticians who experienced it.

The Diagnosticians were the hospital’s highest medical rulers, beings whose minds were both adaptable andC.B.E.----6stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes at one time. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research into xenological medicine and the treatment of new diseases in newly discovered life-forms.

But Cha Thrat was not interested in subjecting herself voluntarily, as had the Diagnosticians, to a multiplicity of alien ideas and influences. She had heard it said among the staff that any person sane enough to'be a Diagnostician had to be mad, and she could well believe it. Her idea represented a much less drastic solution to the problem.

“If I had an Earth-human, a Kelgian, even a Nidian personality sharing my mind,” she persisted, “I would understand why the things I sometimes do are considered wrong, and would be able to avoid doing them. The other-species material would be used for interpersonal behavioral guidance only. As a trainee I would not try to use its medical or surgical knowledge on my patients without permission.”

The Diagnostician was suddenly overcome by an attack of coughing. When it recovered it said, “Thank you, Cha Thrat. I’m sure the patients would thank you, too. But it’s impossible to . . . O’Mara, this is your field. You answer it.”

The Chief Psychologist moved close to the bedside and looked down at her. It said, “Hospital regulations do not allow me to do as you ask, nor would I do so if I could. Even though you are an unusually strong and stubborn personality, you would find it very difficult to control the other occupant of your mind. It isn’t an alien entity fighting for control, but because the type of leading medical specialist who donates the tapes is frequently a very strong-minded and aggressive person used to getting its own way, it would feel as if it is takingcontrol. The ensuing purely subjective conflict could give rise to episodes of pain, skin eruptions, and more troublesome organic malfunctionings. All have a psychosomatic basis, of course, but they will hurt you just as much as the real thing. The risk of permanent mental damage is great and, until a trainee has learned to understand the external personalities of the beings around it, it would not receive one of their Educator tapes.

“In your case there is an additional reason,” O’Mara added. “You are a female.”

Sommaradvan prejudices, she thought furiously, evenhere in Sector General! and made a sound that at homewould have resulted in an immediate and probably vio-* lent breakdown in communication. Fortunately, thesound did not translate.

“The conclusion you have just jumped to is wrong,” O’Mara went on. “It is simply that the females of all the two-sexed species yet discovered have evolved with certain peculiarities, as opposed to abnormalities, of mind. One of them is a deeply rooted, sex-based fastidiousness and aversion toward anything or anyone entering or trying to possess their minds. The only exception is in the situation when life-mating has taken place, where, in many species, the processes of physical and mental sharing and the feelings of possession complement each other. But I can’t imagine you falling in love with an other-species mind impression.”

“Do male entities,” Cha Thrat asked, both satisfied and intrigued by the explanation, “receive mind recordings from other-species females, then? Could / be given a female tape?”

“There is only one’recorded instance of that . . .” O’Mara began.

“Let’s not go into that,” Conway broke in, its face becoming a darker shade of pink. “I’m sorry, Cha Thrat,you cannot be given an Educator tape, now or ever. O’Mara has explained why, just as he has explained the political circumstances of your arrival here and the delicate state of the cultural contact on Sommaradva that would be jeopardized if we simply dismissed you from the hospital. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if you left of your own free will?”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, her eyes turned toward the limb that she had thought would be lost forever, trying to find the right words. Then she said, “You don’t owe me anything for my work on ship ruler Chiang. I have already explained, during my first meeting with the Chief Psychologist, that the delay in attending to its injuries was caused by my not wanting to lose a limb because if, as a result of my decision to perform the operation it lost a limb, then so would I. As a warrior-surgeon I cannot escape a responsibility willingly accepted.

“And now,” she went on, “if I were to leave the hospital as you suggest, it would not be of my own free will. I cannot do, or leave undone, something that I know to be wrong.”

The Diagnostician was also looking at the replaced limb. “I believe you,” it said.

O’Mara exhaled slowly and half turned to leave. It said, “I’m very sorry I didn’t pick up on that 'losing a limb' remark you made at our first meeting; it would have saved us all a lot of trouble. Against my better judgment I relented after the AUGL-One Sixteen business, but the bloody drama during the FROB demonstration was too much. The remainder of your stay here will not be very pleasant because, in spite of the earlier recommendations you’ve had from Diagnostician Conwayand myself, nobody wants you anywhere near their patients.

“Let’s face it, Cha Thrat,” it ended as both Earth-humans moved toward the door, “you’re in the doghouse.”

She heard them talking with a third person in the corridor, but the words were too muffled for translation. Then the door opened and another Earth-human entered. It was wearing the dark-green uniform of the Monitor Corps and looked familiar.

Cheerfully it said, “I’ve been waiting outside in case they couldn’t talk you into leaving, and O’Mara was pretty sure they wouldn’t. I’m Timmins, in case you don’t remember me. We have to have a long talk.

“And before you ask,” it went on, “the doghouse, so far as you’re concerned, is the Maintenance Department.”

CHAPTER 9

It was obvious from the beginning that Lieutenant Timmins did not consider its job to be either servile or menial, and it was not long before the Lieutenant had her beginning to feel the same way. It wasn’t just the Earth-human’s quiet enthusiasm for its job, there was also the portable viewer and set of study tapes it had left at her bedside that convinced her that this was work forIwarriors—although not, of course, for warrior-surgeons. The wide-ranging and complex problems of providing technical and environmental support for the sixty-odd— some of them very odd indeed—life-forms comprising the hospital’s patients and staff made her earlier medical and physiological studies seem easy by comparison.

Her last formal contact with the training program was when Cresk-Sar arrived, carried out a brief but thorough examination, and, subject to the findings of the eye specialist, Doctor Yeppha, who would be visiting her shortly, pronounced her physically fit to begin the new duties. She asked if there would be any objection to her continuing to view the medical teaching channels in her free time, and the Senior Physician told her that she could watch whatever she pleased in her spare time, but it was unlikely that she would ever be able to put any of the medical knowledge gained into practice.

It ended by saying that while it was relieved that she was no longer the Training Department’s responsibility, it was sorry to lose her and that it joined her erstwhile colleagues in wishing her success and personal satisfaction in the new work she had chosen.

Doctor Yeppha was a new life-form to her experience, a small, tripedal, fragile being that she classified as DRVJ. From the furry dome of its head there sprouted, singly and in small clusters, at least twenty eyes. She wondered whether the overabundance of visual sensors had any bearing on its choice of specialty, but thought it better not to ask.

“Good morning, Cha Thrat,” it said, taking a tape from the pouch at its waist and pushing it into the viewer. “This is a visual acuity test designed primarily to check for color blindness. We don’t care if you have muscles like a Hudlar or a Cinrusskin, there are ma-cniiies lu uu me icaiiy ncavy worn . . . oui you nave 10 oe able to see. Not only that, you must be able to clearly identify colors and the subtle shades and dilution of color brought about by changes in the intensity of the ambient lighting. What do you see there?”

“A circle made up of red spots,” Cha Thrat replied, “enclosing a star of green and blue spots.”

“Good,” Yeppha said. “I am making this sound much simpler than it really is, but you will learn the complexities in time. The service bays and interconnecting tunnels are filled with cable looms and plumbing all of which is color coded. This enables the maintenance people to tell at a glance which are power cables and which the , less dangerous communication lines, or which pipes carry oxygen, chlorine, methane, or organic effluvia. The danger of contamination of wards by other-species atmospheres is always present, and such an environmental catastrophe should not be allowed to occur because some partially sighted nincompoop has connected up the wrong set of pipes. What do you see now?”

And so it went on, with Yeppha putting designs in subtly graduated colors on the screen and Cha Thrat telling it what she saw or did not see. Finally the DRVJ turned off the viewer and replaced the tape in its pouch.

“You don’t have as many eyes as I do,” it said, “but they all work. There is no bar, therefore, to you joining the Maintenance Department. My sincere commiserations. Good luck!”

The first three days were to be devoted exclusively to unsupervised lessons in internal navigation. Timmins explained that whenever or wherever an emergency occurred, or even if a minor fault was reported, the maintenance people were expected to be at the site of the trouble with minimum delay. Because they wouldnormally be carrying tools or replacement parts with them on a self-powered trolley, they were forbidden the use of the main hospital corridors, except in the direst of emergencies—staff and patient traffic there was congested enough as it was without risking a vehicular thrombosis. She was therefore expected to find her way from A to B, with diversions through H, P, and W, without leaving the service bays and tunnels or asking directions of anyone she might meet.

Neither was she allowed to make an illegal check on her position by emerging into the main corridor system to go to lunch.

“Wearing the lightweight protective envelope will probably be unnecessary,” Timmins said as he lifted the grating in the floor just outside her room, “but maintenance people always wear them in case they have to pass through an area where there may be a nonurgent seepage of own-species toxic gas. You have sensors to warn you of the presence of all toxic contaminants, including radiation, a lamp in case one of the tunnels has a lighting failure, a map with your route clearly shown, a distress beacon in case you become hopelessly lost or some other personal emergency occurs, and, if I may say so, more than enough food to keep you alive for a week much less a day!

“Don’t worry and don’t try to hurry, Cha ThraC' it went on. “Look on this as a long, leisurely walk through unexplored territory, with frequent breaks for a picnic. I’ll see you outside Access Hatch Twelve in Corridor Seven on Level One Twenty in fifteen hours, or less.”

It laughed suddenly and added, “Or possibly more.”

The service tunnels were very well lit, but low and narrow—at least so far as the Sommaradvan life-form was concerned—with alcoves set at frequent intervalsalong their length. The alcoves were puzzling in that they were empty of cable runs, pipes, or any form of mechanisms, but she discovered their purpose when a Kelgian driving a powered trolley came charging along the tunnel toward her and yelled, “Move aside, stupid!”

Apart from that encounter she seemed to have the tunnel to herself, and she was able to move much more easily than she had ever been able to do in the main corridor whose floor was now above her head. Through the ventilator grilles she could clearly hear the sounds of thumping and tapping and slithering of other-species ambulatory appendages overhead, and the indescribable babbie of growling, hissing, gobbling, and cheeping conversation that accompanied it.

She moved forward steadily, careful not to be surprised by another fast-moving vehicle as she consulted her map, and occasionally stopped to dictate notes describing the size, diameter, and color codings on the protective casings of the mechanisms and connecting pipes and cable runs that covered the tunnel walls and roof. The notes, Timmins had told her, would enable it to check her progress during the test, as well as give her an important check on her general location.

The power and communication lines would look the same anywhere in the hospital, but most of the plumbing here bore the color codings for water and the atmospheric mixture favored by the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms that made up more than half of the Federation’s member species. Under the levels where they breathed chlorine, methane, or super-heated steam the colors would be much different and so would be her protective clothing.

A mechanism that did not appear to be working caught her attention. Through its transparent cover shecould see a group of unlit indicators and a serial number that probably meant something to the entities who had built the thing, but to nobody else who was not familiar with their written language. She located and pressed the plate of the audible label and switched on her translator.

“I am a standby pump on the drinking water supply line to the DBLF ward Eighty-three diet kitchen,” it announced. “Functioning is automatic when required, currently inoperative. The hinged inspection panel is opened by inserting your general-purpose key into the slot marked with a red circle and turning right through ninety degrees. For component repair or replacement consult Maintenance Instructions Tape Three, Section One Twenty. Don’t forget to close the panel again before you leave.

“I am a standby pump . . .” it was beginning again when she took her hand away, silencing it.

At first she had been worried by the thought of traveling continuously along the low, narrow service tunnels, even though O’Mara had assured Timmins that her psych profile was free of any tendency toward claustrophobia. All of the tunnels were brightly lit and, she had been told, they remained so even if they were unoccupied for long periods. On Sommaradva this would have been considered a criminal waste of power. But in Sector General the additional demand on the main reactor for continuous lighting was negligible, and was more than outweighed by the maintenance problem that would have been posed if fallible on-off switches had been installed at every tunnel intersection.

Gradually her route took her away from the corridors and the alien cacophony of the people using them, and she felt more completely and utterly alone than she had believed it possible to feel.

The absence of outside sounds made the subduedhumming and clicking of the power and pumping systems around her appear to grow louder and more threatening, and she took to pressing the audible labels at random, just to hear another voice—even though it was simply a machine identifying itself and its often mystifying purpose.

Occasionally she found herself thanking the machine for the information.

The color codings had begun to change from the oxygen-nitrogen and water markings to those for chlorine and the corrosive liquid that the Illensan PVSJ metabolism used as a working fluid, and the corridors were shorter with many more twists and turns. Before her confusion could grow into panic, she decided to make herself as comfortable as possible in an alcove, substantially reduce the quantity of food she was carrying, and think.

According to her map she was passing from the PVSJ section downward through one of the synthesizer facilities that produced the food required by the chlorine-breathers and into the section devoted to the supply of the AUGL water-breathers. That explained the seemingly contradictory markings and the square-sectioned conduits that made hissing, rumbling noises as the solid, prepackaged PVSJ food was being moved pneumatically along them. However, a large corner of the AUGL section had been converted to a PVSJ operating room and post-op observation ward, and this was joined to the main chlorine section by an ascending spiral corridor containing moving ramps for the rapid transfer of staff and patients, since the PVSJs were not physiologically suited to the use of stairs. The twists and turns of the service tunnel were necessary to get around these topo-logically complex obstructions. But if she got safely past this complicated interpenetration of the water- andchlorine-breathing sections, the journey should be much simpler.

There was no shortage of vocal company. Warning labels, which spoke whether she pressed them or not, advised her to check constantly for cross-species contamination.

Provision had been made to take food without unsealing her protective suit, but her sensors showed the area clear of toxic material in dangerous quantities, so she opened her visor. The smell was an indescribable combination of every sharp, acrid, heavy, unpleasant, and even pleasant smell that she had ever encountered but, fortunately, only in trace quantities. She ate her food, quickly closed the visor, and moved on with increased confidence.

Three long, straight sections of corridor later she realized that her confidence had been misplaced.

According to her estimates of the distances and directions she had traveled, Cha Thrat should be somewhere between the Hudlar and Tralthan levels. The tunnel walls should have been carrying the thick, heavily insulated power cables for the FROBs’ artificial gravity grids and at least one distinctively marked pipe to supply their nutrient sprayers, as well as the air, water, and return waste conduits required by the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing FGLIs. But the cable runs bore color combinations that should not have been there, and the only atmosphere line visible was the small-diameterpipe supplying air to the tunnel itself. Irritated with herself, she pressed the nearest audible label.

“I am an automatic self-monitoring control unit for synthesizer process One Twelve B,” it said importantly. “Press blue stud and access panel will move aside. Warning. Only the container and audible label are reus-able. If faulty, components must be replaced and not repaired. Not to be opened by MSVK, LSVO, or other species with low radiation tolerance unless special protective measures are taken.”

She had no desire to open the cabinet, even though her radiation monitor was indicating that the area was safe for her particular life-form. At the next alcove she had another look at her map and list of color codings.

Somehow she had wandered into one of the sections that were inhabited only by automatic machinery. The map indicated fifteen such areas within the main hospital complex, and none of them was anywhere near her , planned route. Plainly she had taken a wrong turning, perhaps a series of wrong turnings, soon after leaving the spiral tunnel connecting the PVSJ ward with its new operating room.

She moved on again, watching the tunnel walls and roof in the hope that the next change in the color codings would give her a clue to where she might be. She also cursed her own stupidity aloud and touched every label she passed, but soon decided that both activities were nonproductive. It was a wise decision because, at the next tunnel intersection, she heard distant voices.

Timmins had told her not to speak to anyone or to enter any of the public corridors. But, she reasoned, if she was already hopelessly off-course then there was nothing to stop her taking the side tunnel and moving toward the sound. Perhaps by listening at one of the corridor ventilating grilles she might overhear a conversation that would give her a clue to her present whereabouts.

The thought made Cha Thrat feel ashamed but, compared with some of the things she had been forced tothink about recently, it was a small, personal dishonor that she thought she could live with.

There were lengthy breaks in the conversation. At first the voices were too quiet and distant for her translator to catch what was being said, and when she came closer the people concerned were indulging in one of their lengthy silences. The result was that when she came to the next intersection, she saw them before there was another chance to overhear them.

They were a Kelgian DBLF and an Earth-human DBDG, dressed in Maintenance coveralls with the additional insignia of Monitor Corps rank. There were tools and dismantled sections of piping on the floor between them and, after glancing up at her briefly, they went on talking to each other.

“I wondered what was coming at us along the corridor,” the Kelgian said, “and making more noise than a drunken Tralthan. It must be the new DCNF we were told about, on its first day underground. We mustn’t talk to it, not that I’d want to, anyway. Strange-looking creature, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t dream of talking to it, or vice versa,” the DBDG replied. “Pass me the Number Eleven gripper and hold your end steady. Do you think it knows where it’s going?”

The Kelgian’s conical head turned briefly in the direction Cha Thrat was headed, and it said, “Not unless it was feeling that the tunnel walls were closing in on itv and it wanted to treat threatened claustrophobia with a* jolt of agoraphobia by walking on the outer hull. This, is no job for a Corps senior non-com shortly, if what the Major says is true, to be promoted Lieutenant.”

“This is no job for anybody, so don’t worry about it,” the Earth-human said. It turned to look pointedly along,the corridor to the left. “On the other hand, it could be contemplating a visit to the VTXM section. Stupid in a lightweight suit, of course, but maintenance trainees have to be stupid or they’d try for some other job.”

The Kelgian made an angry sound that did not translate, then said, “Why is it that nowhere in the vast immensity of explored space have we discovered yet a single life-form whose body wastes smell nice?”

“My furry friend,” the Earth-human said, “I think you may have touched upon one of the great philosophical truths. And on the subject of inexplicable phenomena, how could a Melfan Size Three dilator get into their waste-disposal system and travel through four levels before it gummed up the works down here?”

She could see the Kelgian’s fur rippling under its coveralls as it said, “Do you think that DCNF is stupid? Is it going to stand there watching us all day? Is it intending to follow us home?”

“From what I’ve heard about Sommaradvans,” the DBDG replied, still not looking directly at her, “I’d say it wasn’t so much stupid as a bit slow-witted.”

“Definitely slow-witted,” the Keigian agreed.

But Cha Thrat had already realized that, cloaked though they were by statements that were derogatory and personally insulting, the overheard conversation had contained three accurate points of reference which would easily enable her to establish her position and return to the planned route. She regarded the two maintenance people for a moment, sorry that she was forbidden to speak to them as they were to her. Quickly she made the formal sign of thanks between equals, then turned away to move in the only direction the two beings had nor discussed.

“I think,” the Kelgian said, “it made a rude gesture with its forward medial limb,”

“In its place,” the Earth-human replied, “I’d have done the same.”

During the remainder of that interminable journey she double-checked every change of direction and kept watch for any unexpected alterations in color codings on the way to Level One Twenty, and paused only once to make another large dent in her food store. When she opened Access Hatch Twelve and climbed into Corridor Seven, Timmins was already there.

“Well done, Cha Thrat, you made it,” the Earth-human said, showing its teeth. “Next time I’d better make the trip a little longer, and a lot more complicated. After that I’ll let you help out with a few simple jobs. You may as well start earning your keep.”

Feeling pleased and a little confused, she said, “I thought I arrived early. Have I kept you waiting long?”

Timmins shook its head. “Your distress beacon was for your own personal reassurance in case yoir felt lost or frightened. It was part of the test. But we keep permanent tracers on our people at all times, so I was aware of every move you made. Devious, aren’t I? But you passed very close to a maintenance team at one stage. I hope you didn’t ask them for directions. You know the rule.”

Cha Thrat wondered if there was any rule in Sector General so inflexible that it could not be bent out of shape, and she hoped that the outer signs of her embarrassment could not be read by a member of another species.

“No,” she replied truthfully, “we didn’t speak to each other”

CHAPTER 10

In the event, she was not given a job until Timmins had shown her the full range and complexity of the work that, one day, she might be capable of taking on. It was obvious that the Earth-human was quietly but intensely proud of its Maintenance Department and, with good reason, was showing off while trying to instill a little of its own pride in her. True, much of the work was servile, but there were aspects of it that called for the qualities of a warrior or even a minor ruler. Unlike the rigid stratification of labor practiced on Sommaradva, however, in the Maintenance Department advancement toward the higher levels was encouraged.

Timmins was doing an awful lot of encouraging, and seemed to be spending an unusually large proportion of its time showing her around.

“With respect,” she said after one particularly interesting tour of the low-temperature methane levels, “your rank and obvious ability suggest that you have more important uses for your time than spending it with me, your most recent and, I suspect, most technically ignorant maintenance trainee. Why am I given this special treatment?”

Timmins laughed quietly and said, “You mustn’t think that I’m neglecting more important work to be with you, Cha Thrat. If I’m needed I can be contacted without delay. But that is unlikely to happen because my subordinates try very hard to make me feel redundant.

“You should find the next section particularly interesting,” it went on. “It is the VTXM ward, which, strange as it may seem, forms part of the main reactor.

You know from your medical lectures that the Telfi are a gestalt life-form who live by the direct absorption of hard radiation, so that all patient examination and treatment is by remote-controlled sensors and manipulators. To be assigned to maintenance in this area you would need special training in—”

“Special training,” Cha Thrat broke in, beginning to lose her patience, “means special treatment. I have already asked this question. Am I being given special treatment?”

“Yes,” the Earth-human said sharply. It waited while a refrigerated vehicle containing one of the frigid-blooded SNLU methane-breathers rolled past, then went on. “Of course you are being given special treatment.”

“Why?”

Timmins did not reply.

“Why do you not answer this simple question?” she persisted.

“Because,” the Earth-human said, its face deepening in color, “your question does not have a simple answer, and I’m not sure if I am the right person to give it to you, since I might also give offense, cause you mental pain, insult you, or make you angry.”

Cha Thrat walked in silence for a moment, then said, “I think that your consideration for my feelings makes you the right person. And a subordinate who has acted wrongly may indeed feel mental pain or anger or intense” self-dislike but surely, if the superior speaks justly, no offense can be taken nor insult given.”

The Earth-human shook its head in a gesture, she had learned, that could mean either negation or puzzlement. It said, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you make me feel like the subordinate. But what the hell, I’ll try to answer. You are being accorded special treatment because of the wrong we did to you and the mental discomfort we have caused, and there are several important people who

feel obligated to do something about it.”

“But surely,” she said incredulously, “I am the one who has behaved wrongly.”

“That you have,” Timmins said, “but as a direct result of us wronging you first. The Monitor Corps are responsible for allowing, no, encouraging you to come here in the first place, and waiving the entry requirements. The wrongdoing that followed this combination of misguided gratitude for saving Chiang’s life and sheer political opportunism was the inevitable result.”

“But I wanted to come,” Cha Thrat protested, “and I still want to stay.”

“To punish yourself for recent misdeeds?” Timmins asked quietly. “I’ve been trying to convince you that we are originally to blame for those.”

“I am not mentally or morally warped,” she replied, trying to control her anger at what, on her home world, would have been a grave insult. “I accept just punishment, but I would not seek to inflict it on myself. There are some very disquieting and unpleasant aspects to life here, but in no level of Sommaradvan society could I be subject to such a variety and intensity of experience. That is why I would like to stay.”

The Earth-human was silent for a moment, then it said, “Conway, O’Mara, and Cresk-Sar among others, even Hredlichli, were sure that your reasons for wanting to stay here were positive rather than negative and thatthere was little chance of my getting you to agree to a return home . . .”

It broke off as Cha Thrat stopped dead in the corridor. Angrily she said, “Have you been discussing with all these people my deeds and misdeeds, my competence or incompetence, perhaps my future prospects, without inviting me to be present?”

“Move, you’re causing a traffic problem,” Timmins said. “And there is no reason for anger. Since that business during the Hudlar demo there isn’t a single being in the hospital who has not talked about your deeds, misdeeds, competence, or lack thereof, and your highly questionable future prospects in the hospital. Having you present at ail those discussions was not possible. But if you want to know what was said about you in great and interminable detail—the serious discussions, that is, as opposed to mere hospital gossip—I believe O’Mara has added the recordings to your psych file and might play them back to you on request. Or again, he might not.

“Alternatively,” it went on when they were moving again, “you may wish me to give you a brief summary of these discussions, inaccurate in that the excess verbiage and the more impolite and colorful phraseology will be deleted.”

“That,” Cha Thrat said, “is what I wish.” “Very well,” it replied. “Let me begin by saying that the Monitor Corps personnel and all of the senior medical staff members involved are responsible for this situation. During the initial interview with O’Mara you mentioned that the lengthy delay in your decision to treat Chiang was that you did not want to lose a limb. O’Mara assumed, wrongly, that you were referring only to Chiang’s limb, and he thinks that in an other-species interview he should have been more alert to the exactmeaning of the words spoken, and that he is primarily responsible for your self-amputation.

“Conway feels responsible,” it went on, “because he ordered you to perform the Hudlar limb removal without knowing anything about your very strict code of professional ethics. Cresk-Sar thinks it should have questioned you more closely on the same subject. Both of them believe that you would make a fine other-species surgeon if you could be deconditioned and reeducated. And Hred-lichli blames itself for ignoring the special friendship that developed between you and AUGL-One Sixteen. And, of course, the Monitor Corps, which is originally responsible for the problem, suggested a solution that would give the minimum displeasure to everyone.”

“By transferring me to Maintenance,” she finished for it.

“That was never a serious suggestion,” the Earth-human said, “because we couldn’t believe that you would accept it. No, we wanted to send you home.”

A small part of her mind was moving her body forward and around the heavier or more senior staff members, while the rest of it felt angry and bitterly disappointed in the life-form beside her that she had begun to think of as a friend.

“Naturally,” Timmins went on, “we tried to take your feelings into account. You were interested in meeting and working with off-planet life-forms, so we would give you a cultural liaison position, as an advisor on Sommar-advan affairs, on our base there. Or on Descartes, our largest specialized other-species contact vessel, which will be orbiting your world until another new intelligent species is discovered somewhere. Your position would be one of considerable responsibility, and could not be influenced in any way by the people who dislike you on Sommaradva.

“Naturally, nothing could be guaranteed at this stage,” it continued. “But subject to your satisfactory performance with us you would be allowed to choose between a permanent position with the Corps’ Sommar-adva establishment as an interspecies cultural advisor or as a member of the contact team on Descartes. We tried to do what we thought was best for you, friend, and everyone else.”

“You did,” Cha Thrat said, feeling her anger and disappointment melting away. “Thank you.”

“We thought it was a reasonable compromise,” Tim-mins said. “But O’Mara said no. He insisted that you be given a maintenance job here in the hospital and have the Corps induction procedures attended to as quickly as possible.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” it replied. “Who knows how a Chief Psychologist’s mind works?”

“Why,” she repeated, “must I join your Monitor Corps?”

“Oh, that,” Timmins said. “Purely for administrative convenience. The supply and maintenance of Sector General is our responsibility, and anyone who is not a patient or on the medical staff is automatically a member of the Monitor Corps. The personnel computer has to know your name, rank, and number so as to be able to pay your salary and so we can tell you what to do.

“Theoretically,” it added.

“I have never disobeyed the lawful order of a superior. . .” Cha Thrat began, when it held up its hand again.

“A Corps joke, don’t worry about it,” Timmins said. “The point I’m trying to make is that our Chief Psychologist bears the administrative rank of major, but it is difficult to define the limits of his authority in this place . . . because he orders full Colonels and Diagnosticiansaround, and not always politely. Your own rank of junior technician, Environmental Maintenance, Grade Two, which became effective as soon as we received O’Mara’s instructions, will not give you as much leeway.”

“Please,” she said urgently, “this is a serious matter. It is my understanding that the Monitor Corps is an organization of warriors. It has been many generations on Sommaradva since our warrior-level citizens fought together in battle. Peace and present-day technology offer danger enough. As a warrior-surgeon I am required to heal wounds, not inflict them.”

“Seriously,” the Earth-human said, “I think your information on the Corps came chiefly from the entertainment channels. Space battles and hand-to-hand combat are an extremely rare occurrence, and the library tapes will give you a much truer, and more boring, description of what we do and why we do it. Study the material. You’ll find that there will be no conflict of loyalty between your duties to the Corps, your home world, or your ethical standards.

“We’ve arrived,” it added briskly, pointing at the sign on the heavy door before them. “From here on we’ll need heavy radiation armor. Oh, you’ve another question?”

“It’s about my salary,"she said hesitantly.

Timmins laughed and said, “I do so hate these altruistic types who consider money unimportant. The pay at your present rank isn’t large. Personnel will be able to tell you the equivalent in Sommaradvan currency, but then there isn’t much to spend it on here. You can always save it and your leave allowance and travel. Perhaps visit your AUGL friend on Chalderescol sometime, or go to—”

“There would be enough money for an interstellar trip like that?” she broke in.

The Earth-human went into a paroxym of coughing, recovered, then said, “There would not be enough money to pay for an interstellar trip. However, because of the isolated position of Sector General, free Corps transport is available for physiologically suitable hospital personnel to travel to their home planets or, with a bit of fiddling, to the planet of your choice. The money could be spent there, enjoying yourself. Now will you please get into that armor?”

Cha Thrat did not move and the Earth-human watched her without speaking.

Finally she said, “I am being given special treatment, shown areas where I am not qualified to work and mechanisms that I can’t hope to use for a very long time. No doubt this is being done as an incentive, to show me what is possible for me to achieve in the future. I understand and appreciate the thinking behind this, but I would much prefer to stop sightseeing and do some simple, and useful, work.”

“Well, good for you!” Timmins said, showing its teeth approvingly. “We can’t look directly at the Telfi anyway, so we aren’t missing much. Suppose you begin by learning to drive a delivery sled. A small one, at first, so that an accident will damage you more than the hospital structure. And you’ll have to really master your internal geography, and be able to navigate accurately and at speed through the service tunnel network. It seems to be a law of nature that when a ward or diet kitchen has to be resupplied, the requisition is always urgent and usually arrives late.

“We’ll head for the internal transport hangar now,” it ended, “unless you have another question?”

She had, but thought it better to wait until they were moving again before asking it.

“What about the damage to the AUGL ward for whichI was indirectly responsible?” she said. “Will the cost be deducted from my salary?”

Timmins showed its teeth again and said, “I’d say that it would take about three years to pay for the damage caused by your AUGL friend. But when the damage was done you were one of the medical trainee crazies, not a serious and responsible member of the Maintenance Department, so don’t worry about it.”

She did not worry about it because, for the rest of the day, there were far more important things to worry about—principally the control and guidance of the uncontrollable and misguided, multiply accursed heap of machinery called an antigravity sled.

In operation the vehicle rode a repulsion cushion so that there was no contact with the deck, and changes in direction were effected by lowering friction pads, angling the thrusters, or, for fine control, leaning sideways. If emergency braking was necessary, the power was switched off. This caused the vehicle to drop to the deck and grind noisily to a halt. But this maneuver was discouraged because it made the driver very unpopular with the service crew who had to realign the repulsor grids.

By the end of the day her vehicle had slipped and spun all over the transport hangar floor, hit every collapsible marker that she was supposed to steer around, and generally displayed a high level of noncooperation. Timmins gave her a packet of study tapes, told her to look over them before next morning, and said that her driving was pretty good for a beginner.

Three days later she began to believe it.

“I drove a sled with a trailer attached, both fully loaded, from Level Eighteen to Thirty-three,” she told Tarsedth, when her one-time classmate visited her for the customary evening gossip. “I did it Using only theservice tunnels, and without hitting anything or anybody.”

“Should I be impressed?” the Kelgian asked.

“A little,” Cha Thrat said, feeling more than a little deflated. “What’s been happening to you?”

“Cresk-Sar transferred to me LSVO Surgical,” Tar-sedth said, its fur rippling in an unreadable mixture of emotions. “It said I was ready to broaden my other-species nursing experience, and working with a light-gravity life-form would improve my delicacy of touch. And anyway, it said, Charge Nurse Lentilatsar, the rotten, chlorine-breathing slimy slob, was not entirely happy with the way I exercised my initiative. What tape is that? It looks massively uninteresting.”

“To the contrary,” Cha Thrat said, touching the pause stud. The screen showed a picture of a group of Monitor Corps officers meeting the great Earth-human MacEwan and the equally legendary Orligian Grawlya-Ki, the true founders, it was said, of Sector General hospital. “It’s the history, organization, and present activities of the Monitor Corps. I find it very interesting, but ethically confusing. For example, why must a peace-keeping force be so heavily armed?”

“Because, stupid, it couldn’t if it wasn’t,” Tarsedth said. It went on quickly. “But on the subject of the Monitor Corps I’m an expert. A lot of Kelgians join these days, and I was going to try for a position as Surgeon-Lieutenant, a ship’s medic, that is, and might still do it if I don’t qualify here.

“Of course,” it went on enthusiastically, “there are other, nonmilitary, openings . . .”

As the Galactic Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, the Monitor Corps was essentially a police force on an interstellar scale, but during the first century since it had come into existence it had becomemuch more. Originally, when the Federation naa comprised a rather unstable alliance of only four inhabited systems—Nidia, Orligia, Traltha, and Earth—its personnel had been exclusively Earth-human. But those Earth-humans were responsible for discovering other inhabited systems, and more and more intelligent life-forms, and for establishing friendly contact with them.

The result was that the Federation now numbered among its citizens close on seventy different species— the figure was constantly being revised upward—and the peace-keeping function had taken second place to that of the Survey, Exploration, and Other-species Communications activities. The people with the heavy weaponry did not mind because a police force, unlike an army, feels at its most effective when there is nothing for it to do but keep in training by carving up the odd mineral-rich asteroid for the mining people, or clearing and leveling large tracts of virgin land on a newly discovered world in preparation for the landing of colonists.

The last time a Monitor Corps police action had been indistinguishable from an act of war had been nearly two decades ago, when they had defended Sector General itself from the badly misguided Etlans, who had since become law-abiding citizens of the Federation. A few of them had even joined the Corps.

“Nowadays membership is open to any species,” Tarsedth continued, “although for physiological reasons, life-support and accommodation problems on board the smaller ships, most of the space-going personnel are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers.

“Like I said,” the Kelgian went on, undulating forward and restarting the tape, “there are lots of interesting openings for restless, adventurous, home-hating types like us. You could do worse than join.”

“I have joined,” Cha Thrat said. “But driving a gravity sled isn’t exactly adventurous.”

Tarsedth’s fur spiked in surprise, then settled down again as it said, “Of course you have. Stupid of me, I’d forgotten that all nonmedical staff are automatically coopted into the Monitor Corps. And I’ve seen how you people drive. Adventurous verging on the suicidal best describes it. But you made a good decision. Congratulations.”

The decision had been made for her, Cha Thrat thought wryly, but that did not mean that it was necessarily a wrong decision. They had settled back to watch the remainder of the Monitor Corps history tape when Tarsedth’s fur became agitated again.

“I’m worried about you and the Corps people, Cha Thrat,” the Kelgian said suddenly. “They can be a bit stuffy about some things, easy-going about others. Just study and work hard. And think carefully before you do anything that will get you kicked out.”

CHAPTER 11

Time slipped past and Cha Thrat felt that she was making no progress at all, until one day she realized that she was performing as routine tasks that only a little earlier would have been impossible. Much of the work was servile but, strangely, she was becoming increasingly interested in it and felt proud when she did it well.

Sometimes the morning assignments contained unpleasant surprises.

“Today you will begin moving power cells and other consumables to the ambulance ship Rhabwar,” Timmins said, consulting its worksheet. “But there is a small job I want you to do first—new vegetable decoration for the AUGL ward. Study the attachment instructions before you go so that the medics will think you know what you’re doing . . . Is there a problem, Cha Thrat?”

There were other and more senior technicians in her section—three Kelgians, an Ian, and an Orligian—waiting for the day’s assignments. She doubted her ability to take over one of their jobs, and hers was probably too elementary for the Lieutenant to consider swapping assignments, but she had to try.

Perhaps the Earth-human would accord her some of the earlier special treatment that, for some reason, had been completely absent since she had been put to work.

“There is a problem,” Cha Thrat said quietly. The note of pleading in her voice was probably lost in the process of translation, she thought as she went on. “As you know, I am not well liked by Charge Nurse Hred-.< lichli, and my presence in the AUGL ward is likely tjb cause, at very least, verbal unpleasantness. The bad fe/al-ing for which I am largely responsible may fade in tim<e, but right now I think that it would be better to seiud someone else.”

Timmins regarded her silently for a moment, then it smiled and said, “Right now, Cha Thrat, I wouldn’t want to send anyone else to the AUGL ward. Don’t worry about it.

“Krachlan,” it went on briskly. “You are for Level Eighty-three, another fault reported in the power converter at Station Fourteen B. We may have to replace the unit . . .”

All the way to the Chalder level, Cha Thrat seethed quietly as she wondered how such a stupid, insensitive, cross-species miscegenation as Timmins had risen to its high rank and responsibilities without sustaining mortal injury at the hands, claws, or tentacles of a subordinate. By the time she reached the AUGL ward and entered inconspicuously by the service tunnel lock, she had calmed sufficiently to remember a few, a very few, of Timmins’s good qualities.

She was relieved when nobody came near her as she went to work. All of the patients and nursing staff seemed to be congregated at the other end of the ward and dimly, through the clouded green water, she could see the distinctive coveralls of a transfer team member. Plainly something of great interest was happening back there, which meant that with luck she would be able to complete her work undisturbed and unnoticed.

Seemingly it was not to be her lucky day.

“It’s you again,” said the familiar, acid-tongued voice of Hredlichli, who had approached silently from behind her. “How long will it take for you to finish hanging that vile stuff?”

“Most of the morning, Charge Nurse,” Cha Thrat replifed politely.

t She did not want to get into an argument with the chilorine-breather, and it seemed as if one were about to stiirt. She wondered if it was possible to forestall it by doing all the talking herself on a subject that Hredlichii could not argue about, the improved comfort of its patients.

“The reason for it taking so long to install, Charge Nurse,” she said quickly, “is that this vegetation isn’t the usual plastic reproduction. I’ve been told that it has just arrived from Chalderescol, that it is a native underwater plant-form, very hardy and requiring the minimum of at-tention, and that it releases a pleasant, waterborne aroma that is said to be psychologically beneficial to the recuperating patient.

“Maintenance will periodically check its growth and genera! health,” she went on before the chlorine-breather could respond, “and supply the nutrient material. But the patients could be given the job of caring for it, as something interesting to do to relieve their boredom, and to leave the nurses free to attend—”

“Cha Thrat,” Hredlichli broke in sharply, “are you telling me how I should run my ward?”

“No,” she replied, wishing not for the first time that her mouth did not run so far ahead of her mind. “I apologize, Charge Nurse. I no longer have responsibility for any aspect of patient care, and I did not wish to imply that I did. While I am here I shall not even talk to a patient.”

Hredlichli made an untranslatable sound, then said, “You’ll talk to one patient, at least. That is why I asked Timmins to send you here today. Your friend, AUGL-One Sixteen, is going home, and I thought you might want to wish it well—everybody else in the ward seems to be doing so. Leave that disgusting mess you’re working on and finish it later.”

Cha Thrat could not speak for a moment. Since the transfer to Maintenance she had lost contact with her Chalder friend, and knew only that it was still on the hospital’s list of patients under treatment. The most she had hoped for today, and it had been a pretty forlorn hope, was that Hredlichli would allow her a few words with the patient while she was working. But this was completely unexpected.

“Thank you, Charge Nurse,” she said finally. “This is most considerate of you.”

The chlorine-breather made another untranslatablenoise. It said, “Since I was appointed Charge Nurse here I’ve been agitating to have this antiquated underwater dungeon redecorated, reequipped, and converted into something resembling a proper ward. Thanks to you that is now being done, and once I recovered from the initial trauma of having my ward wrecked, I decided that I owed you one.

“Even so,” it added, “I shall not suffer terminal mental anguish if I don’t see you again after today.”

AUGL-One Sixteen had already been inserted into its transfer tank and only the hatch above its head remained to be sealed, after which it would be moved through the lock in the outer hull and across to the waiting Chalder ship. A group comprised of well-wishing nurses, visibly impatient transfer team members, and the Earth-human O’Mara hung around the opening like a shoal of ungainly fish, but the loud, bubbling sounds from the tank’s water-purifying equipment made it difficult to hear what was being said. As she approached, the Chief Psychologist waved the others back.

“Keep it short, Cha Thrat, the team is behind schedule,” O’Mara said, turning away and leaving her alone with the ex-patient.

For what seemed a long time she looked at the one enormous eye and the great teeth in the part of its head visible through the open seal, and the words she wanted to speak would not come. Finally she said, “That looks like a very small tank, are you comfortable in there?”

“Quite comfortable, Cha Thrat,” the Chalder replied. “Actually, it isn’t much smaller than my accommodation on the ship. But that constriction will be temporary, soon I’ll have a planetary ocean to swim in.

“And before you ask,” the AUGL went on, “I am feeling fine, really well, in fact, so you don’t have to gopoking about in this pain-free and disgustingly heaitny body checking my vital signs.”

“I don’t ask questions like that anymore,” Cha Thrat said, wishing suddenly that she could laugh like Earth-humans to hide the fact that she did not feel like laughing. “I’m in Maintenance now, so my instruments are much larger and would be very much more uncomfortable.”

“O’Mara told me about that,” the Chalder said. “Is the work interesting?”

Neither of them, Cha Thrat felt sure, were saying the things they wanted to say.

“Very interesting,” she replied. “I’m learning a lot about the inner workings of this place, and the Monitor Corps pays me, not very much, for doing it. When I’ve saved enough to take some leave on Chalderescol, I’ll go and see how everything is with you.”

“If you visited me, Cha Thrat,” the AUGL broke in, “you would not be allowed to spend any of your hard-earned Monitor currency on Chalderescol. As you are a name-user and off-world member of my family, they would be deeply insulted, and would probably have you for lunch, if you tried.”

“In that case,” Cha Thrat said happily, “I shall probably visit you quite soon.”

“If you don’t swim clear, Technician,” said an Earth-human in Transfer Team coveralls who had appeared beside her, “we’ll seal you in the tank now, and you can damn well travel there with your friend!”

“Muromeshomon,” she said quietly as the seal was closing, “may you fare well.”

When she turned to go back to the unplanted vegetation, Cha Thrat’s mind was concentrated on her Chalder friend to such an extent that she did not think of the impropriety of what she, a mere second-grade techni-cian, said to the Earth-human Monitor Corps Major as she passed it.

“My congratulations, Chief Psychologist,” she said gratefully, “on a most successful! spell.”

O’Mara responded by opening its mouth, but not even an untranslatable sound came out.

The three days that followed were spent on the Rhab-war resupply job, bringing crew consumables and time-expired equipment to the largely Earth-human maintenance people charged with bringing the ambulance ship to peak operating efficiency, and occasionally assisting with the installation of some of the simpler items. On its next trip Rhabwar would be carrying Diagnostician Conway, a former leader of its medical team, and the present crew did not want it to find any cause for complaint.

On the fourth day, Timmins asked Cha Thrat to wait while the other assignments were given out.

“You seem to be very interested in our special ambulance ship,” the Lieutenant said when they were alone. “I’m told that you’ve been climbing all over and through it, and mostly when it’s empty and you are supposed to be off-duty. Is this so?”

“Yes, sir,” Cha Thrat said enthusiastically. “It is a complex and beautifully functional vessel, judging by what I’ve heard and seen, and it is almost a miniature version of the hospital itself. The casualty treatment and other-species environmental arrangements are especially . . .” She broke off, to add warily, “I would not try to test or use any of this equipment without permission.”

“I should hope not!” the Lieutenant said. “All right, then. I have another job for you, on Rhabwar, if you think you can do it. Come with me.”

It was a small compartment that had been convertedfrom a post-op recovery room, ana it suit reiameu us direct access to the ELNT Operating Theater. The ceiling had been lowered, which indicated that the occupant-to-be either crawled or did not stand very tall, and the plumbing and power supply lines, revealed by the incomplete wall paneling, bore the color codings for a warm-blooded oxygen-breather with normal gravity and atmospheric pressure requirements.

The wall panels that were in place had been finished to resemble rough planking with a strangely textured grain which resembled a mineral rather than wood. There was an untidy heap of decorative vegetation on the floor waiting to be hung, and beside it a large picture of a landscape that could have been taken in any forested lakeland on Sommaradva, if it had not been for subtle differences in the tree formations.

The framework and padding of a small, low-level bed was placed against the wall facing the entrance. But the most noticeable feature of the room, after she had blundered painfully against it, was the transparent wall that divided it in two. At one end of the wall there was a large door, outlined in red for visibility, and a smaller, central opening that contained remote handling and examination equipment capable of reaching across to the bed.

“This room is being prepared for a very special patient,” Timmins said. “It is a Gogleskan, physiological classification FOKT, who is a personal friend of Diagnostician Conway. The patient, indeed its whole species, has serious problems about which you can brief yourself when you have more time. It is a gravid female nearing full term. There are psychological factors that require that it receives constant reassurance, and Conway is clearing his present workload during the next few weeks so that he will be free to travel to Goglesk, pick up thepatient, and return with it to Sector General in plenty of time before the event takes place.”

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

“What I want you to do,” Timmins went on, “is to set up a smaller and simpler version of this accommodation on Rhabwar’s casualty deck. You will draw the components from Stores and be given full assembly instructions. The work is slightly above your present technical level, but there is ample time for someone else to complete the job if you can’t do it. Do you want to try?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Good,” the Earth-human said. “Look closely at this place. Pay special attention to the attachment fittings of the transparent wall. Don’t worry too much about the remote-controlled manipulators because the ship has its own. The patient

restraints will have to be tested, but only under the supervision of one of the medical team who will be visiting you from time to time.

“Unlike this compartment,” it went on, “your casualty deck facility will be in use only during the trip from Goglesk to the hospital, so the wall covering will be a plastic film, painted to represent the wood paneling here and applied to the ship’s inner plating and bulkheads. This saves on installation time and, anyway, Captain Fletcher would not approve of us boring unnecessary holes in his ship. When you think you understand what you will be doing, collect the material from Stores and take it to the ship. I’ll see you there before you go off-duty . . .”

“Why the transparent wall and remote handling equipment?” Cha Thrat asked quickly, as the Lieutenant turned to go. “An FOKT classification doesn’t sound like a particularly large or dangerous life-form.”

“. . . To answer any questions not covered by your information tape,” it ended firmly. “Enjoy yourself.” The days that followed were not particularly enjoyable except in retrospect. The tri-di drawings and assembly instructions gave her a permanent headache during the first day and night but, from then on, Timmins’s visits to check on progress became less and less frequent. There were three visits from Charge Nurse Nay-drad, the Kelgian member of the medical team who, Tarsedth informed her, was an expert in heavy rescue techniques.

Cha Thrat was polite without being subservient and Naydrad, in the manner of all Kelgians, was consistently rude. But it did not find fault with her work, and it an-, swered any questions that it did not consider either irrelevant or stupid.

“I do not fully understand the reason for the transparent division in this compartment,” she said during one of its visits. “The Lieutenant tells me it is for psychological reasons, so that the patient will feel protected. But surely it would feel more protected by an opaque wall and a small window. Is the FOKT in need of a wizard as well as an obstetrician?”

“A wizard?” said the Kelgian in surprise, then it went on. “Of course, you must be the ex-medical trainee they’re all talking about who thinks O’Mara is a witchdoctor. Personally, I think you’re right. But it isn’t just the patient, Khone, who needs a wizard, it’s the whole planetary population of Goglesk. Khone is a volunteer, a test case and a very brave or stupid FOKT.”

“I still don’t understand,” Cha Thrat said. “Could you explain, please?”

“No,” Naydrad replied. “I don’t have the time to explain all the ramifications of the case, especially to a maintenance technician who has a morbid curiosity but no direct concern, or who feels lonely and wants to talkinstead of work. Be glad you have no responsibility, this is a very tricky one.

“Anyway,” it went on, pointing toward the viewer and reference shelves at the other side of the compartment, “our copy of the case-history tape runs for over two hours, if you’re that interested. Just don’t take it off the ship.”

She continued working, in spite of a constant temptation to break off for a quick look at the FOKT tape, until the maintenance engineer who had been checking Control poked its Earth-human head into the casualty deck.

“Time for lunch,” it said. “I’m going to the dining hall. Coming?”

“No, thank you,” she. replied. “There’s something I have to do here.”

“This is the second time in three days you’ve missed lunch,” the Earth-human said. “Do Sommaradvans have some kind of crazy work ethic? Aren’t you hungry, or is it just an understandable aversion to hospital food?”

“No, yes very, and sometimes,” Cha Thrat said.

“I’ve a pack of sandwiches,” it said. “Guaranteed nutritious, nontoxic to all oxy-breathers and if you don’t look too closely at what’s inside, you should be able to make them stay down. Interested?”

“Very much,” Cha Thrat replied gratefully, thinking that now she would be able to satisfy her complaining stomach and spend the whole lunch period watching the FOKT tape.

The muted but insistent sound of the emergency siren brought her mind back from Goglesk and its peculiar problems to the realization that she had spent much longer than the stipulated lunch period watchjng the tape, and that the empty ship was rapidly filling with people.

She saw three Earth-humans in Monitor Corps greengo past the casualty deck entrance, heading toward Control, and a few minutes later the lumpy green ball that was Danalta rolled onto the casualty deck. It was closely followed by an Earth-human, wearing whites with Pathology Department insignia, who had to be the DBDG female, Murchison; then Naydrad and Prilicla entered, the Kelgian undulating rapidly along the deck and the insectile Cinrusskin empath using the ceiling. The Charge Nurse went straight to the viewer, which was still running the FOKT tape, and switched it off as two more Earth-humans came in.

One of them was Timmins and the other, judging by the uniform insignia and its air of authority, was the ship’s ruler, Major Fletcher. It was the Lieutenant who spoke first.

“How long will it take you to finish here?” it said.

“The rest of today,” Cha Thrat replied promptly, “and most of the night.”

Fletcher shook its head.

“I could bring in more people, sir,” Timmins said. “They would have to be briefed on the job, which would waste some time. But I’m sure I could shorten that to four, perhaps three hours.”

The ship ruler shook its head again.

“There is only one alternative,” the Lieutenant said.

For the first time Fletcher looked directly at Cha Thrat. It said, “The Lieutenant tells me that you are capable of completing and testing this facility yourself. Are you?”

“Yes,” Cha Thrat said.

“Have you any objections to doing so during a three-day trip to Goglesk?”

“No,” she said firmly.

The Earth-human looked up at Prilicla, the leader of the ship’s medical team, not needing to speak.

“I fee! no strong objections from my colleagues to this being accompanying us, friend Fletcher,” the empath said, “since this is an emergency.”

“In that case,” Fletcher said as it turned to go, “we leave in fifteen minutes.”

Timmins looked as if it wanted to say something, a word of caution, perhaps, or advice, or reassurance. Instead it held up a loosely clenched fist with the oppos-able thumb projecting vertically from it in a gesture she had not seen it make before, and then it, too, was gone. Cha Thrat heard the sound of its feet on the metal floor of the ship’s boarding tube and, in spite of the four widely different life-forms closely surrounding her, suddenly she felt ail alone.

“Don’t worry, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, the musical triils and clicks of its native speech backing the translated words. “You are among friends.”

“There’s a problem,” Naydrad said. “No acceleration furniture to suit that stupid shape of yours. Lie down on a casualty litter and I’ll strap you in.”

CHAPTER 12

The FOKT facility was completed and thoroughly tested, first by Naydrad and then, on the orders of Major Fletcher, by Rhabwar engineer officer, Lieutenant Chen. That, apart from brief meetings on the way to or from the combination dining area and recreationdeck, was her only direct contact with any of the ship’sofficers.

It was not that they tried to discourage such contact between the officer-ruler level and a being of the lowest technical rank, or that they deliberately tried to make her feel inferior. They did neither. But all Monitor Corps personnel who passed the very high technical and academic requirements for service on interstellar ships were automatically considered, at least to the status-conscious mind of a Sommaradvan, to be as close to ruler status as made no difference. Without meaning to give offense they kept slipping into a highly technical and esoteric , language of their own, and they made her feel very uncomfortable.

In any case she felt more at home with the civilian medics than with the beings who, apart from a few small but significant badges on their collars, wore the same uniform as she did. As well, it was impossible to be in the same company as Prilicla without feeling very comfortable indeed. So she made herself as inconspicuous as her physiology would permit, reminded herself constantly that she now belonged to the maintenance rather than the medical fraternity, and tried very hard not to join in while the others were discussing the mission.

Goglesk had been a borderline case so far as the Cultural Contact people were concerned. Full contact with a technologically backward culture could be dangerous because, when the Monitor Corps ships dropped out of their skies, they could never be sure whether they were giving the natives evidence of a future technological goal at which they could aim or a destructive inferiority complex. But the Gogleskans, in spite of their backwardness in the physical sciences and the devastating racial psychosis that forced them to remain so, were psychologi-cally stable, at least as individuals, and their planet had not known war for many thousands of years.

The easiest course would have been for the Corps to withdraw and leave the Gogleskan culture to continue as it had been doing since the dawn of its history, and write their problem off as insoluble. Instead they had made one of their very few compromises by setting up a small base for the purposes of observation, investigation, and limited contact.

Progress for any intelligent species depended on increasing levels of cooperation among its individuals and family or tribal groups. On Goglesk, however, any attempt at close cooperation brought drastically reduced intelligence, a mindless urge to destruction, and serious physical injury in its wake, so that the Gogleskans had been forced into becoming a race of individualists who had close physical contact only during the brief reproductive period or while caring for the very young.

The problem had come about as the result of a solution forced on them in presapient times. They had been a food source for every predator infesting their oceans, but they, too, had evolved natural weapons of offense and defense—stings that paralyzed or killed the smaller life-forms and long cranial tendrils that gave them the faculty of telepathy by contact. When threatened by large predators they had linked bodies and minds together to the size required to neutralize any attacker with their combined stings.

There was fossil evidence on Goglesk of a titanic struggle for survival between them and a gigantic and particularly ferocius species of ocean predator, a battle that had raged for many, many thousands of years. The FOKTs had won in the end, and had evolved into intelligent land-dwellers, but they had paid a terrible price.

In order to sting to death one of those giant predators,physical and telepathic link-ups ot hundreds of individual FOKTs had been required. A great many of them had perished, been torn apart or eaten during every such encounter, and the consequent and oft-repeated death agonies of the slain had been shared telepathically by every single member of the groups. In an attempt to reduce their suffering, the effects of the group telepathy had been diluted by the generation of a mindless urge to destroy indiscriminately everything within reach. But even so, the mental scars inflicted during their prehistory had not healed.

Once heard, the audible signal emitted by Gogleskans in distress that triggered the process could not be ignored ' at either the conscious or unconscious levels, because that call to join represented only one thing—the threat of ultimate danger. And even in present times, when such threats were imaginary or insignificant, it made no difference. A joining led inevitably to the mindless

destruction of everything in their immediate vicinity—housing, vehicles, mechanisms, books, or art objects—that they had been able to build or accomplish as individuals.

That was why the present-day Gogleskans would not allow, except on very rare occasions, anyone to touch or come close to them or even address them in anything but the most impersonal terms, while they fought helplessly and, until Conway’s recent visit to the planet, hopelessly against the conditioning imposed on them by evolution.

It was plain to Cha Thrat that the only subjects that the medical team wanted to discuss were the Gogleskan problems in general and Khone in particular, and they talked about them endlessly and without arriving anywhere except back to where they had started. Several times she had wanted to make suggestions or ask questions, but found that if she kept quiet and waited patiently, a form of behavior that had always been foreignto her nature, the ideas and the questions were suggested! and answered by one of the others.

Usually it was Naydrad who asked such questions, although much less politely than Cha Thrat would have j done.

“Conway should be here,” the Kelgian said, fur ruffling in disapproval. “It made a promise to the patient J There should be no excuses.”

The yellow-pink face of Pathologist Murchison deepened in color. On the ceiling Prilicia’s iridescent wings were quivering in response to the emotional radiation being generated below, but neither the empath nor the female Earth-human spoke.

“It is my understanding,” Danalta said suddenly, moving the eye it had extruded to regard the Kelgian, “that Conway was successful in breaching the conditioning of just one Gogleskan, by an accidental, dangerous, and unprecedented joining of minds. For this reason the Diagnostician is the only other-species being who has any chance of approaching the patient closely, much less of touching it before or during the birth. Even though the call came much earlier than expected, there must be many others in the hospital who are capable and willing to take over the Diagnostician’s workload for the few days necessary for the trip.

“I, too, think that Conway should have come with us,” the shape-changer ended. “Khone is its friend, and it promised to do so.”

While Danalta was speaking, Murchison’s face had retained the deep-pink coloration except for patches of whiteness around its lips, and it was obvious from Prilicla’s trembling that the Pathologist’s emotional radiation was anything but pleasant for an empath.

“I agree with you,” Murchison said in a tone that suggested otherwise, ''that nobody, not even the Diagnosti-cian-in-Charge of Surgery, is indispensable. And rm not defending him simply because he happens to be my life-mate. He can call for assistance from quite a few of the Senior Physicians who are capable of performing the work. But not quickly, not while surgery is actually in progress. And the briefings for his operating schedule would have taken time, two hours at least. The Goglesk call had the Most Urgent prefix. We had to leave at once, without him.”

Danalta did not reply, but Naydrad’s fur made discontented waves as the Kelgian said, “Is this the only excuse Conway gave you for breaking its promise to the patient? If so, it is unsatisfactory. We have all had expe-'rience with emergencies arising that necessitated people doing other people’s work, without notice or detailed briefings. There is a lack of consideration being shownfor its patient—”

“Which one?” Murchison asked angrily. “Khone or the being presently under his knife? And an emergency, in case you’ve forgotten, occurs spontaneously or because a situation is out of control. It should not be caused deliberately simply because someone feels hon-orbound to be somewhere else.

“In any case,” it went on, “he was in surgery and did not have time to say more than a few words, which were that we should leave at once without him, and not worryabout it.”

“Then it is you who is making excuses for your life-niate’s misbehavior . . .” Naydrad began when Prilicla, speaking for the first time, interrupted it.

“Please,” it said gently, “I feel our friend Cha Thrat wanting to say something.”

As a Senior Physician and leader of Rhabwar’s medical team it would have been quite in order for Prilicla to tell them that their continued bickering was causing itdiscomfort, and that they should shut their speaking orifices forthwith. But she also knew that the little empath. Would never dream of doing any such thing, because the resultant feelings of embarrassment and guilt over the pain they had caused their inoffensive, well-loved, and emotion-sensitive team leader would have rendered it even more uncomfortable.

It was therefore in Prilicla’s own selfish interests to give orders indirectly so as to minimize trie generation of unpleasant feelings around it. If it felt her wanting to speak, it was probable that it could also feel that she, too, was wanting to reduce the current unpleasantness.

They were all staring at her, and Priiicla had ceased trembling. Plainly the emotion of curiosity was much less distressing than that which had gone before.

“I, too,” Cha Thrat said, “have studied the Goglesk tape, and in particular the material on Khone . . .”

“Surely this is no concern of yours,” Danalta broke in. “You are a maintenance person.”

“A most inquisitive maintenance person,” Naydrad said. “Let it speak.”

“A maintenance person,” she replied angrily, “should be inquisitive about the being for whose accommodation she is responsible!” Then she saw Priiicla begin to tremble again, and controlled her feelings as she went on. “It seems to me that you may be concerning yourselves needlessly. Diagnostician Conway did not speak to Pathologist Murchison as if it felt unduly concerned. What exactly did the message from Goglesk say about the condition of the patient?”

“Nothing,” Murchison said. “We know nothing of the clinical picture. It isn’t possible to send a lengthy message from a small, low-powered base like Goglesk. A lot of energy is needed to punch a signal through hyperspace so that—”

“Thank you,” Cha Thrat said politely. “The technical problems were covered in one of my maintenance lectures. What did the message say?”

Murchison’s face had deepened in color again as it said, “The exact wording was ‘Attention, Conway, Sector General. Most Urgent. Khone requires ambulance ship soonest possible. Wainright, Goglesk Base.’”

For a moment Cha Thrat was silent, ordering her thoughts, then she said, “I am assuming that Healer Khone and its other-species friend have been keeping themselves informed regarding each other’s progress. Probably they have been exchanging lengthier, more detailed and perhaps personal messages carried aboard the Monitor Corps courier vessels operating in this sector, which would avoid the obvious disadvantages of information transmitted through hyperspace.”

Naydrad’s fur was indicating that it was about to interrupt. She went on quickly. “From my study of the Gogleskan material, I am also assuming that Khone is, within the limits imposed by its conditioning, an unusually thoughtful and considerate being who would be unwilling to inconvenience its friends unnecessarily. Even if Conway had not mentioned the subject directly, Khone would already have learned from its sharing of the Earth-human’s mind the full extent of the duties, responsibilities, and workload carried by a Diagnostician. And Conway, naturally, would be equally well informed about Khone’s mind and its probable reaction to that knowledge.

“As the being who wished to be responsible for this patient,” she continued, “the hyperspace signal was for Conway’s attention. But it urgently requested an ambulance ship, not the presence of the Diagnostician.

“Conway knew why this was so,” Cha Thrat went on, “because it also knew as much about Gogleskan preg-nancies as Khone itself did, so it might be that the literal wording of the signal released Conway from the promise. Knowing that its patient required nothing more than fasl transport to the hospital, the Diagnostician was no| overly concerned, and it told you not to be concerned, either, by its absence.

“It may well be,” she ended, “that the recent criticism of Diagnostician Conway’s seemingly unethical behavior' was without basis.”

Naydrad turned toward Murchison and made the closest thing to an apology that a Kelgian could make as it said, “Cha Thrat is probably right, and I am stupid.”

“Undoubtedly right,” Danaita joined in. “I’m sorry, Pathologist. If I was in Earth-human form right now, my face would be red.”

Murchison did not reply but continued to stare at Cha Thrat. The Pathologist’s face had returned to its normal coloration, but otherwise displayed no expression that she could read. Prilicla drifted toward her until she could feel the slight, regular down-draft from its wings.

“Cha Thrat,” the Cinrusskin said quietly, “I have a strong feeling that you have made a new friend . . .”

It broke off as the casualty deck’s speaker came to life with the overamplified voice of Fletcher.

“Senior Physician, Control here.” it said. “Hyper-space Jump complete and we are estimating the Goglesk orbiting maneuver in three hours, two minutes. The lander is powered up and ready to go, so you c transfer your medical gear as soon as convenient.

“We are in normal-space radio contact with Lieutenant Wainright,” it went on, “who wants to talk to you about your patient, Khone.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Prilicla replied. “We want to talk about Khone as well. Please relay friend Wainright’smessage to the casualty deck here and to the lander bay when we move out. We can work as we talk.”

“Will do,” Fletcher said. “Relay complete. You are through to Senior Physician Prilicla, Lieutenant. Goahead.”

In spite of the distortion caused by the translation into Sommaradvan, Cha Thrat could detect the deep anxiety in Wainright’s voice. She listened carefully with only part of her mind on the job of helping Naydrad load medical equipment onto the litter.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” it said, “the original arrangements for the pickup on our landing area will have to be scrapped. Khone isn’t able to travel, and sending transport manned by off-planet people to collect it from its town will be tricky. At a time like this the natives are particularly, well, twitchy, and the arrival of visually horrifying alien monsters to carry it and its unborn child away could cause a joining and—”

“Friend Wainright,” Prilicla interrupted gently, “what is the condition of the patient?”

“I don’t know, Doctor,” the Lieutenant replied. “When we met three days ago it told me that Junior would arrive very soon and would I please send for the ambulance ship. It also said that it had to make arrangements to have its patients cared for, and that it would come to the base shortly before the lander was due. Then a few hours ago a message was relayed verbally to the base saying that it could not move from its house, but the bearer of the message could not tell me whether the cause was illness or injury. Also, it asked if you had another power pack for the scanner Conway left with it. Khone has been impressing its patients with that particular marvel of Federation medical science and the energy cell is flat, which would explain why Khone was unableto give us any clinical information on its own present j condition.”

“I’m sure you are right, friend Wainright,” Prilicla I said. “However, the patient’s sudden loss of mobility in- 1 dicates a possibly serious condition that may be deter- 1 iorating. Can you suggest a method of getting it into the ! lander, quickly and with minimum risk to itself and its j friends?”

“Frankly, no, Doctor,” Wainright said. “This is going to be a maximum-risk job from the word go. If it was a member of any other species we know of, I could load it < onto my flyer and bring it to you within a few minutes. But no Gogleskan, not even Healer Khone, could sit that close to an off-planet creature without emitting a distress call, and you know what would happen then.”

“We do,” Prilicla said, trembling at the thought of the widespread, self-inflicted property damage to the town and the mental anguish of the inhabitants that would ensue.

The Lieutenant went on. “Your best bet would be to ignore the base and land as close as possible to Rhone’s house, in a small clearing between it and the shore of an inland lake. I’ll circle the area in a flyer and guide you down. Maybe we can devise something on the spot. You’ll need some special remote handling devices to move it out, but I can help you with the external dimensions of Rhone’s house and doorways . . .”

While Cha Thrat helped the rest of the medical team move equipment into the lander, Wainright and the empath continued to wrestle with the problem. But it was obvious that they had no clear answers and were, instead, trying to provide for all eventualities.

“Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, breaking off its conversation with the base commander. “As a nonmember of the crew I cannot give you orders, but we’ll need as manyextra hands down there as we can assemble. You areparticularly well equipped with manipulatory appendages, as well as an understanding of the devices used to move and temporarily accommodate the patient, and I feel in you a willingness to accompany us.”

“Your feeling is correct,” Cha Thrat said, knowing that the intensity of excitement and gratitude the other’s words had generated made verbal thanks unnecessary.

“If we load any more gadgetry into the lander,” Nay-drad said, “there won’t be enough space for the patient, much less a hulking great Sommaradvan.”

But there was enough space inside the lander to take all of them, especially when those not wearing gravity compensators, which was everyone but Prilicla, were further compressed by the lander’s savage deceleration. Lieutenant Dodds, Rhabwar’s astrogation officer and the lander’s pilot, had been told that speed had priority over a comfortable ride, and it obeyed that particular order with enthusiasm. So fast and uncomfortable was the descent that Cha Thrat saw nothing of Goglesk until she stepped onto its surface.

For a few moments she thought that she was back on Somrnaradva, standing in a grassy clearing beside the shore of a great inland lake and with the tree-shrouded outlines of a small, servile township in the middle distance. But the ground beneath her feet was not that of her home planet, and the grass, wildflowers, and all the vegetation around her were subtly different in color, odor, and leaf structure from their counterparts on Som-maradva. Even the distant trees, although looking incredibly similar to some of the lowland varieties at home, were the products of a completely different evolutionary background.

Sector General had seemed strange and shocking toher at first, but it had been a fabrication of metal, a gigantic artificial house. This was a different world!

“Is your species afflicted with sudden and inexplicable bouts of paralysis?” Naydrad asked. “Stop wasting time and bring out the litter.”

She was guiding the powered litter down the unloading ramp when Wainright’s flyer landed and rolled to a stop close beside them. The five Earth-humans who manned the Goglesk base jumped out. Four of them scattered quickly and began running toward the town, testing their translation and public address equipment as they went, while the Lieutenant came toward the lander.

“If you have anything to do that involves two or more of you working closely together,” it said quickly, “do it now while the flyer is hiding you from view of the town. And when you move out, remain at least five meters apart. If these people see you moving closer together than that, or making actual bodily contact by touching limbs, it won’t precipitate a joining, but it will cause them to feel deeply shocked and intensely uncomfortable. You must also—”

“Thank you, friend Wainright,” Prilicla said gently. “We cannot be reminded too often to be careful.”

The Lieutenant’s features deepened in color, and it did not speak again until, walking i a well-separated line abreast, they were approaching the outskirts of the town.

“It doesn’t look like much to us,” Wainright said softly, the feelings behind its words making Prilicla tremble, “but they had to fight very hard every day of their lives to achieve it, and I think they’re losing.”

The town occupied a wide crescent of grass and stony outcroppings enclosing a small, natural harbor. There were several jetties projecting into deep water, and most of the craft tied up alongside had thin, high funnels andpaddle wheels as well as sails. One of the boats, clearly the legacy of a past joining, was smoke-blackened and sunk at its moorings. Hugging the water’s edge was a widely separated line of three- and four-story buildings, made of wood, stone, and dried clay. Ascending ramps running around all four walls gave access to the upper levels, so that from certain angles the buildings resembled thin pyramids.

These, according to the Goglesk tape, were the town’s manufacturing and food-processing facilities, and she thought that the smell of Gogleskan raw fish was just as unpleasant as that of their Sommaradvan counterparts. Perhaps that was the reason why the private dwellings, whose roofs and main structural supports were provided by the trees around the edge of the clearing, were so far away from the harbor.

As they moved over the top of a small hill, Wainright pointed out a low, partially roofed structure with a stream running under it. From their elevated position they could see into the maze of corridors and tiny rooms that was the town’s hospital and Rhone’s adjoiningdwelling.

The Lieutenant began speaking quietly into its suit mike, and she could hear the words of warning and reassurance being relayed at full volume from the speakers carried by the four Earth-humans who had precededthem.

“Please do not be afraid,” it was saying. “Despite the strange and frightening appearance of the beings you are seeing, they will not harm you. We are here to collect Healer Khone, at its own request, for treatment in our hospital. While we are transferring Khone to our vehicle we may have to come very close to the healer, and this may accidentally cause a call for joining to go out. A joining must not be allowed to happen, and so we urgeeveryone to move away from your homes, deep into th forest or far from the shore, so that a distress signal will not reach you. As an additional safeguard, we will place! around the healer’s home devices that will make a loud, and continuous sound. This sound will be as unpleasant to you as it is to us, but it will merge with and change the sound of any nearby distress signal so that it will no longer be a call for joining.”

Wainright looked toward Prilicla and when the empath signaled its approval, it changed to the personal suit frequency and went on. “Record and rerun that, please, until I either amend the message or tell you to stop.”

“Will they believe all that?” Naydrad called suddenly from its position along the line. “Do they really trust us off-planet monsters?”

The Lieutenant moved several paces down the hill before replying. “They trust the Monitor Corps because we have been able to help them in various ways. Khone trusts Conway for obvious reasons and as their trusted healer, it has been able to convince the townspeople that Conway’s horrifying friends are also worthy of trust. The trouble is, Gogleskans are a race of loners who don’t always do as they’re told.

“Some of them,” it went on, “could have good reasons for not wanting to leave their homes. Illness or infirmity, young children to be cared for, or for reasons that seem good only to a Gogleskan. That’s why we have to use the sound distorters.”

Naydrad seemed satisfied but Cha Thrat was not. Out of consideration for Prilicla, who would suffer everyone else’s feelings of anxiety as well as her own, she remained silent.

Like everyone else in Maintenance, she knew about those distorters. Suggested and designed by Ees-Tawn, the department’s head of Unique Technology, in re-sponse to one of Conway’s long-term Gogleskan requirements, the devices were still in the prototype stage. If successful they would go into mass production until they were in every Gogleskan home, factory, and seagoing vessel. It was not expected that the devices would eliminate joinings entirely, but with

sensitive audio detectors coupled to automatic actuators, it was hoped that the link-ups that did occur would be limited to a few persons. That would mean that a joining’s destructive potential would be negligible, shorter in duration, and psychologically less damaging to the beings concerned.

Under laboratory conditions the distorters were effective against several FOKT distress call recordings provided by Conway, but the device had yet to be tested onGoglesk itself.

The stink of fish worsened, and the sound of the monitors broadcasting the Lieutenant’s message grew louder as they neared the hospital. Apart from a few glimpses she had of the Earth-humans moving between the houses at the edge of the clearing, there were no signs of life inthe town.

“Stop sending now,” Wainright briskly said. “Anyone who hasn’t acted on the message by now doesn’t intend to. Harmon, take up the flyer and give me an aerial view of this area. The rest of you place the distorters around the hospital, then stand by. Cha Thrat, Naydrad, ready with the litter?”

Quickly, Cha Thrat positioned the vehicle close to the entrance of Khone’s dwelling, ran out the rear ramp, and opened the canopy in readiness to receive the patient. They could not risk touching Khone within sight of other Gogleskans and were hoping that the little healer would come out and board the vehicle itself. In case it did not, Naydrad would send in its remote-controlled probe to find out why.

Because they would make conversation difficult— and so far nothing had happened that could cause any Gogleskan to emit a distress call—the distorters remained silent.

“Friend Khone,” Prilicla said, and the waves of sympathy, reassurance, and friendship emanating from it were almost palpable. “We have come to help you. Please come out.”

They waited for what seemed like a very long time, but there was neither sight nor sound of Khone.

“Naydrad . . .” Wainright began.

“I’m doing it,” the Kelgian snapped.

The tiny vehicle, bristling with sound, vision, and biosensors as well as a comprehensive array of handling devices, rolled across the uneven surface and into Rhone’s front entrance, pushing aside the curtain of woven vegetable fibers that hung there. The view all around it was projected onto the litter’s repeater screen.

Cha Thrat thought that the probe itself, to someone who did not know its purpose, was a frightening object. Then she reminded herself that Diagnostician Conway, and through it Khone, knew all about such mechanisms.

The probe revealed nothing but a deserted house.

“Perhaps friend Khone required special medication from the hospital and went to get it,” Prilicla said worriedly. “But I cannot feel its emotional radiation, which means that it is either far from here or unconscious. If the latter, then it may require urgent attention, so we cannot afford to waste time by searching every room and passageway in the hospital with the probe. It will be quicker if I search for it myself.”

Its. iridescent wings were beating slowly, already moving it forward when it went on. “Move well back, please, so that your conscious feelings will not obscure the fainter, unconscious radiation of the patient.”

“Wait!” the Lieutenant said urgently. “If you nna u, and it awakens suddenly to see you hovering aboveit . . .”

“You are correct, friend Wainright,” Prilicla said. “Itmight be frightened into sending out a distress call. Use your distorters.”

Cha Thrat quickly moved back with the medical team beyond the range of maximum sensitivity for the Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty, and they adjusted their headsets to deaden external sounds while enabling them to communicate with each other. As a screaming, moaning, whistling cacophony erupted from the distorter posi-, tions around the hospital, Cha Thrat wondered about the depth of unconsciousness of their patient. The noise was enough to wake the dead.

It was more than enough to rouse Khone.

CHAPTER 13

“I feel it!” Prilicla called, excitement causing its hovering flight to become wildly unstable. “Friend Naydrad, send in the probe. The patient is directly beneath me, but I don’t want to risk frightening it by a sudden, close approach. Quickly, it is very weak and in pain.”

Now that it had an accurate fix on Khone’s position, Naydrad quickly guided the probe to the room occupied by the Gogleskan. Priiicla rejoined the others around thelitter’s repeater screen where the sensor data was already being displayed.

The pictures showed the interior of one of the hospital’s tiny examination rooms with the figure of Rhone lying against the low wall that separated the healer and patient during treatment. A small table contained a variety of very long-handled, highly polished wooden implements that appeared to be probes, dilators, and spatulas for the nonsurgical investigation of body orifices, some jars of local medication, and, incongruously, the lifeless x-ray scanner left by Conway. A few of the instruments had fallen to the floor, and it seemed likely that Rhone had been examining a patient on the other side of the wall when the healer had collapsed. It was also probable that the patient concerned had originated the last message received by Wainright.

“I am Prilicla, friend Rhone,” the empath said via the probe’s communicator. “Do not be afraid . . .”

Wainright made an untranslatable sound to remind Prilicla that, apart from the initial words of identification, Gogleskans did not address each other as persons and became mentally distressed if anyone tried to do so.

“This device will not cause pain or harm,” Prilicla continued more impersonally. “Its purpose is to lift the patient, very gently, and convey it to a position where expert attention is available. It is beginning to do so now.”

On the repeater screen Cha Thrat saw the probe extend two wide, flat plates and slide them between the floor and Rhone’s recumbent body.

“Stop!”

The two voices, Rhone’s through the communicator and Prilicla’s in response to the Gogleskan’s blast of emotional radiation, sounded as one. The empath’s fragile body was shaking as if caught in a high wind.

'Tm sorry, friend Rhone . . .” it began, then remembering, went on. “Sincere apologies are tendered for the severe discomfort caused to the patient. Even greater gentleness will be striven for in future. But is the patient-healer able to furnish information on the exact position of, and possible reasons for, the pain?”

“Yes and no,” Rhone said weakly. Its pain had diminished because Prilicla was no longer trembling. It went on. “The pain is located in the area of the birth canal. There is loss of function and diminished sensation in the lower limbs, and the upper limbs and the medial area are similarly but less markedly affected. The cardiac action is accelerated and respiration is difficult. It is thought * that the birth process had begun and was interrupted, but the reason is unknown because the scanner has not worked for some time and it is doubted if the patient’s digits retain sufficient dexterity to change the powercell.”

“The probe mounts its own scanner,” Prilicla said reassuringly, “and its visual and clinical findings will be transmitted to the healers out here. It will also change the power cell in the other scanner so that the patient will be able to aid the healers outside with its own Gog-leskan observations and experience.”

The empath began trembling again, but Cha Thrat had the feeling that the shaking was due to its personal concern for Rhone rather than a return of the other’s pain.

“The scanner is being deployed now,” Prilicla went on. “It will approach closely but will not touch the patient.”

“Thanks are expressed,” Rhone said.

As she watched the increasingly detailed scan of Rhone’s pelvic area, Cha Thrat grew more and more angry over her ignorance of Gogleskan physiology. And it made little difference that the degree of ignorance ofPrilicla, Murchison, and Naydrad was only slightly less than her own. The one person with the ability to

help Rhone now was many light-years away in Sector General, and there was a strong probability that even the presence of the Diagnostician Conway would not have resolved this problem.

“The healer-patient can see for itself,” Prilicla said gently, “that the fetus is large and is improperly presented to the birth canal. It is also pressing against the major nerve bundles and impeding the blood supply to the muscles in the area, making it impossible for the fetus to be expelled in its present position.

“Would the healer-patient agree,” the empath went on, “that the birth cannot proceed without immediate surgical intervention?”

“No!” Rhone said vehemently, forgetting to be impersonal. “You must not touch me!”

“But we’re your . . .” Prilicla began. It hesitated for an instant, then went on. “Only friends wishing to help the patient are here. The psychological difficulties are understood. If necessary the probe can be instructed to administer sedative medication so that the patient will be unconscious and unaware of being touched while the operation is in progress.”

“No,” Rhone said again. 'The patient must be conscious during and for a short period following the birth. There are things that the parent must do for the newborn. Can your mechanism be instructed to perform the operation? The patient would be less frightened by the touch of a machine than that of an off-world monster.”

Prilicla trembled again with the emotional effort needed to make a negative reply. It said, “Regrettably not. The remote-controlled manipulators are not sufficiently accurate or responsive for such a delicate procedure. If an observation might be made, the patient is in a severely weakened state and may shortly become unconscious without the assistance of medication.”

Rhone was silent for a moment, then with a note of desperation in its voice the Gogleskan said, “It is consciously realized that the off-world healers feel friendship and deep concern for the patient. But subconsciously, on the darker, unthinking levels of the mind, the close approach of one of these visually horrifying creatures would represent an immediate and deadly threat to the life of the patient, which would inevitably lead to a call for joining.”

“The call would not be heard,” Prilicla said, and explained the purpose of the sound distorters. But Rhone’s reply set the empath trembling again.

“A call for joining,” it said, “presupposes a condition of extreme mental distress that is followed by a massive and uncontrolled expenditure of physical energy. The effect on the patient and fetus could lead to termination.”

Quickly Prilicla said, “Time is short and the clinical condition is deteriorating rapidly. Risks must be taken. The probe mechanism can be made to

provide two-way vision, and pictures of the off-world friends will be sent. Will the patient choose from among them the least frightening being, who will then try to assist it?”

While the litter’s vision pickup swung to cover each of them in turn, Rhone was saying “The Earth-humans are familiar and trusted, as are the Cinrusskin and Kelgian seen during the earlier visit to Goglesk, but all of them would arouse blind, instinctive terror if they approached closely. The other two beings are unfamiliar, both to the recollection of the patient or in the memories of the Earth-human Conway. Are they healers?”

There was a note of relief in the empath’s voice as it replied, “Both are recent arrivals at the hospital and were unknown to Conway at the time of its first visit.

The small, globular being is Danalta, an entity capable of taking any required physical form including, if desirable, that of a Gogleskan, or of extruding any limbs or sensory organs necessary for the repair or alleviation of an organic malfunction. It will work under the Senior Physician’s direction and is an ideal choice for—”

“A shape-changer!” Rhone broke it. “Apologies are tendered to this entity, whose nonphysical qualities are doubtless admirable, but the thought of such a being is terrifying, and its close approach in the guise of one of my people would be unbearably repugnant. No!

“The tall creature,” it added, “would be much less disturbing.”

“The tall being,” said Prilicla apologetically, “is a hospital maintenance-technician.”

“And previously,” Cha Thrat added quietly, “a warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva, with other-species experience.”

The empath was trembling again, and this time because of the storm of mixed feelings being generated by the other members of the medical team.

“Apologies are tendered,” Prilicla said hastily. “A short delay is necessary. This matter requires discussion.”

“For clinical reasons,” Khone replied, “the patient-healer hopes that the delay will be very short.”

It was Pathologist Murchison who spoke first. It said, “Your other-species experience is limited to an Earth-human DBDG and a Hudlar FROB, both involving simple, external surgery to a limb. Neither of them or, for that matter, your own DCNF classification, bears any resemblance to a Gogleskan FOKT. After that Hudlar limb-for-a-limb business, I’m surprised you want to take the responsibility.”

“If this goes wrong,” Naydrad joined in, its furtwitching with concern, “if the patient or newborn terminate, I don’t know what piece of medical melodrama you will pull in atonement. Better keep out of this.”

“I don’t know why,” Danalta said, in a tone that suggested that its feelings were hurt, “it prefers an ungainly, stiff-boned life-form like Cha Thrat to me.”

“The reason,” Khone said, making them realize that they had forgotten to switch off the probe’s communicator, “is degrading and probably insulting to the being concerned, but it should be mentioned in case the Som-maradvan finds it necessary to withdraw its offer.”

Khone went on. “There are physical, psychological, and perhaps ridiculous reasons why this being might closely approach, but not touch except with long-handled instruments, the patient.”

There were few visual similarities between the FOKT and DCNF classifications, Khone explained, except in the eyes of very young Gogleskans who tried to make models of their parents. But the mass of hair covering the ovoid body, the four short, splayed-out legs, the digital clusters, and the four long, cranial stings, were beyond their sculptoring skill. Instead they produced lumpy, conical shapes made from mud and grass, into which they stuck twigs that were not always straight or of uniform thickness. The results, on a much smaller scale, had a distinct resemblance to the body configuration of a Sommaradvan.

These crudely fashioned models were fabricated during the years preceding the change from childhood to maturity, when the young adult’s stings became a threat to its parent’s life, and they were kept and treasured by both parent and offspring as reminders of the only times in their lives when they could feel in safety the warmth and closeness of extended contact with another of their kind.

It was a memory that, in their later and incredibly lonely adult lives, helped keep them sane.

Murchison was the first to react after Khone finished speaking. The Pathologist looked at Cha Thrat and said incredulously, “1 think it is telling us that you look like an oversized Gogleskan equivalent of an Earth teddy bear!”

Wainright gave a nervous laugh, and the others did not react. Probably they were as ignorant about teddy bears as Cha Thrat was. However, if the creature resembled her in many ways, it could not be entirely unbeauti-ful.

“The Sommaradvan is willing to assist,” Cha Thrat said, “and offense has not'been taken.”

“And neither,” Prilicla said, turning its eyes toward her, “will responsibility be taken.”

The musical trills and clickings that were the Cinruss-kin’s native speech changed in pitch, and for the first time in Cha Thrat’s experience the little empath’s translated words carried the firmness and authority of a ruler as it went on. “Unless the Sommaradvan can give an unqualified assurance that there is no possibility of a recurrence of the Hudlar amputation, the’sommaradvan will not be allowed to assist.

“The healer-maintenance technician is being used for one reason only,” it continued, “because the close proximity of the more experienced healers is contraindicated for this patient. It will consider itself simply as an organic probe whose mind, sensors, and digits are under the direction of the Senior Physician, who accepts sole responsibility for treatment and subsequent fate of the patient. Is this clearly understood?”

The idea of sharing or, in this instance, completely relegating responsibility for her actions to another person was repugnant to a warrior-surgeon, even thoughshe could understand the reasons ror n. rmi than her feeling of shame was the sudden, warm upsurge of gratitude and pride at once again being called to work as a healer.

“It is understood,” she said.

Silently the empath indicated that it was changing from the probe frequency, so as not to be verbally hampered by having to use the listening Gogleskan’s impersonal mode of speech.

“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” it said quickly. “Use my Cinrusskin instruments, they are best suited to your upper digits and I would feel more comfortable directing you in their use. Fit the protective devices before trying to do anything else; you could not help the patient if you were to be paralyzed by its stings. When you are with Khone, make no sudden movements that might frighten it without first explaining the reason for them. I shall be monitoring friend Rhone’s emotional radiation from here, and will warn you if any action causes a sudden increase of fear. But you are well aware of the situation, Cha Thrat. Please hurry.”

Naydrad had her carrier pack already filled and waiting. She added the replacement power cell for Rhone’s scanner and began climbing from the top of the litter on to the hospital roof.

“Good luck,” Murchison said. Naydrad ruffled its fur and the others made untranslatable noises.

The roof sagged alarmingly under Cha Thrat’s weight, and one of her forefeet went right through the flimsy structure, but it was a much quicker route than crawling through a maze of low-ceilinged corridors. She dropped into the uncovered passageway leading to Rhone’s room, crouched awkwardly onto two knees and three of her medial limbs, and, with Prilicla warning the patient of her arrival, moved only her head and shouldersthrough the entrance. For the first time she was able to study a Gogleskan FOKT at close quarters.

“The intention,” Cha Thrat said carefully, “is not to touch the patient directly.”

“Gratitude is expressed,” Khone replied in a voice that was barely audible above the sound of the distorters.

The mass of unruly hair and spikes that covered the erect, ovoid body were less irregular in color and position than the probe pictures had suggested. The body hair had mobility, although not to the extent as that possessed by the Kelgians, and lying motionless amid the multicolored cranial fur were a number of long, pale tendrils that were used only during a joining to link the member minds of the group. Four small, vertical orifices, two for breathing and speaking and two for food ingestion, encircled its waist.

The spikes covering the body were highly flexible, grouped together into digital clusters, and were capable of fine manipulation, and the lower body was encircled by a thick apron of muscle, under which the four short legs could be withdrawn when the being wished to rest.

Now it lay on its side, a position from which even a fully fit and active Gogleskan would have difficulty in recovering.

Quietly Cha Thrat said, “Instruct the probe to bring the scanner here. When the power cell has been replaced, return it to within easy reach of the patient, then move the machine aside.”

To Khone she went on. “Unlike the visiting healers, the patient has been unaware of its own condition and an immediate self-examination is requested. Since the patient is also a healer with extensive knowledge of its own life processes, any comments or suggestions it cares to make would be helped to the off-planet colleagues.”

Prilicla’s voice came from her earpiece but not the probe’s speaker, which meant that the empath wanted to talk to her alone. It said, “That was well spoken, Cha Thrat. No patient, no matter how ill or injured, wants to feel completely useless and dependent. Otherwise well-intentioned healers sometimes forget that.”

That was one of the first lessons she had learned at the medical school on Sommaradva. Another, which had obviously been learned by Prilicla, was that junior medics facing a new and difficult job benefited from encouragement.”

“The patient,” Khone said suddenly, “is unable toguide the scanner.”

There was nothing in the Cinrusskin’s instrument pack long enough to reach Khone from Cha Thrat’s present position. Impersonally she asked, “Is it permitted to use the Gogleskan instruments?” “Of course,” Khone said.

On the side table there was a set of long, expanding tongs, made from highly polished wood and with hinges of a soft, reddish metal, used for bringing instruments or dressings to bear on the otherwise untouchable Gogleskan patients. Lying beside them was a thin, conical object that had been fashioned crudely from dried clay, with short twigs and straw stuck all over it. She had mistaken it at first for a piece of decorative or aromatic vegetation. Now that she knew what it was, Cha Thrat thought that its resemblance to the aesthetically pleasing Sommaradvan body shape was close only in the eyes of a very sick Gogleskan.

Awkwardly at first, she used the tongs to lift the scanner from the limp grasp of Khone’s digits and moved it over the abdominal area. While the patient was concentrating on the screen, she edged further into the room and closer to the patient. The unnatural position of herbent forelegs and spine, and the fact that virtually her entire body weight was being supported on medial limbs normally used only for manipulation, was threatening to send the associated muscles into spasm. To ease them she rocked very slowly from side to side, moving a little closer each time.

“The Sommaradvan healer is larger than was expected,” Khone said suddenly, looking up from the scanner. It did not take Prilicla to tell her that the Gogleskan was very frightened.

Cha Thrat held herself motionless for a moment, then said, “The Sommaradvan healer, despite its size, will no more harm the patient than the sculptured likeness lying on the floor. The patient must surely know this.”

“The patient knows this,” Khone agreed, with a distinct trace of anger in its voice. “But has the Sommaradvan healer ever suffered nightmares, in which it is haunted, and hunted, by dark and fearful creatures of the undermind intent on its destruction? And instead of fleeing in unreasoning fear, has it ever tried to stop in the midst of such a nightmare, and think through or around its terror, and turned to face these dreadful phantasms, and tried to look upon them as friends?”

Ashamed, Cha Thrat said, “Apologies are tendered, and admiration for the patient-healer who is trying to do, who is doing, that which the stupid and insensitive Sommaradvan healer would find impossible.”

Prilicla’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “You have irritated friend Khone, Cha Thrat, but its fear has receded a little.”

She took the opportunity of moving closer and said, “It is realized that the patient-healer’s intentions toward the Sommaradvan are friendly, and any harm that might befall it would be the result of a purely instinctive reac-tion or accident. Both the eventualities canbe avoided by rendering the stings harmless”

Khone’s emotional reaction to that suggestion had both Prilicla and Cha Thrat badly worried, but time was running out for this patient and, if anything was going to be done for it, there was no real alternative to capping those stings. The little Gogleskan knew that as well as they did. It was being asked to surrender its only re-maining weapon.

Cha Thrat dared not move a muscle other than her larynx, and that onewas being seriously overworked as she tried to convince Khone’s unconscious as well as its already half-convinced conscious mind that, in a truly civilized society, weapons were unnecessary. She told it that she, too, was a female, although she had yet to produce an offspring. She then spoke of her most personal feelings, many of them petty rather than praiseworthy, about her past life and career on Sommaradva and in Sector General, and of the things she had done wrong in bothplaces.

The team member waiting impatiently by the litter must be wondering if she had contracted a ruler’s disease and had lost contact with the reality of the situation, butthere was no time to stop and explain- Somehow she had to get through to the Gogleskan’s dark undermind and convince it that psychologically she was leaving herself as open and defenseless by what she was telling it as Khone was by relinquishing its only natural weapons.

She could hear Naydrad’s voice, which was being picked up by the Cinrusskin’s headset, demanding to know whether Khone was a psychiatrist as well as a healer, and if so, the stupid Sommaradvan had picked the wrong time to lie,on its couch! Prilicla did not speak and she went on talking unhurriedly to the patient whose voice, like the rest of it, seemed to be paralyzed by fear.

Suddenly there was a response.

“The Sommaradvan has problems,” Khone said. “But if intelligent beings did not occasionally do stupid things, there would be no progress at all.”

Cha Thrat was unsure whether the Gogleskan’s words represented some deep, philosophical truth or were merely the product of a mind clouded by pain and confusion. She said, “The problems of the healer-patient are much more urgent.”

“There is agreement,” Khone said. “Very well, the stings may be covered. But the patient must be touched only by the machine.”

Cha Thrat sighed. It had been too much to hope that a few highly personal revelations would demolish the conditioning of millennia. Without mbving any closer, she held the scanner in position with the long tongs and used the rear medial limb to open her pack so that the probe’s manipulators, which were being guided with great precision by Naydrad, could extract the sting covers.

Those covers had been designed to contain the needle-pointed stings and absorb their venom. Once in position, they released an adhesive that would ensure that they remained so until Khone reached Sector General. This property of the covers had not been mentioned to the patient. But with the distorters making it impossible for any call for joining to be heard by the other townspeople and its stings rendered impotent, the Gogleskan would be unable to avoid direct physical contact with one of the frightful off-worlders.

Considering the rapidly worsening clinical picture, the sooner that happened the better.

But Khone was not stupid and probably it had already realized what was to happen, which would explain its growing agitation as two, then three of the four sting covers were placed in position. Now it was moving itshead weakly from side to side, deliberately avoiding me last cover. Quickly Cha Thrat tried to give it something else to think about.

“As can be clearly observed in the scanner and biosensor displays,” she said impersonally, “the fetus is being presented laterally to the birth canal and is immobilized in this position. It has exerted pressure on important blood vessels and nerve connections to the parent’s mid- and lower body, which has resulted in loss of muscle function and sensation and, unless relieved, will lead to necrosis in the areas concerned. The umbilical is also being increasingly compressed as the involuntary mus-, cles continue trying to expel the fetus. The fetal heartbeat is weak, rapid, and irregular, and the vital signs of the parent are not good, either. Has the patient-healer any suggestion or comments on this case?” Khone did not reply.

Only Prilicla would know how much Cha Thrat’s coldly impersonal tone belied her true feelings toward the incredibly brave little creature who lay like a tumbled haystack so close to her, but still too far away in the non material distances of the mind for her to be able to help it. Yet they were alike in so many ways, she thought. Both had taken risks that no other members of their species were willing to take—she had treated an off-world life-form she had never seen before, and Khone had volunteered itself for treatment by off-worlders. But of the two, Khone was the braver and its risks the greater.

“Is this condition rare or common among gravid females,” she asked quietly, “and

what is the normal procedure in such cases?”

The other’s voice was so weak that the reply was barely audible as it said, “The condition is not rare. Normal procedure in such cases is to administer massivedoses of medication that enables the patient and fetus to terminate with minimum discomfort.”

Cha Thrat could think of nothing to say or do.

In the stillness of Rhone’s room she became increas- I ingly aware of the external noises: the constant whistling and hissing of the distorters; and coming to her through the empath’s communicator, the voice of Naydrad complaining about the difficulty of capping the stings of a patient who would not cooperate; and more quietly, Murchison, Danalta, and Prilicla itself as they suggested and quickly discarded a number of wildly differing procedures.

“The medical team’s voices are unclear,” Cha Thrat said anxiously. “Has anything been decided? What are the immediate instructions?”

Suddenly the voices became loud and very clear indeed, because they were coming from the probe’s speaker as well as her own earpiece. Naydrad, its attention concentrated on the probe’s remote-controlled manipulators as it tried to fit the last sting cover, must have decided that she wanted more volume and reacted to her statement without thinking.

The conversation was completely unguarded.

Prilicla was speaking, quietly and reassuringly, and clearly unaware that its words were reaching Khone as well as herself, Cha Thrat realized. The intense and conflicting emotional radiation emanating from the other team members grouped so closely around it was keeping the empath from detecting her own sudden burst of surprise and fear.

“Cha Thrat,” it said, “there has been some argument, which has since been resolved in your favor, regarding who should perform the operation. Friend Rhone’s need is urgent, its condition has deteriorated to the stagewhere the risk of moving it out tor surgery is able, and your only option is to—”

“No!” she said urgently. “Please stop talking?' “Do not be distressed, Cha Thrat,” the empath continued, mistaking the reason for the objection. “Your professional competence is not in doubt, and Pathologist Murchison and myself have studied Conway’s notes on the FORT life-form, as have you, and we will guide you at every stage of the procedure and take complete responsibility throughout.

“Immediate surgical intervention is required to relievethis condition,” it went on. “As soon as the last sting iscapped, you will use a Number Eight scalpel to enlarge' the birth opening with an incision from the pelvis up tothe— What is happening?”

There was no need to tell it what was happening because in the time taken to ask the question it already knew the answer. Rhone, faced with the imminent prospect of a major surgical attack, had reacted instinctively by emitting the call for joining and was trying to sting to death the only strange, and therefore threatening, being within reach. With its legs virtually paralyzed, Rhone was twisting violently from side to side and using its digital clusters to pull itself toward Cha Thrat.

The remaining uncapped sting, long, yellow, and with tiny drops of venom already oozing from its point, was swaying and jerking closer. Frantically Cha Thrat pushed backward with the forefeet and medial limbs, launching herself toward the Gogieskan and grasping the base of the sting with three of her upper hands.

“Stop it!” she shouted above the noise of the call.

Forgetting to be impersonal, she went on. “Stop movingor you’ll injure yourself and the young one. I’m a friend,I want to help you. Naydrad, cap it! Cap it quickly!”

“Hold it still, then,” the Relgian snapped back,C.B.E.—9swinging the probe’s manipulator arm above Rhone’s jerking head. “Hold it very still.”

But that was not easy to do. Her upper, neck-level arms and digits had been evolved for more precise and delicate operations and lacked the heavy musculature of the medial limbs, and using them meant that Rhone’s head and her own were almost touching. She strained desperately to tighten her ridiculously weak grip on the sting, sending waves of pain into her neck and upper thorax. She knew that if those fingers slipped the sting would immediately be plunged into the top of her head.

The medical team would probably get to her quickly enough to save her life, but not those of Rhone and the fetus, which was their only reason for being here. She was wondering how Murchison, the Diagnostician’s life-mate; and Prilicla, its long-term friend; and Cha Thrat herself would face Con way with the news of Rhone’s death when Naydrad shouted, “Got it!”

The last sting was covered. She could relax for a moment. But not Rhone, who was still jerking and writhing on the floor and stabbing ineffectually at her with all four of its capped stings. Close up, the sound of its distress call was like a gale whistling and howling through a ruined building.

“At least the distorters are working,” Wainright said, and added warningly, “but hurry it up, they won’t last much longer.”

She ignored the Earth-human and grasped tufts of the Gogleskan’s hair in her upper and medial hands, trying vainly to hold it motionless. Pleadingly she said, “Stop moving. You’re wasting what little strength you’ve got. You’ll die and the baby will die. Please stop moving. I’m not an enemy, I’m yourfriendl”

The call for joining was still howling out with un-diminished volume, making her wonder how such asmall creature could make so great a noise, but its physical movements were becoming noticeably less violent. Was it a symptom of sheer physical weakness, or was she getting through to the Gogleskan? Then she saw that the long, pale tendrils on its head were uncurling from the concealing hair

and were standing out straight. Two of them fell slowly to lie along the top of her own head; and suddenly Cha Thrat wanted to scream.

Being Rhone’s friend was much, much worse than being its enemy.

CHAPTER 14

There was fear as she had never known it before—the sudden, overriding, and senseless fear of everything and everyone that was not joined tightly to her for the group defense; and a terrible, blind fury that diminished the fear; and the memories and expectation of pains past, present, and to come. And with those fearful memories there came a dreadful and confused nightmare of all the frightful and painful things that had ever happened to her—on Sommaradva and Goglesk and in Sector General. Many elements of the nightmare were utterly

strange to her; the feeling of terror at the sight of Prilicla, which was ridiculous, and the sense of loss at the departure of the male Gogleskan who had fathered the child within her. But now there was no fear of theoutsized, off-world animated doll who was trying to help her.

Even with the confusion of fear, pain, and alien experiences dulling her capacity to think, the conclusion was inescapable. Khone had invaded her mind.

Now she knew what it was like to be a Gogleskan; at a time like this the choice was simple. Friends joined and enemies—everyone and everything that was not part of the group—were attacked and destroyed. She wanted to break everything in the room, the furniture, instruments, decorations, and then tear down the flimsy

walls, and she wanted to drag Khone around with her to help her do it. Desperately she tried to control the blind and utterly alien fury that was building up in her.

Amid the storm of Gogleskan impressions a tiny part of her own mind surfaced for a moment, observing that the tight grip she retained on Khone’s fur must have fooled its subconscious into believing that she had joined with it, and was therefore a friend worthy of mind-sharing.

I am Cha Thrat, she told herself fiercely, once a Som-maradvan warrior-surgeon and now a trainee maintenance technician of Sector General. I am not Khone of Goglesk and I am not here to join and destroy . . .

But this was a joining, and memories of a larger, more destructive joining came crowding into her mind.

She seemed to be standing on top of a land vehicle stopped on high ground overlooking the town, watching the joining as it happened. The Earth-human Wainright was beside her, warning her that the Gogleskans were dangerously close, that they should leave, that there was nothing she could do and, for some strange reason, while it was saying these things it sometimes called “Doctor” but more often “sir.” She felt very bad because she knew that the joining had been her fault, that it had happenedbecause she had tried to help, and had touched, an industrial accident casualty. Below her she could clearly see Khone attaching itself to the other Gogleskans without being able to understand the reason, and at the same time she was Khone and knew the reason.

With individual Gogleskans hurrying to join it from nearby buildings, moored ships, and surrounding tree dwellings, the group-entity became a great, mobile, stinging carpet that crawled around large buildings and engulfed small ones as if it did not know or care what it was doing. In its wake it left a trail of smashed equipment, vehicles, dead animals, and a capsized ship. The group-entity moved inland to continue its self-destructive defense against an enemy out of prehistory.

In spite of the terrible fear of that nonexistent enemy in Khone’s mind, which was now her mind, Cha Thrat tried to make herself think logically about what had happened to her. She thought of the wizard O’Mara and how it had said that Educator tapes would never be for her, and remembered the reasons it had given. Now she knew what it was like to have a completely alien entity occupying her mind, and she wondered if her sanity would be affected. Perhaps the fact that Khone, like herself, was a female might make a difference.

But there was a growing realization that it was not only Khone’s mind and memories that she had to contend with. The memory and viewpoint from the top of the land vehicle was not from the Gogleskan’s mind, nor her own. There were memories of the ambulance ship and the exploits of its medical team that were definitely not her own, and some vivid and—to her—fearful and wonderful recollections of events in Sector General that were totally outside her experience. Had O’Mara been right? Were factual recollections and insane fantasies intermingling, and she was no longer sane?But she did not think she was insane. Madness was supposed to be an escape from a too-painful reality to a condition that was more bearable. There was too much pain here and the memories or fantasies were too painfully sharp. And one of them was of Lieutenant] Wainright standing beside her, its head on a level with! hers, and calling her “sir.”

With a sudden shiver of fear and wonder she realized what was happening. She was sharing Rhone’s mind, and Khone had earlier shared it with someone else.

Conway!

For some time Cha Thrat had been aware of Prilicla’s! voice in her earpiece, but the words were just sounds” without meaning to her already overloaded mind. Then she felt its warmth and sympathy and reassurance all around her, and the pain and confusion receded a little so that the meaning came through.

“Cha Thrat, my friend,” the empath was saying, “please respond. You have been holding onto the patient’s fur for the past few minutes, not doing anything and not answering us. I am on the roof directly above you, and your emotional radiation distresses me. Please, what is wrong? Have you been stung?”

“N-no,” she replied shakily, “there is no physical damage. I feel badly confused and frightened, and the patient is—”

“I can read your feelings, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said gently, “but not the reason for them. There is nothing to be ashamed of, you’ve already done more than could be reasonably expected of you, and it was unfair of us to let you volunteer for this operation in the first place. We are in danger of losing the patient. Please withdraw and let me perform the surgery—”

“No,” Cha Thrat said, feeling Rhone’s body twitch in her hands. The long, silvery tendrils that were the or-ganic conductors tor metelepathy-by-wire were still lying across her head, and anything Cha Thrat felt or heard or thought was immediately available to Khone, who did not like the idea of an alien monster operating on it, for reasons that were both personal and medical. Cha Thrat added, “Please give me a moment. I’m beginning to regain control of my mind.” “You are,” Prilicla said, “but hurry.” Incredibly, it was her mind-partner who was doing most to aid the process. In common with the rest of its long-suffering and nightmare-ridden species, it had learned how to control and compartmentalize its thinking, feelings, and natural urges so that the enforced

loneliness necessary to avoid a joining was not only bearable but, at times, happy. And now the Conway-memories of Sector General and some of its monstrous patients were surging into the forefront of her mind.

Be selective, Khone was telling her. Use only what isuseful.

All the memories and experience of a Sommaradvan warrior-surgeon, a Gogleskan healer, and half an Earth-human lifetime spent in Sector General were hers, and with that vast quantity of other-species medical and physiological expertise available she could not believe that, even at this late stage, the Khone case was hopeless. Then from somewhere in that vast and incredibly varied store of knowledge, the glimmerings of an idea began to take shape.

“I no longer feel that surgical intervention is the answer,” she said firmly, “even as a last resort. It is unlikely that the patient would survive.”

“Who the blazes does it think it is?” Murchison said angrily. “Who’s in charge of this op, anyway? Prilicla,pin its ears back!”

Cha Thrat could have answered both questions, butdid not. She knew that her words and tone had been wrong for someone in her lowly position—she sounded much too self-assured and authoritative. But there was no time for either long explanations or pretensions of humility, and it would be better if the true explanation was never given. With any luck Pathologist Murchison would believe, and go on believing, that Cha Thrat was a self-opinionated maintenance technician and one-time trainee nurse with delusions of grandeur and, for the time being at least, the team leader was leaving her ears unpinned.

“Explain,” Prilicla said.

Quickly Cha Thrat reviewed the current clinical picture, gravely worsened now by the extreme debilitation that, even in a healthy Gogleskan, followed a joining. When she said that Rhone lacked the strength and physical resources to withstand major surgery—it would have to be a cesarean procedure rather than a simple enlargement of the birth opening—she spoke with absolute certainty because she had the patient-healer’s viewpoint of the case as well as her own. But she did not mention that, saying instead that Rhone’s emotional radiation would confirm her observations.

“It does,” the empath said.

She went on quickly. “The FOKT classification is one of the few life-forms capable of resting in the upright position, although they can also lie down. Since their ancestors emerged from the oceans, their bodies and internal organs have been acted on by vertical G forces, as are those of the Hudlars and Tralthans and Rhenithi. I am reminded of a case in Tralthan Maternity a few years ago that was broadly similar to this one and required—”

“You didn’t learn that from Cresk-Sar,” Murchison broke in suddenly. “Trainee nurses aren’t told about the near-failures, at least not in first year.”

“I liked to study odd cases outside me syuauus, ^u<* Thrat lied smoothly, “and I still do, when I’m not engrossed in a maintenance manual.”

Her emotional radiation would tell the Cinrusskin that she was lying, but it could only guess at what she was lying about. All it said was “Describe your procedure.”

“Before I do,” she went on quickly, “please remove the canopy from the litter and reposition the gravity grids to act laterally in opposite directions. Set the body restraints to the size and weight of the patient under anything up to an alternating plus and minus three Gs. Move the probe into the passageway, so I can step from it onto the roof. Hurry, please. I’m bringing out the patient now and will explain on the way . . .”

Cradling the barely conscious Khone in two medial arms and with all of her free hands gripping its fur tightly to make it feel that it was still joined to a friend, she climbed awkwardly onto the roof and sidled back the way she had come. Prilicla hovered anxiously above her all the way, Naydrad complained bitterly that its litter would never be the same again, and Murchison reminded it that they had a maintenance technician, or something,with them.

She continued to grip the Gogleskan’s fur while Naydrad expertly fitted the restraints and Murchison attached an oxygen supply to all breathing orifices. With her head touching Rhone’s and the long, silvery tendrils still making contact, she checked that the other had a clear view of the scanner display, which she in her present awkward position did not, then braced herself and gave the signal to begin.

Cha Thrat felt her head and upper limbs being pulled sideways as Naydrad fed power to the gravity grid positioned above the patient’s head. It was difficult to keep her balance because her lower body and legs were out-side the influence of the artificial gravity field. But so far I as Khone was concerned, it was tied upside-down to the litter under double, increasing to treble and Gogleskan standard gravity pull.

“Heart rate irregular,” Prilicla reported quietly. “Blood pressure increasing in the upper body and head, respiration labored, minor displacement of thoracic

organs, but the fetus hasn’t moved.”

“Shall I increase the pull to four Gs?” Naydrad asked, looking at Prilicla. But it was Cha Thrat who replied.

“No,” she said. “Give it two Gs alternating as rapidly as possible between normal and reverse pull. You’ve got to try to shake Junior loose,”

Now she was being knocked from side to side, as if by the soft, invisible paws of some great beast, while the patient was suffering the same maltreatment in the vertical plane. She managed to keep her head and the hands gripping Khone’s fur steady, but she was feeling a growing nausea that reminded her of childhood bouts of travel sickness.

“Friend Cha Thrat, are you all right?” Prilicla asked. “Do you wish to stop?”

“Can we spare the time?”

“No,” the empath replied, then: “The fetus is moving! It is—”

“Reverse, two Gs steady,” Cha Thrat said quickly, effectively standing Khone on its head again.

“—now pressing against the upper womb,” Prilicla continued. “The umbilical is no longer being compressed, and pressure on the blood vessels and nerve linkages in the area has been relieved. The muscles are beginning rapid, involuntary contractions . . .”

“Enough to expel the fetus?” she broke in.

“No,” it replied. “They are too weak to complete thebirth process. In any case the fetus is sun noi in me optimum position.”

Cha Thrat used a swear word that was definitely not Sommaradvan, and said, “Can we reposition and refocus the gravity grids so as to pull the fetus into the proper position for—”

“I would need time to—” Naydrad began.

“There isn’t any time,” said Prilicla. “I’m surprised friend Khone is still with us.”

This was not going nearly as well as the remembered case in the Tralthan maternity ward had gone, and there was no consolation in telling herself that, in this instance, the life-form was strange and the operating facilities virtually non-existent. Khone’s mind was no longer sending or receiving impressions, so that she could not even make the Last Apology to it for her failure.

“Please do not distress yourself, friend Cha,” the Cinrusskin went on, beginning to tremble violently. “No blame can be attached to you for attempting a task that, because of the peculiar circumstances, none of us were able to do. Your present emotional radiation is worrying me. Remember, you aren’t even a member of the medical team, you have no authority, and the responsibility for allowing you to try this procedure is not yours . . . You have just thought of something?”

“We both know,” Cha Thrat said, so quietly that her voice reached only Prilicla, “that I have made it my responsibility. And yes, I’ve thought of something.”

In a louder voice she went on quickly. “Naydrad, we need a rapid one-G push-pull this time, just enough to keep the fetus moving. Danalta, the muscle wall around the womb is thin, and relaxed due to the patient’s unconsciousness. Will you produce some suitable limbs and hands? Prilicla will tell you the size and shape needed, and use the scanner to direct your movements of thefetus into the proper position. Murchison, will you stand by to help withdraw it, if or when it is born?”

Apologetically she added, “I cannot assist you. For the time being it would be better if I retained the closest possible physical contact with the patient. My feeling is that, unconscious or not, it will derive a greater measure of emotional comfort from my doing so.”

“Your feeling is correct,” Prilicla said. “But time is short, friends. Let’s do it.”

While Naydrad kept the fetus twitching slowly within the womb, and Danalta, using appendages whose shape and movements would give Cha Thrat bad dreams for many nights to come, tried to press and turn it into optimum position, she tried desperately to get through to her deeply unconscious mind-partner.

You will be all right. Your child will be all right. Hang on, please don’t die on me!

It was like thinking into a black and bottomless pit. For an instant she thought there was a flicker of awareness, but it was probably that the feeling had come because she wanted it to be so. She turned her head slightly, so as not to break contact with the long, silvery tendrils, and wished that she was in a position to see the scanner display.

“It’s in optimum position now,” Prilicla said suddenly. “Danalta, move your hands lower. Be ready to press when I tell you if the fetus starts turning again. Naydrad, two Gs steady, down!”

For a moment there was silence except for the whistling of the distorters, which now seemed to be wavering in intensity as they labored like the patient, on reduced power, to perform their function. Time was running out for both of them. Everyone’s attention was on Khone,and even Prilicla was watching the scanner display too intently to describe what it was seeing.

“I see the head!” Murchison said suddenly. “The top of the head only. But the contractions are too weak, they aren’t helping very much. The legs are at maximum spread, but the fetal head is moving down, then back again, by a fraction of an inch with each contraction. Shall I try surgical enlargement of the—”

“No surgery,” Cha Thrat said firmly. Even if the patient survived it, she had shared Rhone’s mind and knew that serious psychological damage would result from the inflicting of a surgical wound—not to mention the aftermath when close physical contact would be necessary to provide treatment and change dressings—on one whose species was virtually untouchable. The brief physical and mental contact with Conway and Cha Thrat had knocked a large hole in Rhone’s Gogleskan conditioning, but psychologically it was still a strong and very rigidstructure.

But there was no time to explain her feeling or argue her point of view. Murchison had straightened up and was looking questioningly at Prilicla, who shook in the emotional winds blowing from all sides but said nothing. “It would be better if we tried to assist the natural process,” Cha Thrat went on. “Naydrad, I want alternating positive and reverse gravity again, this time between zero and three Gs down, initially for the next five contractions. And watch out for major displacement of other organs. This species has never been subjected to increased G forces—”

“I see the whole head now!” Murchison broke in excitedly. “And shoulders. Dammit, I’ve got the wee bugger!”

“Naydrad,” Cha Thrat said quickly, “maintain threeGs down for a moment until the afterbirth is out, then return to normal gravity conditions. Murchison, place the newborn between the digital clusters just to the left of my head. My feeling is that Rhone will derive greater reassurance from holding on to its little one than from me holding on to its parent.”

She watched as Rhone’s digits curled instinctively around the tiny form, which looked to the Sommaradvan part of her mind like a slimy, twitching little horror and which the Gogleskan portion insisted was a thing of indescribable beauty. Reluctantly she lifted her head from Rhone’s and released her grip on its fur.

“Your feeling is accurate, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “The patient, although still unconscious, is already emoting more strongly.”

“But wait,” Murchison said worriedly. “We were told that it must be conscious if it was to take care of the newborn properly. We’ve no idea what . . .”

She broke off because Cha Thrat, who now knew everything that the Gogleskan healer had known, was busily doing all that was necessary. It was contrary to her Sommaradvan upbringing to tell a deliberate lie, but the situation was fraught with ah1 sorts of interpersonal difficulties and was too complicated for her to take the time needed to tell the truth.

Instead, Cha Thrat waited until the umbilical had been neatly severed and sealed off and the patient’s lower limbs disposed more comfortably, then said smoothly, “There are a number of physiological similarities between the FORT life-form and my own and, in any case, we females have certain instincts in these matters.”

The Earth-human shook its head doubtfully and said,"Your female instincts are a lot stronger,and more preccisely directed, than mine.”

“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, its voice sounding loud because all but two of the distorters had ceased their whistling, “let us discuss female instincts at a more convenient time. Friend Naydrad, replace the litter canopy, turn up the internal heating three points, and maintain a pure oxygen atmosphere and watch out for signs of delayed shock. The emotional radiation indicates a condition of grave debility, but it is stable, there is no immediate danger, and circulation and mobility are returning to the lower limbs. We will all feel better, and especially the patient, when it has the ship’s intensive-care equipment looking after it. Please move quickly.

“All except Cha Thrat,” it added gently. “With you, my Sommaradvan friend, I would like private words.”

Driven by Naydrad and with Danalta and Wainright flanking it, the litter was already moving off. But Pathologist Murchison was hanging back, its face deep pink and wearing an expression that Cha Thrat could now read and understand.

“Don’t be too hard on it, Prilicla,” Murchison said. “1 think it did a very good job, even if it is inclined to forget who’s in charge at times. I mean, well, let’s just say that with Cha Thrat, Maintenance Department’s gain was the medical staff’s loss.”

As Murchison turned abruptly to hurry after the litter, Cha Thrat watched it from three different and confusing viewpoints and with three sets of very mixed

feelings. To her Sommaradvan mind it was a small, flabby, and unlovely DBDG female. To the Gogleskan mind it was just another off-planet monster, friendly but frightening. But from her Earth-human viewpoint it was an altogether different entity, one that for many years she had knownto be highly intelligent, second only to Thornnastor in its professional standing, friendly, sympathetic, fair-minded, beautiful, and sexually desirable. Some of these aspects of its personality had just been demonstrated, but the sudden physical attraction Cha Thrat felt toward it, and the associated mind-pictures of horrible alien grapplings and intimacies, frightened her so badly that the Gogleskan part of her mind wanted to call for a joining.

Murchison was a female Earth-human and Cha Thrat was a female Sommaradvan. She had to stop feeling this stupid attraction toward a member of another species who was not even male, because in that direction lay certain madness. She remembered the discussion about Educator tapes with the wizard, O’Mara, and her own experience of sharing her mind with those of Kelgians, Tralthans, Melfans among others.

But that was not her experience, she reminded herself firmly. She was and would remain Cha Thrat. The Gogleskan and Earth-human who seemed to be occupying her mind were guests, one of them a particularly troublesome guest where thoughts of the entity Murchison were concerned, but they should not be allowed to influence her personal feelings. It was ridiculous to think, or feel, otherwise.

When the disturbing figure of Murchison had disappeared into the middle distance and Cha Thrat was feeling more like herself than two other people, she said, “And now, I suppose, comes the pinning back of the ears of a big-headed and grossly insubordinate technician with delusions of medical grandeur?”

Prilicla had alighted on the roof above Khone’s doorway so that its eyes would be on a level with Cha Thrat’s. It said gently, “Your emotional control is excel-lent, friend Cha. I compliment you on you But your supposition is wrong. However, your obvious understanding of the Earth-human terms you have just used, and your earlier behavior during a very tricky clinical situation, leads me to speculate about what might possibly have happened toyou.

“I am merely thinking aloud, you understand,” it went on. “You are not required, in fact you are expressly forbidden to say whether my speculations are accurate or not. In this matter I would prefer to remain officiallyignorant.”

It was evident from the first few words that the empath knew exactly what had happened to Cha Thrat, even though its certainties were mentioned as suspicions. It suspected that Cha Thrat had shared minds with Rhone, that the Gogleskan’s mind had previously been shared with that of Conway, and it was the Diagnostician’s medical expertise and initiative that had surfaced before and during the birth of Khone’s child. For this reason the Cinrusskin was not offended by the incident —a Senior Physician was far outranked by a Diagnostician, even one who was temporarily in residence within the mind of a subordinate'. And neither would the other team members feel offended if they were to suspect thetruth.

But they must not suspect, at least until Cha Thrat was safely lost in the maintenance tunnels of Sector General.

“From your recent emotional radiation,” Prilicla went on, “I suspect that you had strong if confused feelings of a sexual nature toward friend Murchison that were not pleasant for your Sommaradvan self. But consider the intensity of Murchison’s embarrassment if it suspected that you, an entity of a completely different physiologi-cal classification forced by circumstances to work in close proximity with it, were regarding it with the eyes and the same strength of feeling as that of its life-mate. And if the others were to suspect as well, the emotional radiation from the team would be extremely painful and distressing to me.”

“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

“Pathologist Murchison is highly intelligent,” the Cinrusskin continued, “and in time she will realize what has happened, if she doesn’t learn it from Khone first. That is why 1 would like you to explain this delicate situation to friend Khone at the first opportunity, and ask for its silence in this matter.

“Friend Khone,” Prilicla added gently, “has the memories and feelings of Cha Thrat as well as Con way.”

For a moment Cha Thrat could not speak as the Gog-leskan healer’s mind threatened to engulf her own with its peculiar mixture of fear, curiosity, and parental concern. Finally she said, “Will Khone be able to speak?”

“I have the feeling, not a suspicion, that both our Gogleskans are doing well,” Prilicla replied, shaking out its wings in readiness for flight. “But now, if we don’t end this conversation soon, the others will wonder what I am doing to you, and will be expecting you to arrive back bruised and bleeding.”

The idea of Prilicla inflicting any kind of injury on anyone was so ridiculous that even a Gogleskan as well as a Sommaradvan and Earth-human considered it funny. Cha Thrat laughed out loud as, with the down-draft from the empath’s wings stirring her hair, they followed the others back to the lander.

“You realize, friend Cha,” the empath said, its trembling limbs a visible apology for the words that would diminish her pleasure, “that O’Mara will have to be told.”

CHAPTER 15

By the time they had been transfered from the lander to the special FOKT accommodation of Rhab-war’s casualty deck, both patients were fully conscious and making loud hissing noises. The sounds that the younger one was making did not translate, but Khone’s were divided into repeated expressions of gratitude for its survival and weak but very insistent reassurances about its clinical condition. The healer’s self-diagnosis was supported by the biosensors and confirmed by the less tangible but even more accurate findings of the emotion-sensitive Prilicla. And now that it was separated from its friendly off-world monsters, and its subconscious fears thereby allayed, by a thick transparent partition, Khone was quite happy to speak to anyone at anytime.

That included the nonmedical crew members who, with Captain Fletcher’s permission, left their positions in Control and the Power Room briefly to congratulate the patient and tell complimentary lies about the obvious intelligence, parental resemblance, and great beauty of the new arrival, a male child of greater than average weight. In spite of Prilicla’s urgings that it should rest and refrain from overexcitement, the atmosphere around Khone’s accommodation more closely resembled a birthday party than the casualty deck of an ambulance ship.

When Captain Fletcher arrived, they did not need an emphatic faculty to feel the atmosphere change. To Khone the Earth-human made a perfunctory inquiry about its health, then turned quickly to Prilicla.

“I need a decision, Senior Physician,” it went on, “one that only you people can make. The hospital signaled us a few minutes ago, saying that an emergency beacon had been detected in this sector. The distressed ship is about five hours subspace flight away; the distress beacon was not one of the types used by the Federation, so the casualties might be a species new to us. That makes it difficult to estimate the time needed for the rescue. It could take a couple of days rather than hours.

“The question is,” it ended, “do your patients require hospitalization before or after we respond to this distress call?”

It was not an easy decision to make because their patients, although stable and not in need of urgent treatment, belonged to a life-form about which little was known clinically, so that unexpected complications might arise at any time. Surprisingly the discussion, which was animated but necessarily brief, was ended by Khone itself.

“Please, friends,” it said during one of the rare lulls, “Gogleskan females recover quickly once the birth trauma is over. I can assure you, both as a healer and a parent, that such a delay will not endanger either of us. Besides, here we are receiving much better attention than would be possible anywhere on Goglesk.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Murchison said quietly. “We may be going into a disaster situation possibly involving a life-form completely new to us. It is conceivable that they might horrify or scare even us,much less a Gogleskan leaving its planet for the nrsttime.”

“They might,” Khone replied, “but they would almostcertainly be in a worse condition than I am.”

“Very well,” Prilicla said, turning back to the Captain. “It seems that friend Khone has reminded us of the priorities and of our duty as healers. Tell the hospital that Rhabwar will respond.”

Fletcher disappeared in the direction of Control, and the Cinrusskin went on. “We should now eat and sleep, since there might not be an opportunity to do either for some time. The patients’ biosensors will be monitored automatically and any change in condition signaled to me at once. They need rest, too, and they wouldn’t get it if I left a team member on duty. Come along, everyone. Sleep well, friend Khone.”

It flew gracefully into the gravity-free central well and up toward the dining and recreation deck, followed in more orthodox fashion by Naydrad, Danalta, Murchison, and Cha Thrat. But just before they began their weightless climb, Murchison gripped the ladder with one hand and placed the other on one of her mediallimbs.

“Wait, please,” it said. “I would like to speak to you.” Cha Thrat stopped but did not speak. The sensation of alien digits gently enclosing her arm and the sight of the flabby, pink Earth-human face looking up at her were giving rise to feelings that no Sommaradvan, much less a female one, had any business harboring. Slowly, so as not to give offense, she disengaged the limb from the other’s grip and sought for emotionalcontrol.

“I’m worried about this ship rescue, Cha Thrat,” it said, “and the effect on you of the casualties we may have to treat. Disaster injuries can be pretty bad, colli-sion fractures and explosive decompressions for the most part, and as a rule there are very few survivors. You don’t seem to be able to keep your Sommaradvan nose out of the medical area, but this time you must try, try really hard, not to get involved with our casualties.”

Before Cha Thrat could reply, it went on. “You did some very nice work with Khone, even though I’m still not sure what exactly was going on, but you were very lucky. If Khone or the infant or both of them had died, how would you have felt? More important, what would you have done to yourself?”

“Nothing,” Cha Thrat said, trying hard to tell herself that the expression on the pink face below her was one of friendly concern for an other-species subordinate and not something more personal. Quickly she went on. “I would have felt very bad, but I would not have injured myself again. The code of ethics of a warrior-surgeon is strict, and even on Sommaradva there were colleagues who did not observe it as I have done, and who envied and disliked me for my own strict observance. To me the code remains valid, but in Sector General and on Gog-lesk there are other and equally valid codes. My viewpoints have changed . . .”

She stopped herself, afraid that she had said too much, but the other had not noticed that she had used the plural.

“We call that broadening the mind,” Murchison said, “and I’m relieved and pleased for you, Cha Thrat. It’s a pity that . . . Well, I meant what I said about you being the Maintenance Department’s gain and our loss. Your superiors find you a bit hard to take at times, and after the Chalder and Hudlar incidents I can’t imagine you being accepted for ward training by anyone. But maybe if you waited until the fuss died down, and didn’t doanything else to get yourself noticed, I could speak to a few people about having you transfered back to the medical staff. How do you feel about that?”

“I feel grateful,” she replied, trying desperately to find a way of ending this conversation with a being who was not only sympathetic and understanding as a person, but whose physical aspect was arousing in her other feelings of the kind

usually associated with the urge to procreate. Most definitely, she thought, this was a problem that could only be resolved by one of O’Mara’s spells. Quickly she added, “I also feel very hungry.”

“Hungry!” Murchison said. As the Earth-human turned to resume climbing to the dining area, it laughed suddenly and said, “You know, Cha Thrat, sometimes you remind me of my life-mate.”

She was able to rest after the meal but not sleep and, after three hours of trying, she made the excuse to herself that Rhone’s life-support and synthetic food delivery systems needed checking. She found the Gogleskan awake, as well, and they talked quietly while it fed the infant. Soon afterward they were both asleep and she was left to stare silently at the complex shapes of the casualty deck equipment, which looked like weird, mechanical phantasms in the night-level lighting, until the arrival of Prilicla.

“Have you been able to speak with friend Khone?” the Cinrusskin asked, hovering over the two Gogles-kans.

“Yes,” Cha Thrat replied. “It will do as you suggested, to avoid embarrassing us.”

“Thank you, friend Cha,” Prilicla said. “I feel the others awake and about to join us. We should be arrivingat any—”

It was interrupted by a double chime that announced their emergence into normal space, followed a few min-utes later by the voice of Lieutenant Haslam speaking! from Control.

“We have long-range sensor contact with a large] ship,” the communications officer said. “There are noj indications of abnormal radiation levels, no expanding cloud of debris, no sign of any catastrophic malfunction. ! The vessel is rotating around its longtitudinal axis as well I as spinning slowly end over end. We are locking the tele-1 scope into the sensor bearing and putting the image onf your repeater screen.”

A narrow, fuzzy triangle appeared in the center of the screen, becoming more distinct as Haslam brought it into focus.

It went on. “Prepare for maximum thrust in ten minutes. Gravity compensators set for three Gs. We should close with it in less than two hours.”

Cha Thrat and Khone watched the screen with the rest of the medical team, who were making Prilicla tremble with the intensity of their impatience. They were as ready as it was possible to be, and the more detailed preparations would have to wait until they had some idea of the physiological classification of the people they were about to rescue. But it was possible for the ship ruler to draw conclusions, even at long range.

“According to our astrogation computer,” Fletcher said, “the nearest star is eleven light-years distant and without planets, so the ship did not come from there. Although large* it is still much too small to be a generation ship, so it is highly probable that it uses a form of hyperdrive similar to our own. It does not resemble any vessel, past, current, or under development, on the Federation’s fleet list.

“In spite of its large size,” the Captain went on, “it has the aerodynamically clean triangular configuration typical of a vessel required to maneuver in a planetaryatmosphere. Most of the star-traveling species that we know prefer, for technical and economic reasons, to keep their combined atmosphere-and-space vessels small and build the larger nonlanders in orbit where streamlining is unnecessary. The two exceptions that I know of build their space-atmosphere ships large because the crews needed to operate them are themselves physicallymassive.”

“Oh, great,” Naydrad said. “We’ll be rescuing abunch of giants.”

“This is only speculative at the moment,” the Captain said. “Your screen won’t show it, but we’re beginning to resolve some of the structural details. That ship was not put together by watchmakers. The overall design philosophy seems to have been one of simplicity and strength rather than sophistication. We are beginning to see small access and inspection panels, and two very large features that must be entry locks. While it is possible that these are cargo locks that double as entry ports for personnel who are physically small, the probability is that these people are a very large and massive life-form—”

“Don’t be afraid, friend Khone,” Prilicla broke in quickly. “Even a demented Hudlar couldn’t break through the partition Cha Thrat put around you, and our casualties will be unconscious anyway. Both of you will be quite safe.”

“Reassurance and gratitude are felt,” the Gogleskan said. With a visible effort it added, more personally,"Thank you.”

“Friend Fletcher,” the empath said, returning its attention to the Captain, “can you speculate further about this life-form, other than that it is large and probably lacks digital dexterity?”

“I was about to,” the Captain said. “Analysis of internal atmosphere leakage shows that—”

“Then the hull has been punctured!” Cha Thrat said excitedly. “From within or without?”

“Technician,” said the ship ruler, reminding her of her position and her insubordination with the single word. “For your information, it is extremely difficult, expensive, and unnecessary to make a large, space-going structure completely airtight. It is more practical to maintain the vessel at nominal internal pressure and replace the negligible quantity of air that escapes. In

this case, had escaping air not been observed, it would almost certainly have meant that the ship was open to space and airless.

“But there are no signs of collision or puncture damage,” Fletcher went on, “and our sensor data and analysis of the atmosphere leakage suggests that the crew are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers with environmental temperature and pressure requirements similar to our own.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said, then joined the others who were silently watching the repeater screen.

The image of the slowly rolling and spinning ship had grown until it was brushing against the edges of the screen, when Murchison said, “The ship is undamaged, uncontrolled, and, the sensors tell us, there is no abnormal escape of radiation from its main reactor. That means their problem is likely to be disease rather than traumatic injuries, a disabling or perhaps lethal illness affecting the entire crew. Under illness I would include the inhalation of toxic gas accidentally released from—”

“No, ma’am,” said Fletcher, who had maintained the communicator link with Control. “Toxic contaminationof the air supply system on that scale would have showed up in our leak analyses. There’s nothing wrong with theirair.”

“Or,” Murchison went on firmly, “the toxic materialmay have contaminated their liquid or food supply, and been ingested. Either way, there may be no survivors and nothing for us to do here except posthumously investigate, record the physiology of a new life-form, and leave the rest to the Monitor Corps.”

The rest, Cha Thrat knew, would mean carrying out a detailed examination of the vessel’s power, life-support, and navigation systems with the intention of assessing the species’ level of technology. That might provide the information that would enable them to reconstruct the elements of the ship’s course before the disaster occurred and trace it back to its planet of origin. Simultaneously, an even more careful evaluation of the nontechnical environment—crew accommodation and furnishings, art or decorative objects, personal effects, books, tapes, and self-entertainment systems—would be carried out so that they would know what kind of people lived on the home planet when they succeeded in finding it, as they ultimately would.

And eventually that world would be visited by the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps and, like her own Sommaradva, it would never be the same again.

“If there are no survivors, ma’am,” Fletcher said regretfully, “then it isn’t a job for Rhabwar. But we’ll only know when we go inside and check. Senior Physician, do you wish to send any of your people with me? At this stage, though, getting inside will be a mechanical rather than a medical problem. Lieutenant Chen and Technician Cha Thrat, you will assist me with the entry— Wait, something’s happening to the ship!”

Cha Thrat was very surprised that Fletcher wanted her to help with such important work, badly worried in case she might not be able to perform to his expectations, and more than a little frightened at the thought of what might happen to them when they got inside the distressed ship. But the feelings were temporarily submerged at the sight of what was happening on the screen.

The ship’s rate of spin and roll were increasing as they watched, and irregular spurts of vapor were fogging the forward and aft hull and the tips of the broad, triangular wings. She suffered a moment’s sympathetic nausea for anyone who might be inside the vessel and conscious, then Fletcher’s voice returned.

“Attitude jets!” it said excitedly. “Somebody must be trying to check the spin, but is making it worse. Maybe the survivor isn’t feeling well, or is injured, or isn’t familiar with the controls. But now we know someone is alive in there. Dodds, as soon as we’re in range, kill that spin and lock on with all tractors. Doctor Prilicla, you’re in business again.”

“Sometimes it’s nice,” Murchison said, speaking to nobody in particular, “to be proved wrong.”

While Cha Thrat was donning her suit, she listened to the discussion between the medical team members and Fletcher that, had it not been for the presence of the gentle little empath, would have quickly developed into a bitter argument.

It was plain from the conversation that the Captain was Rhabwar’s sole ruler so far as all ship operations were concerned, but at the site of a disaster its authority had to be relinquished to the senior medical person on board, who was

empowered to use the resources of the ship and its officers as it saw fit. The main area of con-tention seemea to oe me responsibility ended and Prilicla’s began.

The Captain argued that the medics were not, considering the fact that the distressed ship was structurally undamaged, on the disaster site until it got them into the ship, and until then they should continue to obey its orders or, at very least, act on its advice. Its advice was that they should remain on Rhabwar until it had effected an entry, because to do otherwise was to risk becoming casualties themselves if the injured or ill survivor—who had already made a mess of checking its ship’s spin with the attitude jets—decided to do something equally unsuccessful and much more devastating with the main thrusters.

If the medical team was waiting outside the distressed ship’s entry lock when thrust was applied, they would either be smashed against the hull plating or incinerated by its tail flare, and the rescue would be aborted because of a sudden lack of rescuers.

Fletcher’s reasons for wanting the medics to remain behind until the other ship had been opened were sound, Cha Thrat thought, even though they had given her a new danger to worry about. But the medical team had been trained for the fastest possible rescue and treatment of survivors, and they were particularly anxious not to waste time in this case when there might only be one. By the time she was leaving for the airlock, a compromise had been worked out.

Prilicla would accompany Fletcher, Chen, and herself to the ship. While they were trying to get inside, the empath would move up and down the outer hull and try to pinpoint the locations of survivors by their emotional radiation. The rest of the medical team would hold themselves ready for a fast recovery of casualties as soon as the way was open.

She had been waiting only a few minutes in the lock antechamber when Lieutenant Chen arrived.

“Good, you’re here already,” the Earth-human said, smiling. “Help me move our equipment into the lock, please. The Captain doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Without giving the impression that it was lecturing her, Chen discussed the purpose of the equipment they were moving from the nearby stowage compartment to the lock, so that Cha Thrat felt her level of ignorance was being reduced without the feelings of stupidity and inferiority that so often accompanied that process. She decided that the Earth-human was a considerate and helpful person, in spite of its rank, and one with whom she might risk a small insubordination.

“This is in no sense a criticism of the ship ruler,” she said carefully, “but I am concerned lest Captain Fletcher is giving me credit for more technical experience than I in fact possess. Frankly, I’m surprised it wanted me along.”

Chen made an untranslatable sound and said, “Don’t be surprised, Technician, of worried.”

“Regrettably,” Cha Thrat said, “I am both.”

For a few minutes the Lieutenant went on talking about the sections of portable airlock they were carrying that, when deployed and attached with fast-setting sealant around the entry port of the other ship', would enable Rhabwar’s boarding tube to join the two vessels and allow the medics to do their work unhampered by space-suits.

“But rest your mind, Cha Thrat,” Chen went on. “Your maintenance chief, Timmins, spoke to the Captain about you. It said that you are pretty bright, learn quickly, and we should give you as much work to do as possible. We should do this because, once the FOKT’s accommodation was finished, you would havenothing to do and might fret. It said that, with your past performance in the hospital, the medical team wouldn’t allow you anywhere near one of their patients.”

It laughed suddenly and went on. “Now we know how wrong Timmins was. But we still intend to keep you busy. You have four times as many hands as I have, and I can’t think of a better tool-carrier. Do I offend you,Technician?”

The question had been asked of the trainee technician and not the proud warrior-surgeon she had been, so the answer had to be “No.”

“That’s good,” Chen said. “Now, close and seal your helmet, and double-check your safety-line attachments. The Captain’s on his way.”

And then she was outside, festooned with equipment and drifting with the two Earth-humans across the short distance to the distressed vessel, which was now held by the rigid, nonmaterial beams of Rhabwar’s tractors. While immobilizing the other ship, their own had acquired a proportion of its spin. But the countless stars that wheeled endlessly around the apparently motionless vessels aroused a feeling not of nausea butwonder.

Prilicla was already there when they arrived, having exited by the casualty deck’s airlock, and was patrolling along the hull in its careful search for the emotional radiation that would indicate the presence of survivors.

CHAPTER 16

As soon as they were standing upright and held to the gray, unpainted hull plating by their boot magnets, and with the bulk of Rhabwar hanging above them like a shining and convoluted white ceiling, the Captain began to speak.

It said, “There are only so many ways for a door to open. It can hinge in or outward, slide vertically or laterally, unscrew clockwise or anticlockwise or, if the builders are sufficiently advanced in the field of molecular engineering, an opening could be dilated in an area of solid metal. We have yet to encounter a species capable of the latter and, if we ever do, we’ll have to be very careful indeed, and remember to call them, sir.”

Before it had joined the Monitor Corps, she had learned, Fletcher had been a ruler-academic and one of Earth’s foremost, and certainly most youthful, authorities on Extraterrestrial Comparative Technology, and the old habits died hard. Even on the hull of an alien ship that might apply thrust at any moment, it was lecturing —and remembering to include the occasional dry little joke. It was also speaking for the benefit of the recorders, in case something sudden and melodramatic happened.

“We are standing on a large door or hatch that is rectangular in shape with rounded corners,” it went on, “sothe probability is that it will open in or out. Below us, according to the sensors, is a large, empty compartment, which means that it has to be a cargo or personnel lock rather than an equipment access or inspection panel. The hatch is featureless, so the external actuator mechanism should be behind one of the small panels in the door surround. Technician, the scanner, please.”

Because this particular scanner was designed to see into the vital organs of metal-encased machines rather than the softer structures of flesh and blood, it was much larger and heavier than its medical counterpart. In her eagerness to appear fast and efficient, Cha Thrat miscalculated the inertia and sent it crashing into the hatch cover, where it left a long, shallow dent before the Captain brought it to a halt.

“Thank you,” Fletcher said drily, and added, “We are, of course, making no secret of our presence. A covert entry and our sudden appearance inside their ship might frighten the survivors, if there are any.”

Chen made an untranslatable noise and said, “Whacking the hull with a sledgehammer would have been even better.”

“Sorry,” Cha Thrat said.

Two of the small panels concealed retractable lighting fixtures and the remaining one turned out to be a large rocker switch set flush with the hull plating. Fletcher warned them to stand clear, then pressed with its palm on both ends of the switch in turn. It had to press very hard, so hard that it had pushed its leg and arm magnets away from the hull, before anything happened.

A sudden rush of air from the edge of the slowly opening hatch sent Fletcher spinning away. Cha Thrat, who had the advantage of four foot-magnets holding her down, grabbed it by one leg and brought the Captain into contact with the hull again.

“Thank you,” Fletcher said, as the fog of escaping air cleared, then went on. “Everyone inside. Doctor Prilicia, come quickly. The opening of the lock is sure to register on their control deck. If there are any survivors up there, now is the most likely time for them to get nervous and apply thrust . . .”

“There are survivors, friend Fletcher,” the empath broke in. “One of them is forward, probably on the control deck, and several groups of them' farther aft, but none in your immediate area. Out here I am too far from the sources to be able to detect individual emotional radiation, but the predominant feelings are of fear, pain, and anger. It is the intensity of the anger that worries me, friend Fletcher, so go carefully. I am returning to Rhabwar for the rest of the medical team.”

With the scanner they were able to identify and trace the actuator wiring to a set of two rocker switches. The first one was locked in position, and when they pressed the second, the lock’s outer seal closed behind them, after which the first one moved freely and opened the inner seal, simultaneously turning on the lighting.

Fletcher said a few words for the recorders about the intense greenish-yellow lighting that would, on later analysis, give useful information about the crew’s visual organs and an indication of the type and proximity of their sun to the home planet. Then it led the way from the lock chamber into the corridor.

“The corridor is about four meters high, square in cross-section, well lit, unpainted, and gravity-free,” the Captain went on. “We assume an artificial gravity system, currently malfunctioning or possibly switched off, because the inner surfaces are bare of ladders, climbing nets, or handholds that the crew would need to get about in the weightless condition. At this level the section of corridor visible to us follows the lateral curvature of theinner hull, and opposite the lock entrance there is a wide opening through which we can see two ramps, one ascending and the other descending, which lead, presumably, to other decks. We are taking the ascending one.”

Consulting the analyzer strapped to its arm, the Captain went on. “Nothing toxic in the air, pressure low but still breathable, temperature normal. Open your visors so we can talk together without tying up the suit frequencies.”

Fletcher and Chen launched themselves into the air above the ascending ramp. Less expertly, Cha Thrat did likewise and was halfway to the top when the others arrived—and dropped suddenly onto the deck with a muffled crash of equipment and a much less quiet burst of strong language. She had enough warning to be able to land on her feet.

“The artificial gravity system,” the Captain said, when it had picked itself up again, “is still operating in this area. Move quickly, please, we’re looking for survivors.”

Large inward-opening doors with simple latch fastenings lined the corridor, and under Fletcher’s direction, the search became a routine process. First unlatch the door, push it wide open while standing well back in case something nasty came through it, then search the compartment quickly for crew members. But the compartments held only racks of equipment or containers of various shapes and sizes whose labels they could not read, and nothing that in any way resembled furniture, wall decorations, or clothing.

So far, Fletcher reported, the ship’s interior seemed incredibly spartan and utilitarian, and it was beginning to worry about the kind of people who would build and crew such a vessel.

At the top of the next ramp, in another section ofcorridor that was gravity-free, they saw one of them. It was hanging weightless, spinning slowly and occasionally bumping against the ceiling.

“Careful!” Fletcher warned as Cha Thrat moved forward for a closer look. But there was no danger because she could recognize a cadaver when she saw one, regardless of its species. A hand placed on its thick, heavily veined neck confirmed the absence of a pulse and a body temperature that was much too low for a warm-blooded oxygen-breather who was alive.

The Captain joined her and said, “This is a big one, almost twice the mass of a Tralthan, physiological classification FGHI . . .”

“FGHJ,” Cha Thrat corrected.

Fletcher broke off and took a deep breath, which it expelled slowly through its nose. When it spoke she could not be sure whether the Captain was being what Earth-humans called sarcastic, or simply asking a question of a subordinate who appeared to have more knowledge in a particular area than it had.

“Technician,” it said, laying heavy emphasis on the first word, “would you like to take over?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly, and went on. “It has six limbs, four legs and two arms, all very heavily muscled, and is hairless except for a narrow band of stiff bristles running from the top of the head along the spine to the tail, which seems to have been surgically shortened at an early age. The body configuration is a thick cylinder of uniform girth between the fore and rear legs but the forward torso narrows toward the shoulders and is carried erect. The neck is very thick and the head small. There are two eyes, recessed and looking forward, a mouth with very large teeth, and other openings that are probably aural or olfactory sense organs. The legs . . .”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla broke in gently. “Wouldyou please switch on your vision pickup and spotlight, and hold them very steady? We want to see what Cha Thrat is describing.”

Suddenly every surface detail of the dead FGHJ was illuminated by a light even more intense than that of thecorridor.

“You won’t see a good picture,” the Captain said. “The shielding effects of the ship’s hull will cause foggingand distortion.”

“That is understood,” the empath said. “Friend Nay-drad is preparing the large pressure litter. We will be with you very soon. Please continue, Cha Thrat.”

“The legs terminate in large, reddish-brown hooves,” she went on, “three of which are covered by thick, heavily padded bags fastened tightly at the tops, possibly to deaden the sound their feet make on the metal deck. Cylinders of metal, padded on the inner surfaces, encircle all four legs just below knee-level, with short lengths of chain attached to them. The links at the end of the chains have been broken or forced apart.

“The creature’s hands are large, with four digits,” she continued, “and do not appear particularly dexterous. There is a complicated harness suspended from and belted around the upper torso and flanks. Pouches of different sizes are attached to the harness. One of them is open and there are small tools scattered around thebody.”

“Technician,” the Captain said, “remain here until the medic team arrives, then follow us. We’re supposed to find and help the live ones and—”

“No!” Cha Thrat said without thinking. Then apologetically she added, “I’m sorry, Captain. I mean, be verycareful.”

Chen was already moving down the corridor, but the Captain checked itself as it was about to follow.

“I am always careful, Technician,” it said quietly, “but why do you think I should be very careful?”

“I do not have a reason,” she said, with three of her eyes on the cadaver and one on the Earth-human, “only a suspicion. On Sommaradva there are certain people, warriors as well as serviles, who behave badly and without honor toward their fellow citizens and, on rare occasions, grievously injure or kill them. These lawbreakers are confined on an island from which there is no escape. On the vessel that transports them to this island the non-crew accommodation lacks comfort, and the prisoners themselves are immobilized by leg restraints. With respect, the similarities to our present situation are obvious.”

Fletcher was silent for a moment, then it said, “Let’s take your suspicion a stage further. You think this might be a prison ship, in distress not because of a technical malfunction but because its prisoners have broken free and may have killed or injured all or part of the crew before they realized that they were unable to work the ship themselves. Perhaps some crew members are holed up somewhere, in need of medical attention, after inflicting serious casualties among the escapees.”

Fletcher looked briefly at the cadaver, then returned its attention to Cha Thrat.

“It’s a neat theory,” it went on. “If true, we are faced with the job of convincing the ship’s crew and a bunch of unruly prisoners, who are on less than friendly terms with each other, that we would like to help all of them without becoming casualties ourselves. But is it true? The leg restraints support your theory, but the harness and too! pouches suggest a crew member rather than a prisoner.

“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” it added, turning to followChen, “I shall bear your suspicions in mind, and be verycareful.”

As soon as the Captain had finished speaking, Prilicla said quickly, “Friend Cha, we can see wounds all over the body surface, but the details are indistinct. Describe them please. And do they support your theory? Are they the type of injuries that might be sustained by an entity being moved violently about inside a spinning ship, or could they have been inflicted deliberately by another member of the same species?”

“On your answer,” Murchison joined in, “depends whether or not I go back for a heavy-duty spacesuit.”

“And I,” Naydrad said. Danalta, who belonged to a species impervious to physical injury, remained silent.

She looked closely at the brightly lit surfaces of the corridor for a moment, then gently rotated the cadaver so that its entire body was presented to the vision pickup. She was trying to think like a warrior-surgeon while at the same time remembering one of the basic physics tapes she had viewed as a trainee technician.

“There are a large number of superficial contusions and abrasions,” she said, “concentrated on the flanks, knees, and elbows. They appear to have been made by grazing contact with the metal of the corridor, but the wound that caused its death is a large, depressed fracture located on and covering the top of the skull. It does not look as if it was caused by any type of metal tool or implement but by violent contact with the corridor wall. There is a patch of congealed blood, comparable to the area of the injury, on the wall where I am directing the vision pickup.

“Remembering that the cadaver’s position in the vessel is approximately amidships,” she went on, wondering if the Captain’s lecturing manner was a psychological contagion, “it is unlikely that the spinning could havebeen responsible for such a grievous head injury. My conclusion is that the being, whose legs are very strong, misjudged a jump in weightless conditions and hit its head against the wall. The lesser wounds could have been caused while it was tumbling, unconscious and dying, inside the spinning ship.”

Murchison’s voice sounded relieved as it said, “So you’re telling us that it had an accident, that no other antisocial type bashed in its skull?”

“Yes,” ChaThrat said.

“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” it said.

“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla began anxiously.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” said the Pathologist. “If anyone or anything nasty threatens, Danalta will protectus.”

“Of course,” the shape-changer said.

While she was waiting for them to arrive, Cha Thrat continued to study the cadaver while listening to the voices of Prilicla, Fletcher, and Rhabwar’s communications officer. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty had given it approximate locations for the survivors who, apart from the single crew member in Control, seemed to be gathered together in three small groups of four or five persons on one deck. But the Captain had decided that it would be better to make contact with a single crew member before approaching a group, and was heading directly for the survivor on the Control deck.

Cha Thrat steadied the cadaver and took one of its large, strong hands in two of her upper manipulators. The fingers were short and stubby and tipped with claws that had been trimmed short, and none of the digits were opposable. In this species’ prehistory she could imagine those clawed hands conveying freshly killed food to the mouth that even now was filled with long and very nasty-looking teeth. It did not, she thought, look like amember of a species capable of building ships that traveled between the stars.

It did not look, well, civilized. “You can’t always judge by external appearance,” Murchison said, making Cha Thrat realize that she had been thinking aloud. “Your Chalder friend from the AUGL ward makes this one look like a pussy-cat.”

The rest of the medical team were following closely behind the Pathologist: Naydrad guiding the litter; Prilicla walking the ceiling on its six, sucker-tipped legs; and, as she watched, Danalta extruded a thicker, sucker-tipped limb of its own and attached itself to the wall like some watchful, alien vegetable.

Quickly Murchison attached its instrument pack to the wall with magnetic pads and used larger magnets and webbing to immobilize the cadaver. It said, “Our friend here was unlucky, but at least it is helping the others. I can do things to it which I would not think of doing to a living survivor, and without wasting time on—”

“Dammit, this is ridiculous*” a voice said in their suit phones, so distorted by surprise and incredulity that she did not recognize it at first as belonging to the Captain. Fletcher went on. “We’re on the control deck and we’ve found another crew member, alive, apparently uninjured, occupying one of five control positions. The other four positions are empty. But the survivor is wearing restraints on all four legs and is chained to its controlcouch!”

Cha Thrat turned away and left without speaking. The Captain had told her that she should follow Chen and itself as soon as the medical team arrived, and she wanted to do just that before Fletcher had a chance to countermand the earlier order. Her curiosity about this strange, chained-up ship’s officer was so intense that it was almost painful.

It was not until she had ascended two decks that she noticed Prilicla silently following her.

Fletcher was saying “I’ve tried communicating with it, with the translator and my making the usual friendly signs. Rhabwar’s translation computer is capable of converting simple messages into any conceivable language that is based on a system of word-sounds. It growls and barks at me but the sounds don’t translate. When I approach closely it acts as if it wants to tear my head off. At other times its body and limb movements are erratic and uncoordinated, although it seems anxious to be free of its leg restraints.”

Prilicia and Cha Thrat arrived at that moment, and the Captain added, “See for yourselves.”

The Cinrusskin had taken up a position on the ceiling just inside the entrance, well away from the crew member’s wildly flailing arms. It said, “Friend Fletcher, the emotional radiation disturbs me. There are feelings of anger, fear, hunger, and blind, unthinking antagonism. There is a coarseness and intensity in these emotions not usually found in beings possessing high intelligence.”

“I agree, Doctor,” the Captain said, moving back instinctively as one of the clawless hands stabbed out at its face. “But these couches were designed for this particular life-form, and the controls, switches, and doorhandles that we’ve seen so far in the ship are suited to those particular hands. At the moment it is completely ignoring the controls, and the sudden increase in spin we noticed during our approach was probably caused by it accidentally striking the keys concerned.

“Its couch, like the other four, is mounted on runners,” Fletcher went on. “It has been moved back to the limit of its travel, which makes it very difficult for the being’s hands to reach the control consoles. Have you any ideas, Senior Physician, because I haven’t.”

“No, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said, “but lei us move to a lower deck where it cannot see or hear us.”

A few minutes later it continued. “The levels of fear, anger, and antagonism have diminished, and its hunger remains at the same intensity. For reasons that aren’t clear to me at the moment, the crew member’s behavior is irrational and emotionally unstable. But it is in no immediate danger where it is, and it is not in any pain. Friend Murchison.”

“Yes?” the Pathologist responded. “When you are examining that cadaver,” it went on, “pay special attention to the head. It has occurred to me that the cranial injury may not have been an accident, but was deliberately self-inflicted in response to acute and continuing cranial discomfort. You should look for evidence of an area of infection or cell degeneration affecting the brain tissues, which may have adversely affected or destroyed its higher centers of mentation andemotional control.

“Friend Fletcher,” it went on without waiting for a reply, “we must quickly locate and check the condition of the other survivors. But carefully, in case they are behaving like our friend in Control.”

With Prilicla’s empathic faculty to guide them, they quickly found the three large dormitory compartments containing the remaining conscious survivors, five in one room and four in each of the others. The doors were not locked but the occupants had not used the simple latch system that would have opened them from the inside. The artificial gravity system was in operation, and the brief look they were able to catch before the occupants spotted and began to attack them showed plain, unde-corated metal walls and flooring that was covered by disordered bedding and wrecked waste-disposal equip-ment. The smell, Cha Thrat thought, could have been cut with a knife.

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said as they were leaving the last dormitory, “all of the crew members are physically active and without pain, and if it wasn’t for the fact that they are clearly no longer capable of working their ship, I would say that they are quite healthy. Unless friend Murchison discovers a clinical reason for their abnormal behavior, there is nothing we can do for them.

“I realize that I am being both cowardly and selfish,” it went on, “but I do not want to endanger our casualty deck equipment and terrify friend Khone by moving in close on twenty oversized, overactive, and, at present, underintelligent life-forms who—”

“I agree,” Fletcher said firmly. “If that lot got loose, they could wreck my ship and not just the casualty deck. The alternative is to keep them here, extend Rhabwar’s hyperspace envelope, and Jump both ships to Sector General.”

“That was my thought as well, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied. “Also, that you rig the boarding tube so that we can have rapid access to the survivors, that we gather samples of all packets and containers likely to hold this life-form’s food or nutritious fluids. The only symptom these people display is intense hunger and, considering the size of their teeth, I would like to relieve it as soon as possible in case they start eating each other.”

“And,” the Pathologist’s voice joined in, “you want me to analyze the samples so as to tell you which containers hold paint and which soup?”

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” the empath said, and went on. “As well as your cranial investigation would you look at the cadaver’s general metabolism with a view to suggesting a safe anesthetic for use on these people, something fast-acting that we can shoot into them at adistance. They must all be anesthetized very quickly because—”

“For fast work like that,” Murchison broke in, “I’ll need Rhabwar1* lab, not a portable analyzer like this one. And I’ll need the whole team to help me.”

“Because,” Prilicla resumed quietly, “I have a feeling that there is another survivor who is not healthy and active and hungry. Its emotional radiation is extremely weak and characteristic of an entity who is deeply unconscious and perhaps dying. But I am unable to locate it because of the stronger, overriding emanations from the conscious survivors. That is why, as soon as the samples are gathered for friend Murchison, I would like ' every hole, comer, or compartment large enough to hold an FGHJ searched.

“It must be done quickly,” the Cinrusskin ended, “because the feeling is very weak indeed.”

Awkwardly Fletcher said, “1 understand, Senior Physician, but there is a problem. Pathologist Murchison needs all of the medical team and extending Rhabwar’s hyperenvelope and realigning our tractors for the Jump and deploying the boarding tube will require all of theship’s officers . . .”

“Which leaves me,” Cha Thrat said quietly, “withnothing to do.”

“. . . So which should be given priority?” the Captain went on, seeming not to have heard her. “The search for your unconscious FGHJ, or getting it and the rest of them to Sector General as quickly as possible?”

“I will search the ship,” she said, more loudly.

“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “1 felt you wanting to volunteer. But think carefully before you decide. The survivor, should you find it, will be too weak to harm you. But there are other dangers. This ship is e, and as strange to us as it is to you.”

“Yes, Technician,” the Captain said. “These aren’t the maintenance tunnels at Sector General. The color codings, if present, will mean something entirely different. ! You can’t make assumptions about anything you see, and if you accidentally foul a control link . . . Very well, you may search, but stay out of trouble.

Fletcher turned to look at Prilicla and added plaintively, “Or do you feel me feeling that I’m wasting my breath?”

CHAPTER 17

With the printouts from Rhabwar’s sensors providing information on the ship’s layout, and in particular on the size and location of its empty spaces, Cha Thrat began a rapid and methodical search of the alien vessel. She ignored only the control deck, the occupied dormitories, and areas close to the ship’s reactor that the sensor maps showed to be uninhabitable by the FGHJ life-form or, for that matter, any other species who were not radiation-eaters. She was very careful to check all interiors with sound sensors and the heavy-duty scanner before opening every door or panel. She was not afraid, but there were times when shivers marched like tiny, icy feet along the length of her spine.

It usually happened when the realization came that she was searching an alien starship for survivors of a species whose existence she could not have imagined ashort time ago, at the direction of other unimaginable beings from a place of healing whose size, complexity, and occupants were like the solid manifestations of a disordered mind. But the unthinkable and unimaginable had become not only thinkable but acceptable to her, and all because a discontented and unloved warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva had risked a limb and her professional reputation to treat an injured off-world ship ruler.

At the thought of what her future would have been had she not taken that risk she shivered again, in dread.

Even though the first search was to be a fast, perfunctory one, it took much longer than Cha Thrat had expected. By the time it was completed, Rhabwar’s boarding tube was in position, and she could feel and hear the empty grumbling of both her stomachs.

Prilicla told her to relieve these symptoms before making her report.

When she arrived on the casualty deck, Prilicla, Mur-chison, and Danalta were working on the cadaver while Naydrad and Rhone, its hairy body pressed against the transparent dividing wall, watched with an interest so intense that only the Cinrusskin sensed her arrival.

“What’s wrong, friend Cha?” the empath asked. “Something disturbed you on the ship. I felt it evenhere.”

“This,” she replied, holding up one of the leg restraints that Murchison had removed from the cadaver and discarded before the dead FGHJ had been moved to Rhabwar. “The chain is not locked to the leg cuff, it is attached with a simple spring-loaded bolt that can be released easily when pressure is applied just here.”

She demonstrated, then went on. “When I was searching the control deck area I looked at the crew member chained to its couch, without being seen, and noticed that similar fastenings hold the chains to all fourof its leg cuffs. It and the cadaver here could have freed themselves simply by releasing the fastenings, which are within easy reach of its hands. It did not have to break free, and neither does the crew member chained to the control couch, who nevertheless continues to struggle violently against restraints that it could so easily remove. It is all very puzzling, but I think we must now discard the theory that any of these people were, prisoners under restraint.”

They were all watching her closely as she went on. “But what is affecting them? What is it that leaves a crew member normally a responsible, highly trained individual capable of guiding a starship, in such a state that it cannot unfasten its couch restraints? What has rendered the other crew members incapable of opening their own dormitory doors or finding food for themselves? Why has their behavior degenerated to that of unthinking animals? Could contaminated food, or the absence of specific foods, have caused this? And before you left me, the Senior Physician suggested that an organism might have invaded the brain tissues. Is it possible that—”

“If you will stop asking questions, Technician,” Mur-chison broke in crossly, “I’ll have a chance to answer some of them. No, the food supply is plentiful and contains nothing toxic to this life-form. I have analyzed and identified several varieties carried on the ship, so you will be able to feed them when you go back. As for the brain tissues, there are no indications of damage, circulatory impairment, infection, or any pathological abnormality.

“I found trace quantities of a complex chemical structure that, in the metabolism of this life-form, would act as a powerful tranquilizer. The residual material suggests that a massive dose was absorbed perhaps three or four days ago, and the effect has since worn off. A large sup-ply of this tranquilizer was found in one of the cadaver’s harness pouches. So it seems that the crew members tranquilized themselves before confining themselves to the control couch and their dormitories.”

There was a long silence that was broken by Khone, who was holding up its offspring where the scrawny little entity could see all the strange creatures on the other side of its transparent panel. Cha Thrat wondered if the Gogleskan was already trying to weaken the young one’s conditioning, even at the tender age of two days.

Impersonally it said, “It is hoped that the time of more intelligent and experienced healers will not be wasted by this interruption, but on Goglesk it is accepted that in certain circumstances, and against their will, otherwise intelligent and civilized beings will behave like vicious and destructive animals. Perhaps the entities on the other vessel have a similar problem, and must take strong and repeated doses of medication to keep their animal natures under control so that they can live civilized lives, and make progress, and build starships.

“Perhaps they are starved,” Khone ended, “not of food but of their civilizing drug.”

“A neat idea,” Murchison said warmly, then matching the Gogleskan’s impersonal tone it went on. “Admiration is felt for the originality of the healer’s thinking but, regrettably, the medication concerned would not increase awareness and the ability to mentate, it would decrease it to the point where continuous use would cause these people to spend their entire lives in a state of semi-consciousness.”

“Perhaps,” Cha Thrat joined in, “the state of semi-consciousness is pleasant and desirable. It shames me to admit it, but on Sommaradva there are people who deliberately affect and often damage their minds with sub-stances for the purely temporary pleasure they give the user . . .”

“Sommaradva’s shame,” Naydrad said angrily, “is shared by many worlds in the Federation.”

“. . . And when these harmful substances are withdrawn suddenly from habitual users,” she went on, “their behavior becomes irrational and violent and similar, in many respects, to that of the FGHJs on the other ship.”

Murchison was shaking its head. “Sorry, no again. I cannot be absolutely certain because we are dealing with the metabolism of a completely new life-form here, but I would say that the traces found in the cadaver’s brain was a simple tranquilizer that deadens rather than heightens awareness, and is almost certainly nonaddic-tive. Had this not been so I would have suggested using it as an anesthetic.

“And before you ask,” the Pathologist went on, “progress with the anesthetic is slow. I have gone as far as I can go with the physiological data provided by the cadaver, but to produce one that will be safe to use in large doses I require blood and gland secretion samples from a living FGHJ.”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, then she turned to include Prilicla as she said, “I could not find any trace of injured or unconscious survivors during my preliminary search, but I shall search again more diligently when the required samples have been obtained. Is the being still alive? Can you give me even an approximate guide to its location?”

“I can still feel it, friend Cha,” Prilicla replied. “But the cruder, conscious emoting of the other survivors is obscuring it.”

“Then the sooner Pathologist Murchison has its samples the sooner we’ll have the anesthetic to knock outthe emotional interference,” Cha Thrat said briskly. “My medial digits are strong enough to restrain the arms of the FGHJ on the control couch while my upper manipulators take the samples. From which veins and organs, and in what quantities, must they be removed?”

Murchison laughed suddenly and said, “Please, Cha Thrat, let the medical team do something to justify its existence. You will hold the crew member tightly to its couch, Doctor Danalta will position the scanner, and I will obtain the samples while—”

“Control here.” Fletcher’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Jump in five seconds from now- The extra mass of the distressed ship will delay our return somewhat. We are estimating Sector General parking orbit in just under four days.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said. Suddenly there was the familiar but indescribable sensation, unseen, unheard, and unfelt but indisputably present, that signaled their removal from the universe of matter to the tiny, unreal, and purely mathematical structure that the ship’s hyperdrive generators had built around them. She forced herself to look through the casualty deck’s direct vision panel. The tractor and pressor beams that laced the ships rigidly together were invisible, so that she saw only the ridiculously flimsy boarding tube joining them and, at the bottom of the metal chasm formed by the two hulls, the heaving, flickering grayness that seemed to reach up through her eyes and pull her very brain out of focus.

She returned her attention to the solid, familiar if temporarily unreal world of the casualty deck before hyper-space could give her an eyestrain headache.

Cha Thrat had time for only a few words with Rhone before following Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad to the boarding tube. The Charge Nurse was helping hercarry packages of the material that Murchison had identified as food, and she had only to compare them with the hundreds of others in the other ship’s stores to be able to feed all of the surviving crew members until they bulged at the seams.

Her last sight of the casualty deck for a long time, although she did not know it just then, was of Senior Physician Prilicla hovering above the .widely scattered remains of the cadaver and interspersing its quiet words to Khone with untranslatable duckings and trillings to the younger Gogleskan.

“If we can spare the time,” Cha Thrat said to the Pathologist when they were standing around the control couch and its agitated and weakly struggling occupant, “we could feed it before taking your samples. That might make the patient more contented, and amenable.”

“We can spare the time for that,” Murchison replied, then added, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you remind me of somebody else.”

“Who do we know,” Naydrad asked in its forthright Kelgian manner, “who’s that weird?”

The Pathologist laughed but did not reply, and neither did Cha Thrat. Without realizing it, Murchison had moved into a sensitive and potentially highly embarrassing area, and, if it ever did learn exactly what had happened to the Sommaradvan’s mind on Goglesk, it should be from its life-mate, Conway, and not Cha Thrat—Prilicla had been quite insistent about that.

There was surprisingly little variety in the FGHJs’ food containers—two differently shaped plastic bottles, one holding water and the other a faintly odorous nutrient liquid, and there were uniform blocks of a dry, spongy material wrapped in a thin plastic film with a large ring for tearing it open. The liquid and solid foods were synthetic, according to Murchison, but nutrition-ally tailored to the requirements of the FGHJs’ metabolism, and the small quantities of nonnutrient material present were probably there to excite the taste buds.

But when Cha Thrat tossed one of the packages into the crew member’s hands, it began tearing at it with its teeth without removing the plastic wrapping. The simple, spring-loaded caps sealing the bottles were also ignored. It tore open the neck of the container with its teeth and sucked out the liquid that it had not already spilled down its chest.

A few minutes later the Pathologist made an untranslatable sound and said, “Its table manners certainly leave a lot to be desired, but it doesn’t appear to be hungry anymore. Let’s get started.”

Feeding the crew member made no perceptible difference to its behavior except, perhaps, to give it more strength to resist them. By the time Murchison had withdrawn its samples, Naydrad, Cha Thrat, and the Pathologist itself were displaying several areas of surface bruising and Danalta, whose body could not be injured or deformed except by the application of ultrahigh temperatures, had been forced into some incredible shape-changes in order to help them immobilize the brute. When the task was done, Murchison sent Naydrad and Danalta ahead with its test samples while it remained, breathing rapidly, and with its eyes fixed on the crew member.

“I don’t like this,” it said.

“It worries me, too,” Cha Thrat said. “However, if a problem is restated often enough, in different words, a solution sometimes emerges.”

“I suppose some wise old Sommaradvan philosopher said that,” Murchison said drily. “I’m sorry, Technician. What were you going to say?”

“An Earth-human Lieutenant called Timmins said it,” she replied. “And I was about to restate the problem, which is that we are faced with a ship’s crew who are apparently suffering from a disease that leaves them completely healthy, but mindless. Not only can they not operate their own undamaged and fully functioning ship, they do not remember how to unfasten their leg restraints, unlatch doors, or open food containers. They have become like healthy animals.”

Murchison said quietly, “The problem is being restated, but in the same words.”

“The living quarters are bare and comfortless,” Cha Thrat went on, “which made us think at first that this was a prison ship. But is it possible that the crew members, for reasons that may be psychological and associated with space-travel, or a disease that affects them during space travel, know that bodily comforts, pleasant surroundings, and valued personal possessions would be wasted on them during a voyage because they expect to become animals. Perhaps the condition is brief, episodic, and temporary, but on this occasion something went wrong and it became permanent.”

“Now,” Murchison said, twitching her shoulders in the movement that Earth-humans called a shiver, “the words are different. But if it is of any help to you, among the samples Naydrad brought me for analysis there was medication as well as food. The medication was of one kind only, the tranquilizer capsules of the type found on the cadaver, in a form intended for oral self-administration. So you may be right about them expecting the condition and taking steps to reduce accidental damage to themselves during the mindless phase. But it’s strange that Naydrad, who looks very carefully for such things, found only this one type of medication, and no sign of any instruments for the purposes of examination, diagnosis, or surgery. Even if they knew in advance that theywere going to take sick, it looks as if the ship’s crew did not include a medic.”

“If anything,” Cha Thrat said, “this new information increases the problem.”

Murchison laughed, but the pallor of its normally pink face showed that it found nothing humorous in the situation. It said grimly, “I could not find anything wrong with the being I examined, apart from the accidental head injury that killed it, nor can I see anything clinically wrong with the other crew members. But something has trace-lessly destroyed their higher centers of intelligence and wiped their minds clean of all memory, training, and experience so that they are left with nothing but the instincts and behavior patterns of animals.

“What kind of organism or agency,” it ended with another shiver, “could cause such a selectively destructive effect as that?”

Cha Thrat had a sudden urge to wrap her medial arms around the Pathologist and comfort it, and an upsurge of the kind of emotion that no Sommaradvan, male or female, should feel for an Earth-human. With difficulty she controlled the feelings that were not her own and said gently, “The anesthetic might give you the answer. We are seeing patients in whom the disease, or whatever, has run its course. If they are knocked out and we found the other one, isn’t it possible that the disease might not have run its course with this survivor, or the survivor has natural resistance to it? By studying the disease and the resistant patient you might discover the cure for all of them.”

“The anesthetic, yes,” Murchison said, and smiled. “Your tactful way of reminding a stupid Pathologist of the elements of her job would do credit to Prilicla itself. I’m wasting time here.”

It turned to leave, then hesitated. Its face was still very pale.

“Whatever it is that is affecting these people,” it said grimly, “is outside my clinical experience, and possibly that of the hospital. But there should be no danger to us. You already know from your medical lectures that other-species pathogens can effect only life-forms that share a common planetary and evolutionary background, and have no effect on off-planet organisms. But there are times when, in spite of everything we know to the contrary, we wonder if we will someday run into the exception that proves the rule, a disease or a clinical condition that is capable of crossing the species barrier.

“The mere possibility that this might be that exception,” it went on very seriously, “is scaring the hell out of me. If this should be our bacteriological bogeyman, we must remember that the disease does not appear to have any physical effects. The onset and symptomology of the condition are more likely to be psychological rather than physical. I shall discuss this with Prilicla, and we shall be watching you for any marked behavioral changes, just as you must keep a watch on your own mental processes for uncharacteristic thoughts or feelings.”

The Pathologist shook its head in obvious self-irritation. “Nothing can harm you here, I’m as sure of that as I can possibly be. But please, Cha Thrat, be very careful anyway.”

CHAPTER 18

SHE did not know how long she spent watching the mindless struggling of the FGHJ on its couch, and its strong, blunt-fingered hands that had guided this great vessel between the stars before she left the control deck, feeling depressed and angry at her inability to produce a single constructive idea, to begin collecting food for the other, still-hungry crew members. But when she entered the nearest food storage compartment a few minutes later, she was startled to find Prilicla alreadythere.

“Friend Cha,” the empath said, “there has been achange of plan . . .”

The anesthetic that Murchison was producing would have to be tested, in minute but gradually increasing doses, initially on the FGHJ in Control. That process could take anything up to three days before the Pathologist could pronounce it safe for use. Prilicla felt sure that the survivor did not have three days and another method of pacifying the crew members, not as effective as anesthesia, must be tried. Adequate supplies of the crew’s own tranquilizers were available, and large doses of these would be added to the crew’s food and drink in the hope that, heavily tranquilized and with their hunger satisfied, the intensity of their emotional radiation would be245reduced to a level where the empath could isolate and locate the remaining and seriously ill or injured survivor.

“I would like all of the crew members to be fed and tranquilized as quickly as possible,” Prilicla went on. “Our friend’s emotional radiation is characteristic of a mind of high intelligence presently degraded by pain, rather than one in the condition of its crew-mates, but it grows steadily weaker. I fear for its life.” ,At Prilicla’s direction she heavily dosed the liquid food and water, then distributed it quickly to the dormitories while the Cinrusskin moved from deck to deck, with its empathic faculty extended to its maximum range and sensitivity. With full stomachs and dulled minds— some, of them even went to sleep—the crew members’ emotional radiation became less obtrusive, but otherwise the results were negative.

“I still can’t get a fix,” Prilicla said, its body trembling to its own as well as Cha Thrat’s disappointment. “There is still too much interference from the conscious survivors. All we can do now is return to Rhabwar and try to assist friend Murchison. Your charges will not grow hungry again for some time. Coming?”

“No,” she said, “I would prefer to continue the normal, physical search for your dying survivor.”

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla said, “must I remind you again that I am not a telepath, and that your secret, inner thoughts remain your own property. But your feelings are very clear to me, and they are of low-intensity excitement, pleasure, and caution, with the excitement predominating and the caution barely detectable. This worries me. My guess is that you have had an idea or come to a conclusion of some kind, which will involve personal risk before it can be proved or disproved. Would you like to tell me about it?”

The simple answer would have been “No,” but shecould not bring herself to hurt the empath’s hypersensitive feelings with such a verbal discourtesy. Instead she said carefully, “It may be that the idea came as a result of my ignorance regarding your empathic faculty, hence my reticence in mentioning it until I was sure that it had some value and I would avoid embarrassment.”

Prilicla continued to hover silently in the center of the compartment, and Cha Thrat went on. “When we first searched the ship you were able to detect the presence of the unconscious survivor, but not locate it because of the conscious emoting of the others. Now that they are pacified into near-unconsciousness, the situation is the same because our survivor’s condition has worsened, and I fear that it will remain the same even when the anesthetic becomes available and the others, too, are deeply unconscious.”

“I share that fear,” the empath said quietly. “But go on.”

“In my ignorance of the finer workings of your empathic faculty,” she continued, “I assumed that a weak source of emotional radiation positioned nearby would be more easily detectable than a stronger source at a distance. If there had been any such variation in strength, I’m sure you would have mentioned it.”

“I would,” Prilicla said, “and you are right in many respects. In others, well, my emphathic faculty has limitations. It responds to the quality and intensity of feelings as well as their proximity. But detection is dependent on factors other than distance. There is the degree of intelligence and emotional sensitivity, the intensity of the emotions being felt, the physical size and strength of the emoting brain, and, of course, the level of consciousness. Normally these limitations can be ignored when I’m searching for just one source and my friends, usually the medical team, move away or controltheir emotions while I’m searching. That isn’t the case here. But you must have reached some conclusions. What are they?”

Choosing her words carefully, Cha Thrat replied, “That, because of its location, the unconscious survivor’s radiation is and will remain obscured, and that it is very close to, or surrounded by, the conscious sources. This narrows the volume to be searched to the dormitory deck and perhaps the levels above and below it, and I shall concentrate on that volume only. And you said just now that the physical size of the emoting brain is a factor. Could it be that the survivor is a very small, and young, FGHJ hiding close to the mindless parent?”

“Possibly,” Prilicla replied. “But regardless of age or size, it is in very bad shape.”

Controlling her growing excitement, she went on. 'There must be small storage cabinets, systems inspection centers, and odd holes and corners where a crew member or child would not normally go, but where a barely conscious entity whose injuries caused it to act irrationally might have hidden itself. I feel sure than I will find it soon.”

“I know,” Prilicla said. “But there is more.”

Cha Thrat hesitated, then said, “With respect, Cinrusskins are not a robust species, and for that reason are more sensitive to the risk of physical injury than beings like myself. I can assure you that I have no intention of placing myself at risk, for whatever reason. But if I was to tell you my plan in detail, the possibility exists that you would forbid me to carry it out.”

“Would you obey me if I did?” Prilicla asked.

She did not reply.

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla said gently, “you have many qualities that I find admirable, including that of moderate cowardice, but you worry me. You have shown yourselfreluctant to obey orders that you personally feel to be wrong or unjustified. You have been disobedient in Sector General, on this ship, and, I suspect, on your home world. This is not a quality that people find admirable in a person of subordinate rank. What are we going to do with you?”

Cha Thrat was about to tell the little empath how sorry she felt at causing it mental distress, then realized that it already knew exactly how she felt toward it. Instead she said, “With respect, you could allow me to proceed, and ask the Captain to concentrate the sensors on the reduced search area I have indicated, and report any changes to me at once.”

“You know that I was thinking in the longer term,” Prilicla said. “But yes, I shall do as you suggest. I share friend Murchison’s feelings about this situation. There is something very strange here, and possibly dangerous, but we cannot even guess where the threat, if there is a threat, will come from. Take great care, friend Cha, and guard your mind as well as your body.”

Cha Thrat began the search as soon as Prilicla left her, starting with the level above the dormitory deck, then moving to the one below it. But from the start her principal intention had been to enter and search those occupied dormitories, and, as soon as she did so, she knew that there would be a reaction from whoever was watching the sensor displays.

When it came, the voice in her earpiece was that of the Captain itself.

“Technician!” it said sharply. “The sensors show a body of your mass and temperature entering one of the dormitories. Get out of there at once!”

It was possible to argue politely and be circumspect with a gentle little entity like Prilicla, Cha Thrat thought sadly, but not with the Captain. She had just been givena direct order that she had no intention of obeying, so she spoke as if she had not heard it.

“I have entered a dormitory and am moving sideways around the room with my back to the wall,” she said calmly. “I am moving slowly so as not to disturb or frighten the occupants, who seem to be half asleep. Two of them have turned their heads to watch me but are making no threatening movements. There is a small door, tight-fitting and mounted flush with the wall, probably a recessed storage cabinet, that might be large enough for an FGHJ to force a way in to hide. I am opening the door now. Inside there are . . .”

“Switch on your vision pickup,” Fletcher said angrily, “and save your breath.”

“. . . shelves containing what appears to be cleaning materials for the waste-disposal facility,” she continued. “In case a fast retreat is necessary, I have left the heavier equipment outside and am wearing only a headset. Now I’m moving toward the wall facing the entrance where there is another small door.”

“So you can hear me,” Fletcher said coldly. “And you heard my order.”

“I’ve opened it,” she went on quickly, “and the missing survivor isn’t there. Beside the door at floor level there is a small, flat, rectangular flap. Possibly it conceals a recessed handle for an upward-opening door. I will have to lie flat on the floor, and try to avoid the body wastes, to examine it.”

She heard the Captain make an untranslatable but very unsympathetic sound, then she said, It is a tight-fitting flap, hinged on the top side, and free to move in or out with gentle pressure. There is a layer of sponge around the edges that suggests that it is nearly airtight. I can’t get my head close enough to the floor to see insidethe flap, but when I open it there is a strong smell that reminds me of the Sommaradvan glytt plant.

“I’m sorry,” she went on. “Quite apart from the fact that you don’t know what a glytt plant smells like, one wonders whether the seal is intended to keep the unpleasant smell of FGHJ wastes in or the other smell out. Or maybe it is just an inlet point for some kind of deodorant . . .”

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla broke in. “In the short time since you inhaled the odor, has there been any irritation of your breathing passages, nausea, impairment of vision, or dulling of sensation or intellect?”

“What intellect?” Fletcher murmured in a disparaging voice.

“No,” she replied. “I am opening the door of the last remaining storage closet to be searched. It is larger than the others, filled with racked tools and what looks like replacement parts for the dormitory furniture, but is otherwise empty. The crew members are still ignoring me. I’m leaving now to search the next dormitory.”

“Technician,” Fletcher said quietly. “If you can reply to Prilicla I know you can hear me. Now, I’m willing to consider your earlier disobedience as a temporary aberration, a fit of overenthusiasm, and a minor disciplinary matter. But if you continue the search in direct contravention of my orders you will be in major trouble. Neither the Monitor Corps nor the hospital has time for irresponsible subordinates.”

“But I take full responsiblity for my actions,” Cha Thrat protested, “including any credit or discredit that may result from them. I know that I lack the training to investigate an other-species ship properly, but I am simply opening and closing doors and being very careful while I’m doing it.”

The Captain did not reply and maintained its silenceeven when the sensors must have been showing Cha Thrat entering the second dormitory. It was Prilicia who spoke first.

“Friend Fletcher,” the empath said quietly, “I agree that there is a small element of risk in what the technician is doing. But it has discussed some of its ideas with me and is acting with my permission and, well, limited approval.”

Ignoring the tranquilized FGHJs and riot speaking at all, Cha Thrat was able search the dormitory much more quickly, but with the same negative result. None of the storage cabinets revealed the missing survivor, adult or child, and the .narrow, floor-level flap held nothing but the smell of glytt, which never had been one of her favorite aromas.

But the Cinrusskin’s attempts to divert the Captain’s anger from her aroused such a sudden emotional warmth in her that she hoped the empath would feel her gratitude. Without breaking into the conversation, and hoping that Prilicia could not feel her growing disappointment, she began searching the third and last dormitory.

“. . . In any case, friend Fletcher,” the empath was saying, “the responsibility for whatever happens on the distressed ship until the survivors are treated and evacuated is not yours, but mine.”

“I know, I know,” the Captain agreed irritably. “On the site of a disaster the medical team leader has the rank. In this situation you can tell a Monitor Corps ship commander like myself what to do, and be obeyed. You can even give orders to a Corps Maintenance Technician Grade Two called Cha Thrat, but I seriously doubt if they would be obeyed.”

There was another long silence, broken by the subject of the discussion. She said, “I’ve finished searching thedormitories. All three contain identical arrangements of fittings and storage compartments, none of which contains the FGHJ we’re looking for.

“But the first and second dormitories share a common wall,” she went on, trying to sound hopeful, “likewise the second and third. But the first and third are divided by a short corridor leading inboard toward what must be another, fairly large storage compartment whose sides are common to the inner walls of the three dormitories. The missing FGHJ could be there.”

“I don’t think so,” Fletcher said. “The sensors show it as an empty compartment, about half the size of a dormitory, with a lot of low-power circuitry and ducting, probably environmental control lines to the dormitories, mounted on or behind the wall surfaces. By empty we mean that there are no large metal objects in the room, although organic material could be present if it was stored in nonmetal containers. But a piece of organic material of the body mass and temperature of a living FGHJ, whether moving or at rest, would show very clearly.

“All the indications are that it is just another storeroom,” the Captain ended. “But no doubt you will search it, anyway.”

With difficulty, Cha Thrat ignored Fletcher’s tone as she said, “During my first search of this area I looked into this corridor and saw the blank end-wall containing what I mistakenly thought to be a section of badly fitted wail plating. My excuse for making this mistake is that there is no external handle or latch visible. On closer examination I see that it is not a badly fitted plate but an inward-opening door that is very slightly ajar, and the scanner shows that it fastens only from the inside.

“The vision pickup is on,” she added. “I’m pushing the door open now.”

The place was a mess, she thought, with weightlessness adding to the general disorder so that floating debris made it difficult to see any distance into the room. There was a very strong smell of glytt.

“We aren’t receiving a clear picture,” said Fletcher, “and something close to the lens is blocking most of the view. Have you attached the pickup correctly or are we seeing part of your shoulder?”

“No, sir,” she replied, trying to keep her tone properly subordinate. “The compartment is gravity-free and a large number of flat, roughly circular objects are floating about. They appear to be organic, fairly uniform in size, dark gray on one surface and with a paler, mottled appearance on the other. I suppose they could be cakes of preprepared food that escaped from a ruptured container, or they might be solid body waste, similar to that found in the dormitories, which has dried and become discolored. I’m trying to move some of it out of the way now.”

With a sudden feeling of distaste, she cleared the visual obstructions from the front of the pickup, using her medial hands because they were the only ones still covered by gloves. There was no response from Rhabwar.

“There are large, irregular clumps of spongelike or vegetable material attached to the walls and ceiling,” she went on, moving her body so that the pickup’s images would let the others see, however unclearly, what she was trying to describe. “So far as I can see, each clump is colored differently, although the colors are subdued, and under each one there is a short length of padded shelf.

“At floor level,” she continued, “I can see three narrow, rectangular flaps. Their size and positions correspond to those found in the dormitories. These pancakes, or whatever, are all over the place, but I cansee something large floating in a corner near the ceiling . . . It’s the FGHJ!”

“I don’t understand why it didn’t register on the sensors,” Fletcher said. It was the kind of Captain who insisted on the highest standards of efficiency from its crew and the equipment in its charge, and treated a malfunction in either as a personal affront.

“Good work, friend Cha,” Prilicla said, enthusiastically breaking in. “Quickly now, move it to the entrance for loading into the litter. We’ll be with you directly. What is the general clinical picture?”

Cha Thrat moved closer, swatting more obstructions from her path as she said, “I can’t see any physical injuries at all, not even minor bruising, or external evidence of an illness. But this FGHJ isn’t like the others. It seems to be a lot thinner and less well muscled. The skin appears darker, more wrinkled, and the hooves are discolored and cracked in several places. The body hair is gray. I . . . I think this is a much older FGHJ. It might be the ship ruler. Maybe it hid itself in here to avoid what happened to the rest of its crew . . .”

She broke off, and Prilicla called urgently, “Friend Cha, why are you feeling like that? What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me,” she replied, fighting to control her disappointment. “I am holding the FGHJ now. There is no need to hurry. It is dead.”

“That explains why my sensors didn’t register,” Fletcher said.

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla said, ignoring the interruption, “are you quite sure"! I can still feel the presence of a deeply unconscious mind.”

Cha Thrat drew the FGHJ toward her so that she could use her upper hands, then said, “The body temperature is very low. Its eyes are open and do not react tolight. The usual vital signs are absent. I’m sorry, it i dead and . . .” She broke off to look more closely at th creature’s head, then went on excitedly. “And I think know what killed it! The back of the neck. Can you s< it?”

“Not clearly,” Prilicla replied quickly, obviously feeling her own growing excitement, and fear. “One of those disklike objects is in the way.”

“But that’s it,” she said. “I thought at first that one of them had drifted against the cadaver and stuck to its head. But I was wrong. The thing attached itself deliberately to the FGHJ with those thick white tendrils you can see growing from the edge of the disk. Now that I’m looking for them, I can see that they all have the tendrils and, judging by their length, the penetration into the cadaver’s spinal column and rear cranium is very deep. That thing is, or was, alive, and could have been responsible for—”

“Technician,” Fletcher broke in harshly, “get out of there!”

“At once,” Prilicla said.

Very carefully Cha Thrat released her hold on the dead FGHJ, removed her vision pickup, and attached its magnetic clips to a clear area of wall. She knew that the medical team would want to study this strange and abhorrent life-form that was infesting the ship before deciding how to deal with it. Then she turned toward the entrance, which now seemed to be very far away.

The disks hung thickly like an alien minefield between the door and herself. Some of them were still moving slowly in the air eddies caused by her entry or by the blows with which she had so casually knocked them aside, or perhaps of their own volition. They presented views from every angle—the smooth surface of the mot-tied side, the gray and wrinkled reverse side, and the edges with their fringe of limp white tendrils.

She had been so busy searching for an FGHJ survivor that she had scarcely looked at the objects she had mistaken for cakes of food or dried wastes floating in the room. She still did not know what they were, only of what they were capable, which was the utter destruction of the highly trained and intelligent minds of their victims to leave them with nothing but the basic and purely instinctive responses of animals.

The thought of a predator who did not eat or physically harm its prey, but gorged itself on the intelligence of its victim, made her want to seek refuge in madness. She was desperately afraid of touching one of them again, but there were too many of them for her to avoid doing so. But if any of them got in her way, Cha Thrat decided grimly, she would touch it, hit it, very hard.

The gentle, reassuring voice of Prilicla sounded in her earpiece. It said, “You are controlling your fear well, friend Cha. Move slowly and carefully and don’t—”

She winced as a high-pitched, piercing sound erupted from the earpiece, signifying that too many people were talking to her at once and had overloaded her translator. But they realized immediately what was happening because the oscillation wavered and died to become one voice, the Captain’s.

“Technician, behind yourBy then it was too late.

All of her attention had been directed ahead and to the sides, where the greatest danger lay. When she felt the surprisingly light touch, followed by a sensation of numbness on the back of her neck, a cool, detached part of her mind thought that it was considerate of the thing to anesthetize the area before inserting its tendrils. She swung an eye to the rear to see what was happening, andinstinctively raised her upper hands to push away the disk that had left the dead FGHJ and was attaching itself to her. But the hands fumbled weakly, their digits suddenly powerless, and the arms fell limply away.

Other parts of her body ceased working, or began twitching and bending in the random, uncoordinated fashion of a person with serious brain damage. The calm, detached portion of her mind thought that her condition was not a pleasant sight for friends to see.

“Fight it, Cha Thrat!” Murchison’s voice shouted from her earpiece. “Whatever it’s doing, fight it! We’re on our way.”

She heard and appreciated the concern in the Patholo-gist’s voice, but her tongue was one of the organs that was not working just then because her jaw was clamped shut. Altogether, she was in a state of considerable physiological confusion as muscles continued to twitch uncontrollably, her body writhed in weightless contortions, and sensations of heat, cold, pain, and pleasure affected random areas of her skin. She knew that the creature was exploring her central nervous system, trying to find out how her Sommaradvan body worked so that it would be able to control her.

Gradually the twitchings and writhings and even her fear diminished and were gone, and her body was able to resume its interrupted journey. The lens of the vision pickup turned to follow her. When she reached the door, she slammed it closed and locked it with fastenings that had suddenly become familiar.

“Technician,” Fletcher said sharply, “what are you doingTIt was obvious that she was locking the door from the inside, Cha Thrat thought irritably. Probably the Captain meant why was she doing it. She tried to reply but her lips and tongue would not work. But surely her actionswould tell all of them that she, it, both of them, did not wish to be disturbed.

CHAPTER 19

They were all talking at once again. She had to bend the earpiece back to reduce the sudden howl of translator oscillation that was making it difficult to think. The vision pickup was still following her and they must have realized the significance of her action because the babble died quickly and became one voice.

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla said, “listen to me carefully. Some kind of parasitic life-form has attached itself to you and the quality of your emotional radiation is changing. Try, try hard to pull it off and get out of there before your condition worsens.”

“I’m all right,” Cha Thrat protested. “Honestly, I feel fine. Just leave me alone until I can—”

“But your thoughts and feelings aren’t your own anymore,” Murchison broke in. “Fight, dammit! Try to keep control of your mind. At least try to open that door again so we won’t waste time burning through it when we get to you.”

“No,” the Captain said firmly. “I’m very sorry, Technician, they aren’t leaving this ship . . .”

The argument that ensued immediately overloaded Cha Thrat’s translator again, which made it impossible for her to talk to any of them. But there were parts of it,particularly when Fletcher was speaking in its ruler’s voice, that she heard clearly.

The Captain was reminding them, and calling on Prili-cla to support it, that the strictest possible rules of quarantine governed this situation. They had encountered a life-form that absorbed the memory, personality, and intelligence of its victims and left them like mindless animals. Moreover, judging by their recent observations of Technician Cha Thrat, the things were capable of adapting to and quickly controlling any life-form.

By then nobody was trying to interrupt Fletcher as it went on. “This could mean that they are not native to the planet of the FGHJs, that they may have come aboard anywhere, and are capable of doing this to the members of every intelligent species in the Federation! I don’t know what drives them, why they’re content to suck out the intelligence of their victims instead of feeding on the bodies, and I don’t even want to think about it. Or about how, or how rapidly, they can reproduce themselves. There are dozens of them in the room with Cha Thrat, and they’re so small that more of them could be hidden in odd corners all over the ship.

“Until we get a properly equipped and protected decontamination squad in there,” Fletcher went on, “I have no choice but to seal and place a guard on the boarding tube. This is something completely new to our experience, and it may well be that the hospital will advise the complete destruction of the ship, and its contents.

“If you will all think about it for a moment,” the Captain ended, sounding very unhappy with itself, “you will realize that we cannot take the slightest risk of that life-form getting onto this ship, or running loose in Sector General.”

There was silence for several moments while theythought about it, and Cha Thrat thought about the strange thing that had happened, and was still happening, to her.

While trying to help Rhone she had experienced a joining, and with it the shock and disorientation and excitement of having her mind invaded, but not taken over, by a personality that was completely alien to her. The effect had been rendered even stranger and more frightening by the fact that the Gogleskan’s mind had also contained material from a previous joining with a mind whose memories were even more confusing, those of the Earth-human Conway. But this sensation was entirely different. The approach and entry was gentle, reassuring, and even pleasant, giving her the feeling that it was a process perfected after a lifetime of experience. But like herself, this invader seemed to be badly confused by the contents of her part-Sommaradvan, part-Gogleskan, and part Earth-human mind and, because of that confusion, it was having trouble controlling her body. She was still not sure of its intentions, but quite certain that she was still herself and that she was learning more and more about it with every passing second.

Murchison was the first to break the silence. It said, “We have protective suits and cutting torches. Why don’t we decontaminate that compartment ourselves and burn them all, including the one on the technician’s neck, and get Cha Thrat back here for treatment while it still has some of its mind left? The hospital people can finish the decontamination when we—”

“No,” the Captain said firmly. “If any of you medics go onto that ship, you won’t be allowed back here.”

Cha Thrat did not want to join in because speaking would involve a minor mental effort and consequent disruption in an area of her mind that she wished to remain receptive. Instead, she moved her lower arms inthe Sign of Waiting, then realizing that it meant nothing to non-Sommaradvans, held up one hand palm forward in the Earth-human equivalent.

“I am confused,” Prilicla said suddenly. “Friend Cha is not feeling pain or mental distress. It is wanting something very badly, but the emotional radiation is characteristic of a source trying very hard to maintain calm and to control its other feelings . . .”

“But it isn’t in control,” Murchison broke in. “Look at the way it was moving its arms about. You’re forgetting that its feelings and emotions aren’t its own.”

“You, friend Murchison, are not the emotion-sensitive here,” Prilicla said in the gentlest possible of reproofs. “Friend Cha, try to speak. What do you want us to do?”

She wanted to tell them to stop talking and leave her alone, but she desperately needed their help and that reply would have given rise to more questions, interruptions, and mental dislocations. Her mind was a bubbling stew of thoughts, impressions, experiences, and memories that concerned not only her own past on Sommar-adva and Sector General, but those of Healer Khone and Diagnostician Conway. The new occupant was blundering about like an intruder lost in a large, richly furnished but imperfectly lit household, examining some items and shying away from others. This, Cha Thrat knew, was not the time to leave it alone.

But if she answered a few of their questions, said just enough to keep them quiet and make them do what she wanted, that might be the best course.

“I am not in danger,” Cha Thrat said carefully, “or in any physical or emotional distress. I can regain full control of my mind and body any time I wish it, but choose not to because I don’t want to risk breaking mental contact by talking for too long. As quickly as possible I wantSenior Physician Prilicla and Pathologist Murchison to join me. The FGHJs are not important right now. Neither is the anesthetic or the search for the other survivor because—”

“No.” Fletcher broke in, sounding as if it was about to be physically nauseous. “Those things are intelligent. Do you see the insidious way they are trying to get the technician to reassure us and then entice us over to them? No doubt when you two are taken over there will be even better reasons for the rest of us to join you, or you to return here and leave Rhabwar’s crew in the same condition as the FGHJs. No, there will be no more victims.”

Cha Thrat tried not to listen to the interruption because it set off trains of thought in her mind that were unsettling the new occupant and kept it from communicating properly with her. Very carefully she lifted her rear medial arm and bent it so that the large digit was pointing at the thing clinging to the back of her neck.

“This is the survivor,” she said, “the only survivor.”

Suddenly the stranger in her mind was feeling a measure of satisfaction and reassurance, as if it had at last succeeded in making its need understood, and she found that she could speak without the fear of it going away, fading, and perhaps dying on her.

“It is very ill,” she went on, “but it was able to regain mobility and consciousness for a short time when I entered the compartment. That was when it decided to make a last, desperate try to obtain help for its friends and the host creatures in their charge. The first, fumbled attempts to make contact were the reason for my uncoordinated limb movements. Only within the past few minutes has it realized that it is the only survivor.”

None of them, not even the Captain, was saying aword now. She continued. “That is why I need Prilicla to monitor its emotional radiation at close range, and

Mur-chison to investigate its dead friends, in the hope of finding out what killed them and finding a cure before its own condition becomes terminal—”

“No,” the Captain said again. “It sounds like a good story, and especially intriguing to a bunch of e-t medics, but it could still be a ruse to get mental control of more of our people. I’m sorry, Technician, we can’t risk it.”

Prilicla said gently, “Friend Fletcher makes a good point. And you yourself know that the Captain’s arguments are valid because you observed the mindless condition of the FGHJs after these creatures left them. Friend Cha, I, too, am sorry.”

It was Cha Thrat’s turn to be silent as she tried to find a solution that would satisfy them. Somehow she had not expected the gentle little empath to be so tough.

Finally she said, “Physically the creature is extremely debilitated and I could quite easily remove it to demonstrate its lack of physical control over me, but such a course might kill it. However, if I was to demonstrate my normal physical coordination by leaving this compartment and descending four levels, where we would be clear of the emotional interference from the FGHJs, and if I were to urge the creature to remain conscious until then, would the Cinrusskin empathic faculty be able to detect whether its emotional radiation was that of a highly intelligent and civilized being, or the kind of mental predator that seems to be scaring you out of your wits?”

“Four levels down is just one deck above the boarding tube . . .” began the Captain, but Prilicla cut it short.

“I could detect the difference, friend Cha,” it said, “ifI was close enough to the life-form concerned. I’ll meet you there directly.”

There was another howl of oscillation from her translator. When it faded Prilicla was saying “Friend Fletcher, as the senior medical officer present it is my responsibility to make sure whether the life-form attached to Cha Thrat is the patient and not the disease. However, my species prides itself in being the most timid and cowardly in the Federation, and all possible precautions will be taken. Friend Cha, set the vision pickup to show if any of those life-forms try to leave the compartment and follow you. If any of them do, I shall return at

once to Rhabwar and seal the boarding tube. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Senior Physician,” said Cha Thrat.

“If anything suspicious occurs while I am with you,” it went on, “even if I am able to avoid capture and still appear to be my own self, friend Fletcher will seal the tube and put the quarantine procedure into immediate effect.

“We need as much information on this life-form as you can give us,” it ended. “Please continue, friend Cha, we are recording. I’m leaving now.”

“And I’m going with you,” Murchison said firmly. “If this is the ship’s only survivor, one of a newly discovered intelligent species and possible future member of the Federation, Thorny will walk on me with all six of its feet if I let it die. Danalta and Naydrad can stay here in case we have need of special equipment and to watch the vision pickup. And in case the little beastie isn’t as friendly as Cha Thrat insists it is, I’ll add a heavy-duty cutting torch to my instruments so that I can protect your back.” .

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, “but no.”

“But yes, Senior Physician,” the Pathologist replied. “With respect, you have the rank but not the muscles stop me.”

Impatiently Cha Thrat said, “if you want to be able to detect any conscious emotional radiation, please hurry. The patient needs urgent attention . . .”

There was an immediate objection from Fletcher regarding her unjustified use of the word “patient.” She ignored it and, trying her best to describe the thoughts and images that had been placed with so much effort in her mind, went on to outline the case history of the survivor and the history of its species.

They came from a world that even the Sommaradvan, Gogleskan, and Earth-human components of her mind considered beautiful, a planet so bountiful that the larger species of fauna did not have to struggle for survival and did not, for that reason, develop intelligence. But from the earliest times, when all life was in the oceans, a species evolved capable of attaching itself to a variety of native life-forms. They formed a symbiotic partnership in which the host creature was directed to the best sources of food while the weak and relatively tiny parasite had the protection of its larger mount as well as the mobility that enabled it to seek out its own, less readily available food supply. By the time the host creatures left the oceans to become large and unintelligent land animals, the mutually profitable arrangement continued and the parasite had become very intelligent indeed.

The earliest recorded history told of vain attempts to nurture intelligence in many different species of host creature. The native, six-limbed FGHJ life-form with its ability to work in a wide variety of materials, when aparasite was directing its hands, was favored above all the others.

But more and more they had wished for mind-partners they could not control, beings who would argue and debate and contribute new ideas and viewpoints, rather than creatures who were little more than general-purpose, self-replenishing organic tools with the ability to see, hear, and manipulate to order.

With these tools they built great cities and manufacturing complexes and vessels that circumnavigated their world, flew in the atmosphere above it, and, ultimately crossed the terrible and wonderful emptiness between the stars. But the cities, like their starships, were functional and unbeautiful because they had been built by and for the comfort and use of beings without any appreciation of beauty, and whose animal needs were satisfied by food, warmth, and regular satisfaction of the urge to procreate. Like valuable tools they had to be properly maintained, and many of them were well loved with the affection that a civilized being feels for a faithful but nonintelligent pet.

But the parasites had their own special needs that in no respect resembled those of their hosts, whose animal habits and undirected behavior were highly repugnant to them. It was vital to their continued mental well-being that the masters escaped periodically from their hosts to lead their own lives—usually during the hours of darkness when the tools were no longer in use and could be quartered where they could not harm themselves. This they did in the small, quiet, private places, tiny areas of civilization and culture and beauty amid the ugliness of the cities, where their families nested and they were separated from the host creatures by everything but distance.

It had long been an accepted fact among them that nc creature or culture could avoid stagnation if it did not; outside its family or its tribe or, ultimately, its world. Ir their continuing search for other intelligent beings like or totally unlike themselves, many extrasolar planets had been discovered and small colonies established on them, but none of the indigenous life-forms possessed intelligence and had become just so many sets of other-species tools.

Because of an intense aversion to allowing themselves to be touched by the proxy hands of a nonintelligent creature, their medical science catered chiefly to the needs of their hosts and did not include surgery. The result was that when one of their own-planet tools contracted a disease that, to it, was mildly

debilitating, the effect on the parasite was often lethal.

Cha Thrat paused for a moment and raised one of her upper hands to support the weight of the parasite. Sensation had returned to her neck and she felt that the creature’s tendrils were loosening and pulling free. She could hear Prilicla and Murchison on the deck below.

“That is what happened to their ship,” she went on. “The host FGHJs caught something that caused a mild, undulant fever, and recovered. The parasites, with this one exception, perished. But before they returned to their own quarters to die, they placed their now-undirected host creatures in places where food was available and they would not injure themselves, in the hope that help would reach the host creatures in time. The survivor, who seemed to have a partial resistance to the disease, rendered the vessel safe and accessible to rescuers, released the distress beacon, and returned to the ship’s Nest to comfort its dying friends.

“But the effort to do this work,” Cha Thrat went on, talking directly to Prilicla and Murchison who were nowcoming up the ramp toward her, “was too much for its host, an aging FGHJ of whom it was particularly fond, and the creature had a sudden cardiac malfunction and died inside the Nest,"The distress signal was answered not by one of their own ships, but by Rhabwar” she concluded, “and the rest we know.”

Prilicla did not reply and Murchison moved to one side, keeping the thin tube of its cutting torch aimed at the back of Cha Thrat’s neck. Nervously the Pathologist said, “I’d need to check it with my scanner, of course, but I’d say physiological classification DTRC. It’s very similar to the DTSB symbiotes some FGLIs wear for fine surgical work. In those cases it’s the parasite who supplies the digits and the Tralthan the brains, although there are some OR nurses who would argue about that . . .”

It broke off as Cha Thrat said, “I have been trying to relinquish control of my speech centers so that it would be able to talk to you directly through me, but it is much too weak and is only barely conscious, so I must be its voice. It already knows from my mind who you are, and it is Crelyarrel, of the third division of Trennchi, of the one hundred and seventh division of Yau, and of the four hundred and eighth subdivision of the great Villa of the Rhiim. I cannot properly describe its feelings in words, but there is joy at the knowledge that the Rhiim are not the only intelligent species in the Galaxy, sorrow that this wonderful knowledge will die with it, and apologies for anxiety it caused us by—”

“I know what it is feeling,” Prilicla said gently, and suddenly they were washed by a great, impalpable wave of sympathy, friendship, and reassurance. “We are happy to meet you and learn of your people, friend Crel-yarrel, and we will not allow you to die. Let go now, little friend, and rest, you are in good hands.”

Still radiating its emotional support, it went on briskly. “Put away that cutting torch, friend Murchison, and go with the patient and friend Cha to the Rhiim quarters. It will feel more comfortable there, and you have much work to do on its dead friends. Friend Fletcher, preparations will have to be made at the hospital to receive this new life-form. Be ready to send a long hypersignal to Thornnastor as soon as we have a clearer idea of the clinical picture. Friend Naydrad, stand by with the litter in case we need special equipment here, or for the transport of DTRC cadavers to Rhabwar for investigation—”

“No!” the Captain said.

Murchison spoke a few words of a kind not normally used by an Earth-human female, then went on. “Captain, we have a patient here, in very serious condition, who is the sole survivor of a disease-stricken ship. You know as well as I that in this situation, you do exactly as Prilicla tells you.”

“No,” Fletcher repeated. In a quieter but no less firm voice it went on. “I understand your feelings, Pathologist. But are they really yours? You still haven’t convinced me that that thing is harmless. I’m remembering those crew members and, well, it might be pretending to be sick. It could be controlling, or at least influencing, the minds of all of you. The quarantine regulations remain in force. Until the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, or more likely the decontamination squad clears it, nothing or nobody leaves that ship.”

Cha Thrat was supporting Crelyarrel in three of her small, upper hands. The DTRC’s body, now that she knew it for what it was, no longer looked or felt repug-nant to her. The control tendrils hung limply between her LF002digits and the color of its skin was lightening and beginning to resemble that of its dead friends in the Rhiim nest. Had it to die, too, she wondered sadly, because two different people held opposing viewpoints that they both knew to be right?Proving one of them wrong, especially when the being concerned was a ruler, would have serious personal repercussions, and she was beginning to wonder if she had always been as right as she thought she had been. Perhaps her life would have been happier if, on Sommar-adva and at Sector General, she had been more doubtful about some of her certainties.

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said quietly. “As an empath I am influenced by feelings of everyone around me. Now I accept that there are beings who, by word or deed or omission, can give outward expression to emotions that they do not feel. But it is impossible for an intelligent entity to produce false emotional radiation, to lie with its mind. Another empath would know this to be so, but as a nonempath you must take my word for it. The survivor cannot and will not harm anyone.”

The Captain was silent for a moment, then it said, “I’m sorry, Senior Physician. I’m still not fully convinced that it is not speaking through you and controlling your minds, and I cannot risk letting it aboard this ship.”

In this situation there was no doubt about who was right or about what she must do, Cha Thrat thought, because a gentle little being like Prilicla might not be capable of doing it.

“Doctor Danalta,” she said, “will you please go quickly to the boarding tube and take up a position andshape that will discourage any Monitor Corps officer from sealing, dismantling, or otherwise closing it to two-way traffic. Naturally, you should try not to hurt any such officer, and I doubt that lethal weapons will be deployed against you, for no other reason than that anything powerful enough to hurt you would seriously damage the hull, but if—”

“Technician!”

Even though the Captain was on Rhatiwar’s control deck and at extreme range for Prilicla’s empathic faculty, the feeling of outrage accompanying the word was making the little Cinrusskin quiver in every limb. Then gradually the trembling subsided as Fletcher brought his anger under control.

“Very well, Senior Physician,” it said coldly. “Against my expressed wishes and on your own responsibility, the boarding tube will remain open. You may move freely between there and the casualty deck, but the rest of this ship will be closed to your people and that . . . that thing you insist is a survivor. The matter of Cha Thrat’s gross insubordination, with the strong possibility of a charge of incitement to mutiny, will be pursued later.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said. Then, switching off its mike, it went on. “And you, friend Cha. You have displayed great resourcefulness as well as insubordination. But I am afraid that, even when it is proved that you acted correctly, the Captain’s present feelings toward you are of the kind that I have found to be not only unfriendly but extremely long-lasting.”

Murchison did not speak until they were in the Rhiim compartment, when it paused in its scanner examination of Crelyarrel to look at her. The expression and tone of voice, Cha Thrat knew from the Earth-human component of her mind, expressed puzzlement and sympathyas it said, “How can one being get into so much trouble in such a short time? What got into you, ChaThrat?”

Prilicla trembled slightly but did not speak.

CHAPTER 20

Cha Thrat’s arrival for her appointment with the Chief Psychologist was punctual to the second, because she had been told that O’Mara considered being too early to be as wasteful of time as being too late. But on this occasion the impunctuality, although indirectly her fault, was on O’Mara’s side. The Earth-human Braithwaite, who was the sole occupant of the large outer office, explained.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Cha Thrat,” it said, inclining its head toward O’Mara’s door, “but that meeting is running late. Senior Physician Cresk-Sar and, in order of seniority, Colonel Skempton, Major Fletcher, and Lieutenant Tim-mins are with him. The door is supposed to be soundproof, but sometimes I can hear them talking about you.”

It smiled sympathetically, pointed to the nearest of the three unoccupied console desks beside it, and said, “Sit there, you should find that one fairly comfortable while we’re waiting for the verdict. Try not to worry, Cha Thrat, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my work.”

Cha Thrat said that she did not mind, and was sur-prised when the screen on the desk she was occupying lit up with Braithwaite’s work. She did not know what the Earth-human was doing, but while she was trying to understand it the realization came that it was deliberately giving her something to occupy her mind other than the things they were probably saying about her in the next room.

As one of the wizard’s principal assistants, Braith-waite was capable of working a few helpful spells of its own.

Since her return to the hospital, Cha Thrat had been relegated to a kind of administrative hyperspace. Maintenance Department wanted nothing to do with her, the Monitor Corps ruler she had so grievously offended on Rhabwar seemed to have forgotten her very existence, and the medical training people treated her with sympathy and great care, much as they would a patient who was not expected to be long among them.

Officially there was nothing for her to do, but unofficially she had never been busier in her whole life.

Diagnostician Conway had been very pleased with her work on Goglesk, and had asked her to visit Khone as often as possible because Cha Thrat and itself were the only people that the FOKT would allow within touching distance, although that situation was beginning to change for the better. With behind-the-scenes assistance from the Chief Psychologist and Prilicla, progress was being made toward breaking down the Gogleskan racial conditioning, and Ees-Tawn was working on a miniature distorter, permanently attached to the subject and triggered automatically during the first microseconds of a distress call, which would make it impossible for the wearer to initiate one of the suicidal joinings.

O’Mara had warned them that the final solution to the Gogleskan problem might take many generations, that Khone would never be completely comfortable at the close approach or touch of another person, regardless of species, but that its offspring was already giving indications of being quite happy among strangers.

Thornnastor and Murchison had been successful in isolating and finding a specific against the pathogen affecting Crelyarrel, although they had admitted to Cha Thrat that the principal reason for its survival on the Rhiim ship was its possession of a fair degree of natural resistance. Now the little symbote was going from strength to strength, and was beginning to concern itself about the health and comfort of the FGHJ host creatures. It wanted to know how soon new Rhiim parasites could be brought to Sector General to take charge of them.

Similar questions were being asked by the group of visiting Monitor Corps officers who seemed to be ignorant of, or perhaps disinterested in, her recent insubordination on Rhabwar. They were Cultural Contact specialists investigating the ship with a view to gaining as much information as possible about the species who had caused it to be built, including the location of their planet of origin, before making a formal approach to the Rhiim on behalf of the Federation. They badly wanted to talk to the survivor.

Crelyarrel was anxious to cooperate, but the problem was that its people communicated by a combination of touch and telepathy limited to their own species. It was not yet well enough to take full control of a host crew member and, until it was able to do so, the translation computer could not be programmed with the language used by their FGHJ hosts.

Even though it was now generally accepted that the parasitic Rhiim were a highly intelligent and cultured species, none of the hospital staff were particularly eager to surrender their bodies, however temporarily, to DTRCcontrol—and the feeling was mutual. The only person that Crelyarrel would agree to take over and speak through, with her permission,, of course, was Cha Thrat.

As a result of these unofficial demands on her time, there had been little of it left for Cha Thrat to worry about her own problems.

Until now.

The muffled sounds of conversation from the inner office had died away into inaudibility, which meant, she thought, that they were either speaking quietly to each other or not speaking at all. But she was wrong, the meeting was over.

Senior Physician Cresk-S;ar silently led the way out, its hairy features unreadable. It was followed by Colonel Skempton, who made an untranslatable sound, then Rhabwar’s ruler, who neither looked nor spoke, and Lieutenant Timmins, who stared at her for a moment with one eye closed before leaving. She was rising from her seat to enter the inner office when O’Mara came out.

“Sit where you are, this; won’t take long,” it said. “You, too, Braithwaite. Soramaradvans don’t mind having their problems discussed before concerned witnesses, and this one certaimly has a problem. Is that deformed bird-cage you’re sitting on comfortable?"The problem,” it went on before she could reply, “is that you are an oddly shaped peg who doesn’t quite fit into any of our neat little holies. You are intelligent, able, strong-minded yet adaptablle, and have experienced, seemingly without any permanent ill effects, the levels of mental trauma and disorientation that would cause many beings severe psychological! damage. You are well regarded, even respected, by some very important people here, by many with no influence at all, and disliked by a few. The latter group, chiefly Monitor Corps personneland a few of the medical staff, feel very unsure of who or what you are, and who has the seniority, while working with you.

“Sometimes,” Cha Thrat said defensively, “I’m not sure who or what I am myself. When I am thinking like a senior person I can’t help behaving like a . . .” She stopped herself before she said too much.

“Like a Diagnostician,” O’Mara said drily. “Oh, don’t worry, this department never reveals anyone’s deep, dark, and, in your case, peculiar secrets. Prilicla, when it wasn’t enthusing over your behavior immediately preceding and during Rhone’s delivery and on the Rhiim ship, told me about the joining it feels you underwent on Goglesk. Being Prilicla, it is anxious to avoid any painful and embarrassing incidents between its friends Conway, Murchison, and yourself, and so are we.

“But the fact remains,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “that you shared minds with Khone who, because of an earlier sharing with Conway, gave you much of the knowledge and experience of a Sector General Diagnostician as well as a Gogleskan healer. You also became deeply involved on the mental level with one of the Rhiim parasites, not to mention some earlier prying into the mind of your Chalder friend, AUGL-One Sixteen. I’m not surprised that there are times when you aren’t quite sure who or what you are. Is there any doubt about that at present?”

“No,” she replied, “you are talking only to Cha Thrat.”

“Good,” O’Mara said, “because it is Cha Thrat’s problematical future that we must now consider. Since the business on Rhabwar, when you were not only insubordinate but completely right, the option of a career in Maintenance, even though Timmins speaks highly ofyou, is closed, as is any hope you may have had of service as a ship’s medic with the Monitor Corps. Shipboard discipline is often invisible, but it is there and it is strict, and no ship commander would risk taking on a doctor with a proven record of insubordination.

“The Cultural Contact people you’ve been helping with the Rhiim parasite,” it continued, “are less discipline-oriented than the others, and they are impressed with you and are grateful enough to offer you a spot on your home planet, after the disciplinary dust has had a chance to settle, of course. What would you say to returning to Sommaradva?”

Cha Thrat made an untranslatable sound and O’Mara said drily, “I see. But the medical and surgical options are also closed to you. In spite of the respect in which are held by many of the senior staff, nobody wants a know-it-all trainee nurse on their wards who is likely to say or do something that will suggest that its Charge Nurse or doctor on duty are, well, clinically incorrect. And while you have influence in high places, that also could disappear if the truth about your Gogleskan mind-swap became common knowledge.”

Cha Thrat was wondering if there was anything she could do or say that would halt the relentless closing down of her options, when Braithwaite looked up from its display.

“Excuse me, sir,” it said. “But from my knowledge of the personalities involved, Conway, Rhone, and Prilicla are unlikely to discuss it among anyone but themselves, and Murchison, who is a very intelligent entity indeed, will do likewise when she realizes the truth or learns it from her life-mate. Her psych profile indicates the presence of a well-developed sense of humor, and it might well be that the thought of an other-species entity, andanother female at that, looking upon her with the same libidinous feelings as those of her life-mate, Conway, would be funnier than it was embarrassing. Naturally, I would not suggest that any of these misdirected feelings would be translated into action, but certain entertaining sexual fantasies could arise that would illuminate the whole area of interspecies—”

“Braithwaite,” O’Mara said quietly, “it is talk like that which gives people the wrong impression about e-t psychologists.

“As for you, Cha Thrat,” it went on, “I decided a long time ago that there was only one position here that suited your particular talents. Once again you will start as a trainee, at the bottom, and advancement will be slow because your chief is very hard to please. It is a difficult and often thankless job that will cause irritation to most people, but then you’ve become used to that. You will have a few compensations, like being able to poke your olfactory orifices into everyone else’s business whenever you think it necessary. Do you accept?”

Suddenly Cha Thrat’s pulse was clearly audible to her and she was finding it difficult to breathe. “I—I don’t understand,” she said.

O’Mara took a deep breath, then exhaled through its nose and said, “You do understand, Cha Thrat. Don’t pretend to be stupid when you aren’t.”

“I do understand,” she agreed, “and I am most grateful. The delay was due to a combination of initial disbelief and consideration of the implications. You are saying that I am to learn the skills of nonmaterial healing, the casting of spells, and that 1 am to become a trainee wizard.”

“Something like that,” the Chief Psychologist said. It glanced at the display on her desk and added, “I see thatIyou’ve already been exposed to the senior staff psych chart amendment procedure. It is routine, unexciting but very necessary work. Braithwaite has been trying to unload the job on someone for months.”

About the Authorjames white was bom in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and resides there, though he spent his early years in Canada. His first story was printed in 1953. He has since published well-received short stories, novellas, and novels, but he is best known for the Sector General series, which deals with the difficulties involved in running a hospital that caters to many radically different life-forms.

Sector General 8—The Genocidal Healer

James White

To Jeff aka Jeffrey Mcllwain, MD, FRCS who is also great with sick refrigerators

In Appreciation

CHAPTER 1

THEY had assembled in a temporarily unused compartment on the hospital’s eighty-seventh level. The room had seen service at various times as an observation ward for the birdlike Nallajims of physiological classification LSVO, as a Melfan ELNT operating theater, and, most recently, as an overflow ward for the chlorine-breathing Illensan PVSJs, whose noxious atmosphere still lingered in trace quantities. For the first and only time it was the venue of a military court and, Lioren thought hopefully, it would be used to terminate rather than extend life.

Three high-ranking Monitor Corps officers had taken their seats facing a multispecies audience that might be sympathetic, antagonistic, or simply curious. The most senior was an Earth-human DBDG, who opened the proceedings.

“I am Fleet Commander Dermod, the president of this specially convened court-martial,” it said in the direction of the recorder. Then, inclining its head to one side and then the other, it went on. “Advising me are the Earth-human Colonel Skemp-ton of this hospital, and the Nidian, Lieutenant-Colonel Dragh-Nin, of the Corps’s other-species legal department. We are here at the behest of Surgeon-Captain Lioren, a Tarlan BRLH, who is dissatisfied with the verdict of a previous Federation civil-court hearing of its case. The Surgeon-Captain is insisting on its right as a serving officer to be tried by a Monitor Corps military tribunal.

“The charge is gross professional negligence leading to the deaths of a large but unspecified number of patients while under its care.”

Without taking its attention from the body of the court, and seeming deliberately to avoid looking at the accused, the fleet commander paused briefly. The rows of chairs, cradles, and other support structures suited to the physiological requirements of the audience held many beings who were familiar to Lioren: Thornnastor, the Tralthan Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology; the Nidian Senior Tutor, Cresk-Sar; and the recently appointed Earth-human Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery, Conway. Some of them would be willing and anxious to speak in Lioren’s defense, but how many would be as willing to accuse, condemn, and punish?

“As is customary in these cases,” Fleet Commander Der-mod resumed gravely, “the counsel for the defense will open and the prosecution will have the last word, followed by the consultation and the agreed verdict and sentence of the officers of this court. Appearing for the defense is the Monitor Corps Earth-human, Major O’Mara, who has been Chief of the Department of Other-Species Psychology at this hospital since it first became operational, assisted by the Sommaradvan, Cha Thrat, a member of the same department. The accused, Surgeon-Captain Lioren, is acting for and is prosecuting itself.

“Major O’Mara, you may begin.”

While Dermod had been speaking, O’Mara, whose two eyes were recessed and partially hidden by thin flaps of skin and shadowed by the gray hair which grew in two thick crescents above them, had looked steadily at Lioren. When it rose onto its two feet, the prompt screen remained unlit. Plainly the Chief Psychologist intended speaking without notes.

In the angry and impatient manner of an entity unused to the necessity for being polite, it said, “May it please the court, Surgeon-Captain Lioren stands accused, or more accurately stands self-accused, of a crime of which it has already been exonerated by its own civil judiciary. With respect, sir, the accused should not be here, we should not be here, and this trial should not be taking place.”

“That civil court,” Lioren said harshly, “was influenced by a very able defender to show me sympathy and sentiment when what I needed was justice. Here it is my hope that—”

“I will not be as able a defender?” O’Mara asked.

“I know you will be an able defender!” Lioren said loudly, knowing that the process of translation was removing much of the emotional content from the words. “That is my greatest concern. But why are you defending me? With your reputation and experience in other-species psychology, and the high stan- dards of professional behavior you demand, I expected you to understand and side with me instead of—”

“But I am on your side, dammit—” O’Mara began. He was silenced by the distinctively Earth-human and disgusting sound of the fleet commander clearing its main breathing passage.

“Let it be clearly understood,” Dermod said in a quieter voice, “that all entities having business before this court will address their remarks to the presiding officer and not to each other. Surgeon-Captain Lioren, you will have the opportunity to argue your case without interruption when your present defender, be he able or inept, has completed his submission. Continue, Major.”

Lioren directed one eye toward the officers of the court, another he kept on the silent crowd behind him, and a third he fixed unwaveringly upon the Earth-human O’Mara, who, still without benefit of notes, was describing in detail the accused’s training, career, and major professional accomplishments during his stay at Sector Twelve General Hospital. Major O’Mara had never used such words of praise to or about Lioren in the past, but now the things it was saying would not have been out of place in a eulogy spoken over the mortal remains of the respected dead. Regrettably, Lioren was neither dead nor respected.

As the hospital’s Chief Psychologist, O’Mara’s principal concern was and always had been the smooth and efficient operation of the ten-thousand-odd members of the medical and maintenance staff. For administrative reasons, the entity O’Mara carried the rank of major in the Monitor Corps, the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, which was also charged with the responsibility for the supply and maintenance of Sector General. But keeping so many different and potentially antagonistic life-forms working together in harmony was a large job whose limits, like those of O’Mara’s authority, were difficult to define.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect among all levels of its personnel, and in spite of the careful psychological screening they underwent before being accepted for training in the Galactic Federation’s most renowned mul-tienvironment hospital, there were still occasions when serious interpersonal friction threatened to occur because of ignorance or misunderstanding of other-species cultural mores, social behavior, or evolutionary imperatives. Or, more dangerously, a being might develop a xenophobic neurosis which, if left untreated, would ultimately affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both.

A Tralthan medic with a subconscious fear of the abhorrent little predators which had for so long infested its home planet might find itself unable to bring to bear on one of the physiologically similar, but highly civilized, Kreglinni the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. Neither would it feel comfortable working with or, in the event of personal accident or illness, being treated by a Kreglinni medical colleague. It was the responsibility of Chief Psychologist O’Mara to detect and eradicate such problems before they could become life- or sanity-threatening or, if all else failed, to remove the potentially troublesome individuals from the hospital.

There had been times, Lioren remembered, when this constant watch for signs of wrong, unhealthy, or intolerant thinking which the Chief Psychologist performed with such dedication made it the most feared, distrusted, and disliked entity in Sector General.

But now O’Mara seemed to be displaying the type of uncharacteristic behavior that it had always considered as a warning symptom in others. By defending this great and terrible crime of negligence against an entire planetary population, a piece of wrong thinking without precedent in Federation history, it was ignoring and reversing the professional habits and practices of a lifetime.

Lioren stared for a moment at the entity’s head fur, which was a much lighter shade of gray than he remembered, and wondered whether the confusions of advancing age had caused it to succumb to one of the psychological ills from which it had tried so hard to protect everyone else. Its words, however, were reasoned and coherent.

“. . . At no time was it suggested that Lioren was promoted beyond its level of competence,” O’Mara was saying. “It is a Wearer of the Blue Cloak, the highest professional distinction that Tarla can bestow. Should the court wish it I can go into greater detail regarding its total dedication and ability as an other-species physician and surgeon, based on observations made during its time in this hospital. Documentation and personal affidavits provided by senior and junior Monitor Corps officers regarding its deservedly rapid promotion after it left us are also available. But that material would be repetitious and would simply reinforce the point that I have been making, that Lioren’s professional behavior up to and, I submit, while committing the offense of which it is charged, was exemplary.

“I believe that the only fault that the court will find in the accused,” O’Mara went on, “is that the professional standards it has set itself, and until the Cromsag Incident achieved, were unreasonably high and its subsequent feelings of guilt disproportionately great. Its only crime was that it demanded too much of itself when—”

“But there is no crime!” O’Mara’s assistant, Cha Thrat, broke in loudly. It rose suddenly to its full height. “On Sommaradva the rules governing medical practice for a warrior-surgeon are strict, stricter by far than those accepted on other worlds, so I fully understand and sympathize with the feelings of the accused. But it is nonsense to suggest that strict self-discipline and high standards of professional conduct are in any sense bad, or a crime, or even a venial offense.”

“The majority of the Federation’s planetary histories,” O’Mara replied in an even louder voice, the deepening facial color showing its anger at this interruption from a subordinate, “contain many instances of fanatically good political leaders or religious zealots which suggest otherwise. Psychologically it is healthier to be strict in moderation and allow a little room for—”

“But surely,” Cha Thrat broke in again, “that does not apply to the truly good. You seem to be arguing that good is . . . is bad!”

Cha Thrat was the first entity that Lioren had seen of the Sommaradvan DCNF classification. Standing, it was half again as tall as O’Mara, and its arrangement of four ambulatory limbs, four waist-level heavy manipulators, and a further set for food provision and fine work encircling the neck gave it a shape that was pleasingly symmetrical and stable—unlike that of the Earth-humans, who always seemed to be on the point of falling on their faces. Of all the beings in the room, Lioren wondered if this entity would be the one who best understood his feelings. Then he concentrated his mind on the images coming from the eye that was watching the officers of the court.

Earth-humans gave when displaying amusement or friendship, the Nidian officer’s features were unreadable behind their covering of facial fur, and the fleet commander’s expression did not change at all when it spoke.

“Are the counsels for the defense arguing among themselves regarding the guilt or otherwise of the accused,” it asked quietly, “or simply interrupting each other in their eagerness to expedite the case? In either event, please desist and address the court one at a time.”

“My respected colleague,” O’Mara said in a voice which, in spite of the emotion-filtering process of translation, sounded anything but respectful, “was speaking in support of the accused but was a trifle overeager. Our argument will be resolved, in private, at another time.”

“Then proceed,” the fleet commander said. Cha Thrat resumed its seat, and the Chief Psychologist, its face pigmentation still showing a deeper shade of pink, went on, “The point I am trying to make is that the accused, in spite of what it believes, is not totally responsible for what happened on Cromsag. To do so I shall have to reveal information normally restricted to my department. This material is—”

Fleet Commander Dermod was holding up one forelimb and hand, palm outward. It said, “If this material is privileged, Major, you cannot use it without permission from the entity concerned. If the accused forbids its use—” “I forbid its use,” Lioren said firmly. “The court has no choice but to do the same,” Dermod went on as if the Surgeon-Captain had not spoken. “Surely you are aware of this?”

“I am also aware, as, I believe, are you, sir,” said O’Mara, “that if given the chance the accused would forbid me to say or do anything at all in its defense.”

The fleet commander lowered its hand and said, “Nevertheless, where privileged information is concerned, the accused has that right.”

“I dispute its right to commit judicial suicide,” said O’Mara, “otherwise I would not have offered to defend an entity who is so highly intelligent, professionally competent, and completely stupid. The material in question is confidential and restricted but not, however, privileged since it was and is available to any accredited authority wishing for complete psychological data on a candidate before offering to employ it in a position of importance, or advancement to a level of greater responsibility. Without false modesty I would say that my department’s psych profile on Surgeon-Captain Lioren was what gained its original commission in the Monitor Corps and probably its last three promotions. Even if we had been able to monitor closely the accused’s psych profile following its departure from the hospital there is no certainty that the Cromsag tragedy could have been averted. The personality and motivations of the entity who caused it were already fully formed, stable, and well integrated. To my later regret I saw no reason to alter them in any way.”

The Chief Psychologist paused for a moment to look at the beings crowding the room before returning its attention to the officers of the court. Its desk screen came to life, but O’Mara barely glanced at the upward march of symbols as it continued speaking.

“This is the psych record of a being with a complete and quite remarkable degree of dedication to its profession,” the major said. “In spite of the presence of fellow Tarlans of the female sex at that time, there are no social or sexual activities listed or, indeed, any indication that it wished to indulge in either. Self-imposed celibacy is undertaken by members of several intelligent species for various personal, philosophical, or religious reasons. Such behavior is rare, even unusual, but not unsane.

“Lioren’s file contains no incidents, behavior, or thinking with which I could find fault,” O’Mara went on. “It ate, slept, and worked. While its colleagues were off duty, relaxing or having fun, it spent its free time studying or acquiring extra experience in areas which it considered of special interest. When promotion came, it was intensely disliked by the subordinate medical and environmental maintenance staff on its ward because it demanded of them the same quality of work that it required of itself, but fortunate indeed were the patients who came under its care. Its intense dedication and inflexibility of mind, however, suggested that it might not be suitable for the ultimate promotion to Diagnostician.

“This was not the reason for it leaving Sector General,” O’Mara said quickly. “Lioren considered many of the hospital staff to be lax in their personal behavior, irresponsible when off duty, and, by its standards, nonserious to a fault, and it wished to continue its work in an environment of stricter discipline. It fully deserved its Corps promotions, including the command of the rescue operation on Cromsag that ended in disaster.”

The Chief Psychologist looked down at its desktop, but it was not seeing the prompt screen, because for some reason it had closed its eyes. Suddenly it looked up again.

“This is the psych profile of an entity who had no choice but to act as it did,” O’Mara resumed, “so that its actions in the circumstances were proper. There was no carelessness on its part, no negligence, and therefore, I submit, no guilt. For it was only after the few survivors had been under observation here for two months that we were able to unravel the secondary endo-crinological effects of the disease Lioren had been treating. If any offense was committed, it was the minor one of impatience allied to Lioren’s firm belief that its ship’s medical facilities were equal to the task demanded of them.

“I have little more to say,” the major continued, “except to suggest to the court that its punishment should be in proportion to the crime and not, as the accused believes and the prosecution will argue, the results of that crime. Catastrophic and horrifying though the results of the Surgeon-Captain’s actions have been, the offense itself was a minor one and should be treated as such.” While O’Mara had been speaking, Lioren’s anger had risen to a level where it might no longer be controllable. Brown blotches were appearing all over his pale, yellow-green tegument, and both sets of outer lungs were tightly distended to shout a protest that would have been too loud for proper articulation and would probably have damaged the sound sensors of many of those present.

“The accused is becoming emotionally distressed,” O’Mara said quickly, “so I shall be brief. I urge that the case against Surgeon-Captain Lioren be dismissed or, failing that, that the sentence be noncustodial. Ideally the accused should be confined to the limits of this hospital, where psychiatric assistance is available when required, and where its considerable professional talents will be available to our patients while it is—”

“No!” Lioren said, in a voice which made those closest to him wince and the translator squawk with sound overload. “I have sworn, solemnly and by Sedith and Wrethrin the Healers, to forgo the practice of my art for the rest of my worthless life.”

“Now that,” O’Mara replied, not quite as loudly as Lioren, “would indeed be a crime. It would be a shameful and unforgivable waste of ability of which you would be inarguably guilty.”

“Were I to live a hundred lifetimes,” Lioren said harshly, “I could never save a fraction of the number of beings I caused to die.”

“But you could try—” O’Mara began, and broke off as once again the fleet commander raised his hand for silence.

“Address your arguments to the court, not each other,” Der-mod said, looking at them in turn. “I shall not warn you again. Major O’Mara, some time ago you stated that you had little more to say. May the court now assume that you have said it?”

The Chief Psychologist remained standing fora moment; then it said, “Yes, sir” and sat down.

“Very well,” the fleet commander said. “The court will now hear the case for the prosecution. Surgeon-Captain Lioren, are you ready to proceed?”

Lioren’s skin showed an increasing and irregular discoloration caused by the deep emotional distress that even the earliest and innocent memories evoked, but his surface air sacs had deflated so that he was able to speak quietly.

“I am ready.”

CHAPTER 2

THE Cromsag system had been investigated by the Monitor Corps scout ship Tenelphi while engaged on a survey mission in Sector Nine, one of the embarrassing three-dimensional blanks which still appeared in the Federation’s charts. The discovery of a system containing habitable planets was a pleasant break in the boring routine of counting and measuring the positions of a myriad of stars, and when they found one displaying all the indications of harboring intelligent indigenous life, their pleasure and excitement were intense.

The pleasure, however, was short-lived.

Because a scout ship with a complement of only four entities did not have the facilities to handle a first-contact situation, the regulations forbade a landing, so the crew had to content themselves with conducting a visual examination from close orbit while trying to establish the natives’ level of technology by analyzing their communications frequencies and any other electromagnetic radiation emanating from the planet. As a result of their findings, Tenelphi remained in orbit while it recklessly squandered its power reserves on the ship’s energy-hungry sub-space communicator on increasingly urgent distress messages to base.

The Monitor Corps’s specialized other-species contact vessel, Descartes, which normally made the initial approach to newly discovered cultures, was already deeply involved on the planet of the Blind Ones, where communications had reached the stage where it was inadvisable to break off. But the situation on the new planet was not a problem of First Contact but of insuring that enough of the natives would survive to make any kind of contact possible.

The Emperor-class battleship Vespasian, which was more than capable of waging a major war although in this instance it was expected to end one, was hastily converted to disaster-relief mode and dispatched to the region. It was under the command of the Earth-human Colonel Williamson, but in all matters pertaining to relief operations on the surface it was the Tarlan subordinate, Surgeon-Captain Lioren, who had the rank and the sole responsibility.

Within an hour of the two vessels matching orbits, Tenelphi had docked with Vespasian and the scout ship’s captain, the Earth-human Major Nelson, and its Nidian medical officer, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur, were in the operations room giving the latest situation report.

“We have recorded samples of their radio signals,” Major Nelson reported briskly, “even though the volume of traffic is unusually small. But we were unable to make any sense of it because our computer is programmed for survey work with just enough reserve capacity to handle the translation requirements of my crew. As things stand, we don’t even know if they know we are here—”

“Vespasian’s tactical computer will translate the surface traf- fie from now on,” Colonel Williamson broke in impatiently, “and the information will be passed to you. We are less interested in what you did not hear than in what you saw. Please go on, Major.”

It was unnecessary to mention a fact known to everyone present, that while Williamson’s tremendous capital ship had the bigger brain, Nelson’s tiny and highly specialized survey vessel had eyes that were second to none.

“As you can see,” Nelson went on, tapping the keys that threw the visuals onto the room’s enormous tactical display screen, “we surveyed the planet from a distance of five diameters before moving in to map in more detail the areas that showed signs of habitation. It is the third planet, and so far as we know the only life-bearing one, of a system of eight planets. Its day is just over nineteen hours long, surface gravity one and one-quarter Earth-normal, the atmospheric pressure in proportion, and its composition would not seriously inconvenience the majority of our warm-blooded oxygen-breathers.

“The land surface is divided into seventeen large island continents. All but the two at the poles are habitable, but only the largest equatorial continent is presently inhabited. The others show signs of habitation in the past, together with a fairly high level of technology that included powered surface and air transport, with radiation traces suggesting that they had fission-assisted electricity generation. Their towns and cities now appear to be abandoned and derelict. The buildings are undamaged, but there are no indications of industrial or domestic wastes either in atmosphere or on the ground, no evidence of food cultivation, and the road surfaces, street paving, and a few of the smaller buildings have been broken up and damaged due to the unchecked growth of plant life. Even in the inhabited areas of the equatorial continent there is similar evidence of structural and agrarian neglect with the associated indications of—”

“Obviously a plague,” Lioren said suddenly, “an epidemic for which they have little natural immunity. It has reduced the planetary population to the extent that they can no longer fully maintain all their cities and services, and the survivors have collected in the warmer and less power-hungry cities of the equator to—”

“To fight a bloody war!” the scout ship’s medic, Dracht-Yur, broke in, its snarling Nidian speech making an angry accom- paniment to the emotionless translated words. “But it is a strange, archaic form of warfare. Either they love war, or hate each other, very much. Yet they seem to have an inordinate respect for property. They don’t use mass-destruction weapons on each other; there is no evidence of aerial bombing or artillery, even though they still have large numbers of ground and atmosphere vehicles. They just use them to transport the combatants to the battleground, where they fight at close quarters, hand to hand and apparently without weapons. It is savage. Look!”

Vespasian’s, tactical screen was displaying a series of aerial photographs of tropical forest clearings and city streets, sharp and clear despite massive enlargement and the fact that they had been taken from a vertical distance of fifty miles. Normally it was difficult to obtain much information on the body mass and physiological details of a native life-form from orbit—although a study of the shadow it cast could be helpful—but, Lioren thought grimly, far too many of these creatures had been obliging enough to lie flat on the ground dead.

The pictures shocked but did not sicken the Surgeon-Captain as they did Dracht-Yur, because the Nidian medic belonged to one of those strange cultures who reverenced the decomposing remains of their dead. Even so, the number of recently and not so recently dead lying about in the streets and forest clearings was bound to pose a health risk.

Lioren wondered suddenly whether the surviving combatants were unwilling or simply unable to bury them. A less sharp moving picture showed two of the creatures fighting together on the ground, and so gentle were the blows and bites they inflicted on each other that they might have been indulging publicly in a sexual coupling.

The Nidian seemed to be reading Lioren’s mind, because it went on. “Those two look as if they are incapable of seriously damaging each other, and at first I assumed this to be a species lacking in physical endurance. Then other entities were seen who fought strongly and continuously for an entire day. But you will also observe that the bodies of these two show widespread patches of discoloration, while a few of the others have skins without blemish. There is a definite correlation between the degree of physical weakness and the area of discoloration on the body. I think it is safe to assume that these two are seriously ill rather than tired.

“But that,” Dracht-Yur ended in an angry growl, “doesn’t stop them from trying to kill each other.”

Lioren raised one hand slightly from the tabletop, middle digits extended in the Tarlan sign of respect and approval. But the two officers gave no indication of understanding the significance of the gesture, which meant that they had to be complimented verbally.

“Major Nelson, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur,” Lioren said, “you have both done very well. But there is more that you must do. Can I assume that the other members of your crew have also had the opportunity of observing the situation below and have discussed it among themselves?”

“There was no way of stopping them—” Nelson began. “Yes,” Dracht-Yur barked.

“Good,” Lioren said. “Tenelphi is detached from its current survey duty. Transfer its officers to Vespasian. They will join the crews of the first four reconnaissance vehicles to go down as advisors since they know more, perhaps only a little more, about the local situation than we do. This ship will remain in orbit until the most effective rescue site has been chosen . . .”

At times like these Lioren was reluctant to waste time on politeness, but he had learned that, where Earth-human senior officers in particular were concerned, time wasted now would help expedite matters later. And Colonel Williamson was, after all, Vespasian’s commander and nominally the senior officer.

“If you have any comments or objections so far, sir,” Lioren said, “I would be pleased to hear them.”

Colonel Williamson looked at Nelson and Dracht-Yur briefly before returning its attention to Lioren. The scout-ship officers were showing their teeth, and a few of the colonel’s were also visible as it said, “Tenelphi will not be able to resume its survey mission until we have topped up its consumables, and I would be surprised if its officers objected to any break in that deadly dull routine. You are making friends, Surgeon-Captain. Please continue.”

“The first priority is to end the fighting,” Lioren said, “and only then will it be possible to treat the sick and injured. This forced cessation of hostilities will have to be achieved without inflicting additional casualties or causing too much mental dis- tress among the population. To a culture at the prespaceflight level of technology, the sudden arrival among them of a vessel of the size and power of Vespasian, and the visually monstrous entities it contains, would not be reassuring. The first approach will have to be made in a small ship by people who, for psychological reasons, must be of equal or lesser body mass than they are. And it will have to be done covertly, in an isolated area where there are few natives or, ideally, only one whose temporary withdrawal from among its friends will arouse minimum distress . . .”

The vehicle chosen for the mission was Vespasian’s short-range communications vessel, which was equally capable of space operations or extended aerodynamic maneuvering in atmosphere. It was small but comfortably appointed, Lioren thought, if one happened to be an Earth-human, but at present it was overloaded and overcrowded.

They descended steeply out of the orange light of sunrise into an uneven blanket of dark, predawn cloud, thrusters shut down and velocity reduced so that they would not cause unnecessary distress by dragging a sonic shock wave in their wake, and the ship was darkened except for the radiation from its infrared sensors, which the natives might or might not be able to see.

Lioren stared at the enhanced picture of the forest clearing with its single, low-roofed dwelling and outbuildings rushing up at them. Without power their ship was gliding in too steeply and much too fast and with the flight characteristics, it seemed, of an aerodynamically clean lump of rock. Then three small areas of vegetation were flattened suddenly and driven downward into shallow craters as the ship’s pressor beams reached out to support it on immaterial, shock-absorbing stilts. The touchdown was silent and sudden but very gentle.

Lioren turned a disapproving eye toward the pilot, wondering, not for the first time, why some experts felt it necessary to display their expertise so dramatically; the boarding ramp slid out before he could think of words that were both complimentary and critical.

They wore heavy-duty space suits with the air tanks and helmet visors removed, confident that this makeshift body armor would protect them against any bare-handed attack by an intelligent life-form that used only natural weapons. The five Earth-humans and three Orligians in the party ran to search the outbuildings while Dracht-Yur and Lioren moved quickly toward the house, which, in spite of the early hour, had its internal lighting switched on. They circled the house once, keeping below the level of the closed and uncurtained windows, to stop at the building’s only entrance.

Dracht-Yur focused its scanner on the door mechanism and the life-sensor on the spaces beyond; then it used the suit radio to say quietly, “Beyond the door there is a large room, presently unoccupied, and three smaller compartments opening off it. The first is empty of life, the second contains traces which are not moving and positioned so closely together that I can’t be sure whether there are two or three entities, who are making the low, untranslatable noises characteristic of sleep. Maybe they are sick or wounded. The third room contains one being whose movements appear slow and deliberate, and the sounds from that compartment are quiet but distinct, like the intermittent contact between cooking utensils. The overall indication is that the occupants are unaware of our presence.

“The door mechanism is very basic,” the Nidian medic continued, “and the large metal bar on the inside has not been engaged. You can simply lift the latch and walk in, sir.”

Lioren was relieved. Breaking down the door would have made the job of convincing these people of his good intentions much more difficult. But with anything up to four natives in the house and only one overeager but diminuitive Nidian in support, Lioren was unwilling to enter just then. He remained silent until the others arrived to report that the outhouses contained only agricultural implements and nonsapient farm animals.

Quickly he described the layout of the house, then went on. “The greatest risk to us is the group of three or four beings occupying the room directly opposite this entrance, and they must not be allowed to leave it until the situation has been explained to them. Four of you guard the interior door and four the window in case they try to escape that way. Dracht-Yur and myself will talk to the other one. And remember, be quiet, careful, and nonaggressive at all times. Do not damage furniture or artifacts, and especially not the beings themselves, or do anything to suggest that we are not their friends.”

He unlatched the door quietly and led the way inside.

An oil-burning lamp hung from the center of the ceiling, illuminating walls hung with a few pictorial carvings and what seemed to be displays of dried, aromatic vegetation, although to his Tarlan olfactory sensors the aroma was anything but pleasant. Against the facing wall there was a long dining bench with four high-backed chairs pushed under it. A few smaller tables and larger, more heavily padded chairs were visible, plus a large bookcase and other items which he could not immediately identify. The majority of the furniture was of wood and strongly but not expertly built, and a few of the items showed signs of being mass-produced. Plainly they were the very old, scratched, and dented legacies of better times. The middle of the room was uncluttered and covered only by a thick carpet of some fabric or vegetable material that deadened the sound of their feet as they crossed it.

All three of the internal doors had been left ajar, and from the room occupied by the single native the quiet noises of cooking utensils making contact with crockery were accompanied by a soft, wailing sound that was untranslatable. Lioren wondered if the entity was in pain from illness or wounds, or was perhaps indulging in its version of mouth music. He was about to move in to confront the native when Dracht-Yur grasped one of his medial hands and pointed toward the door of the other occupied room.

One of the Earth-humans had been gripping the door mechanism tightly to prevent it being opened from within. Now it held out its free hand waist high with three digits extended, then lowered it palm downward to show two digits at hip level, and brought it down almost to its knee joint before showing one digit. For an instant it released the door handle, pressed both palms together and brought its hands to one side of its face, then inclined its head and closed both of its eyes.

For a moment Lioren was completely baffled by the gestures until he remembered that the Earth-human DBDG classification, and quite a few other life-forms, adopted this peculiar position while asleep. The rest of the hand signals could only mean that the room contained three children, one of whom was little more than an infant, and that they were all asleep.

Lioren dipped his head Earth-human fashion in acknowledgment, relieved that the children could be easily contained in their room so that there would be no possibility of uninformed and terrified escapees spreading panic throughout the area. Feeling pleased and much more confident, he moved forward to open communication with what, judging by the sounds emanating from the food-preparation room, was almost certainly the only adult in the house.

The entity had its back turned toward the entrance, showing him a three-quarters rear profile as it busied itself with some task that was concealed by its upper torso. Because of the absence of individually mobile eye mountings in its cranium and the consequent loss of all-around vision, Lioren was able to watch it for a moment without it being able to see him.

Its bodily configuration more closely resembled Lioren’s own than those of the Earth-humans, Nidians, or Orligians accompanying him, which should greatly reduce the visual shock of first contact. Except for the possession of three sets of limbs-two ambulators, two medial heavy manipulators, and two more at neck level for eating and to perform more delicate work, rather than the Tarlan’s three sets of four—and a cranium covered by thick, blue fur that continued in a narrow strip along the spine to the vestigial tail, the general physical characteristics were remarkably similar. Its skin showed areas of pale yellow-discoloration that were symptomatic of the plague that, with the savage and barbaric war, was threatening to sweep its planet free of intelligent life. The creature’s physiological classification was DCSL, and curing its medical condition, at least, would be relatively simple once he obtained its cooperation.

Gently at first but with increasing firmness Lioren began clapping two of his guantleted, medial hands together to attract its attention, and when it swung around suddenly to face him, Lioren said, “We are friends. We have come to—”

It had been supporting a large bowl partially filled with a pale gray semiliquid material between its body and one medial hand, while the other medial hand was holding and pouring the contents of a smaller bowl into the first. Both containers, Lioren had time to note, were thick-walled and seemed to be made of a hard but very brittle ceramic, as was proved by the way they shattered when dropped onto the floor. The noise was loud enough to waken the three youngsters in the other room, and one of them, probably the infant, began making loud, frightened sounds which did not translate.

“We will not harm you,” Lioren began again. “We have come to help cure you of the terrible disease which—”

The creature made a high-pitched gobbling sound which translated as, “The children! What have you done to the children?” and hurled itself at Lioren and Dracht-Yur.

It was not a bare-handed attack.

From the number of kitchen implements lying on the tabletop nearby it had snatched up a knife, which it swung at Lioren’s chest. The blade was long and pointed, serrated along one edge and sharp enough to leave a deep scratch in the fabric of Lioren’s heavy-duty space suit. But the creature was a quick learner, because the second blow was a straight-armed jab which might have penetrated if Lioren had not grasped the creature’s wrist in two medial hands and used a third to prise the weapon from its fingers, taking a small, incised wound to one of his own digits in the process, while at the same time holding off its two upper hands, which seemed intent on tearing holes in his face.

The violence of its attack sent Lioren staggering backward into the other room, and he had a glimpse of the diminutive Dracht-Yur diving at the creature’s legs and wrapping its short, furry arms tightly around them. The creature overbalanced and all three of them crashed to the floor.

“What are you waiting for, immobilize it!” Lioren said sharply. Then with a sudden feeling of concern for the being, he said, “As yet I am unfamiliar with your internal physiology, and I trust that the weight of my body against your lower thorax is not causing damage to underlying organs.”

The creature’s response was to struggle even harder against the Earth-human, Orligian, and Tarlan hands holding it down, and only a few of the sounds it was making were translatable. Looking at the obviously confused and terrified being, Lioren spoke silent and highly critical words to himself. This, his first contact with a member of a newly discovered intelligent species, had not been handled well.

“We will not harm you,” Lioren said, trying to sound reassuring in a voice louder than that of the creature and those of the three children in the other room, all of whom were awake and contributing their own untranslatable sounds. “We will not harm your children. Please calm yourself. Our only wish is to help you, all of you, to live out your lives free of war and the disease which is affecting you . . .”

It must have understood his translated words, because it had grown silent as he was speaking, but its struggle to free itself continued.

“But if we are to find a cure for this disaster,” Lioren went on in a quieter voice, “we will have to isolate and identify the pathogen within your body causing it, and to do this we require specimens of your blood and other body fluids . . .”

They would also be needed to prepare large quantities of safe anesthetics, tranquilizing gases and synthetic food suited to the species metabolism if the war as well as the disease was to be checked with minimum delay and loss of life. But this did not seem to be the right moment to tell it all of the truth, because its efforts to break free had intensified.

Lioren looked at Dracht-Yur and indicated one of the native’s medial arms where muscle tension and elevated blood pressure had caused one of the veins to distend, making it an ideal site for withdrawing blood samples.

“We will not harm you,” Lioren repeated. “Do not be afraid. And please stop moving your arm.”

But the large, glittering, and multibarreled instrument that the Nidian medic had produced, while absolutely painless in use, was not an object to inspire confidence. If their positions had been reversed, Lioren knew, he would not have believed a single word he was saying.

CHAPTER 3

WITH a few violent exceptions, the subsequent contacts with the planet’s natives, whose name for their world was Cromsag, went more easily. This was because Vespasian’s transmitter had matched frequencies with the Cromsaggar broadcast channels to explain in greater detail who the off-world strangers were, where they had come from, and why they were there. And when the great capital ship landed and began to disgorge and erect prefabricated hospitals and food-distribution centers for the war’s survivors, the verbal reassurances were given form and substance and all hostility against the strangers ceased.

But that did not mean that they became friends.

Lioren was sure that he knew everything about the Cromsag-gar, with the exception of how their minds worked. From recently dead cadavers abandoned in the war zones he had obtained a complete and accurate picture of their physiology and metabolism. This had enabled their injuries to be treated with safe medication and their war to be ended ingloriously under blankets of anesthetic gas. The scout ship Tenelphi had been pressed into service as a fast courier vessel plying between Cromsag and Sector General. It carried specimens requiring more detailed study in one direction and the findings of Head of Pathology Thornnastor, which more often than not agreed with Lioren’s own, in the other.

But the Cromsaggar disease was proving difficult for even Diagnostician Thornnastor to isolate and identify. Living rather than dead specimens were required for study, if possible displaying the symptomology from onset to the preterminal stage of the condition, and Rhabwar, the hospital’s special ambulance ship, was dispatched to obtain them. And even more baffling than the plague, to which the victims invariably succumbed before reaching middle age, was their mental approach to it.

One plague victim had agreed to talk to Lioren about itself, but its words had merely added to the Surgeon-Captain’s confusion. He knew the patient only by its case file number, because the Cromsaggar considered their written and spoken symbol of identity to be the most important of personal possessions, and even though this one was close to termination it would not divulge its name to a stranger. When Lioren asked it why many of the Cromsaggar had attacked off-worlders with any weapon that came to hand, but fought among themselves only with teeth, hands and feet, it said that there was no honor or gain in killing a member of one’s own race unless it was with great effort and extreme personal danger. For the same reason they always stopped short of killing a very sick, severely weakened, or dying adversary.

Taking the life of another intelligent entity, Lioren firmly believed, was the most dishonorable act imaginable. In his position he should respect the beliefs of others, regardless of how strange or shocking they might be to one of his strict Tarlan upbringing, but he could not and would not respect this one.

Changing the subject quickly, he asked, “Why is it that after you fight, the injured are taken away to be cared for while the dead remain untouched where they fall? We know that your people have some knowledge of medicine and healing, so why do you allow the dead to remain unburied, to risk the spread of further pestilence into your already plague-ridden population? Why do you expose yourselves to this totally unnecessary danger?”

The ravages of the disease, which had covered the entire epidermis in patches of livid camouflage, had left the patient very weak, and for a moment Lioren wondered if it was able to reply, or even if it had heard the questions. But suddenly it said, “A decomposing corpse is indeed a fearful risk to the health of those who pass nearby. The danger and the fear are necessary.”

“But why?” Lioren asked again. “What do you gain by deliberately subjecting yourselves to fear and pain and danger?”

“We gain strength,” the Cromsaggar said. “For a time, for a very short time, we feel strong again.”

“In a very short time,” Lioren said with the confidence of a healer backed by all the resources of Federation medical science, “we will make you feel well and strong without the fighting. Surely you would prefer to live on a world free of war and disease?”

From somewhere within its wasted body the patient seemed to gather strength. It said loudly, “Never in the memories of those alive, or in the memories of their ancestors, has there been a time without war and disease. The stories told of such times, when the planetwide ruins of towns and cities were populated by healthy and happy Cromsaggar, are stories told only to comfort small and hungry children, children who soon grow large enough to fight and to disbelieve these stories.

“You should leave us, stranger, to survive as we have always survived,” it went on, straining to raise itself from the litter. “The thought of a world without war is too frightening to contemplate.”

He asked more questions, but the patient, although fully conscious and displaying a slight improvement in its clinical condition, would not speak to him.

There was no doubt in Lioren’s mind that a medical cure would quickly be discovered for the condition affecting the ten thousand-odd surviving Cromsaggar. But he was less sure whether a species which fought wars using only the natural weapons provided by evolution, because that made them feel good for a while, was worth saving. The strict rules of engagement that governed the fighting did not make the situation any less barbaric. They did not fight weaker opponents or children or the very few who were advanced in years, but only because the element of personal risk, and presumably the emotional reward, was reduced. He was glad that his only responsibility was the return of the plague sufferers to bodily health and not the curing of what appeared to be the even more diseased minds inhabiting those bodies.

And yet there had been occasions when, in an effort to give his patients something other than their own distressing clinical condition to think about, he had tried to explain star travel and the Galactic Federation to them. He had described the bewildering variety of shapes and sizes that intelligent life could take, and tried to make them understand that they lived on one inhabited world of many hundreds. He found those frightening and inexplicable minds of theirs had displayed an agility and a level of intelligence, although not the degree of education and knowledge, that was almost the equal of his own.

At those times there had been a small and transient improvement in their clinical condition, and that had made Lioren wonder if their craving for the danger and emotional excitement of war and single combat might not someday be fulfilled by the many and even more difficult challenges of peace. But they refused, or perhaps were psychologically unable because of cultural conditioning, to divulge personal information about their social behavior, moral strictures, or feelings on any subject unless, as in the present case, the patient was gravely ill and its mental resistance low.

The truth was that Lioren did not know how his patients felt, about themselves or anyone or anything else, and the stock question of the attending physician, “How do you feel?,” was never answered.

Rhabwar was due in two days’ time, and he decided that this particular patient would be among those transferred to the ambulance ship for investigation and treatment at Sector General, and that he would ask for a consultation with the vessel’s senior medical officer.

Doctor Prilicla was a Cinrusskin, and, as a member of the Federation’s only empathic species, it knew how everyone felt.

Lioren asked that the meeting take place on Rhabwar'?, casualty deck, rather than summoning Prilicla to the overcrowded sick bay of Vespasian, for reasons both practical and personal. The level of background emotional radiation from patients was much higher on Vespasian and would doubtless have distressed his visitor—it did no harm to show consideration to a professional colleague. On the ambulance ship there was less likelihood of his uncertainties regarding the Cromsaggar becoming known to his subordinates. It was his firm belief that a leader should display certainty at all times to the led if he was to receive their respect and total obedience.

Perhaps the empath held the same belief, but it was more likely that Prilicla had detected Lioren’s emotional radiation at a distance, correctly analyzed it, and insured that their meeting would be private. He was grateful but not surprised. It was in the other’s own selfish interest to minimize the generation of unpleasant emotional radiation around it, because to do otherwise would be to expose itself to exactly the same degree of unpleasantness.

The Cinrusskin positioned itself at eye level above one of the treatment tables, an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect rendered small only by Lioren’s greater body mass. From its tubular, exoskeletal body there projected six pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned manipulators, and four sets of wide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings that were beating slowly as, with the aid of the gravity nullifiers strapped'to its body, it maintained a stable hover. Only on Cinruss, with its thick atmosphere and gravitational pull of one-eighth standard G, could a species of flying insect have evolved intelligence, civilization, and star travel, and Lioren knew of no race within the Federation who did not consider them to be the most beautiful of all intelligent life-forms.

From one of the narrow openings in the delicate, convoluted eggshell that was its head came a series of musical trills and clicks which translated as “Thank you, friend Lioren, for the complimentary feelings you are harboring, and for the pleasure of meeting you in person for the first time. I also detect strong emotional radiation which suggests that the purpose of our meeting is professional and urgent rather than social.

“I am an empath, not a telepath,” it ended gently. “You will have to tell me what is troubling you, friend Lioren.”

Lioren felt sudden irritation at the other’s continuing use of the word “friend.” He was, after all, the medical and administrative director of the disaster relief operation on Cromsag, and a Surgeon-Captain in the Monitor Corps, while Prilicla was a civilian Senior Physician at Sector General. His irritation was making the empath’s whole body tremble and causing its hovering flight to become less stable. He suddenly realized that he was attacking a being with a weapon, his feelings, against which it had no defense.

Even the pathologically warlike Cromsaggar would scorn to attack such a weak and defenseless enemy.

Lioren’s irritation quickly changed to shame. This was a time to forget the feelings of justified pride in his high rank and in the many professional accomplishments that had earned it. Instead he should try, as he had often done in the past, to make the most effective use of the abilities of a subordinate whose feelings were easily hurt, and to control his emotions.

“Thank you, friend Lioren, for the mental self-discipline you have just displayed,” Prilicla said before he could speak. It settled like a feather onto the top of the examination table, no longer trembling, and added, “But I detect strong background emotional radiation that you are finding more difficult to control and that, I feel sure, concerns the Cromsaggar. My own feelings of concern over the situation here are strong, perhaps as strong as yours, and shared feelings about other persons or situations cause me lesser discomfort. So if there is some way that I can help you please do not hesitate to speak.”

Lioren felt renewed irritation at being given permission to discuss the Cromsaggar when his only purpose in coming here had been to do so, but the feeling was faint and transient. As he began to speak, the Surgeon-Captain knew that he was briefly verbalizing his latest report, copied to his Monitor Corps superiors and to Prilicla itself, that Rhabwar would be carrying back to Thornnastor, but it was necessary that the empath be acquainted with the current position if it was to understand the importance of the later questions.

He described the continually expanding search that had brought back data fit only for industrial archeologists. There were no recent life signs. Many of the abandoned cities and mining and manufacturing complexes in the north and south temperate regions were many centuries old, and so well con- structed that only a moderate effort would be required to restore them because the mineral wealth of the planet was far from exhausted. But the effort had not been made because the race’s energies had been directed into fighting, so much so that many of them no longer grew food or had the strength to forage for that which grew wild, and the population had contracted into one region so that they could continue fighting without having to travel far to do so.

“When we stopped the war,” Lioren went on, “or rather, when our sleep bombs halted the hundreds of small gang and two-person conflicts, there was an estimated surviving population of just under ten thousand entities, a number which included all the adults, their young, and a few newly born infants. But recently they have begun dying at the rate of about one hundred every day.”

Prilicla had begun to tremble again. Lioren was unsure whether it was in response to his emotional radiation or its own reaction to the news of the increasing number of fatalities. He tried to make his mind as well as his voice calm and clinical as he continued.

“In spite of our supporting them with shelters, clothing, and synthetic nutrient, even going so far as to gather supplies of local food that they were too weak to harvest for themselves, the deaths continue. Adult fatalities are invariably due to the plague, sometimes expedited by the debilitating effect of war injuries, and the children succumb to other diseases for which we have no specifics as yet. The Cromsaggar accept our help and our food, but only their young appear grateful for it. They show no interest in what we are trying to do for them. I feel that the adults tolerate us as an additional and unwelcome burden that they can do nothing about. My own feeling is that they are disinterested in their own survival and want to be left alone to commit racial suicide in the bloodiest fashion possible, and there are times when I feel that such a warlike and individually violent race should not be restrained from doing so. I do not know what they themselves feel, about anything.”

“And you would like me to use my empathic faculty,” Prilicla asked, “to tell you what they feel?”

“Yes,” Lioren said, with so much feeling that the Cinrusskin trembled for a moment. “I hoped that you, Doctor, might have detected urges, instincts, feelings about themselves, their off- spring, or their present situation. My ignorance regarding their thinking and motivations is total. I would like to be able to do or say something to them that, as with an emotionally disturbed entity about to jump from a high building, would make them want to live instead of die. What is it that they fear, or need, that would make them want to survive?”

“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said without hesitation, “they fear death, like every other self-aware creature, and they want to survive. There were no indications, even in the most serious cases, of a wish for individual death or racial self-destruction, and they should not be—”

“I am sorry,” Lioren broke in. “My earlier remark about allowing them to commit racial suicide—”

“They were words spoken because of helplessness and frustration, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said, in the gentlest of interruptions, “that were completely contradicted by your underlying emotional radiation at the time. There was no need for an apology then or for your embarrassment now.

“And I had been about to say,” it v/ent on, “that the Crom-saggar should not be criticized for their lack of cooperation, and the strong feelings of ingratitude until we know why they feel so ungrateful. These feelings were strongly present in all of the adult patients I monitored during transportation to Sector General and while I was present at the subsequent attempts to question them. They know we are trying to help them, but will not help us with clinical or personal information about themselves. When the interrogation was intensified they became agitated and fearful, and a marked if temporary remission of symptoms was observed at these times.”

“I have made the same observation,” Lioren said, “and assumed that it was the transfer of focus from a material condition to an immaterial one, the psychological mechanism which can sometimes make faith healing effective. I did not consider it an important datum.”

“You are probably correct,” Prilicla said. “But Chief Psychologist O’Mara is of the opinion that the marked remission due to the fear stimulus, combined with their fanatical refusal to communicate with us beyond the exchange of a few words, indicates the presence of an extremely strong and deep-rooted conditioning about which the Cromsaggar, as individuals, may be unaware. Friend O’Mara likens it to the racial group psycho- ses afflicting the Gogleskans, and says that it is trying to probe a very sensitive area that is surrounded by a very thick wall of mental scar tissue, and advises everyone concerned to proceed slowly and carefully.”

The Gogleskan psychosis forced them into avoiding direct physical contact with each other for the greater part of their adult lives, which was certainly not the problem with the Cromsaggar. Trying to control his feelings of impatience, Lioren said, “If we do not quickly find a cure for this plague, your Chief Psychologist will run out of subjects for his slow and careful investigation. What progress has been made since your last visit?”

“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said gently, “significant progress has been made. However, I sense and wholly agree with your need to avoid wasting time, so I suggest that Pathologist Mur-chison makes its report to you in person rather than having it relayed through myself, since you will doubtless have questions and I, because of my selfish need to surround myself with pleasant emotional radiation, have the unfortunate habit of accentuating the positive aspects of any situation.”

Lioren’s original reason for wanting a private meeting with Prilicla no longer seemed valid, and he could not reject the other’s suggestion without seriously embarrassing both himself and the empath. He had the feeling, which was no doubt shared by the empath, that somehow he had lost the initiative.

Pathologist Murchison was a warm-blooded oxygen-breather of physiological classification DBDG with a body that, although considerably shorter and less massive than Lioren’s own, had the soft, lumpy and top-heavy aspect of many of the Earth-human females. It was Thornnastor’s principal assistant, when not required for special ambulance-ship duty, and its words were clear and concise and its manner respectful without being subservient. It also had the slightly irritating habit of answering questions before Lioren could ask them.

The identification, isolation, and neutralization of other-species pathogens, Pathologist Murchison said, was a routine procedure for Thornnastor’s department, but the behavioral characteristics of the Cromsaggar virus—its mechanisms of transmission, infection, incubation, and propagation—remained undetectable to all of the normal investigative techniques. It was only in recent days, when the discovery had been made that the virus was either inherited at conception or transmitted by the mother prior to birth, that some progress had been made.

“The effects on the adult Cromsaggar are known to you,” Murchison went on, “and the present indications are that every member of the species is infected. In the preterminal stage there is a livid rash and skin eruptions covering most of the body, accompanied by progressive and massive debilitation and lassitude which is sometimes overcome, temporarily, by strong emotional stimuli such as fear and danger. The effects on the children are less apparent and this led to the initial assumption that the young were immune, which they are not.

“We have since discovered,” it continued, “that severe debility and lassitude are also present in the young, although it is difficult to be precise since we have no idea of how active a young, noninfected Cromsaggar should be. And, incredible though it might seem, neither can we be precise about the ages of these child patients. There is physiological and verbal evidence which suggests that many of them are not nearly as young as they appear, and that our age estimates should be extended by a factor of two or three because, in addition to its general debilitating effect, the plague retards the overall physiological development and greatly delays the onset of puberty. Probably there are psychological effects, as well, which might explain their grossly antisocial adult behavior, but again, this must remain speculative since you have yet to find a normal, disease-free Cromsaggar.”

“I doubt whether such an entity exists,” Lioren said. “But you spoke of having verbal as well as physiological evidence. These people absolutely refuse to give information about themselves. How was it obtained?”

“A large proportion of the cases you sent us were young or, as we now know, not yet physically mature,” Murchison replied. “The adult patients remain completely uncooperative, but O’Mara was able to open dialogue with a few non-adults, who were much less reticent about themselves. Because of this immature viewpoint, adult motivations still remain unclear, and the picture of the Cromsaggar culture that is emerging is confusing and fraught with—”

“Pathologist Murchison,” Lioren interrupted, “my interest is in the clinical rather than the cultural picture, so please confine yourself to that. My reason for asking Rhabwar to transfer so many young or not so young patients to the hospital was that they were among the large numbers left parentless or without adults to care for them. As well as suffering from undernourishment or exposure, conditions which are treatable, they displayed symptoms of respiratory distress associated with elevated temperature, or a wasting disease affecting the peripheral vascular and nervous systems. If Thornnastor’s investigation into the plague is showing no results, what of these other and, I would think, clinically less complex conditions which seem to affect only the young?”

“Surgeon-Captain Lioren,” the pathologist said, using Lioren’s name and rank for the first time, “I did not say that no progress is being made.

“All of the non-adult cases are being investigated and significant progress is being made,” it went on quickly. “In one of them, the condition presenting respiratory distress symptoms, there has been a minor but positive response to treatment. But the main effort is being directed toward finding a specific for the adult condition, because it has become evident that if the massive debilitation and growth-retarding effects of the plague were removed, the diseases currently afflicting the pre-adult Cromsaggar would be countered by their bodies’ natural defense mechanisms and would no longer be life-threatening.”

If that much was known, Lioren thought, then progress was indeed being made.

“The trials conducted so far,” Murchison continued, “have been inconclusive. Initially the medication was introduced in trace quantities and the patients’ condition monitored routinely for fifty standard hours before the dosage was increased, until on the ninth day, within a few moments of the injection being given, both patients lost consciousness.”

It paused for a moment to look at Prilicla then, seeming to receive a signal undetectable by Lioren, resumed. “Both patients were placed in isolation some distance from the others and each other. This was done so as to minimize same-species interference in their emotional radiation. Doctor Prilicla reported that the level of unconsciousness was extraordinarily deep, but that there was no sign of the subconscious distress that would have been present had they been drifting into termination. It suggested that the unconsciousness might be recuperative since it had many of the characteristics of sleep following a lengthy period of physical stress and that nutrient should be given intravenously. A few days after this was done there was a minor remission of symptoms in both cases, and evidence of slight tissue regeneration, although both patients remained deeply unconscious and in a critical condition.”

“Surely that means—!” Lioren began, and broke off as Mur-chison held up one hand as if it and not himself had the rank. But suddenly he was too excited to verbally tear its insubordinate head off as he should.

“It means, Surgeon-Captain,” Murchison said, “that we must proceed very carefully and, if the first two test subjects regain consciousness rather than drifting into termination, we must closely monitor their clinical and psychological condition before the trial is extended to the other patients. Diagnostician Thornnastor and everyone in its department believes, and Doctor Prilicla feels sure, that we are on the way to finding the cure. But until we are certain we must exercise patience for a time until—”

“How much time?” Lioren demanded harshly.

Prilicla’s fragile body was shaking as if a strong wind was blowing through the casualty deck, but Lioren could no more have controlled the emotional storm of impatience, eagerness, and excitement that raged within him than he could have flown on the empath’s fragile wings. He would apologize to Prilicla later, but now all that he could think of was the steadily dwindling number of Cromsaggar who still clung to life on this plague world, and who might now have a chance to remain alive. More quietly, he asked, “How long must I wait?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the pathologist said. “I only know that Tenelphi has been ordered to remain at flight readiness at Sector General until the medication has been approved for general use, so as to bring you the first production batch without delay.”

CHAPTER 4

RHABWAR departed with its casualty deck filled principally with non-adult Cromsaggar. There were many adult cases in Vespasian’s sick bay—and in the widely dispersed medical stations that Lioren visited every day—who were in a much more serious condition, but the future survival of any species lay with its young, and those fortunate enough to be under the care of Thornnastor would be the first to be cured.

He ignored the polite but increasingly sarcastic messages from Colonel Skempton, the administrative head of Sector General, reminding him that the hospital was unable to accept the entire Cromsag population, depleted though it might be, for hospital-ization, and that they had already received more than enough members of that species for the purposes of clinical investigation. The entire Rhabwar crew would have been aware of Skempton’s uncoded messages and the pressure on ward accommodation that had prompted them, but Prilicla had raised no objections to transporting the additional twenty patients.

Prilicla must be the least objectionable entity in the known galaxy, Lioren thought, unlike the Cromsaggar, who were his patients but who would never be his friends—unless there was a species-wide personality reconstruction by the Galactic Federation’s many deities, of whose existence he had the gravest doubts.

Nevertheless, he spent all of his time, when he was not engaged in eating or sleeping, visiting the worst of his massively unlikable patients or encouraging the two hundred Corps medics and food technicians scattered across the continent who were trying, not always with success, to keep them alive. Always he hoped for a change of attitude, a willingness to talk to him and give information that would enable him to help them or that a tiny crack would show in their impenetrable wall of noncoop- eration, but in vain. The Cromsaggar, adult and young alike, continued dying at a steadily increasing rate because, like Sector General, he did not have the facilities to feed intravenously the entire population.

Occasionally, and in spite of the surface and orbital surveillance, they managed to die at each others’ hands.

It had happened while he had been flying over one of the forest settlements that had long since been searched and declared empty of intelligent life, but that must have been because the occupants had taken to the trees to elude the searchers. Lioren spotted the small-scale war being waged by six of them in a grassy clearing between two buildings. By the time the flier, which would have carried a crew of four Nidians had it not been for his long Tarlan legs, had circled back to land and Dracht-Yur had helped him extricate himself from the tiny vessel’s seating, the hand-to-hand fighting was over and four Cromsaggar lay still on the ground.

In spite of the numerous bites and digitally inflicted wounds covering the bodies, they were able to identify them as three dead males and one female whose life expectancy would be measured in seconds. Dracht-Yur pointed suddenly to the ground nearby where two separate trails of crushed and blood-spattered grass converged toward the open door of one of the buildings.

The advantage of a longer stride meant that Lioren went through the entrance seconds ahead of the Nidian, and his first sight of the two writhing, bloody bodies locked together in mortal combat on the floor reinforced the anger and disgust he felt at such animal behavior between supposedly intelligent beings. Moving forward, he quickly interposed his medial arms between the tightly pressed bodies and tried to push them apart. Only then did he make the disconcerting discovery that they were not, as he had first thought, two males fighting each other to the death but a male and female indulging in a sexual coupling.

Lioren released them and backed away quickly, but suddenly they broke apart and launched themselves at him just as Dracht-Yur arrived and blundered into his rear legs. The weight of the combined attack toppled him over backward so that he sprawled flat on the floor with the two Cromsaggar on top of him and the Nidian somewhere underneath. Within moments he was fighting for his life.

After the first few days on Cromsag had shown the natives to be too severely weakened by the plague to warrant the use of heavy protective suits, all Corps personnel had taken to wearing their cooler and less restrictive shipboard coveralls, which gave protection only against the sun, rain, and insect bites.

It was with a sense of outrage that Lioren realized that for the first time in his life the hands—not to mention the feet, knees, and teeth—of another person had been raised in anger against him. On Tarla disputes were not settled in this barbaric fashion. And even though the number of his limbs equaled the total of theirs, they did not behave like plague-weakened Cromsaggar. They were inflicting serious damage to his body and causing him more pain than he had ever thought it possible to feel.

As he fended off the more disabling body blows and tried desperately to keep the two Cromsaggar from pulling off his dirigible eye-supports, Lioren was aware of Dracht-Yur wriggling from underneath him and crawling toward the door. He was pleased when his attackers ignored it, because the Nidian’s small, furry limbs had neither the muscle power nor the reach to make a useful contribution to the struggle. A few seconds later he caught a glimpse of the Nidian’s head enclosed by a transparent envelope, heard the expected soft explosion of a bursting sleep-gas bulb, and felt the bodies of his attackers go suddenly limp and collapse on top of him before rolling slowly onto the floor.

For the few moments that the bodies, covered as they were by livid patches of discoloration and the oozing sores characteristic of preterminal plague victims, made heavy and almost intimate contact with him, it was a great relief to remember that one world’s pathogens were ineffective against the members of off-planet species.

Designed as it was for maximum effect on the Cromsaggar metabolism, the anesthetic gas produced similar if less immediate results on other warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Lioren was unable to move, but he was aware of the Nidian growling and barking urgently into its headset while it applied dressings to the worst of his wounds. Presumably it was telling the pilot of their flier to send for medical assistance, but his own translator pack had been damaged in the struggle and he could not understand a word. This did not worry him unduly, because the intense discomfort of his many injuries had faded to the mildest of irritations and the hard floor beneath him felt like the softest of sleeping pits. But his mind was clear and seemed unwilling to follow his body into sleep.

Interrupting the two Cromsaggar in the sex act had been a serious mistake, but an understandable one because none of his people had witnessed the occurrence of anything like a sexual coupling since arriving on Cromsag, and everyone, himself included, had assumed that the species had become too physically debilitated by the plague to make much of such activity possible. And their reaction, the sheer strength and ferocity of their attack, had surprised and shocked him.

During the very short breeding season on Tarla such activity, especially among the aging who had been lifemates for many years, was a cause for celebration and public display rather than a matter for concealment—although he knew that many species within the Federation, races who were otherwise highly intelligent and philosophically advanced, considered the mating process to be a private matter between the beings concerned.

Naturally, Lioren had no personal experience in this area, since his dedication to the healing arts precluded him indulging in any pleasure which would allow emotional factors to affect the clinical objectivity of his mind. If he had been an ordinary Tarlan male, an artisan or a member of one of the noncelibate professions interrupted in similar circumstances, there would have been a verbal impoliteness, but certainly not violence.

Distressing and distasteful as the incident had been, Lioren’s mind would not rest in its search to find a reason for such an unreasonable reaction, however alien or uncivilized that reason might be. Could it be that, gravely ill and seriously injured as they had been in the fighting outside, they had crawled into the house to seek a moment of mutual pleasure together before dying? He knew that the coupling must have been by mutual agreement, because the Cromsaggar mechanics of reproduction were physiologically too complicated for the attentions of one partner to be forced on another.

That did not rule out the possibility that the coupling was the end result of the fighting, the bestowal of a female’s favor on a warrior victorious in battle. There were many historical precedents for such behavior, although not, thankfully, in the history of Tarla. But that reason was unsatisfactory because both male and female Cromsaggar fought, although not each other.

Lioren made a mental note to prepare a detailed report of the incident for the cultural contact specialists who would ultimately have to produce a solution to the Cromsaggar problem, if any of the species survived and it was invited to join the Federation.

The four separate images of the room, including the one of Dracht-Yur working on the other casualties, that his immobilized eyes were still bringing him dimmed suddenly into blackness, and he remembered a feeling of mild irritation before he fell asleep in midthought.

Dracht-Yur confined him to the sick bay on Vespasian until the worst of his injuries healed, reminding him, as only a hairy, small-minded, and sarcastic dwarf of a Nidian could, that until then the relationship between them was one of doctor and patient and that in the present situation it was the Surgeon-Lieutenant who had the rank.

It could not, however, no matter how often it stressed the advisability of post-trauma rest and mental recuperation, bind Lioren’s jaw closed or keep him from setting up a communication system by his bedside.

Time passed like a pregnant strulmer climbing uphill, and the medical situation on Cromsag worsened until the daily death rate climbed from one hundred to close on one-fifty, and still Tenelphi did not come. Lioren sent a necessarily brief hyper-space radio signal to Sector General, prerecorded and repeated many times so that its words could be reconstructed after fighting their way through the interference of the intervening stars, requesting news. He was not surprised when it was ignored, because the expenditure of power needed for a lengthy progress report would have been wasteful indeed. All that he was telling them was that he and the medical and support personnel on Cromsag were beginning to feel so helpless and angry and impatient that the condition verged on the psychotic, but the hospital probably knew that already.

Five days later he received a reply stating that Tenelphi had been dispatched and was estimating Cromsag in thirty-five hours. It was carrying medication, as yet incompletely tested for long-term effects, which was a specific against the grosser, more life-threatening symptoms of the plague, and that the details of the pathological investigation and directions for treatment accompanied the medication.

During the excitement that ensued Lioren went over his plans for fast distribution. Dracht-Yur relented to the extent of allowing him to transfer from sick bay to the communications center of Vespasian, but not to risk compounding his injuries by traveling the air or surface of Cromsag in vehicles totally unsuited to the Tarlan physiology. But the general feeling of relief and euphoria lasted only until the arrival of Tenelphi.

The scout ship carried more than enough of the antiplague specific, which required only a single, intravenous application, to treat every Cromsaggar on the planet, but Lioren was forbidden to use it until additional field trials had been carried out.

According to Chief Pathologist Thornnastor, the physiological results following a minimum dosage had been very good, but there were indications of possibly damaging side effects. Symptoms of mental confusion and periods of semiconscious-ness had been observed. These might prove to be temporary, but further investigation was required.

The single injection was followed by a slight but continuing reduction in symptoms, a slow improvement in the vital signs, and evidence of tissue and organs regeneration throughout the body in the days which ensued. During the periods of semicon-sciousness the test subjects had requested and consumed food in quantities which, considering stomach size and the clinical condition of the patients involved, seemed unusually large. There was a steady increase in body weight.

The non-adult subjects had responded in similar fashion, including the periods of unconsciousnessness interspersed with episodes of semiconsciousness and mental confusion, except that with the young the food demand in relation to their smaller size had been greater. Daily measurement had shown a steady increase in growth, both in body mass and limb dimensions.

It was thought probable that with the gradual remission of the condition the non-adult patients, whose physical growth had been retarded by the plague, were returning to optimum size for their ages. The periods of unconsciousness and impaired thinking were in response to a demand by the body for maximum rest during these periods of regeneration and were of little clinical importance. The medication was being used in minimum quantities, but a very small increase in the dosage of one test subject resulted in a strengthening and acceleration of the effects already noted. In spite of the excellent physiological results so far, the associated episodes of mental confusion were cause for concern lest a side effect of the medication led to long-term brain damage.

Thornnastor apologized for sending medication that it had not completely cleared for use, but said that Lioren’s hyperspace radio signals had emphasized the urgency of the situation, and in order to save a few days’ transit time between the medication’s approval and its administration to the patients the final tests should be made concurrently on Cromsag and in Sector General.

“I have been instructed to conduct tests on a maximum of fifty Cromsaggar,” Lioren said, when he was relaying Thorn-nastor’s report to his senior medical officers. “The subjects are to include the widest possible variation in age and clinical condition, as well as minor variations in the dosage administered within that number. We are to pay particular attention to the mental state of these subjects during their periods of semiconsciousness, in the hope that their degree of confusion will be lessened when they are on their home world among others of their kind rather than in the strange and doubtless unsettling environment of Sector General. The initial test period will require ten days, followed by a further—”

“In ten days we would lose a quarter of the remaining population,” Dracht-Yur broke in suddenly, its barking speech sounding angry even through the translator, “which has already shrunk to two-thirds of the number alive when Tenelphi found this Crutath-accursed planet. They’re dying out there like, like . . .”

“That was my thought exactly,” Lioren said, omitting the reprimand the Nidian deserved for its bad manners, and making a mental note to check on the meaning of the word “Crutath.” “It is a thought which all of you share. But it is not because of our common feelings that I will disobey Thornnastor and ignore its recommendations. The decision is not yours. I will, of course, listen to your professional advice and accept it if it has merit, but the instruction to proceed and the responsibility for everything that ensues as a result will be entirely mine.

“This is what I am planning to do . . .”

There was no criticism of his plan because he had formulated it with great care and attention to detail, and—strangely, since it was coming from subordinates to a superior—the advice offered by many of them was personal rather than professional. They advised that he obey Thornnastor, but compromise by testing a few hundred, perhaps a thousand subjects instead of a mere fifty, saying that the course he was advocating would do nothing for any hopes he might have for future advancement. Lioren felt a strong temptation to do as they suggested, if only out of respect for the words of an entity said to be the foremost pathologist in the Federation rather than out of any selfish concern over his future career, but he was not sure that Diagnostician Thornnastor fully appreciated the urgency of the Cromsaggar problem. The hospital’s Chief of Pathology was a perfectionist who would never allow imperfect work to leave its department, and giving Lioren permission to assist with the test program was probably the only compromise that it was capable of making. But a great, hulking Tralthan whose data-crammed mind, it was said, permanently accommodated the brain recordings of at least ten other-species medical authorities could be forgiven for a certain amount of mental confusion.

The Cromsaggar death rate was climbing steadily toward two hundred a day, and treating a mere fifty of them with an unnecessary degree of caution when virtually the entire population could be given the chance to live instead of dying in a lingering and painful manner was, to Lioren’s mind, a great and a cowardly and a completely unacceptable wrong.

In this desperate situation he could accept imperfections even if Thornnastor’s department could not. The psychological effects that accompanied the cure might be temporary, and even if they were not then they, too, might be curable in time. But if the worst should happen and permanent mental harm was the result, it was highly unlikely that the condition would be transmitted to an offspring, because O’Mara itself had stated that the damage was nonphysical. Any Cromsaggar child born of cured but mentally deficient parents would grow up healthy and sane.

Or as sane, Lioren thought, as it was possible for any member of this bloodthirsty race to be.

He had told his staff that it must be an operation combining maximum effort with maximum urgency, and that every single Cromsaggar on the planet must be treated for effect rather than submitting them to time-wasting trials, and within an hour of the meeting’s end the plan was being implemented. On foot to the patients who were being housed close to the grounded Ves- pasian, and by sunace or air transpon to tne more distant shelters, the medication and supplies of synthetic nutrient were being distributed by every Monitor Corps entity available, which meant all but the capital ship’s watch-keeping and communications officers and those charged with the maintenance of the air and surface vehicles. Lioren, whose injuries were still hampering his mobility, divided his attention between communications and the sick bay, where he was the only medic on duty.

The dosage administered varied in proportion to the age, body mass, and clinical condition of the patients. With the very young it was triple that recommended for trial purposes by Thornnastor, and, making due allowance for the potency of the medication, for those close to termination it was massive. Priority should have been given to the more serious cases, but there was so much variation in the degree of illness within small groups that it saved time if everyone was treated as and when they were encountered.

It quickly developed into a routine that was too frenetic to be described as boring. A few words of explanation and reassurance would be given, the single injection administered, and food and water placed within easy reach of the patient, who was usually too ill to make anything but a verbal objection; then it would be on to the next one.

By the end of the third day the entire population had been treated and the second phase began, that of visiting the patients, on a daily basis if possible, to replenish the consumables and observe and report on any change in their clinical condition. The medical and support staff worked day and night, eating infrequently of the same bland, synthetic food supplied to their patients and sleeping hardly at all. Increasing fatigue caused a forced landing and two ground-vehicle accidents, none of which involved fatalities, so that the ship’s hospital no longer held only plague victims.

On the fourth day one of his adult Cromsaggar in sick bay terminated, but the number of deaths outside the ship went down to one hundred and fifteen. On the fifth day the figure had dropped to seven, and there were no fatalities reported on the sixth day.

Except for the difference in scale and the continuing effort needed to keep the widely dispersed patients supplied with food, the situation in sick bay reflected the clinical conditions outside.

As Thornnastor had predicted, a gradual remission in external symptoms was apparent and the food requirement of the adult patients had increased, and the fact that all of the food had been synthesized made no difference to their appetites. Much as he wanted to monitor their progress internally, they would not cooperate and refused to allow him to so much as touch them. With all of his medical staff and the majority of the ship’s crew scattered across the continent, he thought it better not to force the issue, especially as the patients were growing stronger with every day that passed. In spite of the differences in body mass, the young were eating more than the adults, and, as Thornnastor had also observed, their rate of physical growth was phenomenal.

It was obvious that, in order to cause such a massive retardation of growth, the disease, which the Cromsaggar had acquired prenatally, must have involved the entire endocrine system. Now that the process was being reversed and they were not only growing but maturing, another, nonclinical change was occurring. The young patients who, once their initial fear had given way to curiosity and they had grown accustomed to his strange body and multiplicity of limbs, had spoken to him freely and with the unguarded enthusiasm of children were becoming increasingly reticent.

They were speaking to him less because, Lioren observed, their recovering elders were talking to them more. And they talked only when he was not present.

By then his Monitor Corps patients had been well enough to be discharged to continue their recuperation in their own quarters, so he did not know what the Cromsaggar talked about until one day, after replenishing the food supply and his few words of friendship and reassurance had been ignored, he deliberately left one of the sick-bay senders switched on Transmit so that he would be able to listen to them from his own quarters.

In the manner of all eavesdroppers, he fully expected to overhear unkind things about himself and the bad dreams from the sky, which was the literal translation of the Cromsaggar name for their rescuers. But he was completely wrong. Instead, they talked and chanted and sang together so that his translator was unable to separate the individual voices. It was only when a single Cromsaggar spoke out alone, an adult addressing one or more of the young, that Lioren realized what he was hearing.

It was part of an initiation ceremony, a preparation and for-malized sex instruction given to the newly mature before entry into adult life, including the behavior expected of them thereafter.

Lioren broke the connection hastily. The rite of passage into adulthood was a highly sensitive area in the cultures of many intelligent species, and one into which he was not qualified to delve. If he were to continue listening out of mere lascivious curiosity, he might find that he no longer respected himself.

He was relieved, nevertheless, that with the exception of two very small children who were little more than infants, the sick bay held only male Cromsaggar.

During the days that followed there were no organic fatalities reported, but the air and surface vehicles, which had been in continuous operation over eight days and nights, had not fared so well. The food synthesizers on Vespasian and in the outlying medical stations were running at maximum safe overload, a condition that was not recommended for more than a few hours at a time. All of the organic components were displaying signs of stress and severe fatigue but were operating at close to optimum efficiency, even though they rarely talked to each other and seemed to be asleep on their feet. It was becoming clear to everyone concerned that the operation was a success and that no member of the patient population was about to die, and that knowledge was both the fuel and the lubrication which kept them working.

It was irritating to all of them, but not important, that the Cromsaggar showed no gratitude for what was being done for them apart from demolishing the previous day’s food supply. The brief explanation of the treatment and reassurance regarding their ultimate cure that was given at every visit to replenish stores was ignored. The patients were not actively hostile, unless one of the medics tried to check on their vital signs or obtain a blood sample, whereupon they reacted violently toward the person concerned.

An ungrateful and unlikable race, Lioren thought, not for the first time. But it was their physiology rather than their psychology which was his problem, and the problem was being solved.

From Sector General there was a continuing silence.

He could imagine Thornnastor’s slow, careful progress, with its relatively few patients, toward a stage in the treatment which

Lioren had already surpassed with the entire planetary population. It was no reflection on the Tralthan pathologist, who was, after all, the entity responsible for producing the cure for the plague. But if Lioren had not ignored its recommendations and risked the displeasure of his superiors, many hundreds of Crom-saggar would have died by now. And without false modesty on his part, the solution he had devised for the problem had been truly elegant.

His calculated variation in the dosage administered, based as it had been on age, body mass, and clinical factors, had insured that the young and old alike were progressing toward a complete cure at the same time. In spite of his insubordination, he was sure that his action would merit praise rather than censure.

Early on the following day he sent a brief message to the Monitor Corps base on Orligia, and copied to Sector General, requesting additional food synthesizers and spares for the air and ground transport units, adding that there had been no Crom-saggar fatalities for eight days and that a full report accompanied by a medical officer with firsthand experience of the situation was being sent with Tenelphi to the hospital. The request for synthesizers combined with the sudden drop in the death rate would tell Thornnastor what Lioren had done, and the scout ship’s medical officer would be able to fill in the details.

Dracht-Yur had been working well and very hard, and ordering its return to normal duties on Tenelphi would be both a rest and a well-deserved reward for its efforts. It would also remove the Surgeon-Lieutenant from the scene and thereby make it possible for Lioren, whose injuries were healing well, to escape the little Nidian’s irksome medical quarantine.

Before retiring that night Lioren posted the usual guard outside the sick bay, an unnecessary precaution because none of the Cromsaggar had shown any interest in what lay beyond the entrance, but necessary in Captain Williamson’s opinion in case one of the young ones decided to go exploring and injured itself on ship equipment. Tomorrow he would fly to the outlying medical shelters and, for the first time since his embarrassing mishap with the mating Cromsaggar, view the situation for himself.

He would be seeing, Lioren told himself with mixed feelings of pleasure, pride, and self-congratulation, the final stages of the cure of Cromsag.

Before he was due to board his flier next morning he visited

sick bay to check on the condition of his patients, only to find the deck and walls splattered with Cromsaggar blood and all of the adults dead. The entrance guard, after succumbing to a violent attack of nausea, reported hearing quiet voices and chanting that had continued far into the night, followed by a period of unbroken silence which it had attributed to them being asleep. But from the condition of the bodies it was clear now that they had instead been fighting and silently kicking, biting, and tearing the lives out of each other until only two of the female infants survived.

Lioren was still trying to recover from the shock, and make himself believe that he was not asleep and having a particularly horrendous dream, when the wall speaker beside him came to sudden, noisy life. It said that he should go at once to the communications center and that the bloody, self-inflicted massacre in sick bay had been repeated all over Cromsag.

Very soon it became clear that Surgeon-Captain Lioren was responsible not for curing but for killing a planetary population.

CHAPTER 5

WHEN Lioren finished speaking there was complete stillness in the room. Even though all present were already aware of every harrowing detail of the Cromsag Incident and his responsibility for it, the mere repetition was enough to shock any civilized being into silence.

“The guilt in this matter is entirely mine,” Lioren resumed, “and lest there be any doubt about this in anyone’s mind, I ask Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, to give its evidence.”

The Tralthan lumbered forward on its six elephantine feet to take the witnesses position, and, fixing one eye each on the president of the court, Lioren, O’Mara, and its printed notes, it began to speak. Within a tew minutes Meet commander uer-mod was holding up one hand for silence.

“The witness is not obliged,” it said, “to relate its evidence in such clinical detail. No doubt its medical colleagues would find it interesting but it is not understandable by the court. Please simplify your language, Diagnostician Thornnastor, and go to the explanation of why the Cromsaggar acted as they did.”

Thornnastor stamped its two medial feet in a gesture which suggested impatience, but whose exact significance would have been clear only to another Tralthan, and said, “Very well, sir . . .”

Because of the more cautious approach to the trial program at Sector General and the consequently slower progress toward a complete cure, Thornnastor explained, the hypersignal from Vespasian was received in time to prevent a repetition of the catastrophe that had occurred on Cromsag. All of the Cromsaggar had been dispersed and confined to single quarters, and the Department of Other-species Psychology had intensified its efforts to overcome the fanatical noncooperation of the patients so that they would answer questions about themselves.

It was only when the decision had been made, very reluctantly and only after lengthy consideration of possible psychological damage, to tell the patients the whole truth of what had happened on their home planet, including the fact that they were the sole surviving adult members of their race, that they began to talk about themselves. There was much anger and recrimination, understandably, but enough information was provided to make possible the formation of a theory which was supported by the archeological evidence.

The best estimate was that the plague had made its first appearance just under one thousand years ago, when the Cromsaggar level of technological and philosophical advancement included atmospheric flight and a culture that no longer practiced war. No information was available regarding the origin and evolution of the disease other than that it was transmitted by either parent during sexual coupling and, in the beginning, its effects had been mild and embarrassing rather than life-threatening. The majority of the Cromsaggar did not travel widely, and they took their sexual bondings, once formed, very seriously and did not stray in this respect, either. A number of the more farsighted Cromsaggar formed communities that were piaguc-ncc, uui me mauiig pruucss ucpcnucu on einuiiunai rather than medical factors and eventually the disease broached this immaterial defense. Another three centuries were to pass before the plague spread unchecked across all of Cromsag to infect every member of the population, adult and child alike. By that time it had increased in virulence, and deaths in middle age were becoming common.

The continuing efforts of the medical scientists were of no avail, and by the end of the following century their civilization had receded to pretechnology levels with no hope of a revival, and it was rare for anyone to live more than a decade past maturity. As a race, the Cromsaggar were facing extinction, a very early extinction because of the effect of the plague on the birth rate.

“The complete symptomology of the disease,” Thornnastor said, “including the endocrinological involvement with its effect on the sufferers’ rate of growth and maturation, has already been studied and can be discussed at length, but I shall summarize and simplify for the benefit of the court.

“Among the adults of both sexes,” it went on, “the visually and tactually unpleasant skin condition was one factor in the reducing birth rate, but it was a minor one. Even if the tegument of both partners was flawless and aesthetically pleasing, the greatly reduced performance of the endocrine system is such that the act of sexual coupling and conception is impossible without an abnormal level of prior emotional stimulation.”

Thornnastor paused. It did not possess the kind of features which could change expression, but it was as if the mind-pictures it was seeing inside its great, immobile dome of a head had made further speech impossible for a moment. Then it went on. “Efforts were made to circumvent this difficulty by medical means, and by the use of substances derived from naturally occurring vegetation which heightened the senses or had hallucinatory effects. These methods proved ineffective and were discarded because of problems of irreversible addiction, death from overdose, and seriously deformed and nonviable offspring. The solution that was ultimately found was nonmedical and involved a deliberate regression in social behavior to the dark ages of their history.

“The Cromsaggar went to war . . .”

It was not a war fought for reasons of territorial expansion or trade advantage, and neither was it fought at a distance from fortified positions or by warriors acting in concert or protected by armored machines or equipment, and it was a war not waged to the death because there was no intention on either side of killing an opponent who might very well be a family member or a friend. In fact, there were no sides because it was fought hand to hand between pairs of unarmed individuals, and it was a war whose sole purpose was to cause the maximum of fear, pain, and danger, but if possible, not death to the combatants. There was no threat or danger from a beaten and seriously wounded opponent and, even though they had been trying desperately to kill each other moments before, the vanquished were left where they lay, hopefully to recover from their wounds to fight and instill fear in an opponent another day.

Life was rare and precious to the Cromsaggar, rarer and more precious with every dwindling generation that passed; otherwise they would not have tried so hard to keep their race alive.

For it was only by overloading the sensorium with pain and intense muscular effort and subjecting themselves to the highest possible levels of emotional stress that endocrine systems rendered dormant by the eifects of the plague could be roused into something like normal activity, and remain so, aside from the wounds that had been sustained, for the time necessary for a successful coupling and procreation to take place.

But in spite of the terrible solution that had been found, adult deaths from the plague continued to rise and the birth rate to fall. The population contracted in numbers and territory occupied, moving to one continent so as to conserve what little was left of their civilization and resources and to be within easy fighting distance of each other. There was archeological evidence to suggest that in the beginning the Cromsaggar were not warlike, but the need to fight and often kill each other so that their race as a whole could survive made them so, and by the time Tenelphl discovered them, the practice of hand-to-hand combat among all adults had been conditioned into the race for many centuries.

“Even though the decision was taken for the best of all clinical reasons, that of saving many lives,” Thornnastor went on, “without prior knowledge of this conditioning, the effect of introducing a complete and short-duration cure for the plague could not have been foreseen. It is probable, and Chief Psychologist

O’Mara agrees with me in this, that the Cromsaggar who had been treated were aware of feeling better and stronger than they had ever felt before, and subconsciously they must have realized that it was no longer necessary for them to fight and place themselves in the greatest possible danger in order to achieve sexual arousal. But for many centuries they had been taught from an early age that single combat between members of one’s own sex invariably preceded coupling with one of the opposite, a level of conditioning with the strength of an evolutionary imperative. And so, the more their clinical condition improved the greater was their urge to fight and procreate. The many young, whose physical development had been retarded by the effects of the plague and who had suddenly come to maturity, felt the same compulsion to fight.

“But the real tragedy,” the Tralthan continued, “lay in the fact that individually and as a group they were fully cured, and stronger than any Cromsaggar had been since the coming of the plague. Previously they had been weak, diseased, and able to expend only a small fraction of the physical effort of which they were now capable. Their newfound strength reduced the personal fear of pain and death, and made it difficult to calibrate the levels of damage inflicted on and by opponents who were so strong and evenly matched. The result was that they killed each other, every single adult on Cromsag, leaving only the infants and children alive.

“Briefly and simply,” Thornnastor ended, “that is the background to the Cromsag Incident.”

The silence that followed Thornnastor’s words lengthened and deepened until the faint, bubbling sound made by the refrigerated life-support system of an SNLU in the audience seemed loud. It was like the Tarlan Silence of Remembrance after the passing of a friend, except here it was the population of a world that had died and it seemed that no person present was going to break it.

“With respect to the court,” Lioren said suddenly, “I ask that the trial be ended here and now, without further argument and waste of time. I stand accused of genocide through negligence. I am guilty without doubt or question and the responsibility and the guilt are entirely mine. I demand the death penalty.”

O’Mara rose to his feet before Lioren had finished speaking.

The Chief Psychologist said, “The defense would like to correct the accused on one very important point. Surgeon-Captain Lioren did not commit genocide. When the incident occurred it reacted quickly and correctly in the circumstances, by warning the hospital and organizing the rescue and care of the newly orphaned Cromsaggar children, this in spite of the fact that many of its own people had been so taken by surprise that they were unable to use the gas in time, and who were seriously injured in attempts to stop the fighting. During this period the Surgeon-Captain’s behavior was exemplary and, although the witnesses are not here present, their evidence was presented to and accepted by the civil court on Tarla and is on record—”

“The evidence is not disputed,” Lioren broke in impatiently. “It is not relevant.”

“As a result of this timely warning and subsequent actions,” O’Mara continued, ignoring the interruption, “the adult Cromsaggar under treatment here were separated before they could attack each other, and the young, both here and on Cromsag, were saved. Altogether thirty-seven adults and two hundred and eighty-three children, with a roughly equal distribution of sex, are alive and well. I have no doubt that, after a lengthy period of reeducation, resettlement, and specialized assistance in breaking their conditioning, Cromsag will be repopulated, and, now that the plague has been removed, its people will return to living together in peace.

“It is understandable that the accused should feel an overwhelming guilt in this matter,” the psychologist went on in a quieter voice. “Had that not been so, it would not have caused this court-martial to be convened. But it is possible that the great guilt that it feels over the Cromsag Incident, together with its urgent need to discharge that guilt and its impatience to receive punishment for the alleged crime, has caused it to exaggerate its case. As a psychologist I can understand and sympathize with its feelings, and with its attempts to escape the burden of its guilt. And I am sure that there is no need to remind the court that, among the sixty-five intelligent species who make up the Galactic Federation, not one of them practices judicial execution or physical chastisement during confinement.”

“You are correct, Major O’Mara,” the fleet commander said. “The reminder is unnecessary and time-wasting. Make your point briefly.”

The color of O’Mara’s facial skin deepened slightly, and it said, “The Cromsaggar are not extinct, and they will continue to survive as a race. Surgeon-Captain Lioren is guilty of exaggeration, but not genocide.”

All at once Lioren felt anger, despair, and a terrible fear. He kept one eye on O’Mara and directed the other three individually toward the officers of the court and forced calmness and clarity onto his mind as he said, “The exaggeration, this small inaccuracy that was intended only as a simplification of a terrible truth, is unimportant because the enormity of my guilt is beyond measure. And I should have no need to remind Major O’Mara of the punishment, the destruction of a medic’s professional future rather than life, which is meted out to any member of the staff whose carelessness or lack of observation leads to the clinical deterioration or death of a patient.

“I am guilty of negligence,” Lioren went on, wishing that the translator could reproduce the desperation in his voice, “and the defense counsel’s attempt to belittle and excuse what I have done is ridiculous. The fact that others, including the hospital personnel concerned with the trials of the medication, were also surprised by the Cromsaggar behavior is not an excuse. I should not have been surprised, because all the information was available to me, all the clues to the puzzle were there if I had correctly read the signs. I did not read them because I was blinded by pride and ambition, because a part of my mind was thinking that a rapid and total cure would enhance my professional reputation. I did not read them because I was negligent, unobservant, and mentally fastidious in refusing to listen to patients’ conversations relating to Cromsaggar sex practices which would have given a clear warning of what was to happen, and because I was impatient of superiors who were advocating caution—”

“Ambition, pride, and impatience,” O’Mara said, rising quickly to its feet, “are not crimes. And surely it is the degree of professional negligence, if any, that the court must punish, not the admittedly terrible and far-reaching effects of what is at most a minor transgression.”

“The court,” Fleet Commander Dermod said, “will not allow counsel to dictate to it, nor will it allow another such interruption of the prosecution’s closing statement. Sit down, Major. Surgeon-Captain Lioren, you may proceed.”

The guilt and the fear and the desperation were filling Lioren’s mind so that the finely reasoned arguments he had prepared were lost and forgotten. He could only speak simply of how he felt and hope that it would be enough.

“There is little more to add,” he said. “I am guilty of a terrible wrong. I have brought about the deaths of many thousands of people, and I do not deserve to live. I ask the court for mercy, and for the death sentence.”

Again O’Mara rose to its feet. “I am aware that the prosecution is allowed the last word. But with respect, sir, I have made a detailed submission regarding this case to the court, a submission which I have not had the opportunity of introducing for discussion.”

“Your submission was received and has been given due consideration,” the fleet commander said. “A copy was made available to the accused, who, for obvious reasons, chose not to introduce it. And may I remind defense counsel that it is I who will have the last word. Please sit down, Major. The court will confer before passing sentence.”

The misty gray hemisphere of a hush field appeared around the three officers of the court, and it seemed that everyone else might have been enclosed in the same zone of silence as their eyes turned on Lioren. In spite of it being at extreme range for an empath, at the rear of the audience he could see Prilicla trembling. But this was not a time when he could control his emotional radiation. When he remembered the contents of O’Mara’s submission to the court, he felt the most dreadful extremes of fear and despair overwhelming his mind and, for the first time in his life, an anger so great that he wanted to take the life of another intelligent being.

O’Mara saw one of his eyes looking in its direction and moved its head slightly. It was not an empath, Lioren knew, but it must be a good enough psychologist to know what was in Lioren’s mind.

Suddenly the hush field went down and the president of the court leaned forward in its chair.

“Before pronouncing sentence,” the fleet commander said, looking toward O’Mara, “the court wishes clarification and reassurance from defense counsel regarding the accused’s probable behavior in the event of a custodial rather than the death sentence being imposed. Bearing in mind Surgeon-Captain

Lioren’s present mental state, isn’t it likely that either sentence would quickly result in the accused’s death?”

O’Mara rose again. Its eyes were on Lioren rather than the fleet commander as it said, “In my professional opinion, having observed the accused during its training here and studying its behavior subsequent to the Cromsag Incident, it would not. The Surgeon-Captain is an ethical and highly moral being who would consider it dishonorable to escape what it will consider to be a justly imposed punishment for its crime by means of suicide, even though a custodial sentence would be the harshest, in terms of continued mental distress, that could be imposed. However, as the court will recall from my submission, I prefer the term ’remedial' to 'custodial.' To reiterate, the accused would not kill itself but it would, as you have already gathered, be most grateful if the court would do the job for it.”

“Thank you, Major,” the fleet commander said; then it turned to face Lioren.

“Surgeon-Captain Lioren,” it said, “this court-martial upholds the earlier verdicts of your own civil and medical courts on Tarla, your home world, and finds you guilty of an excusable error in observation and judgment which led, regrettably, to a major catastrophe. Although it would be kinder in the circumstances to do so, we will not depart from Federation judicial practice of three centuries, or waste a potentially valuable life should the therapy prove successful, by imposing the death sentence that you so plainly desire. Instead you are to be given a custodial and remedial sentence of two years, stripped of your Monitor Corps and medical rank, and forbidden to leave this hospital, which is an establishment large enough for your confinement not to prove irksome. For obvious reasons you are also forbidden access to the Cromsaggar ward. You will be placed in the charge and under the direction of Chief Psychologist O’Mara. In that time the major expects to bring about a psychological and emotional readjustment which will enable you to begin a new career.

“You have the court’s deepest sympathy, ex-Surgeon-Captain Lioren, and its best wishes.”

CHAPTER 6

LIOREN stood on the clear area of floor in front of O’Mara’s desk, surrounded on three sides by the strangely shaped furniture designed for the comfort of physiological classifications other than his own, and stared down at the psychologist with all of his eyes. Since the imposition of the sentence and a regimen that nothing in his power could change, the intensity of his feelings toward the stocky little biped with its gray head fur and eyes that never looked away had diminished from a life-threatening hatred to a level of dislike so deeply etched into Lioren’s mind that he did not believe that it could ever be erased.

“Liking me is not a prerequisite of the treatment, fortunately,” O’Mara said, seeming to read Lioren’s mind; “otherwise Sector General would be without its medical staff. I have made myself responsible for you and, having read a copy of my written submission to the court-martial, you are aware of my reasons for doing so. Need I restate them?”

O’Mara had argued that the principal reason for what had happened on Cromsag had been due to certain character defects in Lioren, faults which should have been detected and corrected during its other-species medical training at Sector General, and this was an omission for which the Psychology Department was entirely to blame. That being the case, and bearing in mind the fact that Sector General was not a psychiatric hospital, Lioren could be considered as a trainee who had not satisfactorily completed his training in other-species relations rather than a patient, and be attached to the Psychology Department under O’Mara’s supervision. In spite of his proven medical and surgical ability with many life-forms, as a trainee he would have less status than a qualified ward nurse.

“No,” Lioren said.

“Good,” O’Mara said. “I dislike wasting time, or people. At present I have no specific orders for you other than that you will move freely within the hospital, initially with an escort from this department, or, if there are times when this causes an unacceptable level of embarrassment or distress, you will perform routine office tasks. These will include you familiarizing yourself with the work of the department and the medical staff psych files, most of which will be opened to you for study. Should you uncover any evidence of unusual behavior, uncharacteristic reactions toward other-species staff members, or unexplained reductions in professional standards, you will report it to me, having first discussed it with one of your department colleagues to insure that it is worth my attention.

“It is important to remember,” the psychologist went on, “that with the exception of a few of the most gravely ill patients, everyone in the hospital knows all about your case. Many of them will ask questions, polite and considerate questions for the most part, except the Kelgians, who do not understand the concept of politeness. You will also receive many well-intentioned offers of help and encouragement and much sympathy.”

O’Mara paused for a moment; then, in a softer voice, it continued. “I shall do everything that I can to help you. Truly, you have suffered and are suffering a great mental anguish, and laboring under a burden of guilt greater than any I have encountered in the literature or in my own long experience; a load so heavy that any other mind but yours would have been utterly destroyed by it. I am greatly impressed by your emotional control and horrified at the thought of your present level of mental distress. I shall do everything possible to relieve it and I, too, who am in the best position of anyone other than yourself to understand the situation, offer you my sympathy.

“But sympathy,” it went on, “is at best a palliative treatment, and one which diminishes in effect with repeated application. That is why I am applying it on this one and only occasion. Henceforth, you will do exactly as you are told, perform all the routine, menial, boring tasks set you, and you will receive no sympathy from anyone in this department. Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” Lioren said, “that my pride must be humbled and my crime punished, for that is what I deserve.” O’Mara made an untranslatable sound. “What you think you deserve, Lioren. When you begin to believe that you might not deserve it, you will be well on the way to recovery. And now I will introduce you to the staff in the outer office.”

As O’Mara had promised, the work of the office was routine and repetitious, but during the first few weeks it was still too new for him to find it boring. Apart from the periods spent sleeping, or at least resting, or using his room’s food dispenser, Lioren had not left the department, nor had he exercised anything but his brain. His concentration on the new duties was total, and as a result the quality, quantity, and his understanding of the work increased to the point where it drew praise from both Lieutenant Braithwaite and Trainee Cha Thrat, although not from Major O’Mara.

The Chief Psychologist never praised anyone, it had told him, because its job was to shrink heads, not swell them. Lioren could not make any clinical or semantic sense of the remark and decided that it must be what the Earth-human DBDGs called a joke.

Lioren could not ignore his growing curiosity about the two beings with whom he was spending so much time, but the psych files of departmental personnel were closed to each other, and they neither asked personal questions nor answered any about themselves. Possibly it was a departmental rule, or O’Mara had told them to keep a rein on their natural curiosity out of consideration for Lioren’s feelings, but then one day Cha Thrat suggested that the rule did not apply outside the office.

“You should forget that display screen for a while, Lioren,” the Sommaradvan said as it was about to leave for its midday meal, “and rest your mind from Cresk-Sar’s interminable student progress reports. Let’s refuel.”

Lioren hesitated for a moment, thinking about the permanently crowded dining hall for the hospital’s warm-blooded oxygen-breathers and the people he would have to meet in the busy corridors between. Lioren was not sure if he was ready for that.

Before he could reply, Cha Thrat said, “The catering computer has been programmed with a full Tarlan menu, synthetic, of course, but much better than that tasteless stodge the room dispensers dish out. That computer must be feeling hurt, ag- grieved, even insulted at being ignored by the only Tarlan on the staff. Why not make it happy and come along?”

Computers did not have feelings, and Cha Thrat must know that as well as he did. Perhaps it was making a Sommaradvan joke.

“I will come,” Lioren said.

“So will I,” Braithwaite said.

It was the first time in Lioren’s experience that the outer office had been left unattended, and he wondered if one or both of them were risking O’Mara’s displeasure by doing so. But their behavior on the way to the dining hall, and the firm but unobtrusive manner in which they discouraged any member of the medical staff who seemed disposed to stop him and talk, made it plain that they were acting with the Chief Psychologist’s approval. And when they found three vacant places at a table designed for the use of Melfan ELNTs, Braithwaite and Cha Thrat made sure that he remained between them. The other occupants, five Kelgian DBLFs noisily demolishing the character of some unnamed Charge Nurse as they were rising to leave, could not be avoided. Nothing was proof against Kelgian curiosity.

“I am Nurse Tarsedth,” one of them said, turning its narrow, conical head to point in Lioren’s direction. “Your Sommaradvan friend knows me well, since we trained together, but does not recognize me because it insists that, in spite of having four eyes, it cannot tell Kelgians apart. But my questions are for you, Surgeon-Captain. How are you feeling? Does your guilt manifest itself in bouts of psychosomatic pain? What therapy has O’Mara devised for you? Is it effective? If not, is there anything I can do to help?”

Suddenly Braithwaite started making untranslatable sounds, and its facial coloring had changed from pinkish yellow to deep red.

Tarsedth looked at it briefly, then said, “This often happens when the food and air passages share a common entrance channel. Anatomically, the Earth-human DBDG life-form is a mess.”

Anatomically, Lioren thought as he tried hard to concentrate on the questioner in an attempt to avoid the pain that its questions were causing, the Kelgian was beautiful. It was physiological classification DBLF, warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, multi-pedal, and with a long, flexible cylindrical body covered overall by highly mobile, silvery fur. The fur moved continually in slow ripples from its conical head right down to the tail, and with tiny cross-eddies and wavelets appearing as if the incredibly fine pelt were a liquid stirred by an unfelt wind. It was that fur which explained, and excused, the other’s rude and direct approach to what it must know to be a sensitive subject.

Because of inadequacies in the Kelgian speech organs, their spoken language lacked modulation, inflection, and any emotional expression, but they were compensated by the fur, which acted, so far as another Kelgian was concerned, as a perfect but uncontrollable mirror of the speaker’s emotional state. As a result the concept of lying or being diplomatic, tactful, or even polite was completely alien to them. A Kelgian said exactly what it meant or felt because its fur revealed its feelings from moment to moment, and to do otherwise would have been considered a stupid waste of time. The opposite also held true, because politeness and the verbal circumlocutions used by many other species simply confused and irritated them.

“Nurse Tarsedth,” Lioren said suddenly, “I am feeling very unwell, but on the psychological rather than the physical level. The therapy O’Mara is using in my case is not yet clear to me, but the fact that I have visited the dining hall for the first time since the trial, even though accompanied by two protectors, suggests that it is beginning to work, or that my condition may be improving in spite of it. If your questions are prompted by more than mere curiosity and the offer of help intended to be taken as more than a verbal kindness, I suggest that you ask for details of the therapy and its progress, if any, from the Chief Psychologist.”

“Are you stupid?” the Kelgian said, its silvery pelt tufting suddenly into spikes. “I would not dare ask a question like that. O’Mara would tear my fur off in small pieces!”

“Probably,” Cha Thrat said as Tarsedth was leaving, “without benefit of anesthetic.”

Their food trays slid from the table’s delivery recess to the accompaniment of an audible signal that kept him from hearing the Kelgian’s reply. Braithwaite said, “So that’s what Tarlans eat,” and thereafter kept its eyes averted from Lioren’s platter.

In spite of having to eat and speak with the same orifice, the Earth-human kept up a continuous dialogue with Cha Thrat, during which they both left conversational gaps enticingly open so that Lioren could join in. Plainly they were doing their best both to put him at ease and keep his attention from the nearby tables where everyone was watching him, but, with a member of a species who had to make a conscious mental effort not to look in every direction at once, they were having little success. It was also plain that he was undergoing psychotherapy of a not very subtle form.

He knew that Cha Thrat and Braithwaite were fully informed about his case, but they were trying to make him repeat the information verbally so as to gauge his present feelings about himself and those around him. The method they were using was to exchange what appeared to be highly confidential and often personal information about themselves, their past lives, their personal feelings about the department and toward O’Mara and other entities on the hospital staff with whom they had had pleasant or unpleasant contact, in the hope that Lioren would reciprocate. He listened with great interest but did not speak except in answer to direct questions from them or from staff members who stopped from time to time at their table.

Questions from the silver-furred Kelgians he answered as simply and directly as they were asked. To the shy well-wishings of a massive, six-legged Hudlar whose body was covered only by a recently applied coat of nutrient paint and the tiny ID patch of an advanced student nurse he replied with polite thanks. He also thanked an Earth-human called Timmins, wearing a Monitor Corps uniform with Maintenance insignia, who hoped that the Tarlan environment in his quarters had been properly reproduced, and said that if there was anything else that would make him feel more comfortable he should not hesitate to ask for it. A Melfan wearing the gold-edged band of a Senior Physician on one crablike arm stopped to say that it was pleased to see him making use of the dining hall, because it had wanted to speak to the Tarlan but that, regrettably on this occasion, it was due in ELNT Surgery. Lioren told it that he intended using the dining hall regularly in the future and that there would be other opportunities to talk.

That reply seemed to please Braithwaite and Cha Thrat, and when the Melfan Senior left them they resumed the conversation whose gaps Lioren steadfastly refused to fill. If he had chosen to speak and reveal his feelings just then, it would have been to say that, having been condemned to live for the terrible crime he had committed, he must accept as part of the punishment these constant reminders of his guilt.

He did not think they would be pleased to hear that.

The members of the Psychology Department, Lioren discovered, were free to move anywhere within the hospital and talk to or question, at any time which did not adversely affect the performance of the individual’s professional duties, everyone from the lowest trainee nurse or maintenance person up to the near godlike Diagnosticians themselves, and it came as no surprise that their authority to pry into everyone else’s most private and personal concerns made them very few friends among the staff. The surprises were the manner in which these multispecies psychologists were recruited and their prior professional qualifications, if any.

O’Mara had joined Sector General shortly before it had been commissioned, as a structural engineer, and the work it had done among the original staff and patients that resulted in its promotion to major and Chief Psychologist was no longer open for study, although there was a rumor that it had once wet-nursed an orphaned infant Hudlar unaided and without benefit either of heavy-lifting machinery or translation devices, but that story Lioren considered to be too wildly improbable to have any basis in fact.

From the words spoken and unspoken it seemed that Lieutenant Braithwaite’s career had begun in the Corps’s Other-Species Communications and Cultural Contact Division, where initially it had shown great promise and an even greater impatience with its superiors. It was enthusiastic, dedicated, self-reliant, and intuitive where its work was concerned, and whether its intuition proved trustworthy, as happened in the majority of cases, or unsafe, the result was deeply stressful to those in authority. Its attempt to expedite the First Contact procedure on Keran by circumventing the philosophically conservative priesthood caused a citywide religious riot in which many Keranni were killed and injured. Thereafter it was disciplined before being transferred to a number of subordinate administrative positions, none of which proved suitable either to Braithwaite or its superiors, before coming to Sector General. For a short time it was attached to the Maintenance Department’s internal-communications section until, in an attempt to rewrite and simplify the multispecies translation program, it knocked down the main computer and left the entire hospital staff and patients unable to do anything but bark, gobble, or cheep unintelligibly at each other for several hours. Colonel Skempton had been less impressed by what Braithwaite had hoped to do than by the havoc it had caused, and was about to banish it to the loneliest and most distant Monitor Corps outpost in the Federation when O’Mara had intervened on its behalf.

Similarly, Cha Thrat’s career had been beset by personal and professional difficulties. It was the first and so far only Som-maradvan female to qualify and practice as a warrior-surgeon, a position of great eminence in a profession which was otherwise exclusively male. Lioren was unsure of what a warrior-surgeon of that planet was supposed to be or do, but it had been able to treat successfully a member of an off-planet species, an Earth-human Monitor Corps officer very seriously injured in a flier crash, that Cha Thrat had encountered for the first time. Impressed by its surgical skills and flexibility of mind, the Corps had offered it the opportunity of training in multispecies surgery at Sector Twelve General Hospital. Cha Thrat had accepted because, unlike on its home world, the other-species doctors there would judge it on professional merit without caring whether it was male or female.

But the intense dedication and rigorous clinical disciplines of a warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva, which in many respects resembled those of Lioren’s own Tarlan medical fraternity, were not those of Sector General. Cha Thrat did not go into the details of its misdemeanors, suggesting instead that any member of the staff would be eager to satisfy Lioren’s curiosity in the matter, but the impression given was that as a trainee it had exercised its clinical initiative too freely, and too often proved its nominal superiors wrong. After one particular incident during which it had temporarily lost one of its own limbs, no ward in the hospital would accept it for training and it, like Braithwaite, had been transferred to Maintenance until a major act of insubordination warranted by the clinical situation at the time brought about its dismissal. And, again like Braithwaite, it was O’Mara who had kept Cha Thrat from leaving the hospital by recruiting it for the department.

As the conversation that was designed both to inform and to draw him out continued, Lioren felt a growing sympathy for these two entities. Like himself they had been cursed with too much intelligence, individuality, and initiative and had suffered grievously thereby.

Naturally, their crimes were insignificant compared with Lioren’s own, because they were psychologically flawed misfits rather than criminals and not fully responsible for the wrongs they had done. But were they confessing those misdeeds to him in the form of an apparently unimportant exchange of gossip, ostensibly so that he would better understand them and the situation within the department? Or was it an attempt to assuage their own guilt by trying to help him? He could not be sure because they were concealing their true feelings, unlike himself, by talking too much rather than by remaining silent. The thought that they might not be suffering at all, that their efforts to help Lioren and their other department duties made them forget their past misdeeds came to trouble him, but he dismissed the idea as ridiculous. One could no more forget a past crime than one’s own name.

“Lioren,” Braithwaite said suddenly. “You are not eating and neither are you talking to us. Would you prefer to return to the office?”

“No,” Lioren said, “not immediately. It is clear to me that this visit to the dining hall was a psychological test and that my words and behavior have been closely observed. You have also, almost certainly as part of the test, been answering questions about yourselves without my having to ask them, some of them personal questions which I would have considered it most impolite to ask. Now I will ask one question directly of you. As a result of these observations, what are your conclusions?”

Braithwaite remained silent, but with a small movement of its head indicated that Cha Thrat was to answer.

“You have heard and will understand,” the Sommaradvan said, “that I am a warrior-surgeon forbidden to practice my true art and am not yet a fully-qualified wizard. For this reason the spells that I cast lack subtlety, as your words have already shown, and are quite transparent. There is a risk that my observations and conclusions, too, may be oversimplified and inaccurate. They are that my spell aimed at bringing you out of the seclusion of the office and your quarters to the dining hall was unsuccessful in that you reacted calmly and with no apparent emotional distress to the entities who approached you. It was unsuccessful in that it did not overcome your unwillingness to reveal personal feelings, which was another and more important purpose of the test. My conclusion is that any future visits to the dining hall should be unaccompanied unless the accompaniment be for social rather than therapeutic reasons.”

Braithwaite nodded its head in the Earth-human gesture of silent agreement. “As the subject of this partially successful test, Lioren, what are your own conclusions about it? Express your feelings about that, at least, freely as would a Kelgian, and do not spare ours.”

Lioren was silent for a moment, then said, “I feel curious as to why, in this age of advanced medicine and technology, Cha Thrat considers itself to be a wizard, unqualified or otherwise. I also feel surprise and concern regarding the personal information you have revealed to me. At the risk of being grossly offensive, I can only conclude that . . . Is the Psychology Department staffed with insubordinate misfits and entities with a history of emotional disturbance?”

Cha Thrat made an untranslatable sound and the Earth-human barked softly.

“Without exception,” Braithwaite said.

CHAPTER 7

NEVER in all his long years as a student on Tarla and during his advanced training at Sector General had Lioren been given such a woolly-minded and imprecise set of instructions.

Surely Major O’Mara, who was reputed to possess one of the finest and most analytical minds in the hospital, should not be capable of issuing such instructions. Not for the first time Lioren wondered if the Chief Psychologist, charged as it was with the heavy responsibility of maintaining the mental health of close on ten thousand medical and maintenance staff belonging to sixty-odd different species, had been affected by one of the non- physical maladies it was expected to treat. Or was it simply that Lioren, as the department’s most recent and least knowledgeable recruit, had misunderstood the other’s words?

“For my own mental clarification and to reduce the possibility of misunderstanding,” Lioren said carefully, “may I repeat my instructions aloud?”

“If you think it necessary,” the Chief Psychologist replied. From Lioren’s growing experience of reading Earth-human voice sounds and the expressions on their flabby, yellow-pink faces, he knew that O’Mara was losing patience.

Ignoring the nonverbal content of the response, Lioren said, “I am to observe Senior Physician Seldal, for as long and as often as the subject’s duty schedule and my other work allows, without drawing attention to the fact that it is under observation. I am to look for evidence of abnormal or uncharacteristic behavior even though you are aware that, to a Tarlan BRLH like myself, normal and characteristic behavior in a Nallajim of physiological classification LSVO would appear equally strange to me. I am to do this without any prior indication of what it is that I am to look for or, indeed, if there is anything to look for in the first place. If I am able to detect such behavior, I should try, covertly, to discover the reason for it, and my report should include suggestions for remedial treatment.

“But what,” he went on when it was clear that the other was not going to speak, “if I cannot detect any abnormality?”

“Negative evidence,” O’Mara said, “can also be valuable.”

“Is it your intention that I proceed in complete ignorance,” Lioren asked, anger making him forget for a moment the deference due to a nominal superior, “or will I be allowed to study the subject’s psych file?”

“You may study it to your heart’s content,” O’Mara said. “And if you have no further questions, Charge Nurse Kursen-neth is waiting.”

“I have an observation and a question,” Lioren said quickly. “This seems to me to be a particularly imprecise method of briefing a trainee on his first case. Surely I should be given some indication of what is wrong with Seldal. I mean, what did the Senior Physician do to arouse your suspicions in the first place?

O’Mara exhaled noisily. “You have been assigned the Seldal case, and you have not been told what to do because I don’t know what to do with it, either.”

Lioren made a surprised sound which did not translate and said, “Does the possibility exist that the most experienced other-species psychologist in the hospital is faced with a case that it is incapable of solving?”

“Other possibilities you might consider,” O’Mara said, leaning back into its chair, “is that the problem does not exist. Or that it is a minor one and so unimportant that no serious harm will result if it was to be mishandled by a trainee. It is also possible that more urgent problems are claiming my attention and this is the reason why you have been given this small and nonurgent one.

“For the first time you are being given access to the psych file of a Senior Physician,” it went on before Lioren could reply. “It might also be that, as a trainee, you are expected to discover for yourself what it was that aroused my suspicions, and in the light of your subsequent investigation to decide whether or not they were justified.”

Embarrassed, Lioren allowed his four medial limbs to go limp so that the fingertips touched the floor, the sign that he was defenseless before the just criticism of a superior. O’Mara would understand the significance of the gesture, but the Earth-human chose to ignore it and went on, “The most important part of our work here is to be constantly on the lookout for abnormal or uncharacteristic behavior in each and every member of the staff, whatever the species or circumstances, and ultimately to develop an instinct for detecting the cause of such trouble before it can seriously affect the being concerned, other staff members or patients. Are your objections based on an unwillingness to speak at length, rather than the necessarily brief conversations held in the dining hall, because the subject of your past misdeeds would be sure to come up and this would cause you severe emotional distress?”

“No,” Lioren said firmly. “Any such discomfort would be as nothing compared with the punishment I deserve.”

O’Mara shook its head. “That is not a good response, Lioren, but for now I shall accept it. Send in Kursenneth as you leave.”

The Kelgian Charge Nurse undulated rapidly into the inner office, its silvery fur rippling with impatience, as Lioren closed the door behind him and dropped into his work position with enough force to make the support structure protest audibly. The only other person in the outer office was Braithwaite, whose attention was focused on its visual display. Muttering angrily, he bent over the console to key in his personal ID and departmental authorization with the request for the Seldal material, optioning for the printed rather than the Tarlan audio translation.

“Are you addressing me or yourself?” Braithwaite asked, looking up suddenly from its work and displaying its teeth. “Either speak a little louder so I can hear you, or more quietly so I can’t.”

“I am not addressing anyone,” Lioren said. “I am thinking aloud about O’Mara and its unreasonable expectations of me. Mistakenly I assumed that I was speaking in an undertone, and I apologize for distracting you from your work.”

Braithwaite sat back in its chair, looked at the closely printed sheets that were piling up on Lioren’s desktop and said, “So he gave you the Seldal case. But there is no need to agitate yourself. If you can produce a result at all, you would not be expected to do so overnight. And if you should tire of delving into the not very murky recesses of a Nallajim Senior’s mind, the latest batch of trainee progress reports from Cresk-Sar are on your desk. I would like you to update the relevant personnel files before the end of next shift.”

“Of course,” Lioren said. Braithwaite showed its teeth again and returned to its work.

Senior Physician Cresk-Sar had been his clinical tutor during his first year at the hospital and it was still a person totally impossible to please. Reading its characteristically pessimistic report on the apparent lack of progress of the current intake of student nurses, Lioren wondered for a moment whether he should give priority to the deadly dull but important material from the Senior Tutor or to the more interesting but probably less productive psych file on Seldal. Dutifully, as befitted the most junior member of the department, he decided on the former.

A few moments later, while he was reading the clinical competence appraisal and promotion options for a Kelgian student nurse whose name was familiar to him, he abruptly changed his mind and called up the Seldal file. He began studying it so closely that he scarcely noticed the departure of Kursenneth and the arrival of a Tralthan intern who lumbered into the inner office on its six massive feet. But the noise had caused Braithwaite to look up, and Lioren made a polite, untranslatable sound designed to attract the lieutenant’s attention.

“This is interesting,” he said, “but the only parts that I fully understand are the LSVO physiological and environmental data. I don’t know enough about Nallajim interpersonal behavior in general and Seldal in particular to be able to detect any abnormality. It would be better if I was to observe Seldal directly for a period, and talk to it if this can be done without arousing its suspicions, so that I will have a clearer idea of the entity I am investigating.”

“It’s your case,” Braithwaite said.

“Then that is what I shall do,” Lioren said, securing the Seldal and Cresk-Sar material and preparing to leave.

“And I agree,” the lieutenant said, returning to its work, “that doing anything else is preferable to wading through Cresk-Sar’s god-awful boring progress reports . . .”

A quick reference to the senior staff duty roster told Lioren that Seldal would be in the Melfan OR on the seventy-eighth level. Allowing for traffic density in the intervening corridors and a delay while changing into a protective envelope before taking the shortcut through the level of the chlorine-breathing Illensan PVSJs, he should be able to see the Senior Physician before it left for its midday meal.

As yet Lioren had no clear idea of what he would do or say when he was confronted with his first nonsurgical case, and on the way there was no opportunity to think of anything other than avoiding embarrassment or injury by tripping over or colliding violently with staff members.

Theoretically the entities possessing the greater medical seniority had the right of way, but not for the first time he saw a Senior belonging to one of the smaller physiological classifications take hasty evasive action when a six-limbed Hudlarian FROB Charge Nurse with eight times the body mass and an urgent task to perform bore down on it. In such cases it was reassuring to see that the instinct for survival took precedence over rank, although the ensuing contact was verbally rather than physically violent.

With Lioren, however, there was no problem. His trainee’s armband indicated that he had no rank at all and should get out of everyone’s way.

Two crablike Melfan ELNTs and a chlorine-breathing Illen san PVSJ chittered and hissed their displeasure at him as he dodged between them at an intersection; then he jumped aside as a multiply absentminded Tralthan Diagnostician lumbered heavily toward him, and in so doing accidentally jostled a tiny, red-furred Nidian intern, who barked in reproof.

Even though their physiological classifications varied enormously, the majority of the staff were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers like himself. A much greater hazard to navigation were the entities traversing what was to them a foreign level in protective armor. The local protection needed by a TLTU doctor, who breathed superheated steam and whose pressure and gravity requirements were many times greater than the environment of the oxygen levels, was a great, clanking juggernaut which had to be avoided at all costs.

In the PVSJ transfer lock he donned a lightweight envelope and let himself into the yellow, foggy world of the chlorine-breathers. There the corridors were less crowded, and it was the spiny, membranous, and unadorned denizens of Illensa who were in the majority while the Tralthans, Kelgians, and a single Tarlan, himself, wore or in some cases drove protective armor.

The greatly reduced volume of pedestrian traffic gave Lioren a chance to think again about his strangely imprecise assignment, his department, and the work that he had been sentenced to perform.

Even if he was able to prove that O’Mara’s suspicions were unfounded, investigating Seldal would be a unique experience for him. He would take the case very seriously indeed, regardless of its probable minor nature, and if his observations showed that Seldal really had a problem . . .

Lioren raised his four eyes briefly to offer up a prayer to his light-years-distant God of Tarla, in whose existence he no longer believed, pleading for guidance as to what was or was not abnormal behavior in one of the highly intelligent, three-legged, nonflying birdlike natives of Nallaji. He lowered his eyes in time to flatten himself against the wall as the mobile refrigerated pressure envelope belonging to an ultra-low-temperature SNLU rolled silently toward him from a side corridor. Irritated at his momentary lapse of attention, Lioren resumed his journey.

Until now the only abnormal and dangerous behavior he had identified, and it was a type all too prevalent in the hospital, was careless driving.

CHAPTER 8

LIOREN moved along the Melfan surgical ward at a pace which suggested that he knew where he was going and what he intended doing when he got there. The Illensan Charge Nurse on duty looked up from its desk, stirred restively within its protective envelope, but otherwise ignored him, and the other nurses were too busy attending to the post-op ELNTs even to notice his passing. But as he walked between the double line of padded support frames which were the Melfan equivalent of surgical beds it became clear that Senior Physician Seldal, in spite of its name appearing on the ward’s staff-on-duty board, was not present. Neither was Student Nurse Tarsedth.

Among the Illensan, Kelgian, and Tralthan nurses working all around him a Nallajim would have been hard to miss, which meant that it must still be in the operating theater adjoining the ward. Lioren climbed the ascending ramp to the observation gallery—a large number of the medical staff were physiologically incapable of mounting stairs—and saw that he had guessed right. He also discovered that there were two other observers in the gallery. As he had hoped and half expected, one of them was Tarsedth, the Kelgian DBLF who had spoken to him during his first visit to the dining hall several days earlier.

“What are you doing here?” the Kelgian asked, its fur rippling with erratic waves of surprise. “After that mess you made on Cromsag they told us that you would be having nothing to do with other-species bloodletting.”

Lioren thought that it was a particularly dishonorable thing to lie to a member of a species that was totally incapable of lying, so he decided on the compromise of not telling all of the truth.

“I still retain mv interest in other-species surgery. Nurse Tar- sedth,” he said, “even though I am forbidden to practice it. Is the case interesting?”

“Not to me,” Tarsedth said, returning its attention to the scene below them. “My principal interest here is in the OR staff procedure, artificial gravity controls, patient presentation, and instrument deployment, not all this surgical pecking at some hapless Melfan’s innards.”

The other occupant of the gallery, an FROB, vibrated its speaking membrane in the Hudlar equivalent of clearing its throat, and said, “I am interested in the surgery, Lioren. As you can see, the operation is nearing completion. But if there is any aspect of the earlier work of particular interest to you, I would be pleased to discuss it.”

Lioren turned all of his eyes on the speaker but was unable, as were the majority of the hospital staff, to tell one Hudlar from another. The transparent eye casings were featureless, as were the squat, heavy body and the six tapering, immensely strong tentacles which supported it. The skin, which in appearance and texture resembled a seamless covering of flexible armor, was discolored by patches of dried-out, exhausted food, indicating that the being was urgently in need of respraying with nutrient. But it seemed to know Lioren, or knew of him. Was it possible that this friendly Hudlar, like Tarsedth, had spoken to him earlier?

“Thank you,” Lioren said. Choosing his words carefully, he went on, “I am interested in Nallajim surgical procedure, and in particular how this one—”

“I thought all you Psychology people knew everything about everybody,” Tarsedth broke in, strong emotion agitating its fur. “You’ve read Cresk-Sar’s reports on us, so you know I am here, spending free time trying to familiarize myself with other-species OR procedures. You know that I’m trying to impress our noxious little Nidian tutor with my knowledge and interest in the subject so that it will approve my request for a posting to the new ELNT theater on fifty-three, and the early promotion that it would bring. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were sent here by O’Mara or Cresk-Sar.

“You know everything,” Tarsedth ended, its pelt spiking into worried peaks, “but Psychology people say nothing.”

Lioren controlled his anger by reminding himself once again that the Kelgian could not help expressing its true feelings, and his reply, so far as it went, was equally blunt and honest.

“I came here to watch Seldal at work,” he said, “and I have no interest in your future plans or your method of furthering them. Cresk-Sar’s latest report came in this morning, and from reading it and earlier reports I have been made aware of your progress in the most meticulous and boring detail. I am also aware that the material in your file is confidential to my department and must not be discussed with anyone outside it. However, I will say that you are—”

The Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated suddenly as it said, “Lioren, be careful. If you have information which should not be divulged, even though the reasons appear to you to be unreasonable or administrative rather than therapeutic, please remember that you are once again a trainee and your future depends, like ours, in keeping our department heads happy or, at very least, not actively antagonistic toward us because of disobedience or insubordination.

“Tarsedth is trying very hard for this promotion,” it went on quickly, “and it is irritated by what it considers to be the unnecessary secrecy regarding its chances. But it would not wish reassurance or otherwise if the information you gave it was to lead to your dismissal. Like the other nurse trainees, all of whom have discussed you at great length, Tarsedth believes that your only hope of coming to terms with your terrible problem is to remain within the hospital.

“Lioren,” it ended, “please guard your tongue.”

For a moment a sudden engagement of his emotions made it impossible for Lioren’s speech centers to function. It seemed that the dislike of the medical staff for Psychology Department members was not general. But he must not forget that his purpose in coming here was to collect information on Seldal, and the best way of doing that might be to place these two entities under an obligation to him.

“As I was about to say,” Lioren resumed, “I am forbidden to discuss restricted material, whether it refers to the inner workings of the mind of a nurse-in-training or that of the able and highly respected Senior Physician Cresk-Sar . . .”

Tarsedth made a sound which did not translate, but the uneven ruffling of its fur made it plain what the Kelgian thought of its principal tutor.

“However,” he went on, “that does not preclude the discussion of such matters between yourselves, or of you producing theories regarding your possible future behavior based on past, firsthand knowledge of the entity concerned. You might begin by considering the fact that, for a great many years, Cresk-Sar has been noted for being the most dedicated, meticulous, pro-, fessionally uncompromising, and personally unpleasant tutor on the staff. And that its trainees suffer the most extreme mental and emotional discomfort, but rarely fail their examinations. Perhaps because of the fear that they will disappoint it by failing to achieve their full potential, the most promising students are made to suffer the worst unpleasantness. You might also remember that Cresk-Sar is so single-minded about its teaching duties that it frequently interrupts and questions trainees regarding their progress during off-duty periods. You might also consider the probable effect on such a tutor of a hypothetical trainee who seems to be ambitious, dedicated, or stupid enough to spend free time, and even forgo a meal as you are doing, in furthering that ambition.

“Having weighed all these factors yourselves,” Lioren added, “you might consider that our hypothetical trainee had nothing to worry about, and hypothetically I would be forced to agree with you.”

“Lioren,” Tarsedth said, its fur settling into slow, relieved waves, “you are breaking, or at least seriously deforming, the rules. And ambitious I may be but stupid I am not; I packed a lunch box. But this one—” It pointed its head in the Hudlar’s direction. “—came away without its nutrient supply. It will have to be very polite and apologetic, whatever that means, to the Charge Nurse and ask for a quick spray, or it won’t make our next lecture.”

“I’m always polite and apologetic,” the Hudlar said, “especially to Charge Nurses, who must grow a little tired of forgetful, starving FROBs turning up at odd times looking for a handout. It will be critical toward me, perhaps personally abusive, but it won’t refuse. After all, a Hudlar collapsing from malnutrition in the middle of its ward would make the place look untidy.”

He looked closely at the Hudlar, whose smooth and incredibly dense body was beginning to sag in spite of its six widely spaced tentacles. The FROB classification were native to a very heavy-gravity planet with proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The world’s atmosphere resembled a thick, semiliquid soup laden with tiny, airborne food particles, which were ingested by an absorption mechanism covering its back and flanks, and, because the Hudlars were intensely energy-hungry creatures, the process was continuous. In other-world environments and at the hospital it had been found more convenient to spray them at frequent intervals with nutrient paint. It was possible that this one had found Seldal’s procedure so interesting that it had allowed its energy reserves to run dangerously low.

“Wait here,” Lioren said briskly, “while I ask Charge Nurse for a sprayer. It would be less troublesome for all concerned if you made the observation gallery untidy instead of collapsing in the main ward. And up here we won’t risk spraying your smelly Hudlar nutrient onto its nice clean floor and patients.”

By the time he returned with the nutrient tank and sprayer, the Hudlar’s body had settled to the floor with its tentacles twitching feebly and only soft, untranslatable sounds coming from its speech membrane. Lioren used the sprayer expertly and accurately—in common with his fellow Monitor Corps officers, he had been taught to perform this favor for FROB personnel engaged in construction work in airless conditions—and within a few minutes it was fully recovered. Below them Seldal and its patient were no longer visible and the theater was emptying of its OR staff.

“That particular act of charity caused you to miss the end of the operation,” Tarsedth said, ruffling its fur disapprovingly at the Hudlar. “Seldal has left for the dining hall and won’t return until—”

“Your pardon, Tarsedth,” the Hudlar broke in, “but you are forgetting that I recorded the procedure in its entirety. I would be happy to have both of you view a rerun in my place after lectures.”

“No!” Tarsedth said. “Hudlars don’t use beds or chairs and there would be nowhere for a soft body like mine, or even Lioren’s, to relax. And my place is far too small to allow a couple of outsize thrennigs like you two inside. If it is that interested, Lioren can always borrow your tape sometime.”

“Or both of you could come to my room,” Lioren said quickly. “I have never seen a Nallajim surgeon perform and any comments you might make would be helpful to me.”

“When?” Tarsedth said.

He had arranged a time suitable for all three of them when the Hudlar said quietly, “Lioren, are you sure that talking about other-species surgery will not cause you emotional distress or that gossiping, for that is what we will be doing, with people outside your department will not get you into trouble with O’Mara?”

“Nonsense!” Tarsedth said. “Gossiping is the most satisfying nonphysical activity between people. We’ll see you then, Lioren, and this time I’ll make sure my overweight friend here remembers to bring a spare nutrient tank.”

When they had gone, Lioren returned the exhausted tank to the Charge Nurse, who needed to be reassured that the nutrient spray had not smeared the transparent wall of the observation gallery. He had often wondered why every ward’s Charge Nurse, regardless of size, species, or environmental requirements, was so fanatically insistent that its medical domain was kept at all times neat, orderly, and scrupulously clean. But only now had he begun to realize that, regardless of what the subordinate nursing staff might think of it personally, the ward of a Charge Nurse who demanded perfection in the minor details was particularly well suited to dealing with major emergencies.

Lioren felt symptoms of a minor and nonpainful discomfort in his stomach that was usually attributable to excitement, non-physical pleasure, or hunger—on this occasion he thought that it might be a combination of all three. He plotted a course that would take him as quickly as possible to the dining hall, intent on eliminating one of the possible causes, but he did not expect the symptoms to be entirely relieved, because he was thinking about his first nonsurgical case.

Abasing himself to the professional level of a couple of trainee nurses—and him a former Surgeon-Captain in the Monitor Corps—had not been as difficult as he had thought, nor had it shamed him to the degree he had expected and deserved. He was even pleased with himself for correctly deducing from Cresk-Sar’s report that Tarsedth would be observing Seldal’s operation. After lunch, in order to keep the entity Braithwaite happy, he would return to the office and deal with the remainder of the Senior Tutor’s report.

Altogether it promised to be a long, busy day and an even longer evening, during which he would view the recording of

Seldal’s operation and discuss the Nallajim’s procedure at length. Having been told of Lioren’s abiding interest in other-species surgery, the two nurses would be expecting many questions from him. In the circumstances it would be natural for the conversation to wander from the operation to the personality, habits, and behavior of the surgeon performing it. Everyone liked to gossip about their superiors, and the quantity of highly personal information available usually increased in direct proportion to the rank of the individual concerned. If he was careful, this information could be abstracted in such a way that neither his informants nor his case subject would be aware of what was happening.

As the beginning of a covert investigation, Lioren thought with a little shiver of self-congratulation, it was faultless.

CHAPTER 9

“WITH Nallajims,” Tarsedth said while they were reviewing the Seldal operation late that evening, “I can never make up my mind whether I 'm watching surgery or other-species cannibalism.”

“In their early, precurrency days,” the Hudlar said, the modulation of its speaking membrane suggesting that its words were not to be taken seriously, “that was the only way a Nallajim doctor could obtain its fee from a patient.”

“I am filled with admiration,” Lioren said, “that a life-form with three legs, two not-quite atrophied wings, and no hands at all could become a surgeon in the first place. Or, for that matter, perform any of the other delicate manipulatory functions which led to the evolution of intelligence and a technology-based culture. They began with so many serious physiological disadvantages that—”

“They do it by poking their noses into the most unlikely places,” Tarsedth said, its fur rumpling with impatience. “Do you want to watch the operation or talk about the surgeon?”

Both, Lioren thought, but he did not speak the word aloud.

The LSVO physiological classification to which Seldal belonged was a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species which had evolved on Nallaji, a large world whose high rotational velocity, dense atmosphere, and low gravity in the intensely fertile equatorial regions had combined to provide an environment suited to the proliferation of avian life-forms. It had been an environment which enabled airborne predators to evolve which were large both in variety and size, but so heavily armed and armored that they had gradually rendered themselves extinct. Over the millennia while this incredibly violent process was working itself out, the relatively tiny LSVOs had been forced out of the skies and their high, vulnerable nests and had taken to the shelter of the trees, deep gullies, and caves.

Very quickly they had to adapt to sharing the ground with the small animals and insects which had formerly been their prey.

Gradually the Nallajim had lost the ability for sustained flight, and as a species they had progressed too far along the evolutionary path for their wings to become arms, or even for their wingtips to subdivide into the digits suitable for the fabrication of tools or weapons. But it was the savage, mindless, and continuing threat from insects large and small who infested, and by their sheer numbers dominated, the land as the giant avians interdicted the air that brought about the minor changes in bone structure and musculature of the beak that caused the Nallajim to develop intelligence.

Handless but no longer helpless, they had been forced to use their heads.

On Nallaji, the winged insects that swarmed and stung their prey to death were outnumbered by those that burrowed and laid eggs deep within the sleeping bodies of their victims. The only way these burrowing insects could be removed was by pecking them out with the long, thin, flexible Nallajim beak.

From being a simple family and tribal debugging device, the LSVO beak progressed to a stage where it was capable of fabricating quite complex insect-proof dwellings, tools, insect-killing weapons, cities, and ultimately starships.

“Seldal is fast,” Lioren said admiringly, after one particu- larly delicate piece of deep surgery, “and it gives remarkably few instructions to its OR staff.”

“Use your eyes,” Tarsedth said. “It doesn’t have to talk to them because the staff are engaged in supporting the patient more than the surgeon. Look at the way its beak jabs all over that instrument rack. By the time it gave directions to a nurse and the correct instrument was stuck onto its beak, Seldal could have obtained the instrument unaided, completed the incision, and been ready for the next stage.

“With this surgeon,” the Kelgian went on, “it is the choice and disposition of the racked instruments that is important. There is no juggling with clamps and cutters, no verbal distractions, no tantrums because an OR nurse is slow or misunderstands. I think I’d like to work with this birdbrained Senior Physician.”

The conversation, Lioren thought, was moving away from Seldal’s operation to the subject of Seldal itself, which was exactly what he had been hoping would happen. But before he could take advantage of the situation, the Hudlar, who was plainly another enthusiast where Nallajim surgery was concerned, tried to be helpful while displaying its own expertise.

“Its procedure is very fast and may seem to be confusing to you, Lioren,” it said, “especially since you have told us that you have no prior surgical experience with Melfan ELNTs. As you can see, the patient’s six limbs and all of the body are exoskeletal. The vital organs are housed within that thick, osseous carapace and are so well protected that traumatic injury rarely occurs although these organs are, unfortunately, subject to a number of dysfunctions which require surgical intervention . . .”

“You,” Tarsedth broke in, its fur spiking with irritation, “are beginning to sound like Cresk-Sar.”

“I’m sorry,” the Hudlar said. “I only meant to explain what Seldal was doing, not bring back unpleasant memories of our tutor.”

“Do not trouble yourself,” Lioren said. The Hudlar FROBs were acknowledged to be the physically strongest life-forms of the Galactic Federation and with the least-pervious body tegument, but emotionally their skins were extremely thin. He added, “Please continue, so long as you don’t ask questions afterward.”

The Hudlar’s membrane vibrated with an untranslatable sound. “I won’t. But I was trying to explain why speed is so important during Melfan surgery. The major internal organs float in a shock-absorbent fluid and are only tethered loosely to the interior walls of the carapace and underside. When the fluid is removed temporarily prior to surgery, the organs are no longer supported and they sink onto each other with consequent compression and deformation effects which include restriction of the blood supply. Irreversible changes take place which could result in termination of the patient if the situation is allowed to continue for more than a few minutes.”

With an intensity that shocked his sensorium like a traumatic injury, Lioren found himself wishing suddenly for the impossible, for a recent past that had taken a different turning and would have allowed him to share this trainee’s enthusiasm for other-species surgery rather than a demeaning and probably unproductive interest in the surgeon’s mind. The thought that the pain, no matter how severe or often it came, would always be less than he deserved brought little comfort.

“Normally an ELNT surgical procedure requires a large operative field and many assistants,” the Hudlar went on, “whose principal purpose is to support these no-longer-floating organs on specially shaped pans while the surgeon-in-charge performs the operation proper. This procedure has the disadvantages of requiring an unnecessarily large opening in the carapace to allow entry of the supporting instruments, and the healing of such a wound is slow and sometimes leads to unsightly scarring and discoloration where the section of carapace was temporarily removed. This can lead to severe emotional trauma in the patient because the carapace, the richness and graduations of its color and individuality in pattern, plays an important part in the courtship process. With a single Nallajim operating, however, the greater speed of this procedure combined with the smaller entry wound reduces both the size and the possibility of a disfigurement occurring postoperatively.”

“A good thing, too,” Tarsedth said, its fur rippling in vehement sympathy. Kelgian DBLFs had the same feelings about their mobile, silvery fur as the Melfan ELNTs about their beautifully marked carapaces. “But would you look at the way it is pecking at the operative field, sometimes with its naked beak, like a bloody astigmatic vulture!”

Seldal’s instrument rack was suspended vertically just beyond the operative field, within easy reach of the surgeon’s beak. Each recess contained specialized instruments with hollow, conical grips that enabled the Nallajim’s upper, lower, or entire beak to enter and grasp, use, replace, or discard them with bewildering rapidity. Occasionally Seldal went in with nothing but the two, long, cylindrical lenses that extended from its tiny eyes almost to the tip of its beak—which had been strapped in position for the duration of the operation—to correct its avian tendency for long-sightedness. Its three claws were wrapped tightly around the perch attached to the operating frame, and the stubby wings fluttered constantly to give it additional stability when it jabbed with its beak.

“In early times,” the Hudlar said, “both the eggs and the egg-laying insects which had to be removed from the patients were edible, and it was considered proper for the surgeon to ingest them. Melfan tissue would not be harmful to a Nallajim, and you will remember from basic training that any ELNT pathogens it contained would not affect or infect an entity who had evolved on a different world. But in a multispecies hospital like Sector General eating parts of a patient, however small, can be emotionally disturbing to onlookers, so you will note that all such material is discarded.

“The operation,” the Hudlar went on, “is to remove—”

“It surprises me,” Lioren broke in, again trying to guide the conversation back to the surgeon rather than its work, “that a same-species surgeon, Senior Physician Edanelt, for example, was not assigned to the case instead of a life-form who requires a Melfan Educator tape to—”

“That,” Tarsedth said, “would be like expecting Diagnostician Conway to forgo all other-species surgery until it had first treated the Earth-human DBDGs in the hospital. Don’t be stupid, Lioren. Operating on an other-species patient is far more interesting and exciting than one of your own kind, and the more physiological differences there are the greater the professional challenge. But you know all this already. On Cromsag you treated—”

“There is no need to remind me of the results,” Lioren said sharply, irritated in spite of knowing that the other could not help being irritating. “I was about to say that Seldal, who has a beak and no arms, is showing no signs of mental confusion while its mind is partially under the control of a being accus- tomed to using six limbs all of which are capable of various degrees of manipulation. The psychological and emotional pressure, not to mention the input from its mind-partner’s involuntary muscle system, must be considerable.”

“Yes,” the Hudlar said. “Obviously it has good control of both minds. But I wonder how I, another six-limbed being, would feel if I had to take a Nallajim tape. I don’t have a beak equivalent or even a mouth.”

“Don’t waste time worrying about it,” Tarsedth said. “Educator tapes are only offered to those studious, highly intelligent, and emotionally stable types who are being considered for promotion to Senior Physician or higher. The way Cresk-Sar criticizes our work, can you imagine one of us ever being offered an Educator tape?”

Lioren did not speak. Much stranger things had happened in Sector General—the staff records showed that Thornnastor’s principal assistant, the DBDG Earth-human Pathologist Mur-chison, had joined the hospital as a trainee nurse—but it was a strict rule of the department that the subject of a long-term promotion should not be discussed with trainees who were being considered for it nor, except in the most general terms, any of the problems associated with the Educator-tape system.

The major problem from which all the others stemmed was that, while Sector General was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, no single entity could hold in its mind even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity was a product of aptitude, training, and experience, but the complete information covering the physiology of a given patient could only be transferred artificially by Educator tape, which was the brain record of some great medical authority belonging to the same species as that of the patient to be treated.

If a Melfan doctor was assigned to a Kelgian patient, it was given a DBLF tape until the treatment was complete, after which the mind recording was erased. The exceptions to this rule were the Senior Physicians of proven emotional stability such as Sel-dal, and the Diagnosticians.

The Diagnosticians were those rare beings whose minds were stable enough to retain permanently six, seven, and in one case up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To these data-crammed minds were given the initiation and direction of orig- inal research in xenological medicine in addition to the practice and teaching of their considerable art.

The tapes, however, imparted not only the physiological data required for treatment, but the entire memory and personality of the donor entity as well. In effect a Diagnostician, and to a lesser extent a Senior Physician, subjected itself voluntarily to an extreme form of multiple schizophrenia. The donor entities apparently sharing the host doctor’s mind could be aggressive, unpleasant individuals—geniuses were rarely nice people—with all sorts of pet peeves and phobias. Normally these would not become apparent during the course of an operation or treatment because both host and donor minds were concentrating on the purely medical aspects of the work. The worst effects were felt when the possessor of the tape was sleeping.

Alien nightmares, Lioren knew from a few of his own tape experiences, were really nightmarish. And alien sexual fantasies were enough to make the host mind wish, if it was capable of wishing coherently for anything at the time, that it was dead. He could not even imagine the physical and emotional effect of the sensorium of an enormous, intelligent crustacean on the mind of a ridiculously fragile but equally intelligent bird.

He continued to watch the frenetically active Seldal while recalling the saying often repeated among the hospital staff that anyone who was sane enough to practice as a Diagnostician was mad, a remark reputed to have originated with O’Mara itself.

“Seldal’s ELNT procedure fascinates me,” Lioren said, firmly returning to the subject of his investigation. “It shows no hesitation whatever, no pauses for thought or reconsideration, none of the too-careful movements one sees with Educator-tape work. Is it like this with other life-forms?”

“With respect, Lioren,” the Hudlar said, “at the speed it works would you notice an awkward pause if you saw one? We have watched it perform an Earth-human gastrectomy and, among others, do something to a DBLF that Tarsedth had better explain to you since the Kelgian reproductive mechanism is proving difficult for me to understand—”

“You should talk!” Tarsedth broke in. “Every time a Hudlar mother produces offspring it changes to male mode. That’s— that’s indecentl”

“Presumably these patients required only short-duration Educator taping,” the Hudlar went on,  “but Seldal accommodated itself to them without apparent difficulty. For the past six weeks it has been engaged principally on Tralthan surgery and says that it finds the work most interesting, stimulating, and comfortable, next to working on another Nallajim—”

“Another female Nallajim, it means,” Tarsedth said, ruffling its fur in disapproval, or perhaps envy. “Do you know that in the three years that Seldal has been here it has been nested by nearly every female LSVO on the staff? What they see to ruffle their tail feathers in such a scrawny, self-effacing nonentity is beyond my understanding.”

“Is my translator faulty,” Lioren asked, trying to hide his excitement at acquiring this new and potentially useful datum, “or am I to understand that Seldal actually discussed its Educator-tape problems with a couple of trainees?”

“The discussion was perfunctory,” the Hudlar said before Tarsedth could reply, “and was concerned with personal preferences rather than problems. Seldal is very approachable, for a Senior, and usually invites post-op questions from anyone who has been watching from the observation gallery. There wasn’t time this morning or you could have asked questions yourself.

“In any case,” it went on, turning itself ponderously to regard Tarsedth, “my interest in Seldal’s love life, which seems to have become less gaudy in recent weeks, is at best academic. But even among my own species it is not uncommon for female-mode persons to be attracted to males who have personalities which are as shy and timid as that of Seldal. Such people are frequently more sensitive, unhurried, and interesting as lovers.”

It returned its attention to Lioren and continued. “To modify a saying of one of our classmates, which seems to apply to activities associated with same-species reproduction, a faint heart sometimes wins the fair lady.”

“It’s talking about Hadley,” Tarsedth explained, “an Earth-human trainee. It was supposed to have gone into the maintenance tunnels with . . .”

He had not heard that particular item of gossip before, probably because no official notice had been taken of the incident or the grapevine had been already overloaded with even more scandalous material that day. The story of Hadley’s misdemeanor was followed by others, many of which had found their way to his department in the form of much less interesting psych-file updates which were, regrettably, free of Tarsedth’s creative exaggeration. He was forced to use every verbal stra-tegem he could devise to bring the conversation back to the Nallajim Senior and keep it there.

Lioren was discovering many interesting facts about Seldal’s behavior, personality, and interests. It was information which he would not have been able to obtain from the Senior Physician’s file. So far as his assignment was concerned, the evening was being spent profitably and, he thought with increasing feelings of guilt, very enjoyably.

CHAPTER 10

THE following morning’s work period was sufficiently far advanced for his digestive system to begin complaining that it had nothing to engage its attention when Braithwaite walked slowly across to Lioren’s desk. Placing its flabby pink hands palms downward on an uncluttered area of the work surface, it bent its arms so that its head was close to his and said quietly, “You haven’t spoken a word for more than four hours. Is there a problem?”

Lioren leaned back, irritated by the uninvited close approach of the being, and by the fact that on several previous occasions it had criticized him for talking too much. Even though Braithwaite was showing concern and trying to be helpful, he wished that his immediate superior’s behavior would not vacillate so. There were times when he much preferred the approach of O’Mara, who was, at least, consistently nasty.

At the adjacent desk, Cha Thrat was concentrating even more intently on its screen as it pretended not to listen. For some reason Lioren’s problems, and some of his suggested solutions, had been a source of considerable amusement over the past few days, but this time it was going to be disappointed.

“The reason for my silence,” he replied, “is that I was concentrating on clearing the routine work so as to have more time available for Seldal. There is no specific problem, merely a discouraging lack of progress in every direction.”

Braithwaite removed its hands from his desk and straightened up. Showing its teeth, it asked, “In which direction are you progressing least?”

Lioren made the Gesture of Impatience with two of his medial limbs and said, “It is difficult to quantify negative progress. Over the past few days I have observed Seldal’s performance of major surgery and discussed the subject’s behavior with other observers, during which information emerged which was not available from its psych file. The new material is based on unsupported gossip and may not be entirely factual. The subject is highly respected and popular among its medical subordinates. This popularity seems to be deserved rather than deliberately sought. I cannot find any abnormality in this entity.”

“Obviously that is not your final conclusion,” said Braithwaite, “or you wouldn’t be trying to free more time for the investigation. How do you plan to spend this time?”

Lioren thought for a moment, then said, “Since it will not always be possible to question observers or its OR staff without revealing the reason for my questions, I shall have to ask—”

“No!” Braithwaite said sharply, the hairy crescents on its face lowering so that they almost hid its eyes. “You must not question the subject directly. If you should discover anything amiss, report it to O’Mara and do or say nothing to Seldal itself. You will please remember that.”

“I am unlikely to forget,” Lioren said quietly, “what happened the last time I used my initiative.”

For a moment there was neither sound nor movement from Cha Thrat or Braithwaite, but the Earth-human’s facial pigmentation was deepening in color. Lioren went on. “I was about to say that I would have to question Seldal’s patients, discreetly, in the hope of detecting by hearsay any unusual changes in the subject’s behavior during its visits before and after surgery. For this I need a list and present locations of Seldal’s post-op patients and the timing of its ward rounds so that I can talk to them without meeting the subject itself. To avoid comment by the ward staff concerned it would be better if someone other than myself requested this information.”

Braithwaite nodded its head. “A sensible precaution. But what will be your excuse for speaking to these patients and for talking to them about Seldal?”

“The reason I shall give for visiting them,” Lioren replied, “will be to ask for any comments or criticism they may have regarding the environmental aspects of their various recovery wards, since this is an important nonmedical aid to recuperation and the department carries out such checks from time to time. I shall not ask the patients about their medical condition or their surgeon. But I have no doubt that both subjects will arise naturally and, while pretending disinterest, I shall gather as much information as I can.”

“A finely woven, intricate, and well-concealed spell,” Cha Thrat said before Braithwaite could speak. “My compliments, Lioren. Already you show promise of becoming a great wizard.”

Braithwaite nodded its head again. “You seem to be covering all eventualities. Is there any other information or help you need?”

“Not at present,” Lioren said.

He was not being completely truthful, because he wanted clarification of Cha Thrat’s compliment, which, to a highly qualified former medic like himself, had verged on the insulting. Perhaps “spell” and “wizard,” which were words that Cha Thrat used frequently, had different meanings on Sommaradva than on Tarla. But it seemed that his curiosity was soon to be satisfied, because the Sommaradvan wanted to see a Tarlan trainee wizard at work.

The choice of the first patient was forced on him because the other two were beginning their rest periods and Psychology Department staff had no authority to intervene during clinical treatment, which included interrupting a patient’s sleep. The interview promised to be the most difficult and delicate of the three cases Braithwaite had listed for him.

“Are you sure you want to talk to this one, Lioren?” Cha Thrat asked with the small upper-limb movements that he had learned signified deep concern. “This is a very sensitive case.”

Lioren did not reply at once. It was a truism accepted on every inhabited world of the Federation that medics made the worst patients. Not only was this one a healer of the highest professional standing, the interview would have to be conducted with great care because patient Mannen’s condition was terminal.

“I dislike wasting time,” Lioren said finally, “or an opportunity.”

“Earlier today,” Cha Thrat said, “you told Braithwaite that you had learned your lesson regarding the too-free use of initiative. With respect, Lioren, it was impatience and your refusal to waste time that caused the Cromsag Incident.”

Lioren did not reply.

Mannen was an Earth-human DBDG, of advanced age for that comparatively short-lived species, who had come to Sector General after graduating with the highest honors at its home world’s foremost teaching hospital. It had quickly been promoted to Senior Physician and within a few years to the post of Senior Tutor, when its pupils had included such present members of the medical hierarchy as Conway, Prilicla, and Edanelt, until it relinquished the position to Cresk-Sar on its elevation to Diagnostician. Inevitably the time had come when the establishment’s most advanced medical and mechanical aids were no longer capable of extending its life, even though its level of mentation remained as sharp and clear as that of a young adult.

Ex-Diagnostician and current-patient Mannen lay in a private compartment off the main DBDG medical ward, with biosensors monitoring its vital signs and the usual life-support mechanisms absent at its own request. Its clinical condition was close to critical but stable, and its eyes had remained closed, indicating that it was probably unconscious or asleep. Lioren had been surprised and pleased when they found the patient unattended, because Earth-humans were numbered among the intelligent species who liked the company of family or friends at ending of life. But his surprise had disappeared when the ward’s Charge Nurse informed them that the patient had had numerous visitors who had left or been sent away within a few moments of arrival.

“Let us leave before it awakens,” Cha Thrat said very quietly. “Your excuse for being here, to ask if it is satisfied with the room’s environmental system, is, in the circumstances, both ridiculous and insensitive. Besides, not even O’Mara can work a spell on an unconscious mind.”

For a moment Lioren studied the monitor screens, but he could not recall the values he had learned so long ago regarding the measurement of Earth-human life processes. This room was a quiet and private place, he thought, in which to ask personal questions.

“Cha Thrat,” he asked softly, “what precisely do you mean by working a spell?”

It was a simple question that required a long and complicated answer, and the process was neither shortened nor simplified by Cha Thrat breaking off every few minutes to look worriedly toward the patient.

The Sommaradvan culture was divided into three distinct levels of person—serviles, warriors, and rulers—and the medical fraternities responsible for their welfare were similarly stratified.

At the bottom were the serviles, people who were unwilling to strive for promotion and whose work was undemanding, repetitious, and completely without risk because in their daily lives they were protected against gross physical damage. The healers charged with their care were physicians whose treatments were purely medical. The second level, much less numerous than the serviles, were the warriors, who occupied positions of great responsibility and, in the past, considerable physical danger.

There had been no war on Sommaradva for many generations, but the warrior class had kept the name because they were the descendants of the people who had fought to protect their homelands, hunted for food, and raised defenses against predatory beasts while the serviles saw to their physical needs. Now they were the technicians, engineers, and scientists who still performed the high-risk or the most prestigious duties, which included the protection of rulers. For this reason the injuries sustained by warriors had usually been traumatic in nature, requiring surgical intervention or repair rather than medication, and this work was the responsibility of the warrior-surgeons. At the top of Sommaradva’s medical tree were the ruler-healers, who had even greater responsibilities and, at times, much less reward or satisfaction in their work.

Protected against all risk of physical injury, the ruler class were the administrators, academics, researchers, and planners on Sommaradva. They were the people charged with the smooth running of the cities and the world, and the ills which affected them were principally the phantasms of the mind. Their healers dealt only in wizardry, spells, sympathetic magic, and all the other practices of nonphysical medicine.

“Naturally,” Cha Thrat said, “as our culture advanced socially and scientifically an overlapping of responsibilities occurred. Serviles occasionally fracture a limb, or the mental stresses encountered while studying for promotion sometimes threaten the sanity of the mind concerned, or a ruler succumbs to a servile digestive upset, all of which necessitates healers practicing above or below their class.

“Since earliest times,” the Sommaradvan concluded, “our practitioners of healing have been divided into physicians, surgeons, and wizards.”

“Thank you,” Lioren said. “Now I understand. It is merely a matter of semantic confusion combined with a too-literal translation. To you a spell is psychotherapy which can be short and simple or long and complicated, and the wizard responsible for it is simply a psychologist who—”

“It is not a psychologist!” Cha Thrat said fiercely; then, remembering the patient, it lowered its voice again and went on, “Every non-Sommaradvan I have met makes the same mistake. On my world a psychologist is a being of low status who tries to be a scientist by measuring brain impulses or bodily changes brought about by physical and mental stress, and by making detailed observations of the subject’s subsequent behavior. A psychologist tries to impose immutable laws in an area of nightmares and changing internal realities, and attempts to make a science of what has always been an art, an art practiced only by wizards.

“A wizard will use or ignore the instruments and tabulations of the psychologists,” the Sommaradvan continued before Lioren could speak, “to cast spells that influence the complex, insubstantial structures of the mind. A wizard uses words, silences, minute observation, and most important, intuition, to uncover and gradually reorient the sick, internal reality of the patient to the external reality of the world. There is a great difference between a mere psychologist and a wizard.”

The other’s voice had been rising again but the sensors reported no change in the patient’s condition.

It was obvious to Lioren that the Sommaradvan had few opportunities to talk freely about its home planet and the few friends it had left there or to relieve its feelings about the intolerance of its professional peers that had forced it to come to Sector General. It went on to relate in detail the disruption its particularly rigid code of professional ethics had caused throughout the hospital until its eventual rescue by the wizard O’Mara, and its own personal feelings and reactions to all these events. Plainly Cha Thrat wanted, perhaps badly needed, to talk about itself.

But confidences invited more confidences, and Lioren began to wonder if he, the one member of the Tarlan species on the hospital staff speaking like this to its only Sommaradvan, did not have the same need. Gradually there was developing a two-way exchange in which the questions and answers were becoming very personal indeed.

Lioren found himself telling Cha Thrat about his feelings during and after the Cromsag Incident, of the guilt that was terrible beyond words or belief, and of his helpless fury at the Monitor Corps and O’Mara for refusing him the death he so fully deserved and for sentencing him instead to the ultimate cruelty of life.

At that point Cha Thrat, who must have sensed his increasing emotional distress, firmly steered the conversation onto O’Mara and the Chief Wizard’s reasons for taking them into its department, and from there to the assignment that had brought him here in the hope of gathering information from a patient who was plainly in no condition to give it.

They were still discussing Seldal and wondering aloud whether they should try talking to Mannen the next day, if it should survive that long, when the supposedly unconscious patient opened its eyes and looked at them.

“I, that is, we apologize, sir,” Cha Thrat said quickly. “We assumed that you were unconscious because your eyes remained closed since our arrival and the biosensor readings showed no change. I can only assume that you realized our mistake, and because we were discussing matters of a confidential nature, you maintained the pretense of sleep out of politeness to avoid causing us great embarrassment.”

Mannen’s head moved slowly from side to side in the Earth-human gesture of negation, and it seemed that the eyes staring up at him were in some clinically inexplicable fashion younger than the rest of the patient’s incredibly wrinkled features and time-ravaged body. When it spoke, the words were like the whispering of the wind through tall vegetation and slowed with the effort of enunciation.

“Another . . . wrong assumption,” it said. “I am . . . never polite.”

“Nor do we deserve politeness, Diagnostician Mannen,” Lioren said, forcing his mind and his voice to the surface of a great, hot sea of embarrassment. “I alone am responsible for this visit, and the blame for it is entirely mine. My reason for coming no longer seems valid and we shall leave at once. Again, my apologies.”

One of the thin, emaciated hands lying outside the bed covering twitched feebly, as if it would have been raised in a nonverbal demand for silence if the arm muscles had possessed sufficient strength. Lioren stopped speaking.

“I know . . . your reason for coming,” Mannen said, in a voice barely loud enough to carry the few inches to its bedside translator. “I overheard everything . . . you said about Seldal . . . as well as yourself. Very interesting it was . . . But the effort of listening to you . . . for nearly two hours . . . has tired me . . . and soon my sleep will not be a pretense. You must go now.”

“At once, sir,” Lioren said.

“And if you wish to return,” Mannen went on, “come at a better time . . . because I want to ask questions as well as listen to you. But the visit should not be long delayed.”

“I understand,” Lioren said. “It will be very soon.”

“Perhaps I will be able to help you . . . with the Seldal business and in return . . . you can tell me more about Cromsag . . . and do me another small favor.”

The Earth-human Mannen had been a Diagnostician for many years. Its help and understanding of the Seldal problem would be invaluable, especially as it would be given willingly and without the need of him having to waste time hiding the reason for his questions. But he also knew that the price he would have to pay for that assistance in inflaming wounds that could never heal would be higher than the patient realized.

Before he could reply, Mannen’s lips drew back slowly in the peculiar Earth-human grimace which at times could signify a response to humor or a nonverbal expression of friendship or sympathy.

“And I thought I had problems,” it said.

CHAPTER 11

LlOREN’s subsequent visits were lengthier, completely private, and not nearly as painful as he had feared.

He had asked Hredlichi, the Charge Nurse on Mannen’s ward, to inform him immediately whenever the patient was conscious and in a condition to receive visitors, regardless of the time of the hospital’s arbitrary day or night that should be. Before agreeing, Hredlichi had checked with the patient, who hitherto had refused visits from everyone except for the ward rounds of its surgeon, and been greatly surprised when Mannen agreed to receive nonmedical visits only from Lioren.

Cha Thrat had explained it was insufficiently motivated to be willing to interrupt its sleep or drop other, more urgent work at a moment’s notice to pursue the Seldal investigation—which was, after all, Lioren’s responsibility—although it would continue to assist Lioren in any other way which did not involve major personal inconvenience. As a result, the first visit to Mannen had been the only one at which the Sommaradvan had been present.

By the third visit, Lioren was feeling relieved that Mannen did not want to talk exclusively about the Cromsaggar, disappointed that his understanding of Seldal’s behavior was no clearer, and embarrassed that the patient was spending an increasing proportion of each visit talking about itself.

“With respect, Doctor,” Lioren said after one particularly argumentative self-diagnosis, “I am not in possession of an Earth-human Educator tape which would enable me to give an opinion in your case nor, as a member of the Psychology Department, am I allowed to practice medicine. Seldal is your physician-in-charge and it—”

“Talks to me as if . . . I was a drooling infant,” Mannen broke in. “Or a frightened, terminal patient. At least you don’t . . . try to administer . . . a lethal overdose . . . of sympathy.

You are here to . . . obtain information about Seldal and, in return, to satisfy my curiosity . . . about you. No, I am not so much afraid of dying . . . as having too much time to think about it.”

“Is there pain, Doctor?” Lioren asked.

“You know there is no pain, dammit,” Mannen replied in a voice made stronger by its anger. “In the bad old days there might have been pain, and inefficient painkilling medication that so depressed the functioning of the involuntary muscle systems that . . . the major organs went into failure and the medication killed the patient as well as its pain . . . so that its medic escaped with the minimum of ethical self-criticism and . . . its patient was spared a lingering death. But now we have learned how to negate pain without harmful side effects . . . and there is nothing I can do but wait to see which of my vital organs . . . will be the first to expire from old age.

“I should not,” Mannen ended, its voice dropping to a whisper again, “have allowed Seldal loose in my intestines. But that blockage was . . . really uncomfortable.”

“I sympathize,” Lioren said, “because I, too, wish for death. But you can look back with pride and without pain to your past and to an ending that will not be long delayed. In my past and future lies only guilt and desolation that I must suffer until—”

“Do you really feel sympathy, Lioren?” Mannen broke in. “You impress me as being nothing but a proud and unfeeling . . . but very efficient organic healing machine. The Cromsag Incident . . . showed that the machine had a flaw. You want to destroy the machine . . . while O’Mara wants to repair it. I don’t know which of you will succeed.”

“I would never,” Lioren said harshly, “destroy myself to avoid just punishment.”

“To an ordinary member of the staff,” Mannen went on, “I would not say such . . . personally hurtful things. I know you feel you deserve them . . . and worse . . . and you expect no apology from me. But I do apologize . . . because I am hurting in a way that I did not believe possible . . . and am striking out at you . . . and I ignore my friends when they visit me in case they discover . . . that I am nothing but a vindictive old man.”

Before Lioren could think of a reply, Mannen said weakly, “I have been hurtful to a being who has not hurt me. The only recompense I can make is by helping you . . . with information on Seldal. When it visits me tomorrow morning . . . I shall ask it specific and very personal questions. I shall not mention . . . nor will it suspect your connection.”

“Thank you,” Lioren said. “But I do not understand how you can ask—”

“It is very simple,” Mannen said, its voice strengthening again. “Seldal is a Senior Physician and I was, until my summary demotion to the status of patient, a Diagnostician. It will be pleased to answer all my questions for three reasons. Out of respect for my former rank, because it will want to humor a terminal patient who wants to talk shop for what might well be the last time, and especially because I have not spoken a word to it since three days before the operation. If I cannot discover any helpful information for you after that exercise, the information does not exist.”

This terminally ill entity, in what might well be the last constructive act of its life, was going to help him with the Seldal assignment as no other person was capable of doing, simply because it had used a few impolite words to him. Lioren had always considered it wrong to become emotionally involved in a case, however slightly, because the patient’s interests were best served by the impersonal, clinical approach—and Mannen was not even his patient. But somehow it seemed that the investigation into the Nallajim Senior’s behavior was no longer his only concern.

“Thank you again,” Lioren said. “But I had been about to say that I cannot understand why you are hurting in ways that you did not believe possible when your medication should render you pain-free. Is it a nonmedical problem?”

Mannen stared up at him unblinkingly for what seemed a very long time in silence, and Lioren wished that he was able to read the expression on its wasted and deeply wrinkled features. He tried again.

“If it is nonmedical, would you prefer I send for O’Mara?”

“No!” Mannen said, weakly but very firmly. “I do not want to talk to the Chief Psychologist. He has been here many times, until he stopped trying to talk to a person who pretended to be asleep all the time and, like my other friends, stayed away.”

It was becoming clear that Mannen wanted to talk to someone, but had not yet made the decision to do so. Silence, Lioren thought, might be the safest form of questioning.

“In your mind,” Mannen said finally, in a voice which had found strength from somewhere, “there is too much that you want to forget. In mine there is even more that I cannot remember.”

“Still I do not understand you,” Lioren said.

“Must I explain it as if you were a first-day trainee?” the patient said. “For the greater part of my professional life I have been a Diagnostician. As such I have had to accommodate in my mind, often for periods of several years, the knowledge, personalities, and medical experience of anything up to ten entities at a time. The experience is of many alien personalities occupying and—because these tape donors were rarely timid or self-effacing people—fighting for control of the host mind. This is a subjective mental phenomenon which must be overcome if one is to continue as a Diagnostician, but initially it seems that the host mind is a battleground with too many combatants warring with each other until—”

“That I do understand,” Lioren said. “During my time here as a Senior I was once required to carry three tapes simultaneously.”

“The host is able to impose peace and order,” Mannen continued slowly, “usually by learning to understand and adapt to and make friends with these alien personalities without surrendering any part of his own mind, until the necessary accommodation can be made. It is the only way to avoid serious mental trauma and removal from the roster of Diagnosticians.”

Mannen closed its eyes for a moment, then went on. “But now the mental battlefield is deserted, emptied of the onetime warriors who became friends. I am all alone with the entity called Mannen, and with only Mannen’s memories, which includes the memory of having many other memories that were taken from me. I am told that this is as it should be because a man’s mind should be his own for a time before termination. But I am lonely, lonely and empty and cared for and completely pain-free while I spend a subjective eternity waiting for the end.

Lioren waited until he was sure that Mannen had finished speaking; then he said, “Terminally aged Earth-humans, indeed the members of the majority of species, find comfort in the presence of friends at a time like this. For some reason you have chosen to discourage such visits, but if you would prefer the company of donor entities who were your friends of the mind, this answer is to reimpress your brain with Educator tapes of your choosing. I shall suggest this solution to the Chief Psychologist, who might—”

“Tear you psychologically limb from Tarlan limb,” Mannen broke in. “Have you forgotten that you are supposed to be investigating Seldal, not one of its patients called Mannen? Forget about the tapes. If O’Mara ever found out what you, a psychology trainee, have been trying to do here, you would be in very serious trouble.”

“I cannot imagine,” Lioren said very seriously, “being in worse trouble than I am now.”

“I’m sorry,” Mannen said, raising one of its hands a few inches above the covers and then letting it fall again. “For a moment I had forgotten the Cromsag Incident. A tongue-lashing from O’Mara would be insignificant compared to the punishment you are inflicting on yourself.”

Lioren did not acknowledge the other’s apology because the guilty did not deserve one and said instead, “You are right, reimpressing your Educator tapes is not a good solution. My knowledge of Earth-human psychology is meager, but would it not be better if at this time your mind was your own, and not filled with others whose mind records were taken before they even knew of your existence, and whose apparent friendship for you was a self-delusion aimed at making their alien presence more bearable? At this time should you not be ordering the contents of your own mind, its thoughts, experiences, right or wrong decisions, and its considerable accomplishments during your own lifetime? This would help to pass your remaining time, and if your friends were no longer discouraged from visiting you, that would also shorten—”

“I have yet to meet an intelligent being,” Mannen said, “who did not wish for a long life and an instantaneous death. But such wishes are rarely granted, are they, Lioren? My suffering does not compare with yours, but I will still have a long time to spend in a body deprived of all feeling and with a mind that is empty and alien and frightening because it is my own, a mind I can no longer fill.”

The ex-Diagnostician’s two recessed eyes were fixed on the one of Lioren’s that was closest to it. He returned the patient’s stare for several minutes, his mind recalling the words the other had spoken and searching everyone of them for unspoken meanings, but Mannen spoke before he did.

“I have not talked for so long in many weeks,” it said, “and I am very tired. Go now, or I will be so discourteous as to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence.”

“Please don’t,” Lioren said quickly, “because I have one more question to ask of you. It is possible that you are thinking that an entity who has already committed the monstrous and multiple crime of genocide would not suffer additional distress if he were to commit a single and, relatively, more venial offense as a favor to a colleague. Are you suggesting that I shorten your time of waiting?”

Mannen was silent for so long that Lioren checked the biosensors to be sure that it had not lost consciousness with its eyelids open; then it said, “If that was my suggestion, what would your answer be?”

Lioren did not wait as long before replying. “The answer would be no. If it is possible, I must try to reduce my guilt, not increase it by however small an amount. The ethical and moral aspects might be argued, but I could not justify such an act on medical grounds because there is no physical distress of any kind. Your distress is subjective, the product of a mind that is empty of all but one occupant, you, who is no longer happy there.

“But the experience is not new to you,” Lioren went on, “because it was your normal condition before you became a Senior Physician and then a Diagnostician. I have already suggested that you fill your mind with old memories, experiences or professional decisions which brought you pleasure, or problems which you enjoyed solving. Or would you prefer to continue exercising it with new material?”

What he was about to say would sound callous and selfish and might well anger the patient into total noncooperation, but he said it anyway.

“For example,” he added, “there is the mystery of Seldal’s behavior.”

“Go away,” Mannen said in a weak voice, closing its eyes, “go now.”

Lioren did not leave until the biosensor readings indicated the changes which told him that on this occasion the patient’s sleep was not a pretense.

When he returned to the office next morning, Lioren deliberately concentrated on the routine work so as to avoid having to discuss Mannen with Cha Thrat. He did not think that the words of a terminal patient should be judged too harshly, nor be repeated to others, especially when they had no direct bearing on the Seldal investigation.

Of the other three Seldal post-op patients he questioned, two were willing to talk to him at length—about themselves, the hospital food, the nurses whose ministrations were at times as gentle as the hands of a parent or as insensitive as a kick from a Tralthan’s rear leg, but about their Nallajim surgeon scarcely at all. During the little time Seldal spent with them, it listened more than it talked, which was a little unusual in a Senior but was not a character deviation serious enough to worry O’Mara. He was disappointed but not surprised when his general and necessarily vague questions brought no results.

The post-op care of the third patient was the responsibility of Tralthan and Hudlar nurses, who had been forbidden to discuss the case outside the ward. Seldal had likewise forbidden members of any physiological classification less massive than a Hudlar or Tralthan even to approach it. Lioren was curious about this mystery patient and decided to call up its medical record, only to find that the file was closed to him.

He was surprised and pleased when Charge Nurse Hredlichi contacted him to say that Mannen had left instructions that Lioren was to be allowed to visit it at any time. He was even more surprised at the patient’s opening words.

“This time,” it said, “we will talk about Senior Physician Seldal, your investigation and you yourself, and not about me.”

Mannen’s voice was slow, weak, and barely hovering above the limit of audibility, but there were no long pauses for breath, and its manner, Lioren thought, was that of an ailing Diagnostician rather than a terminal patient.

It had spoken to the Nallajim during its twice-daily ward round, and on both occasions Seldal had been pleased that the patient was talking to it again and showing interest in events and people other than itself. During the first talk it was obvious that Seldal was humoring its patient by answering Mannen’s deliberately nonspecific questions about the latest hospital gossip and its other patients, and the Nallajim Senior had spent much longer with it than was clinically necessary.

“Naturally,” Mannen continued, “that was simple professional courtesy extended to the person I once was. However, one of the people we discussed was the new Psychology Department trainee, Lioren, who seemed to be wandering about the hospital with no clear idea of what it was doing.”

Lioren’s medial limbs jerked outward instinctively into the Tarlan posture of defense, but the threat was removed by the patient’s next words.

“Don’t worry,” Mannen went on, “we talked about you, not your interest in Seldal. Charge Nurse Hredlichi, who has four mouths and cannot keep any of them closed, told it of your frequent visits to me, and it was curious to know why I had allowed them and what we talked about. Not wishing to tell an outright lie this close to my end, I said that we talked about our troubles, and said that your problems made my own seem small by comparison.”

Mannen closed its eyes for a moment, and Lioren wondered if the effort of that long, unbroken conversation had exhausted it, but then it opened them again and said, “During its second ward round I asked about its Educator tapes. Stop jerking your arms about like that, you’ll knock over something. It is shortly to undergo the medical and psychological examinations for Diagnostician, and I know that any advice coming from an ex-Diagnostician with decades of experience would be welcomed. The questions regarding its methods of accommodating and adapting to its present mind-partners were expected and aroused no suspicion. Whether or not the information given so far will help your investigation I cannot say.

By the time Mannen had finished speaking, its voice was so low that Lioren had collapsed himself awkwardly onto his knees to bring his head close to the other’s lips. He did not know if the information was helpful, but it had certainly given him a lot to think about.

“I am most grateful, Doctor,” he said.

“I am doing you a favor, Surgeon-Captain,” Mannen said. “Are you willing to do one in return?”

Without hesitation, Lioren replied, “Not that one.”

“And if I was to . . . withdraw cooperation?” the other asked in a voice which carried only a few inches from its lips. “Or go back to pretending to be asleep? Or if I were to tell Seldal everything? ”

Their heads were so close together that Lioren had to extend three of his eyes to cover the full length of the patient’s incredibly emaciated body. “Then I would suffer embarrassment, distress, and perhaps punishment,” he said. “It would be as nothing to the punishment I deserve. But you are suffering distress, of a kind that I can barely imagine, which is not deserved. You say that you find solace neither in the company of friends nor in preterminal contemplation of your past life. It may be that your empty mind is terrifying, not because it is empty but because its only occupant has become a stranger to you. But this mind is a valuable resource, the most valuable resource that was ever in your possession, and it should not be wasted by a premature termination, however accomplished. For as long as possible your mind should be used.”

A long exhalation of the patient’s breath pressed gently against Lioren’s face, and then Mannen said weakly, “Lioren, you are . . . a cold fish.”

Within a few minutes it was asleep and Lioren was on the way back to the office. Several times he collided with other life-forms, fortunately without injury on either side, because his mind was on the patient he had left rather than the ever-present problem of corridor navigation.

He was using the remaining hours or days of an emotionally distressed and terminal patient as a means of furthering a simple, unimportant, and nonurgent investigation, as he would use any suitable tool that came to hand which would enable him to complete a job. If in the process he altered or increased the efficiency of the tool, that was not an important consideration. Or was it?

He was remembering that on Cromsag he had been involved in solving a problem. On that occasion, too, he had considered the solution to be more important than any of the individuals involved, and his intellectual pride and his impatience had depopulated a planet. On his native Tarla that pride and high intelligence had been a barrier that none could penetrate, and he had had superiors and subordinates and family but no friends. Perhaps Mannen’s singularly inaccurate physiological description, which he had put down to the mental confusion of fatigue, had been correct and Lioren was a cold fish. But it might not be entirely correct.

Lioren thought of the wasted and barely living entity he had just left, the pitiful and fragile tool that was performing exemplary work, and he wondered at the strange feelings of hurt and sadness that arose in him.

Was his first experience of friendship, like his first friend, to be short-lived?

As soon as Lioren entered the office he knew that something was wrong, because both Cha Thrat and Braithwaite swung round to face him. It was the Earth-human who spoke first.

“O’Mara is at a meeting and is not to be disturbed and, frankly, I have no idea how to advise you about this,” Braithwaite said in a rapid, agitated voice. “Dammit, Lioren, you were told to be discreet in your enquiries. What have you been saying about your assignment, and to whom? We have just had a message from Senior Physician Seldal. It wants to see you in the Nallajim staff flocking lounge on Level Twenty-three.”

Cha Thrat made the Sommaradvan gesture of deep concern, and added, “At once.”

CHAPTER 12

SlNCE the Nallajim LSVOs often entertained other-species colleagues, their lounge was spacious enough not to cause Lioren any physical inconvenience, but he wondered at the choice of meeting place. In spite of their fragile, low-gravity physiology, the birdlike species could be as abrasive in their conversational manner as any Kelgian, and if this one had found cause for complaint against Lioren, the expected course would have been for it to present itself in the Psychology Department and demand to see O’Mara.

Of one thing he felt very sure, Lioren thought as he moved between the nestlike couches filled with sleeping or quietly twittering occupants toward Seldal, this would not be a social occasion.

“Sit or stand, whichever is more comfortable for you,” the Senior Physician said, lifting a wing to indicate the couch’s food dispenser. “Can I offer you anything.”

It was wrong, Lioren told himself as he lowered his body into the downy softness of the couch, to feel sure about anything.

“I am curious about you,” the Nallajim Senior said, the rapid twittering of its voice making an impatient background to the slower, translated words. “Not about the Cromsag Incident because that has become common knowledge. It is your behavior toward my patient Mannen that interests me. Exactly what did you say to him, and what did he say to you?”

If I told you that, Lioren thought, this meeting would not long remain a social occasion.

Lioren did not want to lie, and he was trying to decide whether it would be better to avoid telling all of the truth or simply remain silent when the Nallajim spoke again.

“Hredlichi tells me,” it said, “and I use the Charge Nurse’s words as clearly as I can recall them, that two of O’Mara’s Psych types, Cha Thrat and yourself, approached it asking permission to interview its patients, including the terminal case, Mannen, regarding some planned improvements in ward environment. Hredlichi said that it was too busy to waste time arguing with you, and your physical masses were such that it could not evict you bodily, so it decided to accede where the patient Mannen was concerned knowing that the ex-Diagnostician would ignore you as it had done everyone else who tried to talk to it. But Hredlichi says that you spent two hours with the patient, who subsequently left instructions that you could visit it at any time.

“Ex-Diagnostician Mannen is highly regarded at Sector General,” Seldal went on, “and its length of service on the staff is second only to that of O’Mara, who was and is its friend. When I joined the hospital it was in charge of training. It helped me then and on many occasions since so that I, too, consider it to be more than a medical colleague. But until yesterday, when it suddenly acknowledged my presence and began to ask questions which were lucid, general, but more often personal, it would not speak to anyone except you.

“I ask again, Lioren, what transpired between Mannen and yourself?”

“It is a terminal patient,” Lioren said, choosing his words with care, “and some of the words and thoughts expressed might not have been those of the entity you knew when it was at the peak of its physical and mental powers. I would prefer not to discuss this material with others.”

“You would prefer not . . .” began Seldal, its angry, twittering speech rising in volume so that the sleeping Nallajims around them stirred restively in their nests. “Oh, keep your secrets if you must. Truly, you remind me of the departed Car-mody, who was before your time. And you are correct, I would not want to know about it if a great entity like Mannen were to display weakness, even though I once shared my mind with an Earth-human DBDG who believed that feet of clay could sometimes form a most solid foundation.”

“Thank you for your forbearance, sir,” Lioren said.

“I have learned forbearance,” the Senior Physician said, “from a very close friend. I shall not explain that, but instead I shall tell you what I think went on between you.”

Lioren was greatly relieved that the other was no longer angry and, seemingly, did not suspect that it was the object of Lioren’s investigation rather than Mannen. He was wondering Whether the remark about learning from a very close friend was an important datum when the Nallajim resumed speaking.

“When Mannen discovered who you were during your first visit,” Seldal went on, “it decided that you might have more problems than it had and became curious about you. This curiosity must have led to personal questions about your reactions to the Cromsag business that were distressing to you, but it was the first time in several weeks that Mannen showed curiosity about anything. Now it seems to be curious about everything. It has talked about you, and closely questioned me, and asked about my other patients, the latest gossip, everything. I am most grateful, Lioren, for the significant improvement your visits have brought about in its condition . . .”

“But the clinical picture—” Lioren began.

“Has not changed,” it said, completing the sentence for him. “But the patient is feeling better.”

“Hredlichi also tells me,” Seldal went on, “that you interviewed my other patients about a ward environment improvement scheme, with the exception of my isolation case who is forbidden visitors and all medical contacts not directly involved with its treatment. The case is a young and therefore relatively small member of a macrospecies, so there would be an element of risk involved to any life-form of more or less normal body mass approaching it closely. If you still want to do so, you now have my permission to visit it whenever you wish.”

“Thank you, Senior Physician,” Lioren said, feeling grateful but even more confused by the way the conversation was going. “Naturally, I am curious about the secrecy surrounding that particular patient—”

“As is everyone else in the hospital,” Seldal broke in, “who is not closely involved with its treatment, which, I must admit, is not going well. But I am not merely satisfying your curiosity, I have a favor to ask.

“My recent conversations with Mannen and the way it speaks of you,” the Nallajim went on quickly, “make me wonder if the change you brought about in the ex-Diagnostician might be repeated with the young Groalterri patient, whose prognosis is being adversely affected for nonmedical reasons about which it will not speak. My idea is that it, too, may benefit from knowing that its problems are minor when compared with your own. But I will understand if you prefer not to assist me.”

“I will be pleased to help you in whatever way I can,” Lioren said, controlling his excitement and the volume of his voice with difficulty. “A—a Groalterri, here in the hospital? I have never seen one, and had doubts about their existence . . . Thank you.”

“Lioren, you should take more time to consider,” the Nallajim said. “As with Mannen, the process of recollection will be distressing for you. But it seems to me that you accept this distress willingly, as a just punishment that you must not avoid. I think this is wrong and unnecessary. At the same time I must accept these feelings, and use you and them as I would any other surgical tool, for the good of my patient. Nevertheless, I am sorry for inflicting this added punishment on you.”

There was a little of the psychologist in every being, Lioren thought, and tried to change the subject. “May I also continue my visits to Doctor Mannen?”

“As often as you wish,” Seldal replied.

“And discuss this new case with it?” Lioren asked.

“Could I stop you?” Seldal asked in return. “I will not discuss the case further lest my ideas influence your own. The Groalterri patient’s medical file will be opened to you, including what little information there is on the species’ home world.”

It was very strange, Lioren thought as he left the Nallajim lounge, that the Senior Physician should be using him as a tool in the treatment of a difficult patient while he was using the other’s patients as tools in his investigation of Seldal itself—not that he was making much progress with that.

He called briefly on Mannen to tell it about this new development and give its too-empty mind something more to think about before returning to the department. Chief Psychologist O’Mara was still absent, and Lieutenant Braithwaite and Cha Thrat were behaving as if they were about to perform a slightly premature Rite for the Dead over him. Lioren told them that he was not in any trouble, that Senior Physician Seldal had asked him for a favor which he was, of course, granting, and as a result of which he would have to copy some material for later study in his quarters.

“The Groalterri patient!” Braithwaite said suddenly, and Lioren turned to see that Cha Thrat and the lieutenant were standing behind him reading his display. “We aren’t supposed to know that it is even in the hospital, and now you’re involved with it. What is Major O’Mara going to think about this?”

Lioren decided that it was what Earth-humans called a rhetorical question and continued with his work.

CHAPTER 13

SlNCE its formation by the original four star-traveling cultures of Traltha, Orligia, Nidia, and Earth, who had formed as its executive and law-enforcement arm the multispecies Monitor Corps, the Galactic Federation had expanded to include the members of sixty-five intelligent species and in population and area of influence had begun to live up to its original and somewhat grandiose name. But not all of the planetary cultures discovered by the Corps survey vessels were opened to full contact, because a few of them would not benefit from it.

These were the worlds whose technical and philosophical development were such that the sudden appearance among them of great ships from the sky, and the strange, all-powerful beings armed with wondrous devices that they contained, would have given the emerging cultures such a racial inferiority complex that their potential for future development would have been seriously inhibited. And there was one world on which the decision for making full contact was not the Galactic Federation’s to make.

As befitted a culture that had been old and wise when the natives of Earth and Orligia and Traltha had still been wriggling through their primeval slime, the Groalterri had been very diplomatic about it. But they had let it be known without ambiguity that they would not tolerate the Federation’s presence in their adult domain nor allow the maturity and delicacy of their thinking to be upset by a horde of chattering, moronic, other-species children. Both individually and as a race the Groalterri carried enough philosophical and physiological weight to make it so.

They did not have any objection to being observed from space, so the details of their physiological classification and living environment had been obtained by the long-range sensors of an orbiting survey vessel, and this was the only information available.

The Groalterri were the largest intelligent macro life-form so far discovered, a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, and amphibious species of physiological classification BLSU who, as individuals, continued to grow in size from their parthenoge-netic birth to the end of their extremely long life spans. In common with other extravagantly massive life-forms, intelligent or otherwise, they found difficulty in moving about unaided, so that from the young-adult state onward they avoided potentially lethal gravitic distortion of their bodies by swimming or floating in their individual lakes or communal inland seas, many of which had been produced artificially and contained a level of biotechnology far beyond the understanding of the observers.

Another characteristic they shared with large creatures—the library computer cited the examples of the nonintelligent Tral-than yerrit and the Earth panda—was that the mass of the embryo was so small that often a pregnancy was not suspected until after the birth had taken place. In spite of the vast size and elevated intelligence levels of adult Groalterri, their offspring were relatively tiny and uncivilized in their behavior and remained so into early adolescence.

That was one of the reasons for the nursing attendants being chosen from the heavy-gravity Tralthan FGLI and Hudlar FROB classifications, Lioren thought as he prepared for his first sight of the patient. Another was that the Federation wanted to do the hitherto unapproachable Groalterri a favor, probably in the hope that it might one day be returned, and had dispatched a Monitor Corps transport vessel to move the seriously injured young one to Sector General for treatment. It was the Corps who had insisted on secrecy so as to minimize political and professional embarrassment should the patient terminate.

There were two unarmed but very large Earth-human Corps-men guarding the entrance to the ward, a converted ambulance dock, to discourage unauthorized visitors and to advise those with authorization to don heavy-duty space suits. The ward atmosphere and pressure was suited to most warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, they explained to Lioren, but the protection might keep the patient from inadvertently killing him.

In his present mental state, the chance of having his life ended traumatically was a fate greatly to be desired, Lioren thought, but did as they advised without demur.

Even though Seldal’s notes had prepared him for the young BLSU’s body mass and dimensions, the sheer size of the patient came as a shock, and the thought that an adult Groalterri could grow to many hundreds of times as big was too incredible for his mind to accept as a reality. For the patient filled more than three-quarters the volume of the dock, and so large was it that the consequent distortion of perspective kept him from seeing more than a fraction of its surface features until he had used his suit thrusters to tour the vast body.

The dock was being maintained in the weightless condition with the patient lightly restrained by a net whose mesh was sufficiently open to allow medical examination and treatment to be carried out. On the dock’s six inner surfaces, wide-focus pressor and tractor beams controlled from the Nurses’ Station had been positioned so as to hold the creature suspended and out of contact with the walls.

The patient’s overall body configuration, Lioren saw, was that of a squat octopoid with short, thick tentacular limbs and a central torso and head that seemed disproportionately large. The eight limbs terminated alternately in four sets of claws that would with maturity evolve into manipulatory digits while the remain- ing four ended in flat, sharp-edged, osseous blades that were larger than twice the spread of Lioren’s medial arms.

In presapient times those four bone-tipped extremities would have been fearsome natural weapons, Seldal had warned him, and the very young of any species could sometimes revert to their savage past.

Lioren made another tour of the gigantic body, staying as far from the net that enclosed it as the dock walls and deck would allow. This time he studied the hundreds of tiny post-op scars and freshly dressed wounds as well as the areas of pustulating infection that covered half of the creature’s upper body surface.

The condition had been caused by a deep penetration of the subdermal tissue by a nonintelligent, hard-shelled, and egg-laying insect life-form which did not appear to have the physical ability to achieve such depth, but the reason for the multiple traumatic penetration was unknown. In spite of the Groalterri language being held in the hospital’s translation computer, so far the patient had refused to give any information about itself or the reason for its condition.

That was why Lioren ended his tour of the body by drifting to a weightless halt above the circular swelling that was the creature’s head. There, centered above the four heavily lidded eyes that were equally spaced around the cranium, was the area of tightly stretched skin that served both as the creature’s organ of speech and hearing.

Lioren made a quiet, untranslatable sound and said, “If this physical or verbal intrusion gives offense I apologize, for such is not my intention. May I speak with you?”

For a long moment there was no response; then the enormous flap of flesh that was the nearest eyelid opened slowly and Lioren found himself looking into the depths of a dark transparency that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly the tentacle just below him tensed, then curled upward and tore through the restraining net as if it had been the insubstantial structure of a web-spinning insect. The great, bony blade at its tip crashed against the wall behind him, leaving a deep, bright trench in the metal before continuing the swing past Lioren’s head, so closely that the push of displaced air could be felt through his open visor.

“Another stupid, half-organic machine,” the patient said, just as Lioren was caught by a tightly focused tractor beam and whisked back to the safety of the Nurses’ Station.

Reassuringly the Hudlar duty nurse said, “The patient does not mind visual or tactile examinations or even surgery, but reacts in unsocial fashion to attempts at communication. The probability is that it meant to discourage rather than harm you.

“If it had wanted to harm me,” Lioren said, remembering how that outsize, organic axe had whistled past his head, “my suit would not have been of much use.”

“Nor would my own normally impenetrable Hudlar skin,” the nurse said. “Doctor Seldal belongs to a fragile species in which cowardice is a prime survival characteristic but it, too, scorns the use of body armor. The few other visitors who come here are allowed to decide for themselves.

“I have found,” the Hudlar went on,  “that the patient is more likely to speak to an entity who is not encased in body armor, which it apparently regards as a being who is partly mechanical and of low intelligence. Its words to these uncovered visitors are few and never polite, but it does sometimes speak to them.”

Lioren thought of the few words that the patient had spoken after nearly frightening him into premature termination with its pretended attack, and he began unfastening his nonprotective suit. “I am most grateful for your advice, Nurse. Please help me out of this thing and I shall try again. And, Nurse, if there is anything else you wish to say to me I will be pleased to listen.”

As the FROB moved forward to assist him, its speaking membrane vibrated with the words, “You do not recognize me, Lioren. But I know you and I, too, am grateful for the helpful words that you spoke to my Kelgian friend, nurse-in-training Tarsedth, before and during our recent visit to your quarters. I am greatly surprised that Seldal allowed you to come here, but if there is anything further that I can do to assist you, you have only to ask.”

“Thank you,” Lioren said.

He was thinking that the assignment O’Mara had given him to investigate Seldal’s behavior, and his unorthodox method of conducting it, was having unforeseen results. For reasons Lioren could not understand he seemed to be collecting friends.

The second time Lioren approached the patient’s head he was wearing only his translator pack and a thruster unit to help him navigate in the weightless condition. Again he halted close to one of the enormous, closed eyes and spoke.

“I am not, in whole or in part, a machine,” he said. “Again I ask with respect, can I speak to you?”

Once more the eyelid opened slowly like a great, fleshy portcullis, but this time the response was immediate.

“There is no doubt in either of our minds that you have the ability to speak to me,” it replied in a voice that accompanied the translated words like a deep, modulated drumroll. “But if your question was carelessly phrased, as is much of the speech in this place, and you are asking whether I will listen and reply, I doubt it.”

Below him one of the great tentacles stirred restively inside the torn netting, then became motionless again. “Your shape is new to me, but it is likely that your questions and behavior will be the same as all the others. You will ask questions whose answers should be already known through prior observation. Even the tiny Cutter called Seldal, who pecks at me and fills the wounds with strange chemicals, asks how I am. If it does not know, who does? And they all behave toward me as if they were the Parents with power and authority and I the tiny offspring needing consolation. It is as if insects were pretending to be wiser and larger than a Parent, which is ridiculous beyond belief.

“I speak to you very simply of these things,” the BLSU went on, “in the hope that you have the authority to end this ridiculous pretense and that you will leave me undisturbed to die.

“Go,” it ended, “at once.”

The great eye closed as if to banish him from sight and mind, but Lioren did not move. “Your wishes in this matter will be passed without delay to the others concerned with your treatment, because the words that have passed between us are being recorded for later study by—”

Lioren broke off. All of the creature’s tentacles were curling and writhing within the restraining net, which parted loudly in several places before they relaxed again.

“My words,” it said, “are an expression of my thoughts that were given to you and earlier to those with whom I spoke. Without my express permission on each and every occasion, these thoughts are not to be shared with entities who are not present and whose minds are likely to misunderstand and distort my meaning. If this is being done, I shall speak no more. Go away.”

Still, Lioren did not move. Instead he keyed his translator to the Nurses’ Station frequency and prepared to speak once again in the manner of a Surgeon Captain.

“Nurse,” he said, “please switch off all recording devices and erase the words spoken since my arrival. Do likewise with the earlier conversations between Doctor Seldal and the patient. Any personal words of the patient that you yourself have heard on this and previous occasions are to be treated as privileged communications and disclosed to no other person. From this moment on, and until the patient itself has given permission for you to do otherwise, you will cease listening in to any conversation that passes between the patient and anyone else, nor will you use your own organic sound sensors to do so. Do you fully understand your instructions, Nurse? Please speak.”

“I understand,” the Hudlar replied, “but will Senior Physician Seldal?”

“The Senior Physician will understand when I make it aware of the strong feelings of the patient regarding the unauthorized recording of its conversations. In the meantime I assume full responsibility.”

“Breaking sound contact,” the nurse said.

It was only the sound contact that had been broken, Lioren knew, because the nurse would be continuing to watch and record the proceedings on the clinical monitors as well as watching him even more intently on the visuals in case he had to be pulled out of trouble with the tractors again. He returned his attention to the eye of the patient, which was again closed.

“We may now speak,” Lioren said, “without our words being overheard or recorded, and I shall not repeat anything you say without your express permission. Is this satisfactory?”

The patient’s gargantuan body remained still, it did not speak, and its eye did not open. Lioren could not help remembering his first visit to ex-Diagnostician Mannen and thought that here, too, the clinical monitors were indicating that the patient was motionless but conscious. Perhaps the BLSU classification did not sleep, for there were several intelligent species in the Federation who had evolved in presapient conditions of extreme physical danger so that a part of their minds remained constantly on watch. Or it might be that the patient, being a member of a species said to be the most philosophically advanced yet discovered, had twice asked him to leave and was now ignoring him because it was too civilized to be capable of physically enforcing the request.

In Mannen’s case it had been the patient’s own curiosity that had caused it to break the silence.

“You have told me,” Lioren said slowly and patiently, “that the attention and questions of the medical staff here are an irritation to you, because they swarm like tiny insects around a behemoth while behaving as if they had the authority of a parent. Have you considered that, in spite of their small size, they feel toward you the same concern and need to help you that is a parent’s? The insect analogy is as distasteful to me as it is to the others, if you have told them of it, for we are not mindless insects.

“I much prefer,” Lioren went on, “the analogy of the highly intelligent entity with one of lower intelligence of whom it has made a friend, or a pet, if that concept is understood by the Groalterri. Two such entities can often form a strong nonphysical bond with each other and, ridiculous though the idea might seem, should the one of greater intelligence become injured or in distress of some kind, the other will want to give solace and will grieve when it is helpless to do so.

“By comparison with yours,” Lioren said, “the intelligence level of those around you is low. But we are not helpless and our purpose here is to relieve many different kinds of distress.”

There was no response from the patient, and Lioren wondered if the other was treating his words as the buzzings of an irritating insect. But his pride would not allow him to accept that idea. He reminded himself that while this patient belonged to a superintelligent species, it was a very young member of that species, which should go a long way toward levelling the difference between them; one important characteristic in the young of any species was their curiosity about all things.

“If you do not wish to satisfy my curiosity about you, because of your earlier words being shared with others without your knowledge or consent,” Lioren said, “you might be curious about one of the entities who are trying to help you, myself.

“My name is Lioren . . .”

He was there at Seldal’s request because of an age-old and Galaxy-wide truism that in a place of healing there are always entities in worse condition than oneself, and that the one in lesser distress felt sympathy toward its less fortunate fellow and seemed to benefit in the nonclinical area thereby. Plainly the Nallajim Senior was hoping for a similar response from this patient, but Lioren wondered whether an entity so massive in size and intellect, and so tremendously long-lived as this one, was capable of feeling sympathy for the stupid, ephemeral insect hovering above its closed eye.

It took much longer than on the previous telling, because then Mannen had known about the Federation and the Monitor Corps and court-martial as well as the swarm of intelligent insects called the Cromsaggar that Lioren had all but exterminated. Many times his manner lost its clinical objectivity as the words caused him to live again the terrible events on Cromsag, and he had to remind himself several times that his memories were being used as a psychological tool that caused pain to its user, but finally it was over.

Lioren waited, glad of the patient’s lack of response that was enabling him to drive away those fearful images and regain control of his mind.

“Lioren,” the Groalterri said suddenly, without opening its eye, “I did not know that it was possible for a small entity to bear such a great load of suffering. Only by not looking at you can I continue to believe it, for in my mind I see an old and greatly distressed Parent seeking help. But I cannot give you that help just as you cannot help me because, Lioren, I, too, am guilty.”

Its voice had grown so quiet that the translator required full amplification to resolve the word-sounds as it ended, “I am guilty of a great and terrible sin.”

CHAPTER 14

MORE than an hour passed before Lioren returned to the Nurses’ Station to find Seldal, its atrophied wings twitch- ing and feathers ruffled in the Nallajim sign of anger, awaiting him.

“Nurse tells me that you ordered the voice recorders switched off,” it said before Lioren could speak, “and the earlier conversations with the patient to be erased. You exceeded your authority, Lioren, which is a bad habit of yours that I thought you had given up after the Cromsag business. But you have spoken with the patient at greater length than all of the medical staff combined since its arrival. What did it say to you?”

Lioren was silent for a moment, then he said, “I cannot tell you exactly. Much of the information is personal and I have not yet decided what can and cannot be divulged.”

Seldal gave a loud, incredulous cheep. “This patient must have given you information that will help me in its treatment. I cannot order a member of your department to reveal psychosen-sitive information about another entity, but I can request O’Mara to order you to do so.”

“Senior Physician,” Lioren said, “whether it was the Chief Psychologist or any other authority my response would have to be the same.”

The Hudlar nurse had moved away so as to absent itself and avoid embarrassing its department head by overhearing an argument that entity was losing.

“May I assume that I still have your permission to continue visiting the patient?” Lioren asked quietly. “It is possible that I might be able to obtain information arrived at by observation and deduction and the detection of facts, material of nonper-sonal nature about itself or its species which would assist you. But great care is needed if it is not to take offense, because it places great importance on the contents of its mind and the words used to reveal it.”

Seldal’s feathers were again lying like a bright and unruffled carpet around its body. “You have my permission to continue visiting. And now I presume you have no objection to me talking to my own patient?”

“If you tell it that the speech recorders will remain switched off,” Lioren said, “it might talk to you.”

As Seldal departed the Hudlar nurse returned to its position on the monitors. Quietly, it said, “With respect, Lioren, the Hudlar organ of hearing is extremely sensitive and cannot be turned off other than by swathing it in a bulky muffling device, the need for which was not foreseen in this ward and so it was not available to me.”

“Did you hear everything?” Lioren asked, feeling a sudden anger that the patient’s confidence had been breached and that Seldal, from whom he had been keeping the conversation a secret, would shortly be able to hear it all on the hospital grapevine. “Including the crime it is supposed to have committed prior to its arrival here?”

“I was instructed not to hear,” the Hudlar said, “so I did not hear, and cannot discuss what I did not hear with anyone other than the entity who forbade me to hear.”

“Thank you, Nurse,” Lioren said with great feeling. He stared for a moment at the other’s identification patch, which bore only the hospital staff and department symbols because Hudlars used their names only among the members of the family or those whom they proposed to mate, and memorized it so that he would know the nurse again. Then he asked, “Do you wish to discuss some aspect of that which you did not hear with me now?”

“With respect,” the Hudlar said, “I would prefer to make an observation. You appear to be gaining the patient’s confidence with remarkable speed, by speaking freely about yourself and inviting an exchange in kind.”

“Go on,” Lioren said.

“On my world and, I believe, among the majority of your own population on Tarla,” the nurse said, “it would not matter because we believe that our lives begin at birth and end with death, and we do not distinguish between the forms of wrongdoing which seem to be troubling the patient. But among the Groalterri, and in many other cultures throughout the Federation, you would be treading on dangerous philosophical ground.”

“I know,” Lioren said as he turned to leave. “This is no longer a purely medical problem, and I hope the library computer will give me some of the answers. At least I know what my first question will be.”

What is the difference between a crime and a sin ?

When he returned to the department, Lioren was told that O’Mara was in the inner office but had left instructions not to be disturbed. Braithwaite and Cha Thrat were about to leave for the day, but the Sommaradvan held back, plainly wanting to question him. Lioren tried to ignore its nonverbal curiosity because he was not sure what, if anything, he could allow himself to say.

“I know that you are seriously troubled in the mind,” Cha Thrat said, pointing suddenly at his screen. “Has your distress increased to the level where you are seeking solace in . . . Lioren, this is uncharacteristic and worrying behavior in a personality as well integrated as yours. Why are you requesting all that study material on the Federation’s religions?”

Lioren had to pause for a moment to consider his answer, because it was suddenly borne in upon him that, since he had become involved with Seldal and its patients, he had spent much more time thinking about the troubles of Mannen and the Groalterri than his own. The realization came as a great surprise to him.

“I am grateful for your concern,” he replied carefully, “but my distress has not increased since last we spoke. As you already know, I am investigating Seldal by talking to its patients, and the process has become ethically complicated, so much so that I am uncertain of how much I can tell you. Religion is a factor. But it is a subject about which I am totally ignorant, and I should not want to be embarrassed if I were to be asked questions about it.”

“But who would ask questions about religion,” Cha Thrat asked, “when it is a subject everyone is supposed to avoid? It causes arguments that nobody wins. Is it the terminal patient, Mannen, who might ask these questions? If it needs help of that kind, I wonder at it asking you rather than a member of its own species. But I understand your reticence.”

Allowing another person to arrive at a wrong conclusion was not the same as lying, Lioren told himself.

Cha Thrat made a Sommaradvan gesture the significance of which Lioren did not know, and went on, “Speaking clinically, Lioren, I would say that you have been forgetting to eat as well as sleep. You can call up that stuff on your room console as well as from here. I cannot help you where Earth-human beliefs are concerned, but let us go to the dining hall and I will tell you all about the religions—there are five of them altogether—of Som-maradva. It is a subject about which I can speak with full knowledge if less than complete conviction.”

During their meal and continued discussion in Lioren’s quarters, Cha Thrat did not press him for information that he was unwilling to give, but he did not have such an easy time at his next visit to Mannen.

“Dammit, Lioren,” the ex-Diagnostician said, who seemed no longer to be troubled by breathlessness, “Seldal tells me that you have been talking to the Groalterri, and it to you, for longer than anyone else in the hospital, and that you refuse to tell anyone about it. And now you want me to give you an ethical justification for your silence without telling me the reason why you won’t speak.

“What the hell is going on, Lioren?” it ended. “Curiosity is killing me.”

“Curiosity,” Lioren said calmly, looking at the age-wasted body and face with its youthful eyes, “would only be a contributing factor.”

The patient made an untranslatable sound. “Your problem, if I understand it correctly, is that during your second and much lengthier visit to the Groalterri you were given, presumably in exchange for personal data on yourself and information regarding the worlds and peoples of the Federation, a large amount of information about the patient, its people, and its culture. Much of this information is impersonal and clinical and extremely valuable both to the physician in charge of the Groalterri’s treatment and to the cultural-contact specialists of the Monitor Corps. You, however, feel that you have sworn yourself to secrecy. But surely you know that neither you nor the patient have the right to conceal such information.”

Lioren kept one eye directed toward the biosensors, watching for signs of respiratory distress following that long speech. He did not find any.

“The personal stuff, yes,” Mannen went on. “My earlier attempt to get you to shorten my waiting time here was not to become general knowledge, for it affected only myself and had no bearing on the treatment of a patient of a new species or that culture’s future relations with the Federation. The clinical or otherwise nonpersonal information you have been able to gather or deduce is pure knowledge that you have no right to keep to yourself. It should be available to everyone just as the operating principles of our scanners or the hyperdrive generators are available to those able to understand and use them without risk, although for a while in the bad old days the hyperdrive was considered to be a top secret, whatever that meant. But knowledge is, well, knowledge. You might just as well try to keep secret a natural law. Have you tried explaining all this to your patient?”

“Yes,” Lioren said. “But when I suggested making the non-personal sections of our conversation public, and argued that it would not be breaking a confidence because it was clearly impractical to ask every single Groalterri in their population for their permission to reveal this information, it said that it would have to think carefully about its reply. I’m sure it would like to help us, but there may be a religious constraint, and I would not want to cause an adverse reaction through impatience. If it became angry, it is capable of tearing a hole through the structure and opening the ward to space.”

“Yes,” Mannen said, showing its teeth. “Children, no matter how large they happen to be, can sometimes throw tantrums. Regarding the religious aspect, there are many Earth-humans who believe that—”

It stopped speaking because suddenly the small room was being invaded, first by Chief Psychologist O’Mara, followed by Senior Physicians Seldal and Prilicla, who flew in and attached itself with spidery, sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, where its fragile body would be in less danger from unguarded movements by its more physically massive colleagues. O’Mara nodded in acknowledgment of Lioren’s presence and bent over the patient. When it spoke its voice had a softness that Lioren had never heard before.

“I hear that you are talking to people again,” O’Mara said, “and that you especially want to talk to me, to ask a favor. How do you feel, old friend?”

Mannen showed its teeth and inclined its head in Seldal’s direction. “I feel fine, but why not ask the doctor?”

“There has been a minor remission of symptoms,” Seldal responded before the question could be asked, “but the clinical picture has not changed substantially. The patient says that it is feeling better, but this must be a self-delusion and, whether it remains here or goes elsewhere in the hospital, it could still terminate at any time.”

O’Mara’s mention of the patient wanting a favor worried Lioren. He thought that it was the same favor Mannen had asked of him, except that now it would be a more public request for early termination, and he felt both sorrow and shame that it should be so. But the empath, Prilicla, was not reacting as Lioren would have expected to such an emotionally charged situation.

“Friend Mannen’s emotional radiation,” Prilicla said, the clicks and trillings of its voice like a musical background to the words, “is such that it should not cause concern to a psychologist or anyone else. Friend O’Mara does not have to be reminded that a thinking entity is composed of a body and a mind, and that a strongly motivated mind can greatly influence the body concerned. In spite of the gloomy clinical picture, friend Mannen is indeed feeling well.”

“What did I tell you?” Mannen said. It showed its teeth again to O’Mara. “I know that this is a fitness examination, with Seldal insisting that I am dying, Prilicla equally insistent that I am feeling well, and you trying to adjudicate between them. But for the past few days I have been suffering from nonclinical, terminal boredom in here, and I want out. Naturally, I would not be able to perform surgery or undertake any but the mildest physical exertion. But I am still capable of teaching, of taking some of the load off Cresk-Sar, and the technical people could devise a mobile cocoon for me with protective screens and gravity nullifiers. I would much prefer to terminate while doing something than doing nothing, and I—”

“Old friend,” O’Mara said, holding up one digit to indicate the biosensor displays, “will you for God’s sake stop for breath!”

“I am not entirely helpless,” Mannen said after the briefest of pauses. “I bet that I could arm-wrestle Prilicla.”

One of the Cinrusskin’s incredibly fragile forelimbs detached itself from the ceiling and reached down so that its slender digits rested for a moment on the patient’s forehead. “Friend Mannen,” Prilicla said, “you might not win.”

Lioren had strong feelings of pleasure and relief that the favor Mannen was asking would reflect neither shame nor dishonor on the ex-Diagnostician’s reputation. But there was also a selfish feeling of impending loss, and for the first time since the others had entered the room, Lioren spoke.

“Doctor Mannen,” he said, “I would like . . . That is, may I still go on talking to you?”

“Not,” O’Mara said, turning to face Lioren, “until you damn well talk to me first.”

On the ceiling Prilicla’s body had begun to tremble. It detached itself, made a neat half loop, and flew slowly toward the door as it said, “My empathic faculty tells me that shortly friends O’Mara and Lioren will be engaged in an argument, accompanied as it must surely be by emotional radiation of a kind I would find distressing, so let us leave them alone to settle it, friend Seldal.”

“What about me?” Mannen said when the door had closed behind them.

“You, old friend,” O’Mara said, “are the subject of this argument. You are supposed to be dying. What exactly did this . . . this trainee psychologist, do or say to you to bring about this insane urge to return to work?”

“Wild horses,” Mannen said, showing its teeth again, “wouldn’t drag it out of me.”

Lioren wondered what relevance a nonintelligent species of Earth quadruped had to the conversation, and had decided that the words had a meaning other than that assigned by his translator.

O’Mara swung around to face him and said, “Lioren, I want an immediate verbal and later a more detailed written report of all the attendant circumstances and conversations that took place between this patient and yourself. Begin.”

It was not Lioren’s intention to be disobedient or insubordinate by refusing to speak, it was simply that he needed more time to separate the things he could say from those which should on no account be revealed. But O’Mara’s yellow-pink face was deepening in color, and he was not to be given any time at all.

“Come, come,” O’Mara said impatiently. “I knew that you were interviewing Mannen in connection with the Seldal investigation. That was an obvious move on your part even though, if Mannen did not ignore you as he had everyone else, it carried the risk of you revealing what you were doing to the patient—”

“That is what happened, sir,” Lioren broke in, knowing that they were on a safe subject and hoping to stay there. “Doctor Mannen and I discussed the Seldal assignment at length, and while the investigation is not yet complete, the indications so far are that the subject is sane—”

“For a Senior Physician,” Mannen said.

O’Mara made an angry sound and said, “Forget that investigation for the moment. What concerns me now is that Seldal noticed a marked, nonclinical change in its terminal patient which it ascribed to conversations with my trainee psychologist. Subsequently it asked that you talk to its Groalterri patient, who was stronger but being just as silent as Mannen, with the result that when it did speak you forbade the use of speech recorders.”

When the Chief Psychologist went on, his voice was quiet but very clear, in the way that Tarlans described as shouting in whispers, as it went on, “Tell me, right now, what you said to these two patients, and they to you, that brought about the change in the Groalterri’s behavior and caused this, this particular act of constructive insanity in a dying man.”

One of its hands moved to rest very gently on Mannen’s shoulder and even more quietly it said, “I have professional, and personal, reasons for wanting to know.”

Once again Lioren searched his mind in silence for the right words until he was ready to speak.

“With respect, Major O’Mara,” Lioren said carefully, “some of the words that passed between us contained nonpersonal information that may be revealed, but only if the patients give their agreement to my doing so. Regrettably the rest, which I expect is of primary interest to you as a psychologist, I cannot and will not divulge.”

O’Mara’s face had again deepened in color while Lioren was speaking, but gradually it lightened again. Then suddenly the Chief Psychologist twitched its shoulders in the peculiarly Earth-human fashion and left the room.

CHAPTER 15

“YOU ask questions,” the Groalterri said, “endlessly. ”

In such a massive creature it was impossible to detect changes of expression, even if the gargantuan features were capable of registering them, and the nonverbal signals he had been able to learn were few. Lioren had the feeling that this was not going to be a productive meeting.

“I also answer questions,” Lioren said, “for as long as they are asked.”

Around and below him the tightly curled tentacles stirred like great, organic mountain ranges caught in a seismic disturbance, and became still again. Lioren was not unduly worried, because the tantrum of his first visit had not been repeated.

“I have no questions,” the patient said. “My curiosity is crushed by a great weight of guilt. Go away.”

Lioren withdrew to indicate his willingness to obey, but only by a short distance to show that he still wanted to talk.

“Satisfying my curiosity,” he said, “makes me forget my own guilt for a time, as does satisfying the curiosity of others. Perhaps I could help you to forget your guilt, for a while, by answering the questions you do not ask.”

The patient did not move or speak, and Lioren, as he had done when previously faced with this form of negative reaction, took it as a reluctant acquiesence and went on talking.

The Groalterri was physiologically unsuited to travel in space, so he talked about one of the other species who were similarly hampered and others for whom star travel should have been impossible but was not. He spoke of the great strata creatures of Drambo, whose vast bodies could grow like a living carpet to cover the area of a subcontinent, who used as eyes the millions of flowers that made of their backs a light-sensitive skin, and who, in spite of the vegetable metabolism that made physical movement so slow, had minds that were quick and sharp and powerful.

He told of the vicious, incredibly violent and mindless Protectors of the Unborn, who neither slept nor ceased fighting from the moment they were born into their incredibly savage environment until they died because of the weakness of age and the inability to protect themselves from their lastborn. But within that organic fighting and killing machine there was an embryo whose telepathic mind was rich and full and gentle, taught as it was by the telepathy of its unborn brothers, and whose ability to think was tragically destroyed after its long gestation by the process of birth.

“Protectors of the Unborn have been brought to this hospital,” Lioren went on, “where we are trying to devise ways of birthing their offspring without the consequent mind destruction, and of training these newly born not to attack and kill everyone on sight.”

While Lioren had been speaking, the Groalterri remained still and silent. He resumed, but gradually his subject was changing from descriptions of the physiological attributes of the beings who made up the Federation to the philosophical viewpoints which joined or sometimes separated them. He wanted to know what was troubling the patient, so the change was deliberate.

Lioren went on. “An act which is considered to be a great wrong by one species because of an evolutionary imperative or, less often, by a too-narrow philosophical education, can be viewed by another as normal and blameless behavior. Often the judge, who is never physically present but has others to speak for it, is an immaterial entity who is believed to be the all-knowing , all-powerful, and all-merciful Creator of All Things.”

Below and around him the tentacles stirred restively, the eye that had been regarding him steadily closed, but there was no other reaction. Lioren knew that he was taking a risk by continuing in this vein, but there was suddenly a need within him to understand the mind of this great and greatly troubled being.

“My knowledge of this subject is incomplete,” he continued, “but among the majority of the intelligent species it is said that this omnipotent and immaterial being has manifested itself in physical form. The physiological classifications vary to suit the environments of the planets concerned, but in all cases it manifests itself as a teacher and lawgiver who suffers death at the hands of those who cannot at first accept its teachings. But these teachings, in a short time or long, form the philosophical foundation of mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation between individuals of that species which eventually lead to the formation of a planetary and interstellar civilization.

“There are many beings who hold the belief that it is the same being in every case who, whenever its creation is threatened and its teachings are most needed, manifested or will manifest itself on all worlds. But the common factors in all these beliefs are sympathy, understanding, and forgiveness for past wrongs, whatever form they have taken and no matter whether they be venial or of the utmost gravity. The quality of this forgiveness is demonstrated by the manifestation’s death, which is reported in all cases to be shameful and physically distressing.

On Earth it is said that termination occurred after being attached with metal spikes to a wooden cross, and the Crepellian octo-poids used what they called the Circle of Shame, in which the limbs are staked out at full extension on dry ground until death by dehydration occurs, while on Kelgia—”

“Small Lioren,” the Groalterri said, suddenly opening its eye, “do you expect this omnipotent being to forgive your own grievous wrong?”

After the patient’s long silence the question took Lioren by surprise. “I don’t . . . What I mean is, there are others who believe that these teachers and lawgivers arise naturally in any intelligent culture which is in transition between barbarism and the beginnings of true civilization. On some worlds there have been many lawgivers, whose teachings vary in small details, not all of whose adherents believe them to be manifestations of an omnipotent being. All of these teachers advocated showing mercy and forgiveness to wrongdoers, and they usually died at the hands of their own people. Was there an entity of that kind, a great teacher and forgiver, in Groalterri history?”

The eye continued to regard him, but the patient’s speaking membrane remained still. Perhaps the question had been offensive in some fashion, for it was plain that the Groalterri was not going to answer it. Sadly, Lioren ended, “I do not believe I can be forgiven because I cannot forgive myself.”

This time the response was immediate, and utterly surprising.

“Small Lioren,” the Groalterri said, “my question has brought a great hurt to your mind, and for this I am sorry. You have been engaging my mind with stories of the worlds and peoples of your Federation, and of their strangely similar philosophies, and for a time my own great hurt was diminished. You deserve more of me, and shall be given more, than a hurt in return for a kindness.

“The information I shall now give you, and this information only, you may relay to and discuss with others. It concerns the origins and history of the Groalterri and contains nothing that is personal to myself. Any previous or subsequent conversations between us must remain private.”

“Of course!” Lioren said, so loudly that in his excitement he overloaded his translator. “I am grateful; we will all be grateful. But—but our gratitude to you is impersonal. Can you at least tell me who and what you are?”

He stopped, wondering if asking the other’s name had been a mistake, perhaps his last mistake.

One of the creature’s tentacles uncurled suddenly and its bony tip whistled past Lioren’s head to strike the metal wall, where it made deafening, intermittent contact for a few seconds before being as quickly withdrawn.

At the center of one of the few areas of plating left unscarred after its previous tantrum there was a perfect geometrical figure of an eight-pointed star. The lines making it up were straight and of equal depth and thickness, something between a deep, bright scratch and a fine, shallow trench in the metal, and the lines of the figure were accurately joined without gaps or overlapping.

“I am Small Hellishomar the Cutter,” it said quietly. “You, Lioren, would call me a surgeon.”

CHAPTER 16

Hellishomar concentrated its attack on an area where the skin was thin and the underlying tissues soft, tearing into the flesh with all four blades until the bloody crater was large and deep enough to admit its body and equipment. Then it closed and sealed the flap of the entry wound behind it, switched on the lighting and eye-cover washers, checked the level of the flammables tank, and resumed burrowing.

This Parent was old, old enough to be the parent of Hellishomar’s parent’s parent, and the gray rot that afflicted the aged was already well established all over and deep within its gargantuan body. As was usual with Parents, it had concealed the early symptoms so as to avoid the days of severe pain and violence that surgery would entail until the visibly growing cancers had left it unable to move, and one of the passing Smalls had reported its condition to the Guild of Cutters.

Hellishomar was old for a Small as well as large for a Cutter, but its extensive knowledge and unrivaled experience more than made up for the damage caused by the size of the entry wounds it was forced to make; and here the deeper tissues were soft so that often he was able to squeeze through a single incision rather than hacking a bloody tunnel into perfectly healthy flesh.

Avoiding the larger blood vessels or heat-sealing those that could not be avoided, and ignoring the severed capilliaries which would close naturally, Hellishomar cut rapidly and accurately without waste of time. During deep work the compressed air tanks had to be small, otherwise the entry wound would have been larger, the damage greater, and the progress slower.

Then suddenly it was visible, the first internal evidence of the growth, and precisely in the predicted position.

Lying diagonally across the newly deepened incision there was a thin, yellow tube whose tough walls and oily surface had enabled it to slide away from the blade tentacle. It pulsed faintly as it drew nutrient from the gray, necrotic growth spreading over the Parent’s surface tegument to the heart-root, or roots, deep inside the body. Hellishomar changed direction to follow it down.

Within a few moments there was another yellow tube visible on one side of the tunnel, then another and another, all converging towards a single point below him. Hellishomar cut and squeezed through them until the heart-root itself lay exposed like a veined, uneven globe that seemed to glow with its own sickly yellow light. In size it was only a little smaller than Hel-lishomar’s head. Quickly he excised a clear space all around and above it, severing in the process more than twenty of the rootlets and two thicker tubes which were the connections to secondaries. Then, taking up a position which would allow the heat and bloody steam to escape and disperse along the entry wound rather than stewing the Cutter in his own body fluids, Hellishomar attacked the foul thing with his burner turned up to full intensity.

Hellishomar did not stop until the heart-root was converted to ash, and then he gathered the ashes into a small pile and flamed them again. He followed the connector to the secondary, burning it behind him as he went, until he found another heart-root and removed that. When the external Cutters had completed their work, the fine root connections to the surface growths, severed at both ends and starved of nutrient, would wither and shrink so that they could be withdrawn from the Parent’s body with the minimum of discomfort.

In spite of the wipers that were laboring to keep the eye-covers clear, there was an increasing and irregular impairment of Hellishomar’s vision. His movements were becoming slower, the strokes of his cutting blades less precise, and the quality of his surgery diabolical. He diagnosed the condition as a combination of heat exhaustion and asphyxiation and turned at once to begin cutting a path to the nearest breathing passage.

A sudden increase of resistance to the cutters indicated that he had encountered the tough outer membrane of a breathing passage. Carefully Hellishomar forced through an incision large enough to allow entrance to his head and upper body only so as to minimize bleeding from the wound, then stopped and uncovered his gills.

Water not yet warmed by the Parent’s body heat washed past Hellishomar’s overheated body, replacing the stale tanked air in his lungs and clearing both vision and mind. His pleasure was short-lived because a few moments later the flood of clear, gill-filtered water diminished to a trickle as the Parent changed to air-breathing mode. Quickly withdrawing the rest of his body from the wound, Hellishomar uncoiled his cutter-tipped tentacles to full extension, making the shallow, angled incisions in the breathing passage wall which would enable it to maintain position above the wound when the storm of inhaled air blew past.

The Parent’s nerve network made it aware of everything that occurred in its vast body and the exact position of the events as they took place, and it also knew that wounds healed more readily in air than in water. As he expertly drew together the edges of the exit wound with sutures, Hellishomar wished that just once one of the great creatures would touch its mind, perhaps to thank him for the surgical intervention that would extend its life, or to criticize the Small selfishness which made it want thanks, or merely to acknowledge the fact of its existence.

Parents knew everything, but spoke of their knowledge to none but another Parent.

The wind of inhalation died and there was a moment of dead calm as the Parent prepared to exhale. Hellishomar made a final check on the wound sutures, released its grip on the wall, and dropped onto the soft floor of the breathing passage. There it rolled itself tightly into a ball of its own tentacles, and waited. Suddenly its body was lifted and hurled along the breathing passage by a hurricane which coughed it onto the surface of the outside world . . .

“There Hellishomar had rested and replaced its consumables,” Lioren went on, “because this Parent was old and large and there was still much work to do.”

He paused so as to give O’Mara a chance to respond. When he had requested permission to make an immediate verbal report on his return from the Groalterri ward, the Chief Psychologist had expressed surprise in a tone which Lioren now recognized as sarcastic, but thereafter it had listened without interruption or physical movement.

“Continue,” O’Mara said.

“I have been told,” Lioren went on, “that the history of the Groalterri is composed entirely of memories handed down over the millennia. I have been assured of their accuracy, but archeo-logical evidence to support them is not available. The culture has, therefore, no presapient history, and in this respect my report must be deductive rather than factual.”

“Then by all means,” O’Mara said, “deduce.”

No early historical records had been kept on the mineral-starved swamp and ocean world of the Groalterri, because the life span of its people was longer and their memories clearer and more trustworthy than any marks placed upon animal skins or layers of woven vegetation that would fade and rot long before the lives of the writers would be ended. Groalter was a large world that orbited its small, hot sun once every two and one-quarter Standard Years, and one of its gigantic intelligent life-forms would have had to be unhealthy or unfortunate indeed not to have witnessed five hundred such rotations.

It was only with the recent advent—recent as the Groalterri measured the passage of time—of Small technology that permanent written records had been kept. These were concerned principally with the discoveries and observations made by the scientific bases that had been established, with great difficulty and loss of Small life, in the heavy-gravity conditions of the polar regions. Groalter’s rapid rotation gave low levels of gravity only in a broad band above and below the equator, where the tidal effects of its large satellite kept the vast, inhabited oceans and swamps constantly in motion, and this continuing tidal action had long since eroded away its few equatorial landmasses.

In time—a long time even as the Groalterri measured it—their great, uninhabited moon would spin closer until it and the mother planet collided in mutual destruction.

The Small made such advances in technology as were possible in their impermanent environment. And every day of their young lives they tried to control the animal nature within them so that they might arrive more quickly at the mental maturity of the Parents, who spent their long lives thinking great thoughts while they controlled and conserved the resources of the only world that, because of their great size, they could ever know.

“There are two distinct cultures on Groalter,” Lioren continued. “There are the Small, of which our overlarge patient is a member, and the Parents, of whom even their own children know little.”

Within their first Groalter year the Small were forced to leave the Parents, to be cared for and educated by slightly more senior children. This seeming act of cruelty was necessary to the mental health and continued survival of the Parents because, during their years of immaturity, the Small were considered to be little more than savage animals whose quality of mentation and behavior made them utterly repellent to the adults.

In spite of being unable to bear their violent and unsettling presence, the Parents loved them dearly and watched over their welfare at a distance.

But the mind of a Small of the Groalterri, when compared with the level of intelligence and social behavior possessed by the average member species of the Federation, was neither savage nor stupid. For many thousands of Earth-standard years, during their long wait between birth and achieving adulthood, they had been solely responsible for the development of Groalterri physical science and technology. During that period they had no communication with their elders, and their physical contacts were incredibly violent and restricted to surgical interventions aimed at prolonging the Parents’ lives.

“This behavior,” Lioren continued, “is beyond my experience. Apparently the Small hold the Parents in high regard, and they respect and obey and try to help them as much as they are able, but the Parents do not respond in any way other than by passively and at times reluctantly submitting to their surgery.

“The Small use a spoken and written language, and the Parents are said to have great but unspecified mental powers which include wideband telepathy. They use them to exchange thoughts among themselves, and for the control and conservation of every nonintelligent living creature in Groalter’s ocean. For some reason they will not use telepathy to talk to their own young or, for that matter, to the Monitor Corps contact specialists presently in orbit above their planet.

“Such behavior is totally without precedent,” Lioren ended helplessly, “and beyond my understanding.”

O’Mara showed its teeth. “It is beyond your present understanding. Nevertheless, your report is of great interest to me and of greater value to the contact specialists. Their ignorance of the Groalterri is no longer total, and the Corps will be grateful and pleased with their onetime Surgeon-Captain. I, however, am impressed but not pleased because the report of the lowest-ranking member of my department, Trainee Lioren, is far from complete. You are still trying to hide important information from me.”

Clearly the the Chief Psychologist was better at reading Tarlan facial and tonal expressions than Lioren was at reading those of an Earth-human. It was Lioren’s turn to remain silent.

“Let me remind you,” O’Mara said in a louder voice, “that Hellishomar is a patient and this hospital, which includes Seldal and you and myself, is charged with the responsibility for solving its medical problem. Clearly Seldal suspected that there might be a psychological component to this clinical problem and, having observed the results of your talks with Mannen and knowing that it could not approach me officially because this department’s responsibility lies only with the mental health of the staff, it asked you to talk to the patient. This may not be a psychiatric hospital, but Hellishomar is a special case. It is the first Groalterri ever to have spoken with us, or more accurately, with you. I want to help it as much as you do, and I have greater experience than you in tinkering with other-species mentalities. My interest in the case is entirely professional, as is my curiosity regarding any personal information it may have disclosed to you, information which will be used therapeutically and not discussed with anyone else. Do you understand my position?”

“Yes,” Lioren said.

“Very well,” O’Mara said when it was obvious that Lioren would say nothing more. “If you are too stupid and insubordinate to accede to a superior’s request, perhaps you are intelligent enough to take suggestions. Ask the patient how it came by its injuries, if you haven’t already done so and are hiding the answer from me. And ask whether it was Hellishomar or someone else who broke the Groalterri silence to request medical assistance. The contact specialists are puzzled by the circumstances of the distress call and wish clarification.”

“I did try to ask those questions,” Lioren said. “The patient became agitated and gave no answers other than to say that it personally had not requested assistance.”

“What did it say?” O’Mara said quickly. “What were its exact words?”

Lioren remained silent.

The Chief Psychologist made a short, untranslatable sound and sat back in its chair. “The Seldal investigation you were given is not in itself important, but the constraints placed on you most certainly were. I knew that you would have to work through Seldal’s patients to gather information, and that one of them was Mannen. I hoped that putting the two of you together, the patient suffering from preterminal emotional distress and refusing all contact with friends and colleagues, and a Tar-Ian whose problems made Mannen’s look minor indeed, would cause him to open up to the stage where I might be able to help him. Without further intervention by me, you achieved results that were much better than I could have hoped for, and I am truly grateful. My gratitude and the minor nature of the affair allowed me to ignore your tiresome insubordination, but this is a different matter.

“It was Seldal’s idea, not mine, that you should talk to the Groalterri,” O’Mara continued, “and I did not learn of it until after the event. Until now I knew nothing of what passed between you, and now I want to know everything. This involves a first-contact situation with a species that is both highly intelligent and until now completely uncommunicative. But you have been able to talk to one of them, and for some reason have achieved more in a few days than the Monitor Corps in as many years. I am impressed and so will be the Corps. But surely you must see that withholding information, any information regard- less of its nature, that might help widen contact is stupid and criminal.

“This is not the time for playing ethical games, dammit,” O’Mara ended in a quieter voice. “It is much too important for that. Do you agree?”

“With respect—” Lioren began, when a sudden movement of O’Mara’s hand silenced him.

“That means no,” the Chief Psychologist said angrily. “Forget the verbal niceties. Why don’t you agree?”

“Because,” Lioren said promptly, “I was not given permission to pass on this kind of information, and I feel that it is important that I continue to do as the patient requests. Hellishomar is becoming more willing to give information about Groalter, at least, for general distribution. If I had not respected its confidence from the beginning, it is likely that we would have been given no information of any kind. Much more data on the Groalterri will be forthcoming, but only if you and the Corps are patient and I remain silent unless specifically directed otherwise by the patient. If I break confidence with Hellishomar, the flow of information will cease.”

While he had been speaking, O’Mara’s facial pigmentation had grown a dark shade of pink again. In an effort to avert what promised to be a major emotional outburst, Lioren went on. “I apologize for my insubordinate behavior, but the continuing insubordination is being forced on me by the patient rather than any lack of respect. It is grossly unfair to you, sir, because you wish only to help the patient. Even though it is not deserved, I would welcome any help or advice that you would be willing to give.”

O’Mara’s fixed, unblinking stare was making Lioren uneasy. He had the feeling that the other’s eyes were looking directly into his mind and reading every thought in it, which was ridiculous because Earth-human DBDGs were not a telepathic species. Its face had lightened in color but there was no other reaction.

“Earlier,” Lioren said, “when I said that the Groalterri behavior was beyond my understanding, you said that it was beyond my present understanding. Were you implying that the situation has a precedent?”

O’Mara’s face had returned to its normal coloration. It showed its teeth briefly. “It has many precedents, almost as many as there are member species in the Federation, but you were too close to the situation to see them. I ask you to consider the sequence of events that occurs when an embryo is growing between the time of conception and birth, although for obvious reasons I shall discuss these events as they affect my own species.”

The Chief Psychologist clasped its hands loosely together on the desktop and adopted the calm, clinical manner of a lecturer. “Growth changes in the embryo within the womb follow closely the evolutionary development of the species as a whole, although on a more compressed time scale. The unborn begins as a blind, limbless, and primitive water-dweller floating in an am-niotic ocean, and ends as a small, physically helpless, and stupid replica of an adult person, but with a mind which will in a relatively short time equal or surpass that of its parents. On Earth the evolutionary path that led to the four-limbed land animal becoming the thinking creature Man was long, and with many unsuccessful side turnings which resulted in creatures that had Man’s shape but not his intelligence.”

“I understand,” Lioren said. “It was the same on Tarla. But what is the significance in this case?”

“On Earth as on Tarla,” O’Mara went on, ignoring the question, “there was an interim stage in the development of a fully intelligent, self-aware form of life. On Earth we called the early, less intelligent men Neanderthal and the form that violently replaced it Cro-Magnon. There were small physical variations between the two, but the important difference was unseen. Cro-Magnon man, although still little more than a savage animal, possessed what was called the New Mind, the type of mind which enables civilizations to grow and flourish and cover not one world but many. But should they have tried to teach their forebears beyond their ability to learn or left them alone? On Earth in the past there were many unhappy experiences between so-called civilized men and aboriginals.”

At first Lioren did not understand the reason for O’Mara speaking in such oversimplified generalities, but suddenly he saw where the other was leading him.

“If we return to the analogy of prenatal and prehistoric evolution,” the Chief Psychologist continued, “and assuming that the gestation period of the Groalterri is proportional to their life span, isn’t it possible that they also experienced this preliminary stage of lesser intelligence? But let us also assume that their young experience it, not before but after they are born. This would mean that during the time from birth to prepuberty the Small belong temporarily to a different species from that of their elders, a species considered by the Parents to be cruel and savage and, relatively speaking, of low intelligence and diminished sensitivity. But these young savages are the well-beloved offspring of these Parents.”

O’Mara showed its teeth again. “The highly intelligent and hypersensitive Parents would avoid the Small as much as possible, because it is likely that making telepathic contact with such young and primitive minds would be unpleasant in the extreme. It is also probable that the Parents do not make contact because of the risk of damaging their young minds, and retarding their later philosophical development by trying to instruct them before their immature brains are physiologically ready to accept adult teaching.

“That is the type of behavior we expect of a loving and responsible Parent.”

Lioren turned all of his eyes on the aging Earth-human, trying vainly to find the words of respect and admiration that were suited to the occasion. Finally, he said, “Your words are not supposition. I believe them to describe the facts of the situation in every important respect. This information will greatly aid my understanding of Hellishomar’s emotional distress. I am truly grateful, sir.”

“There is a way that you can show your gratitude,” O’Mara said.

Lioren did not reply.

O’Mara shook its head and looked past Lioren at the office door. “Before you leave,” it said, “there is information you should have and a question we would like you to ask the patient. Who requested medical assistance for it, and how? The usual communications channels were not used, and telepathy, originating as it does from an organic nondirectional transmitter of very low power, is supposed to be impossible at distances over a few hundred yards. There is also great mental discomfort when a telepath tries to force communication with a nontelepath.

“But the facts,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “are that Captain Stillson, the commander of the orbiting contact ship, reported having a strange feeling. He was the only member of the crew to have this feeling, which he likened to a strong hunch that something was wrong on the planetary surface. Until then nobody had even considered making a landing on Groalter without permission from the natives, but Stillson took his ship down to the precise spot where the injured Hellishomar was awaiting retrieval and arranged to transport the patient without delay to Sector General, all because he had a very strong feeling that he should do these things. The captain insists that at no time was there any outside influence and that his mind remained his own.”

Lioren was still trying to assimilate this new information, and wondering whether or not it should be given to the patient, when O’Mara spoke again.

“It makes me wonder about the mental capabilities of the adult Groalterri,” it said in a voice so quiet that it might have been talking to itself. “If they do not, as now seems evident, communicate with their own young because of the risk of stunting subsequent mental and philosophical development, that must also be the reason they refuse all contact with our supposedly advanced cultures of the Federation.”

CHAPTER 17

LlOREN’s next meeting with Hellishomar was very useful and intensely frustrating. It gave many interesting pieces of information about the life and behavior of the Small, and said that Lioren was free to discuss the material with others, but it seemed to be talking too much about a subject that was not on its mind. The Monitor Corps would be delighted with the details of Groalterri Small society that he was discovering, but Lioren had a strong feeling that the patient was talking to avoid talking about something else. After three hours of listening to information that was becoming repetitious, Lioren lost patience.

During the next pause he said quickly, “Hellishomar, I am pleased and grateful, as will be my colleagues, for this information about your home world. But I would prefer to hear, and

I have the feeling that you would prefer to speak, about yourself.”

The Groalterri stopped talking.

Lioren forced patience on himself and tried to find the right words of encouragement. Speaking slowly and with many pauses, so as to give Hellishomar every chance to interrupt his questions with an answer, he asked, “Are you concerned about your injuries? There is no need because Seldal assures me that the treatment, although delayed because of the size difference between surgeon and patient, is progressing well and your life is no longer threatened by the infection that has penetrated your body. Are you not a skilled Cutter and highly respected by the Small, who will soon welcome you back to continue the work of extending the lives of Parents? Surely these ailing Parents must also hold you in high regard because of the surgical skills that you can still—”

“I have grown too large to help the Parents,” Hellishomar said suddenly,  “or to continue as a Cutter. The Small will not want me, either. I am nothing but a failure and an embarrassment to all of them, and I am doubly ashamed because of the great wrong I have done.”

Lioren wished that he had more time to think about the implications of this information, and his need to question Hellishomar more closely about it was like a great hunger in his mind. But he was moving into a sensitive area that had been approached before without success. It was likely that too many questions on this subject might seem to Hellishomar like an interrogation, might even imply a judgment and the apportioning of guilt on Lioren’s part. His instincts told him that this was a time for further encouragement rather than questions.

“But surely you have grown in surgical experience as well as physical size,” Lioren said. “You have said as much yourself. Among many of the peoples of the Federation, an entity who has amassed great knowledge, and who is no longer capable of the physical work involved, makes that knowledge available to the young and less experienced members of its profession. You could become a teacher, Hellishomar. Your knowledge could be passed on to others of the Small who are sure to be grateful to you for it, as would the Parents for the lives you will indirectly have saved. Is this not so?”

Hellishomar’s enormous tentacles moved restively, heaving like great, fleshy waves on an organic ocean. “It is not so, Lioren. The Small will pretend that I do not exist, so that my shame will drive me to the loneliest and most inhospitable part of the swamp that I can find, and the Parents . . . The Parents will ignore and never speak with their minds to me. There are precedents, thankfully a very few, in Groalterri history for what will happen to me. I will be an outcast for the whole of my very long life, with only my thoughts and my guilt for company, for that is the punishment I deserve.”

The words, thought Lioren with a sudden rush of remembered pain and guilt, were an echo of those he had used so often to himself, and for a moment he could think of nothing but the Cromsaggar. Frantically he tried to return his mind to Hellish-omar’s sin, which could not possibly be as grievous as that of wiping out a planetary population. Perhaps one of the Small, or even a Parent, had died because of something Hellishomar had or had not done. With Lioren’s crime there could be no real comparison.

In an unsteady voice Lioren said, “I cannot know whether or not your punishment is deserved unless you tell me of the crime, or the sin, you have committed. I know nothing of Groalterri philosophy or theology, and I would be pleased to learn of these matters from you if you are allowed to discuss them. But from my recent studies I know that there is one factor common to all the religions practiced throughout the Federation, and that is forgiveness for sins. Are you sure the Parents will not forgive you?”

“The Parents did not touch my mind,” Hellishomar replied. “If they did not do so before I left Groalter, they never will.”

“Are you sure?” Lioren said again. “Did you know that the Parents touched the mind of the officer commanding the ship orbiting your planet? The touch was gentle and almost without trace, and it was the first and only time that a Groalterri made direct contact with an off-worlder, but nevertheless the captain was directed accurately to the place where you were dying.”

Without giving Hellishomar time to respond, Lioren continued. “You have already told me that the Parents are philosophically incapable of inflicting physical damage or pain, and mat even the most skilled Cutters among the Small are too crude and awkward in their methods to undertake surgery on one of their own kind; only the oldest and largest Parents become sick, the Small never. It is certain that your Small colleagues could never equal the delicacy and precision of the work performed by Seldal. You know this to be so, and you know also that if you had not been taken to this hospital you would be dead.

“That being so,” Lioren went on quickly, “is it not possible, indeed is it not a certainty that the Parents responsible for your presence here have already forgiven you? By their willingness to break with Groalterri tradition to ask help from an off-planet species, have they not given proof that they have forgiven you, that they value you and are doing all that they can to help you return to full health?”

While he had been speaking, the patient’s great body had remained absolutely motionless, but it was the stillness of extreme muscular tension rather than repose. Lioren hoped that the Hudlar nurse on the tractor beam was alert to the situation and ready to pull him out.

“They spoke to a strange, Small-minded off-worlder,” Hellishomar said, “but not to me.”

Be careful, Lioren told himself warningly, this might be a very hurt and angry Groalterri. “I had assumed from what you told me earlier that the Parents did not touch the minds of the Small for any reason. Was I mistaken? What do they say to you?”

Hellishomar’s great muscles were still fighting each other, and so evenly matched were they that its body remained motionless. “Are you less intelligent than I assumed, Lioren? Don’t you realize that the Small do not remain the Small forever? In preparation for the transition into adulthood of the most senior among us, the Parents touch our minds gently and instruct us in the great laws that guide and bind the long lives of the Parents. We are given the reasons why they seek to live for as long as possible in spite of sickness and physical pain—so that they may be adequately prepared to Go Out. All of these laws are passed on in simplified form to the very young among us by Small teachers who are on the verge of maturity.

“I have waited with patience for the Parents to speak to me,” Hellishomar went on, “because I have grown old and large and should rightly have been a young Parent by now. But they do not speak to me. In Groalterri history there are precedents for my situation, a very few of them, fortunately, so I knew that a long, lonely, unhappy and uneventful mental life lay ahead of me. Then in my great despair I committed the most grievous sin of all, and now the Parents will never speak to me.”

As the implications of what the other had been saying became clear to Lioren, a great wave of sympathy washed over his mind, and with it the growing excitement of being on the verge of a full understanding of Hellishomar’s problem. He was remembering Seldal’s description of the patient’s clinical condition and Hellishomar’s insistence that the Small were impervious to illness. Now he knew the nature of the great sin that Hellishomar had committed, because Lioren had come very close to committing it himself.

He wished that there was some way that he could bring consolation to this gravely troubled being, or relieve the inner distress of knowing that among its own highly intelligent kind it was mentally retarded. That had been the reason Hellishomar had tried to end its own life.

He said gently, “If the Parents touch the minds and speak to the Small who are nearing maturity, and for the first time to an off-worlder ship captain in the hope that your injuries could be successfully treated, then they must have a high regard, perhaps a great affection, for you. The reason they do not speak and tell you so is because you cannot hear them. Am I right, Hellishomar?”

“To my shame,” Hellishomar replied, “you are right.”

“It is possible,” Lioren said, carefully avoiding all mention of Hellishomar’s other shame, “that your future life will not be lonely. If embarrassment or other reasons keep the Small from talking to you, and you cannot hear the words of the Parents, there are others who would gladly speak and listen and learn from you. The off-worlders would be pleased to set up a base on the polar hard ground and make it as comfortable as possible for you. If the Parents do not allow this, you could be provided with communications devices which would enable two-way contact to be maintained from orbit. Admittedly, this would not be as satisfactory as full telepathic contact with the Parents, but many questions would be asked and answered by the off-worlders and yourself. Their curiosity about the Groalterri is as great as is yours about the Federation, and will require a long time to satisfy. It is said by many of our foremost thinkers that, to a truly intelligent entity, the satisfaction of curiosity is the greatest and most lasting of pleasures. You would not be lonely, Hellishomar, nor would there be little to occupy your mind.”

Around and below Lioren the patient’s body was stirring although muscular tension was still evident.

“You would not be exchanging mere words,” Lioren went on quickly, “or the verbal questions and answers and descriptions that have passed between us here. When you are well again, large-screen viewing facilities will be made available to you. The visuals will be three-dimensional and in full color. Not only will they show you the physical structure of the galaxy in which we live and the tiny fraction of it that is populated by the Federation, but display to you in as much detail as you desire the science and cultures and philosophies of the many and widely varied intelligent life-forms who are its members. Arrangements could be made that would enable you to question these life-forms and, visually and aurally, to live among many of them. Your life would be long, Hellishomar, but full and interesting so that the absence of Parent mental contact would not be so—”

“No!”

Once again the razor-edged, bony tip of a cutting tentacle whistled past Lioren’s head to crash against the wall plating. Surprise and fear paralyzed both his body and mind, but only for an instant. Before the metallic reverberations had died away he was talking urgently to the Hudlar in the Nurses’ Station, telling it not to pull him out. If Hellishomar had wanted that cutting blade to strike him, he would have been a bloody, dismembered corpse by now. With a great effort he forced himself to speak calmly.

“Have I offended you?” Lioren asked. “I do not understand. If nobody else is willing to speak to you, why do you refuse contact with the Fed—”

“Stop talking about it!” Hellishomar broke in, its voice loud and unmodulated as that of a person who could not hear itself speak. “I am unworthy, and you tempt me to an even greater sin.”

Lioren was deeply puzzled by this sudden change in the other’s behavior, but decided to give the words and circumstances that had led up to it more serious thought at another time. He hoped that the ban on conversation referred to the one hyper- sensitive topic, whatever that was. But now he had to apologize without knowing what he was apologizing for.

“If I have given offense,” Lioren said, “such was not my intention and I am truly sorry. What is it that I’ve said that offends you? We can discuss a subject of your choosing. The work of this hospital, for example, or the Monitor Corps’s continuing search for inhabited worlds in the unexplored reaches of our galaxy, or scientific disciplines practiced throughout the Federation that are unknown to a water world like Groalter—”

Lioren broke off, his body and tongue alike paralyzed with fear. The razor edge of a cutting blade had swept up to within a fraction of an inch of his forebody and face. Any higher and it would have lopped off two of his eyestalks. Suddenly the flat of the blade pressed hard against his chin, chest, and abdomen, pushing him away. Hellishomar’s tentacle continued to uncurl to full extension, and the blade was not withdrawn until Lioren had been deposited back at the entrance to the Nurses’ Station.

“Officially I have heard nothing,” said the Hudlar nurse on duty, after it had satisfied itself that Lioren was uninjured, “but unofficially I would say that the patient does not want to speak to you.”

“The patient needs help . . .” Lioren began.

He fell silent then because his thoughts were rushing far ahead of his words. The recent conversation with Hellishomar, together with the information he had already gathered or deduced about the Groalterri culture, was forming a picture in his mind that grew clearer with every moment that passed. Suddenly he knew what had to be done to and for Hellishomar and the entities who were capable of doing it, but there were serious moral and ethical considerations that worried him. He was sure, or as sure as it was possible to be before the event, that he was right. But he had been right on a previous occasion, right and proud and impatient in his self-confidence, and the population of a world had all but died. He did not want to take on the responsibility for destroying another planetary culture, not alone.

“And so do I,” he finished.

CHAPTER 18

HE found Senior Physician Prilicla in the dining hall, its four sets of slowly beating, iridescent wings maintaining a stable hover above the tabletop while it ingested a yellow, stringy substance which the menu screen identified as Earth-human spaghetti. The process by which the little empath drew the strands from the platter and used its delicate forward manipulators to weave them into a fine, continuous rope which disappeared slowly into its eating mouth was one of the most fascinating sights that Lioren had ever seen.

As he was about to apologize for interrupting the other’s meal, Lioren discovered that the musical trills and clicks of the Cin-russkin’s speech came from a different orifice.

“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “I can sense that you are not feeling hunger, or even repugnance at my unusual in-flight method of eating, and that your predominant feeling and probable reason for approaching me is curiosity. How may I satisfy it?”

Cinrusskin GLNOs were empaths, emotion-sensitives who were forced to do everything in their power to insure that the emotional radiation of those around them was as pleasant as possible because to do otherwise would have caused them to suffer the identical feelings that they had caused. In their words and deeds Cinrusskins were invariably pleasant and helpful, but Lioren was nonetheless relieved and grateful for the reminder that it was unnecessary to waste time on verbal politeness.

“I am curious about your empathic faculty and in particular its similarities to full telepathy,” he said. “My special interest is in the organic structures, the nerve connections, blood supply, and operating mechanism of an organic transmitter-receiver, and the clinical signs and subjective effects on the possessor should the faculty malfunction. If permitted, I would like to interview any telepaths among the hospital staff or patients, or entities like yourself who do not depend solely on aural channels of communication. This is a private project and I am finding great difficulty obtaining information on the subject.”

“That is because the information available is sparse,” Prilicla said, “and too speculative as yet to be given to the clinical library. But please, friend Lioren, rest your mind. The growing anxiety you are feeling indicates a fear that news of your private project will be passed to others. I assure you that this will not happen without your prior permission . . . Ah, already you are feeling better and, naturally, so am I. Now I will tell you what little is known.”

The seemingly endless rope of spaghetti disappeared, and the platter had been consigned to the disposal slot when the Cin-russkin made a feather-light landing on the table.

“Flying aids the digestion,” it said. “Telepathy and empathy are two vastly different faculties, friend Lioren, although it is sometimes possible for an empath to appear telepathic when words and behavior and knowledge of the background support the emotional radiation. Unlike telepathy, empathy is not a rare faculty. Most intelligent beings possess it to a certain extent, otherwise they could never have progressed to civilization. There are many who believe that the telepathic faculty was present in all species, and that it became dormant or atrophied when the more accurate verbal and visually reproducible language evolved. Full telepathy is rare and telepathic contact between different species is rare indeed. Have you had any previous experience of mind contact?”

“Not that I was aware of,” Lioren said. “If it had happened, friend Lioren,” the empath said, “you would have been aware of it.”

Full telepathy was normally possible only between members of the same species, Prilicla went on to explain. When a telepath tried to make contact with a nontelepath, the stimulation of a faculty long dormant in the latter had been described as an attempted exchange of signals between two mismatched organic transmitter-receivers. Initially the subjective effects on the nontelepath were far from pleasant.

At present there were three telepathic species in the hospital, all of whom were patients. The Telfi life-forms were physiological classification VTXM, a group-mind species whose small, beetlelike bodies lived by the direct conversion of hard radiation. Although individually the beings were quite stupid, the gestalt entities were highly intelligent. Investigating their ultra-hot metabolism closely was to risk death by radiation poisoning.

Access to the remaining telepathic life-forms was restricted. They were the Gogleskan healer Khone and its recent offspring and two Protectors of the Unborn, all of whom were at Sector General for clinical and psychological investigation by Diagnostician Conway, Chief Psychologist O’Mara, and Prilicla itself.

“Conway has had successful contact as well as surgical experience with both of these life-forms,” the empath went on, “although it is still too recent and radical to have found its way into the literature. Your colleague Cha Thrat has also had extended contact with the Gogleskan, Khone, and helped deliver its child. It would save time and effort if you simply talked to these entities, or asked that the relevant clinical notes be made available to you . . . I am sorry, friend Lioren. From the intensity of your emotional radiation it is clear that my suggestion was not helpful.”

Prilicla was trembling as though its fragile body and pipestem limbs were being shaken by a great wind that only it could feel. But it was an emotional gale whose origin was Lioren himself, so he strove to control his feelings until the empath’s body was again at rest.

“It is I who should apologize for distressing you,” Lioren said. “You are correct. I have strong, personal reasons for not involving other members of my department, at least until I know enough to speak without wasting their time. But I would dearly like to read the Diagnostician’s clinical notes and visit the patients you mentioned.”

“I can feel your curiosity, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said, “but not, of course, the reasons for it. My guess is that it has something to do with the Groalterri patient.”

It paused and once again its body trembled, but only for a moment. “Your control of your emotional radiation is improving, friend Lioren, and I compliment and thank you for it. But there is no cause for the fear in your mind. I know that you are hiding something from me, but not being a telepath I do not know what it is. I would not relay my suspicions to others in case I caused emotional distress in you that would rebound on myself.”

Lioren relaxed, feeling grateful and reassured, and knowing that with this entity he did not have to vocalize his feelings. But the empath was still speaking.

“It is common knowledge,” Prilicla said, “that you are the only being within the hospital who has talked freely with Hel-lishomar. Because my empathic faculty is bound by the inverse square law, it increases in sensitivity with proximity to the radiating mind. I have deliberately avoided approaching the Groal-terri because Hellishomar is a deeply distressed and desperately unhappy entity, full of guilt and grief and pain, and it has a mind so powerful that there is nowhere within the hospital that I can escape completely from these terrible and continuing feelings. However, since you began to visit Hellishomar there has been a marked decrease in the intensity of this distressing emotional radiation and for that, friend Lioren, I am truly grateful.

“When Hellishomar’s name is mentioned,” the empath went on before Lioren could speak, “I detected from you an emotion that is closer to a strong hope than an expectation. It was strongest when telepathy was mentioned. That is why you will be allowed to visit the telepathic patients. Copies of the relevant clinical files will be made available to you for study. If now is a convenient time, we will begin by visiting the Protectors of the Unborn.”

The Cinrusskin’s six iridescent wings began to beat slowly and it rose gracefully into the air above the table.

“You are radiating an intense feeling of gratitude,” Prilicla went on as it flew above Lioren toward the dining-hall entrance, “but it is not strong enough to conceal an underlying anxiety and suspicion. What troubles you, friend Lioren?”

His first impulse was to deny that anything was troubling him, but that would have been like two Kelgians trying to lie to each other—his deepest feelings were as visible to Prilicla as a Kel-gian’s mobile fur. “I am anxious because these are Conway’s patients, and if you are allowing me to visit them without permission you might find yourself in trouble. My suspicions are that Conway has already given its permission and for some reason you are not telling me why.”

“Your anxiety is unfounded,” Prilicla said, “and your sus- picions are accurate. Conway was about to ask you to visit these patients. They are here for close observation and investigation which, to them, is the clinical equivalent of a prison sentence of unknown duration. They are cooperative but not happy and are missing their home planets. We know of two patients, Mannen and Hellishomar, who have benefited from talking to you and, with apologies for any hurt to your feelings, friend Conway thought that visits from you would do no harm even if they did no good.

“I don’t know what it is that you say to them,” the empath went on, “and according to the grapevine you won’t even tell O’Mara precisely how you achieve your results. My own theory is that you use the reversal technique, so that instead of the doctor extending sympathy to the patient the opposite occurs, and proceed from there. I have used this technique myself on occasions. Being fragile and emotionally hypersensitive myself, people are inclined to feel sorry for me and allow me, as Con-way describes it, to get away with murder. But for you, friend Lioren, they can really feel sorry because—”

For a moment Prilicla’s hovering flight became less than stable as the terrible memories of a depopulated planet came flooding back into his mind. Of course they all felt sorry for him, but no less sorry than he felt for himself. Desperately he fought to push those memories back to the safe place he had made for them, where they could trouble only his sleep, and he must have succeeded because the Cinrusskin was flying straight and level again.

“You have good control, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “Your close-range emotional radiation is uncomfortable to me but no longer as distressing as it was during and after the court-martial. I am glad for both our sakes. On the way there I will tell you about the first two patients.”

The Protector of the Unborn belonged to physiological classification FSOJ, a large, immensely strong life-form with a heavy, slitted carapace from which protruded four thick tentacles, a heavy, serrated tail, and its head. The tentacles terminated in a cluster of sharp, bony projections which made them resemble spiked clubs. The main features of the head were the well-protected, recessed eyes, the large upper and lower mandibles, and teeth which were capable of deforming all but the strongest metal alloys.

They had evolved on a world of shallow seas and steaming jungle swamps where the line of demarcation between animal and vegetable life, so far as physical mobility and aggression were concerned, was unclear. To survive at all, a life-form had to be immensely strong, highly mobile, and unsleeping, and the dominant species on that planet had earned its place by fighting and moving faster and reproducing its kind with a greater potential for survival than any of the others.

The utter savagery of their environment had forced them to evolve a physical form that gave maximum protection to the vital organs. Brain, heart, lungs, and greatly enlarged womb, all were housed deep inside the organic fighting machine that was the Protector’s body. Their gestation period was abnormally extended because the embryo had to grow virtually to maturity before parturition, and it was rare for an adult to survive the reproduction of more than three offspring. An aging parent was usually too weak to defend itself against attack by its lastborn.

The principal reason for the Protectors’ rise to dominance on their world was that their young were already fully educated in the techniques of survival long before they were born. In the dawn of their evolution the process had begun as a complex set of survival characteristics at the genetic level, but the small physical separation of the brains of the parent and its developing fetus had led to an effect analogous to induction of the electrochemical activity associated with thought. The result was that the embryos became short-range telepaths receiving everything the parent saw or felt.

And before the fetus was half-grown there was taking form within it another embryo that was also increasingly aware of the violent world outside its self-fertilizing grandparent, until gradually the telepathic range increased until communication became possible between embryos whose parents came close enough to see each other.

To minimize damage to a parent’s internal organs, the growing fetus was paralyzed within the womb, and the prebirth de-paralysis also caused loss of both sentience and the telepathic faculty. A newborn Protector would not survive for long in its incredibly savage environment if it was hampered by the ability to think.

With nothing to do but receive impressions from the outside world, exchange thoughts with the other Unborn, and try to extend their telepathic range by making contact with various forms of nonsentient life around them, the embryos developed minds of great power and intelligence. But they could not build anything, or engage in any form of technical research, or do anything at all that would influence the activities of their parents and protectors, who had to fight and kill and eat continually to maintain their unsleeping bodies and the unborn within them.

“That was the situation,” Prilicla went on, “before friend Conway was successful in delivering an Unborn without loss of sentience. Now there are the original Protector and its offspring, who is itself a young Protector, and the embryos growing within both of them, all but the original parent in telepathic contact. Their ward, which was built to reproduce the FSOJs’ home environment, is the next opening on the left. You may find the sight disturbing, friend Lioren, and the noise is certainly horrendous.”

The ward was more than half-filled by a hollow, endless cylinder of immensely strong metal latticework. The diameter of the structure was just wide enough to allow continuous, unrestricted movement in one direction to the FSOJ patients it contained, and which curved and twisted back on itself so that the occupants could use all of the available floor area that was not required for access by the medical attendants or environmental support equipment. The cylinder floor reproduced the uneven ground and natural obstacles like the mobile and voracious trip-roots found on the Protectors’ home planet, while the open sections gave the occupants a continuous view of the screens positioned around the outer surface of the cylinder. Onto the screens were projected moving, tri-d pictures of the indigenous plant and animal life which they would normally encounter.

The open lattice structure also helped the medical attendants to bring to bear on the patients the more positive aspects of the life-support system. Positioned between the projected screen images were the mechanisms whose sole purpose was to beat, tear, or jab at the occupants’ rapidly moving bodies with any required degree of frequency or force.

Everything possible was being done, Lioren noted, to make the Protectors feel at home.

“Will they be able to hear us?” Lioren shouted above the din. “Or we them?”

“No, friend Lioren,” the empath replied. “The screaming and grunting sounds they are making do not carry intelligence, but are solely a means of frightening natural enemies. Until the recent successful birthing the intelligent Unborn remained within the nonsentient Protector and heard only the internal organic sounds of the parent. Speech was impossible and unnecessary for them. The only communication channel open to us is telepathy. ”

“I am not a telepath,” Lioren said.

“Nor are Conway, Thornnastor, and the others who have been contacted by the Unborn,” Prilicla said. “The few known species with the telepathic faculty evolved organic transmitter-receivers that are automatically in tune for that particular race, and for this reason contact between members of different telepathic species is not always possible. When mental contact occurs between one of these entities and a nontelepath, it usually means that the faculty in the latter is dormant or atrophied rather than nonexistent. When such contact occurs the experience for the nontelepath can be very uncomfortable, but there are no physical changes in the brain affected nor is there any lasting psychological damage.

“Move closer to the exercise cage, friend Lioren,” Prilicla went on. “Can you feel the Protector touching your mind?”

“No,” Lioren said.

“I feel your disappointment,” the empath said. A faint tremor shook its body and it went on, “But I also feel the young Protector generating the emotional radiation characteristic of intense curiosity and concentrated effort. It is trying very hard to contact you.”

“I’m sorry, nothing,” Lioren said.

Prilicla spoke briefly into its communicator, then said, “I have stepped up the violence of the attack mechanisms. The patient will suffer no injury, but we have found that the effect of increased activity and apparent danger on the endocrine system aids the process of mentation. Try to make your mind receptive.”

“Still nothing,” Lioren said, touching the side of his head with one hand, “except for some mild discomfort in the inter-cranial area that is becoming very . . .” The rest was an untranslatable sound which rivaled in volume the noise coming from the Protectors’ life-support system.

The sensation was like a deep, raging itch inside his brain combined with a discordant, unheard noise that mounted steadily in intensity. This must be what it is like, Lioren thought helplessly, when a faculty which is dormant is awakened and forced to perform. As in the case of a muscle long unused, there was pain and stiffness and protest against the change in the old, comfortable order of things.

Suddenly the discomfort was gone, the unheard storm of sound in his mind faded to become a deep, still pool of mental silence on which the external din of the ward had no effect. Then out of the stillness there came words that were unspoken from a being who did not have a name but whose mind and unique personality were an identification that could never be mistaken for any other.

“You are feeling seriously disturbed, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “Has the Protector touched your mind?”

Rather, Lioren answered silently, I has almost swamped my mind. “Yes, contact was established and quickly broken. I tried to help it by suggesting . . . It asked for another visit at a later time. Can we leave now?”

Prilicla led the way into the corridor without speaking, but Lioren did not need an empathic faculty to be aware of the Cinrusskin’s intense curiosity. “I did not realize that so much knowledge could be exchanged in such a short time,” he said. “Words convey meaning in a trickle, thoughts in a great tidal wave, and problems explained instantly and in the fullest detail. I will need time alone to think about everything it has told me so that my answers will not be confused and half-formed. It is impossible to lie to a telepath.”

“Or an empath,” Prilicla said. “Do you wish to delay your visit to the Gogleskan?”

“No,” Lioren replied. “My lonely thinking can wait until this evening. Will Khone use telepathy on me?”

Prilicla had a moment of unstable flight for some reason, then recovered. “I certainly hope not.”

The empath explained that adult Gogleskans used a form of telepathy which required close physical contact, but, except when their lives were threatened, they did everything possible to avoid such contact. It was not simple xenophobia that ailed them, but a pathological fear of the close approach of any large creature, including nonfamily members of their own species. They possessed a well-developed spoken and written language which had allowed the individual and group cooperation necessary for growth of civilization, but their verbal contacts were rare and conducted over the greatest practicable distance and in the most impersonal terms. It was not surprising that their level of technology had remained low.

The reason for their abnormally fearful behavior was a racial psychosis implanted far back in their prehistoric past. It was a subject which Lioren was strongly advised to approach with caution.

“Otherwise,” Prilicla said as it checked its flight above the entrance to the side ward reserved for the Gogleskans, “you risk distressing the patient and endangering the trust that has gradually been built up between Khone and those responsible for its treatment. I am unwilling to subject it to the emotional strain of a visit from two strangers, so I shall leave you now. Healer Khone is a frightened, timid, but intensely curious being. Try to converse impersonally as I have suggested, friend Lioren, and think well before you speak.”

A wall of heavy, transparent plastic stretching from floor to ceiling divided the room into equal halves. Hatches for the introduction of food and remote handling devices hung apparently unsupported like empty white picture frames. The treatment half of the ward contained the usual tools of medical investigation modified for use at a distance and three viewscreens. Only two of them were visible to the adult Gogleskan, the third being a repeater for the patient monitor in the main ward’s nursing station. Not wishing to risk giving offense by staring at Khone directly, Lioren concentrated his attention on the picture on the repeater screen.

The Gogleskan healer, Lioren saw at once, was classification FOKT. Its erect, ovoid body was covered by a mass of long, brightly colored hair and flexible spikes, some of which were tipped by small, bulbous pads and grouped into digital clusters so as to enable eating utensils, tools, or medical instruments to be grasped and manipulated. He was able to identify the four long, pale tendrils that were used during contact telepathy lying amid the multicolored cranial hair. The head was encircled by a narrow metal band that supported a corrective lens for one of the four, equally spaced and recessed eyes. Around the lower body was a thick skirt of muscle on which the creature rested, and whenever it changed position four stubby legs were ex- tended below the edge of the muscular skirt. It was making untranslatable moaning sounds, which Lioren thought might be wordless music, to its offspring, who was almost hairless but otherwise a scaled-down copy of its parent. The sound seemed to be coming from a number of small, vertical breathing orifices encircling its waist.

Beyond the transparent wall, the metal plating had been covered with a layer of something that resembled dark, unpolished wood, and several pieces of low furniture and shelves of the same material were placed around the inner three walls. Clumps of aromatic vegetation decorated the room, and the lighting reproduced the subdued orange glow of Gogleskan sunlight that had been filtered through overhead branches. Khone’s accommodation was as homelike as the hospital’s environment technicians could make it, but Khone was too timid to complain about anything except a sudden and close approach of strangers.

A timid entity, Prilicla had described it, who was perpetually fearful and intensely curious.

“Is it permitted,” he asked in the prescribed impersonal manner, “for the trainee Lioren to examine the medical notes of the patient and healer, Khone? The purpose is the satisfaction of curiosity, not to conduct a medical examination.”

A personal name could be given only once, at the Time of First Meeting, Prilicla had told him, for the purpose of identification and introduction, and never mentioned again except during written communication. Khone’s body hair stirred restively and for a moment it stood out straight from the body, making the little entity appear twice its real size and revealing the long, sharply pointed stings that lay twitching close against the curvature of the lower torso. The stings were the Gogles-kans’ only natural weapon, but the poison they delivered was instantly lethal to the metabolism of any warm-blooded oxygen-breather.

The moaning sound died away. “Relief is felt that clinical examination by another fearsome but well-intentioned monster is not imminent,” Khone said. “It is permitted and, since access to the medical notes cannot be forbidden, gratitude is felt for the polite wording of the request. May suggestions be made?”

“They would be welcomed,” Lioren said, thinking that the Gogleskan’s forthright manner was not what he had expected. Perhaps the timidity was not evident during verbal exchanges.

“The entities who visit this ward are invariably polite,” Khone said, “and frequently politeness retards conversation. If the curiosity of the trainee is specific rather than general, there would be an advantage if the patient rather than the medical notes were consulted.”

“Yes, indeed,” Lioren said. “Thank you . . . That is, helpfulness has been shown and gratitude is felt. The trainee’s primary interest lies in the—”

“It is presumed,” the Gogleskan went on, “that the trainee will answer as well as ask questions. The patient is an experienced healer, by Gogleskan standards, and knows that both parent and firstborn are healthy and are protected from physical danger or disease. The firstborn is too young to feel anything other than contentment, but the parent is prey to many different feelings, the strongest of which is boredom. Does the trainee understand?”

“The trainee understands,” Lioren replied, gesturing toward the inward-facing display screens, “and will try to relieve the condition. There is interesting visual material available on the worlds and peoples of the Federation—”

“Which shows monstrous creatures inhabiting crowded cities,” Khone broke in. “Or packed tightly together in close, nonsexual contact inside air or ground vehicles, or similar terrifying sights. Terror is not the indicated cure for boredom. If knowledge is to be obtained about the visually horrifying peoples and practices of the Federation, it must be slowly and of one person at a time.”

Even a Groalterri, Lioren thought, would not live long enough to do that. “As the uninvited guest is it not proper for the trainee to give answers before asking questions of the host?”

“Another unnecessary politeness,” Khone replied, “but appreciation is felt nonetheless. What is the trainee’s first question?”

This was going to be much easier than he had expected, Lioren thought. “The trainee desires information on Gogleskan telepathy, specifically on the organic mechanisms which enable it to function and the physical causes, including both the clinical and subjective symptomology present if the faculty should malfunc- tion. This information might prove helpful with another patient whose species is also tele—”

“No!” Khone said, so loudly that the young one began making agitated, whistling sounds that did not translate. A large patch of the Gogleskan’s body hair rose stiffly outward and, in a manner that Lioren could not see clearly, wove the strands into the shorter growth of its offspring and held it close to the parent’s body until the young one became quiet again.

“I’m very sorry,” Lioren began, in his self-anger and disappointment forgetting to be impersonal. He rephrased quickly. “Extreme sorrow is felt, and apologies tendered. It was not the intention to cause offense. Would it be better if the offensive trainee withdrew?”

“No,” Khone said again, in a quieter voice. “Telepathy and Gogleskan prehistory are most sensitive subjects. They have been discussed in the past with the entities Conway, Prilicla, and O’Mara, all of whom are strange and visually threatening but well-trusted beings. But the trainee is strange and frightening and not known to the patient.

“The telepathic function is instinctive rather than under conscious control. It is triggered by the presence of strangers, or anything else that the Gogleskan subconscious mind considers a threat that, in a species so lacking in physical strength, is practically everything. Can the trainee understand the Gogleskan’s problem, and be patient?”

“There is understanding—” Lioren began.

“Then the subject can be discussed,” Khone broke in. “But only when enough is known about the trainee for the patient to be able to close its eyes and see the person enclosed in that visually horrendous shape, and so override the instinctive panic reaction that would otherwise occur.”

“There is understanding,” Lioren said again. “The trainee will be pleased to answer the patient’s questions.”

The Gogleskan rose a few inches onto its short legs and moved to the side, apparently to have a better view of Lioren’s lower body, which had been hidden by one of the display screens, before it spoke.

“The first question is,” it said, “what is the trainee training to be?”

“A Healer of the Mind,” Lioren replied.

“No surprise is felt,” Khone said.

CHAPTER 19

THE questions were many and searching, but so polite and impersonal was the interrogation that no offense could be taken. By the time it was over, the Gogleskan healer knew almost as much about Lioren as he did himself. Even then it was obvious that Khone wanted to know more.

The young one had been transferred to a tiny bed at the back of the compartment, and Khone had overcome its timidity to the extent of moving forward until its body touched the transparent dividing wall.

“The Tarlan trainee and onetime respected healer,” it said, “has answered many questions about itself and its past and present life. All of the information is of great interest, although plainly much of it is distressing to the listener as well as the speaker. Sympathy is felt regarding the terrible events on Crom-sag and there is sorrow and helplessness that the Gogleskan healer is unable to give relief in this matter.

“At the same time,” Khone went on, “there is a feeling that the Tarlan, who has spoken openly and in detail of many things normally kept secret from others, is concealing information. Are there events in the past more terrible than those already revealed, and why does the trainee not speak of them?”

“There is nothing,” Lioren said, more loudly than he had intended, “more terrible than Cromsag.”

“The Gogleskan is relieved to hear it,” Khone said. “Is it that the Tarlan is afraid lest its words be passed on to others and cause embarrassment? It should be informed that a healer on Goglesk does not speak of such matters to others unless given permission to do so. The trainee should not feel concern.”

Lioren was silent for a moment, thinking that his utter and impersonal dedication to the healing art and the self-imposed discipline that had ruled his past life had left him neither the time nor the inclination to form emotional ties, It was only after the court-martial, when any thought of career advancement was ridiculous and the continuation of his life was the cruelest of all punishments, that he had become interested in people for reasons other than their clinical condition. In spite of their strange shapes and even stranger thought processes, he had begun to think of some of them as friends.

Perhaps this creature was another.

“A similar rule binds the healers of many worlds,” he said, “but gratitude is expressed nonetheless. The reason other information has been concealed is that the beings concerned do not wish it to be revealed.”

“There is understanding,” Khone said, “and additional curiosity about the trainee. Has the repeated telling reduced the emotional distress caused by the Cromsag Incident?”

Lioren was silent for a moment; then he said, “It is impossible to be objective in this matter. Many other matters occupy the trainee’s mind so that the memory returns with less frequency, but it still causes distress. Now the trainee is wondering whether it is the Gogleskan or the Tarlan who is better trained in other-species psychology.”

Khone gave a short, whistling sound which did not translate. “The trainee has provided information that will enable a troubled mind to escape for a time from its own troubles because this healer, too, has thoughts which it would prefer not to think. Now the Tarlan visitor no longer seems strange or threatening, even to the dark undermind that feels and reacts but does not think, and there is an unpaid debt. Now the trainee’s questions will be answered.”

Lioren expressed impersonal thanks and once again sought information on the functioning, and especially the symptoms of malfunctioning, of the Gogleskan telepathic faculty. But to learn about their telepathy was to learn everything about them.

The situation on the primitive world of Goglesk was the direct opposite of that on Groalter. Federation policy had always been that full contact with a technologically backward culture could be dangerous because, when the Monitor Corps ships and contact specialists dropped out of their skies, they could never be certain whether they were giving the natives evidence of a technological goal at which to aim or a destructive inferiority complex. But the Gogleskans, in spite of their backwardness in the physical sciences and the devastating racial psychosis that forced them to remain so, were psychologically stable as individuals, and their planet had not known war for many centuries.

The easiest course would have been for the Corps to withdraw and write the Gogleskan problem off as insoluble. Instead they had compromised by setting up a small base for the purposes of observation, long-range investigation, and limited contact.

Progress for any intelligent species depended on increasing levels of cooperation between individuals and family or tribal groups. On Goglesk, however, any attempt at close cooperation brought a period of drastically reduced intelligence, a mindless urge to destruction, and serious physical injury in its wake, so that the Gogleskans had been forced into becoming a race of individualists who had close physical contact only during the periods when reproduction was possible or while caring for their young.

The situation had been forced on them in presapient times, when they had been the principal food source of every predator infesting Goglesk’s oceans. Although physically puny, they had been able to evolve weapons of offense and defense—stings that paralyzed or killed the smaller life-forms, and long, cranial tendrils that gave them the faculty of telepathy by contact. When threatened by large predators they linked bodies and minds together in the numbers required to englobe and neutralize with their combined stings any attacker regardless of its size.

There was fossil evidence that a bitter struggle for survival had been waged between them and a gigantic and particularly ferocious species of ocean predator for millions of years. The presapient Gogleskans had won in the end, but they had paid a terrible price.

In order to englobe and sting to death one of those giant predators, physical and telepathic linkages between hundreds of presapient FOKTs were required. A great many of them had perished, been torn apart and eaten during every such encounter, and the consequent and often repeated death agonies of the victims had been shared telepathically by every member of the group. A natural mechanism had evolved that had fractionally reduced this suffering, diluting the pain of group telepathy by generating a mindless urge to destroy indiscriminately everything within reach that was not an FOKT. But even though the Gogleskans had become intelligent and civilized far beyond the level expected of a primitive fishing and farming culture, the mental wounds inflicted during their prehistory would not heal.

The high-pitched audible signal emitted by Gogleskans in distress that triggered the joining process could not be ignored at either the conscious or unconscious levels. That call to join represented only one thing, the threat of ultimate danger. And even in present times, when the danger was insignificant or imaginary, it made no difference. A joining led inevitably to the mindless destruction of everything in their immediate vicinity-housing, vehicles, crops, farm animals, mechanisms, book and art objects—that they had been able to build or grow as individuals.

That was why the present-day Gogleskans would not allow, except in the circumstances Khone had already mentioned, anyone to touch or come close to them or even address them in anything but the most impersonal terms while they fought helplessly and, until the recent visit of Diagnostician Conway to Goglesk, hopelessly against the condition that evolution had imposed on them.

“It is Conway’s intention to break the Gogleskan racial conditioning,” Khone went on, “by allowing the parent and offspring to experience gradually increasing exposure to a variety of other life-forms who were intelligent, civilized, and obviously not a threat. It was thought that the young one, in particular, might become so accustomed to the process that its subconscious as well as its conscious mind would be able to control the blind urge that previously caused a panic reaction leading to a joining. Mechanisms have also been devised by the hospital which distort the audible distress signal so that it becomes unrecognizable. The triggering stimulus and subsequent urge to mindless destruction would then be limited to the capabilities of one rather than a large group of persons acting in concert. Another solution which has doubtless already occurred to the trainee would be to excise the tendrils which allow contact telepathy and make it impossible for a joining to occur. But that solution is not possible because the tendrils are needed to give comfort and later to educate the very young, as well as to intensify the pleasures of mating, and the Gogleskans suffer privations enough without becoming voluntary emotional cripples.

“It is Conway’s expectation and our hope,” Khone concluded, “that this two-pronged attack on the problem will enable the Gogleskans to build with permanence and advance to a level of civilization commensurate with their intelligence.”

Normally Lioren found it difficult to detect emotional overtones in translated speech, but this time he felt sure that there was a deep uncertainty within the other’s mind that had not been verbalized.

“This trainee may be in error,” Lioren said, “but it senses that the Gogleskan healer patient is troubled. Is there dissatisfaction with the treatment it is receiving? Are there doubts regarding the abilities or expectations of Conway—?”

“No!” Khone broke in. “There was one brief and accidental sharing of minds with the Diagnostician when it visited Gog-lesk. Its abilities and intentions are known and are beyond criticism. But its mind was crowded with other minds full of strange experiences and thoughts so alien that the Gogleskan wanted to call for a joining. Much was learned from the mind of Conway and much more remains incomprehensible, but it was plain that the proportion of the Diagnostician’s mind available for the Gog-lesk project was small. When doubts were first expressed, the Diagnostician listened and its words were confident, reassuring, and dismissive, and it may be that Conway does not fully understand the nonmedical problem. It cannot or will not believe that, out of all the intelligent races that make up the Federation, the Gogleskan species alone is accursed and doomed forever to self-inflicted barbarism by the Authority which Orders All Things.”

Lioren was silent for a moment, wondering if he was about to become involved once again in a problem that was philosophical rather than clinical, and unsure of his right or ability as a Tarlan unbeliever to engage in a debate on other-species theology. “If there was a telepathic touching,” he said, “then the Diagnostician must have seen and understood what is in the healer’s mind, so that the doubts may be groundless. But the trainee is completely ignorant in this matter. If the healer wishes it, the trainee will listen to these doubts and not be dismissive. A fear was mentioned that the situation on Goglesk would never change. Can the reason for this fear be explained more fully?”

“Yes,” Khone said in a quieter voice. “It is a fear that one entity cannot change the course of evolution. It was evident from Conway’s mind, and from the thoughts and beliefs of those entities who shared that mind when the touching occurred, that the situation on Goglesk is abnormal. On the other worlds of the Federation there is a struggle between the destructive forces of environment and instinctive, animal behavior on one side and the efforts of thinking and cooperating beings on the other. By some entities it is called the continuing battle to impose order upon chaos, and by many the struggle between good and bad, or God against the Evil One. On all of these worlds it is the former, at times with great difficulty, who is gaining ascendancy over the latter. But on Goglesk there is no God; only the prehistoric but still all-powerful Devil rules there . . .”

The Gogleskan’s erect, ovoid body was trembling, its hair was raised like clumps of long, many-colored grass, and the four yellow spikes that were its stings were beaded with venom at the tips. For it was seeing again the images that had been indelibly printed into its racial memory, the terrible pictures complete with their telepathically shared death agonies as the gigantic predators had torn its joined forebears into bloody tatters. Lioren suspected that the signal of ultimate distress, the Call for Joining, would have already gone out if Khone had not controlled its instinctive terror with the reminder that the only other Gogleskan capable of linking telepathically with it was its own sleeping offspring.

Gradually Khone’s trembling diminished, and when the erect hair and stings were again lying flat against its body, it went on. “There is great fear and even greater despair. The Gogleskan feels that the help of the Earth-human Diagnostician, with goodwill and the resources of this great hospital at its disposal, are not enough to alter the destiny of a world. It is a stupid self-delusion on the part of this healer to think otherwise, and a gross act of ingratitude to tell Conway of these feelings. Everywhere in the Federation there is a balance between order and chaos, or good and evil, but it is inconceivable that a Gogleskan and its child could alter the destiny, the habits and thinking and feelings of an entire planetary population.”

Lioren made the sign of negation, then realized that the gesture would be meaningless to Khone. “The healer is wrong. There are many precedents on many different worlds where one person was able to do just that. Admittedly, the person concerned was an entity with special qualities, a great teacher or lawgiver or philosopher, and many of its followers believed that it was the manifestation of their God. It is not certain that the healer and its child, with Conway’s assistance, will change the course of Gogleskan history, but it is possible.”

Khone made a short, wheezing sound which did not translate. “Such wildly inaccurate and extravagant compliments have not been received since the prelude to first mating. Surely the Tarlan is aware that the Gogleskan healer is neither a teacher nor a leader nor a person with any special qualities. That which the trainee suggests is ridiculous!”

“The trainee is aware,” Lioren said, “that the healer is the only member of its species to have faced its Devil, to have broken its racial conditioning to the extent of coming to a place like Sector General, a place filled with monstrous but well-intentioned beings the majority of whom are visually more terrifying than the Dark One that haunts the Gogleskan racial memory. And the trainee disagrees because it is self-evident that the healer possesses special qualities.

“For it has demonstrated beyond doubt,” Lioren went on before Khone could react, “that it is possible for one Gogleskan who was continually in fear of the close approach of its own kind to overcome and, with practice and great strength of will, to understand and even befriend many of the creatures out of nightmare who live here. This being so, is it not possible, even probable, that it will be able to find and teach this quality to others of its kind, who will in time spread its teachings throughout their world until gradually the Dark One loses all power over the Gogleskan mind?”

“That is what Conway believes,” Khone said. “But is it not also probable that the followers will say that the teacher is damaged in the brain, and be fearful of the great changes that they would have to make in their customs and habits of mind? If it persisted in its attempts to make them think in new and uncomfortable ways, they might drive the teacher from them and inflict serious injury or worse.”

“Regrettably,” Lioren said, “there are precedents for such behavior, but if the teaching is good it outlives the teacher. And the Gogleskans are a gentle race. This teacher should feel neither fear nor despair.”

Khone made no response and Lioren went on. “It is a truism that in any place of healing a patient will invariably find others in a more distressed condition than itself, and derive some small comfort from the discovery. The same holds true among the distressed worlds. The healer is also wrong, therefore, in thinking that Goglesk is uniquely accursed by fate or whichever other agency it feels is responsible.

“There are the Cromsaggar,” Lioren went on, maintaining a quiet tone within the sudden clamor of memories the word aroused, “whose curse was that they were constantly ill and constantly at war because fighting each other was the only cure for their disease. And there are the Protectors, who fight and hunt and kill mindlessly for every moment of their adult lives, and who would make the long-extinct Dark Ones of Goglesk seem tame by comparison. Yet within these terrible organic killing machines live, all too briefly, the telepathic Unborn whose minds are gentle and sensitive and in all respects civilized. Diagnostician Thornnastor has solved the Cromsag problem, which was basically one of endocrinology, so that the few surviving natives of that planet will no longer be condemned to unending, reluctant warfare. Diagnostician Conway has made itself responsible for freeing the Protectors of the Unborn from their evolutionary trap, but everyone feels that it is the Gogleskan problem which will be more easily solved—”

“These problems have already been discussed,” Khone broke in, its whistling speech increasing in pitch as it spoke. “The solutions, although complex, involve medical or surgical conditions that are susceptible to physical treatment. It is not so on Goglesk. There the problem is not susceptible to physical solution. It is the most important part of the genetic inheritance that enabled the species to survive since presapient times and cannot be destroyed. The evil that drives the race to self-destruction and self-enforced solitude was, is, and always will be. On Goglesk there has never been a God, only the Devil.”

“Again,” Lioren said, “it is possible that the healer is incorrect. The trainee hesitates lest offense is given through ignorance of Gogleskan religious beliefs that may be held by the—”

“Impatience is felt,” Khone said, “but offense will not be taken.”

For a moment Lioren tried desperately to remember and organize the information he had recently abstracted from the library computer. “It is widely taught and believed throughout the Federation that where there is evil there is also good, and that there cannot be a devil without God. This God is believed to be the all-knowing, all-powerful but compassionate supreme being and maker of all things, and is also held to be ever-present but invisible. If only the Devil is evident on Goglesk it does not necessarily mean that God is not there because all of the beliefs, regardless of species, are in agreement that the first place to look for God is within one’s self.

“The Gogleskans have been struggling against their Devil since they first developed intelligence,” Lioren went on. “Sometimes they have lost but more often of late they have made small gains. It could be that there is one Devil and many who unknowingly carry their God within them.”

“These are like the words spoken by Conway,” Khone said. “But the Diagnostician encourages with advanced medical science and advises more rigorous training in the mental disciplines. Is Goglesk’s benefactor unable to believe in God or our Devil or any other form of nonphysical presence?”

“Perhaps,” Lioren said. “But regardless of its beliefs the quality of its assistance remains unaltered.

Khone was silent for so long that Lioren wondered if the interview was over. He had a strong feeling that the other wanted to speak, but when they eventually came the words were a complete surprise.

“Additional reassurance might be felt,” Khone said, “if the Tarlan spoke of its own beliefs.”

“The Tarlan,” Lioren said carefully, “knows of many different beliefs held by its own people as well as those on other worlds, but the knowledge is recently acquired, incomplete, and probably inaccurate. It has also discovered in the histories of the subject that such beliefs, if they are strongly held, are matters of faith which are not susceptible to change through logical argument. If the beliefs are very strongly held, the discussion of alternative beliefs can give offense. The Tarlan does not wish to offend, and it does not have the right to influence the beliefs of others in any fashion. For these reasons it would prefer that the Gogleskan takes the lead by describing its own beliefs.”

It had been obvious from the beginning that Khone was deeply troubled, even though the precise nature of the problem had been unclear. This was not an area where advice could be given in total ignorance.

“The Tarlan is being evasive,” Khone said, “and cautious.”

“The Gogleskan,” Lioren said, “is correct.”

There was a short silence, then Khone said, “Very well. The Gogleskan is frightened, and despairing, and angry about the Devil that lives within the minds of its people and constantly tortures and binds them in chains of near-barbarism. It is preferred that nothing be spoken of the nonmaterial supports its people use to solace and encourage themselves because this Gogleskan, as a healer, doubts the efficacy of nonmaterial medication. It asks again, what kind of God does the Tarlan believe in?

“Is it a great, omniscient, and all-powerful creator,” Khone went on before Lioren could reply, “who allows or ignores pain and injustice? Is it a god who heaps undeserved misfortune on a few species while blessing the majority with peace and contentment? Does it have good or even godly reasons for permitting such terrible events as the destruction of the Cromsaggar population, or for the evolutionary trap which imprisons the Protectors of the Unborn and for the dreadful scourge it has inflicted on the Gogleskans? Can there be any sin committed in the past so grievous that it warrants such punishment? Does this God have intelligence and ethical reasons for such apparently stupid and immoral behavior, and will the Tarlan please explain them?”

The Tarlan has no explanations, thought Lioren, because he is an unbeliever like yourself. But he knew instinctively that that was not the answer Khone wanted, because if it was truly an unbeliever it would not be so angry with the God it did not believe in. This was a time for soft answers.

CHAPTER 20

“As has already been stated,” Lioren said quietly, “the Tarlan will give information but will not try to influence the beliefs or disbeliefs of others. The religions on the majority of the Federation planets, and the god worshiped by their fol- lowers, have much in common. Their god is the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Creator of All Things, as has already been stated, and is in addition believed to be just, merciful, compassionate, deeply concerned for the well-being of all of the intelligent entities it has created, and forgiving of the wrongs committed by them. It is generally believed that where there is God there is also the Devil, or some evil and less well defined entity or influence which constantly seeks to undo God’s work among its thinking creatures by trying to make them behave in the instinctive manner of the animals, which they know they are not. Within every thinking creature there is this constant struggle between good and evil, right and wrong. Sometimes it seems that the Devil, or the tendency to animal behavior that is in all thinking beings, is winning and that God does not care. But even on Goglesk good has begun to make gains, minor though they may be, over evil. Had this not been so the Gog-leskan healer would not be here and undergoing instruction in the use of the anti-joining sound distorters. Because it is also said that God helps even those who do not believe in its existence—”

“And punishes those who do,” Khone broke in. “The questions remain. How does the Tarlan explain a compassionate God who allows such massive cruelty?”

Lioren did not have an answer, so he ignored the question. “It is often said that belief in God is a matter of faith rather than physical proof, that it does not depend on the level of intelligence possessed by the believer and that when the quality of mentation is weak the faith is stronger and more certain. The implication is that only the relatively stupid believe in the metaphysical or the supernatural or a life after physical death, while the more intelligent entities know better and believe only in themselves, the physical reality they experience around them and their ability to change it for the better.

“The complexities of this external reality, from the galaxies that stretch out to infinity and the equally complex microuni-verses of which it is made, are given scientific explanations which are little more than intelligent guesses that are subject to continual modification. Most unconvincing of all are the explanations for the presence of creatures who have evolved in the area between the macro- and microcosm, creatures who think and know, and know that they know, and who try to understand the whole of which they are but the tiniest part while striving to change it for the better. To the enlightened few among these thinkers it is considered right to behave well toward each other and cooperate individually and as peoples and other-planet species so that peace, contentment, and scientific and philosophical achievement is attained for the greatest number of beings. Any person or group or system of thinking which retards this process is considered wrong. But to the majority of these thinkers good and evil are abstractions, and God and the Devil but the superstitions of less intelligent minds.”

Lioren paused, trying to find the right words of certainty and reassurance about a subject of which he felt very uncertain. “For the first time in its history, the Galactic Federation has been contacted by a superintelligent, philosophically advanced, but technologically backward race called the Groalterri. The contact was indirect because this species believes that direct mental contact would result in irreversible philosophical damage to those races which hitherto considered themselves to be highly intelligent. One of their young sustained injuries which they were unable to treat, and they requested the hospital to accept it as a patient and gave reassurances that the young one was not yet intelligent enough for contact with it to be psychologically damaging. During conversations with it the Tarlan discovered, among other things, that it and the hyperintelligent adult members of its race are not unbelievers.”

Tufts of stiff, bristling fur were standing out from Khone’s body, but the Gogleskan did not speak.

“The Tarlan feels no certainty about this,” Lioren said, ''and wishes only to make an observation. It may be that all intelligent species pass through a stage when they think that they know the answers to everything, only to progress further to a truer realization of the depth of their ignorance. If the most highly intelligent and philosophically advanced species yet discovered believes in God and an afterlife then—”

“Enough!” Khone broke in sharply. “The existence of God is not the question. The question, which the Tarlan is trying to avoid by providing other and more interesting material for debate, remains the same. Why does this all-powerful, just, and compassionate God act so cruelly and unjustly where some of its creatures are concerned? To the Gogleskan the answer is important. Great distress and uncertainty is felt.”

But what exactly do you believe or disbelive, Lioren wondered helplessly, so that I can try to relieve your distress? Because he did not believe in prayer he wished desperately for inspiration, but all that he could find to talk about were the recently learned beliefs of others.

“The Tarlan does not know or understand the purposes and behavior of God,” he said, “It is the creator of all things and must therefore possess a mind infinitely superior and more complex than that possessed by any of its creations. But certain facts are generally accepted about this being which may assist in understanding behavior that, as the healer has noted, is very often at variance with what is believed to be its intentions.

“For example: It is believed to be the omniscient creator of all things,” Lioren continued, “who has the deep concern of a parent for the welfare of each and every one of its creations, although the more general belief is that this love is reserved principally for its thinking creations. Yet all too often it appears to behave as an angry, irrational, or uncaring parent than a loving one. It is also widely believed that the creator works its purpose within all of its thinking creatures, whether or not they believe in its existence.

“Another belief held by most species is that God created them in its own image and that they will one day live forever in happiness with their creator in an afterlife which has as many names as there are inhabited planets. This belief is particularly troublesome to many thinkers for the reason that the variety of physiological classifications among intelligent life-forms encountered within the known Galaxy makes this a logical and physical impossibility—”

“The Tarlan is restating the question,” Khone said suddenly, “not providing an answer.”

Lioren ignored the interruption. “But there are others who have come to share a different belief and think that they know a different god. These beings are not as intelligent as the Groal-terri, whose thoughts on this subject are and will probably always remain unknown to us. They were unhappy with the idea that such a complex but perfectly ordered structure as the universe around them is without purpose and came into being by accident. It troubled them that there were probably more stars in their sky than individual grains of sand on the beaches surrounding Goglesk’s island continent. It troubled them that the more they discovered about the subatomic unreality that is the foundation of the real world, the more hints there were of a vast and complex macrostructure at the limits of resolution of their most sensitive telescopes. It also troubled them that intelligent, self-aware creatures had come into being with a growing curiosity and need to explain the universe they inhabit. They refused to believe that such a vast, complex, and well-ordered structure could occur by accident, which meant that it had to have had a creator. But they were a part of that creation, the only part composed of self-aware entities, creatures who knew and were aware that they knew, so they believed all intelligent life to be the most important part of the creation so far as the creator was concerned.

“This was not a new idea,” Lioren continued, “because many others believed in a God who had made them and loves them and watches over them, and who would take them to itself in the fullness of time. But they were troubled by the uncharacteristic actions of this loving god, so they modified their idea of God’s purpose so that its behavior might be more easily explained.

“They believe that God created all things including themselves,” Lioren said slowly, “but that the work of creation is not yet complete.”

Khone had become so still and silent that Lioren could not hear its normally loud respiration. He went on. “The work is not complete, they say, because it began with the creation of a universe that is still young and may never die. Exactly how it began is unknown, but at present it contains many species who have evolved to high intelligence who are spreading in peace among the stars. But the rise from animal to thinking being, the process of continuing creation, or evolution if one is an unbeliever, is not a pleasant process. It is long and slow and often many necessary cruelties and injustices occur among those who are part of it,

“They also believe,” Lioren continued, “that the present differences in physiology and environmental requirements are unimportant since evolution, or creation, is leading toward increased sentience and a reduced dependence on specialized appendages. The result, in the greatly distant future, will be that thinking creatures will have evolved beyond their present need for the physical bodies that house their minds. They will become immortal and join together to achieve goals that cannot be envisaged by the near-animals of the present. They will become Godlike and a true image, as they were and are promised, of the being who created them. It is held that the spirits or souls of the mentally and philosophically immature entities who have and will inhabit this universe for many eons to come will also share in this future immortality and be one with their God, because it is believed to be a philosophical absurdity that the creator of all things would discard the most important, if presently incomplete, parts of its own creation.”

Lioren paused to await Khone’s reaction; then another thought occurred to him. “The Groalterri possess very high intelligence and they are believers, but will not talk about their beliefs or anything else with those of lower intelligence levels lest they damage immature minds. It may be that every intelligent species must find its own way to God, and the Groalterri are further along the path than the rest of us.”

There was another long silence; then Khone asked very quietly, “Is this, then, the God in which the Tarlan believes?”

From the other’s tone Lioren knew that his answer should be “Yes,” because he felt sure now that the Gogleskan was a doubter who desperately wanted its doubts dispelled, and that he should take advantage of the situation by quickly reassuring the patient if he wished to obtain the telepathy information he wanted. But an unbeliever telling a lie in the hope of making a doubter believe was dishonorable and dishonest. It was his duty to give what reassurance he could, but he would not lie.

Lioren thought for a long moment, and when he replied he was surprised to discover that he meant every word.

“No,” he said, “but there is uncertainty.”

“Yes,” Khone said, “there is always uncertainty.”

CHAPTER 21

LIOREN’s answer had satisfied the Gogleskan, or perhaps had satisfactorily reinforced its doubts, because Khone did not ask any more questions about God.

Instead, it said, “Earlier the Tarlan expressed curiosity regarding the organic structures associated with the Gogleskan telepathic faculty and reasons why a loss or a diminution of function takes place. As is already known by the Tarlan, the solitary nature of the Gogleskan life-form precluded the development of sophisticated surgical techniques, and only a very few healers could force themselves to investigate internally a Gogleskan cadaver. The information available is sparse and regret is felt for any disappointment caused. But a debt is owed and it is now encumbent upon the Gogleskan to answer rather than ask questions.”

“There is gratitude,” Lioren said.

Khone’s fur twitched, rose and stood out in long, uneven tufts all over its body—a clear indication of the mental effort required to discuss personal matters. But the reaction, Lioren discovered quickly, was also intended as a demonstration.

“Contact telepathy is used only on two occasions,” Khone said, “in response to a tribal Call for Joining when a real but more often an imaginary danger threatens, or for the purpose of reproduction. As has already been explained, the emotional trigger of the signal is highly sensitive. A minor injury, a sudden surprise or change in normal conditions, or an unexpected meeting with a stranger can cause it to operate unintentionally, whereupon a group forms by intertwining the body fur and telepathic tendrils. This fear-maddened group entity reacts to the real or imagined threat by destroying everything that is not a Gogleskan in the immediate vicinity as well as causing self-inflicted injuries to individual members. At such times the men- tal state makes it impossible to be objective or qualitative about the functioning or malfunctioning of the telepathic faculty, since the ability to make clinical observations, or even to think coherently, is submerged in the panic reaction.

“Doubtless the Tarlan will know from experience that a similar but much more pleasant emotional upheaval occurs between partners during the process of sexual conjugation. But here the Gogleskan telepathic linkage insures that the sensations of both are shared, and doubled. Small variations or diminution of sensation, if present, would be difficult to detect or remember afterward.”

“The Tarlan is without experience in this area,” Lioren said. “Healers on Tarla expecting advancement to high positions in the profession are required to forgo such emotional distractions.”

“There is deep sympathy,” Khone said. It paused for a moment, then went on, “But an attempt will be made to describe in detail the physical preliminaries and telepathically reinforced emotional responses associated with the Gogleskan sex act—”

It broke off because another person had entered the room. It was a DBDG female wearing the insignia of a Charge Nurse and pushing a food-dispenser float before it.

“Apologies are tendered for this interruption,” the nurse said, “which has been delayed for as long as possible in the expectation that this discussion would soon be concluded. But the patient’s principal meal is long overdue and harsh words will be directed toward the medical entity charged with its care should a convalescent patient be allowed to starve to death. If hunger is also felt by the visitor and it wishes to remain with the patient, food can be provided that is metabolically acceptable, although perhaps not entirely palatable, to the Tarlan life-form.”

“Kindness is shown,” Lioren said, realizing for the first time how long Khone and himself had been talking and how hungry he was, “and gratitude is felt.”

“Then please defer further discussion until the food has been served,” the Charge Nurse said, making the soft, barking sound that its species called laughter, “and spare my maidenly, Earth-human blushes.”

As soon as the Charge Nurse left them, Khone reminded him that it had more than one mouth and was therefore capable of eating and answering questions at the same time. By then Lioren had reconsidered and decided that the Gogleskan’s information, interesting though it might be in itself, would not enlarge his knowledge of possible dysfunction in the organic transmitter-receiver mechanism of Groalterri telepathy. Apologetically and impersonally, he told the other that the information was no longer required.

“Great relief is felt,” Khone said, “and offense is not taken. But a debt remains. Are there other questions whose answers might be helpful?”

Lioren stared at Khone for a long time, contrasting the tiny, upright, ovoid body of an adult Gogleskan with that of Small Hellishomar the Cutter, who completely filled a ward large enough to accommodate an ambulance ship, and tried to frame another polite refusal. But suddenly he felt so angry and disappointed and helpless that it required a great effort to make the proper, impersonal words come.

“There are no more questions,” he said.

“There should always be more questions,” Khone said. The spikes of fur drooped and the body slumped onto its apron of muscle so that Lioren could almost feel its disappointment. “Is it that the ignorant Gogleskan lacks the intelligence to answer them, and now the Tarlan wishes to leave without further waste of time?”

“No,” Lioren said firmly. “Do not confuse intelligence with education. The Tarlan requires specialist information that the Gogleskan has had no chance to learn, so it is not intelligence that is lacking. To the contrary. Has the healer more questions?”

“No,” Khone said promptly. “The healer has an observation to make, but hesitates lest it give offense.”

“Offense will not be taken,” Lioren said.

Khone rose to its full height again. “The Tarlan has demonstrated, as have many entities before it, that a suffering shared is a suffering diminished, but in this case it appears that the sharing is not equal. The Cromsag Incident, which makes the problem with the Dark Devil of Goglesk seem insignificant by comparison, has been described in detail, but its full effect upon the entity responsible for it has not. Much has been said about the beliefs and Gods, or perhaps the one God, of others, but nothing about its own God. Perhaps the God of Tarla is special, or different, and does not possess the qualities of understanding and justice with compassion where the most important parts of its creation are concerned. Does it expect its creatures to do no wrong at all, even by accident? The excuse given for the Tarlan’s silence, that it does not wish to influence unfairly the beliefs of another with its more extensive knowledge, is laudable. But the excuse is weak indeed, for even an ignorant Gogleskan knows that a belief, even one that is often weakened by self-doubt, is not susceptible to change by logical argument. And yet the Tar-Ian speaks freely about the beliefs of others while remaining silent about its own.

“It is assumed,” Khone went on before Lioren could reply, “that the Tarlan is deeply troubled by guilt over the Cromsaggar deaths, a guilt that is increased because the punishment it considers due for this monstrous crime has been unjustly withheld. Perhaps it seeks both punishment and forgiveness and believes that both are being withheld.”

It was obvious that Khone was trying to find a way of helping him, but so far its lengthy observation had been neither offensive nor helpful, for the good reason that Lioren was beyond help.

“If the Creator of All Things is unforgiving,” Khone went on, “or if the Tarlan does not believe in the existence of this Creator, there can be no forgiveness there. Or if that small part of God, or if there is disbelief and a nonreligious word is preferred, the good that struggles constantly with the evil in all intelligent creatures, then the Tarlan will not be able to forgive itself. The Cromsag Incident cannot be wholly forgotten or its psychological scars entirely healed, but the wrong must be forgiven if the Tarlan’s distress is to be relieved.

“It is the Gogleskan’s advice and strong recommendation,” Khone ended, “that the Tarlan should seek forgiveness from others.”

Not only was Khone’s observation lengthy and inoffensive, it was a complete waste of time. Lioren had difficulty controlling his impatience as he said, “From other, less morally demanding Gods? From whom, specifically?”

“Is it not obvious?” Khone said in a tone no less impatient than his own. “From the beings who have been so grievously wronged—from the surviving Cromsaggar.”

For a moment Lioren was so deeply shocked and insulted by the suggestion that he could not speak. He had to remind himself that an insult required knowledge of the target to give it force, and this one was based on complete ignorance.

“Impossible,” he said. “Tarlans do not apologize. It is utterly demeaning, the act of a misbehaving young child trying to reduce or turn away the displeasure of a parent. The small wrongs of children can be forgiven by the wronged, but Tarlans, adult Tarlans, fully accept the responsibility and the punishment for any crime they have committed, and would never shame themselves or the person they have wronged with an apology. Besides, the patients in the Cromsaggar ward are cured and under observation rather than treatment. They would probably become demented with hate and terminate my life on sight.”

“Was not that the fate which the Tarlan desired?” Khone asked. “Has there been a change of mind?”

“No,” Lioren replied. “Accidental termination would resolve all problems. But to, to apologize is unthinkable!”

Khone was silent for a moment; then it said,  “The Gogleskan is expected to break its evolutionary conditioning and to think and behave in new ways. Perhaps in its ignorance it considers that the effort needed to best the Dark Devil in its mind is small compared with that required to apologize to another thinking entity for a well-intentioned mistake.”

You are trying to compare subjective devils, Lioren thought. Suddenly his mind was filled with the sight and sound and touch of Cromsaggar waning or mating or dying amid the filthy ruins of a culture they themselves had destroyed. He saw them lying helpless in the aseptic beds of the medical stations and in tumbled, lifeless heaps after the orgy of self-destruction that had come about as the result of his premature cure. Remembrance of the sight and strength and close touch of them came rushing into his mind like a bursting wave of sensation that included the feeling of a wardful of them tearing him apart as they tried to exact vengeance for the death of their race. He felt a strange satisfaction and peace in the knowledge that his life would soon be over and his terrible guilt discharged. And then came the images of probability, of the nurses on duty, heavy-gravity Tral-thans or Hudlars, restraining them and rescuing him before lethal damage could be inflicted; and he imagined the long, lonely convalescence with nothing to occupy his mind but the dreadful, inescapable memories of what he had done to the Cromsaggar.

Khone’s suggestion was ridiculous. It was not the behavior expected of an honorable Tarlan of a society in which few indeed lacked honor. To admit to a mistake that was already obvious to all was unnecessary. To apologize for that mistake in the hope of reducing the punishment due was shameful and cowardly and the mark of a morally damaged mind. And to lay bare the inner thoughts and emotions before others was unthinkable. It was not the Tarlan way.

Neither, as Khone had just reminded him, was it the Gogles-kan way to fight the Dark Devil in their minds; or to make physical contact other than for the purposes of reproduction or comforting the young, or to address another entity who was not a mate, parent, or offspring in anything but the briefest and most impersonal terms, but Khone was trying to do all those things.

Khone was changing its ways, gradually, as were the Protectors of the Unborn. The changes both species had to make were extraordinarily difficult for them and called for a mighty and continuing effort of will, but they were not in themselves cowardly and morally reprehensible acts, as was the one that Khone had suggested that Lioren commit. And suddenly he was thinking about Hellishomar, whose condition was the reason for his present investigation into other-species telepathy as well as the cause of his present mental turmoil.

The young Groalterri, too, was struggling with itself. Against all its natural instincts, its training as a Cutter and the teachings of its near-immortal Parents, it had changed and forced itself to do something reprehensible indeed.

Hellishomar had tried to kill itself.

“I need help,” Lioren said.

“The need for help,” Khone said, “is an admission of personal inadequacy. In an entity with pride and authority it might be considered the first step toward an apology. Regrettably, I am unable to give it. Do you know where or from whom this help is available?”

“I know who to ask,” Lioren replied, then stopped as the realization came to him that during the last exchange Khone and he had omitted the Gogleskan impersonal manner of address, and that they had spoken to each other as would close members of a family. He did not know what this signified and did not want to risk asking for clarification because Khone had misunderstood him.

From the other’s words it was clear that Khone had assumed that the help he wanted was with his own Cromsaggar problem, whereas the truth was that he badly needed specialist assistance with Hellishomar’s case. Initially the person he must ask for it was O’Mara, then Conway, Thornnastor, Seldal, and whoever else was qualified to give it. He admitted to himself that he was not qualified, and that interviewing telepathic life-forms in an attempt to solve the problem by himself had been a sop to his vanity as well as being an inexcusable waste of time.

Asking help from others, which would of necessity reveal the lack of knowledge and ability within himself, was not the Tarlan way. But he had been receiving help from many entities in the hospital, often without asking for it, and he did not expect that repeating the shameful process would cause any severe emotional trauma.

As he was leaving Khone’s ward a few minutes later, Lioren wondered if his own habits of thought were beginning to change.

Very slightly, of course.

CHAPTER 22

SENIOR Physician Seldal was present because Hellishomar had been its responsibility from the beginning and it had more clinical experience with the patient than any of the others, although that situation was expected to change very soon. The Tralthan Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, Thornnastor, and the equally eminent Earth-human Conway, who had been recently appointed Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery, were there to discover why Chief Psychologist O’Mara, who was the only entity with sufficient authority to call such a high-level meeting at short notice, had thought it necessary to bring them together to discuss a patient who was supposedly well on the way to a full recovery.

It reminded Lioren of his recent court-martial, and even though the arguments would be clinical rather than legal, he thought that when it came the cross-examination would be much less polite. Seldal spoke first.

Indicating the big clinical viewscreen, it said, “As you can see, the Groalterri patient presented with a very large number, close on three hundred, punctured wounds that were equally divided over the dorsal and lateral areas and in the anterior region between the tentacles, where the tegument is thin and affords minimum natural protection. The punctures were apparently caused by a fast-flying and burrowing insect species which laid eggs and introduced infection to the wound sites. The Nallajim operational procedure was judged to be best suited to the treatment of the condition, and I was assigned. Because of the patient’s unusually large body mass, progress has been slow, but the prognosis is good except for an unfortunate lack of—”

“Doctor Seldal,” Thornnastor broke in, its voice sounding like an impatient, modulated foghorn. “Surely you asked the patient how its wounds were sustained?”

“The patient did not give this information,” Seldal said, the rapid, background twittering of its natural voice reflecting its irritation at the interruption. “I had been about to say that it rarely spoke to me, and never about itself or its condition.”

“The distribution of the punctures,” Diagnostician Conway said, speaking for the first time, “is too localized to suggest a random attack by an insect swarm. To my mind, the angles of penetration and the concentration on one clearly defined area indicates a common point of origin, as in an explosion, although I suppose it is possible that Hellishomar disturbed a hive and the insects attacked the parts of its body that were closest to them. From what little we know of the Groalterri species, they have refused to speak to everyone, so the reticence of the patient may be irritating but not unusual. In the past we have all treated our share of uncooperative patients.”

“Hellishomar was cooperative during treatment,” Seldal said, “and when it spoke it did so with politeness and respect, but without saying anything about itself. I suspected that the clinical picture might have psychological implications, and I asked Surgeon-Captain Lioren to speak to the patient in the hope that—”

“Surely this is a matter for the Chief Psychologist,” Thornnastor said impatiently. “What are a couple of busy Diagnosticians doing here?”

“I,” O’Mara said in a quiet voice, “was not consulted.”

Thornnastor’s four eyes and Conway’s two stared at O’Mara for a moment; then all six were directed at Lioren. It was probably fortunate that he could not read Tralthan or Earth-human expressions.

“In the hope,” Seldal went on, “that Lioren would have a similar degree of success in making a reticent patient talk as it had achieved with another of my patients, the former-Diagnostician Mannen. At the time I was not sure whether the matter was important enough to ask for the help of the Chief Psychologist. Now Lioren believes that it is, and, after consultation with the Surgeon-Captain, I am in total agreement.”

Seldal settled back into its perch, and Lioren placed two of his medial limbs on the table and tried to order his thoughts.

Thornnastor’s six elephantine feet thumped restively against the floor in a manner which could have indicated impatience or curiosity. Conway made an untranslatable sound and said, “Surgeon-Captain, for the nonmedical improvement you have brought about in Doctor Mannen, who was my tutor and is my friend, I am most grateful. But how can we help you with what appears to be a psychiatric problem?”

“Before I begin,” Lioren said, “I would prefer that you do not use my former title. You know that I am forbidden and have forsworn the practice of medicine, and the reason for it. However, I cannot change the way my mind works, and my past training leads me to the conclusion that Hellishomar’s problem is not entirely psychiatric. But first I must discuss briefly the patient’s evolutionary and philosophical background.”

Thornnastor’s feet remained at rest and there were no other interruptions while Lioren described the strangely divided cultures of the telepathic Parents and the more technologically oriented Small, and how strongly the latter were affected by the teachings of the former and by the uncertainties of approaching maturity. He told them how O’Mara had explained that the division was due to an uncompleted stage of their evolution, that the Small were subintelligent by Groalterri standards until they reached maturity, although the concern of the Parents for their Small was very strong. The intelligent macrospecies inhabiting Groalter were so physically massive and extremely long-lived that their numbers had to be strictly controlled if their planet and their race was not to become extinct. Orbital observations had shown that the total Groalterri population of both Parents and Small numbered less than three thousand, so that the birthing of a Small was an extremely rare event and the parental regard for the newborn proportionately large.

Lioren was careful to speak in the most general terms, and he was particularly careful to give only information that Hellish-omar had given him permission to pass on, or material that he had been able to deduce for himself.

“Doubtless you will discover for yourselves that the information I am about to give you regarding the patient is incomplete,” Lioren went on. “This is a deliberate omission on my part, and I have told the Chief Psychologist O’Mara why he and yourselves must be kept in partial ignorance—”

“You told O’Mara that,” Conway broke in, showing its teeth, “and you are still alive?”

“Because Hellishomar is the first and only source of data on the Groalterri culture,” Lioren continued, deciding that it was not a serious question. “This information is of great value to the Federation and the hospital, but I have been told that a small proportion of it is not for general distribution. Were I to break confidence with the patient there is a risk, virtually a certainty, that the source of this valuable knowledge would dry up. My observations of the patient’s behavior and clinical condition, however, are as complete and accurate as I can make them.”

Lioren paused briefly so as to select words that would combine maximum information with complete confidentiality. “Patient Hellishomar came here at the unconscious direction, or suggestion or whatever means was used on the captain of the orbiting vessel, of the Parents because they hoped that it could be treated. They themselves are physically and temperamentally incapable of inflicting pain or injury on another intelligent life-form, and the treatment was not available on Groalter because the surgical procedures of the Small, while precise enough, are too crude for the fine work of removing large numbers of deeply embedded insects. Senior Physician Seldal has been performing this work as only it can, but with the minimum of verbal contact with the patient. I had nothing but verbal contact with Hellishomar and had many opportunities to observe its behavior while we were speaking. These observations led me to the conclusion, a conclusion with which Seldal and O’Mara now agree, that the infected insect punctures were not the only reason for Hellishomar being sent here.”

They were all watching him and so still were they that the whole office with its living contents might have been a holograph.

“From our conversations together,” Lioren went on, “it has become obvious that Hellishomar has grown much too old and large to live and practice as a Cutter among the Small, and that by now it should be undergoing the psychological as well as the physical changes that precede full maturity. But the Parents have not touched minds with it, as is customary at this time, or if they have tried to do so it has not been aware of it because the patient is telepathically deaf, and the possibility exists that Hellishomar is mentally retarded.”

There was a short silence that was broken by Thornnastor. “Judging by the evidence you have given us so far, Surgeon-Captain, I would say it is a strong probability.”

“Please do not use my former title,” Lioren said.

The Earth-human, Conway, made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “You still retain the manner of a Surgeon-Captain if not the rank, so the mistake is excusable. But if you are convinced that Hellishomar is mentally defective, that is not the concern of Pathology or Surgery, so what are Thornnastor and myself doing here?”

“I am not fully convinced,” Lioren replied, “that the condition is due to a congenital defect. Rather, I favor the theory that there might be a structural abnormality which has temporarily affected the proper development of the patient’s telepathic faculty without, however, impairing the other brain functions. This theory is based on behavioral observations by myself as well as those reported by Seldal, and on conversations with the patient which I will not repeat in detail.”

O’Mara made an untranslatable sound but did not speak. Lioren ignored the interruption and went on. “Hellishomar is a Cutter, the Groalterri equivalent of a surgeon, and, although the gross differences in its body mass and ours mean that its work seems crude by our standards, it has displayed to me and to the ward’s vision recorders a high degree of muscular coordination and precision of control. There was no evidence of the uncoordinated movements or the mental confusion normally expected of a damaged or otherwise abnormal brain. Even though it is only an immature member of a species whose adult minds are immeasurably more advanced than our own, in conversation it displays a mind that is flexible, lucid in its thinking, and well able to debate the finer points of philosophy, theology, and ethics that have arisen between us. This is not, I submit, the physical behavior or the quality of thinking expected of a congenitally defective brain. I believe that the deficiency lies only with the telepathic faculty and that there is a high probability that the abnormality causing it is localized and may be operable.”

The Chief Psychologist’s office became a still picture once again. “Go on,” Conway said.

“For the first time,” Lioren resumed, “the Groalterri have contacted the Federation so that we at Sector General might cure one of their ailing Small. Perhaps they are hoping that Hellish-omar’s cure will be complete. We should do our best not to disappoint them.”

“We should do our best,” Conway said, “not to kill the patient. Do you realize what you are asking?”

Thornnastor answered the question before Lioren could reply. “It will require the investigation of a living and conscious brain about which we know nothing, because there are no Small cadavers available for prior investigation. We will be looking for structural abnormalities when we do not even know what is normal. Microbiopsies and sensor implants will not give data of the precision required for a cerebral procedure. Our deep scanners cannot be used because the level of radiation needed to penetrate a cranial structure of that size would almost certainly interfere with the locomotor muscle networks, and we cannot risk a patient of Hellishomar’s mass making involuntary muscle movements during an op. To a greater or lesser degree, depending on the findings of the nonsurgical investigation, we will be trusting to luck and instinct. Has the patient been informed of the risks?”

“Not yet,” Lioren replied. “As the result of a recent conversation with the patient there was an emotional upset of some kind. Hellishomar broke off verbal contact and physically evicted me from the ward, but I am hoping to resume communication soon. I will inform it of the situation and try to obtain its permission and cooperation during the operation.”

“Thankfully,” Conway said, showing its teeth again, “that is your problem.” It turned toward O’Mara. “Chief Psychologist, in matters pertaining to Patient Hellishomar and until further notice I want Trainee Lioren placed under my authority. I shall take overall surgical responsibility for this one, and move it to the top of my operating schedule. Thornnastor, Seldal, and Lioren will assist. And now, if there is nothing further to detain us—”

“With respect, Diagnostician Conway,” Lioren said urgently, “I am forbidden to practice—”

“So you have said,” Conway broke in as it rose to its feet. “You will not be required to cut, simply to observe and advise and give nonsurgical support to the patient. You are the only one among us who may have sufficient knowledge of the patient’s mind and thought processes—and it is Hellishomar’s mind that we will be tinkering with—to keep it from ending up a worse mental cripple than you say it already is.

“You will assist.”

Lioren was still trying to think of a reply when the office had emptied except for O’Mara and himself. The Chief Psychologist had risen to its feet, which was a clear nonverbal signal that Lioren should also leave. He remained where he was.

Hesitantly, he said, “If I had sought personal interviews with Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor individually, the result would have been the same, but much time would have been wasted because they are busy entities and appointments with them are difficult to obtain for a trainee. I am grateful for your help in expediting this matter, especially as you and they could not be given full information about the patient. You remained silent so as not to embarrass me by calling attention to my deliberate omission.

“But it is a new and more serious problem,” Lioren went on, “which was my prime reason for asking for your help. Again I may only discuss it in general terms—”

The Chief Psychologist seemed to be in respiratory distress for a moment, but it recovered quickly and held up one hand for silence.

“Lioren,” O’Mara asked in a very quiet voice, “do you think we are all mentally defective?”

CHAPTER 23

LlOREN knew that an answer was not expected because the questioner was about to provide its own.

“Thornnastor and Conway and Seldal are not stupid,” O’Mara continued. “My latest records show that their three minds are currently in possession of a total of seventeen Educator tapes, and the donor entities who made those recordings were not stupid, and I, making due allowance for the subjective nature of the assessment, would place my own level of intelligence as well above average.”

Lioren was about to agree, but O’Mara gestured for silence.

“Seldal’s description of the clinical picture,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “together with the knowledge you have already obtained regarding the Groalterri society as a whole, and your new information that the patient is by its race’s standards a mental defective, indicates a very high probability that Hellish-omar’s injuries were the result of a failed suicide attempt. Thornnastor, Conway, Seldal, and myself know this, but we would certainly not embarrass the patient or risk worsening its emotional distress by telling it that we knew or by making the knowledge public. If the circumstances are as you describe, the patient had every reason to destroy itself.

“But now,” O’Mara said, raising its voice slightly as if to emphasize the point, “we have to give it an even stronger reason to live whether or not the cranial surgery is successful. You and, if the situation was normal and you were not such a pig-headed, self-righteous trainee, I as your superior should be trying to discover such a reason. You are the sole channel of communication to the patient, and it is better that no other person, myself included, tries to usurp that position. But must I remind you that I am the Chief Psychologist of this weird and wonderful establishment, that I have much experience in prying into the minds of its even weirder staff, and that it is my right and your duty to keep me fully informed so that you can make full use of my experience while talking to this Groalterri. I shall be disappointed and seriously irritated with you if you pretend that the patient did not attempt suicide.

“And now,” he ended, “what exactly is this new and more serious problem with Hellishomar?”

For a moment Lioren sat in the quiet desperation of hope, afraid to answer the question in case there was no hope—or worse, that he would have to find the answer for himself. The Chief Psychologist’s face had grown pink with irritation at the delay when he spoke.

“The problem,” Lioren said, “is with me. I have to make a difficult decision.”

O’Mara sat back into its chair, features no longer discolored. “Go on. Is it difficult for you because it may involve breaking the patient’s confidence?”

“No!” Lioren said sharply. “I told you this is my problem. Maybe I should not ask your advice and risk making it yours.”

The Chief Psychologist showed no sign of irritation at Lior-en’s insubordinate tone as it said, “And maybe I should not allow you any further contact with Hellishomar, once we have its permission for the operation. Placing together two beings who are so guilt-ridden that both would like nothing better than to end their own lives is a greater risk, to my mind, because the chances are even that the results could be beneficial or disastrous. So far you have managed to avoid a disaster. Please begin by telling me why you think that it is not my problem, and allow me to assess the risks.”

“But that would require a long explanation of the problem itself,” Lioren protested. “I would also have to include background information, much of which is speculative and probably inaccurate.”

O’Mara raised one hand from the desk and allowed it to fall again. “Take your time,” it said.

Lioren began by describing again the strange, age-segregated Groalterri culture, but he did not take much time because in the beginning he was repeating information that was already known, and O’Mara was not an Earth-human noted for its patience. He said that by virtue of their great size and unguessable abilities, the Parents controlled their population nondestructively and maintained their planet, its nonintelligent animal and vegetable and mineral resources in optimum condition, because they were an extremely long-lived species and this was the only world that they would ever have. On Groalter all life was of value and intelligent life was precious indeed. The control mechanisms, the laws that were to govern every day of a Groalterri’s incredibly long life, were taught by the Parents to the pre-adults, who passed them on to the younger Small down to the age when they first began to think and speak. These laws, which governed all future behavior on Groalter, were not physically enforced because the evidence pointed to this being a philosophically advanced and nonviolent race. The Small were taught, verbally when they were very young and telepathically as they approached adulthood, so thoroughly that the process more closely resembled deep conditioning. The guilt felt by a lawbreaker, and the punishment that it inflicted on itself, was of a degree of severity possible only to the recipient of the strictest and most comprehensive form of religious indoctrination.

“Which is a theory supported by the fact,” Lioren continued, “that Hellishomar has made several references to committing not a serious crime or an offense but a grievous sin. To the Groalterri the most grievous of all sins is the deliberate and premature destruction of a life. It matters not whether the sin is of commission or omission, or if the life concerned was close to its beginning or near its end. And if the Small and their Parents are deeply religious, that faced me with other questions.

“What kind of god would a life-form that is well-nigh immortal believe in? And what is their hope or expectation of an afterlife?”

“My own hope,” O’Mara said, lowering the lines of fur above its eyes, “is that you will eventually get to the point. This could become an interesting religious debate if I could allow myself the time for it, but so far I do not see a problem where you are concerned.”

“But there is a problem,” Lioren said, “and their religious beliefs are very much involved. And so, to my shame, am I.”

“Explain,” O’Mara said, “and try to take less time about it.”

“In all of the religions that I have recently been studying, I found that their adherents have many beliefs in common. Apart from a few who are fractionally more long- or short-lived than us, all enjoy what we consider to be an average life span . . .”

In precivilized times, when many religions were originating and beginning to shape the thinking of their adherents toward a respect for the person and property of others that formed the basis of civilized behavior, the hopes and needs of these people were simple. Apart from a few individuals who had seized power, the lives of these beings were unhappy, filled with unremitting toil, plagued by hunger and disease, or under the constant threat of violent and premature death, and their life expectancy was far below the present average.

It was natural that they should hope and dream and finally believe in teachings which gave the promise of another life, a Heaven, in which they would not toil or hunger or feel pain or suffer separation from their friends, and where they would live forever.

“In contrast,” Lioren went on, “the Groalterri already possess virtual immortality, so their lives are already long enough for a further physical extension not to be high on their list of priorities. Because of their vast size and lack of mobility, they telepathically control or otherwise cause their food supply to come to them, so they do not have to toil. They are too large to suffer injury, and disease and pain are unknown among them until they are approaching termination, when they call on the Small Cutters to help them further extend their lives before what Hellishomar calls the Escape or the Time of Going Out.

“At first, I assumed this to be the case of a long-lived entity wanting to live even longer in spite of the increasing pain suffered during the terminal decades, but this would be the type of behavior expected of small-minded, selfish entities, which the Parents were not. It came to me that their terminal years, which the Small are sworn to extend for as long as possible, are needed so that they would have the maximum time possible in which to prepare their minds and make themselves worthy of what they expect to find in the afterlife.

“To the tremendous minds and gigantic bodies of the Groalterri,” Lioren said, “it may be that Heaven is the place and condition where they can seek and ultimately discover the secrets of all creation, and while doing so, the condition they most desire is mobility. They need it so that they can escape from the great, organic prisons that are their bodies, and from their planet, and Go Out. Perhaps they long to travel freely through a universe that is infinitely large and provides their great minds with an intellectual challenge that is also infinite.”

O’Mara raised one hand from the desk, but the interruption seemed to be polite rather than impatient. It said, “An ingenious theory, Lioren, and, I think, very close to the truth. But I still do not see where you have a problem.”

“The problem,” Lioren said, “lies in the intention of the Parents in sending Hellishomar to us, and my subsequent behavior toward the patient. Did they influence us into bringing it to Sector General in the hope that we might effect a complete cure for their Small Cutter, as would any parents deeply concerned for the welfare of one of their young? Or do they believe that we might not be able to treat the infected wounds that were then threatening its life, much less recognize the patient as a mental defective? Are they hoping that the treatment it receives here, and the people it meets during that treatment, will give a mind that is incapable of further intellectual and spiritual progression an experience that it will find strange and stimulating and enjoyable before it passes into the substandard Heaven or Limbo that is reserved for the few mentally flawed Groalterri?

“Hellishomar is telepathically deaf and dumb,” Lioren continued, “so the Parents cannot tell it what their intentions are, or that they have forgiven it for the sin it tried to commit, or that they feel compassion for its distress and are simply doing their best to relieve the suffering of a mental cripple by giving it the memories of what, to a living Groalterri, is a unique experience of leaving its planet. But I believe that the patient is more intelligent, and much stricter in its religious self-discipline, than the Parents realize.

“Hellishomar is trying to refuse their gift.

“When it was brought here,” he went on quickly, “Hellishomar offered no resistance and obeyed only the simple requests of Seldal and the nurses during initial examination and treatment. It would not ask or answer questions about itself, and for long periods it kept its eyes closed. Only when I told the patient about myself and it discovered that I, too, had committed a grievous sin and was still suffering from guilt and distress over it, did Hellishomar begin to talk freely about itself. Even then it made me promise not to pass on certain personal information, and it showed great agitation when I tried to talk about the member species and planets of the Federation. When I offered to show supporting visual material it became very agitated and distressed.

“I insist,” Lioren said, “or rather I suggest most strongly that its contacts with other species be kept to a minimum, and that information on all subjects other than its forthcoming treatment be withheld, if necessary by switching off the translator and covering its eyes if life-forms new to its present experience are operating—”

“Why?” O’Mara asked sharply.

“Because Hellishomar is a sinner,” Lioren replied, “and believes itself unworthy of being given even this tiny glimpse of Heaven. To the highly intelligent and questing minds trapped within the physically massive Groalterri body, Going Out, escaping at death from the imprisonment of their planet, is Heaven. Sector General and all the varied life-forms it contains is a part of that much deserved afterlife.”

O’Mara showed its teeth. “This place has been called many things, but never Heaven. I can see that Hellishomar faces a theological problem which we must try to help it resolve, but I still cannot see that you have a problem. What exactly is troubling you?”

“Uncertainty, and fear,” Lioren replied. “I don’t know what the Parents’ intentions were when they touched the mind of the orbiting ship’s captain. That touching must have revealed much about the Federation, but they seem to have ignored the religious implications because they caused Hellishomar to be brought here. Perhaps their adult theology is more sophisticated and liberal than the form they have to teach to the less able minds of the Small, or they simply did not realize what they were doing. Maybe, as I have already said, they believed that Hellishomar was about to die of its self-inflicted injuries and they wanted to give it this small experience of Heaven because they were unsure of the fate of a mental cripple in their afterlife and they are a compassionate race. Or perhaps they are expecting us to cure the patient of all its defects and return Hellishomar to take its place among the Parents. But what will happen if we cure only its physical injuries?

“It is the answer to that question which frightens me,” Lioren ended, “and that is the problem that so terrifies me that I am afraid to solve it without help.”

“Terrifies you, how?” O’Mara asked, in the quiet, absent-minded manner of a questioner who is already working out the answer for itself.

“There are precedents on many worlds,” Lioren replied, “for prophets and teachers coming out of the wilderness to spread beliefs which attack the old order. On Groalter there is no violence, and no way of silencing a religious heretic who is deaf to the words of its elders. The mental cripple, Hellishomar, might be so filled with its new knowledge that it could not subject itself to the voluntary seclusion expected of it. Instead it might bring to the immature minds of the younger Small the knowledge that Heaven contains great machines for traveling between the stars, as well as other technological wonders, and that it is peopled with a great variety of short-lived creatures who are in many cases less intelligent and certainly less moral in their behavior than the Groalterri. As a result the Small might try using their limited technology and planetary resources to build machines so that a few of them could Go Out before reaching Parenthood, much less waiting until the end of their lives, and the many who could not go would cause disaffection and desta-bilization among the Small. Worse, they might take Hellisho-mar’s teachings with them into adulthood, and the delicate physical and philosophical balance that has maintained the Groalterri planet and culture for many thousands of years would be destroyed.

“I have already destroyed the Cromsaggar,” Lioren ended miserably, “and I fear that I am bringing about an even greater philosophical destruction in the minds of the most advanced culture to be discovered since the Federation came into being.”

O’Mara placed its hands together and looked down at them for a moment before it spoke. There was a heavy emphasis on the first word as it said, “We do indeed have a problem, Lioren. The simple answer would be to lose the patient, allow Hellishomar to terminate here, for the greater good of its people, naturally. But that is a solution which we would find ethically unsound, a relic of our presapient past. Our rejection of it would have the agreement of the entire hospital staff, the Monitor Corps, the Federation, and the Groalterri Parents. We must therefore do the best that we possibly can do for the patient, in the hope that the Parents also knew what they were doing when they sent it to us. Agreed?”

Without waiting for a reply, the Chief Psychologist went on. “The suggestion that you should be the only contact with the patient is a valid one. Hellishomar will be isolated from all other visual and verbal contact during surgery, and I shall certainly not contact it. At least, not directly.

“You have been doing very well,” O’Mara continued. “But you lack my professional experience or, as Cha Thrat insists on describing it, my knowledge of the subtler spells. You do not know everything, Lioren, even though you often act as if you do. For example, there are several well-tried methods of reestablishing communication and friendly relations with an other-species patient who has broken off contact for emotional reasons—”

O’Mara stopped and, with its eyes still directed toward Lioren, one hand moved to the desk communicator. “Braith-waite, reschedule today’s appointments for this evening or tomorrow. Be diplomatic; Edanelt, Cresk-Sar, and Nestrommli are Seniors, after all. For the next three hours I am not here.

“And now, Lioren,” it went on, “you will listen and I shall talk . . .”

CHAPTER 24

THE modifications to the ward structure necessary for the performance of this operation will be completed within the hour,” Diagnostician Conway said, loudly enough to be heard above the din of shouting voices and the metallic clangor of massive equipment being moved into position and given its final operational checks, “and the surgical team is already standing by. But any cranial investigation involving a newly discovered intelligent species, especially of a macro life-form like yourself, must of necessity be exploratory and with a high element of risk. For anatomical and clinical reasons, the sheer body mass combined with our present ignorance regarding the metabolism involved makes any estimate of the quantity of medication required sheer guesswork, so that the procedure will have to be carried out without benefit of anesthetic.

“Such a procedure is completely contrary to normal practice,” Conway went on, in a voice which was less than steady, “so that it is the psychological rather than the clinical preparations which Chief Psychologist O’Mara and I must satisfy ourselves are complete.”

Hellishomar did not speak. It was probable, thought Lioren, that the Groalterri knew nothing of the tiresome Earth-human habit of asking questions in the form of statements.

Conway looked quickly at the large openings that had been cut in the deck, walls, and ceiling all around them, and at the heavily braced structural supports for the tractor- and pressor-beam installations projecting from them before going on. “It is imperative that you do not move during the procedure, and you have told us several times that you will remain still. But, with respect, that is too much to expect from a fully-conscious patient when the degree of pain being inflicted is unknown, and there is a risk of our instruments stimulating the locomotor network and causing involuntary body movements. Total restraint and immobility will therefore be imposed by use of wide-focus tractor and pressor beams even though we may not, as you have assured us, require them.”

Hellishomar remained silent for a moment; then it said, “Surgery under anesthesia is not practiced by Groalterri Cutters, so I would not consider your procedure abnormal or the discomfort associated with the entry wound of major importance. As well, you will remember that Seldal, Lioren, and yourself have assured me that, in the majority of life-forms of your clinical experience, deep cranial surgery can be undertaken without discomfort since the protection afforded by the thickness of the cranium obviates the necessity for pain sensors within the brain itself.”

“That is true,” Conway said. “But the Groalterri life-form is like no other in the hospital’s experience, so it is not a certainty.

“Another and more important reason for the absence of anesthesia,” the Diagnostician continued before Hellishomar could reply, “is that we will be forced to call on you from time to time for a report on the subjective effects of our surgery while the operation is in progress. The high intensity of scanner radiation required to penetrate and chart the cranial contents, although harmless in itself, would almost certainly affect the local nerve networks and cause—”

“All this has been explained to me,” Hellishomar said suddenly, “by Lioren.”

“And it is being explained again by me,” Conway said, “because I am performing the operation and must be absolutely sure that the patient is fully aware of the risks. Are you?”

“I am,” Hellishomar said.

“Very well,” Conway said. “Is there anything else you would like to know about the procedure? Or anything that you would like to do or say, up to and including changing your mind and canceling the operation entirely? This can still be done without any loss of self-respect. In fact I, personally, would consider it to be an intelligent decision.”

“I have two requests,” Hellishomar said promptly. “Shortly I will be experiencing the first cranial surgery to be performed on a member of my species. As a Cutter as well as the patient I am deeply interested in the procedure and would appreciate a translated description of, and the reasons for, your actions while the operation is in progress. During the operation I might need to talk with the entity Lioren on another channel, but privately. If this conversation becomes necessary, no other entity in the hospital is to overhear our words. That is my second and more important requirement.”

Both the Diagnostician and the Chief Psychologist turned to look at Lioren. He had already warned them that Hellishoraar would make such a request and that it would not accept a negative answer.

Reassuringly, Conway said, “My intention is to talk through the procedure and record it in sound and vision for staff-training purposes, so there is no reason why you should not overhear the original. We can also arrange for a second communications channel, but you will not be able to operate it yourself because your manipulatory appendages are too massive for the control mechanism. I suggest that both channels be controlled by Lioren, and any private words you have for Lioren be prefixed by its name so that all others can be switched out of the conversation. Would that be satisfactory?”

Hellishomar did not reply.

“We understand that privacy at such times is of great importance to you,” O’Mara said suddenly, staring at one of the patient’s enormous, closed eyes. “As Chief Psychologist of this establishment I possess the authority of a Parent. I can assure you, Hellishomar, that your second communication channel will be private and secure.”

The Chief Psychologist’s curiosity regarding the words that had and would pass between Hellishomar and Lioren was personal, professional, and intense. But if there was disappointment in O’Mara’s voice, it was lost in translation.

“Then I would like you to proceed with minimum delay,” Hellishomar said, “lest I take Diagnostician Conway’s good advice and change my mind.”

“Doctor Prilicla?” Conway said quietly.

“Friend Hellishomar’s emotional radiation fully supports its decision to proceed,” the empath said, joining the conversation for the first time. “The feeling of impatience is natural in the circumstances, and the expression of self-doubt may be considered as an oblique verbal pleasantry rather than indecision. The patient is ready.”

A great wave of relief, so intense that he could see Prilicla shaking with it as well, burst over Lioren’s mind. But the em-path’s trembling was slow and regular, like the movements of a stately dance, and indicated the presence of emotional radiation that was pleasant rather than painful. Even with O’Mara advising him at every stage, it had taken five days and nearly as many nights of argument, closely reasoned at times but at others purely emotional, to obtain Hellishomar’s agreement to the operation. It was only now that he knew they had succeeded.

“Very well,” Conway said. “If the team is ready we will go in. Doctor Seldal, I’d be obliged if you would open.”

The instruments required for the macroprocedure, the drills and cutters and suction tubes so massive that some of them had to be individually manned, hung in position all around them. The preparations, Lioren had thought, more closely resembled those for a mining operation than a surgical procedure. But the Diagnostician’s words were another example of an oblique verbal pleasantry, because the operating team was ready and waiting, and Seldal had already been thoroughly briefed on its part at every stage of the operation.

Politeness was a lubricant, Lioren thought, that reduced friction but wasted time.

Even though Hellishomar was a member of a macrospecies with a head that was large in proportion to its enormous body, the sheer size of the operative field came as a shock to Lioren. The area of the flap of tegument that was excised and drawn back to reveal the underlying bone structure was larger than any of the decorative rugs scattered around his living quarters.

“Doctor Seldal is controlling the subdermal bleeding by clamping off the incised capilliaries,” Conway was saying, “which in this patient more closely resemble major blood vessels, while I drill vertically through the cranium to the upper surface of the meningeal layer. The drill is tipped with a vision sensor linked to the main monitor, which will show us when it reaches the surface of the membrane . . . We’re there.

“The drill has been withdrawn and replaced by a high-speed saw of identical length,” the Diagnostician continued a few minutes later. “This is being used to extend the original borehole laterally until a circular opening has been made in the cranium of sufficient diameter so that, when the resulting plug of osseous material is removed, the surgeons will be able to enter the wound and work freely. That’s it. The plug is being removed now and will be kept under moderate refrigeration pending its replacement. How is the patient?”

“Friend Hellishomar’s emotional radiation,” Prilicla said quickly, “suggests feelings of mild discomfort, or more severe discomfort that is under firm control. Feelings of uncertainty and anxiety normal to the situation are also present.”

“A reply from me,” Hellishomar said, opening the eye nearest to the display screen, “seems unnecessary.”

“For the moment, yes,” Conway said. “But later I will need the kind of help which only you will be able to give. Try not to worry, Hellishomar, you are doing fine. Seldal, climb aboard.”

Lioren wished suddenly that he could find something reassuring to say to the patient, because he, having convinced O’Mara and Conway and finally Hellishomar itself of the necessity for the operation, bore the responsibility for what was to happen here. But he could not excuse breaking into the operating team’s conversation without invitation, and the private communication channel was closed to him until or unless Hellishomar spoke his name, so he remained silent and watchful.

Looking like a pink-flecked, shaven log of a large tree, the bony plug was lifted clear while Seldal, its three spindly legs strapped together so as to minimize bodily projections, was being lifted into Conway’s backpack so that only its long, flexible neck, head, and beak were uncovered. A similar pack containing the instruments and inflatable equipment that both surgeons would use was strapped tightly to Conway’s chest and abdomen. The Diagnostician’s legs were not strapped together, but the sharp contours of its feet were encased in thick padding, and a white, frictionless overgarment was drawn over the limbs and fastened at the shoulders so that only the arms and head were uncovered. A transparent helmet that was free of external projections and large enough to accommodate the necessary lighting and communications equipment was added. Seldal, whose upper body was naturally streamlined, kept its head and beak pressed firmly against the back of Conway’s helmet. The Nal-lajim wore only eye protection and an attachment for the thin air line running into the corner of its mouth.

“Zero gravity in the operative field,” Conway said. “Ready, Seldal? We will now enter the wound.”

A tractor beam seized their weightless bodies in its immaterial grasp, deftly upended them, and lowered them heads first into the narrow opening. The thick cable loom comprising their air supply, suction and specimen extraction hoses, and the emergency rescue line unreeled like a multicolored tail behind them. Conway’s helmet lighting showed the smooth, gray walls of the organic well they had created moving past them, and an enlarged and enhanced image was reproduced on the external display.

“We are at the base of the entry well,” Conway said, “level with the internal surface of the cranium, and have encountered what is probably the equivalent of the protective meningeal sheath. The membrane responds to firm hand pressure, in a way which suggests the presence of underlying fluid, and what appears to be the outer surface of the brain itself lies just beyond. A precise estimate of the distance is difficult because either the membrane or the fluid, or perhaps both, are not completely transparent. A small test incision is being made through the membrane. That’s strange.”

A moment later the Diagnostician went on, “The incision has been extended and opened, but there is still no apparent loss of fluid. Oh, so that’s it . . .”

Conway’s voice sounded pleased and excited as it went on to explain that, unlike in other species of its experience, the cere-brospinal fluid, which helped protect the brain structure from shocks by acting as a lubricant between the inner cranium and brain, was not in the Groalterri species a fluid. It was instead a transparent, semisolid lubricant with the consistency of a thin jelly. When a small piece of the jelly was cut away for closer examination and then replaced, it immediately rejoined the main body without any trace of the earlier incision. This was fortunate since it enabled them to go through the meninges without having to worry about controlling fluid losses, and they could move laterally with minimal resistance and loss of time between the brain surface and the meningeal layer to the first objective, a deep fissure between two convolutions in the area suspected of housing the Groalterri telepathic faculty.

“Before we proceed,” Conway said, “is the patient aware of any unusual physical sensations or psychological effects?”

“No,” Hellishomar said.

For a few moments the main screen gave glimpses of Con-way’s hands and Seldal’s beak, brightly lit by the helmet lamp, as they pushed themselves carefully through the clear jelly between the smooth inner meninges and the massively wrinkled outer surface of the cortex and into the narrow crevice.

“As closely as we can estimate,” Conway went on, “this fissure extends about twenty yards on each side of our entry point and the average depth is three yards. On the upper brain surface the division between adjoining convolutions is clearly evident, but with depth the walls begin to press together. The pressure is not sufficient to be life-threatening, and the effort required to push the surfaces apart is minimal and does not reduce our mobility, but it would seriously hamper any surgical procedure that may become necessary and quickly cause disabling levels of fatigue. Soon we will have to deploy the rings.”

Hellishomar had not spoken directly to Lioren, even on the open channel, so that he had no way of knowing what was going through the patient’s mind. But Prilicla’s gauzy wings were beating slowly, and the stability of its hovering flight made it plain that there was no source of unpleasant emotional radiation in the area.

“Ease your mind, friend Lioren,” the empath said quietly. “At this time your anxiety is greater than friend Hellishomar’s.”

Greatly reassured, Lioren returned his attention on the main screen.

“This is the lobe where the highest concentration of trace metals occurs,” Conway said. “It has been chosen because similar traces have been associated with the telepathic function of the few other species known to possess the faculty, and although the operating mechanism remains unclear, the higher concentration of metal indicates the presence of an organic transmitter-receiver. It is the possible impairment of the patient’s higher brain functions, including the telepathic faculty, that we are trying to investigate and correct.

“Regrettably our charting of this area is imprecise,” it continued. “This is because the volume and density of the cranial contents would make it necessary to use very high power levels on our deep scanners, which would cause interference with neural activity.

“For this reason the portable, low-powered scanner will be used briefly and only in an emergency.

“The patient’s earlier cooperation in making voluntary muscle movements at our direction and submitting to external touch, pressure, and temperature stimuli has enabled us, by observing the local increases in neural activity, to identify those areas and eliminate them from the investigation. This information was obtained by sensor only, a detection system which produces no troublesome radiation, but which lacks the precision of the scanner.”

Lioren could not believe that there was anyone in the hospital, either presently on the staff or future trainees, who did not know the difference between a scanner and a sensor, and assumed that the explanation was for the patient’s benefit.

“It was expected,” Conway went on, “that the brain of a macro life-form would be more open and coarse-structured to correspond with its large body mass. As we can now see, the blood supply network is on the expected large scale, but the neural structure appears to be as highly condensed and finely structured as that of a being of smaller mass. I cannot . . . it is completely beyond rny ability to estimate the level of mentation possible to a brain of this size and complexity.”

Lioren stared at the enlarged image of Conway’s hands as they stretched slowly forward, pushed palms outward to each side, and then moved back out of sight, as if the Diagnostician was swimming endlessly through a fleshy ocean. For a moment he tried to put himself in Hellishomar’s place, but the thought of a white, slippery, two-headed insect crawling about in his brain was so repulsive that he had to control a sudden feeling of nausea.

Conway’s voice became uneven and its respiration more audible as it went on. “While we cannot be completely certain of what is or is not normal in this situation, it seems that the investigation so far has uncovered no evidence of structural abnormality or dysfunction. Our progress is being gradually impeded by increasing pressure from the fissure walls. At first this was ascribed to increasing fatigue in my arm muscles, but Seldal, who has no arms to tire, notes a similar increase in pressure against the outer surface of its carrying pouch. It is not thought to be a psychosomatic effect caused by claustrophobia.

“Mobility and the field of view are seriously reduced,” it added. “We are deploying the rings.”

Lioren watched as Conway struggled to pull the first ring over their heads and, with the help of Seldal’s incredibly flexible neck and beak, position it at waist level before breaking the compressed-air seal and inflating it around them. Two more rings were inflated at knee and shoulder level and joined into a hollow, rigid cylinder by longitudinal spacers. When the initial triple-ring deployment was complete, they added another ring and spacers to extend the structure forward. By deflating and withdrawing the rearmost ring and attaching it in front, and varying the lengths of the spacers, they were able to move the hollow cylinder and travel within it in any required direction. The open structure provided all-around visibility and ready access to perform surgery.

They were no longer swimmers in a near-solid ocean, Lioren thought, but miners boring through a tunnel that they carried with them.

“We are encountering increasing resistance and pressure from one wall of the fissure,” Conway said. “The tissues on that side appear to be both stretched and compressed. You can see there, and over there, where the blood supply has been interrupted. Some of the vessels are distended where the blood has pooled and others deflated and all but empty. This does not appear to be a naturally occurring condition, and the absence of necrosis in the area suggests that the circulation is seriously impeded but so far not completely blocked. The structural adaptation that has taken place also suggests that the condition has been present for a long time.

“Scanning is needed to find its cause and source,” Conway went on. “I will use the hand scanner briefly, at minimum penetration, now. How does the patient feel?”

“Fascinated,” Hellishomar said.

The Earth-human barked softly. “No emotional or cerebral effects are reported by the patient. I will try again with a little more penetration.”

For a few seconds Conway’s scanner image appeared on the main screen, then dissolved. The recording was projected onto an adjacent screen and frozen for study.

“The scanner shows the presence of another membrane at a depth of approximately seven inches,” the Diagnostician continued. “It is no more than half an inch thick, and has a dense, fibrous structure and a degree of convex curvature which, if continued uniformly, would enclose a spherical body of approximately ten feet in diameter. The underlying tissue structure is still unclear but shows a marked difference to that encountered so far. It may be that this is the site of the lobe responsible for the telepathic faculty. But there are other possibilities which can only be eliminated by surgical investigation and tissue analysis. Doctor Seldal will make the incision and obtain tissue samples while I control the bleeding.”

The main screen was filled with a picture of Conway’s hands, looking enormous and distorted because of the proximity of the helmet’s vision pickup, as they fitted a cutter to the Nallajim Senior’s beak. Then an index finger moved forward to outline the position and extent of the required incision.

There was a sudden blur of motion as the back of Seldal’s head and neck briefly obscured the operative field.

“You can see that the initial incision has not uncovered the membrane,” Conway went on, “but the underlying pressure has forced apart the edges of the wound to a degree that, if we don’t relieve the situation by extending the incision at once, there is a serious risk of it tearing open at each end. Seldal, would you go a little deeper and extend . . . Oh, damn!”

It was as Conway had foreseen. The incision had torn apart at each end and weightless globules of blood were drifting out of it and totally obscuring the operative field. Seldal had discarded the cutter because its beak came into view gripping the suction unit, which it moved expertly along and inside the wound so that Conway could find and seal off the bleeders. Within a very few minutes the wound, now with torn, uneven edges and fully three times its original length, was clear and gaping open to reveal at its base a long, narrow ellipse of utter blackness.

“We have uncovered a strong, flexible, and light-absorbent membrane,” the Diagnostician resumed, “and two tissue samples have been taken. One is being sent out to you through the suction unit for more detailed study, but my analyzer reading indicates an organic material that is totally foreign to the surrounding tissues. Its cell structure is more characteristic of a vegetable than an—What the blazes is happening? We can feel the patient moving. It must remain absolutely still! We are not supposed to be in an area where accidental stimulation of the motor muscles is possible. Hellishomar, what is wrong?”

The Diagnostician’s words were lost in the bedlam of the outer ward, where the tractor and pressor units were emitting audible and visible signals of overload as their operators struggled to keep Hellishomar’s heaving body motionless. The Groalterri’s enormous head was jerking from side to side against its immaterial restraints, and the ends of the incision were tearing and bleeding again. Prilicla’s body was being shaken by an emotional gale, and everyone seemed to be shouting questions, instruction, or warnings at each other.

But it was Hellishomar who succeeded in making itself heard above the din, suddenly and with one word.

“Lioren!”

CHAPTER 25

I am here,” Lioren said, switching quickly to the secure channel, but the sounds that the patient was making did not translate.

“Hellishomar, please stop moving,” Lioren said urgently. “You could seriously injure, perhaps kill yourself. And others. What is troubling you? Please tell me. Is there pain?”

“No, “Hellishomar said.

Telling the patient that it might kill itself would be a waste of time, Lioren thought, because the Groalterri’s presence in the hospital was due to it trying to do just that. But the reminder that it was endangering others must have penetrated the frenzy in its mind, because the violence of its struggles was gradually diminishing.

“Please,” Lioren asked again. “What is troubling you?”

The reply came slowly at first, as if each and every word had to break through a great, individual wall of fear, shame and self-loathing; then suddenly the words rushed out in a near-incoherent flood that swept away all such barriers. As he listened to Hellishomar pouring out everything that was in its mind, Lioren’s confusion changed slowly to anger and then to sadness. This was utterly ridiculous, he told himself. Had he been an Earth-human he might have been barking with laughter by now at this display of ignorance from a member of a species that was the most highly intelligent of any race known to the Federation. But if Lioren had learned anything since joining O’Mara’s department it was that emotional distress was the most subjective of all phenomena, and the most difficult to relieve.

But this was an entity trained in the Groalterri concepts of healing. It was a young and perhaps mentally retarded Cutter whose experience was restricted to peripheral surgery performed on aged members of its own race, and it was viewing an intercranial procedure, on itself, for the first time. In those circumstances ignorance was excusable, he told himself, provided it remained a temporary condition.

“Listen,” Lioren said quickly into the first, brief pause in the tirade. “Please listen carefully to what I am saying, ease your mind, and above all, be still. The blackness inside your head is not the physical manifestation of your guilt, nor did it grow because of evil thoughts or any sin committed by you. It is likely that it is a bad and a dangerous thing, but it is not your spirit or soul or any part of—”

“It is,” Hellishomar broke in. “It is the place where I am. The thinking, feeling, and grievously sinning me who tried to destroy myself lives in that place, and it has a blackness that is beyond hope.”

“No,” Lioren said firmly. “Every intelligent entity I know of believes that its personality, its soul lives in the brain, usually a short distance behind the visual receptors. They believe this because, even when there has been gross trauma and physical dismemberment, it remains intact. Sometimes there is physical damage or disease that causes the personality to change. But this change does not come about because of an act of will, so the entity concerned cannot be held responsible for subsequent behavior. ”

Hellishomar remained silent and its body movements had reduced to the point where the overload lights were no longer showing on the tractor-beam installations.

Lioren went on quickly. “It is possible that the inability of your brain to mature to the stage where direct mind-to-mind contact can be achieved with the Parents is due to a genetic defect. But it is also possible that the crimes you blame yourself for committing were the result of a disease or injury to the brain, and the reason for these wrongful thoughts and actions may now have been found. You must know that the black mass that Con-way and Seldal have uncovered is not your personality, because you have told me yourself that the soul is immaterial, that when the Parents die and their bodies decay and return their substance to the world, their souls leave Groalterri to begin their never-ending exploration of the universe—”

“While my own soul,” Hellishomar said, beginning to struggle against the restraints again, “sinks like a stone into the mud of the ocean floor, to fester in darkness forever.”

Lioren felt that he would lose what little control he had gained over the situation if he did not speak quickly, and move the argument from metaphysics to medicine. Focusing one of his eyes on the side screen where the results of Conway’s analysis were being displayed, he went on.  “It may well rot at the bottom of your ocean if that is where you want it placed, but more likely it will end in a waste-disposal furnace at Sector General. I do not know what it is exactly, but it is not your soul or, for that matter, any other part of you. It is completely foreign material, a vegetable form of life, an invader of some kind. I ask you to be calm and to think, to think as a Groalterri Cutter and healer, and to remember if there was anything in your past experience that resembles this black growth. Please think carefully.”

For several moments Hellishomar was silent and absolutely still. The ward was quiet again and he could hear the voice of Conway saying that it was about to resume the operation.

“Please wait, Doctors,” Lioren said, switching briefly to the public channel. “I may have important clinical data for you.” On the main screen one of the Diagnostician’s hands waved acknowledgment, and he returned to the private channel.

“Hellishomar,” Lioren said again, “please try to recall anything resembling this black growth, whether the memory is from recent experience, the less certain recollections of infancy, or even the hearsay experiences of others. Can you remember having contact with such a growth, or having suffered an injury, not necessarily to the cranium, which would have allowed it to enter the bloodstream?”

“No,” Hellishomar said.

Lioren thought for a moment. “If you do not remember, is it possible that you contracted the disease as a very small infant, before you were capable of forming memories? Can you recall any later reference to something like this happening to you by an older Small charged with your care? This person may not have considered it important at the time, or mentioned it until you were grown and—”

“No, Lioren,” Hellishomar broke in. “You are trying to make me believe that this foul thing in my brain is not the result of wrong thinking, and what you are doing is a great kindness. But I have already told you, it is only the very aged Parents who are afflicted with diseases, the Small never. We are strong and healthy and immune. The invisible attackers you have told me about are ignored, and those large enough to be visible are treated as a nuisance and simply brushed away.”

Lioren had been hoping that he would discover something useful to Conway and Seldal by questioning the patient, but he was making no progress at all. He was about to signal them to proceed when another thought occurred to him.

“These pests that you brush away,” he said. “Please tell me all that you can remember about them.”

Hellishomar’s replies sounded polite but very impatient, as if it had guessed that the other’s only intention was to keep its mind on other things and the answers were unimportant. But gradually its answers became very important indeed and Lioren’s questions more precise. Slowly his earlier feeling of hopelessness was changing to one of excitement and mounting anxiety.

“From all that you have told me,” Lioren said urgently, “I am convinced that the pest you call a skinsticker is the original cause of your trouble, but I do not want to waste time giving my reasons to you and then again to the operating team. A final question. Will you give me permission to speak of this to the others? Not all that has passed between us, and nothing about your thoughts and fears, only the details of the description and behavior of the skinstickers.”

Subjectively it seemed that a very long time elapsed without any response from Hellishomar. Lioren could hear Conway, Seldal, and the support staff in the ward talking together, their words muffled by his earpads but their impatience plain. He tried again.

“Hellishomar,” Lioren said, “if my theory is correct, your life may be at risk, and the cerebral damage will certainly render you incapable of future coherent thought. Please, your answer is needed quickly.”

“The Cutters inside my skull are also at risk,” Hellishomar said. “Tell them.”

Without taking time to reply Lioren switched to the public channel and began to speak.

Although he could not be absolutely certain because of the small amount of information that the patient had been able to give him, Lioren said that he felt sure the original cause of the black intercranial growth was due to infestation by a species of parasitic vegetable vermin known to the Groalterri as a skin- sticker, which was considered to be a periodic nuisance rather than a threat to life. Nothing was known about the life cycle or reproduction mechanism of the skinsticker because they could be easily removed, brushed away with the manipulatory tentacles or by rubbing the affected area of tegument against a tree, and a life-form with the enormous physical mass and limited dexterity of the Groalterri had neither the desire nor the ability to investigate the habits of a near-microscopic form of plant life.

Skinstickers were black, spherical, and covered with a vegetable adhesive which enabled them to attach themselves to the host’s body and extend their single feeder root while they were still too small to be seen. They required only an organic food source and the presence of light and air to grow very quickly to the size when they became a nuisance and were removed. They could be destroyed by crushing between hard surfaces or by burning, and after removal the root, which had a high liquid content, withered quickly and fell out of the wound it had made.

Lioren went on, “My theory is that this case was the result of infestation by a single skinsticker which gained entry via a small abrasion which the patient no longer remembers or through the puncture wound left by the root of an earlier and unsuccessful skinsticker, and was carried through the circulatory system until it lodged in the cranium. Once there it had a virtually limitless food supply but not, apart from the tiny amount of oxygen it was able to absorb from the local blood supply, the light and air its metabolism required for optimum growth. The growth rate was inhibited but it has had a great many years, a young Groalterri’s very long lifetime, in which to grow to its present size.”

Except for the slow and near-silent beating of Prilicla’s wings, the ward might have been a still picture as Lioren finished speaking. It was Conway who reacted first.

“An ingenious theory, Lioren,” the Diagnostician said, “and while obtaining this information and discussing it between you, you have succeeded in pacifying our patient. That was well done. But whether or not your theory is correct, and I believe that it is, our procedure must continue as originally planned.”

Imperceptibly Conway’s manner changed from one of person-to-person conversation to that of lecturer-student instruction as it went on. “This foreign tissue, tentatively identified as a massively overgrown Groalter skinsticker, will be excised in very small pieces whose size will be dictated by the maximum orifice setting of our suction unit. Many hours of patient, careful work will be required to accomplish this, particularly in the later stages if there are adhesions to healthy brain tissue, and rest periods or relays of surgeons may be necessary. However, since the patient has shown no impairment or deterioration in mentation since its arrival here, and the growth has been present for a very long time, its removal may be considered necessary but nonurgent. We will be able to take all the time we need to insure that—”

“No,” Lioren said harshly.

“No?” Conway sounded too surprised to be angry, but Lioren knew that the anger would not be long in coming. “Why not, dammit?”

“With respect,” Lioren said, “the screen shows that your original incision is widening and extending in length. Let me remind you that the skinsticker grows rapidly in the presence of light and air and, after a great many years in the airless dark, light and air are again present.”

For a few moments Conway directed angry and self-abusive words at itself, then suddenly the main screen turned black as it switched off its helmet lighting and said, “This will slow the rate of growth a little. I need time to think . . .”

“You need more surgical assistance,” Thoranastor said. “I will—”

“No!” Seldal broke in. “Another set of enormous, awkward feet in here is what we don’t need! There isn’t enough space as it is to—”

“My feet aren’t that big—” Conway began.

“Not yours,” said Seldal. “I’m sorry, for a moment I was thinking of—”

“Doctors!” Thornnastor said, speaking suddenly with the voice and authority of the hospital’s senior Diagnostician. “This is not the time for arguments about the relative sizes of your ambulatory appendages. Please desist. I was about to say that the Nidian Senior, Lesk-Murog, is available and anxious to assist. Its surgical experience is as large as its feet are small. Conway, what are your instructions?”

The main screen brightened again as Conway switched on its helmet light. “We need a much wider suction unit, a flexible pipe of six inches’ diameter or as large as Lesk-Murog can han- die, linked to one of the air circulation pumps, so that large pieces of the growth can be excised and withdrawn quickly. We cannot work without light, but we should be able to reduce the air that has leaked from the edges of our breathing masks by withdrawing it with the operative debris and replacing it with an inert gas pumped through the existing suction line. The inert should inhibit the skinsticker’s rate of growth as effectively as a complete absence of air, but that is a hope rather than an expectation.”

“I understand, Doctor,” Thornnastor said. “Maintenance technicians, you know what is required. Lesk-Murog, prepare yourself. Quickly, everyone.”

A subjective eternity passed before the equipment was set up and the diminutive Lesk-Murog, looking like a plastic-encased, long-tailed rodent with one end of the new suction pipeline attached to its backpack, disappeared headfirst into the entry wound. Conway and Seldal had already cut through the skin-sticker’s outer membrane and were excising small pieces and feeding them into the original suction unit, although it was obvious that the black growth was increasing in size in spite of their efforts because the incision continued to widen and tear in both directions. But with the Nidian Senior’s arrival the situation changed at once.

“This is much better,” said Conway. “We are beginning to make progress now and are excising deeply into the growth. As soon as we have hollowed it out sufficiently, Seldal and Lesk-Murog will go inside and pass the excised material out to me for disposal. Don’t cut such large pieces, doctors, please. If this suction unit blocks we’ll be in real trouble. And watch where you’re swinging that blade, Lesk-Murog, I have no wish to become an amputee. How is the patient?”

“It is radiating anxiety, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, “with secondary but still strong feelings of excitement. Neither are at levels to cause distress.”

Since a further reply was unnecessary, Hellishomar and Lioren did not speak.

The main screen showed glimpses of rapidly moving Earth-human and Nidian hands and a furiously pecking Nallajim beak plying instruments that glittered brightly against the light-absorbent blackness of the growth. While describing the procedure Conway broke off to say that they were feeling more like miners digging for fossil fuel than surgeons engaged on a brain operation. The Diagnostician’s words were complaining but its voice sounded pleased because the environment of inert gas was seriously inhibiting further growth and the work was going well.

“The cavity has been enlarged sufficiently so that all three of us are now able to work inside and attack the growth independently,” Conway said. “Doctors Seldal and Lesk-Murog are able to stand upright while I am forced to kneel. It is becoming very warm in here. We would be obliged if the inert gas you are pumping was reduced in temperature so as to avoid the risk of heat prostration. The inner surface of the growth’s enclosing membrane has been exposed over several large areas and it is beginning to sag under the weight of the surrounding brain structure. Please increase the internal gas pressure immediately to keep it from collapsing all over us. How is the patient?”

“No change, friend Conway,” Prilicla said.

For a time the operation proceeded in silence. It was clear what the surgeons were doing and there was nothing new for Conway to describe, until suddenly he said, “We have discovered the location of the feeder root and are evacuating its liquid content. The root has shrunk to less than half its original circumference and is being withdrawn with negligible resistance. It is very long but appears to be complete. Seldal is making a deep probe to insure that none of it has been left behind. No other roots have been discovered, nor anything resembling connective pathways to a secondary growth.

“The inner surface of the membrane is now totally exposed,” the Diagnostician went on. “We are excising it in narrow strips that can be accommodated by the suction unit. Of necessity the work at this stage is slow and carefully performed because we are detaching the membrane from the underlying brain structures and must avoid inflicting further damage. It is most important that the patient remain completely immobile.”

Hellishomar spoke for the first time in nearly three hours. It said, “I will not move.”

“Thank you,” Conway said.

More time passed, slowly for the operating team and interminably for the watchers, until finally all activity on the main screen ceased and the Diagnostician spoke again.

“The last of the skinsticker material has been withdrawn,” Conway said. “You can see that the interfacing brain structures displaced by the growth have been seriously compressed, but we have found no evidence of necrosis due to impairment of the local circulation, which is, in fact, being slowly restored. It is unsafe to make categorical statements regarding the clinical condition of a hitherto unknown life-form or a prognosis based on incomplete data, but my opinion is that minimum cerebral damage has been done and, provided the effects were not due to heredity factors, the condition should rectify itself when the pressure which is artificially maintaining this working cavity is gradually reduced to zero. There is nothing more that we can do here.

“You leave first, Lesk-Murog,” Conway ended briskly. “Sel-dal, hop back into the pouch. We will withdraw and close up.”

Lioren watched the main screen as they slowly retraced their path, and worried. The operation had been successfully accomplished and the great mass of foreign matter within the Groal-terri’s brain had been removed, but had it been the only cause of Hellishomar’s trouble? The Groalterri had carried that foul thing in its brain for most of its life, and it could never have become a highly respected Cutter had there been any impairment of muscular coordination. Was it not more likely, as Con-way had suggested, that the missing telepathic function and all the mental distress which had stemmed from it was due to an unbeatable genetic defect and incurable? He looked around for Prilicla, intending to ask it how the patient was feeling, then remembered that the emotion-sensitive had been forced to leave. As a species Cinrusskins lacked stamina and required frequent rest periods.

He should ask the question of Hellishomar himself, Lioren thought, instead of waiting for the patient to signal its private distress by calling his name. But suddenly he was too afraid of what the answer might be. Conway and Seldal had replaced the massive osseous plug and sutured the flap of cranial tegument and were removing their operating garments, and still Lioren could not drive himself to ask the question.

“Thank you, Seldal, Lesk-Murog, everyone,” Conway said, looking all around to include the OR and technical support staff. “You all did very well. And especially you, Lioren, by making the patient remain immobile when it was most necessary, by discovering the growth characteristics of that skinsticker, and by warning us in time about the effects of air and light. That was very well done. Personally I think your talents are wasted in Psychology.”

“I don’t,” O’Mara said. Then, as if ashamed of the compliment it had paid, the Chief Psychologist went on, “The trainee is insubordinate, secretive, and has an infuriating tendency to . . .”

Lioren.

They were all listening to O’Mara and seemed not to have heard. Lioren’s hand moved instinctively to his communicator to switch to the private channel, wondering desperately what possible words of comfort he could find for this vast being who must again have lost all hope. Then, with his finger on the key, he stopped as a great and joyful realization came to him.

His name had been called but it had not been spoken.

CHAPTER 26

ONCE again it was a private conversation, but this time without the deep cranial itching that had preceeded his telepathic contact with the Protector of the Unborn. The answers were given before the questions could be uttered, the other’s reassurance negated his concern as soon as it was felt, and the nerve and muscle connections between Lioren’s brain and tongue became redundant. It was as if a system for exchanging messages chiseled laboriously on slabs of rock had been replaced by the spoken word, except that the process was much faster than that.

Hellishomar the Cutter, formerly the flawed, the mentally deficient, the telepathically deaf and no longer the Small, was cured.

Gratitude washed over him in a bright, warm flood that only Lioren could see and feel, and with it came knowledge, incomplete and simplified so as to avoid damage to his relatively primitive mentality, that must be his alone. The people who had contributed to the unique and wondrous cure of a mentally disabled Groalterri should not be repaid with knowledge that would cripple their own young minds. Hellishomar had touched the minds of every thinking being within the hospital and the occupants of vessels orbiting beyond it, and knew this to be so.

The entities who had contributed to the success of the operation would be thanked individually and verbally. They would be told that Hellishomar felt very well, that a significant change for the better had already taken place in the quality of its mentation, and that it was anxious to return to Groalter, where its recuperation would be aided by the greater freedom of physical movement that was not possible in Sector General.

All this was true, but it was not all of the truth. They were not to be told that Hellishomar needed to leave the hospital quickly because the temptation to remain and explore the minds and behavior and philosophies of the thousands of entities who came to work, to visit, or to be cared for in this great hospital was well-nigh irrestistible. For Lioren had been right when he had told O’Mara that to the gross and planetbound Groalterri the universe beyond the atmosphere was the hereafter that they would need all eternity to explore, and Sector General was a particularly intriguing microcosm of the Heaven that awaited them.

Lioren’s concern over the possible effects on the other Groalterri culture of Hellishomar’s off-planet experiences had been justified at the time. But now Hellishomar was not returning as one of the Small destined to remain a telepathic mute and crippled by a permanently occluded mind for the remainder of its life. Instead it was returning with all of its faculties restored, as a near-adult who would speak of this wondrous thing only to the Parents. It did not know how they would react to the knowledge he bore, but they were old and very wise and it was probable that the proof that Heaven was as wonderful and mind-stretching as they believed, and even that a small part of it was peopled by short-lived creatures whose minds were primitive and their ethics advanced, would strengthen their belief and cause them to strive even harder for the perfection of mind and spirit that was needed before the Going Out.

A great debt was owed to the Monitor Corps and to the hospital staff who had made Hellishomar whole again, and to the single Tarlan entity who had talked and argued and worked with its mind to obtain the patient’s agreement to the operation. An even greater debt was owed by the other Groalterri, but neither debt would be paid. The Federation would not be allowed full contact with the Groalterri for the reasons already given, and neither would Lioren be given the answers to the two questions uppermost in his mind.

During all his contacts with patients Lioren had never allowed himself to influence their nonmaterial beliefs, no matter, in the light of his own greater knowledge and experience, how strange or ridiculous they had seemed to him. He had refused to tamper with their beliefs even though he himself did not believe that he believed in anything. In the circumstances Lioren’s behavior had been ethically flawless and Hellishomar could do no less. It would not give its Tarlan friend the benefit of the advanced Groalterri philosophical and theological thinking by telling him what he should believe. And an answer to the second question was unnecessary because Lioren was about to make the decision for himself and do something that was completely foreign to his nature.

Lioren was becoming confused by this highly compressed method of communication, and by answers that come before the questions are fully formed.

It shames me to remind you of the debt you owe, Lioren thought, and to ask that a small part of it be repaid. When you touch my mind I sense a vastness of knowledge, a great area of brightness that you are hiding from me. If you instructed me I would believe. Why will you not tell me from your greater knowledge what is the truth about God?

By your own efforts, Hellishomar replied, you have acquired great knowledge. You have used it to ease the inner hurts of many entities, including my former, retarded self, but you are not yet ready to believe. The question has already been answered.

Then I repeat the second question, Lioren went on. Is there any hope of me finding ease or a release from the constant memory and guilt of Cromsag ? The decision I have struggled with for so long involves behavior shameful to a Tarlan of my former standing, but no matter. It may also result in my death. I ask only if the decision I have made is the right one.

Does the memory of Cromsag trouble you continually, Hel- lishomar thought, to the extent that you would seek your own death as a release from it?

No, said Lioren, surprised by the intensity of his feelings. But that is because so many other matters have recently occupied my mind. I would not welcome death, especially if it came about by accident or as a result of a stupid decision on my part.

Yet you believe that the decision includes the serious risk of major injury or death, Hellishomar returned, and I find no indication that you are going to change your mind. I will not tell you whether your decision is right or wrong or stupid, or of the probable results, but shall only remind you that no event in this state of existence occurs by accident.

This much I will do for you, Hellishomar went on. Your coming action will not be hampered in any way. Since your decision has now been made, I suggest that you avoid prolonging your distress and uncertainty further and leave without delay.

There was a moment of mental dislocation as Lioren’s mind returned to a working environment in which conversations were conducted by laggard speech and meanings were clouded. It seemed that O’Mara had just finished listing its trainee’s shortcomings. Conway was showing its teeth and reminding the Chief Psychologist that it had expressed serious displeasure with everyone in Sector General, and especially those who had risen to become Diagnosticians, and it seemed that every being in the ward was watching Lioren expectantly and trying to move closer.

“The patient is well,” Lioren said. “It feels no sensory discomfort and reports a significant and continuing improvement in the quality of its mentation. It wishes to use the public channel to thank everyone here individually.”

They were all too excited and pleased to notice him leave. Lioren plotted the fastest route to the Cromsaggar ward and tried to push all second thoughts out of his mind.

He had already checked the duty rosters and knew that there were only two nursing staff on the ward. This was normal practice when patients were fully convalescent and under observation rather than treatment or awaiting discharge, but it was not normal to post an armed Monitor at the ward entrance.

The guard was an Earth-human DBDG, with only two arms and legs and less than half of Lioren’s body mass, and its weapon was a disabler. It could scramble his voluntary muscle system or cause full paralysis, depending on the power setting, but it would not kill him.

“Lioren, Psychology Department,” he said briskly. “I am here to interview the patients.”

“And I am here to stop you,” the guard said. “MajorO’Mara said that you might try to get among the Cromsaggar patients and that you should be forbidden entry for your own safety. Please leave at once, sir.”

The guard was showing the consideration and respect due Lioren’s former rank as a Surgeon-Captain, but feelings of kindliness and sympathy, however strong, would not cause it to ignore its orders. Surely O’Mara knew enough Tarlan psychology to know that he would not try to escape just punishment by deliberately ending his own life. Perhaps the Chief Psychologist had thought that even this Tarlan could change his mind and his inflexible code of behavior and force himself to commit an act formerly considered dishonorable and had simply taken precautions.

This obstruction, Lioren thought helplessly, had not been foreseen. Or had it?

“I’m glad you understand my position,” the guard said suddenly. “Good-bye, sir.”

A few seconds later it stamped its feet and, as if to relieve boredom or stiffening leg muscles, began pacing slowly along the corridor. If Lioren had not stepped aside quickly, the guard would have walked straight into him.

Thank you, Hellishomar, Lioren thought, and entered the ward.

It was a long, high-ceilinged room containing forty beds in two opposing rows and with the nurses’ station rising like a glass-walled island from the center of the floor. Environmental technicians had reproduced the dusty yellow light of Cromsag’s sun and softened the structural projections with native vegetation and wall hangings that looked real. The patients were standing or sitting in small groups around four of the beds, talking together quietly while another group was watching a display screen on which a Corps contact specialist was explaining the Federation’s long-term plans for reconstructing Cromsag’s technology and rehabilitating the Cromsaggar. One of the Orligian duty nurses was using the communicator and the other’s furry head was swiveling slowly from side to side as it scanned the length of the ward. It was plain that they did not see him and, as with the guard outside, their minds had been touched to render them selectively blind.

Whether or not his decision was the correct one, Hellishomar had promised that he could make it without interruption.

Trying to show neither haste nor hesitation, Lioren walked down the ward in a gathering silence. He looked briefly at the seated or recumbent patients he passed, and they stared back at him. He had never learned to read Cromsaggar facial expressions and had no idea of what they were thinking. When he reached the largest group of patients he stopped.

“I am Lioren,” he said.

It was obvious that they already knew who and what he was. The patients who had been sitting or lying on the nearby beds rose quickly to their feet and gathered around him, and those further along the ward hurried to join the others until he was completely encircled by still and silent Cromsaggar.

A sharp, clear memory of his first meeting with one of them rose in Lioren’s mind. It had been a female attacking him in defense of an imagined threat to infants sleeping in another part of its dwelling, and even though its body had displayed the discoloration and muscle wastage of disease and malnutrition, it had come close to inflicting serious injury on him. Now he was surrounded by more than thirty Cromsaggar whose bodies and limbs were well-muscled and healthy. He knew well the damage that those horny, long-nailed feet and hard medial hands could inflict because he had seen them fighting each other not quite to the death.

On Cromsag they had fought with ferocity but total control, with the intention of inflicting maximum damage short of killing, and with the sole purpose of stirring their near-atrophied endocrine systems into sufficient activity to enable them to procreate and survive as a species. But Lioren was not another Cromsaggar and would-be mate; he was the creature responsible for countless thousands of their deaths and of all but destroying their race. They might not want to control the hatred they must feel for him, or the urge to tear his body apart limb from limb.

He wondered whether the distant Hellishomar was still influencing the minds of the guard and the two nurses, for normally they could not have helped seeing the crowd closing in around him and would have attempted a rescue. He wished that the

Groalterri would not be so thorough in its mind control because suddenly he did not want his life to end in this or any other fashion, and then he realized that his thoughts were clear to Hellishomar and he felt an even greater shame.

That which he was about to do and say was shameful enough without adding to it the dishonor of personal cowardice. Slowly he looked at each one of the faces surrounding him and spoke.

“I am Lioren,” he said. “You know that I am the being responsible for causing the deaths of many thousands of your people. This was a crime too great for expiation and it is only fair that the punishment should lie in your hands. But before this punishment is carried out, I wish to say that I am truly sorry for what I have done, and humbly ask your forgiveness.”

The feeling of shame at what he had just done was not as intense as he had expected, Lioren thought as he waited for the onslaught. In fact he felt relieved and very good.

CHAPTER 27

THE Monitor guard insists that he did not see you enter the ward,” the Chief Psychologist said in a quiet but very angry voice, “and the nurses did not know you were there until the Cromsaggar were suddenly standing around and shouting at you. When the guard went in to investigate you told him that he should not be concerned, that they were having a religious argument which he was welcome to join, although he says that he had heard quieter riots. Tarlans are not noted either for their sarcasm or their sense of humor, so I must assume you spoke the truth. What happened in that ward, dammit? Or have you imposed another oath of secrecy on yourself?”

“No, sir,” Lioren replied quietly. “The conversations were public and confidentiality was neither asked for nor implied. When you sent for me I was preparing a detailed report for you on the whole—”

“Summarize it,” O’Mara said sharply.

“Yes, sir,” Lioren said, and tried to find a balance between accuracy and brevity as he went on. “When I identified myself, apologized, and asked forgiveness for the great wrong I had committed against them—”

“You apologized?” O’Mara broke in. “That—that was unexpected.”

“So was the behavior of the Cromsaggar,” Lioren said. “Considering my crime, I expected a violent reaction from them, but instead they—”

“Did you hope that they would kill you?” O’Mara broke in again. “Was that the reason for your visit?”

“It was not!” Lioren said sharply. “I went there to apologize. That is a shameful enough act for any Tarlan to perform because it is considered to be a cowardly and dishonorable attempt to diminish personal guilt and avoid just punishment. But it is not as shameful as escaping that punishment by deliberately ending one’s life. There are degrees of shame, and from my recent contacts with patients I have discovered that there are feelings of shame that may be misplaced or unnecessary.”

“Goon,” O’Mara said.

“As yet I do not fully understand the psychological mechanism involved,” Lioren replied, “but I have discovered that in certain circumstances a personal apology, while shameful to the entity making it, can sometimes do more to ease the hurt of a victim than the simple knowledge that the offender is receiving just punishment. It seems that vengeance, even judicial vengeance, does not fully satisfy the victim and that a sincere expression of regret for the wrong committed can ease the pain or loss more than the mere knowledge that justice is being done. When the apology is followed by forgiveness on the part of the wronged entity, there are much more beneficial and lasting effects for both victim and perpetrator.

“When I identified myself in the Cromsaggar ward,” Lioren went on, “there was a strong probability that lethal violence would ensue. It was no longer my wish to die, because the work of this department is very interesting and there may be more that I can do here, but I felt strongly that I should try to ease the hurt of the Cromsaggar with an apology, and did so. I did not expect what happened then.”

In a very quiet voice O’Mara asked, “You are still insisting that you, a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla with all that that implies, apologized?”

The question had already been answered so Lioren continued. “I had forgotten that the Cromsaggar are a civilized race forced by disease to wage war. They fought with great ferocity because they had to try their hardest to engender the fear of imminent death in each other if their formerly impaired sex-involved endocrine systems were to be stimulated to the point where they would become briefly capable of conceiving children. But while fighting they learned to exercise strict mental and emotional control, and refuse to surrender to anger or hatred, because they loved and respected the opponents they were trying so hard to damage almost to the point of death. They had to fight to insure the continual survival of their species, but the wounds they inflicted and sustained were personal to themselves. They could not have continued to fight and respect and love each other if they had not also learned to apologize for and forgive each other for the terrible hurts they were inflicting.

“On Cromsag the ability to forgive is what enabled their society to survive for so long.”

Suddenly Lioren was seeing and hearing again the Cromsaggar patients who had crowded around him, and for a moment he could not speak because his emotions were being involved in a way that any self-respecting Tarlan would have considered to be a shameful weakness. But he knew that this was another one of the minor shames that he was learning to accept. He went on. “They treated me as another Cromsaggar, a friend who had done a very great wrong and inflicted much suffering in an attempt to save their race and, unlike themselves, I had succeeded.

“They—they forgave me and were grateful.

“But they were also fearful about the return to Cromsag,” he continued quickly. “They understood and were grateful for the rehabilitation program the Monitor Corps had planned for them and said that they would cooperate in every way. It is a psychological problem involving a disbelief in their own ability to exist without severe and continuous stress, coupled with a belief that fate, or a nonmaterial presence whose precise nature was the subject of much argument, might not intend them to live lives of contentment in the material world. Basically it was a religious matter. I told them about the racial memory of the Gogleskans, the Dark Devil which tries to drive them to self- destruction, and how Rhone is besting it. And about the problems of the Protectors of the Unborn, and gave what other reassurance I could. My report will cover everything that transpired in detail. I do not foresee the Corps psychologists having serious trouble with the problem. An ensuing religious debate, which the Cromsaggar engage in with great enthusiasm, was interrupted by the arrival of the guard.”

O’Mara leaned back into its chair and said, “Apart from taking that insane risk you have done well, but then fortune often favors the stupid. In a very short time you have also become something of an authority on other-species religious beliefs mostly, I have been told, by studying the available material during off-duty periods. This is a very sensitive area which the department normally prefers to leave untouched, but so far you have had no problems with it. So much so that you may now consider yourself to be a full member of the department staff rather than a trainee. This will in no sense improve my behavior toward you because you have become the second most insubordinate and selectively reticent person I have ever known. Why will you not tell me what went on between you and ex-Diagnostician Mannen?”

Lioren decided to treat it as a rhetorical question because he had refused to answer it the first time it had been asked. Instead he asked, “Are there any other assignments for me, sir?”

The Chief Psychologist exhaled with an unusually loud hissing sound, then said, “Yes. Senior Physician Edanelt would like you to talk to one of its post-op patients, Cresk-Sar has a trainee Dwerlan with a nonspecified ethical problem, and the Cromsaggar patients would like you to visit them as soon and as often as you find convenient. Khone says that it is willing to try my suggestion that the transparent wall dividing its compartment be reduced gradually in height and eventually replaced by a white line painted on the floor, and it wants to see you again, as well. There is also the original Seldal assignment, which you seem to have forgotten.”

“No, sir, I have completed it,” Lioren said, and went on quickly. “From the information given by yourself and my subsequent conversations with and about Senior Physician Seldal it was clear that a marked change in personality and behavior had taken place, although not for the worse. At first the change was apparent in the reduced number of couplings with female

Nallajims on the staff, and in its behavior toward colleagues and subordinates. Normally members of that species are physically and emotionally hyperactive, impatient, impolite, inconsiderate, and subject to the rapid changes of mood that make them very unpopular as surgeons-in-charge. Not so Seldal. Its OR and ward staff would do anything it asks and will not allow a word of criticism about their Senior either as a surgeon or a person, and I agree with them. The reason for the change, I am certain, is that one of the Educator-tape personalities Seldal is carrying has assumed partial control or is exerting a considerable amount of influence on the Senior’s mind.

“I did not realize that a Tralthan donor was responsible,” Lioren continued, “until the incident during the Hellishomar operation when the growth was threatening to get out of control and Conway needed help. Seldal had a moment of extreme stress and indecision during which it must have forgotten who it was. The remark about not wanting another set of big feet in the operative field was intended for Thornnastor, who had offered help, and referred to its six overly large Tralthan feet rather than Conway’s, because at that moment the Tralthan tape persona was in the forefront of its mind.

“This is an unusual and perhaps unique situation,” Lioren went on, “because observational evidence supports my theory that the partial control of Seldal’s mind was relinquished willingly. I would say that the Tralthan donor, rather than being kept under tight control by the host mind, has been befriended by Seldal. The feeling may be even stronger than that. There is professional respect, admiration of a personality that possesses the Tralthan attributes of inner calm and self-assurance that is so unlike Seldal’s own, and it is probable that a strong emotional bond has formed between the Senior Physician and this immaterial Tralthan that is indistinguishable from nonphysical love. As a result we have a Nallajim Senior who has willingly assumed the personality traits of a Tralthan and is a better physician and a more content person because of it. That being so I would recommend that nothing whatever be done about the case.”

“Agreed,” O’Mara said quietly, and for a moment it stared at him in a way which made Lioren wonder again if the Chief Psychologist possessed a telepathic faculty. “There is more?”

“I do not wish to embarrass and perhaps anger a superior, by asking this as a question,” Lioren said carefully, “but I have formed a suspicion that you, having knowledge of the donor tapes in the Senior Physician’s mind, suspected or were already aware of the situation and the Seldal assignment was a fitness test for myself. Its secondary, or perhaps its primary, purpose was to try to make me go out and meet people so that my mind would not be concerned solely with thoughts of my own terrible guilt. I have not nor will I ever be able to forget the Cromsag Incident. But your plan worked and for that I am truly grateful to you, and especially for making me realize that there were people other than myself who were troubled, entities like Khone, Hellishomar, and Mannen who—”

“Mannen is a friend,” O’Mara broke in. “His clinical condition has not changed, he could terminate at any moment, and yet he is going around in that antigravity harness like a . . . Dammit, it’s a bloody miracle! I would like to know what you said to each other. Anything you tell me will not go into his psych file and I will not speak of it to anyone else, but I want to know. Termination comes to everyone and some of us, unfortunately, may be given too much time to think about it. I will not break this confidence. After all, he is an old friend.”

The question was being asked again, but his momentary feeling of irritation was quickly replaced by one of sympathy as he realized that the Chief Psychologist was troubled, however briefly, by the thought of termination and the deterioration of the body and mind which preceded it. His answer must be the same as before, but this time Lioren believed that he could make it more encouraging.

“The ex-Diagnostician is no longer troubled in its mind,” he said gently. “If you were to ask your questions of Mannen, as an old friend, I feel sure that it will tell you everything you want to know. But I cannot.”

The Chief Psychologist looked down at his desk as if ashamed of its momentary display of weakness, then up again.

“Very well,” it said briskly. “If you won’t talk you won’t talk. Meanwhile the department will have to contend with another soft-spoken, insubordinate Carmody. No disciplinary action will be taken over your Cromsaggar ward visit. Close the door on your way out. Quietly.”

Lioren returned to his desk feeling relieved but very confused, and decided that he must try to relieve the confusion; otherwise the quality of his report would suffer. But search as he would, the information he wanted remained hidden, and he was beginning to strike his keyboard as if it were a mortal enemy.

Across the office Braithwaite cleared its breathing passages with a noise which Lioren now knew denoted sympathy. “You have a problem?”

“I’m not sure,” Lioren replied. “O’Mara said that it would take no disciplinary action, but it called me . . . Who or what is a Carmody, and where will I find the information?”

Braithwaite swung round to face him and said, “You won’t find it there. Lieutenant Carmody’s file was withdrawn after his accident. He was before my time but I know a little about him. He came here from the Corps base on Orligia at his own request and managed to survive in the department for twelve years even though he and O’Mara were always arguing. When an incoming ship whose pilot was badly injured lost control and crashed through our outer hull, he accompanied the rescue team and tried to give reassurance to what he thought was a surviving crewmember. It turned out to be a very large, fear-maddened and nonintelligent ship’s pet, which attacked him. He was very old and frail and gentle, and did not survive his injuries.

“During his time here Lieutenant Carmody became very well liked and highly respected by all of the staff and long-term patients,” Braithwaite concluded, “and his position was not filled, until now.”

Feeling even more confused, Lioren said, “The relevance of what you say eludes me. I am neither old nor frail nor particularly gentle, I have been stripped of all Monitor Corps rank, and my arguments with O’Mara are concerned only with the retention of patient confidences—”

“I know,” said Braithwaite, showing its teeth. “Your predecessor called it the Seal of Confession. And the rank doesn’t matter. Carmody never used his, and most of the people here did not even use his name. They just called him Padre.”

Sector General 9—The Galactic Gourmet

James White

CHAPTER 1

Gurronsevas had long been accustomed to being accorded the outward forms of respect by persons nominally his superior, and usually it was because of his enormous physical strength and body mass, rather than his less obvious attributes of high intelligence and unrivalled professional experience. Being invited to view the final approach from the courier vessel’s tiny control deck was a courtesy rarely extended to a ship’s passenger even when, as in his own case, he was the only one. But he wished heartily that the Captain had shown less politeness and more consideration by allowing him to complete the voyage in Tennochlan’s uncluttered and much roomier cargo hold.

He watched in polite silence and mounting awe, his physical discomfort forgotten, as the gigantic, complex structure that was Sector Twelve General Hospital grew larger until the forward view-screen was entirely filled by the breathtaking sight of dazzling, regimented lines of approach beacons, dock floodlighting, and the external ports and ward-viewing galleries that were ablaze with every color and intensity of light that the occupants considered normal.

Beside him Captain Mallan showed its teeth briefly and made the untranslatable, barking sound which among Earth-humans signified humor. It said, “Enjoy the view while you can. The people who work here rarely get the chance to see the outside of their world.”

The other officers on the flight deck maintained the silence of subordinates and, there being nothing of importance that he wished to say, Gurronsevas joined them.

Suddenly the image disappeared to be replaced by a picture of a pale-green Illensan chlorine-breather whose outlines were partially concealed by the yellow fog inside its protective envelope. It was seated at a communications console, and the flat, translated voice still retained some of the hissing and moaning quality of the original word-sounds as it spoke.

“Reception,” it said quickly. “Identify yourselves, please. State whether patient, visitor, or staff, and give species. If there is an emergency condition please give patient clinical details first, then the physiological classifications of the others so we can arrange suitable accommodation, life-support, and proper type and periodicity of meals.”

“Meals,” said the Captain, looking at Gurronsevas and showing its teeth again. It pressed the transmit stud and said briskly, “No medical emergency on board. I am Major Mallan, commanding Monitor Corps scoutship Tennochlan, courier flight from Retlin on Nidia. Crew of four, all Earth-human DBDG classification plus one passenger, Gurronsevas, a Tralthan FGLI joining the hospital staff. All are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers and this one, myself, would certainly appreciate a change from ship rations . . .”

“Wait,” said Reception, who plainly was not disposed to waste time discussing the subject of Earth-human food, the ingestion of which would have been instantly lethal to an Illensan. The image of the hospital structure returned to the screen, looking closer and even more impressive, but only for a moment.

“Please follow the red-yellow-red beacons to the vacant Class Three docking cradle adjoining Lock Twenty-three,” it went on briskly. “Monitor Corps officers will report to Colonel Skempton. Gurronsevas will be met by Lieutenant Timmins on arrival.”

Was this another courtesy, Gurronsevas wondered, from a being who might or might not consider itself his superior? Somehow he doubted it. The being in Reception had not been impressed by his name, yet they must have heard of him even amidst the poisonous yellow fog of chlorine-breathing Illensa. But there had been no mention of the famous or the renowned or the great Gurronsevas, whose name and unique ability was admired and debated by the cultured members of every warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species in the Federation, and whose unique contribution to and presence on any one of their home worlds would have been a matter for planetary pride. There had merely been the brief statement that Gurronsevas would be met.

A lesser being than himself might have felt uncertain, or even insulted.

The entity Timmins turned out to be an Earth-human DBDG whose dark-green uniform coveralls, although clean and well-pressed, were so well-worn that the insignia of rank were all but invisible. Its head fur was the color of dull copper, it showed its teeth readily in the non-aggressive grimace its species called a smile, and its manner was brisk and moderately respectful.

“Welcome on board, sir,” it said when the introductions had been performed. “Technically, Sector General is too small to be a planet and too large to be a star-going vessel, but a ship is how the purists like to refer to it when we are not calling it something much more derogatory. As soon as convenient I had planned to show you to your quarters and explain the equipment and functioning. As Head of Maintenance your environmental control systems are a part of my responsibility, but Major O’Mara would like to see you in his office sooner than that. Allowing for traffic density in the intervening corridors, and a delay while changing to lightweight protective envelopes for the short-cut through the level of the chlorine-breathing PVSJs, it should take about twenty minutes. On the way you can have the usual but usually inadequate briefing given to a new arrival.

“With your permission, sir,” he added, “I’ll lead the way and talk as we walk.”

As Gurronsevas followed Timmins out of the lock antechamber and along the boarding tube and into the hospital proper, the Lieutenant apologized in advance in case he was imparting information already known to him, and explained that Sector General was the largest, most technologically advanced and professionally respected multi-environment hospital ever to come into being. Many planetary cultures had contributed to its building, fabricating sections and transporting them over a period of nearly two decades to the assembly area in Galactic Sector Twelve. It was supplied and maintained by the Monitor Corps, the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, but it was not and never would be a military establishment. In its three hundred and eighty-four levels could be reproduced the environments of all of the life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a physiological spectrum ranging from the ultra-frigid methane life-forms through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types to the more exotic beings who lived by the direct conversion of hard radiation.

Gurronsevas missed a few of the Lieutenant’s words because he was being forced to concentrate a large proportion of his attention on avoiding injury or embarrassment by colliding with or walking on entities larger or smaller than himself. He was travelling inside a combination white-walled, three-dimensional maze, and a noisy and overcrowded extra-terrestrial menagerie, and soon he would be expected to find his own way through it.

Two crab-like Melfan ELNTs and an Illensan PVSJ chittered and hissed their displeasure at him as he stopped awkwardly in the middle of an intersection to let them pass. In so doing he jostled a tiny, red-furred Nidian who barked a reproof at him. But the simple translator that he had been given on Tennochlan was programmed only for Earth-human/Tralthan speech, so that he did not know what exactly anyone within earshot was whistling, cheeping, growling or moaning at him.

“. . . Theoretically the staff member possessing the greater medical seniority has right of way,” Timmins was saying, “and you will soon learn to identify the different ranks from the color markings on the arm-bands that everyone wears. As yet you have no armband, so your rank is uncertain . . .Quickly, please, move flat against the wall!”

A great hissing and clanking juggernaut that was nearly half the width of the corridor was bearing down on them. It was the mobile protective armor used by SNLU medics, who normally breathed superheated steam, and whose pressure and gravity requirements were many times greater than that of the—to them, lethal—environment of the oxygen-breathing levels. In a situation like this, Timmins said with a brief show of teeth, it was better to ignore differences in rank, allow the instinct for self-preservation to take over, and get out of the way fast.

“You are adapting to the situation here very well, sir,” the Lieutenant went on. “I have known first-time visitors to the hospital who went into a panic reaction, they ran and hid themselves or froze into fear paralysis, when confronted with so many different life-forms in such a short space of time. I think you will do well.”

“Thank you,” said Gurronsevas. Normally he would not have volunteered personal information to another person on first acquaintance, but the Earth-human and its compliment had pleased him. He went on, “But the experience is not entirely strange to me, Lieutenant. It is similar to the situation during a multi-species convention, although there the delegates were not usually so well-mannered.”

“Really?” said Timmins, and laughed. “But if I were you I would reserve judgment on their manners, at least until after you are issued with your multi-channel translator. You don’t know what some of them have been calling you. We’re within a few minutes of the Psychology Department now.”

On this level, Gurronsevas noted, the corridors were much less crowded but, strangely, their progress was less rapid. For some reason the Earth-human was slowing his previously fast walking pace.

“Before you go in,” said Timmins suddenly, in the manner of one who has come to a decision, “it might be a good idea if you knew something about the entity you are about to meet, Major O’Mara.”

“It might prove helpful,” Gurronsevas agreed.

“He is the hospital’s Chief Psychologist,” Timmins went on. “What I believe your species calls a Healer of the Mind. As such he is responsible for the smooth and efficient operation of the ten-thousand-odd, sometimes very odd, members of the medical and maintenance staff . . .”

Taking into consideration the very high levels of species toleration and professional respect among its personnel, the Lieutenant explained, and in spite of the careful psychological screening they all had to undergo before being accepted for service in a multi-environment hospital, there were still situations when serious inter-species and interpersonal friction could occur. Potentially dangerous situations could occur through simple ignorance or misunderstanding or, more seriously, an entity could develop a xenophobic neurosis towards a patient or colleague which might affect its professional competence or mental stability. It was O’Mara and his department’s duty to detect and eradicate such problems or, as a last resort, to remove the potentially troublesome individual from the hospital. There were times when this constant watch for signs of wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking, which the Major and his staff performed with such dedication, made them the most disliked beings in the hospital.

“. . . For administrative reasons,” Timmins continued, “O’Mara bears the rank of Major in the Monitor Corps. There are many officers and medical staff here who are nominally his senior, but keeping so many different and potentially antagonistic life-forms working together in harmony is a big job whose limits, like those of O’Mara’s authority, are difficult to define.”

“I have long understood,” said Gurronsevas, “the difference between rank and authority.”

“That’s good,” said Timmins, pointing at the large door they were approaching. “This is the Department of Other-Species Psychology. After you, sir.”

He found himself in a large outer office containing four desk consoles ranged on each side of a broad, clear stretch of floor leading to an inner door. Only three of the desks were occupied—by a Tarlan, a Sommaradvan, and another Monitor Corps officer of the same rank and species as Timmins. The Tarlan and Sommaradvan remained bent over their work, but each curled an eye inquisitively in his direction, and the other officer looked at him Earth-human fashion with both its eyes. Placing his six feet as gently as possible against the floor so as to minimize undue noise and vibration, a politeness he practiced among lower-gravity entities in confined surroundings, he moved further into the room.

He remained silent because in these circumstances he did not consider it proper to speak to any subordinate person until he had first spoken to their superior.

Timmins said briskly, “Gurronsevas, newly arrived on Tennochlan, to see the Major.”

The other officer smiled and said, “He is waiting for you, Gurronsevas. Please go in. Alone.”

The inner door slid open and Timmins said quietly, “Good luck, sir.”

CHAPTER 2

The inner office of the Chief Psychologist was larger than the outer one, Gurronsevas saw, and if anything it resembled a well-appointed torture chamber from his native Traltha’s pre-civilized past. Ranged around the walls and encroaching towards the center of the floor, and in two cases hanging from the ceiling, was a weird and wonderful assortment of furniture that was designed to enable the different species with business in the office to sit, lie, curl up, or hang at ease. As a member of a species who preferred to work, eat, sleep and do everything else standing on its six feet (except on occasions when eye-level other-species social intercourse was necessary), Gurronsevas found these office accessories of marginal interest. That was why he moved without hesitation to stand in the clear area of floor before the rotatable desk console at which sat this entity of indeterminate authority, O’Mara.

Gurronsevas directed all of his eyes towards O’Mara but remained silent. The Major knew who he was so it was unnecessary to introduce himself, and he wanted it to be established from the beginning, at the risk of committing a minor act of insubordination or impoliteness, that he was a person of strong will who would not be forced into making unnecessary conversation.

The Major appeared to be old (as Earth-humans counted their years), although the head-fur and hairy crescents shading its eyes were grey rather than white. Its facial features and the two hands resting on top of the desk remained motionless while it was returning his gaze. The silence lengthened until suddenly it nodded its head. When it spoke it did not use either his name or its own.

There had been a brief and silent contest of wills, but Gurronsevas was not sure who had won it.

“I must begin by welcoming you to Sector General,” said O’Mara, and not once did he allow the flaps of skin that protected and lubricated its eyes to drop. “We both realize that these words are nothing more than a polite formality because your presence here was not requested by the hospital, nor is it as the result of unusually high medical or technical aptitude. You are here because someone in Federation Medical Administration had a rush of brains to the head and sent you, leaving us to discover whether or not the idea is viable. Is that a fair summation of the situation?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas. “I was not sent, I volunteered.”

“A technicality,” said O’Mara, “and possibly an aberration on your part. Why did you want to come here? And please don’t repeat the material in your original submission. It is long, detailed, most impressive, and probably accurate; but very often the facts contained in documents of this kind are shaded in favor of the applicant. Not that I am suggesting that deliberate falsification has taken place, just that an element of fiction is present. You have no previous hospital experience?”

“You know I haven’t,” Gurronsevas replied, resisting an urge to stamp his feet in irritation. “I do not consider that a bar to the performance of my duties.”

O’Mara nodded. “But tell me, in as few words as possible: did you want to work here?”

“I do not work,” said Gurronsevas, raising and lowering two of his feet with enough force to make the floor-mounted furniture in the room vibrate. “I am neither an artisan nor a technician. I am an artist.”

“Please forgive me,” said O’Mara in a voice which seemed to be totally devoid of contrition. “Why have you decided to favor this particular hospital with your artistry?”

“Because it represents a challenge to me,” he replied fiercely. “Perhaps the ultimate challenge, because Sector General is the biggest and best. That is not a clumsy attempt at flattering you or your hospital; it is a widely-known fact.”

O’Mara inclined its head slightly and said, “It is a fact known to each and every member of the hospital staff. And I’m pleased that you have not tried to use flattery on me, clumsy or otherwise, because it doesn’t work. Neither can I conceive of any circumstances where I would use it on another entity—although I have been known, on a very few occasions, to stoop to politeness. Do we understand each other?—And this time you may take a few more words to answer the questions,” it went on before Gurronsevas could reply. “What is there about this medical madhouse that attracted you, why did you decide to come, and what kind of influence do you have that you were able to swing it? Were you unhappy with your previous establishment or superiors, or they with you?”

“Of course not!” said Gurronsevas. “It was the Cromingan-Shesk in Retlin on Nidia, the largest and most highly-acclaimed multi-species hotel and restaurant in the Federation. They treated me very well there, and had that not been so there were several other establishments that vied with each other to obtain my services. I was quite happy there until about a year ago, when I spoke with the Monitor Corps ranking officer on Nidia Base, Fleet Commander Roonardth, a Kelgian.”

Gurronsevas paused, remembering the ridiculously short and simple conversation that had brought his former life of contentment and boredom to an end.

“Go on,” said O’Mara quietly.

“Roonardth wished to compliment me in person,” Gurronsevas went on, “and it was a personage of sufficient importance for me to be called to its table so that it could do so. Kelgians are, as you know, very forthright beings who are psychologically incapable of lying or even of being polite. During the conversation that ensued it said that it had just consumed the finest meal of Crelletin vine-shoots in its life, rendered even more enjoyable because of its recent stay in Sector General where it had been taken after an unspecified but clearly life-threatening accident in space. Roonardth had no complaints about the medical services, but said that when it criticized the meals being served, it was told by an Earth-human DBDG nurse of a conspiracy aimed at poisoning long-stay patients whose convalescence was overlong, but that it was nevertheless fortunate in that it did not have to eat in the staff dining hall.

“The Fleet Commander said that no doubt the remark was an example of what Earth-humans called humor,” he went on, “but it also suggested that if someone like Gurronsevas (if there were anyone else like Gurronsevas) were to take charge of Sector General’s commissariat, then patient recuperation and staff morale would be greatly enhanced. It was a high compliment that gave me much pleasure. But later I began thinking about it and feeling dissatisfied with a style of life which, I realized, had become pointless and boring. When Roonardth next came in to dine, I excelled myself so as to have the opportunity of speaking to it again, and I asked if the Fleet Commander’s earlier suggestion had been a serious one.

“It was,” Gurronsevas ended, “and Roonardth had the rank and sufficient influence with the department responsible for maintaining the hospital to have me sent, after a wait of a year, to Sector General.”

“Yes,” said O’Mara. “Roonardth carried enough clout. I assume that you spent the waiting time familiarizing yourself with the layout and organization of the hospital? And, like any eager little newcomer, you are anxious to make a good impression on everyone as quickly as possible, and have already made plans to that effect?”

Gurronsevas’ first thought was to point out to the diminutive Earth-human that, possessing as he did more than five times the other’s body mass, he could scarcely be described as ‘little.’ Then he decided that O’Mara must have used the word deliberately in an attempt to unsettle him, and answered simply, “Yes.”

The Major regarded him in silence for a moment, then it nodded and briefly showed its teeth. “In that case, what are your immediate intentions?”

“As soon as possible,” said Gurronsevas, trying to control his enthusiasm, “I shall call a meeting of all hospital food technicians and associated medical personnel, with the purpose of introducing myself to those few who may not already know of of me by reputation . . .”

O’Mara was holding up one hand. It said, “All food technicians? Even the chlorine-breathers, and the ultra-low temperature and other exotic life-forms?”

“Of course,” Gurronsevas replied. “But I would not make any major changes in the exotics’ diets . . .”

“Thank God for that,” said O’Mara.

“. . . Without first making a careful study of the probable effects and obtaining the medical and technical advice of those with prior experience. But in time I intend to increase the present range of my culinary expertise, extensive though it already is, to include the dietary requirements of species other than the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. I am now, after all, the hospital’s Chief Dietitian.”

O’Mara was moving its head from side to side in a gesture, Gurronsevas had learned, that indicated non-verbal negation. Impatiently he wondered what objection this unpleasant entity had to him doing his job.

“I’ll tell you exactly what you are,” said O’Mara, “and what you will do. You are a potentially dangerous contradiction. As a newcomer to the hospital without prior technical or medical training you should be classified as a trainee. Instead you have arrived as the head of a department whose ramifications are completely unknown to you. Two points in your favor are that you are aware of your ignorance; and, unlike our trainees, you have wide experience of other-species social contact. Nevertheless, you will soon be faced with and have to adapt to physiological types not normally found in the dining rooms of the ultra-exclusive Hotel Cromingan-Shesk. Since you appear to have a high opinion of your own importance and I, on rare occasions, am capable of exercising tact, I have avoided using the words will or must do, even though they are more appropriate in this case. No, don’t interrupt.

“While you are learning the ropes,” O’Mara continued, “please remember that, in spite of the influence you may have with the high-ranking gourmets of the Monitor Corps, you are here on probation, the period of which can be shortened in three ways. One, you may find the work too much for you and decide to resign. Two, I decide that the work is too much for you and kick you out. Three, and this is an improbability that comes within the category of wish-fulfillment, you display such a high level of aptitude that we are forced to confirm your position and request that you stay.

“Before you do or plan anything,” it went on, “familiarize yourself with the hospital. Take all the time you need—within reason—to settle in. Before making any dietary changes have them vetted by the Diagnostician-in-Charge of the relevant department for possibly harmful medical effects. Should you encounter any psychological problems of your own I will, of course, try to assist you—provided you can satisfy me that you are not able to solve them yourself. If you have any other problems or questions while settling in, call on Lieutenant Timmins for help. You will find, if you have not already done so, that he is a polite and helpful person and one of the few people in this place who, unlike myself, seem able to suffer fools gladly.

“When I have more time to spare,” it continued, “we will discuss the boring administrative details. Your salary, entitlement to paid leave and reduced transportation charges to your home world or chosen place of vacation, and supplies of free protective clothing and equipment. With or without the clothing you should wear a trainee’s arm- or leg-band so that—”

“Enough!” said Gurronsevas loudly, making no attempt to hide his feeling of outrage. “I require no salary. By the exercise of my unique talents I have already amassed more wealth than I could hope to spend during the rest of my life, no matter how profligate I should become. And I remind you again that I am a specialist renowned throughout the Federation and not a trainee, so I shall wear no trainee’s badge or—”

“As you wish,” said O’Mara quietly. “Is there anything else you wish to say to me? No? Then I expect you have other things to do less wasteful of your time and mine.”

The Chief Psychologist glanced pointedly at its wrist chronometer, then tapped briefly on its console. When its communicator lit up it said quietly, “Braithwaite, I will see Senior Physician Cresk-Sar now.”

Gurronsevas returned to the outer office seething with anger and making no attempt to place his feet quietly on the floor. The Nidian Senior waiting to see O’Mara took hasty evasive action while all the eyes of the department’s staff remained firmly on their work displays, even though small items of equipment resting on the console desks were vibrating noisily with every foot-fall. He stopped only when he reached the waiting Timmins.

“That is a most infuriating entity,” he said angrily. “As a Healer of the Mind it is incredibly lacking in sympathy or sensitivity, and, although I am not in that profession, I would say that it causes more psychological distress than it cures.”

Timmins was shaking its head slowly. It said, “You are quite wrong, sir. The Major is fond of saying that his job here is to shrink heads, not swell them. If the meaning of that particular Earth-human phrase is unclear to you I will explain it later. He is a very good psychologist, the best that any mentally distressed or traumatized entity could wish for, but he also likes to project the image of a thoroughly nasty and sarcastic person to those friends and colleagues about whom he has no cause for professional concern. If he were ever to show you sympathy and concern, and to act towards you as a patient rather than a colleague, you would be in real trouble.”

“I—I’m not sure that I understand,” said Gurronsevas.

“In fact, sir,” said the Lieutenant, smiling again, “you showed commendable restraint. The inner office is supposed to be soundproofed and we heard your voice raised only once. Many of the others try to slam the door on the way out.”

“Lieutenant,” said Gurronsevas, “it is a sliding door.”

“Even so,” said Timmins.

CHAPTER 3

The compartment was much smaller than his former quarters in Retlin, but a beautiful and almost three-dimensional picture of Tralthan mountain scenery that covered one wall gave it a feeling of spaciousness, while the colors used to decorate the other walls and ceiling were identical to those he had left. A small but adequate body-immersion pit, terraced on one side for ease of entry, was recessed into the floor under the picture wall. There was a gravity control unit so that he could increase the compartment’s G-level for exercise or relaxation, since the standard gravity pull used inside the hospital was just over half Tralthan normal. A console with communicator and large view-screen was set into one corner, and the two containers (one large and one small) that had come with him on Tennochlan were already waiting inside the entrance.

“This is unexpected and very pleasant, Lieutenant Timmins,” said Gurronsevas. “My thanks for your efforts in making it so.”

Timmins smiled and made a dismissive gesture with one hand, then used it to point at the communications console.

“The operation is standard,” it said, “and there are a large number of medical training and information channels available, including one covering the detailed geography of the hospital which you will find helpful, with a recall provision for study purposes if required. To understand them you will need to use your multichannel translator pack; that’s it lying on top of your console. Unfortunately, the entertainment channels are, well . . .I know the Earth-human material is old and not very good, and the other-species staff have similar complaints. There is a rumor, never officially denied by O’Mara, that the Senior Physician in charge of training, Cresk-Sar, has deliberately arranged this to encourage more study during leisure periods.”

“I understand,” said Gurronsevas, “and sympathize.”

Timmins smiled again and said, “You have concealed storage spaces here and here, and recessed attachment points for any pictures or wall hangings you may have. They work like this. Would you like help unpacking and arranging your personal effects?”

“Since I have very few, that will not be necessary,” Gurronsevas replied, and pointed. “But as quickly as possible I would like that larger container to be stored under moderate refrigeration where I can have ready access to it. The contents will be required for my work.”

The expression on Timmins’ soft, yellow-pink features was probably one of curiosity, which Gurronsevas did not intend to satisfy as yet, then it said, “There is a cold-storage facility at the other end of your corridor. We don’t need to waste time going for a gravity sled; it isn’t very heavy.”

A few minutes later Gurronsevas’s precious container was in a cool, safe place, and Timmins went on, “Would you like to rest now, sir? Or tour part of the hospital, or maybe visit our dining hall for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers?”

“None of those,” Gurronsevas replied. “I will return to my quarters and familiarize myself with the hospital layout. Then I would like to find my way to the dining hall, alone. Sooner rather than later I must learn to—how does your species put it?—stand on my own six feet.”

“Understood, sir,” said Timmins. “You have my personal comm code. Call me if you need help.”

“My thanks, Lieutenant,” said Gurronsevas. “I will need help—but hopefully not too often.”

Timmins raised one hand and left without speaking.

Next day Gurronsevas was able to find his way to the correct level without having to ask anyone for directions, but this was because, during the final stages of the journey, he followed two Melfan student nurses who were discussing the necessity for hurrying their next meal to avoid being late for a lecture. He was sure, however, that he would be able to find the place again without passive guidance.

In the four principal languages spoken throughout the Federation—Tralthan, Orligian, Earth-human and Illensan—and as a spoken identification for translation by the other user species, the sign above the wide, doorless entrance announced Main Dining Hall, species classifications DBDG, DBLF, DBPK, DCNF, EGCL, ELNT, FGLI and FROB. Species GKNM & GLNO at own risk. Gurronsevas moved inside and stopped, paralyzed as much by the sight of so many other species together in one place as by the muted roar of their barking, grunting, growling, cheeping and whistling conversations.

Gurronsevas did not know how long he stood staring across that vast expanse of highly polished floor with its regimented islands of eating benches and seating grouped together by size to accommodate the incredible variety of beings using them. It was far beyond anything in his previous experience. He identified members of the Kelgian, Ian, Melfan, Nidian, Orligian, Dwerlan, Etlan, Earth-human, and his own Tralthan species, plus others that were completely new to him. Many of them were occupying tables and using eating utensils that had been designed for entirely different life-forms, seemingly for the purpose of conversing with other-species friends.

There were beings terrifying in their obvious physical strength, others so horrifying and repugnant that they belonged in the realms of nightmare, and one, a large, insectile creature with three sets of beautiful iridescent wings, had a body so fragile that the sight of it among the others aroused immediate feelings of concern. There were very few vacant spaces at any of the tables.

It was obvious that space was at a premium in Sector General and, whenever it was physiologically possible, the beings who worked together were expected to dine together—although not, Gurronsevas sincerely hoped, on the same food.

He was wondering if it was possible to prepare a meal that every warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species would find instantly palatable, and thinking that that would be the ultimate challenge for the Great Gurronsevas, when he was struck two soft double-blows from behind.

“Don’t block the entrance, stupid!” said a silver-furred Kelgian in the unmannerly manner of its race as it pushed past him. On his other flank its companion added, “Stand dreaming there much longer and you’ll starve to death.”

As he moved further into the hall, Gurronsevas realized suddenly that he felt hungry, but even stronger was his feeling of curiosity regarding the beautiful, outsized insect life-form hovering and eating above a nearby table that was furnished for Melfan ELNTs. Beside and below it there was a vacant place.

It was indeed an insect, he saw as he came up to its table, an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect that was tiny in comparison with most of the other beings in the hall. From its tubular exo-skeletal body there projected six pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately formed manipulators, and three sets of wide, iridescent wings that were beating slowly as it hovered a short distance above the table as it wove a long, stringy substance (which Gurronsevas immediately recognized as Earth spaghetti) into a cable before conveying it delicately to its mouth.

At close range, he thought, the delicate creature was even more beautiful. For a moment its hovering flight became less stable and a series of trills and clicks issued from an unidentified body orifice like a musical backing to the translated words.

“Why thank you, friend,” it said. “I am Prilicla. You must be Gurronsevas.”

“You must be telepathic,” said Gurronsevas in surprise.

“No, friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla, “I am a Cinrusskin. Our race possesses a faculty which enables us to sense emotional radiation, but it is empathy rather than telepathy. You were radiating feelings characteristic of a mind that is undergoing a completely new experience, but with the unease which usually accompanies such feelings overlaid by intense curiosity. Other trace emotions are present which support the principal indications. These combined with the foreknowledge that a Tralthan was expected to arrive shortly to take charge of Dietetics enabled me to make no more than an accurate guess.”

“I am nevertheless impressed,” said Gurronsevas. The warmth and friendliness emanating from the little being was almost palpable. “May I join you?”

“Stranger, you are too damned polite,” a large Orligian from the other side of the vacant place broke in loudly. It was elderly, its bristling grey fur concealed most of the straps of its equipment harness, and it was seated not very comfortably on the edge of the table’s Melfan support cradle, all of which may have contributed to its own lack of politeness. “I am Yaroch-Kar. Just grab the seat before somebody else does. In this place you’ll find that the polite people are always badly undernourished.”

Further along the table an Earth-human made the sound Gurronsevas had learned to identify as laughter, and in a softer voice the Orligian went on. “The mechanism for food selection and delivery is standard. Just key in your physiological classification and the menu display will list the food available. We have a lot of Tralthans here so there is a good selection, even though the quality and taste are matters for argument.”

Gurronsevas did not reply. He was modifying his earlier opinion regarding this impolite Orligian. The being had tried to be helpful. It was still trying.

“With newcomers like yourself,” it went on, “it sometimes happens that the meals being consumed by your fellow diners, perhaps even the diners themselves, are visually distressing to the point where the appetite is affected. If such is the case with you, just keep one eye on your platter and close the others. Nobody here will be offended. And if you really are the person who is to be responsible for the quality, or lack of it, of hospital catering, life would be easier for you if you kept that knowledge to yourself for as long as possible.”

“My deepest thanks for the information and good advice,” said Gurronsevas. “Regrettably, I may not be able to take all of it.”

“You are being too polite again,” said the Orligian, and returned its attention to its platter.

As he moved closer to the table, being careful to straddle and not risk deforming the Melfan chair by allowing his underside to rest on it, the trilling, clicking speech of Prilicla came again.

“I feel your hunger as well as your curiosity about my method of eating,” it said, “so please assuage one while I satisfy the other . . .”

Prilicla might not be telepathic, Gurronsevas thought as he keyed in his choice, but with an empathic faculty of such sensitivity the difference was negligible.

“. . . I find that eating while in flight aids the digestion,” it went on, answering the first unasked question, “and, should it be too hot for fast consumption, the wing downdraft helps cool the soup of my Earth-human friends. The stringy material that I am weaving and eating is, of course, the Earth staple called spaghetti, which is very popular with the DBDGs on the maintenance staff. It is produced synthetically, as you know, and has a bland taste that is offset by a sauce which, when present in too large a quantity, sometimes splashes my features or those persons seated too close to me. Is there anything else you would like to know, friend Gurronsevas?”

“Professionally, I find this most interesting,” he said, forgetting in his excitement to use the mouth not engaged in eating. “Do you eat any other varieties of non-Cinrusskin food? Or do you know of anyone else in the hospital who eats other-species food? Is there anyone at this table who does?”

Yaroch-Kar put down its eating tools and said, “Diagnosticians do it sometimes, when they have a particularly strong other-species Educator tape riding them and they aren’t sure who they are. Apart from that a few have done it as a dare, or for a covert departmental initiation. I mean, imagine an Orligian like me eating, say, a helping of Melfan greeps and having to chase them around the bowl. I, personally, am very glad the practice isn’t widespread.”

Gurronsevas could not believe what he was hearing. “You mean live food is served here?”

“I exaggerate, but only a little,” said Yaroch-Kar. “The greep dish is mobile rather than alive; otherwise it is the same near-tasteless synthesized stodge we all eat. The material is treated with nontoxic chemicals which allow each piece of food to be given a small electrical charge. Half of them are charged positively and the other half negatively, then the pieces are mixed just inside the serving outlet. For the few moments before the charges neutralize each other, the effect is visually realistic and quite disgusting.”

“Fascinating,” said Gurronsevas, thinking that this Yaroch-Kar was unusually knowledgeable where hospital cuisine was concerned. Perhaps it thought of itself as a gourmet, and he was anxious to continue the conversation. He went on, “At the Cromingan-Shesk we had to import live greeps, usually crottled, which made them a rare and expensive delicacy. But isn’t it theoretically possible to produce a meal that would be metabolically suited to, and attract and satisfy the appetites of all warm-blooded oxygen-breathers? A dish that would combine the visual appearance and taste sensations of, say, the Kelgian crelletin vine-shoots, Melfan swamp nuts, and greeps, of course, Orligian skarkshi, Nallajim bird-seed, Earth-human steak, and spaghetti, too, and our own . . .Is something wrong?”

With the exception of the hovering Prilicla the other entities at the table were making loud, untranslatable noises. It was the Earth-human who replied.

“Wrong?” it said. “The very idea is driving us to the point of imminent regurgitation.”

Prilicla made a short, trilling sound which did not translate, then went on, “I can detect no feelings of emotional or digestive distress, friend Gurronsevas. They are exaggerating their verbal responses for humorous effect. Do not concern yourself.”

“I understand,” said Gurronsevas, returning all attention to the Cinrusskin. “Does weaving the spaghetti strands into a cable also aid your digestion?”

“No, friend Gurronsevas,” Prilicla replied. “It is done for my own amusement.”

“When I was very young,” Yaroch-Kar joined in, “which was a long time ago, I can remember being verbally chastised for playing with my food.”

“I, too, have a similar memory,” said Prilicla. “But now that I have grown up to be big and strong, I can do as I please.”

For a moment Gurronsevas stared in astonishment at the thin, egg-shell body, spidery limbs and incredibly fragile wings then he, too, joined the others in making the untranslatable sounds that were his own Tralthan equivalent of laughter.

CHAPTER 4

A lengthy period of wakeful thinking, so concentrated that he had no clear idea of the elapsed time, was interrupted by the insistent sound and flashing light of his door signal. It was Lieutenant Timmins.

“Please excuse the interruption, sir,” it said briskly. “I trust you slept well. Is there anywhere special you would like to visit or people you want to meet? The catering computer, the food synthesizer banks, the ward diet kitchens or the food technicians responsible for . . .”

Gurronsevas held up two of his upper limbs, loosely crossed in the non-verbal request for silence, a Tralthan gesture which Timmins must have understood because he stopped talking at once.

“For the present,” said Gurronsevas, “none of those things. I know that you must have other duties, Lieutenant. So long as they permit it, I would prefer to have no close personal contact or conversation with anyone but yourself.”

“I have other duties, naturally,” said Timmins, “but I also have an assistant who tries very hard to make me feel redundant. For the next two days, and thereafter at mutually convenient times, I will be at your disposal. What would you like to do first?”

It was plain that Timmins was becoming impatient, but Gurronsevas did not move. He said, “At the risk of sounding repetitious and tedious, hopefully for the last time, I must remind you of my former position on Nidia. The Cromingan-Shesk was a very large, multi-species hotel and its kitchens, of which I had overall charge, were complex, technically advanced and, as you would expect, subject to periodic and most inconvenient malfunctions. I was able to reduce the number of these foul-ups by acquainting myself with the basic operation of the invisible support structures, the various other-species food reception systems, processors, ovens, and ancillary equipment, right down to the proper use of the smallest cutting implement and spoon. As well, I made myself familiar with the work of the sub-cooks, the waiters, those responsible for table decoration, the maintenance technicians, and so on down to the lowliest member of the cleaning staff. I made it my business to know enough to tell, if or when a fault occurred, whether I was being given a reason for it or an excuse.

“Before I try to give instructions to anyone in my department,” he went on, “I want to know the geographical extent of my new responsibilities and the practical problems that are likely to occur, so that the gulf of ignorance between my subordinates and myself will be as narrow as possible. My learning process should begin at once.”

Timmins’ mouth had opened while Gurronsevas had been speaking, but the configuration of its lips seemed wrong for a smile, and finally it said, “You will have to travel extensively through the maintenance tunnel network. In places it can be dirty, unpleasant and dangerous. Are you sure that is what you want?”

“Quite sure,” said Gurronsevas.

“Then we can talk as we walk,” said the Lieutenant. “But it would be better, at least in the beginning, if I talked and you listened. There is a personnel access hatch in the wall at the end of your corridor . . .”

According to Timmins, the maps of the hospital’s maintenance tunnels and substations, which Gurronsevas had studied so assiduously before his arrival, had been produced for the information of interested non-specialists—the drawings were too simple, too pretty, and years out of date. As soon as they entered the maintenance access door he was confronted by a flight of descending stairs which should not have existed.

“They’re strong enough to support your weight,” said Timmins, “but take them slowly. Or if you prefer we can use another access point where there is a ramp. Some Tralthans find stairs difficult . . .”

“I used them in the hotel,” Gurronsevas broke in. “Just don’t ask me to climb ladders.”

“I won’t,” said the Lieutenant. “But you go first. It isn’t politeness; just that I don’t want to risk a quarter of a ton of Tralthan falling on me. How is your eyesight?”

“Very good,” said Gurronsevas.

“But is it good enough,” Timmins persisted, “to clearly identify the subtle shadings and dilutions of color brought about by changes in the ambient lighting? Are you claustrophobic?”

Trying to hide his impatience, Gurronsevas said, “I am able to tell by sight alone the degree of freshness, to within a few hours, of a wide range of commonly consumed fruit and vegetables. I am not claustrophobic.”

“Good enough,” said Timmins. With a hint of apology in its voice it went on, “But look above and around you. All of the interconnecting corridors, tunnels, service bays and alcove shelters are just like this. The walls and ceilings are covered with cable looms and piping, all of which is color-coded. This enables my maintenance people to tell at a glance, like you and the fresh vegetables, which are power cables and which are the less dangerous communication lines, or which pipes carry oxygen, chlorine, methane, or organic effluvia. The danger of contamination of wards and staff accommodation by other-species’ atmospheres is always present, and such a local environmental catastrophe should not be allowed to happen because some partially-sighted entity connected up the wrong set of pipes.

“Normally,” it went on, “I would not have to ask about visual acuity or claustrophobia because O’Mara’s psychological screening would reject anyone with those defects before they were accepted for training. But your psych file was not open to me because you are not a trainee . . .That alcove just ahead on the right. Get in, quickly!”

For the past few seconds Gurronsevas had been aware of a high-pitched, wailing sound of steadily increasing volume. He felt Timmins’ small, soft hands pushing at his lower flank in a manner which in another Tralthan would have been considered an intimacy, but it was simply urging him to move more quickly into the alcove before squeezing in beside him.

A gravity sled, piled so high with unidentifiable stores and equipment that there seemed to be only inches to spare between the load and the corridor walls, wailed past them. Above the sound of the warning siren the Earth-human driver shouted, “Morning, Lieutenant.” Timmins raised a hand but did not speak because by then the other entity was beyond conversational range.

Now he knew the reason for the alcoves.

“It would save time if we used a gravity sled instead of walking,” said Gurronsevas. “I was accustomed to driving in Retlin city center, where the traffic was quite horrendous, and was considered competent.”

Timmins shook its head and said, “Not good enough. If you intend spending a lot of time in the service tunnels, I will arrange specialized driving instruction, in an empty cargo bay with collapsible practice-walls so that you won’t damage the hospital’s structure or yourself. But the chief reason for not using a sled right now is that it would move too fast for you to be able to see or learn anything useful about where we were going.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Good,” said the Lieutenant. “But now, a little test. Based on what little you have learned and your observations so far, what can you tell me about the stretch of tunnel we have just entered?”

Very many years had passed since Gurronsevas had attended school, but then as now he had always tried hard to impress his teachers. He said, “For a few seconds I was aware of muted rumbling and shuffling sounds and muffled other-species voices, too many and too faint for translation, coming from the ceiling. This leads me to assume that we are passing under one of the main corridors. There is a faint smell that I cannot identify which I think in greater strength would be unpleasant. I also note that, while the color coding which identifies the overhead power and communication cables, as well as the piping which carries the water and oxygen-nitrogen mixture used by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers has remained consistent, several large-diameter pipes coded for water have also appeared, and a few narrower runs with a color coding about which you have not told me. I have a question.”

“One good answer,” said Timmins, smiling, “deserves another. Ask.”

“There were no identifying markings on any of the mechanisms and equipment we have passed,” said Gurronsevas. “Are you and your maintenance staff required to recognize by sight and memorize the function of all these mechanisms?”

“God, no . . . !” Timmins began, when the siren of an approaching vehicle driven by a silver-furred Kelgian who did not speak forced them to take refuge in the nearest alcove. When they emerged, it continued, “Not even a Diagnostician has that good a memory. On your right is a red-blue-white-coded cabinet, that one with three of the large-diameter water pipes entering it. On the outer face is a large inspection panel with a small, hinged lid set into it. Pull back the lid and press the button inside.”

Gurronsevas did so and was surprised when a new voice began speaking to them. He could not recognize the original language but the words came clearly through his translator.

“I am a standby pump for the purpose of topping-up the environmental fluid in the Chalder main ward. This supply contains trace elements favored by its AUGL water-breathers which, although not toxic, make it unsuitable as a drinking water supply for other warm-blooded species. Functioning is automatic. The large inspection panel is opened by inserting your general-purpose key into the slot marked with a red circle and turning it, as indicated by the arrow, through ninety degrees. For component repair or replacement consult Maintenance Instructions Tape Three, Section One Thirty-two. Do not forget to close the panel before you leave.

“I am a standby pump for . . .” it was repeating when Gurronsevas closed the lid, silencing it.

“A verbal label,” he said admiringly, “understandable by everyone with a translator. I should have realized.”

Timmins smiled and said, “We are moving into the Illensan levels. The smell and the new color code you spotted indicate the presence of chlorine. But before we go any farther we need protective suits, so turn into the next opening on the left. In there, at least, you won’t have to worry about traffic.”

The place was a multi-species suit store, he saw at once, and the transparent doors of the cabinets ranged around the walls revealed their contents while verbal labels gave any special fitting instructions on request. Timmins lifted out a suit for itself and donned it quickly before directing Gurronsevas towards one of the Tralthan cabinets.

“With your six legs you may find getting into that thing tricky at first,” it said, “so I’ll help you. The garment is a combination of lightweight environmental protection and general purpose coveralls. On mine there is a head-hood which can be sealed should there be an emergency involving other-species contamination such as a major seal malfunction at an oxygen and chlorine interface, or between the Telfan hot level and anywhere else. Yours contains a short-duration air supply, cooling and drying elements to control perspiration and guard against heat prostration, and an emergency beacon to summon help should you get into trouble.

“Don’t use the beacon unless you cannot get to a communicator and have a serious emergency,” the Lieutenant went on, “or until you are sure that you cannot solve the problem yourself. If a full rescue team with medical support turns out and finds that you are only lost or lonely, harsh words will be spoken.”

“Harsh words,” said Gurronsevas, “would be deserved.”

Timmins smiled and continued, “The suits also give protection against dirt, and cuts and abrasions from metal projections. Unlike the medical levels and your kitchens at the Cromingan-Shesk, we do not need to work in super-clean conditions. Static charges build up in the equipment which attracts dust, and with the lubricants used everywhere it makes for a very dirty combination that is difficult to remove, particularly for entities who are covered with fur. The protective coveralls are a uniform color, Monitor Corps green, with the exception of the transparent suits used by Kelgians who need their fur to be visible for non-verbal communication. Before dressing, medical or departmental insignia of rank are transferred to the outside of the garment. Now check your head seal. Is the general fit comfortable?”

“Quite comfortable, thank you,” Gurronsevas replied. “But I have a question prompted by the AUGL water pump that spoke to me. The problem of improving the taste of food used by water-breathers is one I had not considered until now. As soon as I have gained some knowledge of the maintenance levels’ geography and food distribution network, I would like to discuss the problem with the Chalder patients. Can you arrange that?”

“That is a medical matter,” said Timmins slowly. “It would be better if you asked permission and found out the most convenient visiting times from Nurse Hredlichli, who is in charge of the AUGL ward.”

“Then I shall do that,” said Gurronsevas. “But you sound hesitant. Am I likely to encounter some difficulty?”

“Charge Nurse Hredlichli,” the Lieutenant replied, “has the reputation of being only slightly less obnoxious than O’Mara. But now, before I take you to see the main synthesizer unit under the dining hall, attach this trainee’s band to one of your fore-limbs in a position where it will be easily seen.”

This was the second time he had been told to wear the demeaning badge of a trainee, Gurronsevas thought, but the angry response he had given the impolite Chief Psychologist would scarcely do for this friendly and well-mannered Lieutenant. He was still searching his mind for reasons—or were they, perhaps, excuses?—for refusing the band when Timmins spoke again.

It said, “I myself, and soon everyone else in the hospital, will know that you are not a trainee but a specialist with considerable seniority. However, on the maintenance levels people are always in a hurry and accidents happen easily. You have seen how some of us drive, and there are many other situations where you would be at risk. Isn’t it simple good sense to let those with experience know that you have none, so that allowances can be made? After all, the hospital needs a Chief Dietitian more than it needs another patient.”

For a long moment Gurronsevas argued silently with himself, feeling shame because he could not be sure whether he was using his intelligence or giving in to moral cowardice.

“Well, if it is a matter of my continued survival,” he said reluctantly, “all right.”

CHAPTER 5

Gurronsevas was feeling very proud of himself. He had met and spoken with all the members of his staff individually—and, when required, at length. His principal assistant, a Nidian called Sarnyagh-Sa, had required careful handling because it had been expecting to inherit the retiring Chief Dietitian’s position, but it was able, responsible, a little unresponsive to new ideas as yet, but showed long-term promise. Without ingratiation or implied diminution of his own authority or responsibility, Gurronsevas asked for the help of everyone. His intention was to be approachable by all levels of staff, provided the approach was not a waste of his time. He hoped that relations within other-species Catering would be pleasant and professional, but noted that the degree of the former would be strictly dependent upon the quality of the latter. The general response had been good, although a few of them had thought it strange that the Great Gurronsevas had worn maintenance coveralls during their interviews.

And after just five days of exploring the food supply maintenance tunnels with Timmins and just three half-days of anti-gravity sled driving instruction, the Lieutenant had told him that he need no longer travel on foot or with company. On the sixth day he had driven an unloaded sled from the synthesizer complex under Level Eighteen to the short-term storage facility on Thirty-one, using only the service tunnels and without having to request a navigational fix, in just twenty-four standard minutes without hitting anyone or anything—at least, not hard enough for a written report to be necessary.

Timmins had told him that he was doing exceptionally well for a beginner, and now Gurronsevas was trying hard not to allow his feelings of pride and pleasure to be destroyed by the ill-mannered, acid-tongued, chlorine-breathing Illensan he currently faced.

“When we need one of you people quickly,” said Charge Nurse Hredlichli, “it seems that the maintenance sub-species suddenly becomes extinct; and when we don’t want you, you clutter up the place. What is it you want?”

Since the Cromingan-Shesk had not catered for chlorine-breathers, it was the first time he had seen one of the PVSJ classification at close range. The Illensan’s spiny, membranous body resembled a haphazard collection of oily, unhealthy vegetation that was partially obscured by the yellow mist of chlorine inside the entity’s protective envelope, and Gurronsevas found himself wishing that the fog had been denser. Hredlichli was drifting motionless in the water-filled Nurses’ Station in front of a patient-monitor screen. He had not been able to locate its eyes amid the tangle of head-fronds, but presumably the Charge Nurse was looking at him.

“I am Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas, Charge Nurse, not a maintenance technician,” he said, making a great effort to be polite. “With your help I would like to interview one or more of your patients regarding the ward food supply, with a view to making improvements. Could you suggest the name of one that I can talk to without interrupting its medical treatment?”

“I could not suggest a name,” said Hredlichli, “because our patients do not give them. On Chalderescol a person’s name is known only to close members of its family and is otherwise given only to its intended life-mate. Here they are known by their medical filenames. AUGL One-Thirteen is convalescent and unlikely to be seriously stressed by a lot of stupid questions, so you may talk to it. Nurse Towan!”

A voice from the communicator, faintly distorted by the intervening watery medium, said, “Yes, Charge Nurse.”

“When you finish changing One-Twenty-Two’s dressings,” said Hredlichli, “please ask One-Thirteen to come to the Nurses’ Station. It has a visitor.” To Gurronsevas it went on, “In case you don’t know, a Chalder won’t fit in here without wrecking the place. Wait outside.”

The ward was probably smaller than it looked, Gurronsevas thought as he awaited the arrival of AUGL-113, but size and distance were hard to judge in this dim, green world where the difference between the shadowy inhabitants, their medical equipment, and the decorative vegetation designed to make them feel at home was difficult to define. Timmins had told him that some of the plants were living rather than artificial, a species that gave off a water-borne aromatic which the patients found pleasant, and that it was Maintenance Department’s responsibility to see that the foliage stayed healthy no matter what happened to the patients. Sometimes it was difficult to know when the Lieutenant was being serious. It had also told him that the natives of the ocean world of Chalderescol embarrassed easily and were the most visually fearsome beings that he was ever likely to meet.

That, Gurronsevas thought as he watched the enormous, tentacled, torpedo shape that was speeding silently towards him, he could believe.

The creature was like an enormous armored fish with a heavy, knife-edged tail, a seemingly haphazard arrangement of stubby fins, and, around its waist, a thick ring of tentacles projecting through some of the only openings visible in its organic armor. The tentacles lay flat against its body while it was moving forward, but they were long enough to reach forward past the thick, blunt wedge of its head. As it swam closer and began to circle him, one of its tiny, lidless eyes regarded him. It drifted to a halt and its waist tentacles fanned forward to hang in a great, undulating circle around it. Suddenly the mouth opened to reveal a vast, pink cavern edged with the largest, whitest, sharpest teeth Gurronsevas had ever seen.

“Are, are you my visitor?” it asked shyly.

Gurronsevas hesitated, wondering whether or not he should introduce himself. A member of a culture which did not use names other than among family or loved ones might feel embarrassment if he should use his. He should have remembered to ask the Charge Nurse about that.

“Yes,” he said finally. “If you have nothing more important to do and will allow it, I would like to talk to you about Chalder food.”

“With pleasure,” said AUGL-113. “It is an interesting topic that causes much argument but rarely leads to violence.”

“About hospital food,” said Gurronsevas.

“Oh,” said the Chalder.

He did not have to be a Cinrusskin empath to sense the deep criticism implied by that single word. He said quickly, “It is my intention, in fact I have accepted it as a personal and professional challenge, to improve the quality, taste and presentation of the synthetic food provided by the hospital to its many life-forms. Before any improvement is possible I must know in what way or ways the present synthesized diets, which to me seem little more than near-tasteless organic fuel, fall short of the ideal. The work has just begun, and you are the first patient to be interviewed.”

The cavernous mouth closed slowly then opened again. The patient said, “A laudable ambition, but surely unattainable? I must remember your phrase, tasteless organic fuel. Using it to a host on Chalder would be the ultimate culinary insult, because there we take our food seriously, and often in excess. What can I tell you?”

“Practically everything,” said Gurronsevas gratefully, “because my ignorance regarding Chalder food is total. What edible animal and vegetable varieties are there? How are they prepared, presented and served? On the majority of worlds the methods of presentation stimulates the taste sensors and adds much to the enjoyment. Is it so on Chalderescol? What spices, sauces or condiments are used? And the concept of a culinary spectrum which is comprised of only cold dishes is completely new to me . . .”

“Being ocean-dwelling water-breathers,” One-Thirteen broke in gently, “our people were late in discovering fire.”

“Of course, I’m stupid not to have . . .” Gurronsevas began when the voice of Hredlichli interrupted both of them.

“Whether or not you are stupid is not for me to say,” it called from the entrance to the Nurses’ Station. “At least, not out loud. It is time for our mid-day meal and the patients are hungry and, with the exception of the one you are talking to, are on special diets and require nursing assistance during feeding. So make yourself useful: draw One-Thirteen’s rations and let the poor thing eat while you talk.”

He followed Hredlichli into the Nurses’ Station, thinking how strange it was that the unpleasant Charge Nurse was telling him to do exactly what he himself would have wished to do. But before he could follow the thought to its incredible conclusion—that Hredlichli might not be as unpleasant as it seemed—the food delivery chute started spitting out large, brown-and-grey mottled globes into a waiting carrying net. When the net was full he towed it out to One-Thirteen.

“Keep your distance and push them at it one at a time,” Hredlichli called after him. “You don’t want to become part of the meal.”

Two Kelgian nurses, their fur rippling in dimly-lit silver waves inside their transparent protective suits, and a water-breathing Creppelian octopoid who needed no protection, passed him on their way in.

“What are they, eggs?” Gurronsevas asked as he pushed them one by one towards the patient’s open and waiting mouth. One-Thirteen’s jaws closed much too quickly for him to be able to see whether the material was soft and surrounded by a hard, uneven shell, or solid all the way through. His curiosity remained unsatisfied until the last of the objects had disappeared into the vast jaws and the patient’s mouth was again free for speech.

“Are you getting enough to eat?” he said. “Relative to your body mass, the meal portions appear, well, meager.”

“My tardiness in replying,” the patient replied, “should not be taken as an impoliteness. On Chalderescol the ingestion of food is an important and pleasurable activity, and to converse while eating is considered to be an implied criticism of one’s host for allowing a guest to become bored with what is being provided. Even here, where the food is open to serious criticism, the habit of good manners remains.”

“I understand,” said Gurronsevas.

“To answer your questions,” Patient One-Thirteen went on, “the food objects resemble but are not eggs, although they have a hard, edible outer shell enclosing a quantity of concentrated nutritious fibre, synthetic, of course, which expands to many times its original volume when exposed to our digestive juices, thus giving a feeling of physical repletion. As a species we Chalders have an educated palate, and well do we know that hunger makes the most effective sauce, but the taste of these food objects is artificial and unsubtle and . . .to describe them more fully my language would of necessity become impolite.”

“Again I understand,” said Gurronsevas. “But can you describe the differences in appearance and consistency, as well as the taste, between the natural and synthetic varieties? You will not offend me by using impolite language to describe foul-tasting or badly-prepared food because I have been doing so to my kitchen staff for a great many years . . .”

Patient One-Thirteen began by saying that it did not want to sound ungrateful to the hospital because the treatment it had received had, after all, saved its life. Medical and surgical wonders had been performed in the crowded and claustrophobic, to an AUGL, confines of the ward, and to complain about the food being unappetizing seemed petty under the circumstances. But on its home world there was space in which to eat, and to exercise, and to sharpen the taste sensors with expectancy and uncertainty by having to chase certain varieties of food which were not easily caught.

On the ocean world of Chalderescol, in spite of the civilizing influences of many centuries, the Chalders still felt a physiological as well as an aesthetic need to chase their food rather than have it served dead and, so far as their instincts were concerned, in the early stages of decomposition on a platter. To remain physically healthy they needed to exercise their jaws and teeth and massive, armored bodies, and the time of maximum effort and enjoyment, except for the brief period every year when they were able to procreate, was when they were eating.

The hospital food was hard-shelled enough and undoubtedly nutritious, but the contents were a soft, tasteless, disgusting pap that resembled the partially pre-digested and newly-dead material given to toothless AUGL infants. Unless immobilized by serious illness or injury, an adult Chalder was forced to concentrate its mind on other and more pleasant things if it was to avoid nausea while eating the vile stuff.

Gurronsevas listened attentively to AUGL-113’s every word, occasionally asking for clarification or offering suggestions, but always remembering to make due allowance for creative exaggeration on the part of a patient who was obviously pleased at having someone new at whom it could complain. But the constant discussion of food in its many unpalatable forms, to a Chalder, was reminding Gurronsevas that it had been four hours since he himself had dined.

“If I may interrupt you to summarize the problem,” said Gurronsevas when the other began repeating itself with only minor variations. “First, there is the shape and consistency of the food, which is inadequate in that it exercises only the jaws and teeth. Second, the taste is unsatisfactory because it is artificially produced with chemical additives and, to the discriminating palate of the Chalder, any such substitution is immediately detectable. And third, the water-borne odors which the real food animals emit when they are being chased are not present.

“In my recent study of similar problems as they relate to other life-forms in the hospital,” Gurronsevas went on, “I have discovered that the ward menu is under the control of the clinical dietitian, who acts under the direction of the physician-in-charge, rather than being the responsibility of the food technicians. Rightly, the primary concern of the physician concerned is to prescribe food that supports the clinical needs of its patient and is an extension of its medical treatment, so that the taste and odor have a low order of priority—if, indeed, they are considered at all. But it is my belief that they should be considered, and seriously, if only for the psychologically beneficial effects on convalescent patients like yourself who should be encouraged to eat and exercise.

“Regrettably,” he went on, enthusiasm for his subject dulling the pangs of personal hunger, “there is little I can do about taste and texture, at least not until I have had consultations with your physician-in-charge and the relevant food synthesists. But as a general rule most varieties of food can be made to seem more appetizing by varying its manner of presentation. An interesting combination of colors, for example, or an imaginative shaping and arrangement of food on the platter so that there is a visual appeal as well as . . .”

Gurronsevas broke off in mid-sentence, remembering that patient AUGL-113 did not use a platter and that the principal visual attraction of the food would be its ability to go scuttling all over the dining area. But his embarrassment was short-lived because Hredlichli had emerged from the nurses’ station and was swimming quickly towards them.

“I must interrupt this excessively long and, to me, less than interesting conversation,” said the Charge Nurse as it drifted to a halt between the patient and himself. “Senior Physician Edanelt is due to make its evening rounds. Please return to your sleeping frame, One-Thirteen. And Dietitian Gurronsevas, if you wish to continue the discussion you will have to wait until Edanelt has completed its ward rounds. Shall I contact you then?”

“Thank you, no,” he replied. “Patient One-Thirteen has given me some very useful information. I am grateful to both of you, and hopefully I shall not need to return until I have been able to make a positive improvement in the AUGL ward diet.”

“I will believe that,” said Charge Nurse Hredlichli, “when I see it.”

CHAPTER 6

When Gurronsevas had asked for the use of a large, enclosed volume of water that was not so deep that there would be the risk of his air-breathing helpers drowning, but extensive enough so that the experiments could be carried out without the test objects colliding too often with the retaining walls, he had not expected anything quite as large as this, and for a moment surprise rendered him speechless.

Bright but well-concealed lighting combined with some inspired landscaping had given the recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small, tropical terrain beach enclosed on two sides by low cliffs containing several large and small cave mouths which were the concealed access tunnels to several diving boards, all of which were constantly in use, that projected at various heights from the soft, artificial rockface. The beach was open to the sea, which seemed to stretch to a distant horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. Overhead the sky was blue and cloudless. The bay was deep blue, shading to turquoise where it met the shelving beach, and the wave-making machinery had been turned off for the duration of the experiment so that the water lapped gently onto soft, golden sand that was pleasantly warm underfoot.

Only the artificial sun, whose light had an orange tinge that Gurronsevas found strange, and the varieties of alien greenery fringing the cliff-tops kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on his home planet.

“Newcomers are always impressed,” said Lieutenant Timmins proudly, “by their first sight of our recreation facility for warmblooded oxygen-breathers. At least one-third of the medical staff are off-duty at any given time and most of them like to spend a few hours here. Sometimes the place is so crowded you can hardly see the beach or ocean for bodies. But space is at a premium in Sector General, and the people who work together are expected to play together as well.

“Psychologically,” Timmins went on, still speaking in the manner of a proud parent of what must have been Maintenance Department’s favorite brainchild, “the most effective part of the environment is the one you don’t even see. The whole area is maintained at just under one-half standard gravity, and a half-G pull means that the people who feel tired can relax more comfortably and the ones who are feeling lively can feel livelier still. Unfortunately it lacks privacy, but there are so many different life-forms enjoying their leisure in so many strange ways that your experiments are likely to pass unnoticed.

“Do we start now or wait for Thornnastor?”

“Now, please,” said Gurronsevas, and began helping Timmins and its two Melfan assistants to transfer their equipment into the large, brightly-colored raft that was waiting in the shallows.

Only once did Gurronsevas pause when his communicator came briefly to life with the message that Diagnostician Thornnastor had been unavoidably delayed and would not be able to join them as planned, but it was sending Pathologist Murchison in its place. Judging by its sudden change of facial expression, the news pleased Timmins very much.

But they were all too busy making adjustments to the propulsion system of one of their test objects—the only one which so far had not blown itself to soggy pieces or otherwise proved a failure—to notice the pathologist’s arrival until it had swum out to the raft, pulled itself on board and spoken to them.

“Thornnastor had no time to brief me,” Murchison said. “What is that thing? And what am I doing here, apart from watching fully grown and presumably mentally adult beings playing in the water like children?”

It was a tall Earth-human DBDG, Gurronsevas saw, with the flabby and top-heavy aspect common to many females of that species. Long yellow head-fur darkened by water clung to its neck and shoulders and, Earth being one of the few cultures containing beings who still observed a nudity taboo, it wore two ridiculously narrow strips of fabric around its chest and pelvis. Even though the words implied criticism its manner seemed pleasant. Before replying he reminded himself that Murchison was Thornnastor’s principal assistant and the life-mate of another Diagnostician, Conway, and that he should not be too quick to take offense in case none had been intended.

“It might look that way, ma'am,” Timmins said before Gurronsevas could speak, “and I must admit that this isn’t the most unpleasant project I have ever been given. But there are serious, technical, and medical-support reasons for what we are doing here.”

“For playing with a toy boat?” asked Murchison.

“Technically, ma'am, it isn’t a boat,” said the Lieutenant, smiling. It lifted the test object out of the water so that the pathologist could see it more clearly. “It is a prototype submersible vehicle with a flattened ovoid configuration that is designed to remain in a state of stable equilibrium at whatever depth it is placed, after which it is supposed to alter its position and depth randomly and at speed.

“The propulsion system,” Timmins went on, “is a thin-walled plastic cylinder of compressed gas which fits into this cylindrical opening in the stern, just here. Smaller depressions around the circumference and on the top and underside house smaller capsules of compressed gas which are used for changing attitude. The walls of these steering capsules are water soluble and of varying thickness so that they need differing periods, anything from five to seventy-five seconds, to melt and release the gas. This means that the changes in direction will be random and the vehicle consequently very difficult to catch, at least until the propellant gas runs out which, in this test specimen, will be in two minutes. We are about to do another test run, ma'am. You should find it interesting.”

“I can’t wait,” said Murchison.

Timmins and the two Melfan technicians lifted the test vehicle onto the raft and climbed on board. Their combined weight made the raft tip alarmingly. Murchison stepped backwards quickly to give them space to work, arms outstretched to maintain its balance, and Gurronsevas remained in the water. He was tall enough for his feet to touch the bottom while his cranial breathing passages remained in air. Two of his eyes he positioned under the surface to watch for any underwater swimmers who might be about to encroach on the test area, and with the other two he watched until the vehicle was refuelled and ready.

“This time we’ll place it at a depth of one-half meter,” Gurronsevas said, “because I want to closely observe its behavior from the moment the main propulsion unit’s seal dissolves until the first steering capsule bursts. Hold it as level as possible, let go simultaneously and withdraw slowly so that you will not create turbulence which might cause an attitude change before thrust is applied. Is this understood by everyone?”

“It was understood,” said one of the Melfans so quietly that it was plain that the remark was not intended to be overheard, “the first time you explained it.”

Gurronsevas decided to be diplomatically deaf.

Murchison had not spoken directly to Gurronsevas since its arrival; and since Timmins had been eagerly passing on all of the necessary information, there was no reason other than mere politeness for him to speak to the pathologist. He was beginning to have serious doubts about the feasibility of the whole project, and to say less now would reduce any subsequent embarrassment caused by an apology for wasting the other’s time. In any case, the pathologist was lying flat on the raft with its face and both eyes directed at the launch preparations.

Gurronsevas noted with growing impatience that most of Timmins’ attention was being directed at Pathologist Murchison. He reminded himself that the Earth-human DBDG classification belonged to a species which (unlike the vast majority of other life-forms within the Federation, who were intensely active only for short periods in the year) was capable of sexual arousal and activity throughout its adult life. There were some who envied them this ability, but privately Gurronsevas considered it a disadvantage which all too often reduced the quality of their mentation. But again, this was a good time to maintain diplomatic silence.

The next test began well, with the thin, bubbling jet of compressed gas driving the vehicle forward in a not quite straight line at a slowly increasing velocity and constant depth. The Chalder’s prey was amphibious so that it was normal for it to release air while fleeing. When the first lateral thrust came with its smaller and briefer explosion of bubbles, the vehicle made a wide curve that was bringing it back towards the raft. Another gas capsule melted and burst on the same side and the circle tightened until suddenly the vehicle broke the surface and began spinning and skidding uncontrollably over the water as the propulsion unit reinforced the spin set up by the two lateral jets. The others burst at random without effect and a moment later the vehicle came to rest, still spinning slowly, with its topside breaking the surface.

One of the Melfans retrieved it and a technical argument started regarding the inherent instability of the flattened ovoid configuration. Gurronsevas was too angry and disappointed to join in, but not so Murchison.

“This is not my specialty,” said the pathologist, “but when I used to play with my big brother’s toy boats as a child, they were fitted with keels which gave them directional stability even when the wind changed. When we grew older and progressed to speedboats and submarines we had radio-controlled rudders and diving vanes to maintain or change direction or depth. Couldn’t something similar be used here?”

Timmins and the Melfans stopped talking but did not reply. They were all looking at Gurronsevas. Plainly he could remain silent no longer.

“No,” he said. “Not unless the radio receiver and actuating devices could be fabricated from materials that were non-metallic, non-toxic and edible.”

“Edible?” said Murchison. In a quieter voice it went on, “So that’s why I was sent here. Until now I didn’t know that Thorny had a sense of humor. Please go on.”

“In its final form,” said Gurronsevas, doing so, “the entire vehicle would have to be edible, or at least non-toxic to the Chalder life-form, and that would include the water-soluble gas containers for propulsion and steering. The problem with the addition of a keel, which would also have to be edible and not sharp-edged enough to risk injury to the patient’s mouth, is that the structure would change the visual appearance of the vehicle so that it no longer resembled the Chalders’ natural and greatly preferred food source, which is a streamlined, hard-shelled, aquatic animal of the size and configuration of our test object. A weak and convalescent Chalder patient might not consider it worth the effort to chase unfamiliar food.

“You will understand,” Gurronsevas continued, “that the confined space of the AUGL ward causes physical as well as physiological effects which unnecessarily lengthen the period of convalescence. The patients become lazy, listless, almost debilitated by their inability to exercise properly. I should explain that the physiology of the AUGLs is such that—”

“I am familiar with the physiology of the Chalders, among others,” said Murchison.

For a moment Gurronsevas radiated embarrassment so strongly that he was surprised the water around him did not steam. He said, “My apologies, Pathologist Murchison. This Chalder knowledge is very new to me, and very exciting, and in my excitement I stupidly assumed a similar level of ignorance in others. I had no wish to offend you.”

“You didn’t,” said the pathologist. “I was just trying to stop your wasting time on an unnecessary explanation. But I have no knowledge or professional interest in the non-intelligent life-forms on Chalderescol, including the food animal you are trying to copy. How does the real one propel itself and take evasive action and manage to retain directional stability?”

Feeling greatly relieved, Gurronsevas said quickly, “On each side the animal has a set of eight laterally-mounted paddles. Their frequency of beat and angle of attack against the water can be varied so as to make the animal rise, dive, or—by going into reverse beat on one side—make a sudden change in direction. The paddle structure is a translucent framework supporting a transparent membrane which, when the creature is fleeing, is beating so fast as to be virtually invisible. When there is a change in direction, minor turbulence is created which is visually similar to the bubbles produced by the test object’s attitude jets.

“Regrettably,” he added, “the model looks but does not behave like the real thing. It is hopelessly unstable.”

“That it is,” said Murchison. For several minutes it remained silent, staring thoughtfully at the test object in the water while Timmins stared just as intently at the pathologist and the two Melfan technicians talked quietly to each other. Suddenly it spoke.

“We need a keel of some kind,” it said in a quiet but excited voice, “but one which will not alter the object’s appearance. The original life-form uses paddles which are translucent and move too quickly to be seen. Why don’t we use an invisible keel?”

Without giving anyone a chance to reply it went on, “We should be able to make it from a shaped and hardened transparent gel possessing the same refractive index as water. It would have to be edible, naturally, and be weak enough structurally not to damage the patient’s teeth or digestive tract. Some of the constituents I have in mind—well, the taste would range from neutral to downright awful, but we can work on that until—”

“You can produce this edible stabilizer?” Gurronsevas broke in, incredulity making him forget good manners. “Your department has done so before?”

“No,” said Murchison. “We have never been asked to do so before. It will be a difficult but not impossible biochemical problem to devise an edible and Chalder-non-toxic material of the required consistency. The shaping of the material into a keel and its attachment to the vehicle will be covered by your food synthesizer programming.”

“Meanwhile,” Timmins joined in, “we can start fitting non-edible and visible keels to the test vehicle to see which size and shape works best. Kledath, Dremon, lift it onto the raft. We’ve got work to do.”

Murchison rolled off the raft so as to give the others more space to work. It lay floating on its back beside Gurronsevas, completely relaxed, with eyes closed and only its face above the surface.

“I think you have solved this problem, Pathologist Murchison,” he said, “and I am most grateful.”

“We aim to please,” the pathologist said. Its mouth opened slightly in a smile and the eyes remained closed. “Have you other problems?”

“Not exactly,” said Gurronsevas. “I have thoughts and questions and ideas, not yet fully formulated, which are likely to develop into problems. Right now my ignorance about some aspects of my future work here is close to total and, well, I would welcome suggestions.”

The pathologist opened one eye briefly to look at him, then said, “Right now I can think of nothing better to do than listen and make suggestions.”

On the raft the three technicians were concentrating all of their attention on the test vehicle, so much so that Timmins had stopped casting sidelong glances at Murchison. They had attached a long, narrow keel and the Lieutenant was suggesting that they add a similar dorsal fin so as to equalize water resistance on the top and undersides. With the expected increase in longitudinal stability, which would reduce the earlier tendency to sideslip and go into a spin every time it changed direction, the lateral thrusters would need to be strengthened so as to sharpen the turning angles.

The conversation could not have been more technical, Gurronsevas thought as he directed all of his eyes towards Murchison, if they had been designing a spaceship.

“Thanks to your suggestion,” he said, “our test object should act as well as look like the food animal it is meant to be. That is important because there is much more to food than its outward appearance. There are also taste, smell, consistency, visual presentation, and contrasting or complementing sauces which, I hope to demonstrate in time, are vital accompaniments to the often bland edible material that the hospital synthesizers provide. In the case of our Chalder we have been able to reproduce the consistency with the hard shell that encloses the soft contents, and the presentation, which is the mobility of a dish that is apparently trying to escape being eaten. But that is all.”

“Go on,” said Murchison, opening both of its eyes.

“In the present instance,” said Gurronsevas, “the difficulty of adding a conventional sauce to a dish that is moving rapidly underwater is well-nigh insurmountable. The thick-shelled, immobile eggs currently being fed to AUGL patients, in spite of the artificial taste additives they contain, are most unappetizing. To an Earth-human like yourself an analogy would be that they taste like cold mashed potato sandwiches . . .”

“My department was consulted about those artificial taste additives,” Murchison broke in, “to make sure there would be no harmful side-effects. The taste concentration can easily be increased if that is what you want.”

“It isn’t,” said Gurronsevas firmly. “The diner, I mean the patient, is aware of the artificial taste and finds it objectionable. I had it in mind to reduce the taste components in the material rather than increase them, it being more difficult for the sensorium to detect artificially in trace quantities than in heavy concentrations. My plan, or rather my hope, is to mask the diluted artificial taste with a sauce that requires no physical ingredients. Instead I will rely on the best condiment of all, hunger, reinforced by the excitement of the chase and the uncertainty of capturing the meal. Intellectually the Chalder will know that it is being fooled, but subconsciously it might not care.”

“Nice, very nice,” said Murchison approvingly. “I’m pretty sure that will work. But you are missing a bet.”

“A, a bet?”

“Sorry, an Earth-human expression,” it said, and went on, “When a land animal is being hunted it usually emits a special body odor, a glandular secretion indicative of its fear and increased level of physical activity, and the same may hold true here. Synthesized fear pheromones—in this case, in the form of a fast-dispersing water-borne scent—could be released into the propulsion system, again in trace quantities so as to hide the fact that they are artificial.”

“Pathologist, I am most grateful,” Gurronsevas said excitedly. If your department can provide me with this substance, then the solution to my Chalder problem is complete. Can you do so, and how soon?”

“We can’t,” Murchison said, shaking its head. “At least, not yet. We will have to investigate the physiology and endocrinology of a food animal about which the medical library may not be fully informed. And if a secretion of the type we are postulating exists, it would take a few days to analyze and reproduce the molecular structure and test the synthetic variety for possibly harmful side-effects. Until then, Gurronsevas, save your thanks.”

For a long moment he stared at the pathologist as closely as Timmins had done earlier, although not for the same reason, at the ridiculous, wobbling bulges on its upper thorax and the disproportionately small, Earth-human head which in this case held a mind that could never be described as tiny. He was about to thank it again when there was an interruption from Timmins.

“It’s ready to launch, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “Same depth as last time?”

“Thank you, yes,” said Gurronsevas.

Once again the test vehicle was lowered carefully into the water and held in position below the surface. Timmins said, “This time I’ve loaded attitude thrusters on the port side only so that, if the new stabilizers work and the thing achieves some distance, it will circle back to us. On the synthesized production version the changes of depth and direction will be random and . . .Bloody hell!”

A large, brightly-colored ball, inflated to near-solidity, had landed with a loud thump on the raft where it had bounced twice before rolling into the water beside them. Instinctively one of the Melfan technicians raised a pincer to push it away.

“Leave it and hold still!” said the Lieutenant sharply. “Don’t disturb the water. The jet seals are melting and we’re committed to a launch . . .There she goes.”

The vehicle began to move forward, slowly at first but steadily picking up speed, and this time in a perfectly straight line. When the first lateral thrust came it changed direction sharply and proceeded on the new course without sideslipping or apparent loss of speed. There was another abrupt change in direction, and another, both achieved cleanly and without loss of stability, and it was curving back towards them. A few seconds later, its compressed air capsules exhausted, it coasted to a stop beside the raft.

“It needs fine tuning,” said Timmins, pulling its lips into the widest Earth-human smile Gurronsevas had ever seen, “but that was a definite improvement.”

“Yes indeed,” said Gurronsevas, who could not smile but wished that he could. “Pathologist Murchison and yourself, and technicians Kledath and Dremon deserve the highest—”

He broke off because suddenly the immobile domed head of a fellow Tralthan was rising from the water beside them, followed by a waving tentacle wearing the arm band of a trainee nurse.

“Please,” it said, “can we have our ball back?”

CHAPTER 7

Present for the trial of the first batch of the new food samples were, in descending order of rank, Senior Physician Edanelt, who had overall medical responsibility for the AUGL ward, Pathologist Murchison, Gurronsevas himself, Lieutenant Timmins, Charge Nurse Hredlichli, and the rest of the ward’s nursing staff. They were all packed so tightly into the Nurses’ Station that there was barely room for the food, which had been wrapped separately in five plastic envelopes to protect the thruster seals against premature contact with water. Patient AUGL-113 was drifting about thirty meters from the station’s entrance, its ribbon tentacles curling and uncurling slowly with impatience.

The normal meal of hard-shelled, artificial eggs had been served and the remains cleared away, and 113 had been told to expect a surprise, possibly a pleasant surprise.

At Gurronsevas’ signal, Timmins moved closer to help him strip off the plastic cover. In addition to the stabilizers, which were all but invisible as well as being not too bad to eat, the upper and lower surfaces of the self-propelled edible packages had been colored so that they closely resembled the grey-and-brown mottled shell of a young but fully-grown specimen of the original food animal. Murchison’s researches into the body markings, behavior, and glandular excretions under stress had been necessarily brief, but thorough.

Within a few seconds the main thruster seal melted and a thin stream of compressed air bubbled out. Gurronsevas and the Lieutenant held the package steady and then, to help it overcome the inertia and initial water resistance, gave it a firm push in the direction of 113.

The Chalder’s mouth opened wide, whether in surprise or anticipation they could not be sure, then its tremendous jaws crashed shut. But its prey had changed direction suddenly, climbing to pass over 113’s massive head and continuing into the tepid, green depths of the other end of the ward. The patient turned ponderously end for end and went after it. Distorted by the intervening water there came the sound of massive teeth closing on emptiness, followed by a noise like a discordant gong being struck as 113 collided with the resting-frame of an immobilized fellow patient, before it managed to catch the food-shell.

The regular chewing and crunching sounds that followed were diminishing when Timmins and Gurronsevas launched the second one.

This time the chase was short-lived because the first random change of direction sent the food straight into 113’s mouth. The third package was able to evade capture until its compressed air supply ran out and it drifted dead in the water, but by then 113 was far too excited to notice or care about this strange behavioral anomaly. Number four it lost altogether.

That was because its erratic course took it too close to the resting-frame of the tethered patient AUGL-126, who snapped it out of the water as it was passing and devoured it within seconds. A heated dispute ensued between 113 and 126, with accusations of theft being countered with those of selfishness, which was ended by the release of the fifth and last food-shell.

It must have been that the convalescent 113 was tiring, Gurronsevas thought, because the chase was a long one and its movements seemed to lack coordination. Several times it collided heavily with the resting-frames lining both sides of the ward, or tore away masses of the decorative and aromatic vegetation that was loosely attached to the walls and ceiling. But its fellow patients seemed not to mind and either shouted encouragement or tried to take a bite out of the food-shell as it went past.

“It’s wrecking my ward!” said Hredlichli angrily. “Stop it, stop it at once!”

“I think most of the damage is superficial, Charge Nurse,” said Timmins, but it did not sound very sure of itself. “I’ll send you a repair squad first shift tomorrow.”

Patient 113, having caused the fifth food-shell to completely disappear, was returning to the Nurses’ Station. It swam slowly past two resting-frames whose structures were visibly deformed and between drifting tangles of artificial vegetation until it was just outside the entrance. Its great, pink cavern of a mouth opened wide.

“More, please,” it said.

“Sorry, no more,” said Senior Physician Edanelt, speaking for the first time since its arrival in the ward. “You have been taking part in an experiment conducted by Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas, an experiment which in my opinion requires further modification. Perhaps there will be more tomorrow or soon after.”

As 113 turned to leave, Hredlichli said quickly, “Nurses, check the condition of your patients at once and report back if this, this experiment has caused any clinical deterioration. Then try to tidy up the mess as best you can.” It turned to the Senior Physician and went on, “I don’t think the experiment should be modified, Doctor. I think it should be forgotten like a bad dream. My ward can’t take another such . . .”

The Charge Nurse broke off because Edanelt had raised a fore-limb and was clicking a pincer together slowly in the Melfan sign that it wanted attention.

“The demonstration has been interesting and on the whole successful,” it said, “although the present devastation in the ward might suggest otherwise. The unnecessarily slow rate of recovery with Chalder patients has a psychological basis, as we know. Post-operatively they tend to become listless, bored, lazy and uncaring about their future. This new food package, which should be served only to mobile, convalescent patients, promises to change that. Judging by the reaction of One-Thirteen and future convalescent patients I would expect the boring nature of mealtimes to be relieved, considerably, by this constant reminder of the pleasures of chasing and eating the real food that awaits them on their home world. The patients under clinical restraint, observing their mobile brethren, will try to reach the convalescent stage as quickly as possible.

“You are all to be complimented,” it went on, looking at the four of them in turn, “but especially the Chief Dietitian for its imaginative solution to what has been until now a serious problem among recuperating Chalders. I have, however, two suggestions to make.”

Edanelt paused and they waited in silence. The Melfan was an unusually polite entity considering its high medical rank, but to a mere Pathologist, a Lieutenant of Maintenance, a Charge Nurse and even a Chief Dietitian, the suggestions of a Senior Physician rumored soon to be elevated to Diagnostician were indistinguishable from orders.

“Gurronsevas,” it went on, “I would like Timmins and yourself to redesign the mobile Chalder meal with a view to reducing its velocity and maneuverability. The physical effort involved in catching the food, however enjoyable it is for the diner and exciting for the watchers, could place the patient in danger of a relapse. Also, a less agile food package would greatly reduce the risk of structural damage to the ward equipment and decoration.”

It turned towards Hredlichli and continued, “That risk could be further reduced by the right psychological approach on the part of your nurses and yourself. Nothing too authoritarian, you understand, because the Chalders are a sensitive species in spite of their imposing physical appearance. Just a gentle reminder that we are friends who are trying to cure them as quickly as possible so that they can go home. And suggest that at home they would not display such unruly eating manners in the dwelling of a friend. I feel sure this approach will greatly reduce the risk of structural damage. That should make you feel happier, Charge Nurse.”

“Yes, doctor,” said Hredlichli in a very unhappy voice.

“It will certainly make the maintenance department happier,” said Timmins. “We will begin work on the modifications at once.”

“Thank you,” said Edanelt, and returned its attention to Gurronsevas. “But I can’t help wondering which problem our very unpredictable Chief Dietitian will address next.”

For a moment Gurronsevas was silent. On the Station’s communicator the nurses were reporting on the condition of their patients who, they said, were displaying excitement but no other symptoms that would arouse clinical concern. The Senior’s words, he realized, had not been a mere politeness. It was honestly curious and awaiting his answer.

“I am undecided, Doctor Edanelt,” he said, “because I still lack dietary experience in many areas. For that reason I began with this minor and isolated problem involving a small number of Chalders, rather than modifying the meals served to a species which is more numerous within the hospital, and which would object massively if the changes were not to their liking. I plan to concentrate initially on the dietary needs of individuals. The first tests will be conducted on volunteers, but later it may be necessary to conduct them covertly without the knowledge of the target subjects. I would not want to attempt any major changes with the larger species’ groups until I have more knowledge of medical and technical problems involved.”

“Ghu-Burbi be thanked,” said Hredlichli.

“That seems like a sensible plan,” Edanelt said. “Who is to be your next subject?”

“A staff member this time,” Gurronsevas replied. “I had several entities in mind but, under the circumstances, and out of consideration for its co-operation in providing facilities for today’s test, and as a well-deserved favor in return for the severe emotional distress caused by the damage to its ward, I think Charge Nurse Hredlichli is the obvious choice.”

“But, but you’re not even a chlorine-breather!” Hredlichli burst out. “You’ll poison me!”

Edanelt’s crab-like, Melfan body began shaking gently and it was making noises which did not translate. Gurronsevas said, “True, but I have responsibility for the food requirements of everyone in the hospital, regardless of species, and I would be failing in my duty if I restricted my professional activities to warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Besides, Pathologist Murchison has extensive experience with the PVSJ classification as well as having an Illensan chlorine-breather attached to its department, and they have both promised advice and assistance. They would not allow me to release any edible variants that were unsafe. If you are willing to volunteer, Charge Nurse, I can promise that you will be in no danger.”

“The Charge Nurse will be pleased to volunteer,” said Edanelt, its body still shaking gently. “Hredlichli, the culinary reputation of Gurronsevas throughout the Federation is such that you should feel greatly honored.”

“I feel,” said Hredlichli helplessly, “that I have just contracted a life-threatening disease.”

CHAPTER 8

On Gurronsevas’ second visit to the Department of Other-Species Psychology he found the same three entities busy at their desk consoles, but in the intervening time he had discovered who as well as what they were. The Earth-human in Monitor-green uniform was Lieutenant Braithwaite, O’Mara’s principal assistant; the Sommaradvan, Cha Thrat, was an advanced trainee; and Lioren, the Tarlan, was a specialist in the uncertain area where other-species religions and psychology overlapped. This time he did not address himself to the entity possessing the highest rank, as was his custom, because all three of them might be able to help him.

“I am Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas,” he said quietly. “If it is possible I would like to obtain information and assistance with a matter requiring a high degree of confidentiality.”

“We remember you, Gurronsevas,” said Lieutenant Braithwaite, looking up. “But you have called at the wrong time. Major O’Mara is attending the monthly meeting of Diagnosticians. Can I help you, or will you make an appointment?”

“I have called at the right time,” said Gurronsevas. “It is about the Chief Psychologist that I wish to consult you, all of you, in confidence.”

There came the strange, negative sound of three entities ceasing to work. Braithwaite said, “Please go on.”

“Thank you,” Gurronsevas said, moving closer and lowering his voice. “Since I joined the hospital I have not seen the Chief Psychologist visit the main dining hall. Is O’Mara in the habit of dining alone?”

“Correct,” said Braithwaite, and smiled. “The Major rarely dines socially or in public. It is his contention that doing so might give the staff the idea that he is only human after all, with all the usual human faults and weaknesses, and that might be prejudicial to discipline.”

“I do not understand,” said Gurronsevas, after a moment’s thought. “Is there an emotional problem involved, a crisis of identity perhaps? If the Chief Psychologist does not wish to be thought of as human, to which other species does it believe itself to belong? This information, if it is not privileged and you are willing to divulge it, would greatly assist me in the preparation of suitable meals. I am assuming that the solitary eating habit is to conceal the fact that it does not eat Earth-human food.”

Cha Thrat and Lioren were making quiet sounds which did not translate and Braithwaite’s smile had widened. It said, “The Chief Psychologist is not psychologically disturbed. I’m afraid my remark—about him not wanting to appear human—suffered in translation, and misled you. But what is it that you want to know, and how exactly can we help you? You give the impression that it has something to do with the Major’s food intake.”

“It has,” said Gurronsevas. “Specifically, I would like all the information you can give me regarding its food preferences, the ordering frequency of favorite dishes, and any critical remarks the subject has made or may make about them in future.

“It is surprisingly difficult,” he went on quickly, “to gather this kind of information without attracting attention to myself and arousing comment regarding a project that should remain secret until its completion. Many entities within the hospital dine alone, either out of personal preference or because urgent professional duties make the journey to and from the dining hall too wasteful of their time. Any record of the food ordered by them is erased once the order is filled and dispatched, there being no necessity to store such information, and the only way of discovering the dishes chosen would be to intercept the original order or breach the delivery vehicle, neither of which could be done covertly. It would be much simpler if you were to give me the necessary information.”

“Unless the food chosen indicates depraved tastes, whatever that may mean in this medical madhouse,” said Lioren, speaking for the first time, “information on food preferences can scarcely be classified as a privileged communication. I see no reason for withholding such information, but why not ask the Major for it directly? Why the need for secrecy?”

Surely the need is obvious, Gurronsevas thought. Patiently he said, “As you already know, I am charged with the responsibility for improving food presentation and taste, since the quality and composition of the synthetic materials used is standard and nutritionally at optimum levels. But the introduction of changes in appearance and taste, many of them quite subtle, to large numbers of diners, has one serious disadvantage. The changes would give rise to widespread discussion and argument regarding personal preferences rather than the reasoned and detailed criticism that would be of value to me.

“Naturally,” he went on, “the testing of single members of selected species, as I have been doing with the AUGL patient One-Thirteen and Charge Nurse Hredlichli, produces useful data. But even with this method time can be wasted, albeit sometimes pleasantly, in debating culinary side-issues. I have decided, therefore, that for the best results the subject should be unaware of the test until after its conclusion.”

For a moment Lieutenant Braithwaite stared at him, its mouth open but neither speaking nor smiling, and Cha Thrat had joined in its silence. It was Lioren who spoke first.

“As a person,” it said quietly, “the Chief Psychologist is not well-beloved by anyone I know, but it is greatly respected by all. We would not wish to join in a plot to poison it.”

“Could it be,” said Braithwaite, finding its voice again, “that the pressure of responsibility and the enormity of its task has caused our Chief Dietician to develop a death wish?”

“The problem lies in my specialty,” said Gurronsevas sharply, “not yours.”

“Sorry,” Braithwaite said, “my question was not meant to be taken seriously. But you risk offending a very powerful and short-tempered entity who is unlikely to conceal any mistakes if they occur. Maybe you should think about that before you begin.”

“I have thought about it,” said Gurronsevas. “If there is confidentiality, the risk is acceptable.”

“Then we will give you what help we can,” the Lieutenant replied, “but it may not be much . . .”

The arrival of O’Mara’s meals was witnessed every day by one or more of the outer office staff, and the contents were enclosed in a sealed and insulated delivery float with a transparent cover. They were able to identify the meals going in and to draw conclusions from the uneaten remains coming out. Occasionally they were able to hear O’Mara criticizing a meal loudly enough for his remarks to be heard through the office door. The criticism usually included an identification of the dish that had been particularly offensive.

“. . . So you can see,” Braithwaite ended apologetically, “that any information that we can give you will be incomplete.”

“But helpful,” said Gurronsevas. “Especially if you will agree to keep me informed regarding the Chief Psychologist’s words and reactions during and subsequent to the consumption of its meals. For the reasons already explained, I would be most grateful if your observation were of a covert nature and any behavioral changes, no matter how small, associated with the menu modifications I shall be making, were relayed to me without delay.”

“How long is the project likely to last?” asked Braithwaite. “A month? Indefinitely?”

“Oh, no,” he replied firmly. “There are over sixty different food-consuming life-forms in the hospital requiring my attention. Ten, or at most fifteen days.”

“Very well,” said the Lieutenant, nodding. “The observation of minor changes in personality or behavior, which can sometimes be an early indication of a major psychological problem developing, is what we in this department are trained to do. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“Thank you, no,” said Gurronsevas.

As he was turning to leave, Lioren said, “Speaking of personality changes, we are hearing rumors about Charge Nurse Hredlichli. Over the past few days it has been behaving very oddly, showing sympathy and consideration for its junior ward staff and showing early signs of becoming almost a likable personality. Had your PVSJ menu changes anything to do with that, Chief Dietitian?”

They were all making the quiet, untranslatable sounds which indicated that the question was not a serious one. Gurronsevas laughed softly in return.

“I hope so,” he said. “But I cannot guarantee a similar result with Major O’Mara.”

With the small part of his mind that was not concentrating on collision avoidance in the busy corridors between Psychology and the level housing Food Synthesis Control, Gurronsevas thought about Hredlichli. He had spent much more time than he had intended on the PVSJ exercise, but that was because the chlorine-breather had wanted to talk more than eat, and he knew that, however pleasantly, much of the time had been wasted. But in a few hours’ time Hredlichli and himself would be ending this phase of professional contact, and he was almost sorry.

He was not surprised to see Murchison and Timmins already there when he arrived. The pathologist waved a hand at him and said that it had deserted its department for the rest of the day because this was where the action was. The words sounded like a shameful admission of professional negligence and irresponsibility, but he had learned not to take everything the pathologist said seriously.

Because of Gurronsevas’ anxiety in case anything went wrong, Timmins had been asked to advise on the Maintenance Department support regarding the final program changes that were going into the synthesizer serving the PVSJ dining compartment, and hence was too busy to notice his arrival or even the presence of Murchison. Food Technicians Dremon and Kledath were making it clear by the impatient ruffling of their fur that they did not require advice.

Murchison moved closer to him and said briskly, “We completed our analysis of the sample of protective film used on that item of furniture in the exercise lounge adjoining the chlorine-breathers’ dining area. The material has already been passed as safe, and it still is, but the film applied to that particular exerciser contained a small quantity of foreign matter that was probably introduced accidentally during manufacture. When exposed to the ambient chlorine atmosphere over a long period the material dissolves out, releasing trace quantities of a gas which, although completely foreign to their environment and metabolism, is harmless to chlorine-breathers even in high concentrations. The Illensan in Pathology describes the odor as appetizing. That was a nice piece of observation and deduction on your part.”

“Thank you,” said Gurronsevas. “But most of the credit should go to Hredlichli. It was the Charge Nurse who pointed out to me in the first place that a number of its colleagues who used that piece of equipment before meals—apparently Illensans suffer digestive upsets if they exercise after meals—insisted that it helped them work up an appetite. When one is pointed in the right direction it is much easier to reach one’s destination.”

“You are too modest,” said Murchison. “But what are you planning to do next, and to whom?”

Gurronsevas was thinking that this was the first time in his life that he had ever been accused of modesty, when Timmins, whose head had been bent over the control console display, turned to say, “I can’t wait to hear the answer to that question, too.”

They were all watching him. Even the Kelgians were silent, their fur standing up in tight motionless tufts of curiosity. Gurronsevas knew that he would have to speak very carefully if he was to tell them what but not who.

“The PVSJ was a challenging but almost theoretical exercise for me,” he said, “in that it involved the preparation and presentation of edible materials which I myself could not taste and which would have been instantly lethal had I tried. My next project will be more challenging but less dangerous to all concerned because, although the taste and presentation may be personally obnoxious, the food will not poison me or any other warm-blooded oxygen-breather.

“The test subject this time will be an Earth-human DBDG,” he went on, “a member of the species which makes up more than one-fifth of the hospital’s medical and maintenance staff and whose food preferences, as I know from my long experience in the Cromingan-Shesk, are very difficult to satisfy. Subsequently I hope to deal with the Kelgian, Melfan and Nallajim species, although not necessarily in that order.”

The Kelgians’ fur was eddying about their bodies with a motion too irregular for Gurronsevas to read their feelings with accuracy. Murchison was smiling and Timmins said quickly, “I would be pleased to volunteer, sir.”

“Lieutenant,” said the pathologist firmly. “Join the end of the line.”

He was about to tell them that he no longer needed Earth-human volunteers when the lab communicator lit up with the image of Hredlichli. He saw at once that the Charge Nurse was calling from its private quarters because its features were clearly visible rather than being softened by a pressure envelope.

“Chief Dietitian,” it said, “I would greatly appreciate having another progress report on your latest attempt to synthesize gree in yursil jelly, to which I was looking forward with great eagerness. The sample has not reached me. What happened to it?”

Food Technician Liresschi happened to it, thought Gurronsevas. Aloud, he said, “Progress has been very good since we talked yesterday. In fact, I have finalized for synthesis five additions to the PVSJ menu: two main courses, and the three other complementary or contrasting sauces that we devised for use with existing dishes. By main meal time tomorrow your Illensan friends will be able to test the results. But be sure to remind them that all of the dishes have been synthesized and that the characteristic, lifeless taste of synthesized food about which you have complained is disguised, not removed, by the new material.

“One of the ingredients in the fryelli sauce does not occur naturally on your home world,” he went on, “but Pathology assures me that it is metabolically harmless to you. Its appeal lies in the appetite-enhancing effect of the odor and appearance. The sauce itself is tasteless, but you will have difficulty in believing that anything that looks and smells so pleasant to you does not also taste good.

“Where the gree is concerned,” he continued, “the changes are minor and for the most part visual. The surface of the translucent yursil jelly contains small, irregular convolutions which, when the diner is leaning forward to eat or talk, make it appear that the embedded synthetic gree beetles are in motion and therefore still alive. The weight of visible evidence overwhelms the diner’s taste sensors so that—”

“No doubt it looks and tastes wonderful,” Hredlichli broke in. “But what happened to the sample?”

Choosing his words carefully, Gurronsevas said, “Because it was due shortly to go into production, I sent it to you by way of Food Technician Liresschi for synthesis scanning and additional taste evaluation. Liresschi gave the sample full approval, but said that there were subtleties of taste that required repeated sampling before it was entirely satisfied. Regrettably, there was insufficient sample remaining for it to be worth passing on to you. But I shall be pleased to send you another—”

“But, but you said that the sample would be enough for four helpings!”

“Yes,” said Gurronsevas.

“Food Technician Liresschi is a culinary barbarian,” said Hredlichli angrily, “and a greedy slob!”

“Yes,” said Gurronsevas again.

The charge nurse made a sound which did not translate, but before it could go on Gurronsevas said quickly, “I want to thank you for the help you have given me during our long talks together. Because of them, significant improvements have been made in the present Illensan menu, and in time more will follow. This project has therefore achieved its initial purpose and now I must begin another involving the dietary requirements of a different life-form. Again, Hredlichli, my thanks.”

For what seemed like a long time Hredlichli did not reply, and Gurronsevas wondered whether his words had been lacking sensitivity. Over the years the Illensans had earned the highest professional respect but not the liking of their other-species medical colleagues, due largely to the difficulty of making easy social contact with them or having those opportunities to air their mutual non-medical thoughts, opinions and complaints which the oxygen-breathing species took for granted. Rightly or wrongly, they felt themselves to be a small, underprivileged, chlorine-breathing minority to whom nobody listened, so that individually and as a group their dispositions had suffered. There had been a marked change in Hredlichli’s manner towards him during his work on the Illensan menu improvements, but whether that was due to him winning the Charge Nurse’s heart through its stomach, or that the other had at last found someone who found what it had to say of value, or simply that it had made an other-species friend, Gurronsevas did not know.

He wished suddenly that one of the Psychology staff, Padre Lioren preferably, had been there to tell him what he had said wrong, and how best to unsay it. Then suddenly Hredlichli spoke.

“I may have a compliment as well as a complaint for you,” it said hesitantly, “but I am not sure because, until recently, our ignorance regarding the eating habits and formalities of warmblooded oxygen-breathers was complete.”

Gurronsevas maintained a polite silence, and Hredlichli went on, “I have been discussing our work together with my Illensan friends and they are as pleased as I am about your menu changes. We have questioned the non-medical library computer and discovered that on Earth, which is one of the many worlds where the preparation and presentation of food has evolved into a major art form, there is a custom originating among a racial group called the French which appeals to us. At the end of a particularly pleasant meal the diners ask what they call the Chef du Cuisine to join them so that they can express their appreciation in person.

“We were hoping,” the Charge Nurse ended, “that you will visit us in the Illensan dining-room during main meal tomorrow so that we can do the same.”

For a moment Gurronsevas was unable to speak. Finally he said, “I am aware of that Earth custom and I am, indeed, greatly complimented. But . . .”

“You will be in no danger, Gurronsevas,” Hredlichli said reassuringly. “Wear whatever type of environmental protection you choose. Only your presence will be required. We do not expect you to eat anything.”

CHAPTER 9

When there were over ten thousand members of the medical and maintenance staff plus a few thousand patients that he would ultimately have to please, it was neither sensible, efficient nor even fair that he concentrate all his efforts towards the satisfaction of one being, even though it was probably the most influential entity in the hospital. The O’Mara project, Gurronsevas had decided, must be allowed to progress concurrently with those of others which were likely to present fewer problems.

The decision had been influenced by his spies from the Psychology Department who, after five days during which he had engaged in some subtle tinkering with the Chief Psychologist’s food intake, had reported no discernable change in Major O’Mara’s temper, behavior following meals, or manner towards subordinates or anyone else.

During one of their daily meetings in the dining hall, Cha Thrat suggested that the Major might be one of those rare people with the ability to ignore their sensoria while engaged in serious professional mentation during meals, and was therefore unaware of the changes. Braithwaite agreed, saying that it had smelled the difference the Chief Dietitian had made to O’Mara’s meals, and that it would gladly offer itself as a more appreciative and responsive subject. Gurronsevas had replied by saying that data obtained from an objective and even hostile source was more valuable than that from an appreciative volunteer.

“However,” he ended, “as there was no strong negative response from O’Mara, I have assumed that the changes are acceptable and have already introduced my Earth-human menu changes into the main dining hall’s synthesizer. You, Lieutenant, and probably every other Earth-human in the hospital, will let me know what they think.”

“We will,” said Braithwaite, smiling as it called up the menu. “Which meals?”

“I need decent food, too,” said Cha Thrat, “as much and as often as Earth-human DBDGs.”

“I am aware of that,” Gurronsevas replied, “and the hospital’s single Sommaradvan DCNF has not been forgotten. But your species joined the Federation comparatively recently and, during my time at the Cromingan-Shesk, we did not have the opportunity of catering for Sommaradvans. Data on your eating habits and preferences is therefore scarce. If you wish to discuss them with me now I would gladly listen, if only to take my mind off the taste of this unappetizing mush that resembles only visually a truncated creggilon in uxt syrup. But my own favorite other-species dish is the Nallajim strill millipede, a beautifully-marked crawler with black and green hair about so long, and served live, of course, in an edible cage of cruulan pastry.”

“Please,” said Braithwaite, “I am about to eat.”

“I, too,” Cha Thrat said, “am suffering increasing abdominal discomfort. In a moment I shall probably turn myself inside out.”

“Suffering is good for the soul, Cha Thrat,” Padre Lioren joined in, “and if you do that we will find out whether or not you’ve got one.”

Gurronsevas was trying to devise a reply that was both culinary and theological when a Hudlar wearing the insignia of a junior intern approached the table and vibrated its speaking membrane.

“Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas?” it said shyly, and waited.

The Hudlars had the thickest and most impervious skin of any Federation species, Gurronsevas knew from long experience, and the most sensitive feelings. He said, “Doctor, may I help you?”

“You may be able to help me, and my FROB colleagues,” it said. “But is this an inconvenient time for you? Our problem is serious but non-urgent.”

Gurronsevas said, “I have a few minutes to spare before leaving for Loading Bay Twelve. If you need more time than that we can talk as we walk. What is the problem, Doctor?”

While they had been speaking, all of Gurronsevas’ eyes had been on the creature who, although not much greater in size, had a body mass at least four times that of his own. It had six tentacular limbs which served both as locomotor and manipulatory appendages and, like many immensely strong beings forced to live among entities many times weaker than itself, it was careful and gentle in its movements.

The FROB physiological classification, Gurronsevas reminded himself, had evolved on a heavy-gravity world with an ultra-dense atmosphere that resembled nothing so much as a thick, high-pressure soup. It was covered by a body tegument, transparent where it enclosed the eyes, that was as tough as flexible armor plating. As well as protecting them against the savage external pressure of their native environment, it enabled them to work comfortably in any atmospheric pressure down to and including the vacuum of space. Their skin was completely without seam or body orifice, the speaking membrane served also as its sound sensor, and they did not breathe. Food was ingested through organs of absorption that covered both flanks and the wastes were eliminated by a similar mechanism on the underside, both systems under voluntary control. When off-planet their food had to be sprayed on at frequent intervals because they were an energy-hungry species.

The most common problem with Hudlars was periodic starvation. When their minds were concentrating on their duties or an interesting conversation, and often while they were hurrying to the dining hall sprayers, they collapsed helplessly onto a ward or corridor floor whenever their food ran out, and they could not be revived until they were repainted. If the coating of food was applied without delay, there were no ill-effects, so the condition was considered to be a nuisance rather than a medical emergency. To reduce the incidence of Hudlars collapsing from malnutrition at the wrong times and places, every oxygen-breathing ward in the hospital stocked a supply of Hudlar paint for use in these non-emergencies. But this one’s organs of absorption were thickly covered by nutrient paint, Gurronsevas saw, so its problem could not be food.

It is always wrong, Gurronsevas told himself as soon as the Hudlar began to speak, to jump to conclusions.

“Sir,” it said, “everyone is talking about the alterations you have made to the Chalder, Illensan and Earth-human menus. I, we Hudlars, that is, would not want you to think that we are complimenting you simply for the purpose of influencing your future actions, because the compliment is deserved whether or not you . . .Oh, are you leaving for Bay Twelve now? I, too, have business there. Shall I walk in front of you, Chief Dietitian? We would make better time because the other entities using the corridors will try to avoid colliding with a Hudlar, regardless of any differences in medical rank.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Gurronsevas. “But I’m not sure that I can do anything for you. Hudlars are, well, Hudlars. My experience of serving patrons of your species was similar to what happens here, except that a light screen was placed around their dining area to protect nearby patrons from misdirected nutrient. The food tanks were taken from stores, and the only function of my kitchen staff was to ensure that the spraying equipment was arranged on a suitably decorated floater. What changes had you in mind, Doctor?”

Five minutes later they were moving along the corridor leading to the null-G drop-shaft that would take them close to Bay Twelve, and still the other had not spoken. Gurronsevas did not know whether it was disappointment or shyness that was keeping the intern’s speech membrane silent.

Finally, it said, “I don’t know, sir. Probably I am wasting your time and trying your patience. The food we are given is perfectly suited to our nutritional needs and cannot be faulted, but it is utterly tasteless and unexciting when it enters our absorption organs. I do not wish to criticize the Hospital or yourself because all Hudlar food supplied by the home planet tastes like this because, as you will already know, it must be dried and all constituents likely to cause spoilage removed before it is emulsified prior to suspension in the nutrient paint. Attempts at synthesizing Hudlar food have been unsuccessful, and most unpalatable.”

It was Gurronsevas turn to remain silent. He sympathized with the Hudlar, but he had asked a question and he was not going to ask it again.

“I don’t know what if any changes are possible,” the intern went on. “All Hudlars working away from our home planet use the paint and are resigned to its use. But if only we could look forward to the pleasure rather than the utter boredom of eating, we would not, I feel sure, collapse so often in inconvenient places.”

It had a point, Gurronsevas thought.

They were moving through the entrance to the control center of Bay Twelve, through the transparent canopy he could see the open cargo locks of the unloading dock and the hold of the recently arrived freighter. The first sealed containers, brightly color-coded to indicate origin and contents, were being withdrawn by the tractor beam operators. To facilitate the transfer both the bay and the ship’s cargo hold were airless and gravity-free. The final placement of the containers was the responsibility of a swarm of cargo handlers of different species wearing red-and-yellow protective suits. The whole process, Gurronsevas thought, resembled nothing so much as a crowd of children playing with outsized building blocks.

“Doctor,” he said, “how and why does the nutrient paint differ in taste from the food on your home world?”

The Hudlar tried very hard to tell him how and why in great detail, and the picture of the other’s planetary environment that emerged was intriguing and just short of incredible. As a child student Gurronsevas had been exposed to the basic information about Hudlar during the lessons on the Geography of Federation Planets. But now he was beginning to appreciate and understand it as would a native. The word-picture had holes in it, however, because the Hudlar was pausing from time to time, often in mid-sentence, as if its attention was not entirely on what it was saying. When Gurronsevas followed the direction of its gaze the reason became clear.

“That vessel has a Hudlar crew,” he said, pointing at the open cargo lock and the figures who were busy positioning containers for withdrawal. “Are you acquainted with someone on board?”

“Yes,” said the intern. “We grew up together. A friend of the family who is presently in female mode and who is to become my life-mate.”

“I see,” said Gurronsevas carefully. The mechanism of Hudlar reproduction was a subject he had not felt a need to study, and he did not want to become embroiled in the emotional problems of a lovelorn Hudlar.

“If I understand you correctly,” said Gurronsevas, ignoring the change of subject, “the atmospheric broth that you absorbed on your home world consisted of tiny pieces of living animal and vegetable tissue which, because of the violent and continuous storms which sweep your planet, remains permanently in suspension in the lower reaches of your gas envelope. The toxic material that is also present is identified by the taste sensors in your organs of absorption and, because it produces a stinging or burning sensation, it is either rejected or neutralized. The intensity of your overall taste sensations are in direct proportion to the degree of toxicity. Is it the absence of these unpleasant taste sensations that is your principal complaint?”

“Correct, sir,” said the Hudlar promptly. “The occasional bad taste is, or would be, a reminder of home and normality.”

Gurronsevas thought for a moment, then said, “I well understand the concept of combining sweet with sour, or the astringent with the bland to improve the taste sensation. But frankly, I do not think the Hospital would allow me to introduce toxic material deliberately into a species’ menu, especially if it would quickly render the remainder of the food supply inedible.”

The Hudlar had no features to reflect its feelings, but the hard muscles supporting its speaking membrane had begun to sag. Gurronsevas went on, “However, I am willing to look at the problem. How can I obtain samples of this mildly toxic material? Must you send to Hudlar for it?”

“No, sir,” said the intern quickly, its speaking membrane once again stretched stiffly in excitement. “A large volume of Hudlar atmosphere came aboard the freighter while it was loading on the home world. There is a pocket of it on the recreation deck. It will be pretty stale by now, but the non-edible material you need will be present in quantity. And if you would be interested in a tour of the ship while you gathered specimens, I would be pleased to arrange it.”

Gurronsevas was remembering the Hudlar medic’s childhood friend who was in female mode somewhere within the freighter. He thought, I’m sure you would.

CHAPTER 10

The Hudlar medic needed magnetic wrist pads, a sealed air-bag communicator to enclose its speaking membrane, but no other environmental protection of any kind, so that it dressed very quickly and was ready long before Gurronsevas; but, being a Hudlar, there was no other way for its eagerness to show.

As soon as Gurronsevas had learned of the arrival of a Hudlar freighter at Bay Twelve, he had decided to spend some time studying the unloading operation. It was a matter of professional curiosity. He wanted to observe and if necessary question all aspects of the hospital’s food supply, storage, distribution and processing systems even though, as the Chief Dietitian with a specialist catering staff, he might never have need of the information. But he had followed this rule on taking up all new appointments and he had no wish to change the habit of a lifetime.

A few minutes later they were emerging into the temporary vacuum of the vast unloading dock, accompanied by repeated warnings not to get in the cargo-handlers’ way or between the tractor-beam projectors and the incoming containers that were being moved and stacked with seemingly reckless speed. With the Hudlar taking the lead and staying close to the floor plating, and as they were about to enter the lock itself, an impatient voice on Gurronsevas communicator ordered a three-minute hold on unloading operations to allow two members of the hospital staff to traverse the lock in the wrong direction. The voice, whose species of origin was unknown, sounded authoritative but impatient.

Another Hudlar detached itself from the cargo-handling team and joined them. It was polite and friendly, and became even more so when the intern explained Gurronsevas’ position at Sector General and his professional interest in improving the quality of Hudlar tanked food. There were no objections to two members of the hospital staff touring the ship, it said, provided one of the crew accompanied them. It immediately volunteered itself for the duty and led the way towards the nearby personnel lock.

Like Chalder Patient One-Thirteen, Hudlars did not give or use their names in the presence of anyone who was not a member of the family or a close friend, and this one had not even revealed its rank, duties or identity number so that Gurronsevas did not know what it was. Judging by its assured manner of speech while it was discussing the mechanics of its race’s food ingestion, it was possible that the other was the ship’s medical officer.

Whether or not it was the friend in female mode that the intern had come to visit was also unknown. Hudlars were said to be very undemonstrative beings, at least in public.

“Is the gravity setting and external pressure comfortable for you?” asked the second Hudlar as they moved into the crew quarters. It was looking at Gurronsevas’s protective envelope, whose flexible sections were pressed tightly against his body. Hudlars could live and work for long periods in airless and weightless conditions, but whenever possible they preferred the home comforts of high pressure and heavy gravity.

“Quite comfortable,” Gurronsevas replied. “In fact, these conditions more closely approximate those on my home planet than the standard Earth-G maintained in the hospital. But I shall not unseal my suit, if you don’t mind. Your air is rich enough in oxygen not to be lethal, but there are other constituents, some of them still appear to be alive, which might cause me respiratory distress.”

“We do not mind,” said the second Hudlar. “And you will find more of those constituents on the recreation deck, which is the best place to withdraw your non-edible samples. Is there anywhere else you would like to visit?”

“Everywhere,” said Gurronsevas. “But especially the dining area and kitchens.”

“You do not surprise me, Chief Dietitian,” said the Hudlar, making an untranslatable sound. “Are you familiar with the layout of these vessels?”

“Only as a passenger,” he replied.

“As a passenger,” the second Hudlar went on, “you will already know that the majority of the Federation’s starships are built by Nidia, Earth and your heavy-gravity Traltha because those three cultures produce the most dependable vessels. Even though the control systems, life-support and crew accommodation are built to suit the user species, Tralthan ships are the most favored by both the commercial operators and the Monitor Corps itself . . .”

“Who say,” Gurronsevas joined in proudly, “that even the Tralthan earth-moving machinery is put together by watchmakers.”

The Hudlar paused for a moment, then it said, “Correct. But I have no wish to give offense by presuming a low level of general knowledge. Only to say that this is a robust ship, built to Hudlar specifications on Traltha, so you can relax and throw your not inconsiderable weight around safe in the knowledge that our equipment and fittings are not susceptible to accidental damage.”

“No offense was taken,” said Gurronsevas. Appreciatively he stamped his six heavy feet in turn with a force that would have seriously dented Sector General’s flooring. “Thank you.”

As he followed them towards the control deck, he thought that the lighting was a little dimmer than that of his native Traltha, and made worse by some kind of colloidal suspension in the air that formed a grey film on his visor which he had to wipe clean every few minutes. Apparently the two Hudlars were not troubled by it.

Gurronsevas showed a polite interest in the equipment and displays on the control deck, but lingered at the screen which showed the unloading operation as viewed from the freighter. The Hudlar crew-member explained that the food material for the synthesizers in the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing section, which was not susceptible to damage or chemical change through rough handling, was the first to be off-loaded. The Illensan material and their own tanks of compressed Hudlar nutrient required more handling before transfer to their respective storage facilities by the hands and gravity floats of specialist cargo teams, rather than being thrown about by tractor beam operators. The internal transfer teams, who operated without spacesuits, would join the other handlers as soon as the freighter’s hold and the airless loading bay were returned to normal atmospheric pressure. This was happening as they watched, but given the size of the combined volume of the receiving dock and freight hold, the process was necessarily a slow one, and so would leave just enough time for the less fragile stores to be unloaded.

“The ship carries enough of all three types of cargo to keep the hospital supplied for one-quarter of a standard year,” the Hudlar went on. “Supplying food for the more exotic life-forms, like that TLTU Diagnostician you have who breathes superheated steam and eats the Maker alone knows what, or the radiation-eating Telfi VTXMs is not our responsibility. Nor, I hope, is it yours.”

“It isn’t,” said Gurronsevas, and added silently, “at least not yet.”

If anything, he thought, the ship’s dining area resembled an other-species communal shower. It was capable of accommodating up to twenty diners at a time although there were only five crew-members waiting to enter when Gurronsevas and his escort joined them. He was advised to remain outside and to observe the proceedings through a direct vision panel in the corridor rather than suffer the inconvenience of a protective suit and helmet plastered with Hudlar food. His two guides, whose well-covered organs of absorption showed that they had dined recently, remained with him. The others hurried inside and the last one in switched on the facility.

Immediately the food sprayers set at close intervals into the walls and ceiling began pumping in nutrient at high pressure until a thick fog of the stuff filled the room. Then fans concealed around in walls came to life, whipping the dense atmosphere into a room-sized storm and keeping the food particles airborne.

“The food is identical with that used in the hospital and on all Hudlar ships and space accommodations,” the Hudlar medic explained, “but the violent air movement closely resembles the continual storm conditions found on our world and makes it feel, if not taste, more homely. The recreation deck is even more homelike as you will see, but foodless and, for you, much less messy.”

The recreation deck was empty because the rest of the crew were either dining or off-loading cargo. Lighting that was more subdued than that of the corridor outside made it just possible for him to see the details of exercise equipment, unlit reading and entertainment screens and hard, irregular masses of what might have been sculptures. There was no soft furniture or bedding because the Hudlars were too hard-skinned to require soft padding on which to relax. A tightly-stretched, circular membrane set into the ceiling was emitting whistling and moaning noises which he was told was relaxing Hudlar music, but it was fighting a losing battle against the howling and buffeting sounds of the artificial gale that was blowing around the room.

So strong were some of the gusts at times that they threatened to blow him off his six widely braced Tralthan feet.

“Small objects are striking my suit and visor,” said Gurronsevas. “Some of them appear to be alive.”

“They are wind-borne stinging and burrowing insects native to our home world,” said the Hudlar medic. “The tiny amounts of toxic material secreted by their stings affects our absorption organs briefly before being neutralized. To a species like your own, who have a well-developed sense of smell, the insects perform a function analogous to that of a sharp-tasting, aromatic vegetation. How many specimens will you require?”

“A few of each species, if there is more than one,” Gurronsevas replied. “Preferably living insects with their stings and poison sacs intact. Is this possible?”

“Of course,” said the medic. “Just open your specimen flask and reseal it when enough of them have been blown inside . . .”

He had been toying with the idea of sectioning off an area of the hospital’s main dining room for the exclusive use of Hudlars, and of introducing wind machines and a small swarm of native insects so as to make their dining environment more enjoyable, but now it would have to be discarded. The insects blowing against his suit were trying with great persistence to bite and sting him through the fabric, and the thought of the havoc they could create among the hospital’s unprotected diners should they escape from the Hudlar enclosure was too frightful to contemplate. He decided that the nutrient sprayers were a simple and well-tried method of feeding even though the food itself tasted like nothing on Hudlar.

While they were continuing to describe the sensations caused by native insects attacking the outer layers of their absorption organs, Gurronsevas noticed that a slight, intermittent tremor was affecting their limbs. He knew that the condition was not due to lack of food because both had recently been sprayed and, if it was a medical problem, then the intern would have made some mention of it. But was there another possibility?

Apart from the other-species and therefore sexually neutral presence of himself, they had been alone together in the empty recreation deck for nearly two hours. Gurronsevas did not know whether or not their species required privacy for what they might be intending to do, but he had no intention of waiting to find out.

“I am grateful to both of you,” he said quickly. “Your information has been interesting and may prove helpful in solving your problem, although at present I do not know how. But I must not impose on your kindness any longer and will leave you without delay.

“Please,” he went on as the Hudlar medic began moving towards the entrance, “I have a very good sense of direction so there is no need to accompany me.”

There was a moment’s silence as he turned to go, then the intern said, “Thank you.”

“You show great consideration,” said its friend.

Since joining Sector General the operation of Federation standard airlock controls had become a matter of routine, as had the checks on his protective envelope before changing environments. When the outer seal opened, his helmet indicators showed enough air in his tanks to last for half an hour. His thruster fuel was running low, too, but that was unimportant because he could make a weightless jump to the cargo lock and use thrust only for any minor course corrections.

During his visit the ship’s vast freight hold had been almost emptied, but when he switched on his communicator there was the same continuous flow of instructions to cargo handlers and tractor beamers. The composition of the freight streaming through the cargo lock had changed to double-layer, 200-pack bales of Hudlar sprayers interspersed with strings of the bright yellow-and-green tanks containing the poisonous, high-pressure, chlorine-based sludge required for the Illensan food synthesizers. As the seal closed behind him, Gurronsevas positioned his six feet carefully on the wall, waited until there was a break in the rapidly-flowing stream of freight going past, and jumped towards the cargo lock.

At once he knew that he had made two very serious mistakes.

For the past two hours Gurronsevas and his leg muscles had been accustoming themselves to the three Gs of the Hudlar ship rather than the nil-G of the loading bay, so he had used too much power in his jump. He was off-course and spinning slowly and moving much too fast . . .

“What the blazes are you doing?” said an angry voice in his earpiece. “Get back onto the deck!”

. . .And he had forgotten to tell the tractor-beamers, who could not see his jumping-off position because of the restricted view through the cargo lock, of his intention to return to the hospital. Quickly, he used his thrusters, but misjudged again and found himself tumbling towards one of the Illensan tanks.

“Beamer Three,” said the voice again, “pull that damn Tralthan out of there!”

Gurronsevas felt the sudden, invisible tug of the tractor beam, but it was off-center so that it pulled only on his forebody and sharply increased his rate of spin.

“Can’t,” said another voice. “It’s still using thrusters. Stop moving, dammit, so’s I can focus on you!”

He had no intention of stopping. Behind him an Illensan food tank, touched briefly by the tractor beam, was rushing towards him. He used the thrusters at full power, not caring which direction he took so long as it would avoid a collision with that hurtling chlorine bomb. An instant later he crashed into a 200-unit bale of Hudlar sprayers.

In spite of the gravity-free state of the freight hold, the mass and inertia of a spinning Tralthan body was considerable. So was that of the food sprayers, several of which burst open in a great, soft explosion of nutrient paint that drove the others apart and into the path of the Illensan tank. The jagged edge of a broken sprayer must have ruptured it because there was another and greater pressure explosion and, as the constituents of the Hudlar and Illensan food reacted chemically with each other, a rapidly expanding cloud of yellow-brown, hissing and boiling gas began drifting towards the open cargo lock.

“Cut all tractors to the ship,” said a voice urgently. “We can’t see through this muck . . . !”

The steady procession of freight items that were still moving past him into the opaque cloud around the cargo lock and continuing through it—but not all of them. Some were striking the rim and bursting open with enough force to knock subsequent items off-course. The sounds of collisions and pressure explosions were continuous and the toxic cloud was growing rapidly, shooting out fat, yellow-brown filaments and threatening to engulf the entire freight hold within minutes.

Hudlars could survive the environments of most of the Federation planets as well as the vacuum of space, but contact with chlorine was instantly lethal to them.

Somewhere a siren came suddenly to life, its short, urgent blasts reinforcing a new voice that was repeating, “Contamination alarm, major oxygen-chlorine incident Loading Bay Twelve. Decontamination squads Two through Five to Bay Twelve at once . . .”

“Urgent to all Hudlar cargo handlers,” the first, authoritive voice returned. “Evacuate your hold immediately and take cover in—”

“Duty officer, Trivennleth,” a new voice broke in. “We cannot get them all inside in time. Less than a quarter will reach safety. Propose pulling free with airlocks open, changing attitude ninety degrees using maximum lateral thrust port-side bow rather than main drive to minimize structural damage to the hospital—”

“Do it, Trivennleth!” the first voice replied. “All cargo bay personnel, reseal your suits and grab hold of something solid. Massive decompression imminent . . .”

Above the braying of the siren, Gurronsevas could hear a great metallic creaking and groaning from around the cargo lock as the freighter’s lateral bow thrusters applied lateral pressure to push the interface surfaces apart. Suddenly there was the high-pitched whistle of escaping air that sucked away the obscuring clouds momentarily, revealing a dark, widening crescent where the airlock seals on one side had been pulled apart, then he felt himself being sucked towards the opening with the other loose pieces of cargo.

For an instant it seemed that every tank and sprayer in the vicinity was hitting him and splashing his suit with nutrient, then suddenly he was outside and the objects were drifting away from him.

If he had been wearing a heavy-duty suit, Gurronsevas knew that he would not have survived. But the lightweight protective envelope had been flexible enough to remain undamaged, although the same could not be said for its wearer. His left flank and outer surfaces of his medial and hind limb on that side felt like one great, livid bruise, and he had the feeling that it would feel worse before it felt better.

To take his mind off his discomfort, Gurronsevas moved his eyes to the few remaining areas of his helmet that were not obscured by paint so that he could watch what was happening while he awaited rescue.

The projecting structure of Bay Twelve’s cargo lock had suffered a minor deformation when the freighter had twisted itself free, but the seal was still open and projecting a misty cone of escaping air mixed with pieces of unsecured cargo which were colliding and bursting against each other. Trivennleth had turned through ninety degrees and was lying parallel with the hospital’s outer hull. By comparison the freighter’s hold was only a fraction of the volume of the unloading bay and must have been airless by now, because its lock showed no signs either of mist or escaping cargo.

Its duty officer had acted decisively and well, Gurronsevas thought, and wondered why the Captain had not taken charge during the emergency. He was considering the possibility that the commanding officer had been the person he had left sharing the recreation deck with the Hudlar intern when he became aware that a voice in his headset was talking about him.

“. . . And where is that stupid Tralthan?” it was saying angrily. “Trivennleth’s crew are safe in vacuum, no casualties. The same with our oxy-breathing handlers. Senior Dietitian Gurronsevas, come in please. If you’re still alive, respond dammit . . . !”

It was then that Gurronsevas discovered that his suit had not escaped entirely without damage. The communicator’s Transmit light would not come on.

Not only was his air running dangerously low, nobody would be able to hear his calls for help.

CHAPTER 11

It was completely incredible, Gurronsevas told himself angrily, that the Federation’s foremost exponent of the art of multi-species cuisine was going to end his life asphyxiating inside a spacesuit smothered in Hudlar nutrient. No matter how subtly worded the manner of his death might be, as the final entry in a professionally distinguished life it was unfair, unsuitable and undignified. He could only guess at the kind of farewell message some of his less serious-minded colleagues would inscribe on his Pillar of Memory. But as yet he felt far too angry and embarrassed to be really fearful. Surely there must be some means of signalling his predicament other than by radio. But the voices in his receiver—which, unlike the stupid transmitter, was working perfectly—were saying otherwise.

“Gurronsevas, come in please,” said one of them. “If you can hear me but cannot respond, release your distress flare . . .Still no reply, sir.”

“You’re forgetting that it’s a hospital suit,” a second voice said, “for interior use only. It doesn’t carry flares. And Gurronsevas had no reason to draw one because it wasn’t expecting to leave the bloody hospital! But it is wearing a short-duration thruster pack. You know what a Tralthan looks like so look for it. This one has a thruster pack and will be moving independently with respect to the general drift of cargo and trying to return to the cargo lock, if it is conscious and uninjured, that is.”

“Or still alive.”

“Yes.”

Gurronsevas tried to ignore the pessimistic turn the conversation was taking and concentrated instead on the helpful advice it contained. The endless metal landscape of the hospital structure, the blunt, torpedo shape of the Hudlar freighter, and the cloud of dispersing cargo, some of it still steaming and spraying out a thick mist of chlorine or nutrient paint, was wheeling grandly around him. As the first voice had suggested, he should begin by moving independently of the material surrounding him. But first he would have to use the thrusters to kill his spin.

Because of his minimal experience of maneuvering with a thruster pack, it required several minutes as well as a considerable waste of fuel, which the indicators showed to be already dangerously low, before he was able to neutralize his spin. He estimated that at best he had only enough thrust to move himself, slowly, for a few minutes and a distance of a few hundred yards, and that his terminal velocity would fall far short of that needed to break free of the expanding cloud of cargo debris, much less bring him back to the unloading bay before his air ran out.

The voices in his headset were agreeing with him, but otherwise they were not being helpful.

“. . . And we checked the suit register, sir,” one of them was saying. “It shows the recent withdrawal of one Tralthan-style protective suit with a three-hour air supply and a standard thruster pack, just under two and three-quarter hours ago. If Gurronsevas used the thrusters during its visit to the Hudlar ship and remained sealed while doing so, it might not be able to move far or breathe for very much longer. A search and rescue team is suiting up, but where do we tell them to look for it?”

“Suppose it uses its remaining thrust to spin rapidly,” said another, “that would enable us to get a visual fix on a rapidly rotating body of roughly Tralthan mass and—”

“I don’t know, sir,” the first voice replied. “Some of those cargo items are large and have mass and momentum in proportion. If Gurronsevas was unlucky enough to be caught between two colliding masses, it might no longer bear much resemblance to a Tralthan.”

“Mount a tractor-beam on the outer hull,” said the first voice quickly. “Use it in conjunction with the rescue team who will spread themselves out to search the cargo cloud in one sweep. If they spot anything that looks like our wanderer, you pull it in.”

“Tractor mounts aren’t exactly portable, sir,” said the other voice. “We’ll need time to clamp it in position and realign the—”

“I know, I know. Just do it as fast as you can.”

Through the few clear patches in his helmet, Gurronsevas saw that he had stabilized himself with respect to the hospital because the cargo lock of the unloading bay, reduced by distance to a small, brightly-lit square, was no longer moving past him. Already tiny, Earth-human figures were moving equipment, presumably the tractor beam installation, through the lock and onto the hull. A few seconds later the first members of the rescue team came shooting out in powered suits to scatter towards their assigned search areas.

None of them were heading directly towards him, and Gurronsevas himself was headed for trouble.

The cargo debris was still expanding and dispersing all around him and the nebular fog of nutrient and chlorine was fading to a thick mist, except for one area nearby where a Hudlar food container had collided with something that had broken off its sprayer nozzle and sent it spinning. The container was discharging its contents in a thin, high-pressure jet as it spun so that it was encircled by a continuous expanding spiral of nutrient. Gurronsevas was too close and moving too fast to evade the bright, insubstantial rings of vapor with his thrusters, and could only wrap his arms around his head to protect the remaining clear areas of the helmet.

Just before he reached the bright, insubstantial barrier, Gurronsevas could almost believe that he was approaching and penetrating the orbiting equatorial dust of some vast, ringed planet, and he thought that the ending of his life was accompanied by some unusual and interesting experiences. He was pleased when he passed through without any further deterioration in helmet visibility.

Beyond the rings he saw another object about fifty yards ahead, a large, seemingly undamaged bale of Hudlar nutrient drifting without spin and motionless with respect to himself. It was not, therefore, a threat.

The rescue team was being widely deployed, but none of the voices reported sighting him, and he could see only one of them through the fog. He was wondering if he should wave his arms in an attempt to attract that single Earth-human’s attention when he caught sight again of the spinning food sprayer that was producing the rings.

Perhaps, Gurronsevas thought with a faint stirring of hope, he would have time for many more interesting experiences before his life came to an end.

The undamaged bale of Hudlar food tanks was drifting nearby. He used the suit thrusters to close with it. In spite of his shortage of air and the need for urgency, he used minimum power so that the contact would be gentle enough not to set the bale spinning or damage the food tanks that lay like a large, tightly-packed carpet of eggs that was moving up to meet him.

He landed gently and, moving with great care, positioned himself as close to the center of the layer of tanks as his ungainly physiology would permit. Because the cargo had been orbitally loaded in weightless conditions and the hyperspace jump to Sector General had also been gravity-free, the two-layer bale was held in one piece by a tightly-stretched open net rather than a solid container. Gurronsevas was able to look between the long, tightly-packed cylinders to the opposite face of the bale, and beyond it to the hospital’s outer hull.

Looking through the opening between the group of tanks closest to his helmet, Gurronsevas attached himself to the bale and used his suit thrusters to send it into a slow, controlled roll. When the brightly-lit cargo lock of Bay Twelve came into view, he checked the roll and with gentle applications of side thrust then centered the target in this crude sight and waited for a moment to be sure that it would stay there. Then he forced himself to think.

Gurronsevas estimated that there were one hundred food tanks in the layer around him, all of their nozzles pointing vertically upwards. A central group of about twenty of them were covered by his body and were therefore useless for his purpose, but the outlying tanks could be emptied without him being covered with nutrient. Very carefully he extended all his arms, selected two pairs of tanks that were equidistant from his central position, opened the nozzles for a maximum delivery jet rather than a spray, and switched all four on simultaneously.

He felt a very gentle pressure as the tanks emptied their contents rapidly into space. But the inertia of the cargo bale and his own large body had to be overcome, and it was too great for there to be any noticeable reduction in his velocity away from the hospital. He opened the valves on all of the tanks he could reach and was soon surrounded by spurting, inverted cones of nutrient paint. It was very important that his strange vehicle’s center of thrust did not deviate from its intended direction of flight, so every few seconds he sighted through the tiny spaces between the tanks to ensure that the brightly-lit and now slowly expanding opening into Bay Twelve had not moved aside. Whenever it showed a tendency to drift, he corrected with his suit thrusters.

According to the helmet indicators, his thrust power had been exhausted minutes earlier. He assumed that the inaccuracy had been designed into them so that they read empty when there was, in fact, a small safety reserve remaining. Fervently he hoped that the same design philosophy had been used on his air tank indicators.

His difficulty in breathing, the pounding in his head and the increasing pain in his chest were probably psychosomatic, he told himself, and caused principally by foreknowledge. But he did not believe himself.

He was moving away from the expanding cloud of cargo debris and Lock Twelve was growing larger ahead. The rescue team members were continuing to send in negative reports. Surely, thought Gurronsevas, someone should have spotted him by now. Then suddenly they all did.

“Rescue Four, it looks as if one of the Hudlar bales sustained freak collision damage that ruptured the tanks on one side. It is moving in a direction opposite to the rest of the cargo and could be a personnel hazard . . .”

“Five here. Freak collision hell! Our missing Tralthan is riding on that thing. Oh man, that is one nice trick. But it’s going in too fast . . .”

“Rescue team, can any of you intercept?”

“Rescue One. No, not before it hits. We’re all moving in the wrong direction. Hull tractor beam, can you soft land it?”

“Negative, One. We won’t be operational for another ten minutes.”

“Then forget it and clear the area in case it lands on top of you.”

“I don’t think so, One. We’ve computed its trajectory and think it will make it through the airlock. That Tralthan knows how to . . .”

“Rescue One. All internal tractor beamers switch to pressor mode. Catch it as it comes in. Decontamination and medical teams stand by . . .”

His heartbeat was becoming so rapid and thunderous that it was difficult to hear the rest of the conversation and, in spite of the blurring of his vision, he could see the bright opening into Bay Twelve rushing closer. The nutrient tanks propelling him were emptying themselves, but unevenly so that his bale was beginning a slow, lateral roll that was moving him towards the edge of the lock opening.

For an instant Gurronsevas thought that he would pass through safely, but a corner of his vehicle struck the coaming and the whole bale disintegrated into its component tanks. Miraculously, he had escaped injury, but suddenly he was in the middle of about two hundred full and empty food tanks, all of them tumbling at high speed towards the inner wall of the unloading bay. Then he felt as if he had been punched all over his body as the immaterial rod of a pressor beam brought him to an abrupt halt, leaving the tanks to crash and burst against the inner wall. Those that were not already empty emptied themselves rapidly in all directions.

One of them struck his chest as it spun past, not violently enough to cause pain, but suddenly his communicator transmit light came on. All it had needed was a solid thump.

“Don’t leave it hanging up there, dammit,” said an authoritative voice. “Pull it into the personnel lock. Duty medic, stand by . . .”

“Gurronsevas,” he said with great difficulty. “I need air, not medical attention, urgently.”

“You’re talking to us . . .good!” came the reply. “Hang on, we’ll have you hooked up to a new tank in a few minutes.”

Gurronsevas spent what seemed like a long time in the lock chamber having his protective garment cleaned of any possible chlorine contamination and removed, but his irritation was tempered by the fact that while the process was going on he was able to breathe again without difficulty, and think. The duty medic, a very officious Nidian, could not believe that he had escaped serious injury and wanted to transfer him to an observation ward, but that Gurronsevas would not allow. He compromised by allowing it to use its portable scanner on every square inch of his body.

He had plenty of time to listen to the voices in his headset describing many interesting events that he was unable to see. They spoke of small, unpressurized vehicles being dispatched to examine and retrieve the dispersing cargo for the purpose of salvage or later safe disposal, of Trivennleth redocking and of the temporary, fast-setting sealant that was being applied to the warped freight lock and the preparations for unloading its remaining cargo.

They did not mention Gurronsevas’s daring self-rescue again, he noted with some disappointment. Perhaps they were too busy.

When the Nidian doctor finally released him, Gurronsevas asked directions to Bay Twelve’s operations center because there were words that he must say to the people there. The staff, who were mostly Earth-human, looked up at him as he entered. None of them spoke, nor did anyone smile. Placing his feet quietly against the floor to demonstrate politeness and the fact that he was at a psychological disadvantage, he walked across to the being who was occupying the supervisor’s position.

“I wish to express my sincere gratitude for the part you and your subordinates played in my rescue,” said Gurronsevas formally. “And for any small way in which I may have contributed to your cargo accident, I tender my apologies.”

“Any small way . . . !” began the supervisor. Then it shook its head and went on, “You saved your own life, Gurronsevas. And that idea of using the nutrient as a propulsion unit was, well, unique.”

When it became plain that the Earth-human was not going to say anything else, Gurronsevas said, “Shortly after I joined the hospital I was told by an entity I shall not name, and whom I considered to be a culinary barbarian, that food is just fuel. I had not realized that it might be speaking the literal truth.”

The supervisor smiled, but only for an instant, and the expressions of the others did not change. Gurronsevas did not need to be a Cinrusskin empath to know that he was not highly regarded by these people just then. But if they would not respond to a pleasantry, they could not refuse a polite request.

He went on, “I have in mind to make some important changes to the food supply of the Hudlars, among others. To make them it is possible that I shall require the permission and cooperation of the hospital’s Chief Administrator. May I use your communicator? I want to talk to Colonel Skempton.”

The supervisor swung its chair around to look through the observation window, a wall-sized sheet of transparent material as clear as air in the small areas where it was not covered with nutrient paint, at the team working on the damaged airlock, and at the littered and paint-splattered loading bay before turning back to face Gurronsevas.

“I feel sure,” it said, “that Colonel Skempton will want to talk to you.”

CHAPTER 12

It soon became clear that the loading bay supervisor was not familiar with the workings of the Chief Administrator’s mind, because he was unable to talk to Colonel Skempton in spite of three attempts to do so. When Gurronsevas tried a fourth time, he was informed by a subordinate that the whole Gurronsevas problem had been passed to the Chief Psychologist who had been given Colonel Skempton’s recommendations for its solution, and it was Major O’Mara that Gurronsevas should speak to, without delay.

The atmosphere in the Psychology Department’s outer office reminded him of a gathering in the Room of Dying around the remains of a respected friend, but neither Braithwaite, Lioren nor Cha Thrat had a chance to speak to him because Major O’Mara did not keep him waiting.

“Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas,” O’Mara began without preamble, “you do not appear to realize the gravity of your position. Or are you about to tell me that you are innocent, and that you are right and everyone else wrong?”

“Of course not,” said Gurronsevas. “I admit to bearing some responsibility for the accident, but only because I was in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time and in circumstances where an accident was likely to occur. I cannot be held entirely responsible for it because, as you must agree, unless an entity is given complete control over a situation it cannot be held completely responsible for what happens. I had little control and, therefore, much reduced responsibility.”

For a long moment O’Mara stared up at him in silence. The crescents of fur above its eyes were drawn downwards into thick, grey lines and its lips were tightly pressed together so that respiration was taking place, quite audibly, through its nasal passages. Finally it spoke.

“Regarding the matter of responsibility,” it said, “I require clarification. Shortly after the accident I was contacted by a Hudlar who said that it shares responsibility for the accident with you. What have you to say about that?”

Gurronsevas hesitated. If the Hudlar medic was to become involved with the loading bay accident as well as a possible misdemeanor on the freighter, it might lose its internship at the hospital. The intern had been a well-mannered being, helpful with its suggestions regarding the Hudlar food problems and, no doubt, professionally competent or it would not have been accepted for training in Sector General.

“The Hudlar is mistaken,” he said firmly. “It had business on board and accompanied me into Trivennleth, acting as my guide and advisor regarding some food problems. It wanted to escort me back again, but I insisted that I could return alone. Since I am Chief Dietitian and it a junior intern it had no choice but to comply. In this matter the Hudlar is blameless.”

“I understand,” said O’Mara. It made an untranslatable sound and added, “But you should also understand that I am not greatly impressed by acts of unselfishness or nobility of character. Very well, Gurronsevas, no official notice will be taken of your Hudlar intern’s earlier words to me, but only because, in this instance, a trouble shared will not be a trouble halved. Have you anything else to say in your own defense?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas, “because there is nothing else that I have done wrong.”

“Is that what you think?” said the Major.

Gurronsevas ignored the question because he had already answered it. Instead he said, “There is another matter. For the continuance of my dietary improvements I require material which is not presently available in the hospital. But I am uncertain whether obtaining these supplies, which will have to be transported from many different worlds and will therefore incur considerable expense, is a simple matter of requisitioning them or one that will require special permission from the hospital authorities. If the latter, then it is only simple politeness that I ask the Chief Administrator in person. But for some reason Colonel Skempton refuses to talk to me or even . . .”

O’Mara was holding up a hand. It said, “One reason is that I advised him against seeing you, at least until the emotional dust settles. But there are others. You did cause that mess in Bay Twelve. Not deliberately, of course, and a major contamination, depressurization and structural damage to the cargo lock and Trivennleth’s hold is expensive in maintenance time as well as the cost of—”

“This is shameful!” Gurronsevas burst out. “If, through some miscarriage of the law and deformation of Monitor Corps’ regulations, I am to be held responsible for this damage, then I shall pay for it. I am not poor, but if I do not have sufficient funds, then deductions can be made from my salary until the cost is repaid in full.”

“If you had the life span of a Groalterri,” said O’Mara, “that might be possible. But it isn’t, and in any case, you will not be asked to pay for the damage. It has been decided that the tractor-beamers have become so fast and proficient in their work that they may have grown a little over-confident, and their safety procedures are being tightened. Between the Corps budget and Trivennleth’s insurance brokers, the financial aspect will be taken care of and need not concern you. But there is another price that you are already paying and I’m not sure if you can afford it. You are losing your reserves of good will.

“During your visit to Trivennleth and subsequent unscheduled EVA,” O’Mara went on, without allowing him time to speak, “less catastrophic events were taking place in the AUGL ward. The convalescent Chalders became overexcited while chasing their self-propelled lunch and, according to Charge Nurse Hredlichli, all but wrecked the ward. Specifically, eleven sections of internal wall plating were seriously deformed and four Chalder sleeping frames were damaged beyond repair, fortunately without ill effects to the patients occupying them at the time.

“I know that Hredlichli is obligated to you,” the Major went on, “because of improvements you made in the Illensan menu, but at present I would not say that it considers itself to be your friend. The same situation exists with Lieutenant Timmins, who is responsible for repairing the damage not only to the Chalder ward but minor sub-structures in Bay Twelve.

“But it is Colonel Skempton that you should worry about, and avoid meeting, because he wants you fired from the hospital and returned to your previous planet of origin. Forthwith.”

For a moment Gurronsevas could not speak. It was as if his immobile, domed cranium were a dormant volcanic mountain about to split open under the double pressures of shame and fury over the fate that had allowed such a cruel injustice to be perpetrated on a being as professionally accomplished, and with so much to offer this establishment, as himself. But it was the feeling of shame which predominated, and so he forced himself to speak the only words that could be spoken in this situation.

Gurronsevas turned to leave, making no attempt to muffle the sound of his feet, and said, “I shall tender my resignation, effective immediately.”

“I have found,” said O’Mara in a voice that was quiet but somehow managed to halt Gurronsevas in mid-turn, “that words like forthwith and immediately are used very loosely. Consider.

“A ship bound for Traltha or Nidia or wherever else you decide to go,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “may not call at Sector General for several weeks; or, if you choose to go to an obscure Tralthan colony-world infrequently visited by commercial or Monitor Corps vessels, for much longer than that. The delay would enable you to complete any current projects before you have to leave. This would benefit the hospital, provided you do not involve it in any more near-catastrophes. And you personally would benefit because the longer you spend here the less likely it will seem to outsiders, including your colleagues in the multi-species hotel business, that your separation from Sector General was involuntary and your professional reputation would suffer minimum damage.

“Insofar as it is possible for a Tralthan,” O’Mara continued, showing its teeth briefly, “try to keep a low profile. Do nothing to attract Colonel Skempton’s attention, nor annoy anyone else in authority, and you will find that your departure will be something less than immediate.”

“But eventually,” said Gurronsevas, making a statement rather than a question, “I will have to go.”

“The Colonel insisted that you leave the hospital soonest,” it said, “and I promised that you would. Had I not done so you would have been confined to quarters.”

The Chief Psychologist sat back in its chair, giving a clear, non-verbal indication that the interview was at an end. Gurronsevas remained where he was.

“I understand,” he said. “And I would like to say that you have shown sensitivity and concern for my feelings in this situation. Your reaction is, well, surprising and confusing, because I could not imagine an entity with your reputation acting in such a sympathetic fashion . . .”

He broke off in embarrassment, aware that the attempt to express his gratitude was verging on the insulting. O’Mara sat forward in its chair again.

“Let me dispel some of your confusion,” it said. “I am, of course, aware of your covert tinkering with my menu, and have been from the beginning. And no, the outer office staff did not betray you. You forget that I am a psychologist, and the type of continuous, non-verbal signals they were emitting was impossible to hide from me. And you betrayed yourself by significantly improving the taste of meals which were formerly so tasteless that I could safely engage my mind with more important matters while eating. But not any more. Valuable time is wasted wondering what new culinary surprise lies in ambush, or speculating afterwards on precisely how you achieved a particular taste. Not all of your changes were for the better, and I have sent you a list of my reactions to all of them together with suggestions for further modifications.”

“That is most kind of you, sir,” said Gurronsevas.

“I am not being kind,” said O’Mara sharply. “Nor sympathetic, nor do I possess any of the other qualities you are trying to attribute to me. I have no reason to be grateful to a being who is merely doing its job. Is there anything else you want to say to me before you leave?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas.

He could hear the movable furniture and O’Mara’s desk ornaments rattling as he stamped out of the office.

“What happened?” said Cha Thrat when the door had closed behind him. From the way they were staring at him, it was obvious that the Sommaradvan was speaking for Lioren and Braithwaite as well.

Anger and embarrassment made it difficult for Gurronsevas to keep his voice at a conversational level as he replied, “I am to leave the hospital, not immediately but soon. Until then I am to do my job, as O’Mara calls it, without attracting attention to myself. I’m afraid the Major knows that you cooperated with me in making the menu changes. It was pleased with them but not grateful. Will any of you suffer because of the conspiracy?”

Braithwaite shook its head. “If O’Mara had wanted us to suffer, we’d have known about it by now. But try to look on the bright side, Gurronsevas, and do as he says. After all, the Major seems to approve of some of the things you are doing and wants you to continue doing them. If he had been displeased, well, you would not have been leaving soon but on the first ship going anywhere. You don’t know what will happen.”

“I know,” said Gurronsevas miserably, “that Colonel Skempton wants to get rid of me.”

“Perhaps,” said Lioren gently, “you could covertly introduce substances into the Colonel’s meals which would eliminate the problem by—”

“Padre!” said Braithwaite.

“I did not mean substances of lethal toxicity,” Lioren went on, “but taste-enhancers similar to those used on Major O’Mara. There is a saying current among Earth-human DBDGs that the way to a man’s heart lies through its stomach.”

“Surely,” said Cha Thrat, “a questionable and risky surgical procedure.”

“I’ll explain it to you later, Cha Thrat,” said Braithwaite, smiling. “Lioren, psychologically that is sound advice, but Skempton is unlikely to be influenced as easily by Gurronsevas’s cooking. His psych file says he is a vegetarian, which means that—”

“Now that I don’t understand,” Cha Thrat broke in again. “Why should a member of the DBDG classification, which is omnivorous, elect to become a herbivore? Especially when the basic food material is synthetic anyway. Is it some kind of religious requirement?”

“Perhaps,” Lioren replied, “it has beliefs similar to the Ull, who say that to eat the flesh of another creature, sentient or otherwise, is to preserve its soul within the eater. But the Colonel has never consulted me on religious matters so I am unable to speak with certainty.”

“Cooking for herbivores,” said Gurronsevas, “has never been a problem for me.”

Braithwaite nodded and Cha Thrat remained silent. Both of them were looking at the padre, all of whose eyes were directed steadily at Gurronsevas.

“May I also remind you,” said Lioren quietly, “that this is a very large establishment housing many thousands of entities who, because of the nature of the work they do and their feelings and motivations regarding it, tend to have very short memories where the occasional interpersonal conflicts are concerned. If people held grudges in a place like this the level of mental health would be very low, and the type of person who would hold a grudge is excluded by the psychological screening.

“It may be that other events will transpire,” it went on, “although hopefully not with as much potentiality for disaster as your own recent adventure, which will turn Colonel Skempton’s attention in other directions and reduce its present hostility towards you. You are to leave the hospital soon, you say, but as a measure of time that period is flexible and your departure might not be permanent. To God or fate or whatever random operation of the laws of chance that you may or may not believe in, all things are possible.”

Lioren paused for a moment, then added, “My advice is to follow the Major’s advice and concentrate on the work that you are uniquely qualified to perform, and do not give up hope.”

The advice was sound if ridiculously overoptimistic, Gurronsevas thought. But when he left them he was walking quietly and he did not know why he was feeling better.

CHAPTER 13

The feeling of optimism lasted for only a few hours, and during the first three days of maintaining a low profile he grew increasingly depressed, uncertain and lonely. His visits to his food synthesizer staff and Pathology became infrequent and brief because the people in both places kept looking at him when they thought his attention was elsewhere, but whether it was with sympathy or morbid curiosity he did not know. Apart from those few occasions he remained in his quarters, refused to answer the communicator and ate only from the food dispenser, which did not help lift his depression one little bit.

In the middle of the fourth day someone began tapping politely but with extraordinary persistence on his door. It was Padre Lioren.

“We have not seen you in the dining hall recently,” it said before he could speak. “You could be overdoing the low profile instruction, Gurronsevas, because a complete absence will often attract more attention than a normal presence. In any case, most other species, myself included, have difficulty telling Tralthans apart without reading their IDs. I am on my way to the dining hall now. Would you like to join me?”

“My room,” said Gurronsevas, embarrassment making him irritable, “is far from your normal path between the Psychology Department and the dining hall.”

“True,” said Lioren. “Perhaps I was making another call on this level, or I could be telling a therapeutic untruth. Which it is you will never know.”

Without knowing why, Gurronsevas said, “All right, I’ll come.”

If more than the usual number of entities were watching him, he did not know about it because he kept his four eyes directed on Lioren, Braithwaite, Cha Thrat and his platter, and none of the conversations at nearby tables were about him. When he joined the others Gurronsevas wondered aloud how they had been able to obtain O’Mara’s permission to leave their office unattended, and Braithwaite told him that it was an unwritten law of the hospital that nobody became mentally disturbed while the Psychology Department was out to lunch. Gurronsevas suspected that to be another therapeutic untruth, and decided that they were trying to humor him.

But very quickly the conversation became serious.

“We hear that you haven’t been spending much time at the food synthesizers these past few days,” said Lieutenant Braithwaite suddenly, “and there have been no recent menu changes. Was this by choice or is your work being hampered by others? O’Mara wants to know.”

Surrounded as he was by three psychologists, he decided that it would be pointless not to tell the truth.

“Both,” said Gurronsevas. “I had an aversion to meeting people, and my work was hampered, not by others but by a shortage of necessary supplies. I had intended seeking Skempton’s assistance in providing them, because they are not on the normal list of provisions and may be expensive to bring here, but I am forbidden to speak to the Colonel.”

“I see,” said Braithwaite. After a moment’s thought it went on, “In this medical madhouse we order up so much weird and wonderful stuff, equipment and medication and such, that procurement isn’t normally a problem for any head of department . . .Are you on friendly terms with Thornnastor.”

“Thornnastor has always behaved politely towards me,” said Gurronsevas. “But I fail to see the relevance of the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology in this matter.”

“Of course you don’t,” said Lioren, “at least not yet. But if you were to explain your difficulty to Thornnastor, it should be possible to circumvent the Colonel. Skempton’s principal assistant is the Chief of Procurement, Creon-Emesh. It and Thornnastor have been close friends for many years, so much so that it would be difficult for either to refuse a favor asked by the other.”

“I understand,” said Gurronsevas. “When two members of a species engage in such a long-term emotional and sexual relationship, they think and feel as one . . .”

He broke off because Braithwaite and Cha Thrat seemed to be having respiration difficulties. Before he could express his concern, Lioren said, “They have been playing bominyat together, many say to planetary championship level, at every opportunity for more than a decade. Creon-Emesh is a Nidian, so the relationship is not, therefore, physical.”

“My deepest apologies to both entities,” said Gurronsevas in confusion. “But if Creon-Emesh is the Colonel’s assistant, would it not tell—”

“It would not,” said Braithwaite firmly. “It may be that I am divulging privileged information from Creon-Emesh’s psych file . . .”

“I would say there was no doubt about it,” said Lioren.

“. . . when I tell you that the Chief of Procurement is an intelligent, able and ambitious entity who does not believe in bothering its superior with trifles, or even serious problems which it is capable of solving itself. In short, it is one of those rare and valued assistants who is constantly trying to make its superior redundant. It has respect but no strong affection for Skempton, and it will be aware of the Colonel’s present antipathy towards you, so if you were to make the request in confidence and word it so that Creon-Emesh was faced with a challenge in the bominyat tradition . . .”

“With a mind as devious as that,” said Cha Thrat, “the Lieutenant should play bominyat.”

“. . . you might get your supplies,” Braithwaite continued, ignoring the interruption, “without the Colonel knowing anything about it. Or would you prefer me to make the suggestion to Creon-Emesh?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas. “In my time I, too, have played bominyat, but only at inter-city level, so Creon-Emesh and I will have that in common. I am most grateful, both for the suggestion and your offer of help, but I would prefer to do it myself.”

“If you are a bominyatti, too,” said Braithwaite, raising a hand to acknowledge and dismiss his thanks, “you have nothing to worry about. But enough of these games of devious diplomacy and calculated manipulation of obligations. What menu surprises are you planning for us?”

The off-duty accommodation of Creon-Emesh was spacious, for a Nidian, but tiny and claustrophobic so far as the majority of other species were concerned. The ceiling was so low that, even with his knee-joints bent to maximum flexion and his arms tightly folded, Gurronsevas’s head scraped the ceiling and his body threatened to dislodge the pieces of decorative vegetation hanging from the walls or demolish the ridiculously fragile furniture. An area on one side of the room had been cleared and the ceiling raised for the convenience of a more massive visitor, Thornnastor presumably, and he moved to it with relief.

“You are not here just to play bominyat,” said Creon-Emesh before Gurronsevas could speak, “so that can wait. Thorny keeps telling me that my place resembles a Tralthan rodent’s nest, so if you say anything polite about it I would not believe you. Please do not waste playing time. What is it exactly that you want of me?”

Gurronsevas tried not to take offense. The Nidians as a species, it was said by their many critics, were not particularly strong or intelligent or in possession of effective natural weapons that had enabled them to become dominant on their home planet; they had got there purely through their sheer, bad-tempered impatience to evolve. But he felt it necessary to display a modicum of good manners.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “I am obliged to you for agreeing to this meeting, especially as it is taking place when you are supposed to be off-duty.”

“Off-duty, on-duty, hah!” said the Nidian impatiently, nodding towards a display screen which was showing columns of figures rather than one of the entertainment channels. “It is the curse of the truly dedicated not to know the difference. But if what I hear about you is true, you have the same problem. What exactly is it that you want from me?”

“Information on ordering procedures, assistance and your discretion,” said Gurronsevas. The other’s bluntness of speech seemed to be contagious.

“Explain,” said Creon-Emesh.

But not too contagious, Gurronsevas thought. This was a situation which would need more than a few words of explanation. He said, “When I came to Sector General I carried few personal effects because, as you well know, Tralthans do not wear clothing and scorn the use of body ornaments. Instead I brought with me a quantity of herbs, spices and condiments native to Traltha, Earth, Nidia and the other worlds who practice the cooking of food with imagination rather than as a means of eliminating any harmful bacteria it might contain. Material from this personal store has been used to modify the standard meals of a few test subjects, and now I wish to incorporate them, as well as a number of other improvements I have planned, in the main dining hall menus. When I am forced to leave the hospital I would like to be remembered for something other than the accident in Bay Twelve, or wrecking the Chalder ward or—”

“Yes, yes, I sympathize,” Creon-Emesh broke in. “But what do you want me to do?”

“The material is used in very small quantities so far as individual meals are concerned,” Gurronsevas went on, “but if they are to be made available to everyone, which was my intention from the beginning, the small supply brought with me from Nidia will be exhausted within a week.”

“Then order what you need,” said Creon-Emesh. “You have a budget.”

“Yes, a generous one,” said Gurronsevas unhappily, “but regrettably insufficient. That is why I wanted to speak to Colonel Skempton, to have it increased. The supplies I need originate on a score of different planets, and the transportation costs alone would greatly exceed it.”

Creon-Emesh gave a sudden, sharp bark and said, “You are too innocent for your own good, Gurronsevas, and plainly you have been too busy to discuss this problem with anyone in Procurement. But your only concern lies with the preparation of food rather than how it reaches us. Had you not become a foul stench in Skempton’s nose, the Colonel would have educated you in our ways, as I am about to do. So listen carefully.

“You already know,” it went on quickly, “that the Monitor Corps is responsible for the supply and maintenance of Sector General. For this it uses a very small part of the Federation’s overall budget that finances the service as a whole. Supply includes providing us with species-specialized surgical instruments and equipment, medication, other-species atmospheres and, of course, food mass to top-up the synthesizer reservoirs as well as the Hudlar and Illensan food tanks which are more convenient to import. The Monitors also bring us patients who are beyond the clinical capabilities of the Federation planetary hospitals and are referred here for treatment, or the casualties of space accidents, or newly-discovered life-forms who are damaged or diseased or otherwise in need of medical care. Because the Corps vessels are not designed specifically for the large-scale transport of freight, they charter ships like Trivennleth to do the work. It is therefore possible, with a little creative accounting within your budget allowance, to purchase supplies from any part of the explored Galaxy and have the transport charges set against the Corps’ overall supply and maintenance budget, which is much too large for them to worry about what you are doing. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

It was as if the artificial gravity grids in the floor had failed and he was about to float into the air, so great was the weight that had been lifted from him. But before Gurronsevas could find the words to express his understanding and his gratitude, Creon-Emesh spoke again.

“Naturally, the maintenance aspect does not concern you,” it said, and barked softly, “although recently you have been the cause of quite a lot of structural repairs being carried out. You have a list of your requirements?”

“Thank you, yes,” Gurronsevas stammered. “The principal items have been committed to memory. But will what you are doing for me cause you to smell as badly to Skempton as I do, or otherwise affect your chances of career advancement? And are you sure all this can be hidden from the Colonel?”

“To answer you in order,” said Creon-Emesh impatiently, “no, no and no. We cannot hide anything from the Colonel, the system we use precludes it. Skempton will be able to see everything we do but, as it has been said many times, life is too short to waste time checking every requisition order which, on average, number several thousand per day. He leaves that to trusted but obviously untrustworthy subordinates like myself. So long as the identification codes, routing instructions and quantities ordered are not abnormal they will be accepted without question. If any of the items are likely to arouse Supply Department’s suspicions, I’ll tell you to think again.

“And remember,” it went on, “ordering in quantity is preferable to periodic reordering of small amounts, which would increase the chances of what you are doing being detected. What are your principal needs?”

He tried to thank it again, but the other seemed to be interested only in his needs which, because of the little Nidian’s continued lack of objection, were becoming more ambitious and daring by the moment. But Gurronsevas’s enthusiasm was checked when Creon-Emesh barked suddenly and held up both of its tiny hands.

“No,” it said firmly. “You cannot have morning-gathered Orligian crelgi leaves. Gurronsevas, be reasonable.”

“I am reasonable,” he replied. “The leaves have a subtle taste-enhancing effect which has crossed the species barrier, and are widely used by cooks of many warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing races. I am also disappointed.”

“You are also forgetful,” said the Nidian. “They would arrive here three days minimum after picking, because that is the fastest they could be hyper-jumped here. Our Orligian procurement office would have no trouble supplying them, but a jump like that is ordered only for urgently-required medication or to carry a critically ill patient. An emergency jump from Orligian to Sector General with a crate of herbal plants would most certainly attract the Colonel’s attention, so it must be no to that one. Accept the leaves dry-frozen by normal freight delivery and I’ll say yes.”

Gurronsevas thought for a moment, then said, “There is an alternative called, on Earth, nutmeg. The taste difference is too subtle to be detected by anything but the most educated of palates, and it travels well. I have added it to the edible mud shell of the magma-flashed Corellian struul dishes to enhance the otherwise bland taste of the fish. And on Nidia the sauce I used with your braised criggleyut contained a sprinkling of nutmeg seasoning to bring out the—”

“You intend to add criggleyut to our menu?” Creon-Emesh broke in excitedly. “It has been a favorite of mine since my adult fur grew.”

“At the earliest opportunity,” Gurronsevas replied, and added, “About fifty pounds of it would be adequate for my Nidian and other-species’ requirements.”

Creon-Emesh shook its head. “You haven’t been listening to me, Gurronsevas. Without mentioning it to you I have been trebling and quadrupling the amounts you have been ordering because you are not asking for enough. Small quantities attract attention. The unloading bay personnel might think that anything that small must be urgently required medication wrongly coded, rather than food, and open it to check, which would bring you to Skempton’s attention. With a taste-enhancer that has so much other-species popularity and a long shelf life, I suggest a minimum order of five tons.”

“But it is used in minute quantities,” he protested. “Five tons of nutmeg would last us a hundred years!”

“In a hundred years,” said Creon-Emesh, “the hospital will still be here, I expect, and its inhabitants will still be stuffing their eating orifices with food. Is there anything else? I want time for a game before you go.”

CHAPTER 14

Visiting the hospital’s Pathology Department reminded Gurronsevas of Nidia and his daily trips to the multi-species butcher’s to buy fresh meat for the Cromingan-Shesk’s carnivore-omnivore menu. Here he was not allowed to serve the whole or partially dismembered carcasses on show because they had once harbored intelligence and the hospital’s regulations on that point were strict. No real meat, fresh or unfrozen, must ever be used.

Thornnastor, the multiply absent-minded Diagnostician-in-Charge, rarely spoke to him but the words of Pathologist Murchison and the rest of the department’s staff were helpful, friendly, and, as now, even complimentary.

“Good morning,” said Murchison, looking up from its scanner examination of an organic something which he could not identify. “You surprised us yet again. My hus . . .I mean, Diagnostician Conway says thanks for whatever you did to the synthi-steaks, as do I and, I’m sure, a great many other Earth-humans. Very nice work, Gurronsevas.”

As Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery, Conway was second only to Thornnastor among the medical hierarchy, and it was also Murchison’s life-mate. In his present situation the gratitude of important beings could only be helpful.

Greatly pleased, Gurronsevas said self-deprecatingly, “The changes were minor and mostly of presentation, a small matter of culinary psychology, nothing more.”

“Your Diagnostician’s Alternative menu,” said Thornnastor, turning an eye towards him and speaking directly to Gurronsevas for the first time in three days, “is not a small matter.”

Gurronsevas agreed. To his mind all of the hospital’s Diagnosticians and Senior Physicians with other-species teaching duties had been little more than culinary cripples who were handicapped to a greater or lesser degree by the alien Educator tape donors who shared their minds, often imposing on them their own alien viewpoints, emotional responses and, inevitably, food preferences.

The Educator tape system was necessary to the hospital’s operation, Gurronsevas had learned, because no doctor, no matter how brilliant or able, could hold in its mind all of the physiological and pathological data necessary for the treatment of such a large number of other-species patients. With the tapes, however, the impossible became a matter of simple if sometimes unpleasant routine. A doctor with an other-species patient to treat was impressed with the mind-recording of a medical authority of that species until treatment was completed, after which the tape was erased. The reason for this was that the entire mentality of the donor entities were transferred and, even though they had no actual presence, and the host doctor knew this to be so, a non-material personality who had been tops in its field did not easily assume a subordinate position, and often gave the impression that it was the donor rather than the host who was in charge. Only Seniors and Diagnosticians of proven mental stability, and engaged in permanent teaching duties or ongoing research projects, were allowed to retain their tapes over long periods, but there was a price to pay.

Psychological problems were none of Gurronsevas’s concern, even though he might have solved one of them. He was slowly extending his Diagnostician’s Alternative menu and soon he would be able to cater for every life-form on the senior medical staff. Beings like Thornnastor, who possessed the appetite for food normal to a Tralthan of its body-mass, would no longer be seen seated at their dining benches, with eyes averted from the platter, in a vain attempt to conceal the contents from its other-species alter ego, whose revulsion would be communicated to the host mind. Now a tape-ridden diner could simply indicate the dish it required and request a visual presentation that would keep the donor entity happy, and the incidence of senior medical personnel going into periods of involuntary starvation would soon be a thing of the past. Even the acid-tongued Chief Psychologist O’Mara, Gurronsevas had been told, had been faintly complimentary about those particular changes.

But the person who was acknowledged to be the Federation’s foremost practitioner in the art of other-species cooking should use self-depreciation in moderation.

“I agree that it was not a small matter,” he said to Thornnastor. “It was a simple but quite brilliant idea on my part, one of many still to come.”

Thornnastor made the low, moaning sound that one Tralthan uses to another to express concern and warning, and Murchison verbalized the non-verbal message. It said, “Be careful, Gurronsevas. After that Trivennleth incident you should not risk attracting attention to yourself.”

“I am grateful for your concern, Pathologist,” he said, “but I am supported by the belief that nothing very unpleasant can happen to an entity who, like myself, is working only for the general good.”

Murchison laughed quietly and said, “Unless this is a social visit, which would be a unique occurrence, what problems are troubling you today?”

Gurronsevas paused for a moment to organize his thoughts, then said, “I have two problems. For the first I require your advice regarding my proposed changes in the Hudlar nutrient paint . . .”

Briefly he described his visit to Trivennleth and the idea that had come to him during the continuous, insect-laden artificial gale that blew around the ship’s recreation deck. He produced his specimen flask and indicated a few of the insects that were still trying to bite or sting their way through its transparent walls. According to the Hudlars, the effect of these stingers on their organs of absorption was pleasant, stimulating, non-harmful and analogous to being in the thick, soupy fresh air of their home world.

“Even though it would greatly please the Hudlars on the staff,” Gurronsevas went on, “I know that introducing a swarm of their native insects into the FROB section is inappropriate. Instead my intention, subject to Pathology Department’s approval and cooperation, is not to release the insects but to have the contents of their poison sacs analyzed and the toxic material, less than a fraction of one percent by volume, added to the nutrient paint. If it can be produced in the form of a fine grit, a simple modification of the sprayer nozzle will allow minute amounts to be released into the food spray at intervals so that it would affect their absorption organs with the same random distribution as the original insect bites . . .”

“I cannot believe this,” Thornnastor broke in, turning all four eyes in Gurronsevas’s direction. “Have you forgotten that this is a hospital, where we are supposed to be curing people, rather than trying to poison them? Are you intending deliberately to introduce toxic material into the Hudlar food supply, and you want us to assist you?”

“That is perhaps an overly dramatic simplification, sir,” Gurronsevas replied, “but yes.”

Murchison was shaking its head from side to side, but its teeth were showing. Neither of them spoke.

“I am not myself a doctor,” Gurronsevas went on, “but all of the medically-trained Hudlars with whom I have discussed the idea agree that the introduction of toxic material into their food in trace quantities would increase their eating pleasure, and they feel quite certain that there would be no harmful effects. I am inclined to distrust feelings of certainty when they involve subjective pleasures, remembering the long-term effects of chewing Orligian blue-hemp, smoking Earth tobacco or drinking fermented Dwerlan scrant, all pleasurable and supposedly harmless pastimes. That is why I am asking for your help to find out whether or not this alteration to the Hudlar menu is harmful.

“But if it is harmless,” he went on excitedly, giving them no chance to speak, “just think of the result. No more Hudlars collapsing from malnutrition because their food is so tasteless that they forgot to eat it. Instead they would not forget because they would be looking forward with anticipation to their next spraying. And if the change proved successful here, there is no reason why it should not be introduced on ships and space construction sites wherever Hudlars are working off-planet. It would also, although I assure you that this is not an important consideration with me, be yet another culinary triumph for The Great Gurronsevas which would resound throughout the Federation. I would, of course, give all due credit to your department for the advice and assistance given . . .”

“I understand,” Thornnastor broke in. “But if the changes you propose prove harmless, they would be important enough for me to discuss them at the next meeting of Diagnosticians where, regrettably, Colonel Skempton will be present. Do you wish to risk attracting its attention?”

“No,” Gurronsevas replied firmly. A moment later he went on, “But I am having difficulty with the idea that a menu change, perhaps one that will turn out to have beneficial and far-reaching effects for the entire off-planet Hudlar population, should be withheld because of my own moral cowardice.”

Thornnastor returned three of its eyes and part of its attention to the examination table before it replied, “Leave your specimens with Pathologist Murchison,” it said. “You mentioned a second problem?”

“Yes,” said Gurronsevas, turning to leave. “The problem is technical rather than medical, a matter of flash-heating a new dish to an ultra-high temperature for a precisely calculated duration so that the edible crust is hard-baked while the filling remains cold. It requires only another lengthy visit to the maintenance levels, which are already well-known to me, to familiarize myself with the food distribution and heat exchange systems adjoining the fusion reactor. No toxic additives are involved, no changes or risk to existing structures and equipment, the procedure I have in mind is perfectly safe and nothing whatever can go wrong.”

“I believe you,” said Pathologist Murchison as it took the specimen flask from him, “but why do I feel so uneasy?”

Eight days later he was remembering Murchison’s words and his own stupid feeling of certainty while Major O’Mara was trying, with considerable psychosomatic success, to remove the thick, Tralthan skin from his back with a verbal flaying. And Gurronsevas’s attempts to explain and excuse served only to make the Chief Psychologist angrier.

“. . . I don’t care if it was a simple technical operation performed routinely by maintenance technicians every two weeks,” said O’Mara quietly, in a strange voice that seemed to increase in fury as it decreased in volume, “or that the maintenance manual says that component failures of this kind are common and there was no cause for alarm because of the back-up system. This time you were there, which is usually reason enough for a catastrophe. And instead of a faulty cleaning cylinder blocking an emergency coolant supply pipe and needing retrieval, the sensors reported a quantity of unidentified ash which should not have been there. Suspecting that the ash indicated a major contamination, the entire reactor was closed down and the hospital went on standby . . .”

“The ash is harmless,” Gurronsevas said, “a simple organic mixture of . . .”

“We know it’s harmless,” the Chief Psychologist broke in. “You’ve already told me that, and what you were trying to do with it. But Maintenance doesn’t know, yet, and are investigating very carefully what they think might be a unique and possibly life-threatening situation. I estimate a minimum of two hours before they discover the truth and report it to Colonel Skempton who will want to see me. About you.”

O’Mara paused for a moment, and when it went on it seemed that the anger in its voice was being diluted with sympathy as it said, “By that time I will be able to tell him with certainty that you have left the hospital.”

“But, but Sir,” he protested, “this is unjust. The component failure was an accident, my involvement was peripheral and the offense venial. And two hours! The time limit is unreasonable. There are instructions that I must give my food synthesizer staff and . . .”

“Neither of us has time to waste debating the concepts of justice and reasonable behavior,” said O’Mara quietly, “nor will you have time for personal farewells. Lioren is waiting to help you clear your accommodation of personal effects and to conduct you to the ship without delay . . .”

“Where is it going?”

“. . . which will, if or when its primary mission is accomplished,” O’Mara went on, ignoring the question but answering it anyway, “either return you here to face your fate or leave you on a world of your choice, always provided you don’t do something stupid to irritate its captain. Whatever you find to do, please try to stay out of trouble. Good luck, Gurronsevas. And go. Now.”

CHAPTER 15

Unlike O’Mara, it was possible to reason with Lioren, at least to the extent of convincing it that the time saved in clearing his quarters should be added to that needed to leave proper instructions to his food technicians. Much time was wasted even so, because his people spent more of it regretting his departure and wishing him well than listening to his orders, so much so that he was feeling quite embarrassed when his time ran out and he had to leave the hospital.

He did not, however, have to travel very far,

“I—I don’t understand,” Gurronsevas protested. “This is a ship. A small, powered-down, empty ship, judging by the silence, the poor lighting, and this isn’t passenger accommodation. Where am I? What am I supposed to do here?”

“As you can now see,” Lioren said, switching on lights as it spoke, “you are on the casualty deck of the special ambulance ship Rhabwar, and you are to wait, patiently and very quietly, for its departure. While you are doing that the small number of people who know your whereabouts will be able to say, with the minimum of moral discomfort, that you are no longer in the hospital because, technically, this will be the truth.

“Being a Tralthan,” it went on, “you are accustomed to sleeping on your feet and will be physically comfortable here. Do not try to explore. Apart from this level, the ship was designed for operation by Earth-humans or other beings of similar or lesser body mass. Its officers and medical team will behave much more pleasantly towards you if you do not damage the structure and equipment.

“The casualty deck’s food dispenser is there,” it went on, pointing, “and the nursing station console, which is over there, will enable you to call up all the information you could possibly need about Rhabwar. Study it well before departure. You can call up the training and education channels if you are bored, but do not use the communicator because officially you are not here. Do nothing to attract attention. Don’t leave the ship, however briefly, or show yourself in the boarding tube or access corridor. I will visit you as often as possible.”

“Please,” said Gurronsevas. “Am I some kind of stowaway? Does the crew know I’m here? And how long must I wait?”

Lioren paused inside the lock chamber. It said, “I have no information regarding your shipboard status. Rhabwar’s medical team knows you are here, but the ship’s officers do not, so you must not reveal your presence to them until after the first hyperspace jump. I don’t know how long you will have to wait. Five days, according to one rumor I’ve heard, perhaps longer. The people concerned are having trouble making up their minds. If I find out for certain, I’ll tell you at once.”

Lioren disappeared into the boarding tube before Gurronsevas could think of another question.

He waited for a moment until the confusion in his mind had settled into curiosity and, moving carefully and placing his feet on nothing less solid than the deck, began investigating his surroundings.

Each one of the compartment’s walls was pierced by a large direct-vision panel. One showed a featureless expanse of metal which was probably the hospital’s outer hull, another a section of the docking cradle, and the other two looked out across the dazzling, white plains of Rhabwar’s delta wings. From the wall areas around and between the viewports projected equipment whose purpose would have been a total mystery to him even if it had been properly illuminated. In the center of the floor and ceiling were the circular openings to the communications well that gave access to the decks forward and aft. It was fitted with a multi-species ladder but was too narrow for a Tralthan.

The console that Lioren had indicated was surrounded by a mass of what appeared to be inactive medical monitoring equipment. He was still feeling too confused and ignorant to think constructively, so he called up the hospital’s main library, keying for a Tralthan printed translation with spoken backup, and asked for the available information on the ambulance ship Rhabwar.

The console screen lit with a message that was repeated from the speaker unit in a condescending voice. “Information is available on this subject without restriction,” it said. “Please specify precise requirements or choose from the following options: Ship design philosophy. Structural layout. Engineering and medical systems, sub-systems and equipment. Operating power reserves and mission duration. Crew and medical personnel specialties. Medical log of previous missions. Non-technical summary.”

Gurronsevas felt like an uneducated child as he chose the last item on the menu. But as the screen and the speaker began to present their information, his feelings changed rapidly to those of surprise and wonder because the summary began with a history lesson, an illustrated discussion on the formation and evolution of what had become the present Galactic Federation, from a philosophical viewpoint that was completely new to him.

On the screen there appeared, small but diamond-sharp, a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral, with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As he listened, a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another—the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extra-terrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared showing the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.

Several decades were to pass before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. In those days, the precise, emotionless voice explained, intelligent life-forms still tended to be suspicious and distrustful of each other—in one case, the early contacts between Orligia and Earth, to the point of declaring the first and so far only interstellar war. But time as well as distance was being compressed in the summary.

The tracery of gold lines grew more rapidly as contact, then commerce, was established with the highly advanced and stable cultures of Kelgia, Illensa, Hudlar, Melf and their associated colonies. Visually it was not an orderly progression. The lines darted inwards to the galactic center, doubled back to the rim, seesawed between zenith and nadir, and even made a jump across inter-galactic space to link up with the Ian worlds—although in that instance it had been the Ians who had done the initial traveling. When finally the lines connected the member worlds of the Galactic Federation, the result was an untidy yellow scribble resembling a cross between a DNA molecule and a child’s drawing of a bramble bush.

Provided the exact coordinates of the destination world were known, it was as easy to travel through subspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other side of the Galaxy. But one first had to find an inhabited planet before its coordinates could be logged, and that was proving to be no easy task.

Very, very slowly a few of the blank areas in the star charts were being mapped and surveyed, but with disappointing results. When the Monitor Corps scoutships discovered a star with planets, it was a rare find—even rarer when the planets included one that harbored life. And if one of the native life-forms was intelligent, jubilation—tempered with a natural concern over what might become a threat to the Pax Galactica—swept the worlds of the Federation. It was then that the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were sent to perform the tricky, time-consuming and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.

On the screen appeared a succession of tabulations giving details of the survey operations mounted, the number of ships and personnel involved and a cost figure that had too many digits to be credible. The voice went on, “During the past twenty years they have initiated First Contact procedures on three occasions, all of which resulted in the species concerned being accepted into the Federation. Within the same time period, Sector Twelve General Hospital became fully operational and also initiated First Contacts which resulted in seven new species joining the Federation.

It might have been Gurronsevas’s imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of pride creeping into the library computer’s condescending voice as it continued, “In every case this was accomplished, not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by rescuing and giving medical assistance to a sick or space-wrecked alien.

“In giving this assistance the hospital demonstrated the Federation’s goodwill towards newly-discovered intelligent species more simply and directly than by any time-consuming exchange of concepts.

“As a result there has recently been a change of emphasis in First Contact policy . . .”

Just as there was only one known way of traveling in hyper-space, there was only one method of sending a distress signal if an accident or malfunction stranded a vessel in normal space between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio was not a dependable means of interstellar communication, subject as it was to interference and distortion by the radiation from intervening stellar bodies, as well as requiring inordinate amounts of a vessel’s power that a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence. It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast a location signal, a subspace scream for help which ran up and down the communications frequencies until, in a matter of days or hours, it died.

Because all Federation vessels were required to file course and passenger details before departure, the position of a distress beacon was usually a good indication of the physiological type of the species that had run into trouble, and an ambulance ship with a matching crew and life-support equipment was sent from the ship’s home planet. But there had been instances, far more than were realized, when the disasters had involved beings unknown to the Federation in urgent need of help which the would-be rescuers were powerless to give.

It was only when the rescue ship concerned was large and powerful enough to extend its hyperspace envelope to include the distressed vessel, or when the casualties could be extricated safely and a suitable life-support provided them within the Federation ship, were they transported to Sector General. The result was that many hitherto unknown life-forms, beings of high intelligence and advanced technology, were lost except as interesting specimens for dissection and study.

Another factor that had to be considered was that, whenever possible, the Federation preferred to make contact with a star-travelling race. Species who were intelligent but planet-bound might give rise to additional problems because there was no certainty whether full contact would help or hinder their future development, give them a technological leg-up or a crushing inferiority complex, when the great, alien starships began dropping out of their skies.

For a long time an answer to these problems had been sought and, in recent years, one had been found.

It had been decided to design and equip one vessel that would respond only to those distress beacons whose positions did not agree with the flight plans filed by Federation starships, a very special ambulance ship that would answer the cries for help of life-forms hitherto unknown to the Federation.

Gradually, as Gurronsevas concentrated more and more deeply on the displays, it seemed that his mind and the darkened casualty deck around him were becoming filled with pictures of devastated ships and drifting masses of space wreckage, and populated with the dead or barely living debris they contained. Sometimes the organic wreckage had to be extricated with great care because it belonged to a species new to the Federation, and beings who were in great pain and mental confusion from their injuries could react violently against the strange and terrifying monsters who were trying to rescue them. But there had been other times when the distressed ship had been undamaged and it was the crew who were urgently in need of assistance. Then it was Rhabwar’s commanding officer, a specialist in other-species technology, who had to find a way into the vessel and solve its alien and life-threatening engineering puzzles before the injured or diseased crew-members, who again might react violently at their rescuers’ approach, could be treated.

The log was filled with such instances.

There was a full description of Rhabwar’s response to the distress signal from a ship of the Blind Ones and their sighted and incredibly violent mind-partners, the Protectors of the Unborn. And there was the vast gestalt creature of unknown name and origin whose miles-long colonizing vessel had been wrecked in interstellar space and a large-scale military as well as major surgical operation had been required to put the scattered pieces together and transport them to their target world. And there had been the Dwerlans and the Ians and the Duwetz, and many others.

Gurronsevas did not know enough about medicine to understand all of the clinical details, but that no longer mattered. So deeply engrossed did he become in the information and incredible events that were unfolding on the screen that, had the food dispenser been less conveniently placed to the console, he would not have bothered to eat. He was beginning to worry about the dangers he might have to face during Rhabwar’s next mission, but in a way he felt almost sorry that he lacked the qualifications to take an active part in it, especially when the ship personnel list revealed that he was already well-acquainted with two members of the medical team, Prilicla and Murchison.

On the screen the wreckage of alien starships and their other-species casualties disappeared to be replaced by a schematic drawing of the ship, and the voice began describing the ship’s deck layout, crew and casualty accommodations, and principal systems, while the relevant areas were graphically highlighted. Gurronsevas tapped hold because the information being presented was becoming just so much meaningless light and noise. He had lost track of time. He was tired and hungry and his mind was too full of strange and wonderful information for sleep. Perhaps it was sheer fatigue that was causing his mind to throw up such fanciful ideas, but as he recalled some of the things that had been said and done to him by the Chief Psychologist and others, and in particular the things that should have been done and had not, his thoughts were making him feel afraid, uncertain, even more confused—and almost hopeful.

Rhabwar was indeed a very special ambulance ship. Soon it would depart on one of its very unusual and probably dangerous missions for which it had been designed. But what was a disgraced Chief Dietitian doing on board, unless O’Mara was trying to give him another chance?

CHAPTER 16

The next four days passed very quickly and without the slightest feeling of boredom, and it was only when complete body and brain fatigue forced him to leave the console that he moved to his concealed resting place behind a set of casualty bed-screens to try, not always successfully, to switch off his mind. Then on the fifth day he was awakened by the lighting being switched on and a voice saying loudly, “Chief Dietitian, this is Lioren. Waken quickly, please. Where are you?”

Gurronsevas’ mind was too confused by suddenly interrupted sleep for him to reply, but by lowering the concealing bed-screen he answered the question and signaled his returning consciousness.

There was a sharpness in Lioren’s tone that Gurronsevas had not heard before as it said, “Have you returned to the hospital or talked to anyone, however briefly, since we last spoke?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas.

“Then you don’t know what has been happening during the past two days?” it asked, making the question sound like an accusation. “Nothing at all?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas again.

Lioren was silent for a moment, then in a friendlier voice it said, “I believe you. If you remained on Rhabwar and know nothing, hopefully you may not be at fault.”

Gurronsevas disliked the implication that he might have lied. He tried to keep his anger in check as he said, “I have spent all of the time studying, doing exactly as I’ve been told, for a change, and thinking about my possible future position here. It is about that, if it could spare a few minutes, that I would like to speak to O’Mara. Now please tell me what you are talking about?”

The other hesitated again, in the way of a person who is trying to impart bad news as gently as possible, then said, “I have two pieces of information for you. The first is inexact and may turn out to be unpleasant for you. The second is very unpleasant for you unless you can assure me that you had nothing to do with the situation. I prefer to tell you the less unpleasant news first.

“It is about Rhabwar’s next mission,” said Lioren. “This is little more than a rumor, you understand, because the mission is being discussed at a very high level by people who rarely gossip. A large number of expensive hyperspace signals have been exchanged about it. Contact with a newly-discovered intelligent species is involved, but there is doubt regarding the ambulance ship’s ability to handle the situation. Rhabwar’s medical team thinks they can help and the cultural contact people insist it is their job. I think the final decision has been taken but implimentation was delayed because of the epidemic.”

“What epidemic?”

Lioren hesitated, then said, “If you have not gone into the hospital or contacted anyone there you would, of course, know nothing. Your ignorance also increases the possibility that you have no responsibility for the situation.”

“What situation?” said Gurronsevas, in a voice so loud with exasperation that it must have reached to the other end of the boarding tube. “What epidemic? And what have I to do with it?”

“Nothing, I hope,” said Lioren. “But stop shouting and I’ll tell you about it.”

According to Lioren an unidentified epidemic had swept through the hospital’s staff and patients three days earlier. Only the warm-blooded oxygen-breathing species had been affected, although not all of them. Hudlars, Nallajims and a few others had escaped, including, for some unknown reason, several members of these species who had succumbed but who, as individuals, appeared to have immunity or were lucky enough not to have been exposed. The symptoms were nausea increasing in severity over the first two days, after which the patients were unable to take food by mouth and had to be fed intravenously. More serious was the fact that over the same period there was a gradual loss of the ability to communicate coherently or coordinate limb and digital movements. It was too soon to say that the IV feeding was successful in all cases; there were too many staff members affected who were too sick to investigate either their own or their patients’ clinical condition properly, but there were indications that the symptoms of nausea and brain dysfunction were receding among those who were being fed intravenously.

“. . . But we can’t keep every warm-blooded oxygen-breather who is affected, close on four hundred of them, on IV feed indefinitely,” Lioren went on, “Even with them working round the clock, there aren’t enough other-species medical staff to handle it. So far there have been no fatalities, but with ordinary patients still requiring treatment or surgery, we are being forced to use trainees and junior medics who are operating beyond their level of competence. Deaths are just a matter of time. We don’t have the people for a proper investigation because the investigators are being affected too, in spite of the same-species barrier nursing precautions.

“Some of the senior medical staff escaped,” Lioren continued. “Diagnostician Conway told me that in its case this might have been because it was concentrating on a Nallajim project at the time and its Educator tape was making it difficult to eat anything that did not look like birdseed. But if that is a factor in its immunity and if there is a correlation between the food eaten or not eaten and the onset of symptoms . . .”

“Are you suggesting food poisoning?” Gurronsevas broke in, trying to control his anger. “That is insulting, outrageous and impossible!”

“. . . Given the widespread and concurrent onset of nausea symptoms, the obvious diagnosis would be food poisoning,” Lioren went on, ignoring the interruption but answering the question. “The bulk material used for food synthesis is thoroughly tested for quality and purity before shipping, and sealed for transit in a manner that precludes chemical or radiation contamination. The many new taste enhancers recently introduced by you are subject to the same rigorous safety regulations but, because of their number and variety, it is more likely that toxic or infective contamination gained entry through this channel. And I agree, any form of toxicity finding its way into the hospital’s food supply system is highly unlikely, but not impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” said Gurronsevas angrily. “But this is so close to it that . . .”

“I don’t wish to sound callous,” Lioren broke in, “but if this outbreak is due to contaminated food, your professional embarrassment will be great, and even greater will be the relief of the medical staff because it would mean that they are faced with a medical problem that requires simple treatment. But if it is not food poisoning, and the nausea is a secondary symptom of a condition affecting the brains of several different intelligent life-forms, then we have a much more serious problem. It means that there is a hitherto unknown pathogen loose in the hospital that is capable of crossing the species barrier. Even a non-medical person like yourself knows that that, too, is impossible. But on Cromsag I learned the hard lesson that no possibility should be discounted.”

Gurronsevas did know. From the time when he had made his first journey off-planet he had been told that there was no risk of him contracting other-species’ diseases or infections. A pathogen that had evolved on one world could not affect any living thing that had evolved on another, a fact that greatly simplified the practice of multi-species medicine and surgery. But he had heard it said that the Federation medical authorities were constantly on the lookout for the exception that proved the rule. Regarding Cromsag, he had no idea what had befallen the Padre there, and he felt sure that this was not the time to ask.

“It is most urgent,” Lioren went on, “that the food poisoning possibility be confirmed or eliminated as quickly as possible. The normal procedures for pathological investigation and analysis are too slow and uncertain right now. The investigators are too busy treating patients, or are patients themselves, or they have discounted the food-poisoning theory because it is too unlikely for them to waste time on it. But you will know what to look for and where. Food is your area of expertise, Chief Dietitian.”

“But, but this is inexcusable,” Gurronsevas said angrily. “It is a personal affront. Never before have I been associated with an establishment or a food service operation so lax in its standards of food hygiene that patrons were poisoned wholesale!”

“It may not be food poisoning,” Lioren reminded him firmly. “That is what you and I have to find out.”

“Very well,” said Gurronsevas. He took a deep breath and sought for inner calm before going on, “I would like to have the patients questioned regarding the exact composition of the suspect meals, the time that the meal was eaten, if any unusual taste or consistency was detected, and whether the patient visited any particular section of the hospital or engaged in any activity that was common to all of them and which might have brought it into contact with a source of infection other than the food. Then I want to check on the operation of the main dining hall and subsidiary food computers and call up a breakdown of the menu demand and synthesizer output for the times when the infection is thought to have occurred. I would like to obtain this information at once.”

“I can tell you exactly how one patient behaved,” said Lioren quietly. “But Gurronsevas, please remember that the food poisoning idea is mine alone. Officially you are not in the hospital and, if you are innocent in this matter, it would be wrong to make you reveal yourself.”

“If the symptoms in all cases are uniform,” said Gurronsevas, feeling in no mood for another semi-apology, “an interview with one patient may be enough. Who and what was it?”

“The patient is Lieutenant Braithwaite,” said Lioren. “About twenty minutes after we returned from the dining hall . . .”

“You dined together?” Gurronsevas broke in sharply. “This is exactly the kind of information I need. Can you remember which dishes you, or it, ordered? Tell me everything you can remember about the meal. Every detail.”

Lioren thought for a moment, then said, “Fortunately, perhaps, my selection was from the Tarlan menu, a single course of shemmutara with faas curds. You can see that I am not adventurous where food is concerned. I did not look closely at Braithwaite’s meal, or the codes it used while ordering, because the sight of most kinds of Earth food causes me internal uneasiness. We took only the main courses because it had a meeting with O’Mara directly after lunch. But I did notice that its platter contained a small, flat slab of synthetic meat, the stuff Earth-humans call steak, with several round, slightly toasted, yellow vegetables, and two other kinds of vegetation that looked like a heap of tiny green spheres and some pallid, round grey domes that looked particularly disgusting. There was a small dab of brownish-yellow, semi-solid material, possibly a condiment of some kind, at the edge of the plate. And, yes, a thick, brown liquid had been poured over the steak . . .”

Gurronsevas wondered what Lioren would have noticed if it had been looking closely. He said, “Did Braithwaite make any comment about the food, during or after eating the meal?”

“Yes,” said Lioren, “but there was nothing unusual about that. A few other beings, not Earth-humans, had ordered the same meal and commented on it in my hearing. Some of the warm-blooded oxy-breathers here are in the habit of crossing the species divide in search of new taste sensations, and the practice has increased since your menu changes were incorporated. This is highly complimentary to yourself, or has been until . . .”

“Just tell me what Braithwaite said,” Gurronsevas broke in. “Everything.”

“I am trying to remember,” said Lioren, with a Tarlan gesture that might have signified irritation. “Oh, yes. Braithwaite said that the meal had a peculiar, gritty taste, and that this was strange because it had ordered the same course on previous occasions without noticing anything odd about it. It also said that you were continually experimenting with the menu, that the latest change was probably an acquired taste, but if so, it was not masochistic enough to want to acquire it. The remainder of the meal was eaten quickly and silently because it did not want to be late for the meeting.

“On the way back to the department,” Lioren continued, “it complained of feeling what it called queasy, and self-diagnosed the trouble as a digestive upset caused by it eating too fast. The meeting a short time later, comprising O’Mara, Braithwaite and Cha Thrat, was concerned with the psych profiles of the latest group of trainees. Because department business was being discussed rather than a personal interview, the connecting door had not been closed. I heard but did not see all that ensued. Cha Thrat filled in the visual details later.”

Lioren made a series of small, untranslatable sounds, then cleared its breathing passages noisily and went on, “My apologies, Gurronsevas, this is not a laughing matter. Braithwaite began complaining of growing nausea, but answered Cha Thrat’s sympathetic questions about its condition with loud abuse, calling O’Mara and Cha Thrat names that are not in polite usage, after which it became creatively if unintentionally insubordinate towards the Major, and ended by regurgitating onto the printouts covering the desktop. Soon afterwards Braithwaite began to lose both coherency of speech and muscular coordination in its limbs, and O’Mara had it transferred to a ward for clinical investigation. By that time the wards were filling up with similar cases.

“That was forty-three hours ago. Even though all of the patients affected have shown an almost complete remission of symptoms, since then the Major has been spending as much time as possible with Braithwaite, trying to establish whether its assistant’s abnormal behavior was due to a new pathogen that has invaded and attacked the brain functions of those affected, which is the theory favored by the senior medical staff, or a side effect of food-poisoning which is the solution preferred by myself.

“If I am wrong it is better that you stay out of sight and, hopefully, beyond reach of the infection,” Lioren ended. “If I am right, then the Chief Psychologist will not be pleased with you.”

Nobody here is pleased with the Great Gurronsevas, he thought. At least, they do not stay pleased for long. He tried to fight against the wave of anger and disappointment that was sweeping over his mind by concentrating on what for him could only be a minor culinary puzzle.

“I will need to access the food service program,” he said briskly. “But do not concern yourself, it will not require giving my identity.”

Lioren’s description had enabled him to identify the suspect meal, and given a close estimate of the time that the infection—if that was what it was—had occurred. The number of all meals selected were listed and stored on a daily basis so as to indicate current demand and to facilitate re-ordering and withdrawal of the non-synthetic material from stores. Diners’ choices were subject to psychological factors—personal recommendations of an item by one’s friends, the latest eating fad, a new entry on the menu that everyone wanted to try—which ensured that the total number of any given meal ordered would vary from day to day. But he knew the day and the suspect course, and now the number he was looking for was being displayed. He was tapping in the list of ingredients and requesting their full biochemical analyses when suddenly Lioren moved closer to the display screen.

“Any progress?” it said, in the voice of one who already knew and did not like the answer.

“Yes and no,” he replied, moving an eye towards Lioren. “I am fairly sure that the suspect meal has been identified, and of the number of times it was served, but the . . .”

“You can be absolutely sure,” said Lioren. “I know the total ward admission figure for the outbreak. It agrees exactly with yours. This does not look good for you, Gurronsevas.”

“I know, I know,” he said, pointing angrily at the display. “But look at that. The meal ingredients are innocent, uncomplicated and completely innocuous, and prepared according to my instructions. After processing and shaping in the synthesizer only three non-synthetic ingredients were added. These were trace quantities of the Orligian and Earth herbs chrysse and Merne Lake salt in the sauce and a light, overall dusting of nutmeg. None of them could have caused food poisoning. Could toxic material have been introduced externally, perhaps by a seepage of waste contaminants from adjoining piping . . . ? I must speak directly and at once to my first assistant.”

“You must not call anyone within the hospital . . .” Lioren began, but Gurronsevas ignored it.

“Main Synthesizer, Senior Food Technician Sarnyagh,” said the Nidian whose features appeared on-screen. If its expression was surprised, irritated, or worried at seeing him, Gurronsevas was unable to tell under the facial fur. Inevitably it said, “Sir, I thought you had left the hospital.”

“I have,” said Gurronsevas impatiently. “Please be quiet, and listen . . .”

As soon as he had finished speaking, Sarnyagh said impatiently, “Sir, that was the first question asked after the trouble developed. We called in our entire staff and spent the next two shifts answering it, even though Maintenance assured us that the layout and design of the associated plumbing made such cross-contamination impossible. We also checked the food synthesizer banks and enhancer storage, all of which tested pure. Have you any other ideas, sir?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas, breaking contact. His earlier anxiety was fast approaching desperation, but there was a vague idea stirring at the back of his mind that was refusing to come out into the light, a tiny itch left by something the food technician might have said. To Lioren he went on, “If the fault isn’t in the delivery system then it must be in the meal, which it isn’t. Maybe I should make a closer study of the ingredients, even though they have been in use for centuries on and off their planets of origin. I will need the non-medical reference library.”

There was a bewildering mass of information available on food herbs even in the comparatively small general library possessed by Sector General, and finding the three he wanted required a careful search through background material which, even with computer assistance, was very slow. He learned much interesting but useless information about the part played in the Kelgian local economy by their exports of Merne Lake salt, but the only associated fatalities had occurred during the dawn of their history when warring natives had drowned in it while it was still a body of water. It was the same with the Orligian chrysse polyps, and the references to Earth nutmeg were many but lacking in useful detail, until he came on one very old entry that might have been included as an afterthought.

Suddenly the itch at the back of his mind came out to a place where he could scratch it. His kitchen staff had been under pressure from the medical hierarchy. In the middle of a sudden emergency, a small change might be made, forgotten, or be considered too minor to be mentioned to a superior. Suddenly Gurronsevas stamped all of his feet, heavily and one at a time.

When the loose equipment on the casualty deck had stopped rattling, Lioren said, “Gurronsevas, what is happening? What is wrong with you?”

“What is happening,” he replied, tapping the communicator keys as if each one was a mortal enemy, “is that I am trying to recall that miscenegenated apology for a food technician, Sarnyagh. What is wrong with me is that I want to commit violent bloody murder on another supposedly sapient being!”

“Surely not!” said Lioren in a shocked voice. “Please calm yourself. I feel, and I am sure that you will agree, that you may be overreacting verbally to a situation that in all likelihood might not require physical violence to resolve . . .”

It broke off as Sarnyagh’s image reappeared. In a voice that was composed of equal parts of deference and impatience, the food technician said, “Sir. Was there something you had forgotten to ask me?”

Gurronsevas sought for inner calm, then said, “I refer you to my original instructions regarding the composition and presentation of Menu Item Eleven Twenty-one, Earth-human DBDG species, and additionally suitable for use by and available on request to physiological classifications DBLF, DCNF, DBPK, EGCL, ELNT, FGLI and GLNO. Compare the original composition with that of the meals actually served following taste enhancement and display both. Explain why an unauthorized change was made.”

And if no change had been made, Gurronsevas was about to be very seriously embarrassed. But he felt sure that he would not be.

Sarnyagh looked down at its console and tapped briefly. Two short columns of data appeared as a bright overlay across its furry chest, with two of the quantity figures highlighted.

“Ah, yes, now I remember,” said Sarnyagh. “It was a small change, or rather a correction of an error which it seemed that you yourself had made. If you can remember, sir, your menu instructions for this ingredient specified point zero eight five of the dish’s total food mass which was, with respect, a ridiculously small quantity for something that is listed as an edible vegetation, so I assumed that the amount that you had intended was eight point five. Was I mistaken? Too cautious, perhaps?”

“You were mistaken,” said Gurronsevas, striving not to scream abuse at it and to keep his voice at a conversational level, “and not cautious enough. Couldn’t you tell by the taste that something was wrong?”

Sarnyagh hesitated, obviously suspecting that it might be in trouble and trying in advance to talk its way out of it, then said quickly, “I regret, sir, that I have neither your vast culinary experience nor your unrivalled ability to taste and evaluate a wide variety of other-species dishes. My preference is for the simple home cooking of Nidia and an occasional venture onto the Kelgian cold menu. The few times I tried it, I found Earth food to be lumpy, with too many color contrasts and aesthetically repugnant, so I would not have known whether it tasted right or wrong. Even though the change was minor and I would have asked your permission before making it had you been available, it was not made without careful consideration.

“Before making the change,” Sarnyagh went on, “I checked with the medical computer to make sure that the item was not listed as toxic, which it was not. Also, the kitchen supply which you had brought with you from the Cromingan-Shesk had been running low. When I ordered a top-up I discovered that Stores had recently received several tons of the stuff. At the rate of use you had specified there was enough to keep us supplied for centuries. That was when I decided that you had made a mistake and corrected it. Have you any further instructions, sir?”

The reason for the overstocking had been purely administrative and of questionable legality, Gurronsevas remembered. It had been a means of ordering in bulk so that the material would be covered by the virtually inexhaustible supply funding of the Monitor Corps rather than his own department’s relatively low budget. But he could not mention that without word of the transgression reaching Skempton through official channels; he did not want that to happen even if, as seemed likely, the Colonel already knew of it unofficially. No blame should attach itself to the Head of Procurement, Creon-Emesh, who had been most helpful to him. And Sarnyagh had done a neat job of passing most of the responsibility for its mistake back to Gurronsevas, and the food technician was going to get away with it.

He was reminded of the times in his own youth when he had learned the hard way that one’s seniors had been placed above him because they knew more, not less, than their ambitious subordinates.

“My instructions,” said Gurronsevas coldly, “are to reverse your unauthorized change and restore Eleven Twenty-one DBDG to its original composition. Do it at once. I am very displeased with you, Sarnyagh, but any disciplinary action that is needed must wait until . . .”

“But, sir!” Sarnyagh broke in. “This is unfair, petty. Because I made a harmless change on my own initiative and you think, wrongly I assure you, that it is a threat to your authority you are going to . . .Sir, there is much more important and urgent work to be done here. Following recent instructions of Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway we are in the process of physically checking through our entire food preparation and delivery system for possible entry points for contamination. Impossible, I know, but there has been a major outbreak of what they think might be food poisoning and . . .”

“That particular problem,” said Gurronsevas firmly, “has been solved. Just do as I say.”

When Sarnyagh’s image disappeared, he went on to Lioren, “Perhaps I will not murder it, after all. But if you could tell me how to inflict some non-lethal injuries requiring a lengthy and uncomfortable period of recuperation, I would be grateful.”

“I hope you are joking,” said Lioren uncertainly. “But is the problem really solved? And how?”

“I am joking,” he replied. “And yes, your epidemic of so-called food poisoning is over. I’ll tell you about it quickly so that you can contact Diagnostician Conway at once. It was a simple matter of . . .”

“No, Gurronsevas,” Lioren interrupted gently. “This is your specialty. Conway is one of the few people who knows you are here. You will save time by telling it yourself.”

A few minutes later, Diagnostician Conway was staring intently at him from the screen as he began to describe the unauthorized change that had been made in DBDG Menu Eleven Twenty-one.

He went on, “It occurred because of my then ignorance, which has been rectified within the past few minutes, regarding a little-known side effect of the Earth herb, nutmeg, which is a taste enhancer that I like to use with this particular dish. Although it is no longer listed as a toxic substance, probably because its unpleasant gastric side effects when taken in quantity made it unpopular as a drug, in the distant past nutmeg was known as a mild hallucinogen. That was many centuries ago, when the use of mind-damaging drugs was common in several cultures. The quantity used in meal DBDG Eleven Twenty-one was one hundred times the specified amount. The Earth-human DBDGs and other species, taking it for the first time in these quantities, would be likely to suffer from progressively increasing hallucinations, lack of physical and mental coordination and nausea of the type that has been described to me.

“The error is being rectified as we speak,” Gurronsevas added, “and the DBDG food service operation will be fully restored within the next two hours. The symptoms will fade rapidly and, according to the historical reference, the recovery of non-habitual users, your patients, will be complete within a few days. I am certain that your emergency is over.”

For a moment Diagnostician Conway was silent except for the sound made by a long, slow exhalation of breath. Its recessed eyes swiveled to look past Gurronsevas at Lioren and the casualty deck behind them, then it smiled and said, “So you were right after all, Padre Lioren, and we were frightening ourselves needlessly over a widespread but basically simple digestive upset. And you, Gurronsevas, have solved our problem within a few minutes without even being here. That was nice work, Chief Dietitian. But what do you suggest we do with the food technician responsible?”

“Nothing,” said Gurronsevas. “I have always accepted responsibility for the professional conduct, including the few mistakes, of my subordinates. Sarnyagh will be disciplined if and when I return.”

Behind him Lioren made a quiet, untranslatable sound. Conway nodded and said, “I understand. But your return may not be for some time. Now that the epidemic scare is over, we will be launching Rhabwar within the hour.”

CHAPTER 17

Following Lioren’s lengthy farewell, and even lengthier exhortations against exercising his initiative too freely and the necessity for making friends, Gurronsevas had so much to think about that only a few minutes seemed to pass before there came another, expected interruption. It was the sound of movement forward, suggesting that several people were entering the ship through the crew access lock, and one of them was moving aft along the central well on the way to the Power Room. Simultaneously, another group entered the other end of the boarding tube and approached rapidly. From the babble of other-species word sounds he estimated that there were four different voices, but they were speaking too quietly for his translator to separate them. Quickly he dimmed the lighting, raised the bed-screen and concealed himself behind it.

As they entered the casualty deck the lighting came on at full intensity, the voices fell silent and there was the loud, unmistakable hiss and thump of the airlock closing.

The lengthening silence was broken by a voice speaking quietly in the musical trills and clickings of its native Cinrusskin speech, so that the translated words were unnecessary for the identification of the speaker.

“I sense your presence close by, my friend,” said Prilicla. “At present and until the hyperspace insertion is complete, the casualty deck will not be in sound or vision contact with Control. You are among friends, Gurronsevas, so please lower that screen and show yourself.”

There was a moment’s silence while he stared at the four of them and they at him, then the Kelgian member of the medical team said, “Gurronsevas! You are that Gurronsevas? I thought you had left the hospital.”

Murchison laughed softly and said, “You were right, Charge Nurse, it had.”

“Friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla as it fluttered gracefully into the air to hover above his head. “You already know Pathologist Murchison and myself, and we were not surprised by your presence because O’Mara told us that you were already on board, and why. Doctor Danalta and, as you can see from the agitated state of its fur, Charge Nurse Naydrad did not expect you, and may have seen you only at a distance. But in a ship of this size there are no distances, so we will have no choice but to become very close acquaintances and, I believe, friends.”

A large mound of dull green, wrinkled jelly wobbled closer, extruded a single eye, ear and mouth and said, “We have seen each other on several occasions but, as a polymorph, there were personal or clinical reasons why I was looking like something else at the time. You do not show the surprise, even aversion, that many entities display when meeting me for the first time. I am very pleased to make your closer acquaintance.”

“And I yours, Doctor Danalta,” said Gurronsevas. “Your name and work are familiar to me because to, ah, pass my waiting time here I ran the log of recent missions, including the part you played in many of them. Even though the medical details were beyond me it was fascinating viewing. Towards the end I did not want to pass the time in any other way.”

Prilicla settled slowly to the deck, its incredibly fragile, iridescent body quivering, but with the slow, gentle tremor that indicated pleasant emotional radiation in the area. It said, “The Chief Dietitian is too polite to mention it, but friend Gurronsevas has feelings of the most intense curiosity. Since the rest of us are fairly normal life-forms I must assume that its curiosity is regarding you, friend Danalta. Would you like to satisfy it?”

“Of course it would,” said Naydrad, rippling its back fur disdainfully. “Our medical superblob likes nothing better than impressing strangers.”

And it was also used to dealing with the other’s impoliteness, Gurronsevas saw, because it quickly extruded a three-digited, Kelgian fore-limb and made a gesture with it which disturbed Naydrad’s fur even more and said, “I would be happy to do so. But what is it about me that particularly interests you, Chief Dietitian?”

As they continued talking, the view from the direct vision panels around them showed that Rhabwar was edging its way through the sprawling, three-dimensional maze of the hospital’s outer structures and the traffic markers. Once it was in clear space, Gurronsevas had learned, thrust would be applied which would take it out to the prescribed Jump distance where the hospital’s more delicate items of equipment would not be affected by Rhabwar’s entry into an artificial universe that the ship had created for itself. But the time was passing very quickly and pleasantly because Danalta liked talking about itself and, unusually with such people, knew how to make the subject interesting.

Danalta’s physiological classification was TOBS. It belonged to a species that had evolved on a planet with a highly eccentric orbit which produced climatic changes so violent that an incredible degree of physical adaptability was necessary for survival. The species had become dominant on its world and developed intelligence and a civilization, not by competing in the evolution of natural weapons but by refining and perfecting their adaptive capability. When faced by natural enemies or life-threatening events they had the four options of flight, protective mimicry, the assumption of a shape frightening to the attacker, or encasing themselves in a dense, hard shell. The species was basically amoebic but with the ability to extrude any limbs, sense organs or protective tegument necessary to any environment or situation in which it might find itself.

“. . . In pre-sapient times the speed and accuracy of the mimicry was all-important,” Danalta went on, and without a pause in its conversation it took the shape of a scaled-down Tralthan who was a perfect miniature of Gurronsevas himself, then more life-sized replicas of Naydrad and Murchison. “To avert a threat by natural predators, rapid reproduction of the would-be attacker’s actions and behavior patterns were an important part of the process. This meant that we also had to develop the faculty of receptive empathy so that we could know how the other being expected us to look and act although, needless to say, it lacks the range and sensitivity of Doctor Prilicla’s empathic faculty.

“With such physical and psychological protection available,” it continued, “our species has become impervious to bodily damage other than by physical annihilation or the application of ultra-high temperatures, which are threats posed by modern technology rather than natural enemies. While we have no trouble mimicking an infant in every detail we still, regrettably, die of old age.”

“Fascinating,” said Gurronsevas. “But surely, with this natural protection available, your species has no great need for doctors?”

“You are right,” Danalta replied, “there is no need for the healing arts on my world, and I am not a doctor. But to a mimic of my capabilities, and at this point I must say that they are considered much greater than average among my people, an establishment like Sector General represents a tremendous challenge. Because of the work I am able to do on Rhabwar and among the ward patients, my friends insist on giving me that title.

“Do you have another question, Chief Dietitian?”

Gurronsevas felt himself warming towards this utterly strange being who, like himself, had come here solely because of the professional challenge.

While he was still trying to frame his simple question, which to a species as weird as Danalta’s might give offense in a politely roundabout fashion, he felt a sudden dizziness. Rhabwar had reached Jump distance and entered hyperspace, a fact confirmed by the direct vision ports which were showing only a flickering greyness.

Prilicla said gently, “Gurronsevas, your hesitancy suggests that the question you wish to ask may be an indelicate one dealing, perhaps, with the subject of reproduction? Please remember that Danalta is a receptive empath, as am I. We are not telepaths. We feel that you have another question. We do not know what it is, only that you feel the answer to be important.”

“Yes, it is important to me,” Gurronsevas admitted, then went on, “Doctor Danalta, what do you eat?”

Pathologist Murchison leaned its head back and laughed, Charge Nurse Naydrad’s silvery fur was rolling in slow, uneven waves from nose to tail, and Prilicla’s body was reacting to what Gurronsevas now knew to be a sudden burst of pleasant emotional radiation. Only Danalta’s body was still and its words serious.

“I am afraid that I will prove a grave disappointment to you, Chief Dietitian,” it said, “because my species does not possess the sense of taste. Apart from the ultra-hard metals, I can and do eat anything and everything regardless of consistency or appearance. In moments of deep mental concentration I have been known to dissolve a hole in the deck plating on which I am resting, and in the past this has caused great annoyance to the ship’s officers.”

“I know the feeling well,” said Gurronsevas.

While the others were displaying amusement in their varying fashions, he was remembering Lioren’s final words to him. Gurronsevas was on probation, the Padre had warned him, and there were things he must try to do and not to do. Obviously he must make no attempt to tinker with the ship’s food synthesizer. Above all, he must remember that he was on a small ship carrying a very small crew of specialists, and he must try very hard to make friends rather than enemies of them. Since the medical team had come aboard he had been trying to do that, by negating his own importance and displaying a friendly and admiring curiosity about Danalta and, in time, the others. Surprisingly, it had not required a great effort on his part, but now he was wondering whether he had overdone the uncharacteristic charm and they secretly thought of him as being shallow and insincere, or was it simply that they were trying as hard to be friendly as he was. He was also wondering if he would have as much success making friends with Rhabwar’s non-medical officers.

As if on thought-cue the internal comm screen lit up to show the Monitor-green-uniformed head and shoulders of an Earth-human.

“Casualty Deck, this is the Captain,” it said sharply. “I overheard your last few minutes’ conversation. Doctor Prilicla, what is that, that walking Tralthan disaster area doing on my ship?”

Even though Control was at long range for the Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty, the Captain’s emotional radiation was causing the empath some minor distress. Without hesitation Prilicla said, “For the period of the present mission, friend Gurronsevas has been co-opted to the medical team as a non-clinical advisor. Its expertise could prove helpful in what lies ahead. Please do not be concerned about possible effects on the structure of the ship, friend Fletcher. The Chief Dietitian will be accommodated on the casualty deck, it requires no special life-support and it will not risk damaging your light-gravity furniture and equipment by going forward, unless at your express invitation.”

There was a moment’s silence, but Gurronsevas was too startled and confused by Prilicla’s words, to be able to fill it with a question.

He had often heard it said that the little empath was not averse to bending the truth, a fact which Prilicla itself freely admitted, if by so doing it could improve the quality of emotional radiation in the area. An emotion-sensitive felt everything that those around it were feeling with the same degree of intensity, but the suggestion that Gurronsevas could advise Rhabwar’s medical team on anything during the forthcoming mission was utterly ridiculous. Doubtless the lie would improve the Captain’s emotional radiation, Gurronsevas thought, but the effect would be temporary.

“I feel your curiosity, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, no longer trembling as the Captain’s anger diminished to irritation, “and I intend to satisfy it as soon as possible.”

“Very well, Doctor,” said the Captain, then went on briskly, “We are presently in hyperspace cruising mode, estimating the Wemar system in just under four standard days and the ship is running itself. A few minutes before boarding I was given the coordinates of the target system and the preliminary briefing tape, which there has been no opportunity to scan, and told that we would be fully briefed on arrival. Now would be a convenient time to run the tape so that we non-medics can be let into the secret of what we are supposed to be doing there.”

“I don’t know anything about it, either,” said Naydrad, its fur spiking in irritation. “At least, nothing but a rumor that three weeks of top-level discussions were needed to decide whether or not Rhabwar could do the job. And when they did finally make up their minds, they keyed my alarm for a full emergency turn-out when I was right in the middle of . . .”

“Friend Naydrad,” Prilicla broke in gently, “it is often the case that the time taken to reach a decision has to be deducted from that needed to carry it out. The rumor was not entirely accurate. I took part in those discussions but, in spite of our unrivaled reputation for pulling sick or damaged life-forms out of trouble, I was not sure that Rhabwar is capable of performing this mission. Many of the hospital’s military and medical authorities agreed with me; the Chief Psychologist and a few others did not. The only reason for the secrecy was to avoid hurting the feelings of Rhabwar’s crew by publicly displaying their lack of confidence in us.

“And the questions that I feel you all wanting so badly to ask,” it went on, “should wait until we have viewed the Wemar material.

“When you are ready, friend Fletcher.”

CHAPTER 18

At the time of its discovery three months earlier, it was not thought that the world, which its dominant intelligent species called Wemar, would cause the cultural-contact specialists of the Monitor Corps any serious problems. It was an environmentally distressed world with subsistence level living standards for the tiny remnant of its surviving population that verged on uninhabitability. In its recent history—from the orbital studies of industrial archeological remains the date was estimated at a little over four centuries earlier—the native culture had been technologically advanced to the level of maintaining orbiting space satellites, and there were traces of a non-permanent base on the system’s closest and uninhabitable planet.

Because of their background of recently lost space technology, two important assumptions had been made. One was that the Wem would not be frightened by the idea of a galaxy inhabited by other intelligent beings and, even though they might be surprised and uneasy at the sudden arrival of a starship in orbit around their world, they would not be completely against the idea of making friendly contact with other-species visitors. The second assumption was that when contact had been widened and their natural fears allayed, they would agree to accept the offers of material and technical support which they so desperately needed.

Both assumptions proved wrong. When two-way translation-communication devices were soft-landed in the few inhabited areas—sound and vision communications were a part of their lost technology—the natives exchanged only a few angry words before ordering the strangers to leave Wemar and its system before smashing all of the off-world devices. Evidently they had grown to fear all forms of technology as well as the people who used it. Only one small, isolated group had shown some trace of reluctance at breaking off contact but they, too, destroyed the translator-communicators that had been sent to them.

Plainly the Wem were a proud species who would not accept the kind of help that the off-worlders were so anxious to give them.

Rather than risk the situation degenerating further, the commanding officer of the orbiting Monitor preliminary contact ship obeyed the first order by ceasing to send down any more communication devices, and ignored the second, safe in the knowledge that the planet-bound Wem could do nothing against the orbiting vessel which continued its close observation of the surface. Shortly afterwards, Wemar had been declared a disaster area, and Rhabwar had been sent to assess the medical problems and, if possible, suggest a solution.

It had never been the Federation’s policy to do nothing while another intelligent species tried to commit suicide.

Rhabwar emerged from hyperspace some ten planetary diameters from Wemar. From that distance it appeared to be like any other normal, life-bearing world, with wisps and blankets of cloud and the fat, white spirals of cyclonic weather systems softening and breaking up its continental outlines and polar ice fields. It was only when they had closed to within one diameter that the abnormal details became plain.

In spite of the generous scattering of rain-bearing clouds, it was only in a narrow band around the equator that the surface vegetation showed any traces of normal growth. Above and below the green belt and into the north and south temperate zones the coloration became increasingly tinged with yellow and brown until it merged into the tundra fringing the polar ice-fields. There were no large tracts of desert visible on those areas, it was simply that the once-thick forests and rolling grasslands of the past had withered and died or burned in what must have been great country-sized conflagrations due to naturally occurring lightning strikes, and the new growth was still fighting its way through the ashes of the old.

They were still watching but not enjoying the view when the casualty deck’s communicator lit with the image of the Captain.

“Doctor Prilicla,” said Fletcher, “we have a signal from Captain Williamson on Tremaar. He says that it is operationally unnecessary for Rhabwar to dock with his ship, but he would like to speak with you at once.”

The commanding officer of a Monitor Corps survey and preliminary contact vessel would hold a lot more rank than the Captain of an ambulance ship, Gurronsevas thought, and clearly this one intended to use it.

“Senior Physician Prilicla,” Williamson said without preamble, “I have no wish to give personal offense, but I am not pleased to see you here. The reason is that I am not happy with a mission philosophy based on near desperation and the assumption that if your presence here does not do any harm then it might do some good. From your briefing you already know that the situation here has gone sour and there are no signs of it improving. We are maintaining constant visual and surface sensor surveillance, but we have no direct communication with anyone on the surface. There is one small group of Wem who may be less proud and stubborn, or simply more intelligent than the others, who gave the impression that a few of their number thought they might be able to benefit from our offers of help. But they, too, stopped speaking to us and smashed our translators. Personally, I believe there is still a possibility that, provided we do nothing further to offend them, this group might resume contact and, if it is handled carefully, enable us to reopen communications with the other, less amenable groups who in time will accept the large-scale disaster relief they need so badly.”

Williamson took a deep breath and went on, “Regardless of your good intentions, Rhabwar blundering uninvited into this situation could end this tenuous future hope. And if you were to set down in an equatorial region, where the political power and the remains of their offensive technology are concentrated, it could also result in damage to your ship and casualties among your personnel. The efforts of a small medical team are not going to significantly affect the situation here, except possibly for the worse . . .”

While the other Captain was speaking, Gurronsevas studied its manner and minor changes of facial expression. It was an Earth-human who in many ways resembled Chief Psychologist O’Mara. The hairy crescents above the eyes and the head fur showing below the uniform cap were an identical shade of metallic grey, the eyes never looked away nor did they blink, and its words carried the self-assurance that went with the habit of command. In manner, however, Williamson was much more polite than O’Mara.

The preliminary briefing had suggested that the medical team could expect some arguments from the authorities on-site, Gurronsevas thought worriedly, but this sounded like a very serious difference of opinion indeed. He wondered what a shy and timid emotion-sensitive like Prilicla could do against such strong opposition.

“. . . Regrettably,” Williamson continued, “I cannot order you back to Sector General because, theoretically, you have operational authority at the scene of any disaster, and this could quickly become a disaster on the largest scale. But the Wem are a proud race with a degenerating culture which, as often happens in situations like this, still retains much of its weapons technology. We do not want to risk another Cromsaggar Incident here. For the safety of your crew and to avoid the physical and non-physical trauma that a failure with casualties would bring to any empathic entity who was responsible, I would strongly advise you to return to Sector General without delay.

“Please give my advice serious consideration, Senior Physician Prilicla,” it ended, “and let me know your intentions as soon as possible.”

Prilicla was maintaining a stable hover in front of the communicator’s vision pick-up and giving no indication of being intimidated, Gurronsevas saw, or perhaps it had only one form of response to another thinking being regardless of the other’s high rank or bad manners. It said, “Captain, I am grateful for your concern over the safety of my crew, and for your understanding of the emotional distress I personally would suffer in the event of them sustaining injuries. Knowing this, you must also know that I belong to the most physically fragile, timid and abjectly cowardly species in the Federation, the members of which will go to great extremes to avoid physical pain or emotional discomfort for ourselves or those around us which, for an empath, is the same thing. Friend Williamson, it is a law of nature, an evolutionary imperative, that I take no unnecessary risks.”

Williamson gave an impatient shake of its head and said, “You are the senior medical officer on Rhabwar, the ambulance ship that has more high-risk rescue missions to its credit than any other vessel in the Monitor Corps. You may argue that at the time those risks were necessary and unavoidable, even by a being to whom cowardice is a way of life. But with respect, Senior Physician, the risks you would take on Wemar are unnecessary, avoidable and stupid.”

Prilicla showed no physical reaction to the other’s harsh words and, Gurronsevas realized suddenly, the reason must be that Tremaar was orbiting many thousands of miles away and far too distant for even an empath of Prilicla’s hyper-sensitivity to detect Williamson’s emotional radiation. Gently, it said, “My immediate intention is to assess for myself the situation in the north temperate zone, where the technology level and living conditions are primitive and, hopefully, the Wem minds are more flexible, before deciding whether or not to land and/or subsequently abort the mission.”

Captain Williamson exhaled audibly but did not speak.

“If or when we land,” Prilicla went on, “I would be grateful if you would maintain orbital surveillance of the area so as to warn us of any hostile action that the Equatorials might be mounting against us. Rhabwar’s meteor shield will protect the ship against anything the Wem can throw at us, but I have no intention of starting a war, even a defensive war, and will lift off and go elsewhere before that can happen. I would also be pleased to have any new information not contained in our preliminary briefing. I would appreciate having that information as soon as is convenient.

“Our primary interest is in areas where there is little or no weapons technology,” Prilicla continued, “and subsistence-level conditions with, if possible, a higher than average infant population. We are assuming that Wem parents resemble other civilized beings in that they would be willing to subordinate their racial pride and anger at outside interference if by so doing they could alleviate the hunger of their children. And if the proper approach can be made and the parents can be influenced into accepting our help, it would be advisable to minimize their embarrassment by not being too obvious regarding the food supply operation.”

For a moment Williamson turned its head to give a quiet instruction to someone off-screen, then it returned its attention to Prilicla and said, “We both know that once you land in the disaster area, and in this case that means anywhere on this whole damn planet, you have the rank. Very well, your immediate requirement is for continuous intelligence updating, protective surveillance from orbit, and covert supply drops at night if or when necessary. You’ve got it. Anything else?”

“Thank you no, friend Williamson,” said Prilicla.

The other began shaking its head slowly from side to side, then it said, “I was told that trying to make you change your mind would be like fighting cobwebs—a maximum expenditure of energy with minimum results. I have said all that I can to dissuade you. It was good advice, Senior Physician, even though I cannot force you to take it, but . . .be very careful down there, friend.”

Before Prilicla could reply, Williamson’s face disappeared to be replaced by that of Captain Fletcher, who said briskly, “Tremaar is already sending the update you requested. Their communications officer tells me that it includes some nice close-ups of adult and young Wem, the disposition of their defenses and some ideas about their social structure and behavior, which are mostly guesswork, but that last bit is unofficial. I’ll run the new material on your repeater screen as soon as we have it all. Meanwhile, Rhabwar is closing Wemar under cruising thrust and we are estimating low-orbit insertion in thirty-two hours and two minutes.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” the empath replied. “That will give us plenty of time to review the new information before landing.”

“Or time to change our minds about landing,” said Naydrad.

Murchison laughed quietly and said, “I don’t think so, that would be too sensible.”

A few minutes later the main screen began displaying the new material and, during the discussion that followed, Gurronsevas quickly discovered what it was like to be an unseen observer.

Surprisingly it was the non-medic Fletcher who began by saying that, with all due respect, his opposite number on Tremaar had been deliberately exaggerating the threat posed by the Wem heavy weaponry which, they had seen for themselves, was very old, badly corroded, and showed no signs of recent use, while the emplacements and connecting system of defensive pits were overgrown or reduced by natural erosion. The long-range weapons were of the chemically-powered type firing solid or exploding projectiles, but in Fletcher’s opinion they would be a greater danger to the users than their targets. Because the vision pickups sent down could not be directed inside a Wem dwelling or sub-surface arsenal without them being immediately seen and destroyed, it was possible that the Wem had concealed stocks of portable weapons but this, too, was unlikely.

“My reason for believing this,” Fletcher went on, “is based on our covert observations of the young Wem. Like most youngsters, they play at being hunters or warriors, using the toy spears or bows and arrows that are the harmless, scaled-down weapons of the adults. But not one of them has been seen pointing a pretend weapon and shouting ‘Bang!’ which, incidentally, seems to be the same word-sound in every species’ language, so it is unlikely that chemically powered weapons are used widely by their parents. As well, the population of the Wem fortified villages we’ve seen have shrunk so much that their defenses can no longer be fully manned. My feeling is that the early fortifications were built to repel raiders in search of meat. But now the surviving Wem are so widely scattered, and their numbers and those of their food animals so reduced, they are no longer capable of mounting a long-range raid because they would probably starve before reaching the target village.

“I think Captain Williamson was trying to scare us off before we could take a close look at the situation,” Fletcher ended. “It is my feeling that the Wem do not pose a physical threat. What I don’t understand is why, even though these people are facing imminent starvation, they are so choosy about their food.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “Your words leave us feeling greatly reassured. And we are asking ourselves the same question. Friend Danalta, I feel you wanting to speak.”

The green, organic mound that was currently the shape-changer quivered, added a loose, shapeless mouth to its single eye and ear, and said, “I have observed that hunger can make a civilized people behave in a most uncivilized fashion, especially when their dietary spectrum is limited. Fortunately, my own species was able to survive and evolve intelligence by eating anything and everything that wasn’t trying to eat us. But can we decide whether this is a matter of tradition, some form of early religious conditioning? Or is it due to a basic physiological need?”

“No Wem burial places have been discovered,” said Fletcher. “The outward sign of remembering or honoring the dead can indicate a belief in the afterlife. We can’t be certain, naturally, but our present information suggests that the Wem are not religious.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Murchison. It moved to the console, tapped for rECALL and hOLD when the screen displayed the first of many close-up pictures of the natives, and went on, “The Wem life-form belongs to physiological classification DHCG. For the non-medics among us, that is a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species with an adult body mass just under three times that of an Earth-human and, since Wemar’s surface gravity is one point three eight standard Gs, a healthy specimen is proportionately well-muscled . . .”

If anything, Gurronsevas thought as the succession of still and moving images continued, it resembled a picture he had once seen of a rare Earth beast called a kangaroo. The differences were that the head was larger and fitted with a really ferocious set of teeth; each of the two short forelimbs terminated in six-fingered hands possessing two opposable thumbs, and the tail was more massive and tapered to a wide, flat, triangular tip which was composed of immobile osseous material enclosed by a thick, muscular sheath. The flattening at the end of the tail, Murchison explained, served a threefold purpose: as its principal natural weapon, as an emergency method of fast locomotion while hunting or being hunted, and as a means of transporting infant Wem who were too small to walk.

There was one charming picture of a pair of adults—Gurronsevas was still not sure which sex was which—dragging their tails and two of their happily squeaking offspring behind them, and a less charming sequence of them hunting. For this they began by adopting an awkward, almost ridiculous stance with their forelimbs tightly folded, their chins touching the ground, and their long legs spread so as to allow the tail to curve sharply downward and forward between the limbs so that the flat tip was at their center of balance. When the tail was straightened suddenly to full extension, it acted as a powerful third leg capable of hurling the Wem forward for a distance of five or six body lengths.

If the hunter did not land on top of its prey, kicking the creature senseless with the feet before disabling it with a deep bite through the cervical vertebrae and underlying nerve trunks, it pivoted rapidly on one leg so that the flattened edge of the tail struck its victim like a blunt, organic axe.

“. . . While the tail is highly flexible where downward and forward movement is concerned,” Murchison said, “it cannot be elevated above the horizontal line of the spinal column. The fine details will have to wait until we are able to make an internal scan, but you can see from the visible external structure of the dorsal and tail vertebrae and associated musculature that it’s impossible for the tail to be brought close to the back without major spinal dislocation. The back and upper flanks are, therefore, the Wem’s only body areas that are vulnerable to attack by natural enemies, who must also possess the element of surprise if they are not to become the victim.”

There was a brief sequence showing a quadruped, with fur so black that few physical details could be seen other than its long, sharp teeth and even longer claws, leaping onto the Wem from an overhanging branch. It dug its claws deeply into the victim’s cloaked back and tore at the side of its neck while the Wem used its tail to jump frantically about in an attempt to dislodge the creature so that its spear could be brought to bear. Either by accident or design, one of its near vertical jumps sent it crashing against the underside of another overhanging branch, crushing the predator’s body and causing a large quantity of its own blood and internal organs to be expelled through its mouth. Both bodies dropped to the ground where, Murchison said, they terminated a few minutes later.

Gurronsevas turned his eyes towards the direct vision port before the sight made him nauseated.

Murchison went on, “The black furry creature is one of, and probably the most dangerous of, the animals hunted for food, and plainly there is room for argument regarding who are the eaters and who the eaten. But enough of the bloody melodrama. It is shown to make us more aware and cautious of the creatures, both intelligent and non-intelligent, we will be meeting down there, and to make an important anatomical point. Confirmation will have to wait on an internal scan of the Wem stomach and digestive system but, based on our external visuals we can say . . .”

For a few minutes the pathologist’s language became so densely specialized that Gurronsevas could understand only the odd word. But its concluding summation, perhaps for his benefit, was clear and unambiguous.

“. . . So there can be no doubt that the Wem life-form evolved as, and still remains, an omnivore,” Murchison said. “There is no external evidence of it ever possessing the multiple stomach system characteristic of a ruminant herbivore, and I would say that its digestive system is unspecialized and not unlike our own. With the exception of Danalta’s, that is. Add the fact that the very young Wem have been seen to eat a combination of animal and vegetable matter, the proportion of animal tissue increasing with the approach of puberty. In a sapient species this means that the carnivorous eating habit is a matter of choice rather than physiological necessity. In their past there may have been environmental or sociological factors influencing them to make this choice but, whatever the reason, in the present situation it is the wrong one. Unless the Wem can be made to change their present eating habits, their food animals will be hunted to extinction while they themselves die of starvation because they insist on being hunters. As farmers they just might survive.”

Murchison paused, its features still and serious as it looked around at all of them, then it said grimly, “Somehow we must convince a planet full of meat-eaters to become vegetarians.”

A long silence followed its words. The pathologist did not move and neither did Danalta, but Prilicla was being shaken by the intensity of the others’ emotional radiation, and Naydrad’s silvery, expressive pelt was being stirred by sudden waves and eddies as if it, too, were being blown by an unfelt wind.

Loudly, it said, “Is that why Gurronsevas is here?”

CHAPTER 19

Rhabwar went sub-orbital and subsonic on its approach to the north temperate zone site where, according to Williamson, there was a Wem settlement that might not be as proud and hostile as the others. Gurronsevas was being given the opportunity to view directly a large tract of Wem landscape, not because Captain Fletcher thought that they would enjoy a slow, low-level pass over a planetary surface that was new to them, but because it was considered bad practice to drag a sonic shockwave over an area where one hoped to make a good impression on the natives.

The minor scars and blemishes concealed by orbital distance and overlying clouds, showed as major lesions at Rhabwar’s present altitude of five thousand feet. A procession of low, wooded mountains unrolled below them, their slopes and peaks softened by greenery streaked with yellow and brown, and great, flat tracts of mottled green and brown grasslands. On another world the color variation might have been due to seasonal changes, Gurronsevas thought, but Wemar had no axial tilt.

Once they overflew a long, narrow, blackened area that paralelled the line of the prevailing winds, where a lightning strike or a careless native had started a fire that had quickly become uncontrollable in the near-desiccated vegetation. Often they passed close to the ruins of Wem cities that rose into the sky like great, grey, dried-up sores. Their streets and buildings were overgrown by sickly yellow weeds, untended, undamaged, and populated only by ghosts. He was glad when the Captain’s voice interrupted his morbid imaginings.

“Control. We are estimating the Wem settlement in fifteen minutes, Doctor.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “Please maintain the present altitude and circle the site so as to accustom them to the sight of the ship. While you are doing that, drop a two-way communicator and translator unit beside the one they destroyed. Hopefully they will consider us forgiving and persistent rather than stupid and wasteful. Land while we still have full daylight, as close as you can without inconveniencing them.”

“Security, Doctor?”

“Deploy the meteorite shield to minimum distance,” Prilicla replied. “Set for repulsion only—no shocks—with a visible perimeter so that they won’t collide with it by accident. We will discuss individual security requirements before leaving the ship.”

The Wem settlement comprised a few wooden outbuildings and a cliff-face mine of unknown depth above the floor of a deep valley that ran north to south. So steep were the valley sides that the sun shone into it for only a few hours every day, but the vegetation growing on the lower slopes and bottomland looked as healthy as any they had seen at the equator. Several small areas, which looked like gardens rather than fields, were under cultivation. There was one large ground-level entrance to the mine and three smaller openings on the cliff face, but without information on the extent of the hidden tunnel network and chambers it was impossible to estimate the number of inhabitants.

Rhabwar was incapable of making a quiet approach and, even though the upper slopes of the valley were still in sunlight, it further advertised its presence by switching on all of its external lighting so that the entire hull and wide, delta wings illuminated the mine entrance like a dazzling white triangular sun. As yet the line of emblems decorating its wings—the Red Cross of Earth, Illensa’s occluded sun, the yellow leaf of Traltha, and the many other symbols representing the concept of assistance freely given throughout the Federation—meant nothing to the Wem; but hopefully that situation would soon change.

The flood of highly-amplified reassuring words pouring from the two-way communicators soft-landed before Rhabwar’s arrival, Gurronsevas thought, were not having any immediate effect.

“Do not feel disappointed, friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla. “I sense feelings of curiosity from many beings, and of caution from a few, but their emotional radiation is tenuous and close to the limits of my—”

“Control,” said Captain Fletcher, breaking in. “You are right, Doctor. Our sensors show a large number of Wem pushing into the mouth of the entrance tunnel. They are crowded together too tightly for an accurate estimate of sizes or numbers but we think there are at least one hundred of them. There are no indications of metal, so none of them are carrying tools, implements or weapons. Three of them, who must be the cautious ones you mentioned, are positioned just inside the tunnel mouth and appear to be restraining the others. Orders?”

“None, friend Fletcher,” said the empath. “For the present you may join us in waiting and listening.”

They stood or sat or in one case hovered around the direct-vision panel facing the mine entrance, which to their unaided eyes looked empty, and listened to the prerecorded message that was going out to the Wem. The words were simple, spoken slowly and clearly so that the echoes bouncing back from the cliff-face did not distort their meaning. They were also, Gurronsevas thought after the first interminable half-hour of listening to them, unutterably boring.

“. . . We are friends and will not harm you,” the communicator-translator was blaring. “Our vessel may seem strange and perhaps frightening to you, but our intentions are peaceful. We are here to help you, and especially to help your children, if we are able and if you allow it. We are not like the others who spoke to you. Ours is a small vessel which contains only enough food for its crew with a small reserve, so we will not risk offending you by offering food unless it is with your permission. We do not know if we can help you. But we would like to speak with you, and learn from you, so that we will know whether or not we can help.

“We are friends and will not harm you . . .”

“Senior Physician, while we are waiting I have a question,” said Gurronsevas suddenly, in an attempt to relieve both his boredom and his intense curiosity since the original remark had been made. “Earlier it was suggested that I had been appointed to the medical team as a nutritional advisor of some kind. If so, it was without my knowledge or consent. But if I am not a mere stowaway, hiding from the hospital authorities, and your earlier words to the Captain a lie aimed at concealing that fact, can you please tell me why O’Mara sent me here?”

Prilicla did not speak for a moment. Its fragile limbs and body were trembling, but Gurronsevas did not think that his own feelings of curiosity and irritation were strong or unpleasant enough to cause it. Perhaps the emotional radiation was coming from someone else or, as sometimes happened when the empath wished to avoid an emotional unpleasantness, it was preparing to tell a lie.

“Friend O’Mara radiates many and complex feelings,” it said finally. “Whenever you have been mentioned I have detected feelings of approval mixed with irritation, and a desire to help you. But I am not a telepath, so the feelings were clear but the thoughts were not. If friend O’Mara intended you to join the medical team . . .”

“. . . It must have been really desperate,” said Naydrad suddenly, its fur rippling with excitement. “Look, they’re coming out!”

The Wem were pouring out of the mine opening as if someone had turned on a faucet, running and tail-bouncing and making loud, untranslatable noises as they charged towards Rhabwar. Apart from the three adults who were standing to one side of the tunnel mouth, and who had presumably been responsible for holding the others back, they were all young Wem. Some of them were so small and awkward that often they fell over sideways while trying to jump with their tails. But the falls did little to impede their progress and soon they had joined their friends who were shouting, running and tail-jumping in a continuous circle just beyond the meteor shield.

Murchison laughed suddenly. “I have the feeling,” it said, “that they should be waving bows and tomahawks at us.”

“My own feeling,” said Prilicla, “is that they are all curious and excited, and noisy as are most children in that emotional condition, and they are not a threat.”

“I’m sorry,” said Murchison. “That was a non-serious Earth historical reference, and not funny enough to be worth explaining. But the adults are moving closer now, two of them, anyway.”

They were moving slowly and more carefully than the young Wem, and except for one who was carrying a wooden staff, their hands were empty of weapons. Two of them were approaching in a slow succession of tail-jumps with short pauses between. The third one was moving even more slowly, on its hind limbs only and using the staff to help support its weight. Murchison spoke the thoughts that were already going through Gurronsevas’s mind.

“Physically they appear to be very weak,” said the pathologist, “and display extreme caution in their limb and tail movements. But I have the feeling this may be due to the frailty of age rather than illness. All three are females in a state of serious debilitation and . . .The one with the staff is heading for the communicator!”

“Your feeling is accurate, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, “but your unspoken concern regarding, I suspect, the possibility of the staff being used to damage the communicator is unwarranted. The aged Wem female is radiating curiosity and minor irritation rather than anger and an urge to destroy.”

“It would take more than a walking-stick,” the Captain’s voice broke in, “to damage that unit.”

“True, friend Fletcher,” said the empath. “But as soon as the Wem reaches it, cancel the broadcast and switch to two-way communication mode. I have a feeling that it wants to talk.”

“And how long has it been,” said Danalta, speaking for the first time, “since one of your feelings was wrong?”

Outside the ship the crowd of young Wem were growing tired but not quiet. Instead of running and tail-jumping they had stopped to collect in small groups around the meteor screen, pushing at the resilient, near-invisible barrier or leaning against it at forty-five degree angles and shouting excitedly to each other when they did not fall over. A few of the more daring ones ran and jumped against the shield, shouting in excitement when they were bounced back. The two adults had joined them and were talking quietly together, but there were too many louder conversations going on at once for the ship’s translator to separate them, and the third adult had stopped beside the communicator which immediately ceased broadcasting.

“The silence, at least, is welcome,” said the Wem without any sign of hesitation. It went on, “Do you think we are all deaf? Or of retarded intelligence since the same message was repeated over and over? Don’t you people know that shouting reassurances at us, loudly and continually, angers more than it reassures? From beings who must have come from the stars, I expected more intelligence. Can this stupid machine listen as well as shout? What do you want of us?”

“Sound level reduced by two-thirds,” said the Captain quietly. “Go ahead, Doctor.”

“Thank you,” said Prilicla. It drifted closer to the communicator and tapped the transmit stud before going on, “We are sorry that the device was too noisy and that it angered you. The offense was not intended and neither was there any implication that your hearing or intelligence is defective. It was simply that we wished to be heard over a wide area.

“We want to talk with you and your friends,” Prilicla continued, “and to learn from you and to help you in whatever way is possible. You are as strange to us as we will be to you when you see us. We will answer questions about ourselves and we would like to ask questions of you. Provided there are no personal or cultural reasons for not giving the information and you are willing to give the answer to a stranger, the first question is what is your name. My name is Prilicla and I am a healer.”

“That’s a ridiculous name,” said the Wem. “It sounds like a handful of pebbles being rattled together. I am Tawsar, the First Teacher. I leave healing and preservation to others. What is your second question?”

“Are the young Wem safe where they are,” asked Prilicla, “so far from the shelter of your mine? They are in no danger from us but, now that it will soon be dark, is there a risk to them from night predators?”

Gurronsevas’s first thought was that there were more important questions that Prilicla could have asked, but his second thought was that expressing an early concern for the safety of the young displayed consideration and friendliness that would reinforce its words of reassurance more than anything else it could have said.

“It is our practice,” Tawsar replied, “to allow the children to escape from the mine for a few hours every day when the sun will not blight their young skins or work changes in the offspring they may one day bear. It also releases the energy that would otherwise make them unruly and noisy in class and keep them and their teachers from going to sleep. In the mine they cannot run freely or tail-jump, which is an unnatural situation for the very young. But they are in no danger from predators because all such creatures, be they large and dangerous or tiny rodents, have long since been hunted to extinction in this area. Your ship has provided a new experience for them as well as an outlet for their surplus energy. How long will your ship remain here?”

A school, thought Gurronsevas, was the ideal place to find curious and flexible minds. He could sense the medical team’s growing excitement.

“As long as you allow us to stay,” said Prilicla quickly. “But we would like to meet you and your friends in person instead of speaking through this device. Is that possible?”

Tawsar was silent for a long moment, then it said, “We should not waste time talking to you. Our behavior will be publicly criticized. No matter, we are curious and too old to care. But you must leave before the return of our hunters. This you must promise me.”

“We promise it,” said Prilicla simply, and there was no doubt in the minds of the medical team that the promise would be kept. “But there may be a problem when we show ourselves to you. Physically we differ greatly from the Wem. The young, perhaps you yourself, might find us visually horrendous and repulsive.”

Tawsar made a sound that did not translate, then said, “We have not seen the creatures from the other starship, but they have given us word-pictures of themselves. They are strange, upright creatures without a balancing tail, some of them covered in fur and others with fur only on their heads. But they wanted to change our ways, so our hunters smashed their speaking devices before leaving. As for frightening the children, I doubt that you could appear more horrendous than the creatures with which their imaginations have already populated your ship.

“Upon consideration,” it went on before Prilicla could reply, “it would be better if you didn’t show yourselves now. The young are excited enough as it is, and if they were to see you we would have difficulty making them return to the dormitories, much less getting them to sleep. If you are to stay with us for a time, it would be more convenient for us and safer for you if we introduced you during class.”

“You do not understand, Tawsar,” said Prilicla carefully. “The beings who described themselves were Orligians and Earth-humans. We have five Earth-humans, they are the ones with head fur, on board, and four others who will appear even stranger to you. One is a Tralthan, a being with six legs and with a body mass at least three times greater than an adult Wem. Another is a Kelgian, who is half your size and weight, has twenty sets of walking limbs and is covered by silver, mobile fur. There is a shape-changer who can make itself appear as ferocious or friendly as the situation requires. And lastly there is a large, flying insect, myself. If the thought of meeting one of these beings distresses you, then that person will remain out of sight on the ship.”

“Your shape-changer is, is . . .” began Tawsar, then went on firmly, “It is a creature out of a story told to children, to very young children. Adults are not gullible enough to believe in such things.”

The empath, plainly hoping to minimize Tawsar’s future embarrassment, did not reply. And on the deck below the hovering Prilicla, Danalta writhed and flowed briefly into the shape of a scaled-down, aged Wem female and said quietly, “No comment.”

CHAPTER 20

Early on the following morning, when only the east-facing upper slopes of the valley were lit by the rising sun and the mine entrance was still in twilight, Tawsar presented itself beyond the shimmering curtain of the meteor shield. Several groups of twenty to thirty young Wem, each with an adult in charge, had already left the mine and were dispersing to their various places of work or learning on the valley floor and lower slopes.

It had been decided that the function of the Wem settlement fell somewhere between a teaching establishment and a safe refuge for children whose hunter parents were either absent for long periods or dead. The decision was provisional and, following the coming meeting with Tawsar, would no doubt be subject to major modification.

Remembering Tawsar’s slow and obviously painful progress down to the meteor shield, it came as no surprise to Gurronsevas when Prilicla ordered out the anti-gravity litter. The equipment carried by the medical team was light and portable enough to make the vehicle redundant, but it was obvious that it was hoping that Tawsar could be persuaded to ride in comfort instead of subjecting itself to the self-inflicted pain of walking, a suffering which the empath would not be anxious to share.

Prilicla was first to exit the lock, and hovered above them as Murchison, Naydrad, Danalta and Gurronsevas followed it down the telescoping ramp to the ground and through the meteor shield, which offered no resistance to objects moving away from the ship. Gurronsevas had not been invited to accompany the medical team, but neither had he been forbidden, and he needed exercise more vigorous than was possible within the confines of the casualty deck.

Tawsar stared at them one by one without speaking as they approached and gathered around it in a semicircle which, according to Prilicla’s reading of the Wem’s emotional radiation, was wide enough not to cause unease and reassuring in that it left open the other’s line of retreat to the mine. Prilicla’s iridescent wings beat slowly in a stable hover, Naydrad’s fur rippled like waves on a silver sea, Murchison smiled and Gurronsevas stood motionless. Danalta changed its shape in turn from that of a furless Kelgian to a not very complimentary copy of Pathologist Murchison before returning to a shapeless green lump topped by a single eye, ear and mouth. Finally Tawsar broke the silence.

“I see you and I still do not believe you exist,” it said, its eyes on Danalta. Then it looked up at Prilicla and went on, “I do not like insects, whether they crawl or fly, but, but you are beautiful!”

“Why thank you, friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla with a gentle shiver of pleasure. “You have reacted well to your first sight of off-worlders, and I have the feeling that you yourself are not afraid of us. But what of the other adults and the children?”

Tawsar made a short, untranslatable sound and said, “They were told about your strange and horrendous or puny and ridiculous appearance. They already know that your friends wanted to interfere with our customs and beliefs, and tried to tell us what we should eat, and what we should do about the Light That Rots All Things. They even asked to look inside our living bodies and do things that only a life-mate is allowed to do. Prilicla you, perhaps not you personally but your people who have come uninvited to our world, do not frighten us. They shock and repel and infuriate us. More than anything else we want them to go away quickly, but we know that it is not your wish deliberately to harm us.

“Having told you how we feel,” it added, “do you still wish to call me friend?”

“Yes,” said Prilicla. “But you need not call me friend until you yourself wish it.”

Tawsar made a wheezing sound and said, “I do not expect to live that long. But we have much to see and many questions and answers for each other. Would you like to begin with the valley or the mine?”

“The mine is closer,” said Prilicla, “and will involve less walking for you. And if you were to mount this litter, there would be no effort required at all.”

“It, it doesn’t rest on the ground,” said Tawsar in an uncertain voice. Plainly there was a battle going on in the Wem’s mind between the submission to a totally new and perhaps dangerous activity and the pain of its age-stiffened limbs. “Yet it feels solid enough and strongly supported . . .”

They had to wait for a few minutes while Tawsar talked itself into boarding the litter, then Naydrad angled the repulsion units to set the vehicle moving towards the mine entrance at the medical team’s walking pace.

“I—I’m flying!” said Tawsar.

At an altitude, Gurronsevas estimated, of a few inches.

On their headsets Fletcher was reporting continuously on its observations of the widely-scattered groups of young Wem in the valley. Under the direction of a single adult, several parties were tilling the soil and gathering what seemed to be wild-growing vegetation from the lower slopes. But there were three groups of the larger children whose activities gave cause for concern because there could be no doubt that they were practicing with slingshots, crossbows and weighted nets used in conjunction with spears. The spears were blunt, crudely formed from wood, with roughened hand-grips at the middle and blunt end so that they could be used either for throwing or as two-handed stabbing weapons, and they were slightly large for the hands and muscles of the users.

“They are not playing with wooden swords and spears as many children do,” the Captain insisted, “because neither they nor their instructor are treating the exercise as a game. It is much too serious. They are the oldest of the children and they might have real, metal-tipped weapons among the farming implements out there. At this range my sensors can’t tell the difference. But if anything goes sour with the Tawsar contact your retreat to the ship could be cut off.”

Prilicla did not reply until they were within a few minutes of reaching the mine entrance, and when it spoke Gurronsevas had the feeling that its words were aimed at reassuring the medical team as well as the Captain. It said, “The emotional radiation of the adults and children who surrounded us yesterday bore no trace of hostility, especially the concealed hostility of beings who are pretending to be friendly. Although they are decidedly not our friends, their feelings towards us are not antagonistic enough to make them want to commit acts of physical violence. Tawsar is controlling or at least trying to ignore its dislike for us, but it is feeling much more than a simple curiosity regarding strangers. I cannot be more precise, but I have the feeling that it wants something from us and, until we discover what it is, we are quite safe here.

“Besides,” the empath went on, “we have friends Danalta and Gurronsevas with us. Our shape-changer can take many forms that would discourage an attack by unruly children, and the Chief Dietitian has a near-impervious skin and the body mass and muscles to do the same.”

“Doctor Prilicla,” said Fletcher, “this is a first contact situation so far as the medical team is concerned. One of you could do or say something that could change Tawsar’s feelings about you, suddenly and drastically. So why not talk in the open where I can keep you under observation and pull you out with tractors if there is any trouble? I am worried about you going inside their mine.”

At that moment the party came to a halt outside the dark mouth of the entrance tunnel and the litter drifted gently to the ground. Tawsar looked up suddenly at Prilicla and said, “I am worried about you going into our mine.”

Danalta’s body twitched and it said, “In a steep valley like this one, echoes are not uncommon.”

Prilicla ignored it and asked, “Why, friend Tawsar?”

The Wem looked at each one of team in turn before returning its attention to the empath. It said, “I know nothing about you people, your life habits, your feelings about strange places or people, the food you eat, nothing. Suddenly I have realized that you might not want to visit our home. The connecting tunnels are narrow and low-ceilinged, and only our places of gathering are adequately lit, and then only for a limited period each day. Even among the Wem there are those who become distressed in enclosed spaces, or at the thought of the great weight of rock that is pressing down on them.

“But you in particular,” Tawsar went on, “are a free-flying creature of the air. I fear that your fragile body and wide-spreading wings are unsuited to crawling about inside a mountain.”

“I am grateful for your feeling of concern, friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla, “but it is unnecessary. All of us are used to working in a structure that is like a metal mountain, filled with tunnels of different sizes connecting its rooms. All are well-lit but, if yours are too dark for us, we carry our own sources of illumination. If anyone should feel distressed, it will be free to return to the outside. But I do not think that anyone will have such feelings . . .”

There was nobody better at reading feelings than Prilicla, Gurronsevas knew, but he was not as sure as the empath was about his own. He hated dark, cramped spaces but, after being named as one of the team’s protectors in case of trouble, he could not act like a coward by refusing to enter the mine before first finding out what it was like inside.

“. . . As for myself,” Prilicla went on, “I sleep in a coccoon-like room without light. My wings and over-long limbs fold so that, if you have no objections, I will be able to ride on the litter with you. How restricted is the space in your tunnels? Will they allow free passage for everyone here?”

“Yes,” said Tawsar. It looked at Gurronsevas and added, “Just barely.”

A few minutes later Naydrad guided the litter with Tawsar and Prilicla on board into the entrance, preceded by Danalta and followed by Naydrad and Murchison with Gurronsevas forming what the Captain so worryingly referred to as the rear guard and the pathologist as a mobile, organic thrombosis.

But the plug, he was pleased to discover, was a loose fit because the tunnel was wider, than he had expected and better lit so that he had no need of his image enhancer. Perhaps Wem vision was less sensitive than that of a Tralthan, for it had been apologizing in advance for the shortcomings of its technology. Prilicla and Tawsar were talking together quietly, but the constant pattering of Naydrad’s many feet kept him from hearing what they were saying, and the Captain was filling the gaps in their conversation by worrying aloud.

“. . . The deep sensor indications,” Fletcher was saying, “are of an exhausted and long-abandoned copper mine. It could be centuries old, judging by the condition of the tunnel support structure, but shows signs of recent repair. Many of the deeper galleries have been sealed off by rock-falls, and even if the Wem don’t mean you any harm, you can’t talk your way out of a collapsed tunnel. Please reconsider and ask Tawsar to do the talking outside.”

“No, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied on the ship frequency. “Tawsar wants to talk inside the mine. It has strong feelings of embarrassment which suggest that it prefers our conversation to be private. It is not feeling the anxiety characteristic of impending tunnel collapse.”

“Very well, Doctor,” said the Captain. “Are you having any difficulty with breathing? Is anyone aware of smells that might indicate the presence of flammable gas?”

“No, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “The air is cool and fresh.”

“You don’t surprise me,” said Fletcher. “Only the upper galleries are occupied and the Wem have drilled themselves a neat system of natural ventilation tunnels which require no power. They have a small electricity generator which produces enough current for lighting, powered by a subterranean river which exits at the base of the other side of the mountain. We have also detected a few hot spots that are probably cooking fires or ovens, and associated combustion byproducts, but the pollution level is not life-threatening. Be careful anyway.”

“Thank you, we will,” said Prilicla, and resumed its conversation with Tawsar.

They passed the openings into many side-tunnels and small, unlighted chambers, and in several places Gurronsevas’ head and flanks scraped against the tunnel walls and roof, but the air that blew gently past him was cool and fresh and polluted only slightly with an odor which Murchison identified as a combination of wood smoke with trace odors of the kind associated with food preparation. A few minutes later they moved past the entrance to a kitchen.

“Friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla, using voice amplification so that its words would carry back to him, “I feel your intense curiosity and I think I understand the reason for it, but at present it would be better for the team to stay together.”

As the odor grew fainter with distance, Gurronsevas used the olfactory sense that had been sharpened by a lifetime of experience in the culinary arts in an attempt to isolate and identify the constituents of a smell that was totally beyond his previous experience. Or was it?

Carried on a fine mist of water vapor containing trace quantities of dissolved salt there was the unmistakable odor of vegetation, several different varieties, that were being boiled or stewed together. One of them had a sharp, heavy smell that reminded him of the cooked somrath plant or the Earth cabbage leaf favored by some Kelgians, but the other odors were too bland for him to make off-world comparisons. These included a faint, hot smell of what was almost certainly coarse flour baking in an oven. But the most surprising part of this Wem olfactory cocktail was the things that were not in it.

Charitably, Gurronsevas reminded himself that there were several member species of the Federation who had developed high technology and an artistically enlightened culture while remaining in a culinary wilderness.

CHAPTER 21

A few minutes later the tunnel opened into a compartment whose wall-mounted lighting fixtures failed to illuminate the high and unsupported roof while showing the rock walls and sloping, uneven floor of a large, natural cavern. Plainly it had been utilized as an extension to the mine rather than a compartment hollowed out by Wem hands.

About two hundred yards ahead there was a wall, built from large, unfinished stones bound together by cement, sealing off the mouth of the cavern. The wall was pierced by ten large window openings, three of which still retained their glass while the others looked as if they had been boarded up for a very long time. Enough daylight came through the windows to bleach the artificial lighting to a dull, yellow glow and illuminate the rows of high, bench-like Wem tables that were separated by wide aisles into groups of twenty or more.

This was the communal dining area, Gurronsevas thought, then immediately corrected himself. Facing every rectangular group of tables there was a piece of equipment whose basic design, modified to suit the size and shape of its users, was common to virtually every intelligent species in the Federation—a blackboard and easel. Ranged against the cavern walls were side tables, some of them stacked with platters and eating utensils and others with books that looked as if they were disintegrating with age. Hanging from spikes driven into the rockface were a number of large, framed wall-charts which were cracked and faded almost to illegibility.

It was a school classroom as well as a dining area.

Fletcher was seeing everything that the team was seeing through their vision pick-ups, but the Captain kept talking about it anyway because the material was probably being recorded for onward transmission to Tremaar.

“. . . The furniture and equipment is old,” Fletcher was saying. “You can see the corrosion stains where the original metal legs were attached, and the replacement wooden structure is not all that recent, either. The wall-frame supports are solid with rust, as well. They must be short of glass, too, otherwise they would not have boarded up the window frames in an area where daylight is available for classroom work.

“I missed seeing that wall on the cliff face,” Fletcher continued, a hint of apology creeping into its tone, “because it is built from local, weathered stone that is difficult to see because it is recessed and shaded by a rock overhang. I would say that the purpose of the wall is to protect rather than confine the younger inhabitants, because the cavern mouth opens onto a sheer cliff some five hundred feet above the valley floor. But we have the wall clearly in sight now. If an emergency withdrawal becomes necessary, Danalta and Gurronsevas can easily break through the boarded-up window frames. Doctor Prilicla can fly down and the rest of you can escape using the—”

“Not on the anti-gravity litter!” Naydrad broke in, its fur spiking in agitation. “That is primarily a ground-effect vehicle. At anything over fifty feet altitude it balances like a drunken Crrelyin!”

“—Using the tractor-beam,” Fletcher continued, “The ship is close enough for it to reach you and lift you down one at a time.”

“Captain,” said Prilicla, “the possibility of a life-threatening emergency occurring is very small. The emotional radiation of Tawsar and the other Wem in the mine we have not yet met was not hostile, and they are the beings with authority in this establishment. Our friend is radiating a mixture of shame, embarrassment and intense curiosity. It wants something from us, possibly only information. But it does not, as your colorful but anatomically inexact Earth saying has it, want our guts for garters. Please return to translation mode or Tawsar will think we are talking about it.”

Prilicla and Tawsar resumed talking, with occasional interjections from the other team members, but their conversation was becoming too medical to hold Gurronsevas’s interest. He moved over to the windows to look down on Rhabwar shimmering inside the dome of its meteor shield, and beyond it to the valley floor and the scattered groups of young Wem who were working there. The most distant group had formed into a line and was beginning to walk back towards the mine.

The ship had not yet reported the incident. Lacking Gurronsevas’s greater elevation, the watch-keeping officer would not have seen them.

He bent an eye to look behind him where Prilicla and Murchison were demonstrating the uses of the litter’s handheld scanner on Naydrad and each other, but not on Danalta whose internal organs were voluntarily mobile and far too confusing for a simple first lesson in other-species anatomy. Surprisingly, for a being of its advanced age and the inflexible habits of thought which usually accompanied that condition, Tawsar was quick to grasp the idea of making a non-invasive and painless internal investigation of a living body. It stared entranced at the internal organs, the beating hearts, the lungs in their different respiration cycles and the complex skeletal structures of the Cinrusskin Senior Physician, the Earth-human Pathologist and the Kelgian Charge Nurse.

It was inevitable that Tawsar became curious and wanted to look into its own internal workings, which gave Prilicla the opening it needed to ask more personal medical questions.

“. . . If you look closely at the hip and knee, here and here,” the Senior Physician was saying, “you can see the layers of cartilage which separate the joints and which are supposed to form a thin, frictionless pad between them. In your case, however, the joint interfaces are no longer smooth. The bone structure has deteriorated and become uneven, and the movement of the limb, combined with the pressure of your body weight on surfaces which are no longer smooth, has torn and inflamed the cartilage and generally worsened the condition, making physical movement both restricted and painful . . .”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Tawsar.

“I will,” Prilicla replied gently. “But before I do that you must be told something that you do know, that your condition is due to the aging process that is common to all species. In time, in varying lengths of time, because our life-expectancies are not the same, all of the beings you see around you will age, our physical and sometimes mental capabilities will deteriorate until eventually we will die. None of us can reverse the natural aging process, but with the proper medication and treatment the symptoms can be reduced, or their onset delayed, and the physical discomfort removed.”

Tawsar did not respond for a moment, and Gurronsevas did not need to be an empath to feel the Wem’s disbelief, then it said, “Your medication would poison me, or give me some foul, off-world disease. My body must remain healthy and clean, despite its infirmities. No!”

“Friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla, “we would not even try to help if there was the slightest risk to yourself. You do not realize, because until now you had no way of knowing, that there are many similarities between the Wem and the off-worlders represented here. With minor differences in composition we breathe the same air and eat the same basic types of food . . .”

The Cinrusskin’s pipe-stem legs and slow-beating wings began quivering, but only for a moment. It did not stop talking.

“. . . Because of this, the ways that our bodies work, the processes of respiration, ingestion and waste elimination, procreation, and physical growth are all very similar. But there is one important and unique difference: we cannot catch a disease from you or from each other, or you from one of us. This is because the pathogens, the germs, which have evolved on one world are powerless to affect life-forms from another. After centuries of close and continuous contact on many worlds, this is a rule to which we have found no exception.”

Prilicla bypassed the translator again and said quickly, “There was a strong emotional reaction to the mention of food. I detected the same feelings of shame, curiosity and intense hunger. Why should a native of a famine-stricken world be ashamed of feeling hungry?”

Switching back to Tawsar it went on, “We cannot promise that you will be able to run and hop like a young Wem. If we are able to treat you, there will be a marked alleviation of your discomfort. If not, no change in your condition or additional pain will be apparent. Withdrawal of the specimens we need to ensure that our medication will not harm you is also painless.”

It was not just another therapeutic lie, Gurronsevas knew, because in this case the doctor was feeling everything that its patient felt. Judging from the faint tremor visible in Prilicla’s limbs, it was also feeling the patient coming to a difficult decision.

“I must be damaged in the head,” said Tawsar suddenly. “Very well, I agree. But don’t take too long about it or I may change my mind.”

The medical team gathered around the Wem who was still lying on the litter. Prilicla said, “Thank you, friend Tawsar, we will not waste time.” Murchison said, “The scanner is on record,” and after that the conversation became densely technical. Gurronsevas turned his back on the massively boring medical proceedings and returned to the windows.

The four most distant working or teaching parties had merged on their way back to the mine and presumably their midday meal, and the closer groups would join them so that they would all arrive at the same time. They were maintaining the slow walking pace of their teachers rather than running and hopping ahead, and he estimated their arrival time at just under an hour. Rhabwar would have them in sight very soon. He wondered whether their lack of haste was due to teacher discipline or disinterest in the meal awaiting them. He was increasingly curious about the kitchen smells that were drifting in from the entry tunnel.

He became suddenly aware that Prilicla was talking about him.

“. . . It moving away from us means no disrespect,” the empath was saying. “Because of its specialty Gurronsevas is more curious about what you put into your body than in what we are taking out and, whenever you can spare the time, it would be much more interested in investigating the Wem cooking arrangements than in—”

“It is welcome to look at our kitchen now,” Tawsar broke in. “The First Cook knows of the visit by off-worlders and will be pleased to see Gurronsevas. Does it require guidance?”

“Thank you, no,” said Gurronsevas. Silently, he added, “I can follow my nose.”

“I shall join you in the kitchen,” said Tawsar, “as soon as this strange activity is over.”

He was already moving towards the exit tunnel when Prilicla switched from the translator channels to say, “Friend Gurronsevas, I was talking about you simply to give Tawsar something other than the examination to think about. But suddenly there was an emotional response of the type I detected earlier. Feelings of hunger, curiosity and intense shame or embarrassment, but much more intense. Be very careful, and observant, because I have the feeling that you could discover something important to us. Maintain voice contact at all times and please take care.”

“I will be careful, Doctor,” said Gurronsevas impatiently as he continued his erratic journey between the desks. Who better than himself knew how many accidents could occur in a kitchen, and how to avoid them.

Prilicla resumed its attempts to take Tawsar’s mind off what Murchison and Naydrad were doing to it. Their voices sounded clearly in his earpiece.

“For the best results,” the empath was saying, “we should also investigate a healthy and active young Wem, ideally one close to maturity. It would be for purposes of comparison only, not for treatment. Would this be possible?”

“Anything is possible,” Tawsar replied. “Children are prone to take risks, for a dare or out of curiosity or to prove themselves better than other children. Maybe that is the reason I am subjecting myself to this experience, I was too stupid to realize that I have long since entered my second childhood.”

“No, friend Tawsar,” said Prilicla firmly. “There is a young and adaptable mind inside your aging body, but it is not a stupid one. There can be few others of your kind who could have faced a group of off-worlders, beings who must appear completely alien and visually horrendous to you, and help us with our investigation as you have been doing. That was and is a very brave act. But were you simply curious about us or were there other reasons for inviting us here?”

There was a long pause, then Tawsar said, “I am not a unique person. There are others here who are equally brave or stupid. Most of them are willing to meet and make whatever use of you that they can, and a few others, the majority of the absent hunters, refuse to have any part of you. As First Teacher it was my responsibility for inviting you into the mine. I was surprised that you did not need more coaxing, so perhaps you, too, are brave or stupid. And placing me under an obligation by promising to relieve the pain in my joints was unfair because I cannot repay . . .”

“Friend Tawsar,” Prilicla broke in, “there is nothing to repay. But if the balancing of obligations are important to your people, you have allowed us to satisfy our medical curiosity regarding the Wem, and this would repay the debt many times over. As for your stiffening joints, the pain symptoms can be relieved easily although a cure that would allow a return to full mobility might be more difficult because the condition is advanced in your case. We might have to remove the damaged joints in their entirety and fit replacements made from metal or hardened plastic.”

“No!”

The single word sounded so angry that it must have been accompanied by strong emotional radiation, and Gurronsevas was glad that he was not seeing Prilicla’s reaction. He had moved along the tunnel and was within a few paces of the kitchen entrance by the time the empath found its voice again.

“There is nothing to fear, friend Tawsar,” said the empath. “Joint replacements are done routinely, thousands every day on some worlds, and in the majority of cases the replacement is more efficient than the original. There is no pain. The operation is performed while the subject is unconscious and . . .”

“No,” Tawsar broke in again, less vehemently. “That must not be done. It would render parts of my body inedible.”

Gurronsevas was moving slowly into what appeared to be a service compartment adjoining the kitchen proper, which was hidden by two swinging doors that were impervious to sight but not smell. He could see long benches stacked with trays, neatly-racked eating utensils and shelves containing cooking-pots, dishes of various sizes, and cups, the majority of which were cracked or missing their handles. But as the implications of what Tawsar had said began to sink in, he came to a sudden halt.

He could only imagine how the medical team and the listening Fletcher on Rhabwar were reacting; like himself they must have been shocked speechless. It was the pathologist who found its voice first.

“W-We, that is, all of the intelligent species we know, bury their dead, or burn them, or dispose of them in other ways. But they do not use them as food.”

“That is very stupid of you,” Tawsar replied, “to waste an important natural resource like that. On Wemar we cannot afford such criminal wastage. We honor and remember our dead if their lives and deeds warrant it, but even so, a person’s past life has little effect on his or her taste provided they remain healthy. We would not, of course, eat someone who was too long dead, or who had died from a disease, or whose body contained harmful substances like metal or plastic joints. If we are sure the meat will not harm us, we will eat anything. Because of my advanced age, I myself will probably be tough and stringy, but nutritious nevertheless.

“The tastiest pieces,” the Wem went on, “come from the young or the newly-mature adults who die by accident or while hunting . . .”

The double doors into the main kitchen swung open suddenly to reveal the figure of a Wem wreathed in steam, and two others working some distance behind it. All three wore loosely-tied aprons of a fabric that had been washed too often for it to have retained its original color. The one nearest the door was the first to speak.

“Obviously you are one of the off-worlders,” it said politely. “My name is Remrath. Please come in.”

For a moment it seemed that Gurronsevas’s six, massive feet were rooted to the stone floor, because he was remembering Tawsar’s earliest words to him.

The First Cook will be pleased to see you.

CHAPTER 22

I’ve been monitoring your conversation, Doctor,” said Fletcher on the ship frequency, “and I do not like what I’m hearing. About seventy young Wem and four instructors have come into sight heading for the mine entrance, and at the present rate of progress they should be there in forty-plus minutes. The other working parties have downed tools and are moving to join them, probably for lunch. Judging by what I’ve just heard, your people probably are lunch. I strongly advise you to break off contact and return to the ship at once.”

“A moment, Captain,” said Prilicla. “Friend Murchison, how long do you need to finish here?”

“No more than fifteen minutes,” the pathologist replied. “The patient is being very cooperative and I don’t feel like stopping—”

“And I share your feelings,” the empath broke in. “Captain, we will complete our investigation, excuse ourselves politely and then take your advice. The revelation that the Wem are cannibals is disturbing. But please do not concern yourself; neither Tawsar nor any of the other Wem within my emotive range are radiating feelings of hostility. In fact, the opposite holds true because I feel Tawsar beginning to like us.”

“Doctor,” said the Captain, “when I am very hungry, as these people are all the time, I like thinking about my lunch very much. But I do not have feelings of hostility towards it.”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla began, “you are oversimplifying . . .”

Gurronsevas had to switch to the Wem translation channel at that point because, while he was capable of looking in four directions at once, he could conduct only one conversation at a time. It appeared that there was no immediate danger from the returning work parties, and certainly not from the aged Wem left in the mine, so that he, too, had a chance to satisfy his own professional curiosity while Murchison completed its medical investigation. Besides, while he had been listening to Prilicla and Fletcher, the Wem standing before him had been speaking, and common politeness demanded that he reply.

“My apologies,” he said, indicating his translator pack and telling a small diplomatic lie. “This device was not tuned to you. I heard but did not understand your earlier words. Would you oblige me by repeating them?”

“They were not of great importance,” the Wem replied. “Merely an observation that I have often wished that I had four hands. They would be especially useful in this place. I am the healer and chief cook here.”

“I occupy a similar position in a somewhat larger establishment. But there the functions of healing and food preparation are separate, and performed by different people. How do I address you, as doctor or . . . ?”

“My full title is verbally cumbersome and unnecessary,” the Wem broke in. “It is used only during the Coming of Age ceremonies and by pupils who have misbehaved and are hoping, vainly, to avoid just chastisement. Call me Remrath.”

“I am Gurronsevas,” he replied, and added, “I am only a cook.”

As the Galactic Federation’s foremost exponent of the highly-specialized art of multi-species food preparation, Gurronsevas thought, I do not believe I said that.

“Compared with the high culinary standards said to have been achieved by our own people in the good old days,” said Remrath in a voice in which anger and apology were mixed, “that is, in the centuries before the sun itself turned against us, my kitchen is primitive. To you it must appear no more than a cooking-place for savages. But if you are interested you are welcome to look around.”

His reply was silenced by the voice of Fletcher speaking directly to him on the ship frequency. “Chief Dietitian, you are not trained in First Contact procedures. So far you have not said anything wrong, but please listen carefully. Do not react adversely to anything you may see or hear, no matter how repugnant it may seem to you. Try to show an interest in their equipment and processes, no matter how primitive they seem, and praise rather than criticize. Try to be agreeable, and diplomatic.”

Gurronsevas did not reply. The interval between Ramrath’s invitation and his answer had already stretched longer than politeness allowed.

“I am most interested,” said Gurronsevas, truthfully, “and will want to ask many and possibly irritating questions. But the sounds of activity I hear, and the complex odors of food well-advanced in preparation and perhaps ready for serving, lead me to think that you are simply asking out of politeness. From long personal experience I know that, at a time like this, visitors are not welcome in the kitchen.”

“That is true,” said Remrath, backing through the swinging doors and holding one open while it used the other hand to beckon Gurronsevas to follow it inside. He could see that its legs and tail were too stiff in their movements to enable it to turn inside the wide entrance. It went on, “But I can see that in enclosed spaces you are more agile than I am in spite of your enormous body, and you should know enough not to get in the way at the wrong times. As you have already guessed, very soon we shall be serving the main meal of the day. Perhaps I want you to see us working under pressure when we are at our best . . .” It made a short, untranslatable sound “. . .or our worst.”

He found himself in another cavern that was a continuation of the one he had just left. Facing him was a large, vertical wall of small, irregular stone blocks built around four open ovens that were burning wood or a similar form of dense, combustible vegetation. There must have been natural ventilation behind the wall because there was no smoke in the kitchen and the steam from the cooking pots that had been moved from the ovens to a long, central table, was being drawn in that direction as well. To the right of the table, which ran from the oven area almost to within a few yards of the entrance, the upper two-thirds of the rock wall was concealed by open cabinets and shelves containing cooking utensils, platters and small drinking vessels, the majority of which had been made by people whose craft had not been pottery. Although crudely made and cracked or with drinking handles missing, he noted with approval, they all appeared to be scrupulously clean.

Below the shelving there was a long trough that was supported on heavy trestles and lined with some form of ceramic filled with continually running water. A few cups and platters were visible under the surface. The wide inlet pipe at one end had no tap, so he guessed that it was fed by a natural spring rather than a storage tank, and at the other end a system of paddle-wheels fed a small generator which was, presumably, responsible for the overhead lighting.

Against the opposite wall were more shelves and open cabinets, wider spaced and more crudely built, containing what Gurronsevas guessed were the stores of Wem-edible vegetation and fuel for the ovens. Neither were in plentiful supply.

Gurronsevas followed Remrath around the kitchen, content to allow the Wem cook-healer to do all the talking, especially as the purpose of the very basic equipment was already clear and he had no need to ask questions. He was silent even when Remrath paused before a long, low cabinet positioned below the trough of running water beside the paddle-wheels and splashed by them.

There was a wide flange around the outward-facing edges of the cabinet which prevented water from seeping into its double doors, which hung open to reveal an empty interior. A simple but effective method of cooling by evaporation, he thought. Nowhere else was there anything that resembled a cold storage facility that would have indicated the presence of fresh meat.

In the light of his knowledge that the Wem were cannibals, Gurronsevas did not know whether to feel relieved or worried.

The tour of the kitchen ended with a return to the oven area where the contents of several cooking pots were simmering gently and others were on the side table, covered by thick cloths to keep them warm. Remrath said suddenly, “You have said very little, Gurronsevas, and asked no questions. Is the sight of our primitive methods of food preparation abhorrent to you?”

“To the contrary, Remrath,” he replied firmly. “In essence, kitchens have been very much the same on every world I’ve visited, but it is the small differences that I find of greatest interest. I have many questions for you . . .” He reached for a large wooden spoon that lay beside a simmering pot that had not yet been covered. “. . .and the first one is, may I be permitted to taste this? Please excuse me for a moment. My colleagues are talking to me.”

It would have been truer to say, Gurronsevas thought angrily, that they were talking about him.

“. . . Whether through ignorance or stupidity or both!” Captain Fletcher was saying. “Doctor Prilicla, talk to it! Make it see sense, dammit. You don’t land on a strange planet and start sampling the local fast food outlet—”

“Friend Gurronsevas,” Prilicla broke in. “Is this true? Are you about to eat Wem food?”

“No, Doctor,” he replied, bypassing the translator. “I am about to taste the smallest possible portion of a Wem dish. With respect, I would remind everyone that I have a well-educated palate combined with a highly developed sense of smell, and that I would be immediately aware of it if any dish is likely to prove harmful. Since I do not intend to swallow, there is no risk of ingesting possibly toxic material. As well, in consistency the dish is something between a thin vegetable stew and a thick soup which has been boiling in a covered container for more than an hour. I am grateful for your concern, Doctor, but it is not in my nature to take stupid risks.” There was a moment’s silence, then Prilicla said, “Very well, friend Gurronsevas, but if you should inadvertently swallow something, especially if it has any unusual or unpleasant effects, return to the ship at once. Be very careful.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Gurronsevas, “I most surely will.” He was about to resume speaking to Remrath when the Cinrusskin went on quickly, “You may have been too busy to listen to our conversation with Tawsar, or fully understand what you heard. The current position is that, with Tawsar’s willing cooperation, we have obtained all the physiological data that we need at present and it will require further study on Rhabwar to help us decide what else we need. The information on the Wem social structure is meager, however, and I feel a strong reluctance from Tawsar to speak about the subject, so that further conversation is becoming increasingly difficult.

“This seems like the right time for us to break off contact without the risk of giving offense,” it continued. “The imminent arrival of the working parties for their midday meal allows us to say, truthfully where everyone but Danalta is concerned, that we must return to the ship for the same purpose. Please complete your food-tasting as quickly as possible, apologize to the kitchen staff and say that you must return with us. They will assume that you, too, are due a meal. Join us as we pass the kitchen entrance in a few minutes time.”

Gurronsevas was holding the long spoon a few inches above the simmering contents of the pot. As Remrath watched and listened to his untranslated words to Prilicla, he knew that it must be feeling irritated at being excluded from the conversation. Had their positions been reversed, Gurronsevas would certainly have been angry, but suddenly he found that he could not speak to either of them.

“Your emotional radiation is difficult to resolve at this range,” said Prilicla, “especially with the kitchen staff adding their own emotions. Is there a problem, friend Gurronsevas?”

“No, Doctor,” he replied, “not if . . .How sure are you that the Wem mean us no harm?”

“I am as sure as an empath can be about the feelings of others,” Prilicla replied. “The kitchen staff are radiating curiosity and caution normal to the situation, but no hostility. Not being a telepath I cannot tell what they are actually thinking, and because of this there is a small element of doubt. Why do you ask?”

Gurronsevas was still trying to find the right words for his reply when Prilicla spoke again.

It said, “Is it because you are radiating an intense curiosity, presumably a professional curiosity, considering your present surroundings, and do not wish to leave until it is satisfied? Or is it that you feel more comfortable in a kitchen among other-species cooks than with the medics on the casualty deck of an ambulance ship?”

“Are you sure you are not a telepath?” asked Gurronsevas.

“I am sorry, friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla, “I had no wish to embarrass you because your embarrassment affects me. You may remain in the kitchen, but Doctor Danalta will stay with you as a protector. It is not capable of hurting any other intelligent being, but friend Danalta can assume some truly fearsome shapes if attacked. Should your situation there become dangerous, make your way quickly to the wooden outer wall and onto the lip of the cavern mouth, where friend Fletcher will lift you to safety with a tractor-beam.

“While you are satisfying your culinary curiosity,” it went on, “do you think you could widen the conversation to include general questions on the Wem social and cultural background, both past and present if possible? Do not be too obvious about it, and move away from subjects that appear to be sensitive. It may be that you will have more success with Remrath than we’ve had with Tawsar.

“Do not waste time replying,” it ended. “I can feel Remrath’s impatience growing very rapidly.”

“Sorry for the interruption, Remrath,” he said, doing as he had been told. “My friends, all but the one called Danalta, need to return to the ship for their own meal and this, your own eating period, seems like an opportune time. You will find Danalta an interesting being who is able to change shape at will. It can go without food for long periods, even longer than I myself can do. It is much smaller than I, a healer but not a cook, and with your permission I would like it to observe the workings of your kitchen.”

Remrath, Gurronsevas suspected, knew as well as he did that there was another reason for Danalta’s presence. The concept of there being safety in numbers was one shared by every thinking race.

“Your friend is welcome so long as it doesn’t obstruct us,” said Remrath, then pointed a bony digit at the spoon Gurronsevas was still holding above the pot. “Are you going to do something with that?”

Ignoring the sarcasm, Gurronsevas dipped the spoon into the greenish-brown, bubbling mass, stirred it briefly to feel the consistency, then raised a spoonful to his breathing orifice until he judged the temperature to be cool enough not to blister his mouth before touching it to the taste pad covering the inside of his upper lip.

“Well?” Remrath asked sharply.

Gurronsevas thought that he could detect the presence of three different forms of vegetation, but they had been so thoroughly mixed and overcooked that he could not separate the individual tastes, much less relate them to foods already known to him. No condiments, sauces, mineral or chemical flavorings were present, and not even a trace of the salt which must have been available from Wemar’s seas. Plainly the food was being prepared too far in advance and the subsequent overcooking had destroyed any complementary or contrasting taste possessed by the original constituents.

“A little bland,” said Gurronsevas.

Remrath made an untranslatable sound and said, “You are being much too diplomatic, off-worlder. You have tasted our staple dish, a meat and vegetable stew without the meat, and by the time it reaches table it will be scarcely warm. Bland is a polite description for this unappetizing mess, but it is not the word we or our pupils would use.”

“It needs something,” Gurronsevas agreed. Deliberately, he directed all four of his eyes towards the empty cold cabinet he had noticed earlier and went on, “Doubtless the meat would improve the taste, but you do not appear to have any. Is meat a part of their normal diet?”

In his head-set Prilicla said warningly, “You are in a very sensitive area, friend Gurronsevas. Remrath’s emotional radiation is disturbed and angry. Tread gently.”

That was a ridiculous thing to ask a physically massive Tralthan to do. Even though he knew what the empath meant, he was in the kitchen and the Wem must surely expect him to ask questions about food.

“No,” said Remrath sharply. When Gurronsevas had decided that he must have given offense and it was not going to speak further, it proved him wrong by saying, “Only adults are entitled to eat meat, if and when it is available. It is forbidden to the young, but that rule is relaxed when, as is the case here, many of them are nearing maturity. The pupils who are old enough are occasionally given it in small quantities to add taste to the vegetable dishes, as a preparation for and a promise of their approaching maturity and the status they can expect as brave hunters and providers for their people.

“Our hunting party is due to return soon,” Remrath ended in a quiet voice that sounded angry despite the emotion-straining process of translation. “But in recent years they have had limited success, and they will not share their meat and their mature strength with children, so they keep it all for themselves”

Plainly some kind of verbal response was needed, Gurronsevas thought worriedly, preferably a sympathetic or encouraging or innocuous one that would not increase the Wem’s anger. Not knowing what to say, he tried to play safe by making a harmless and obvious statement of fact.

“You are mature,” he said.

If anything Remrath became even angrier. So loudly that the two cooks at the other end of the kitchen looked up from their work, it said, “I am very mature, stranger. Too mature to take part in a hunt, or to be given the smallest share of the kill. Too mature to have my past hunts remembered with gratitude or my feelings considered. Occasionally, out of kindness or sentiment, a young and newly-mature hunter will throw me a scrap or two of meat, but those we use to add a little taste to the meals of the older children. Otherwise we eat what everyone else eats in this place—a tasteless, lukewarm vegetable mush!”

In his time Gurronsevas had heard and dealt with many complaints about food, although rarely when it had been prepared by himself, and felt able to speak without risk of giving offense.

He took a deep breath and said carefully, “I have met or know of many different kinds of creatures, intelligent beings like yourselves who have developed civilizations more advanced even than that of the Wem of many centuries past, and who eat nothing but vegetation from the time they are weaned from their mothers’ milk until they die. Their meals are served hot, as are yours, or uncooked and served in a variety of different—”

“Never!” Remrath burst out. “I can believe that they eat vegetable stew until they die, because we older Wem are forced to do the same. In all probability it precipitates our dying. But it is simply a matter of filling an empty and growling stomach with tasteless organic fuel, and eating vegetation is shameful and demeaning for any adult.

“But eating raw growing things like a, like a rouglar!” it ended fiercely. “Off-worlder, you risk making me sick.”

“Please excuse my ignorance,” said Gurronsevas, “but what is a rouglar?”

“It used to be a large, slow-moving meat animal which ate and digested foliage all day long,” Remrath replied. “A few of them are rumored to exist in the equatorial regions, but elsewhere they are extinct. They were always too slow and stupid to escape the hunters.”

“With respect, you are wrong,” said Gurronsevas. “Many intelligent species are herbivorous and suffer no feelings of shame because of it. Neither do they have feelings of mental or physical inadequacy among the carnivores and omnivores who eat meat only or a combination of both, as do you. Charge Nurse Naydrad, that is the one you will see with the long, silver-furred body and multiplicity of legs, eats only vegetation and is slow neither in its thoughts or movements. Differences in eating habits are not a cause for shame or pride or any other emotions except, perhaps, pleasure or displeasure over the taste, quality of the cooking or preparation of the food. They are just differences. Why do the Wem feel shame?”

Remrath did not reply. Had his question given offense, Gurronsevas wondered, or was the answer even more shameful? Rather than ask questions it might be safer to continue giving information while noting the other’s reaction to it.

“Food is a fuel regardless of its type,” he went on, “but the process of refueling is, or should be, a pleasurable experience. The taste can be enhanced in various ways by the addition of small quantities of substances that are animal, vegetable or edible mineral. Or a meal can be improved by using different constituents which complement or contrast with each other and make the taste more interesting. I have some small experience in this area including the preparation of . . .”

Briefly, he wondered how the subordinate kitchen staff at the Cromingan-Shesk would have reacted to such a ridiculous and uncharacteristic piece of understatement, but his listener knew nothing of multi-species cooking and would not be impressed by gratuitous displays of expertise that were completely beyond its understanding or, hopefully, its present understanding.

When he continued, Gurronsevas tried to keep the information as simple and basic as possible because this aged Wem cook, regardless of its advanced years, was the merest child in culinary matters. But as he warmed to his favorite subject and the minutes slipped past unnoticed, he grew aware that Remrath was showing signs of restlessness and possibly impatience. It was time to taper off before positive boredom set in.

“There is much more that I could tell you about food preparation,” he went on, “including the fact that my efforts are wasted on a few rare and very unfortunate beings. The shape-changer Danalta is one. It eats anything, vegetation, meat, hard woods, sand, most varieties of rock, all without being able to sense any difference in taste.”

He stopped suddenly with the realization that the conversations in his head-set were indicating that the medical team were boarding Rhabwar, the Wem students were about to reenter the mine, and Danalta had not yet arrived.

Or had it.

Standing against a poorly lit section of the wall behind the kitchen doors Gurronsevas remembered, there had been a wooden cask with the shafts of several brooms and mops projecting from the open top. Now there were two casks, identical but for a knothole in one of them that had the wet, transparent look of an eye—which slowly winked at him. Danalta had joined them.

Exhibitionist, thought Gurronsevas, and returned his attention to Remrath.

“We must continue this conversation at another time,” the Wem said before he could speak, “because now we have much to do. Watch if you wish, but kindly stand aside and avoid hampering our movements.”

Gurronsevas moved away to stand beside the cask that was not a cask. The movements that he was not supposed to hamper, he saw, were painfully slow. Remrath and its kitchen staff were ladling helpings of the vegetable stew onto deep-rimmed dishes which they placed two to a tray before adding two wide, flat spoons and two cups of drinking water taken from the entry pipe of the free-running sluice. The platters were unwarmed and some of them were still damp from washing. One by one the loaded trays with their two-place servings were carried to the outer room and placed on the big table until its entire surface was covered. While this was happening, the teachers supervising the Wem working parties and classes arrived and began adding the day’s crop of vegetables to the kitchen’s storage bins while their young charges moved on to the dining area.

Remrath told the newcomers that the presence of Gurronsevas would be explained later and to continue with their normal duties. The sight of them doing so was seriously elevating Gurronsevas’ blood pressure.

The age-immobilized tails, the stiffness in their hands, fingers, and walking limbs and their erratic, hobbling gait meant that they could carry and balance only one small tray of two servings at a time. It also meant that the food already cooling in the outer room would be even cooler, if not stone cold, by the time it reached the dining area. But the diners were unlikely to complain about it because their impatience for a meal of cold mush would be minimal.

“I can’t stand here and watch this any longer,” he said with quiet vehemence to one of the casks behind him. “The organization of this kitchen is a criminal shambles, and their food delivery system is . . .Don’t change or move to follow me, Danalta, unless I call for help.”

He waited until Remrath was hobbling past close by, then went on in a louder voice, “I have been observing your activities closely and believe that I can be of assistance. As you have seen, I am more physically agile than you are and much faster in my movements. And I have four hands, all of which are presently idle . . .”

The Great Gurronsevas, he thought incredulously as he was carrying the first four trays along the tunnel to the dining area, waiting at table! What was happening to him?

CHAPTER 23

The conversation continued after the meal was over and the near-empty platters cleared away. Nobody, it seemed, paid the cooks the compliment of leaving clean plates. Tawsar thanked Gurronsevas for his help serving and for answering questions about himself asked by the young Wem diners. At no time did he see Tawsar touch its food, and when he mentioned this to Remrath later he was told that the First Teacher held to the old traditions and would not eat vegetation where others could witness its shame. Even though the other cooks, who had to take food to the very young children, had left them alone in the kitchen when he asked for an explanation, Remrath avoided the question.

Gurronsevas knew better than to criticize or offer suggestions about the workings of its kitchen to the cook in charge, no matter how poorly-equipped the place might be, because wars had started over less. Instead he talked about the other kitchens he had known and his criticisms were implied rather than spoken.

“We no longer ask the young to do these menial kitchen duties,” Remrath said. “There was a time when those who misbehaved were given responsibility for clearing away and washing the dishes and cutlery, and for cleaning the next day’s vegetables. But much crockery was broken and vegetables were improperly washed as a result, and the practice was discontinued. Reluctant helpers are not worth the trouble. Besides, it is better for the aged to remain useful rather than waste resources that seem to grow scarcer by the day. Is that a food-stain or wear on your platter? Please scrub it again.”

Gurronsevas immersed the platter in the cold, running water and rubbed at it with the piece of dense, wiry moss provided for the purpose before showing it again to Remrath who was engaged in the same activity. First a waiter, he thought, and now a dishwasher!

He said, “With many of the species I have known, especially when the individual is no longer young, repeated immersion in cold water stiffens the finger joints. Is it so with you?”

“Yes,” said Remrath. “And, as you must already have seen, at my age it is not only the parts bathed in cold water that suffer.”

“That, too, is a common complaint on many worlds,” said Gurronsevas. “But it is possible that the suffering can be relieved. I say possible because I have no knowledge of the subject myself, but Tawsar kindly submitted to a full medical examination and many metabolic tests, so we will soon know whether or not our healing can be practiced to the benefit of the Wem. But if not, on my world the young can often be made to help their elders when the right arguments are used.”

Remrath washed three more platters, examined them minutely for food stains and placed them aside still dripping wet before it said, “Do you know whether Tawsar is well or ailing? Is the age-rot that grows in all our bodies, and opens the way for other flesh-poisoning diseases, working within it?”

Gurronsevas was trying to think of a suitable reply when Murchison joined in on the ship frequency. “You were correct in saying that we might not be able to alleviate a Wem arthritic condition, but there is a fair chance that we can. Tawsar is old and frail but not sick. It could live for another ten years, longer if it would eat more. For some reason these people are nearly starving themselves to death.”

If the pathologist had tasted the recent Wem meal, Gurronsevas thought, the reason would be plain. To Remrath he said, “Tawsar has many years of life ahead, especially if it would eat more food.”

Remrath scraped the congealed remains of a meal from a platter into a waste bin before sliding it into the washing trough. It said, “The young would help us if we asked them, but the old must do useful work while we are waiting to deliver up our bodies at the Ending, and it is work that we are allowed to do even though we are not always capable of doing it well. And we don’t want to eat more food, not when it is vegetation. The subject is distasteful in every sense of the word. But I have questions for you, Gurronsevas. If they are improper, ignore them. Your work I can understand because it is not unlike my own, but what about the beings who spoke with and did things to Tawsar? Where do they come from and what do they do there?”

Gurronsevas tried to describe Sector General and the work that was done there, but his description was much too simple and far from accurate because he knew that the tremendous truth would not be believed.

“So it is a great building in the sky,” said Remrath, “filled with beings who take in diseased and damaged bodies and make them clean and fresh and whole again?”

“That’s as good a way as any,” said Murchison, laughing softly, “of describing what we do.”

“There used to be places like that on Wemar,” it went on, unaware of the interruption, “but their work fell far short of that which you describe. You say that your friends on the ship come from Sector General and are willing to do this service for Tawsar and the rest of the senior staff?”

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation.

“I—I am grateful,” said Remrath, “but I am also uneasy about entrusting my body to strangers. Although one of them, you are known to me and . . .You, also, come from Sector General and must have knowledge that is greater than mine. I would prefer, when the time comes, that you did the work of returning my body to the freshness of youth.”

“Regrettably,” said Gurronsevas, pleased at the misplaced compliment, “I know nothing of these matters. My only contribution lies in the preparation, presentation and delivery of food for people there.”

“Is this an important contribution?” asked Remrath. “Does it help keep them clean and fresh?”

“Yes,” said Gurronsevas again. “I would say without hesitation that it is the most important one, since without it nobody would survive.”

In his head-set he could hear Murchison making an untranslatable sound.

“And you want to help keep us fresh,” said Remrath, lifting the last, newly-washed platter from the trough, “by making our food look nice and taste better? Impossible!”

Gurronsevas shook his hands dry because there was nothing he could see resembling a towel and said, “I would like you to allow me to try.”

Without replying, Remrath turned and hobbled stiffly into the outer room to return a few minutes later with an armful of the recently arrived vegetables. It began pulling leaves off some of them and roots from others before dropping the presumably edible parts into the water before it spoke.

“You are allowed to try, stranger,” it said. “But if, out of your greater knowledge and other-world experience, you cannot produce meat for us you will be wasting your time. That is our hope and the reason why I forced Tawsar to meet you in the first place. Instead of explaining our urgent need for meat, which is necessary for the survival of our species, he was ashamed and talked of other things and allowed your healers to do strange things to him.

“What do you want to do first, Gurronsevas?”

“I would like to begin,” he replied, “by talking to you about the Wem . . .”

“Yes, please,” said Murchison. “Apart from the physiological data, Prilicla says that you are getting more useful information from your friend in five minutes than we did from Tawsar in two hours.”

“. . . About what you think of yourselves and your world,” he went on, ignoring yet another unexpected compliment, “as well as what you like to eat. Which objects, scenes and colors do you consider beautiful? Is the appearance of your food as important as its taste and odor? It has long been my belief that, in several important respects, a person’s behavior and level of culture is reflected by the food it eats and, of course, the civilized rituals and refinements practiced while cooking, presenting and eating it . . .”

“Stranger!” Remrath broke in. “You are becoming offensive, to myself and the Wem people. Are you suggesting that we are savages?”

“Gurronsevas, be careful,” said Murchison urgently. “Dammit, are you trying to pick a fight?”

“That was not my intention,” he said, replying to both questioners. “I know that the Wem are close to starvation, and many of the rituals of eating require a sufficiency, if not a surplus, of the preferred foods. But where I come from eating rituals can be altered, either through necessity or to relieve the boredom of an unchanging diet.

“Despite my ignorance of Wem cooking,” Gurronsevas continued quickly, “I shall make suggestions on how this may be done. If these suggestions are offensive or unsuitable for any physical or psychological reason, tell me so at once without wasting time on politeness. But before you do so, let me test the foods that are available and debate the suggestion with you at length so that I as well as you will know why it is unworkable.

“To make these tests,” he went on, “I need your permission to take samples, very small quantities, of the vegetation and condiments that you use here. As well, I would be grateful if you could take me out to where these plants are harvested. Seeing them in their natural state, and gathering and testing other possibly edible growths in the vicinity, might suggest alternative meals or changes in the existing menu.”

“But it is meat that we need,” said Remrath firmly. “Have you a suggestion for providing that?”

“Only,” said Gurronsevas, suddenly impatient with the other’s culinary monomania, “if you were to eat one of us.”

“Gurronsevas . . . !” Murchison began.

“We would not eat you, Gurronsevas,” said Remrath, taking the suggestion literally. “With respect, your limbs and body appear hard and tough. You might taste like the branches of a tree. The shape-changer’s parts might cause indigestion by changing shape within us, and the limbs and body of the beautiful, winged creature are as fleshless as the twigs of a bush in winter. The soft being who balances on two legs and the one with the shining fur might be suitable. Are they soon to die?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas.

“Then you must not offer them to us,” said Remrath in a very serious voice, “The Wem believe that it is wrong to eat another intelligent being unless it dies naturally and free of disease, or its body is broken in an accident. You must not shorten another person’s life out of sympathy for our hunger, no matter how desperate our present need. I am grateful for the offer, but distressed and shocked that you would behave with such a lack of feeling towards your friends. Your gift of meat is refused.”

“I’m glad,” said Murchison.

“So am I,” said Gurronsevas, bypassing the translator, “I am tough only on the outside. But I seem to have talked myself into a corner . . .”

To Remrath, he said, “Please, there is no need for you to feel distressed or shocked because we hold the same belief. My words were ill-chosen and were a clumsy attempt at asking another question. Would the Wem accept off-planet food, provided it was palatable and we were sure that it would not harm you?”

“Off-planet meat?” Remrath asked hopefully.

“No,” he said, and this time his words were well-chosen as he explained that, while it was possible to give the food the taste and consistency of different other-worldly meats, the material was not and had never been alive. The reason for this was that when different meat-eating life-forms worked together as they did at Sector General and on the ship, it was considered insensitive to eat the flesh of non-intelligent creatures who often bore a close physical resemblance to their intelligent colleagues. He ended, “The food is artificial, but you could not tell the difference.”

Remrath replied with a sound that suggested disbelief. The long silence which followed was broken by it saying, “Regarding the tour of our vegetable gardens, I have duties here which allow me very little free time for walking in the valley. I have a class and I must prepare for the evening meal . . .”

Gurronsevas concealed his disappointment. He would have preferred to have Remrath as a guide and advisor on Wem plant life than to waste his own time pulling quantities of specimens—which the other would have known immediately to be toxic—and then having to wait on the results of Murchison’s analyses. Politely, he said, “What are you serving this evening?”

“More of the same,” said Remrath shortly. It raised one hand stiffly to point toward the outer room and went on, “But we will be able to make the necessary time, Gurronsevas, if you bring in and break up the firewood, and help me wash the vegetables.”

CHAPTER 24

Remrath’s movements over the rough ground of the valley floor were slower than Tawsar’s had been and clearly caused it more pain, and it steadfastly refused to enter any area that was lit by the early afternoon sun. Both problems were solved by Naydrad, who joined them with the anti-gravity litter and deployed its sunscreen over the initially reluctant passenger. The Charge Nurse had been instructed to guide the litter and to leave all the conversation to Gurronsevas, and the agitated state of its fur showed what it thought of the enforced silence. Danalta, whose job as protector had been declared redundant, had rejoined Prilicla and Murchison on Rhabwar to help process the Wem physiological data provided by Tawsar.

The forenoon and early afternoon classes, held in the big cavern so as to keep the pupils out of the direct sunlight while taking advantage of the maximum natural illumination from the windows, had left the mine to work outdoors again, and Remrath seemed to have forgotten the time limit it had placed on the specimen-gathering exercise. Plainly it was enjoying the comfort of traveling on the litter and it was deriving even more amusement from the strange things Gurronsevas was saying and doing.

“Surely,” it said during one of their stops on the higher, uncultivated slopes, “you do not eat flowers on your world?”

“Sometimes,” said Gurronsevas, “the stems or leaves or petals can be crushed or cooked and used to complement or contrast with the other ingredients, or arranged on the platter so as to make a meal look attractive, or simply to decorate and give a pleasing appearance and smell to the dinner table. Sometimes we eat them.”

Remrath made another sound that did not translate. It had been making them for most of the afternoon.

“These berries with the brown-spotted green skin,” he went on, pointing at a low-growing bush with dense, wiry foliage which he recognized as the plant he had earlier used to scrub the platters clean, “are they edible?”

“Yes, but in very small amounts,” the Wem replied. “They are the running berries. Their taste is sharp now and sweet when they are fully ripened. But we do not eat them unless one of us is having difficulty with the elimination of body wastes. You, you are not going to take them, too!”

“I will take specimens of everything,” said Gurronsevas, “especially from medicinal plants which can sometimes add flavor as well as health-enhancing properties to a meal. You say that the Wem use many such plants. Who is responsible for prescribing them?”

“I am,” it said.

As the senior cook of the establishment, Remrath and himself had a lot in common. The Wem’s knowledge and vocabulary was severely restricted, naturally, but they spoke the same language. It would be helpful to the medical team, he thought, if he was able to identify the Wem equivalent of a doctor.

“And who among you,” he persisted, “deals with the more seriously ill or injured cases? Is there a special place where they are treated? And what is done for them?”

There was a long silence, during which Gurronsevas wondered whether his seemingly innocent questions had given offense, before Remrath spoke.

“Unfortunately, I am,” it said. “And Gurronsevas, I do not speak of such things to off-worlders, or even to friends. Tell me more about the strange ways you serve food.”

They returned to the subject that Gurronsevas knew was safe and which he considered more interesting anyway.

Initially, Remrath’s interest was merely polite. Obviously it was enjoying the comfort of traveling on the litter and was anxious to prolong the experience. But once Gurronsevas was able to make it accept the idea that eating food might be something more than the simple ingesting of organic fuel, and described with enthusiasm the many other-world rituals and subtleties used in its preparation and presentation, and the large number of different courses that could be served as part of a single meal, its interest became more serious—if, at times, combined with a large measure of incredulity.

“I can believe that you consider a meal to be a work of art,” Remrath said at one point, “like a beautiful wood-carving or wall-painting. Of necessity a meal is a very short-lived work of art if the artist’s work is successful. But comparing the taste sensations to the pleasures of procreation is . . .surely that is an exaggeration?”

“Perhaps not,” Gurronsevas replied, “if you consider that one provides a moment of intense pleasure which can be expanded and heightened by experience and controlled delays, while the other is a continuing, although admittedly a less intense pleasure, which lasts for much longer, is less subject to factors of age or physical fatigue, and is not subject to premature consummation.”

“If you can do that with food,” said Remrath, “you must be a very good cook.”

“I am the best,” said Gurronsevas simply.

Remrath made a sound which did not translate and so, for some reason, did Naydrad.

Only the topmost slopes of the valley were lit by the setting sun and the air temperature had dropped noticeably when they began their return to the mine. The young members of the working parties and classes, unsupervised, were running and hopping about in small groups on the flat area outside the entrance. This was an activity which was encouraged, Remrath explained, so as to use up their surplus energy and make them hunger for both the evening meal and sleep, because non-reparable bodily damage could occur if they were to go wandering about in the dark tunnels. Even though the waterwheels provided continuous power, except in special circumstances the mine was not lighted at night because their small remaining store of filament bulbs could not easily be replaced.

“Do you intend to work these miracles of taste for us?” said Remrath suddenly. “How will you do it when you know nothing about Wem food and have eaten barely an insect’s mouthful of my stew?”

“I shall try,” Gurronsevas replied. “But first the Wem samples must be tested to ensure that they will not harm me. Should they prove edible to myself as well as the Wem, only then will I try to compose something. Naturally, any meal or course that I produce must first be tested on myself. Your advice regarding taste sensations and intensities would be greatly appreciated, since my Tralthan taste sensorium will differ in certain ways from that of the Wem, but I would not serve a meal to anyone that was not first eaten in its entirety by myself.”

“Even a project that is doomed to failure,” said Remrath, “can be interesting to watch. Do you wish to return to the kitchen now?”

“No,” said Gurronsevas sharply, unused to having his artistic ability doubted in this fashion. He went on, “The analysis and initial experimentation with the specimens may take some time. I will return tomorrow or perhaps a day or two later. With your permission, of course.”

“Will you require a guide,” asked Remrath, “to find your way back to my kitchen?”

“Thank you, no,” he replied. “I remember the way.”

No more was said until they joined the crowd of rowdy young Wem outside the mine entrance. Two of them helped Remrath off the litter, one tried to crawl through the open space between the apparently unsupported underside and the ground, then began chattering excitedly to the others about the strange, tingling sensation that the repulsion field had caused in its head and arms. Another was about to climb onto the empty litter when Remrath chased it away with threats of imminent dismemberment and other dire punishments which, considering the First Cook’s physical weakness and impaired mobility, were not being taken seriously by either.

Naydrad had begun to guide the litter back toward the ship and Gurronsevas was turning to follow it when Remrath spoke again.

“Tawsar, also, would be pleased if you visited us again,” it said, “to talk to the young about the other worlds and peoples and wonders you have seen. But of your work in the kitchen you must speak only to me lest some of your ideas about food cause mental distress or nausea.”

He was able to control his own mental distress, caused by shock and anger that anyone would even suggest that the great Gurronsevas was capable of preparing a meal that would nauseate anyone, before he came within closer range of Prilicla’s empathy.

By the time he returned to Rhabwar’s casualty deck, Naydrad had unloaded his samples and, fur rippling in anticipation, was busying itself at the food dispenser while Murchison and Danalta were doing incomprehensible things at the analyzer console. He looked around for Prilicla, but the pathologist answered his question before he could ask it.

“Cinrusskins are short on stamina, as you probably know,” Murchison said, smiling. “It has been sleeping this past four hours and we are trying not to let our emotional radiation get too noisy. You’ve had a long day, Gurronsevas. Do you need food, rest, or both?”

“Neither,” he replied. “I am in need of information.”

“Aren’t we all,” said Murchison. “What exactly do you want to know?”

As precisely as possible Gurronsevas did as he was asked. It required many minutes for him to do so, and Murchison was about to reply when Prilicla flew in to join them. The Senior Physician gestured with one delicate manipulator for it to continue.

“First,” the pathologist began briskly, “to deal with your questions about the testing of Wem vegetation for edibility by the FGLI classification, yourself, as well as the native DHCGs. We obtained more physiological information from Tawsar than it was aware of giving, and while we still have many questions regarding the Wem endocrinology, and the evidence we have found of a possible genetic rift in the area of the herbivore-carnivore, or perhaps herbivore-omnivore, transfer which may take place at puberty, these should become clear when we have more . . .I’m sorry, Gurronsevas, that part of the investigation is medically specialized and of no interest to you.

“What we can tell you,” it went on, “is that our study of the tongue structure and analysis of the saliva indicates the presence of a taste sensorium and an oral pre-digestive system that is in most respects similar to those found in the majority of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms, including your own. If you identify and label your specimens and give us a few hours to process them, we will be able to tell you with a fair degree of certainty which plants, or sections of plants such as roots, stems, foliage or fruit, will be edible by the Wem and yourself, and which will be toxic to a greater or lesser degree. Frequently, material which we would classify as being toxic if introduced directly into the bloodstream can be rendered harmless by the normal detoxification processes of digestion, so it is unlikely that you would poison a Wem or yourself if the food samples tested are initially kept small. The same applies to any food material for the Wem produced by Rhabwar’s synthesizer.

“We cannot tell you how exactly any given sample will taste,” it went on. “The chemical composition will indicate whether or not the taste will be intense, but not whether it will be intensely pleasant or unpleasant to a Wem. As you more than anyone else here know, taste is a personal preference which varies between individuals of a single species, much less those with different evolutionary backgrounds.”

“It seems,” said Gurronsevas, “that the Wem palate will have to be reeducated.”

Murchison laughed and said, “Thankfully, that isn’t my problem. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Thank you, yes,” he replied, directing all of his eyes towards Prilicla. “But it is neither a medical nor a culinary matter. I would like to know how much time I have to work on the problem? The present friendly situation at the mine could change as soon as the hunting party returns. When will they arrive?”

“That knowledge will be useful to us, too,” said the Senior Physician. “Friend Fletcher?”

“There is a small problem, Doctor,” said the Captain’s voice from the wall speaker. “Tremaar has been concentrating its surveillance within a circle of fifty miles radius of the mine and has seen nothing of the hunting party. Beyond that circle the surface is uneven and wooded, giving large areas of natural cover so that the observations are less than trustworthy. Other settllements are under observation, but the closest is sited on the edge of a mountain lake just over three hundred miles away. Because of the Wem aversion to sunlight, Tremaar thinks they may be traveling at night and resting out of sight by day. Either way, they are not carrying the type of portable equipment with a radiation signature that would reveal their presence to orbiting sensors.

“But I can put up our unmanned casualty search vehicle,” Fletcher went on. “That baby will detect any sign of life even if it is close to extinction. It uses a low-level spiral search pattern and, unless the whole hunting party is dead, you will have their number, rate of travel, and estimated time of arrival within a day or so, depending on how far away they are just now.”

“Do that at once, please,” said Prilicla. It flew closer to him before saying, “I can feel your satisfaction, friend Gurronsevas, but we are far from satisfied with our own progress. We are a small and uniquely-equipped medical team, too small to cure the ills of an entire planet . . .”

“We are also nothing,” said Naydrad, looking around from the food dispenser, “if not modest.”

“. . . Although we should be able to solve the problems of one small, isolated community. Our contact is not going well. Your conversations with Remrath clarified the reasons for the shame it felt as an adult over being forced to eat young food, but still Tawsar is reluctant to give information in several areas important to full understanding. Progress is being made only in the Wem kitchen on the common ground of cookery. Surely, Chief Dietitian, this must be a first in the annals of First Contact procedures.”

Gurronsevas did not reply. He was pleased by both the unexpected compliment and the use of his title in conjunction with it, and he knew that the other was aware of his pleasure.

“We overheard Remrath’s invitation to you,” said Prilicla. “What are your plans?”

“I would like to return at the same time tomorrow,” Gurronsevas replied. “By then the edible vegetation specimens will be analyzed and identified and I will know enough to make a few dietary experiments while talking to Remrath and helping in the kitchen. But there is no need for physical protection. I feel very comfortable working over there.”

He did not add that he felt more at home in Remrath’s steaming and smoking and altogether primitive kitchen than he did among the shining, aseptic medical technology of the casualty deck.

“I am aware of your feelings, friend Gurronsevas,” said the empath gently. “But I would feel happier if Danalta accompanied you. As well as being able to assist you directly it will be available in case of a medical emergency. According to the statisticians, the kitchen is the second most likely room in which accidents are likely to occur.”

“Especially,” said Naydrad, “the kitchen of a bunch of cannibals.”

“As you wish, Doctor,” said Gurronsevas, ignoring the charge nurse. “Am I allowed to return Remrath’s hospitality by inviting it here?”

“Of course,” Prilicla replied, “but be careful. The same invitation was extended to Tawsar, who refused it vehemently. Its emotional radiation at the time was complex and intense and even unfriendly. Remrath might feel and react in the same fashion.

“That is why,” it went on, “we must discuss the whole Wemar situation with you, the facts we know and our speculations based on them, before you speak to Remrath again. Because of their unidentified feelings of antipathy or distrust towards us, you are maintaining our most promising communications channel with the Wem. It must not be closed accidentally because we have not provided you with all the available information.”

He was a cook, Gurronsevas thought, and neither a medic nor an other-species contact specialist. But now they seemed to be treating him as all three. His feelings about that were oddly pleasant and not a little fearful.

“We will continue to monitor and record your conversations in the mine or while you are with Remrath outside it,” Prilicla went on reassuringly, “but we no longer think it necessary to distract you with unnecessary advice, and should there be an emergency we will react quickly; our silence will not mean that we have forgotten you. Personal security procedures will be included in your Wem briefing.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do not feel worried, friend Gurronsevas,” said the empath, “either for your safety or your ability to do the job. You have done and will do well. But I find it strange that a specialist of your eminence has not complained, nor have you felt any but the most minor and temporary emotional distress about the menial work you are doing here. On Wemar they are not treating you with the respect that is your due.”

“On Wemar,” said Gurronsevas, “I have yet to earn their respect.”

CHAPTER 25

Fletcher’s low-altitude sensor vehicle discovered and sent back pictures of a party of adult Wem, forty-three in number, who were headed towards the mine but still distant by an estimated nine days’ march. They were walking rather than hopping because four of them were carrying a fifth on a litter made from thin, straight branches stripped of their twigs. Two small animals of about one-fifth the body mass of the Wem were each being dragged and driven between a pair of hunters who had them double-roped at the neck. Apart from the sick or injured one on the litter, all of the Wem wore packs which sagged loosely against their backs. Plainly the hunt had not been a successful one.

It had been left to Gurronsevas’s discretion whether or when to show the pictures to Remrath. The news of the arrival of the hunting party might have an unsettling effect on his steadily improving relations with Remrath. Since their trip together in the valley, the Chief Cook had never been short of words, especially, as now, when they were words of criticism.

“This is completely ridiculous and childish,” said the Wem impatiently. “Gurronsevas, how often must I tell you that eating vegetation is a practice forced on us by near-starvation and not by choice. Cold or hot, raw or stewed, whatever form they take, they are still vegetables. You make them look nice on the platter, I admit, but youngsters find it easier to make designs by pushing colored stones and pieces of wood around on their desktops than by making a soggy mess with bits of raw vegetation on their platters. What is it? Surely you don’t expect anyone to actually eat this stuff?”

“It is a salad,” he replied patiently in an attempt to counter the other’s impatience. “If you will observe it closely you will find that it is composed of small amounts of familiar Wem vegetation, diced, sliced and shredded into unfamiliar forms, covered lightly with a dressing comprised of your vrie seeds crushed and mixed with the juice of unripe moss berries to give it the necessary tang, and arranged into a visually interesting design. The crill bud can also be eaten if desired, and they will be fully opened by the time the meal is served, but their purpose is chiefly decorative as well as aroma-enhancing. I have already explained that the attraction of this dish, and of the other two dishes on the tray, lie in their visual and olfactory presentation as well as in the taste.

“Please try the salad,” Gurronsevas went on. “I have eaten of all three dishes without harm to myself and, in spite of the ingredients being strange to me, I have found some of them to be quite pleasant.”

That was not entirely true, he thought. During the early experimentation with Wem vegetation the pleasure had been preceded by much digestive displeasure. But, he reminded himself, a great deal of trouble had been caused throughout every world’s history by people who insisted on telling too much of the truth.

“Taste them and see,” he added.

“I do not understand why there have to be three separate dishes,” said Remrath. “Why not mix them all together?”

The mere idea sent a small, unnoticed shiver of revulsion through Gurronsevas’ massive body. He had already answered that question earlier and suspected that Remrath was simply fighting a delaying action which, as a fellow cook, it could not hope to win. Perhaps he should answer it again, and this time leave no doubt in the other’s mind about his meaning.

“Among all of the intelligent species known to me,” said Gurronsevas, “the practice is to prepare and serve meals comprising a number of separate and contrasting or complementary dishes, or courses. This is because they consider eating as a pleasure of the taste sensors that can at times be subtle and long-delayed and at other times sharp and intense. The ingredients of the individual dishes are chosen to perform a similar function on a smaller scale within a single course.

“A meal can consist of many different courses,” he went on enthusiastically, “five, eleven, or even more, so that the event can last for hours. With the larger and more complex meals, which often have the secondary political and psychological function of impressing the guests with their host’s or its organization’s or tribe’s wealth, the diner is not expected to eat everything that is set before it; and great gastronomic discomfort would ensue should it try. Personally, I am not in favor of such over-large and wasteful meals, favoring as I do quality rather than quantity. Nevertheless, each and every course is meticulously prepared and served with the proper accompanying—”

“Off-worlders waste so much of their lives eating,” Remrath broke in, “how did you find the time to build starships and carts that float on air and your other technical marvels?”

“We use these things without needing to understand them,” Gurronsevas replied. “They are built to save time, not waste it, so that we can have more of it to enjoy the lasting pleasures of life, like eating.”

Remrath’s reply did not translate.

“There are other pleasures,” Gurronsevas admitted, “especially those associated with procreation. But these cannot be indulged in continually, or with great frequency, without incurring severe debilitation or some other health penalty. The same applies to the exciting or dangerous activities of, say, mountain-climbing, sea-diving or flying in unpowered aircraft. The principal excitement of those occupations is that the entity concerned is pitting daring and skill against what can often become a life-threatening situation. The mental and physical coordination required for these activities deteriorates with age, but with age the ability to appreciate the pleasures of good food and drink increases with practice. And they are pleasures which can be repeatedly indulged to satiety and which, when the proper foods are ingested regularly and in the correct amounts, can significantly extend your life.”

Remrath said quietly, “Eating this stuff, eating raw vegetables, will keep my body young and fresh?”

“If they are eaten from an early age and throughout maturity,” Gurronsevas replied, “they will keep you younger and fresher for a much longer time. Especially if you learn to eat vegetation exclusively, as I prefer to do. Our own healers agree on this, and I have personal experience of cooking for aging beings where such was the case. But I must be truthful. Changing your eating habits would not mean that your people would live forever.”

Remrath returned its attention to the tray Gurronsevas had prepared with such care, then said sourly, “If they have to eat this stuff, they would not want to.”

Gurronsevas thought that he had received more professional insults since coming to Wemar than in all of his past life. He indicated the tray and returned firmly to his subject.

“As I was saying,” he said, “a meal normally consists of three courses. The first, which I have already described, is a small, fresh-tasting starter designed merely to sharpen rather than blunt the appetite.

“It is followed by the main course,” he continued, “which is more nutritious and varied regarding its ingredients and, as you can see, much more bulky. Here again the visual presentation is important and you will recognize most of the vegetables, although you are not used to seeing some of them in this under-cooked form. This was done so that each variety could be placed separately on the platter, which adds to the visual effect as well as allowing the vegetables to retain their individual tastes, which would otherwise be diluted or lost if they were to be mixed together in a stew. As in your stew, the principal vegetable used is the orrogne. It is, if you will excuse me saying so, a particularly bland and tasteless vegetable which I have sliced and dry-cooked, we call it roasting, after brushing on a little oil of crushed glunce berries, which you do not appear to consider a food, to avoid charring. The orrogne taste remains the same, but with the surfaces crisped and covered by a film of oil, I think you will find it more interesting to eat . . .”

“It has an interesting smell,” said Remrath, inhaling loudly through its nose and bending over the tray.

“. . . Especially,” Gurronsevas went on, “in conjunction with the dark red jelly, which was also made from local—no, don’t eat it directly with a spoon. Use your food spike, select a portion of vegetable and touch it lightly against the jelly. It is similar to Kelgian sarkun, or strong Earth mustard, and is very hot on the tongue—”

“Hot!” Remrath burst out, grabbing for one of the two beakers on the tray and emptying it quickly before saying, “Great Gorel, it set my whole mouth on fire! But, but what have you done to our water?”

“I may have miscalculated the level of sensitivity of the Wem palate,” Gurronsevas said apologetically, “or I will need to reduce the proportion of powdered cressle root or, as with any new ingredient, the jelly may be an acquired taste. The liquids in the beakers have each been flavored with the juice of two different berries, one bitter-tasting and the other slightly sweeter and aromatic. Your names for them are unknown to me because you do not use them in the kitchen, but the healers on the ship say that they are harmless to the Wem.”

Remrath did not reply. It had speared another slice of roasted orrogne on its eating spike and was touching it carefully to the jelly. Its other hand was holding the beaker close to its mouth as if in readiness to extinguish another fire.

“Your mountain spring water is cold and fresh and makes a fine liquid accompaniment to a meal,” said Gurronsevas, “but by the time the water is being drunk it has become tepid and uninteresting. The flavoring is an attempt to give it an appeal that is not dependent solely on its low temperature and, hopefully, to stimulate the taste sensors to a greater appreciation of the accompanying food. On many other worlds the preferred accompaniment is wine, which is a liquid containing varying proportions of a chemical called alcohol that is produced by fermentation of certain species of vegetation. There are many different wines that can be chosen to complement and enhance the taste of the meal or the course that is being consumed, but on Wemar I have encountered problems where the production of alcohol is concerned and have been forced to give up the attempt.”

There were several native plants whose fermentation would have produced alcohol, but the problem had been philosophical rather than physical. So far as the medical team knew, the use of alcohol as a beverage was unknown on Wemar and they did not want the responsibility of introducing it. Pathologist Murchison had been particularly vehement in its objections, citing the case of an early Earth-human sub-culture of the Amerindians that had been virtually destroyed through overindulgence because they had no prior experience of its mind-deadening and mood-changing effects. Prilicla had gently agreed that in their present situation the Wem had problems enough.

“The third course,” Gurronsevas resumed, “we call the dessert, or the sweet. Again it is a small dish, a pleasant farewell to a stomach that is almost filled to repletion. This one is made from chopped cretto stalks, heated until the water has boiled away to leave it with the consistency of a thick, smooth, and tasteless paste, under which there are hiding a few stoned den berries, diced matto and a few other items which I will not name as yet. Please try it. It will not burn your tongue but I think it may surprise you.”

“Wait,” said Remrath. It had put down the beaker and was gently applying its fifth slice of orrogne to the jelly. “I haven’t decided how much I dislike this one yet.”

“In your own time,” said Gurronsevas, and went on, “Instead of a cold salad, the starter dish can be a hot soup. In consistency this is something between a flavored drink and a very thin stew, contains small amounts of vegetation to which are added very small quantities of your herbs and spices to vary the taste. I am still experimenting with combinations that show promising results, but I would not want you to taste the result of an unsuccessful experiment.

“You do not seem to be aware of the many edible herbs and spices growing in your valley,” he continued, “the majority of which our healers have pronounced safe and even beneficial for the Wem, and myself. Regrettably, there are subtle differences in taste sensitivity and appreciation between the Wem and Tralthan species, and it is important that these differences be reconciled so that I can make further suggestions.”

Remrath laid down its eating spike and dipped its spoon cautiously into the dessert. The platter containing the main course, whose portions were rather small, was more than half empty.

“You have said that the mine grows very cold at night,” Gurronsevas went on, “and damp when heavy rain enters the ventilation shafts. The young Wem are not inconvenienced by this, but the teachers are. One of my suggestions is that, when your fuel reserves permit it, the teachers heat the water served with the evening meal so that they will feel warmer when they cover themselves for the night. Better still, if they were to take a thick, highly-spiced soup before retiring, one that is hot in taste as well as temperature, they would find it more comforting than shivering under their blankets until their own body heat slowly warmed them.

“For you it would be a small change in routine,” he added, “but it is a popular practice among many off-world species who find that it engenders physical and mental relaxation as well as encouraging sleep.”

Remrath stopped with the second spoonful of dessert halfway to its mouth and said, “It would be a small change, one of many small changes and suggestions that have led to me eating these, these outlandish mixtures of vegetation, and may lead to who knows what else. Your intention is to help us, and that is the reason why I, and to a lesser extent the other teachers, are submitting ourselves to your strange and often sickening experiments with Wem vegetation. But are you not forgetting that we, being old as well as hungry, have forced down our shame to help you, and that it is the young adults who need your help most, and that they need meat.

“Gurronsevas,” it ended, “you are so enthusiastic, so forceful and so single-minded and so dismissive of objections that you act like a person who is indulging its favorite hobby.”

The Great Gurronsevas a hobbyist! he thought furiously. He was too angry to speak for a moment, during which a very uncomfortable thought arose in his mind. What was the difference between a person with a hobby that claimed all of his attention and one who devoted his life to the perfection of a single, all-consuming activity?

“But you are also forgetting,” Remrath went on, “that the reluctant cooperation you receive from the teachers will not be forthcoming from the taught. It may be that age has damaged our minds, or made them less resistant to argument. But if you try to make them eat this stuff, the young Wem are likely to throw your carefully prepared experimental meals against the nearest wall, or at you. What are you going to do about that?”

“Nothing,” said Gurronsevas.

“Nothing?”

“About the young, nothing,” Gurronsevas explained. “They will see but not be permitted to sample the new meals, which will be exclusively for adult consumption. Here again, I shall need your cooperation and that of the other teachers. You have said that Tawsar eats alone, through shame over its forced consumption of vegetation, but if it was explained that it was not doing so through choice but to assist with important food experiments being conducted by the off-worlders, that might be the excuse it needs to eat in public. When the young see all of you eating and enjoying the new meals, and I am increasingly confident that you will enjoy them, the normal curiosity of the young will take over and they will want to try them too. But still you will not permit this. They will feel increasingly aggrieved, thinking that you are being selfish in not sharing the enjoyment of the strange, off-worlder meals with them. And gradually you will relent.

“A pleasure witheld is a pleasure intensified.

“Your present kitchen staff is adequate,” he went on, “for the production of stew and the very occasional meat dish. But many more, and more agile, help will be needed for the preparation, and in particular the visual presentation, of the new, three-course meals. You will select the number needed and together we will train them. As a special favor and reward for helping in the kitchen, only these selected few will be allowed to eat the new meals during training. In the manner of the young they will want to talk about their new job, perhaps even boast about it, to their less-favored friends. As a teacher, Remrath, you know how young minds think and how to influence them. It should not be long before everyone is dining like the off-worlders.”

Remrath was silent for several minutes, during which it finished the dessert and renewed its cautious attack on the cooling main course. Gurronsevas cringed at the very idea of consuming a course in the wrong order of presentation, but reminded himself that culinarily the Wem were still untutored. Finally the other spoke.

“Gurronsevas,” it said, “you are a cunning and devious grudlich.”

Plainly the word was exclusive to the Wem language because his translator gave the word-sound without a Tralthan equivalent. Deliberately he did not ask Remrath for an exact translation. He had taken enough insults for one day.

CHAPTER 26

Supported by all the resources of Rhabwar’s clinical equipment and the expertise of its medical team, the culinary education of the Wem was proceeding apace. But the transfer of information was two-way and no longer restricted to cooking because the team were at last beginning to understand the full extent of the Wemar problem, and the Wem were seeing that problem from the viewpoint of the off-worlders who were trying to provide a solution to it. On both sides the learning curve had become satisfactorily steep.

Wemar had been a verdant, thickly-forested world whose dominant life-form had risen rapidly from pre-sapience to technologically advanced civilization by the traditional method of forming alliances and periodically threatening themselves with extinction through increasingly mechanistic forms of warfare. Fortunately, they had not developed nuclear fission or fusion power so that they survived with their civilization intact until they slowly learned the ways of peace and the population expanded without control. Unfortunately, they were an inward-looking culture that considered their world’s resources, its animal life and its growing and fossil fuel supply to be inexhaustible.

Until too late they did not have the orbiting eyes to see what they were doing to their planet.

With every new generation the Wem population tripled, and the levels of atmospheric pollution from its power-hungry and non-nuclear manufacturing processes kept pace, until the ionization layers protecting it against the harmful parts of the solar radiation spectrum became increasingly affected. Like the majority of worlds that had no axial tilt and seasonal temperature variations, the meteorological changes were driven only by Wem’s planetary rotation so that its weather systems tended to be unspectacular and predictable. As a result the pollutants found their way into the upper layers of the atmosphere to collect over the north and south poles. There the quantities of destructive material grew and spread, stripping the polar regions of their protective ionization and spreading inexorably into the upper levels of the stratosphere above the heavily populated temperate zones, and beyond.

It was a gradual process, but slowly the planetary surface from the poles to the sub-tropical latitudes adjoining the equator sickened and much of it died, as did the great herds of food animals that depended on the dying vegetation. The fish and underwater plant life occupying the on-shore shallows sickened as well, and in steadily increasing numbers so did the Wem—who starved without their meat. Worse, the sun, which had once caused plants and grasses eaten by their food animals to grow and thrive, was causing them to wither and die; and the Wem, too, were dying in great numbers from strange wasting diseases of the skin and eyes, caused by exposure to their increasingly lethal sunlight.

Gradually their technology collapsed. The steady attrition of population was accelerated by increasingly savage wars waged between the equatorial and comparatively well-fed Haves, who still had an adequate ionization layer protecting them, and the starving temperate zone Have Nots. Over the past two centuries the situation had stabilized, with the world population much diminished and the pollution it had caused removed, so that now the desperately ill planet was beginning to cure itself. The sun was beginning to reionize the upper atmosphere and renew the damaged protective layer.

In time, perhaps in four or five generations, the off-world teachers on Tremaar insisted, the cure would be complete. But only if the tragically few remaining Wem were able to survive, and they did not once again allow their population to grow out of control or reintroduce the old, dirty technology to support it.

“I tell you again,” said Gurronsevas very seriously, “the next time the Wem try to kill themselves, you might succeed.”

Remrath did not look up from the special cold desserts it was preparing for the teachers and students. Angrily, it said, “The Wem do not like being constantly reminded that we are criminally stupid. Certainly I don’t.”

“I feel very strongly about this situation,” Gurronsevas said quickly, “so that my words were hasty and ill-considered. You are neither stupid nor a criminal, nor is any other Wem that I know of. The crime was committed by your ancestors. The problem is inherited, but it is you who must solve it.”

“I know, I know,” said Remrath, still without looking up. “By eating vegetables?”

“Soon,” Gurronsevas replied, as he had done so often before, “there will be nothing else to eat.”

Over the past few days Remrath and he had grown close, as acquaintances if not friends, so much so that he no longer allowed politeness to get in the way of truth. At first this had worried the listeners on Rhabwar who, as well as supplying him with the information they had been able to discover or deduce about the Wem culture, kept reminding him that he was their only effective channel of communication. But they expected him to explain to Remrath and the other teachers a situation which, not being a medic or anthropologist or even a biologist, he did not fully understand himself.

When he asked for a fuller explanation it was usually Pathologist Murchison, speaking to him in a manner identical to that of Tawsar addressing a very backward pupil, who gave the densely clinical answer. Gurronsevas knew nothing about genetic rifts, or the various other-world precedents for the Wem’s apparent change from omnivore to carnivore eating habits at puberty, or the fact that on Earth tadpoles and frogs made the same changeover, and he cared less. So far as he was concerned, the legs of frogs were no more than a culinary delicacy enjoyed by some Earth-humans as well as a few other species with cultivated palates.

Unlike the Earth-human Murchison, in his youth Gurronsevas had never caught tadpoles or frogs, or kept one of them in a glass jar, because there was no equivalent of those life-forms on Traltha. But finally the pathologist had been able to make him understand the differences between the digestive systems possessed by herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.

The large, meat-bearing herbivores were usually ruminants who had to graze continually while they were awake so that their multiple stomachs could metabolize the food which, because of its high proportion of vegetable fibre and low energy content, required a long time to digest and store. When threatened by predators, the grazers could move fast and sometimes protect themselves with horns or hooves, but they lacked the speed and stamina of the meat-eating carnivores whose food intake was more easily assimilated and available as energy.

It was only in rare environmental circumstances that a ruminant species evolved to planetary dominance or the level of intelligence that preceded civilization. If they were not hunted to extinction, they were domesticated, bred, and protected as a continuing source of food by the species which had achieved domination. And very rarely did a carnivorous species achieve the level of cooperation beyond the family unit that allowed an advanced culture to develop, and then only when they made major changes in their predatory behavior and eating habits.

Omnivorous life-forms were much more adaptable in the matter of food because they had the choice of hunting for it, gathering it or, when their ability to adapt became the stirrings of true intelligence, of herding and cultivating it. And if these intelligent omnivores were threatened with starvation because a crop had failed or their food-herds had sickened and died, they would find a way to survive even if they suffered a natural disaster on the scale of that which had overtaken Wemar.

There was a much easier way to that which the Wem hunters were now pursuing.

Gurronsevas went on, “Out of instinct or experience, the few animals that are left to hunt have learned to stay out of the sun. Large and small, they have become twilight or nocturnal creatures who shelter during daylight in deep caves and ground burrows. And because they have only each other to prey upon, they have become very dangerous indeed. Frequently, as you have told me, your hunters have to spend many dangerous hours in the sun, hampered by their protective cloaks, while digging them out or following them into deep lairs, because at night the advantage lies with their prey. It is hard, dangerous work that they do, and often your hunters become the hunted.

“A mere grower of vegetables would not attract the admiration and prestige of a brave hunter,” he continued, “but the work is easier and the life-expectancy higher because vegetables don’t fight back.

“Unless served with too much powdered cressle root,” he added.

“Gurronsevas,” said Remrath, “this is a serious matter. The Wem have always been meat-eaters.”

He wished suddenly that he was back in Sector General and able to consult Chief Psychologist O’Mara or, better still, Padre Lioren, about this problem. He was pitting logic against belief, indisputable scientific fact against a situation that had become a religion; and, as so often happened with emerging cultures, science was losing the argument.

“You are right, of course,” he replied. “The matter is very serious and the Wem have always, as far back as your memories and written records go, been meat-eaters. Many centuries ago, when your plains and forests were still well stocked with animal life and you could hunt them in the sunlight without fear, I think that it was not only the adults who ate meat. I think, and my thoughts are supported by the investigation of our healers on the ship, that infants, newly-weaned from their mothers’ milk, were fed a thin, vegetable, meat-flavored stew because their young stomachs were unable to accept meat alone. At a very early age, however, and making allowance for their smaller physical size, they would be given meat in the same proportion as that served to the adults.

“But neither they, nor you, are necessarily carnivorous.

“Physically the Wem are not suited to be farmers,” Gurronsevas went on. “Your long rear limbs and tails, your fast movements and ability to suddenly change direction, were probably evolved to escape large predators in your pre-sapient past. Until the ecological catastrophe overtook your world, meat was always plentiful and hunting and herding it was much easier than trying to grow it, so that meat-eating became a virtue of necessity. But when your meat supply diminished, and you may have difficulty accepting my words, it became a vice.

“I do not speak with certain knowledge,” Gurronsevas went on quickly before Remrath could interrupt, “because I can only speculate about events that happened two or three centuries ago. But I would guess that, when the meat shortage became gradually more severe, the short period when vegetable stew was fed to young infants was increased until they reached puberty, and the restriction on eating meat was extended, probably at their own request, to those aged adults who were past their physical best. I would guess that soon afterwards only the young male hunters and female hunters, because of the increasing dangers they faced and their importance to the survival of their tribal group, were certain of having meat to eat. And in times of great shortage it might be that the hunters were expected to keep the meat they caught for themselves.

“They would not do this because of selfishness brought on by great, personal hunger,” Gurronsevas added. “It would be because of a firmly held belief that the future survival of the Wem lay in feeding the food-gatherers with meat. Is this not so?”

Because the returning hunters were making slower progress than expected, there had been time for Gurronsevas to learn a little of Remrath’s body language and facial expressions. The old cook was looking distressed and ashamed, emotions which could change quickly to anger, and it was not replying. In his anxiety to help the other he was pushing too hard. Something must be said quickly to lighten this conversation, he thought, or contact might be broken permanently here and now.

“If I were to ask them politely,” he said, “would your hunters give me some of their meat? Just a small portion would do. I can be quite creative with a meat course.”

For a moment Remrath had difficulty with its breathing, but the choking sounds subsided into the low barking that he recognized as the Wem equivalent of laughter.

“They would not!” it said. “Meat is too precious for an off-worlder cooker of vegetables to risk spoiling it.”

Gurronsevas remained silent, deliberately. As he had hoped, it was Remrath who now felt that it had given offense because its tone became apologetic.

“You would not spoil food deliberately,” Remrath said quickly. “But you might change its taste with your sauces and spices so that they would not recognize it as meat.” It hesitated, then went on, “And you are right. Unless there was a particularly successful hunt, and that has not happened since I left the hunters to become a teacher, neither the old nor the young share the meat. Sometimes, secretly, a returning hunter will spare a morsel for a teacher parent or an offspring, but I cannot remember when that last happened.

“Now meat is so scarce that even the hunters are forced to eat vegetables,” it went on in a voice so quiet with shame that Gurronsevas barely heard it, “to add bulk to what would otherwise be very frugal meals. But they insist that meat is present to give them strength, and they feel privileged when the taste of meat is there. I think their hunters’ pride very often brings them close to starvation and weakness rather than giving them greater strength.”

That was what Gurronsevas had been trying to tell it all along, but this was not the time to be scoring argument points. Instead, he laughed and said, “Then we must go on cooking vegetables, and make the hunters envious of the taste.”

Remrath did not laugh. It said, “A few days ago, before you had everyone wanting to eat your strange three-meals-in-one, that would have been a ridiculous suggestion. But now . . .Gurronsevas, vegetable novelties for the young and very old are not enough. It is meat that we need if the Wem are to survive as a race and, and our hunters are long overdue.”

In a regretful voice it added, “Need I remind you of the promise made by your First Healer that the off-worlders would leave us before the hunters returned?”

Prilicla had left it to Gurronsevas to decide when would be the best time to tell the people in the mine that their hunters could be expected soon, and this seemed to be the right moment. But with the good news there should also be a strong reminder that changes for the Wem were inevitable. He opened the satchel strapped to his side and directed an eye into it, searching for Rhabwar’s reconnaissance pictures.

“Allowing for the differences in size and age,” he said, “the young and old Wem are healthy and active on their diet of vegetables. The healers on the ship, who have knowledge of such matters covering many worlds, say that your young adults, too, would live and thrive and proliferate on the same diet. The eating of meat is good for them, the healers agree, but it is not the only source of health and energy for them. We feel that the eating of meat has become a belief and a habit going back many generations, and that it is a habit that can be broken.

“But let us not start another argument,” Gurronsevas went on quickly, “because I have good news for you. At their present rate of progress, which is slow because they are heavily loaded, your hunters will be here in the late morning of the day after tomorrow. If meat is what you want then meat you shall soon have.”

Without saying how long ago the pictures had been taken he gave a simple explanation of the workings of Rhabwar’s casualty search vehicle and began spreading them out before Remrath. Enlarged and enhanced, they showed every detail of the five food animals struggling against their tethers, every fold in the sewn skins covering the litter that was being carried by six Wem and, because the day had been heavily overcast, the hunters had their sun cowls and cloaks tied back so that every face was clearly visible. Even to Gurronsevas the sharpness of the images was impressive.

“Maybe they are late arriving because they have five food animals and a heavily loaded litter,” Gurronsevas went on enthusiastically. “You can see for yourself, so clearly that you will be able to recognize your friends. I have no idea of how much they usually bring back, but I think I know a big catch when I see one.”

“You know nothing, Gurronsevas,” said Remrath in a very quiet voice. “It is not a big catch. The hunters should not be walking, they should be running and tail-hopping so that the small animal carcasses in their belly-packs will not spoil before they reach us, and dragging upwards of twenty big crellan and twasacths behind them instead of five scrawny cubs. But many of their packs are empty, and they carry a Wem on a covered litter, which means that one of the hunters has been damaged and is dead or dying.”

“I am sorry,” said Gurronsevas. “Do you know . . .Is it a friend of yours?”

Gurronsevas knew as soon as he spoke that it was an unnecessary question. All the faces in the pictures were so clear and sharp that the other could identify the injured Wem by the simple process of elimination.

“It is Creethar, their leader,” said Remrath in an even quieter voice. “A very brave and resourceful and well-loved hunter. Creethar is my last-born.”

CHAPTER 27

Tawsar was reluctant but sympathetic and Remrath was adamant, which meant that it was the First Cook who won the argument. Even so, it took three hours before Rhabwar with Remrath on board was able to lift off on the kind of mission that it had been expressly designed to perform.

The situation did not bear thinking about, even for a non-medical person like himself. For an emotion-sensitive like Prilicla, he thought, it must be ghastly.

Gurronsevas knew exactly how he felt about it, and he thought that he knew how Remrath and the other people on the casualty deck were feeling. In spite of the attempts they must be making to control their feelings, they must all be emoting strongly within a few yards of Prilicla. Perhaps that was why the Senior Physician had not prefixed any of their names with “friend” for more than an hour.

The Wem were so short of meat that far-ranging hunting parties were sent out to find it, and so low in technology that there was no way that the catch could be stored for long periods unless it was brought to the mine, so the only way to transport it over long distances was to keep it alive. If the casualty was not already dead, it and its fellow hunters would try to keep it alive so that the young body meat that it must give up to its people would be fresh when it arrived home.

In spite of the continuing pain it would suffer on the journey, and of the fact that its selectively cannibalistic race knew little or nothing of the practice of curative medicine, Remrath told them that Creethar would try to stay alive until the last possible moment. As a brave and honorable Wem it was Creethar’s bounden duty to do so.

Now Remrath was standing before the casualty deck’s view-screen, displaying no visible reaction as Fletcher brought Rhabwar down for a full emergency landing, which Gurronsevas felt sure was little more than a controlled crash, a few hundred yards from the Wem hunting party.

Prilicla was hovering unsteadily beside him. He spoke to hide his anxiety, realizing at once that no feelings could be hidden from an empath.

“When I spoke to Tawsar and Remrath,” Gurronsevas said quietly, in spite of the translator bypass, “together and separately as you asked, there was disagreement. Tawsar forbade us to interfere and Remrath was anxious to help us in every way possible. So if we try to help Creethar without Tawsar’s permission, our present good relations with the Wem may be jeopardized. But from what I have seen, Tawsar likes and respects its first cook and healer, and at present feels great sympathy towards it, so the risk may be a small one. Creethar is, after all, Remrath’s youngest and only surviving offspring.”

“You have already said these things to me,” the empath replied, “and then as now your attempt at reassurance is appreciated. But as the senior medical officer of an ambulance ship I have no choice. Or is your feeling of anxiety due to something else?”

“I’m not sure,” said Gurronsevas. “There seems to be a problem with communication. Against Tawsar’s wishes Remrath is flying out with us to reassure the hunting party about our good intentions, so that we can bring Creethar home quickly for treatment or to die. But it doesn’t seem to want that. Before it left the mine with me, you must have overheard it telling Tawsar that as the parent, it had the final say in what was to happen to the damaged First Hunter and that it wanted the off-worlders, rather than itself or another Wem, to take Creethar into the ship for as long as would be necessary.

“Nothing more was said to me directly,” he went on, “and I do not have your ability to read emotional radiation. But why would a parent in this terrible situation give its offspring to us, to utterly strange beings it has known for such a short time, with so little argument? I felt sure that it was saying less, much less, than it was thinking and feeling. This worries me.”

“I know your feelings, and Remrath’s,” said the empath. “Right now it is radiating the combination of uncertainty and grief characteristic of the expected loss of a loved one, the severity of whose injuries and chances of survival are unknown. And, almost submerged by these stronger feelings, there is a child-like wonder and excitement of its first experience of flying. It is an intelligent being with, in spite of the present near-barbaric situation on Wemar, a civilized and liberal mind who trusts us. That trust was won by you, friend Gurronsevas, and as a result we will be able to give Creethar the best treatment possible, with parental consent.

“You have no reason to worry,” Prilicla ended, “but still you are worrying.”

Before he could reply, the deck plating pressed gently against their feet as the gravity compensators evened out the shock of the emergency landing. Warm, outside air blew around them as the casualty deck’s boarding lock swung open. Remrath climbed stiffly onto the litter and the medical team, with the exception of Pathologist Murchison who would prepare to receive the casualty following the preliminary report on its medical condition, moved down the ramp and toward the hunting party.

Remrath took charge at that point, ordering the others to remain silent while it did the talking. Unless it was present, it had insisted, any attempt the off-worlders might make to retrieve Creethar would certainly fail, probably with many casualties on both sides, if another Wem was not present to speak to them with authority. The medical team had been forced to agree. But Gurronsevas tried to put himself in the position of a Wem hunting party who were seeing a spaceship for the first time, and an off-world menagerie that was as strange as it was frightening, who were trying to take one of their number away from them.

He wondered if his friend was suffering from the overconfidence of age.

But Remrath was talking to them as if they were still its pupils, firmly, reassuringly, and with authority. First it told them that they had nothing to fear and then telling them why. It began with a brief and very simple lesson in astronomy that covered the formation of solar systems, the intelligent life-forms that some of them must contain, and the vast interstellar distances between them, and from there it went on to an equally short discussion regarding the many centuries of peaceful cooperation required to achieve the level of technology on these worlds required for travel between the stars . . .

Danalta had adopted a quadripedal shape with no fearsome natural weaponry so as not to worry any of the Wem hunters. The shape-changer moved closer to Gurronsevas and said, “When your friend offered to help us, I didn’t expect anything like this.”

“In spite of having a common area of interest,” said Gurronsevas, “we talked about subjects other than cooking.”

“Obviously,” said Danalta.

They had closed to within twenty yards of Creethar’s litter and the hunters were showing no sign of moving out of their way.

“. . . The strange creatures around me have come in peace,” Remrath was saying. “They mean us no harm and are anxious to help us. One of them . . .” it pointed at Gurronsevas, “. . .has already helped us with the provision of new food at the mine, in many strange and wonderful ways that I have not the time to describe now. The others are healers and preservers of wide experience who are also willing to help us. I have decided, as is my parental right, to allow them to practice their advanced art on our behalf. Put the litter down and remove the coverings.”

In a quieter, less authoritative voice it added, “Does, does Creethar still live?”

A long silence answered it.

Prilicla moved forward to hover just above Creethar’s litter. Two of the hunters raised spears and another notched an arrow to its bow, aimed, but did not draw back the string to full tension. The empath was aware of everyone’s feelings, Gurronsevas told himself reassuringly, and would know if anyone really intended to attack it, hopefully in time to take evasive action. But Prilicla’s hovering flight was erratic, so it was possible that the empath was as worried about its safety as he was.

“Creethar is alive,” said the empath, its voice sounding loud in the silence, “but just barely. Friend Remrath, we must examine it at once, then transfer it quickly to the ship. Danalta, let us see our patient.”

More spears and bows were raised, and now all of them were pointed at the shape-changer’s virtually impervious hide rather than at the incredibly fragile body of Prilicla. While Danalta was carefully removing the animal skins that were draped loosely over the grounded Wem litter, Remrath created another diversion by dismounting from the team’s vehicle and renewing its demand that Creethar be released to the off-worlders. The hunters crowded around the First Cook, arguing and shouting so much that they seemed to be ignoring everything that Prilicla, Danalta and Naydrad were doing and saying.

Gurronsevas tried very hard to listen to everyone, but the Wem hunters were growing louder and more excitable, and their arguments were becoming so involved that it passed beyond his comprehension. His attempts to make sense of what they were saying was further hampered by their ability to talk rapidly to each other and listen, simultaneously. He switched briefly to the ship frequency so that he could listen to the medical team without Wem interference.

Prilicla was saying, “The patient has sustained multiple fractures and lacerations to the forelimbs, chest and abdomen, with extensive contused and lacerated areas along both flanks, which suggest a rolling fall onto a hard, uneven surface, probably rocks. As you can see, there is material resembling dried soil or rock dust still adhering to the uninjured areas, indicating that the water used to irrigate the wounds was in short supply. The scanner shows damage to the rib cage but no other internal injuries. Severe crepitation and complication of the fractures has taken place during travel. There is widespread tissue wastage, suggesting a lengthy period without food and reduced water intake. When compared with the normal vital signs obtained from Tawsar, friend Creethar’s are not good. It is massively debilitated, barely conscious, and its emotional radiation is characteristic of an entity who is close to termination. You are seeing what we are seeing, friend Murchison. There is no time to waste arguing with its friends and, for now, we must risk acting without their permission.

“Danalta, Naydrad,” it went on briskly. “Extend the anti-gravity field and lift Creethar onto the litter, smoothly and with minimum disturbance to its limbs. We don’t want any further complications to those fractures. Gently, that’s it. Now seal the canopy, increase internal heating ten degrees and switch the atmosphere to pure oxygen. We should be back on Rhabwar in five minutes.”

“Right,” said Murchison. “Instruments for orthopedic repair and internal examination procedures are ready. However, that patient is emaciated and badly dehydrated. In addition to the trauma, it’s about ready to terminate from sheer starvation. Dammit, this kind of treatment is callous, even cruel. Have the Wem never heard about the use of splints to immobilize fractures? Or do these people care about their injured?”

Gurronsevas knew that he had no business interrupting a medical discussion, but the pathologist’s words had angered him. It was as if he was being forced to listen while a friend was being wrongly criticized. The feeling surprised him, but it was there and it was strong.

He said, “The Wem are not cruel, nor uncaring. Remrath and I discussed this very point. It said that on Wemar the medical profession is composed only of physicians—cook-healers and herbalists, that is. There are no surgeons as we know them. Remrath thinks that there may have been such people in the old days, but the skill has long since been lost. Nowadays even a simple injury can result in death, or a long, pain-filled life of a cripple that is a burden both to the invalid and those taking care of it, as well as a drain on the food resources of its community. That being so, they do not waste food on a friend who is going to die, nor would Creethar want them to do so.

“It is Wemar that is cruel, not the Wem.”

For a moment there was silence except for a soft sighing which Gurronsevas recognized as the sound Earth-humans made while exhaling through the nose, then Murchison said, “Sorry, Gurronsevas. I listened to many of your conversations with Remrath, but I must have missed that one. You are right. But it bothers me when any casualty is subjected to protracted major discomfort.”

“Its discomfort will soon be eased, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla gently. “Please stand by.”

Suddenly the little empath rose high into the air, aided by the gravity nullifier belt set at the Cinrusskin norm of one-eighth G. Its slowly beating, iridescent wings reflected the sunlight like a great, mobile prism. Immediately, the argument around Remrath died into silence as the hunters raised their eyes to watch this strange off-worlder who was literally dazzling them with its beauty, and beginning to shade their eyes with their free hands because Prilicla was moving slowly into a line between them and the sun. The altitude and position might have been chosen, Gurronsevas thought, to make the accurate use of weapons difficult. By the time the watchers realized what was happening, it was too late for them to do anything about it. Danalta, Naydrad and the litter bearing Creethar were already halfway to the ship.

As Prilicla turned to fly after them, it said reassuringly, “The emotional radiation from the hunters indicates general confusion, anger, resentment, but not, I think, of sufficient intensity to result in physical violence, and accompanied by very strong feelings of loss. There is little risk of them attacking you, friend Gurronsevas, unless you provide additional provocation. Ask Remrath if it wishes to remain with its friends or return on the ship with Creethar, and extricate yourselves as quickly as possible.”

Gurronsevas spent the most unnerving fifteen minutes of his life trying to do just that. The hunters had no objection to Remrath returning to the ship, since the First Cook was too old and infirm to return on foot, but not so Gurronsevas. The off-worlder, they insisted loudly as they gathered around him to cut off his escape, must remain and travel back with them to the mine. He must do this because the creatures in the ship had taken their leader, Creethar, and Gurronsevas was a hostage against its return. They would not harm him unless he tried to escape, or unless Creethar was not returned to them.

Their voices became quieter and almost clinical in tone as they began discussing how best they might overcome the large, thick-skinned off-worlder. Spears and arrows might not be immediately disabling, they thought, so that the best procedure might be to strike heavily at the three legs on one flank with their tails. The creature’s legs were short but the body appeared top-heavy, and if it could be toppled onto its side it would have difficulty regaining its feet. The skin of the underbelly appeared to be much thinner than that of the back and flanks so that a spear-thrust into that area would probably be lethal.

They were quite right, Gurronsevas thought, but he was certainly not going to tell them so. He was still trying to think of something to say when Remrath rushed to his defense.

“Listen to me,” said the Wem loudly. “You had more brains when you were children. Use them. Do you want to risk an end like Creethar’s, with too many of you injured and dying to be carried home? Think of the criminal waste of meat, to yourselves and your young near-adults awaiting your return. We have never seen Gurronsevas fight, because its actions towards us have always been helpful. But this creature is totally beyond your hunting experience. It weighs twice as much as any two of you, scrawny and half-starved as you are, and I cannot imagine what it might do to you.”

Gurronsevas could not imagine what he could do to them, either, so he allowed Remrath to do the talking.

“You do not need a hostage because you already have one,” it continued quickly. “Gurronsevas spends all of our waking time in the mine, where it helps with the cooking, instructs and advises the kitchen staff and young trainees in the off-world methods of selecting and preparing edible vegetation, and is helpful in many other ways. We would not want it to be killed, or hurt, or even insulted in any way.

“Besides,” Remrath ended, “in my professional opinion as your first cook and preserver, Gurronsevas would be totally inedible.”

Surprise and pleasure at the complimentary things Remrath had just said about him kept Gurronsevas silent for a moment. The people in the mine, both young and old, had been talkative but undemonstrative, and he had thought that his presence among them was being tolerated and nothing more. He wanted to say a word of appreciation to the elderly Wem, but he was not out of trouble yet and there were other words he must speak first.

“Remrath is correct,” he said loudly. “I am inedible. And Creethar, too, is inedible so far as the off-worlders on our vessel are concerned, because we do not eat meat. Remrath knows this and has given its offspring into our charge because of our greater knowledge and experience in this area. It, and all of you, have our promise that Creethar will be returned to you at the mine as soon as possible.”

I am telling the truth, Gurronsevas told himself, but not all of it. Rhabwar’s crew and half the medical team were meat eaters, but the meals they consumed on board ship and at Sector General were a product of the food synthesizers, perfect in color, texture, and taste though they were, rather than parts from some hapless food animal—and they would certainly not eat any portion of an intelligent being. Neither did he say whether Creethar would be alive or dead when he was returned to them. He thought he knew which it would be, but the communication of that kind of bad news was better left to medics.

It suddenly occurred to him that the medical team did not know anything about their patient other than what they could see with their scanners, and information on how its injuries had been sustained might be helpful as well as allowing him to change to a less sensitive subject. The Wem were talking rapidly but quietly among themselves, and from the few words the translator picked up they seemed to be less hostile towards him now. He would risk a question.

“If it will not cause distress to you,” he said, “can you tell me how Creethar received its injuries?”

Plainly the question did not cause distress because one of them, a hunter called Druuth who had replaced the injured Wem as leader, began describing the event. In complete and often harrowing detail that included the incidents and conversations leading up to and following the event as well as Creethar’s own report and instructions before the First Hunter had lost consciousness, the story unfolded.

Gurronsevas formed the impression that the Wem might be talking to excuse or perhaps justify something the hunting party had or had not done.

CHAPTER 28

Soon after dawn on the thirty-third day of the worst hunt that any of them could remember, they discovered the tracks left by an adult twasach and several cubs leading from the muddy edge of a river towards a nearby hillside cave. The larger prints were not deeply impressed into the soft ground, indicating that the adult was either not fully grown or badly undernourished. But it was unlikely to be as close to starvation as its hunters, Druuth thought bleakly, which meant greater danger for the one who had to trap and kill it. Inevitably that one would be First Hunter Creethar, her mate.

In the far past, the ancient, disintegrating books at the mine told of a time when the twasachs had been tree-climbers and eaters of vegetation as well as smaller animals, but since then they had learned to attack and eat anything they could find regardless of its size, which included unwary Wem hunters. This twasach would be particularly dangerous because it was both hungry and naturally protective of its young. But the glorious prospect of trapping an entire twasach family had, in spite of Creethar’s repeated warnings, made them both overeager and undercautious.

Druuth understood them well. For too long had they been catching and sharing the tiny and unsatisfying carcasses of rodents and burrowing insects, and then, to hide their shame and try to fill the noisy emptiness of their stomachs, they had left camp one by one to eat secretly the fruit and berries and roots that they had pretended not to see each other gather along the way. But suddenly they were feeling like true Hunters again, brave and proud and about to eat their fill of meat as was their right under the law.

The hillside was steep and rocky, with more sharp-edged stones carpeting the dried-up river bed at its base. There were only a few clumps of vegetation, not very securely rooted, to give a steadying grip for their hands, and the crumbling, uneven ledge leading up to the cave would bear a twasach’s weight but was barely wide enough to support one Wem at a time. She followed Creethar along the narrow ledge to the cave mouth and there, clinging precariously to the slope, and with their heavy tails hanging over the ledge and threatening to overbalance them, they deployed the weighted net.

So confident of success were the other hunters that they had begun to erect a smoke-tent to dry and preserve any uneaten meat that remained, and to gather fuel for its slow-burning fires.

Working as quietly as possible, Creethar and Druuth hung the heavy net across the cave mouth, holding it in position by pushing the open mesh over convenient vegetation or wedging it loosely into rocky outcroppings. Then they took up positions on each side of the cave entrance and began shouting loudly and continuously into the dark interior.

They waited, spears ready, for a furious twasach to come charging out and into their net, but it did not come.

Between periods of shouting they tossed loose stones through the mesh and heard them clattering against the floor of the cave. But still there was no reaction except for the frightened bleating of the cubs and a low, moaning sound from the adult. The waiting hunters were growing impatient in their hunger and the words that were being shouted up to their First and Second Hunters were becoming openly disrespectful.

“Nothing is happening here,” said Creethar angrily, “and I am beginning to look ridiculous. Help me lift the bottom edge of the net so that I can get under it. Be careful, or it will pull loose.”

“Be careful yourself,” said Druuth sharply, but too quietly for those below to hear her. “It is easy for them to criticize when their feet and tails are on solid ground. Creethar, hunger is no stranger to us on this hunt and the others we have shared. We can starve for a few more hours until the twasachs have to drink again.”

Just as softly Creethar replied, “We cannot wait in this position for long. Already my legs are cramping and if I stretch or move them as I soon must, the ledge will crumble.” And in the sure voice of a First Hunter he went on, “Below there! Throw some dried wood up to the ledge, and a lighted torch. If noise does not drive them out then smoke will.”

Druuth lifted the net carefully and Creethar moved under it until only his tail remained outside the cave. The adult twasach was still moaning steadily and the cubs were making the soft, excited barking sound which indicated that they might be playing together. By the time the fire was set and kindled, Creethar said that his eyes were ready for a night hunt. He could see that the cave was deeper than expected and that the floor sloped upwards and angled sharply to the left so that the exact position of the animals was hidden from him, but the barking of the cubs was sounding frightened rather than playful. The billowing smoke was affecting his eyes so badly that he could see nothing, he said, and he began backing carefully out onto the ledge.

Druuth realized later that there had been a moment’s warning when the moaning sounds ceased, but the beast came silently and so fast out of the smoke that its claws were tearing at Creethar’s chest before he could bring up his spear.

In the open the twasach could have been swept loose and knocked unconscious with a disabling tail-blow, but in the confined space of the cave mouth Creethar could only fend it off desperately with arms that were deeply torn and bleeding while he backed carefully onto the ledge where Druuth could use her spear. But not carefully enough.

Suddenly Creethar’s feet became entangled in the net. He lost balance and together the attacker and attacked tumbled backwards over the narrow ledge, and, wrapped together in netting, rolled down the rocky slope. By the time the other hunters got to them the twasach, whose body had ended up underneath that of the much heavier Wem, was dead, and Creethar was not expected to survive for long. But he did survive and while he lived, he would continue to hold authority over them because that was the law.

The dead twasach was diseased, its hunger-weakened body so covered with open, suppurating sores that it could not be safely declared edible. In spite of being severely weakened by their own hunger, the hunters had no choice but to obey when Creethar ordered them to leave the suspect carcass where it lay. A few of them wondered aloud about the internal organs which might not be affected, but their remarks were ignored.

They were also ordered to call off the hunt immediately, return to the mine and to bring all five of the cubs with them alive. It was not the first time that young twasachs had been caught by hunting parties, but previously they had been killed singly and in the open, never trapped as a complete litter in their den. For the first time in living memory, and provided the hunters and their families living in near starvation at the mine could control their hunger for a few years, there was the possibility of breeding the cubs into a food herd.

So they built a covered litter for Creethar out of branches and the skins of the smoke-tent and began the slow return to the mine. Even though Creethar was in constant pain and not always clear in his mind or speech, he spent his lucid moments talking to Druuth about the necessity of keeping all of the twasach cubs alive and trying to make them promise to continue doing so should he die before reaching the mine.

This was not strictly according to Wem law, but they did not want to argue and add in any way to the suffering of a greatly respected First Hunter, who was soon to die, or to Druuth, his mate.

Druuth insisted on being one of the litter bearers whether or not it was her turn, so as to make sure the other carriers moved as smoothly as possible over rough ground and to try to talk some of Creethar’s pain away. She spoke of many things: of earlier, more successful hunts; of the strange speaking machines dropped at the mine by the off-worlders; but mostly of their first journey together from the lake settlement. Four young adults had made the long, dangerous journey in search of mates, just as the new hunters among the lake people would travel to the mine or other groups for the same purpose, because the children were sickly or damaged in their minds if the Wem mated within their own tribe. Creethar had shown his courage and strength and had claimed his right of first choice by leaving his traveling companions far behind and arriving at the lake three days before they did, and his choice had been Druuth.

But when the going was rough and Creethar’s broken bones were grinding together so that she could almost hear his silent screaming in her mind, Druuth talked only about that first mating journey together, and of the things they had said and done during their long, unhurried, and wonderful return to her new home in the mine.

Creethar’s deteriorating condition during the return journey was being described in such horrifying detail by Druuth that Gurronsevas was feeling a growing inner distress, and he did not have to be an empath to sense the effect of the words on Remrath, its parent. But before he could speak, the voice of Prilicla said everything that he wanted to say.

“Friend Gurronsevas,” said the empath. “The information you have obtained regarding the patient’s injuries and subsequent lack of treatment is helpful. But we have enough for the time being, and your friend Remrath is suffering acute emotional distress. Please sever contact with Druuth as quickly as possible and give Remrath the choice of going back in Rhabwar or with the hunting party, then return to the ship.”

When he relayed the message, Remrath said, “Ancient in years as I am, I could probably walk faster than this starving bunch. But no, I shall return on your ship. There, there are preparations I must make.”

Again Gurronsevas sensed the other’s distress. In an attempt at reassurance, he said, “Please do not worry, Remrath. The off-worlders on the ship know their business and Creethar is in good hands. Would you like to watch them work?

“No!” said Remrath sharply. In a softer voice it went on, “To you it may appear that I am a weak and cowardly parent. But remember, your off-worlders have asked for this responsibility and I have passed it to them. It is very insensitive of you, Gurronsevas, to ask me to watch what they do to my offspring. This is information I prefer not to know. Please return me to the mine as quickly as possible.”

During the return flight the Wem did not spare so much as a glance at the medical team who were working on Creethar, nor did it speak another word to Gurronsevas or anyone else. He tried to imagine how he would have felt if one of his children, supposing there had been any, had been seriously injured and he had been offered the chance to watch the surgeons working on it.

Perhaps Remrath was right and his remark had been most insensitive.

CHAPTER 29

Unlike Remrath, Gurronsevas could not avoid seeing or at least hearing everything that was being done. Each stage of the procedure was being relayed onto the casualty deck’s large repeater screen and, since it was the first major operation on a life-form new to the Federation, the procedure was being recorded for future study, which meant that the accompanying verbal commentary was precise and detailed. Even when he directed all of his eyes away from the screen, he could not escape the word-pictures that the voices were painting.

Beyond the direct vision port the steep green slopes of the valley dimmed gradually into the monochrome of twilight and then to the near-absolute darkness that was possible only on a moonless world in a galactic sector where the star-systems were sparse, and still they worked and talked over the patient. But as the first grey hint of dawn diluted the blackness, the work slowed to a stop and the commentary went into the summation phase.

The voices were sounding increasingly concerned.

“. . . You will observe,” Prilicla was saying, “that the simple and complicated fractures to the leg, fore-limb, and rib cage have been reduced and immobilized where necessary, and the incised and lacerated wounds and abrasions irrigated, sutured and covered with sterile dressings. Because of the Wem physiological data furnished by Tawsar and Remrath, no difficulties were experienced during the surgical repair work. It is the minor injuries, the areas of surface laceration or abrasion associated with the fractures, which are the major cause of concern and which make the prognosis uncertain . . .”

“Translated,” said Naydrad, its pointed head turning toward Gurronsevas, “it means the operation was a success but the patient will probably die.”

None of the others remonstrated with it. Probably the Charge Nurse was saying only what the medical team was already thinking.

“. . . While it is unnecessary to remind some of you,” Prilicla went on, for the non-medical Gurronsevas’s benefit, “that pathogens evolved on one world cannot affect the life-forms of another, the same cannot be said for the curative medication used by different species. We have developed a single, emergency-use specific that is effective against infections of this type found in the majority of the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms, but there are a few species on whom the medication is lethal. Even with Sector General’s facilities a lengthy investigation—two or three weeks, at minimum—would be required before it could be declared safe for use on a Wem patient. We took a small risk with the anesthetic . . .”

“We may have to take the big one, Doctor,” Murchison broke in sharply. Then in a more clinical voice, it went on, “The patient is severely debilitated, initially by its injuries, then by the continuing trauma of its long journey without treatment, and now by unavoidable post-operative shock. The shock is being controlled, but the only positive measures we have been able to take are running in pure oxygen and intravenous feeding lines. At least we know enough about the Wem basic metabolism not to poison it with an IV drip.

“Whether or not to risk using Wem-untested medication is a decision that will have to be made very soon,” Murchison went on. “Thankfully it isn’t mine to make. I don’t have to mention the Cromsaggar Incident, because we must all be remembering it, when Lioren used untested medication and came close to committing species genocide. It isn’t the fault of the Wem that they know nothing about the treatment of even the simplest injuries or infections. Seemingly, they have learned to accept the idea that a minor injury nearly always results in death or permanent disability. So they have passed responsibility for Creethar’s treatment to us, the wonderful, medically advanced off-worlders. And what are we doing? We are trusting to the patient’s natural resistance to fight off what should be a minor infection.

“In its present condition I doubt whether the patient has any resistance left.”

“The decision is . . .” began Prilicla, then interrupted itself. “Gurronsevas, you are emoting very strongly, a combination of impatience, irritation and frustration characteristic of a person who is in disagreement but wants badly to speak. Quickly please, what is it that you want to say?”

“Pathologist Murchison is too critical of the Wem,” Gurronsevas replied. “And wrong. They do treat minor, non-surgical ailments. Usually the kitchen staff double as healers, so that—”

“Are they better healers than they are cooks?” Naydrad broke in, its fur tufting with impatience.

“I am not qualified,” said Gurronsevas, “to give an opinion on medical matters, but I wanted to—”

“Then why,” said Murchison sharply, “are you interrupting a clinical discussion?”

“Please go on, Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla, gently but very firmly. “I feel you wanting to help.”

As briefly as possible he described one of his recent food experiments in the mine kitchen, where he was continually trying to find combinations of taste and consistency that would lift the vegetable meals to a level where, so far as the tradition-bound Wem were concerned, they would compete successfully with their remembered meat dishes. He had been trying every variety of root, leaf and berry that he could find, including those he found in a small and apparently little-used storage cupboard. His first attempt to incorporate them into a main dish had led to much unexplained hilarity among the kitchen staff until Remrath had told him that he was using stale materials from their medicinal herbs store.

“From the discussion that followed,” he went on, “I learned that, while the Wem would not cut surgically into a living body, they use herbal remedies to treat simple medical conditions. Respiratory difficulties, problems encountered with the evacuation of body wastes, and superficial wounds are treated in this way, usually with hot poultices made from a paste of certain clays and herbs, and grasses to bind the poultice together and allow easier application to the injured area. When I asked them about your patient’s injuries, Remrath said that Creethar was seriously and irreparably damaged, that parts of his body had been broken, and that treating the superficial damage would merely prolong suffering that had already gone on for far too long.”

While he had been speaking, Prilicla had alighted on the bottom edge of Creethar’s bed and was watching Gurronsevas, as silent and still as all the others. The patient’s respirator was beginning to sound loud.

Hesitantly, he went on, “If, if I understand you correctly, Creethar’s internal injuries, the fractures, have been treated and it is the surface wounds that are causing concern. That was why I mentioned—”

“Gurronsevas, I’m sorry,” Murchison broke in again, “I did not think you could make any contribution, and impatience made me forget my manners. Even with the availability of these local folk-remedies whose effectiveness is still in doubt, we may not be able to cure our patient. But its chances have improved.”

The pathologist laughed suddenly, but it was the sharp, barking sound which, Gurronsevas thought, indicated a release of tension rather than amusement. It went on, “But just look at us! We have the most technologically advanced ambulance ship in known space with, I say in all modesty, a medical team with the experience to match it, and we’re back to using dark-age poultices! When Peter gets to hear about this, he will never let us live it down. Especially if the treatment works.”

Feeling confused, Gurronsevas said, “I do not know the entity, Peter. Is it important?”

“You do,” said Prilicla, wings beating slowly as it rose to hover above the patient. “Peter is the name used by family and friends for Pathologist Murchison’s life-mate, Diagnostician Conway, a being who in the past has been no stranger to unusual medical practices. But the matter is not important to our present situation. What is important is that you speak with Remrath as quickly as possible. Ask it for supplies of its herbal medications, with information regarding their application and use. That is important, friend Gurronsevas, and very, very urgent.”

Before replying, Gurronsevas turned one eye towards the direct vision port. The valley was still in darkness but the slopes of the mountains were outlined by the grey light of early dawn.

He said, “My memory for colors and shapes and smells, as well as for words of explanation, is excellent. If the matter is urgent there will be no need to talk again with Remrath. I shall leave shortly to begin gathering the necessary herbs and mosses. They are at their most effective when gathered early in the morning.”

CHAPTER 30

Over the next four days Gurronsevas kept the ambulance ship supplied with fresh herbal vegetation when required, together with the Wem cook-healer’s instructions for using it, but he continued to spend as much time as possible in the mine kitchen. His reasons for doing so were both positive and negative.

Whenever he was present on the casualty deck, Murchison, Danalta and Naydrad were always worrying aloud about the ethical implications of a lay person dictating a patient’s course of medical treatment, and where the responsibility for treating Creethar really lay. Nothing was said to him directly, but he did not know how to answer the unspoken criticism and felt very disturbed by it, even though he normally considered the opinions of other people toward him to be of no importance. Since he had left the kitchens of the Cromingan-Shesk, where his authority had been absolute, his self-confidence had been under constant and successful attack. It was not a nice feeling.

Prilicla, who could not help but know of Gurronsevas’s feelings, waited until the others were either off-watch or too busy to listen before drawing him aside so that they could speak privately.

“I understand and sympathize with your feeling of irritation and uncertainty, Chief Dietitian,” said the empath, the quiet, musical trilling and clicking of its native speech barely audible above the translated voice in Gurronsevas’ earpiece, “as you must try to understand those of the medical team. In spite of the things you have heard them say, they are not being critical of you so much as displaying self-irritation at their own professional inadequacy over the fact that a mere cook—my apologies, friend Gurronsevas, when they take time to think about it they will realize that you are much more than a mere cook—is able to help their patient in ways that they cannot. They can no more help their feelings than you can your own, but I shall suggest gently that they refrain from showing them to you. Until the problem of Creethar is resolved, please make allowances for them. I could not have asked this of the Chief Dietitian who joined the hospital a few months ago. You have changed, friend Gurronsevas. It is for the better.”

His confused feelings were clear for the other to read, Gurronsevas knew, so he said nothing.

“For the present,” Prilicla went on, “it will be more comfortable for you if you spend as much time as possible with friend Remrath in the mine.”

That was not to be as easy as it first appeared. For some reason, Remrath, and to a lesser extent the rest of the kitchen staff and teachers, were acting in an increasingly unfriendly manner toward him. And Prilicla was too far away to read the subtle changes in their emotional radiation that would give him some indication of what he was saying or doing wrong.

Fortunately, the young Wem did not share the feelings of their elders and remained respectful, obedient, curious, and continually excited by speculations regarding the strange culinary marvels their off-world cook would suggest next. Even the returned hunters were sampling his offerings with decreasing reluctance, although, as staunch traditionalists, they still insisted that meat was the only proper food for an adult and that they would continue to eat it.

Considering the pitifully small amount they had brought back from their hunt—with careful rationing there would be barely enough to add a meat flavor to the standard Wem vegetable stew for a few more weeks—their personal shame must have been as great as their hunger. Gurronsevas did not openly disagree with them. He was educating ignorant palates and enticing them into trying new sensations, and generally winning their hearts and minds by a flanking attack through their stomachs. The pretense of losing the occasional battle was of no importance when he knew that he was winning the war.

But the hunters, too, were showing signs of turning against him for no reason that he could see. Unlike Remrath and the other teachers, they had never been friendly or relaxed in his presence, but they had adapted surprisingly well to having an off-worlder in their midst. Over the past few days, however, their behavior towards him had verged on the hostile. In his presence the silences of the Wem adults were lengthening to the point where an attempt to open a conversation with a simple question brought only the briefest and most reluctant of responses, delivered in a tone that should have turned the running water in the kitchen to ice. He could think of no reason for their change of behavior and it was beginning to irritate him. In the circumstances, he decided, it would be better to forget the polite niceties of a first contact situation and ask a simple, direct question.

“Remrath,” he said, “why are you angry with me?” After several minutes without a response, Gurronsevas decided that the question was being ignored. He returned his attention to the preparation of the day’s alternative main meal which, in spite of being nicknamed by the Wem ‘the off-world option', was one of several dishes he had devised that used only local root and leaf vegetables with an added sauce containing the barest touch of the native herb shuslish which had the effect of lighting a gentle fire on the tongue while stirring the olfactory senses with a warm expectancy. From experience he knew that his dish would be chosen by the majority of the adults and all of the young, and it would be only a few die-hard hunters who would eat the native vegetable stew with its extremely light flavoring of meat. But that was fine, Remrath had told him when they were still talking, because the remains of the hunters’ kill preserved in the cold running mountain water weighed less than two pounds, and the less the demand, the longer it would last.

The dish complete, Gurronsevas stepped back to make room for the four young apprentice cooks on this shift, who moved quickly forward to begin spooning out and duplicating his presentation before moving the completed dishes to his newly introduced hot shelves to await serving. One of them—a youth called Evemth, he thought, although he still had difficulty telling near-pubescent Wem apart—had made a small rearrangement to the presentation by adding a few tiny sprigs of driss to the surface of the shuslish sauce, which would not do anything catastrophic to the overall taste but did add a certain visual attraction. The change had been made on only one platter, presumably Evemth’s own.

There had been a time when he would have verbally stripped the tegument from an underling who had dared to do such a thing without permission, if only to show the miscreant that The Master was alert and quick to see the smallest of unauthorized changes. But this young Wem was displaying culinary initiative and imagination and was beginning to think and experiment for itself. Evemth, if it was Evemth, showed promise.

“I am not angry with you,” said Remrath suddenly.

And black is white, thought Gurronsevas. But this was not the time to start an argument. He felt that Remrath had more to say, and remained silent.

“In a time that surprised us all by its short duration,” Remrath went on, “and in spite of your horrendous appearance, we have come to feel at ease in your presence. You have gained our respect and, with one of us at least, our friendship. But we are very angry and disappointed with the preservers on your ship and, as one of the off-worlders, you must share in our anger.”

“I understand,” said Gurronsevas.

He knew that all of his conversations in the mine were being monitored by Rhabwar and Tremaar, but for many days they had paid him the compliment of not continually telling him what to ask or answer. There were times, as now, when he would have gladly done without both the compliment and the responsibility.

“But the preservers, like myself, want only to help the Wem. You must all know and believe that. Why are you now so angry with them? And what must I do to regain your friendship?”

In the angry, impatient voice of one who is speaking to a stupid child, Remrath said, “They are continuing to withhold Creethar from us.”

Gurronsevas was relieved. It seemed that the two problems had a single solution, the speedy return of their grievously injured hunter. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Your offspring will be returned to you as soon as possible. I am not myself a preserver so I cannot say with accuracy how long you will have to wait. I shall ask the preservers for their best estimate. Or you could visit the ship and see for yourself what is happening to Creethar and ask them any questions you wish.”

“No!” said Remrath sharply, as sharply as it had done on the other occasions when a visit to Creethar was suggested. Angrily it went on, “You are most insensitive, Gurronsevas. It hurts me to say this but I, too, am beginning to suspect you, as well as the other off-worlders, of gross and selfish dishonesty. I want you to prove me wrong, and until you do we shall not speak again. Go back to your ship and tell your friends to return Creethar to us without delay.”

Remembering his last conversation with Prilicla, Gurronsevas set off for Rhabwar wondering if there was anyone anywhere who wanted his company. If it still lived, the Wem patient would talk to him and, hopefully, explain the strange behavior of Remrath and the others. Mysteries and unanswered questions were like heaps of trash littering a mind, and he liked to think that his mind was at least as well-ordered as his kitchens. He would suggest to Prilicla that he be allowed to speak to Creethar on his return.

“I was about to make the same suggestion to you, friend Gurronsevas,” the empath said, surprising him. “The situation with the Wem is deteriorating more rapidly than you realize, and for no apparent reason. Did you know that they have broken contact entirely, switched off the communicators we left with them, after telling us that off-worlders were no longer welcome in the mine? Creethar is the only channel of communication left open to us; but it, too, has said repeatedly that it does not want to talk to off-worlders.”

Prilicla indicated the patient’s bed and flew slowly towards it. No other members of the medical team were present, Gurronsevas noted, possibly because Creethar was no longer in danger, or because it objected strongly to them being there. It was nice to have his supposition proved true.

“Clinically,” Prilicla went on, “friend Creethar is doing very well. Since the application of your locally derived medication, its condition has advanced from critical to pre-convalescent. Its emotional radiation, however, is not good. There is a deep and continuing anxiety, a dread, that it is trying to conceal and control. It refuses to discuss the problem with us in spite of my attempts at reassurance . . .”

Not only was Prilicla emotion-sensitive, Gurronsevas reminded himself, the little Cinrusskin was a projective empath as well. Unless there was serious emotional distress present, it could make everyone feel better just by flying into a crowded room.

“. . . During our last and very short conversation with it,” said Prilicla, “it asked about its parent Remrath, the hunting party, and events at the mine. That was two days ago. Since then it has refused to speak or even listen to us, and it became extremely distressed whenever we tried to discuss the case in its presence, so much so that I switched off its translator whenever we were doing so. It is also refusing to eat. Unknown to it, we are continuing to feed it intravenously; but, psychologically and clinically, we both know that the speedy recovery of a convalescent patient is improved by the intake of solid food. In this case the patient is so gravely weakened by malnutrition that without it Creethar’s termination cannot be long delayed.

“But you, friend Gurronsevas, have four distinct advantages over us,” the empath continued. “It has not yet met you while conscious. You are not a medic and will therefore not feel the temptation to discuss the patient’s clinical condition in its presence. You are a master cook who may be able to discover the patient’s food preferences. And lastly, you have first-hand information on recent events in the mine. That is why I would like you to talk to Creethar as soon as possible.”

With its iridescent wings beating slowly, the Senior Physician drifted to a halt above the patient’s bed before going on. “You have been accepted as a friend by these people, much more so than any of the medical team. But do not assume, because you have grown to like and respect one of them, that they are human. They are not human, whether your yardstick is Earth-human, Cinrusskin-human, or even Tralthan-human like yourself; they are Wem-human. That difference, compounded by something we have said or done wrong, is the reason why they are no longer our friends.”

“I will be careful,” said Gurronsevas.

“I know you will,” said Prilicla. It extended a delicate forward manipulator and briefly touched a stud on the bed console. “I will monitor and report on the patient’s emotional response on a closed frequency. Its translator has been switched on. Friend Creethar’s eyes are closed but it is awake and listening to us. It is better that I leave you now.”

Creethar lay on the treatment bed in a position that allowed the casts enclosing its injured limbs to be suspended comfortably in a system of cross-braced slings that reminded Gurronsevas of the cordage on an old-time sailing ship. The remainder of the body and tail were immobilized by restraining straps, but he did not know whether these were to protect the patient against self-injury or the medical attendants from attack. The casts were transparent and there were no bandages, dressings, or Wem poultices visible, so that he could see that the many infected wounds that had covered the hunter’s body were healed or healing. Suddenly it opened its eyes.

“Great Shavrah!” Creethar burst out, its whole body fighting the restraints. “What kind of hulking, stupid beast are you?”

Gurronsevas ignored the insult and responded only to the question.

“I am a Tralthan,” he said reassuringly. “That is, I am a member of a species larger and perhaps more visually fearsome than the others you have met on the ship. Like them, however, I mean you no harm. Unlike them I am a cook and not a healer. But I, too, wish only to help return you to full . . .”

“A cook who isn’t a healer?” Creethar broke in. Its voice was quieter and the body was beginning to relax inside the restraints. “That is strange, off-worlder. Were you incapable of completing your education?”

“My name is Gurronsevas,” he said, unable to ignore the second insult in spite of Prilicla’s voice in his earpiece observing that convalescent patients were notoriously argumentative. “My early training and subsequent life have been devoted to mastering the culinary arts, and I have no other interests. I am, therefore, a good cook, and that is why I have been asked to help you. Creethar, you must eat before you are returned to the mine, but you refuse ship food. If it is unpalatable to you, explain why and I shall provide an alternative.”

Creethar’s body moved restively but it did not speak.

“There is an adverse emotional response,” said Prilicla, “a return of the feelings of fear and personal loss. I don’t know why this should be, but it peaked at your mention of returning it to the mine. Please change the subject.”

But the subject was supposed to be food and the necessity for making Creethar eat some, Gurronsevas thought angrily. Then, realizing that the empath was receiving his anger, he calmed himself and went on. “What did you find wrong with the ship food? Did the taste displease you?”

“No!” said Creethar with surprising vehemence. “Some of it tasted like meat, better meat than I had ever tasted before.”

“Then I don’t understand why you refused . . .” Gurronsevas began.

“But it was not meat!” the patient broke in. “It looked and tasted like meat, but it was some strange, other-world concoction from what the winged one called a synthesizer. It is not Wem food. I must not eat it lest it poison my body. You as a cook will understand the importance of meat to the adults of a species, any species. There can be no survival without it.”

“As a Tralthan cook,” said Gurronsevas firmly, “I know no such thing. The majority of my species has not eaten meat for many centuries. They do this out of preference, not because we have the stomachs of grazing animals. My home world, Traltha, and the many Traltha-seeded planets, are well-populated and thriving. You have been believing an untruth, Creethar.”

The patient was silent for a moment, then it said slowly, “Your preserver friends have said this to me many times. By your standards the Wem are backward and pitifully uneducated, but we are not stupid. Neither are we small children listening to the wondrous stories told by parents to give us pleasant dreams. Do you expect a grown Wem to believe an obvious untruth because it is told to me by off-worlders?”

Gurronsevas had not been expecting a response like this from a being weakened and still recovering from serious injuries. He thought quickly, then said, “I am aware of the difference between intelligence and education, and that of the two intelligence is of vastly greater importance because it aids the acquisition of education. But there are adult Wem in the mine who are beginning to believe our stories.”

“The minds of the aged,” said Creethar, “too often resemble those of the very young. I do not know why you are trying to make me eat your strange, sweet-tasting meat from a machine. You are not a friend or family or even a Wem, you do not know or do not care what damage it will do to my body, and you do not have my responsibility towards my people. No matter what you tell me, I will not eat your off-world food.”

Plainly Creethar had very strong feelings on the subject, too strong for logical argument to change them, and Prilicla’s emotional reading was in agreement. It was time to change the approach.

He said carefully, “The last time you spoke to Doctor Prilicla, who is the beautiful one who flies, you asked about your friends at the mine. I have spoken to Remrath and many of the near adults while working in the kitchen. What would you like to know?”

Even through the translator, Creethar’s tone sounded incredulous. “My mother allowed you in the kitchen?”

“I am a cook,” said Gurronsevas.

It was without doubt the greatest understatement of his long and distinguished professional life, but the patient did not know that.

When Creethar did not respond, he began talking about his impressions of the life and people in the mine. Briefly he described the initial off-worlder contacts with the aged teachers and the Wem young, his decision to spend most of his time there and, after the passage of a few days, the increasing acceptance of his advice by Remrath.

Well did Gurronsevas know that a kitchen and its serving staff was the center for all of an establishment’s gossip, scandal and current events. A table server was obvious only when he, she or it was doing something wrong, at other times remaining an inconspicuous part of the background, which meant that diners rarely felt it necessary to guard their tongues. Gurronsevas did not believe in training clumsy food-servers, so the intelligence available in the Wem kitchen was both up-to-date and accurate.

He did not always know the precise meaning, degree of scandal, or humor contained in the conversations he was relaying, but several times Creethar made untranslatable sounds and its body twitched inside the restraints, and gradually Gurronsevas was returning to the subject of food. The purpose of the conversation was, after all, to make the patient eat.

“. . . Remrath has been kind enough to adopt many of my suggestions,” he went on smoothly, “and they have proved popular not only with the teachers and the young but among a few of your returned hunters who say that—”

“No!” Creethar protested. “Have you given them the poisonous off-world food from your machine?”

“I have not,'’ said Gurronsevas reassuringly. “The ship’s food dispenser is intended for crew use and it lacks the capacity to feed an entire community, so our off-world food was not offered to them. Only you have been offered it because of your gravely weakened and starving condition, and you have refused it.

“Your friends in the mine,” he went on quickly, “are eating and, most of them have told me, enjoying the local edible vegetation which was thought to be suitable only for children. They eat it because I have shown Remrath many new ways to vary the taste of your vegetable meals, and present them more attractively, and add contrasts of taste with sauces made from herbs and spices which grow all over the valley.

“For example . . .”

Creethar neither moved nor spoke while Gurronsevas, with growing enthusiasm, went on to describe the many changes he had wrought in the mine-dwellers’ eating habits. The new ways he had shaped and added spices or soft berries to their coarse-ground flour before baking had met with general approval. He said that his words and Creethar’s imagination were a poor substitute for the taste sensations he was describing. When he repeated the compliments paid to his cooking by Remrath, and even the arch-traditionalist Tawsar, there was still no response. He was fast running out of things to say.

Trying hard to control his impatience, he said, “Creethar, are you feeling hungry?”

“I am feeling hungry,” Creethar replied without hesitation.

“It is feeling hungrier,” Prilicla joined in, “with every word you speak.”

“Then let me give you food,” said Gurronsevas. “Wem, not off-worlder machine food. Surely you can find no fault with that?”

Creethar hesitated, then said, “I am unsure. The Wem food served to the young is well remembered, and it is not a pleasant memory. If you have somehow improved the taste, it may be because you have added off-world substances to it. I cannot take that risk.”

In the past Gurronsevas had dealt with his share of overly fastidious diners, and the diet and natural-food fanatics had been particularly difficult, but Creethar was making some of their demands easy by comparison.

“Creethar, you must eat,” he said very seriously. “I am not myself a preserver and cannot give a precise estimate, but if you begin taking food regularly you will soon be returned to your people. If you prefer Wem food to that from our machine, I can prepare the simple vegetable stew you remember as a child and, as flavoring, I shall ask Remrath for a little of the meat brought back by your hunting party. Your people are anxious to have you back, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind . . .”

“No!” said Creethar sharply, its body moving weakly against the restraints. “You must not ask my people for meat, or speak to Remrath about me. This you must promise.”

“The patient,” said Prilicla, “is feeling increasing distress.”

I can see that for myself, Gurronsevas thought. But why was it distressed? Had it suffered undiagnosed head injuries and was no longer rational? Or was it simply behaving like a Wem?

Quickly, he said, “Very well, Creethar, I promise. But there is another possibility. Suppose I were to gather edible vegetation from your valley, and show it to you before and during every stage of its preparation and cooking. I will not promise to serve it up in the way that you remember, but I am sure that you will approve of the results. I will not even use the heating system of the food dispenser for cooking, since you might fear contamination, but will personally gather your own natural combustibles and kindle a cooking fire on the deck beside you where you can watch me at work. What do you say now, Creethar? I foresee no difficulty in meeting all of your objections.”

“I am very hungry,” said Creethar again.

“And you, friend Gurronsevas,” said Prilicla warningly, “are being very optimistic.”

CHAPTER 31

Naydrad, with the characteristic Charge Nurse’s concern for the proper ordering and cleanliness of its medical empire, objected strongly to fires being lit on its aseptically clean casualty deck and wood smoke polluting the atmosphere. Pathologist Murchison said that it was bad enough to be forced back into the medical dark ages of treatment by herbs and poultices without being asked to become smoke-filled-cave dwellers. Doctor Danalta, who could adapt to any environment capable of harboring life, remained aloof but disapproving, and Senior Physician Prilicla tried to keep the peace and reduce the unpleasant emotional radiation in the area. But there were times, as now, when Gurronsevas did nothing to smooth their feelings.

“Now that Creethar has been tempted into eating regularly and in satisfactory quantities for a convalescent patient . . .” he began.

“For a convalescent glutton,” said Naydrad.

“. . . another and, you will be pleased to hear, non-medical idea has occurred to me,” he went on. “During your last clinical discussion, which I could not help overhearing, you stated that the patient was making good progress, but that its recovery would be hastened if meat protein and certain minerals in trace quantities, all of which can be provided by our food dispenser, were added to its food intake.

“My idea is this,” he continued. “Since Creethar is afraid of everything produced by the dispenser, even though it has watched us use the casualty deck outlet many times, the patient would be greatly reassured if it were to see us eating Wem food prepared by myself as well as dispenser meals. Hopefully we should be able to convince it that dispenser food will not harm it because Wem food does not harm us. You will then be able to make the required dietary change that will . . .”

Gurronsevas broke off because Naydrad’s fur was standing in angry spikes all over its body, Prilicla’s fragile body was trembling in the emotional gale that was sweeping the casualty deck, and Murchison, its face turning a deeper pink, was holding up both hands.

“Now just wait one minute!” it protested. “It was bad enough you cooking in here and choking us half to death, now you’re asking us to eat your disgustingly smelly Wem meals! Next you’ll want us to sing Wem songs round the campfire so that it can feel even more at home.”

“With respect,” said Gurronsevas in a voice that was not particularly respectful, “the temporary pollution was not life-threatening, and on one occasion the Charge Nurse told me that the odor of some of the meals was not unpleasant . . .”

“I said,” Naydrad broke in, “that it killed the stink of wood smoke.”

“. . . You cannot know that a meal is smelly and disgusting until you have tried it,” Gurronsevas continued, ignoring the interruption, “because anyone with a semblance of culinary education knows that taste and odor are complementary. I would have you know that some of the Wem vegetable sauces I have created, which I assure you are a taste well worth acquiring, are such that I shall introduce them into the Sector General menu on my return.”

“Fortunately,” said Danalta, “I can eat anything.”

Impatiently, Gurronsevas went on, “I have never poisoned a diner in my life and I do not intend to start now. You all belong to a profession in which objectivity is a prime requirement, so why are you making purely subjective judgments now? My suggestion is that you eat one full Wem meal every day with the patient, always bearing in mind that any toying with food or other visible show of reluctance while eating it would not be reassuring to the patient. After all, it is you people who wanted the patient to eat, and now to incorporate the additional material you consider necessary. I am simply trying to tell you how this can be done.”

Gurronsevas did not have to be an empath to sense that another emotional eruption was imminent from Pathologist Murchison and Charge Nurse Naydrad. But it was Senior Physician Prilicla with its firm but gentle authority who spoke first.

“I feel that a spirited exchange of views is about to occur,” it said, rising and flying slowly towards the exit, “so I shall excuse myself and retire to my compartment where the resultant emotional radiation will be diluted by distance. I also have the feeling, and my feelings are never wrong, that all of you will remember the purpose of Rhabwar and its medical team, and recall the many strange patients and even stranger adaptations we were forced to make while treating them so that we could further that purpose. I will leave you to argue, and remember.”

The argument continued, but everyone knew that Gurronsevas had already won it.

During the next four days the Wem found and destroyed the last of the communicating and listening devices left in the mine, and the few words they were able to hear before contact was lost made it plain that the off-worlders had committed a most shameful crime and were worthy only of the deepest scorn. While gathering the early morning vegetation, Gurronsevas tried to speak to a teacher in charge of one of the working parties, but the elderly Wem closed its ear flaps and the young ones had obviously been instructed to ignore him. Since all contact had been severed, the team did not know what crime they had committed or how to apologize for it. But when Gurronsevas offered to enter the mine uninvited to ask Remrath for an explanation, Prilicla said that the Wem anger and disappointment was so strong that it could detect their feelings even on the quarter-mile distant Rhabwar, and it could not risk a further deterioration of the situation, if that was possible.

Creethar, it felt sure, was their only way back to full contact.

Good progress was being made with their patient. Led by Prilicla, who felt that it should set them an example, the medical team were using his Wem menu for their principal meal of the day. They had agreed not to criticize his cooking within the hearing of Creethar, and as he left the patient’s side only to gather fresh vegetation every morning, he was not aware of any adverse criticism.

But when Creethar was finally enticed into eating a little dispenser food containing the required medication, and its continuing increase in body mass necessitated easing of its restraining straps, compliments of a kind were forthcoming.

“Today’s meal wasn’t bad, Gurronsevas,” Murchison said grudgingly. “And the lutij and yant dessert could grow on me in time.”

“Like a fungus,” said Naydrad. But its fur remained unruffled, he noticed, so the Kelgian’s disapproval could not have been extreme.

“I liked what you did with the main course,” said Prilicla who, when it was unable to say anything complimentary, said nothing. “While the taste and texture were completely different, I would rate it close to my other favorite non-Cinrusskin dish, Earth-human spaghetti with cheese in tomato sauce. But I feel distended and have a need for some flying exercise outside the ship. Would one of you like to accompany me?”

It was looking only at Gurronsevas.

Prilicla did not say anything else to him until they were outside and the ship’s protection screen had blinked off to let them through. With the empath hovering close to his shoulder, he walked slowly away from the mine entrance and down into the valley. Their path would pass within one hundred yards of a Wem working party, but he knew that the teacher in charge would ignore them.

“Friend Gurronsevas,” the empath said suddenly, “we, but to a greater extent you, are gaining Creethar’s trust, and the process would not be aided if we were to exclude it from our conversations by switching off its translator. That is why I wanted to talk to you alone.

“You must already have guessed that Creethar is ready for discharge,” it went on. “Apart from one immobilized lower limb, whose cast is timed to dissolve in two weeks’ time when the fractured bones have knitted fully and will support its weight, it has healed well. It should be happy, relieved and pleased at the prospect of returning to its normal life, but it is not. I am far from happy with our patient’s emotional state. Something is badly wrong, and I would like to know what it is before I send Creethar back to its friends. That will be no later than two days from now because there is no clinical reason for keeping it longer.”

Gurronsevas remained silent. The other was restating a problem, not asking a question.

Prilicla went on. “It may well be that returning Creethar to its people will solve all our problems. Hopefully, it will reduce their present hostility towards us, restore Remrath’s personal friendship with you and enable us to resume friendly contact. But there is something about them that we do not fully understand, something that causes inexplicable emotional responses in our patient. Unless we completely understand the reasons for its unnatural feelings, sending it home could be another and even greater mistake. I cannot tell you what to say or ask, because the most general and superficial remarks about its parent Remrath, its hunter friends, and life in the mine are met with a disproportionately severe emotional reaction, which resembles that of a fearing person whose deeply held beliefs are under attack.

“I know that you are not a trained psychologist, friend Gurronsevas,” Prilicla continued, “but do you think that you could spend the next two days talking to Creethar? Talk about safe generalities while listening, as we all will be, for the specific items of information which, in my own experience, many beings suffering emotional distress of this kind are secretly wanting to reveal. If, during the course of the dialogue there is anything that the team should do or refrain from doing, or an idea that might be helpful occurs to you, tell us. You will be in effective charge of the non-medical treatment.

“Creethar trusts you,” Prilicla ended. “It is more likely to tell its troubles to you than to any of us. Friend Gurronsevas, will you do this for me?”

“Haven’t I already been doing that,” said Gurronsevas, “unofficially?”

“And now,” the empath replied, “it is an official request by Rhabwar’s medical team leader for specialist assistance in a crucial stage of the Wem contact. This must be done because, if you are unsuccessful, the responsibility will be entirely mine. You must not blame yourself for anything that may go wrong and, in this very unusual situation, neither will the rest of the medical team. You are not an easy person to like, friend Gurronsevas. You too closely resemble some of your recent Wem dishes in that you are an acquired taste. But you have gained our respect and gratitude for your assistance with Creethar, and none of us will blame you if you fail to resolve a problem that has already baffled us. How do you feel about this, friend Gurronsevas?”

For a moment Gurronsevas was silent, then he said, “I feel complimented, encouraged, reassured, and anxious to do everything that I can possibly do to help. But, being an empath, you already know my feelings, and I think it was your intention to make me feel this way.”

“You are right,” said Prilicla, and gave a short trilling, untranslatable sound that might have been Cinrusskin laughter. “But I have not been tinkering with your emotional radiation. The feeling of wanting to help was already there. Now I feel you wanting to say more.”

“A few suggestions, yes,” said Gurronsevas. “I think you should decide on the exact time and place of Creethar’s return and inform Remrath and the others, in case there are preparations they may want to make. We know they are anxious to have Creethar back, and telling them when would be a politeness that might reduce their hostility towards us. The best time would be in the early forenoon, I think, when the working parties and teachers are returning for their midday meal. That would ensure a large number of spectators and maximum effect, but whether the effect will be good or bad I cannot say.”

“Nor I,” said Prilicla. Quickly it gave the time and circumstances of Creethar’s discharge, then went on, “But how will you tell them, when they close their ears whenever we try to speak? Have you forgotten that problem? Because I cannot feel you worrying about it.”

Gurronsevas had always tried to avoid waste, whether of time, material, or breath. Instead of answering the question he stopped, rotated his massive body slightly so as to bring his speaking mouth to bear on the Wem work-party which was less than two hundred yards away, and filled his lungs.

“This is an announcement from the preservers on the off-world ship,” he said, slowly and distinctly and very loudly. “The hunter Creethar will be delivered to the mine entrance at one hour before noon on the day after tomorrow.”

He could see the Wem teacher’s ear flaps close at the first words, and hear the anger in its voice as it tried to make the students do the same while Gurronsevas repeated the announcement. But it was not succeeding because the young ones were hopping around their instructor in small circles and shouting excitedly to each other. He knew that the Wem adults had closed their ears to the off-worlders, but there was no way that they could stop listening to their own children.

The news about Creethar’s return would be all over the mine by nightfall.

“Well done,” said Prilicla, making a graceful, banking turn so that it again faced the ship. “But now you have a lot more talking to do. Let us return to our patient.”

It was almost as if Creethar had become Gurronsevas’s patient. They were left alone on the casualty deck for long periods while the medical team stayed in their quarters or on Rhabwar’s tiny dining and recreation deck. He knew that Williamson on Tremaar was recording everything that was said, but the other Captain’s comments or criticisms were withheld so that he could talk to the patient without distractions.

He found it easy to talk to Creethar but difficult to remain on a topic which would not quickly cause it to stop talking back. Prilicla reported that its silences were invariably accompanied by severe emotional distress in which fear, anger and despair predominated. And still Gurronsevas and the listening empath could find no reason for these sudden bouts of reticence.

Talking about the Wem and their centuries-long fight for survival on a world brought close to death by the uncontrolled pollution of the distant past was a safe if not a pleasant subject, except when they disagreed about the importance of meat-eating for successful procreation. In the Old Times, Creethar said, the grasslands and forests were filled with tremendous herds of animals. The herds and teeming jungle creatures had long since vanished, but the eating of meat, even the small and infrequent morsels available after an unsuccessful hunt, had become a kind of non-spiritual religion.

In answer Gurronsevas agreed that the hunters were worthy of the meat they ate, since it was obtained after long periods of travel and hardship and great personal risk. But the growers of vegetation who stayed at home produced more food with fewer risks and none of the respect accorded the brave hunters. It was thus on Wemar now, just as it had been on countless worlds for many centuries.

Prompted by Prilicla, he told it that meat-eating in the far past had been a matter of availability, convenience and choice rather than a physiological necessity. He reminded it that as a general rule the vegetable-eating young and the very old Wem were healthier and better fed than the meat-eaters, who often starved themselves into unnecessary sickness because of their hunters’ pride. The result was an angry silence that lasted for nearly an hour.

Still Creethar was not fully convinced that meat was unnecessary for sexual potency, but after a few days of eating Gurronsevas’ Wem vegetable dishes its conditioning, he felt sure, was beginning to crumble.

Food was a fairly safe topic, especially the preparation and presentation of Gurronsevas’s most recent Wem dishes, but when he tried to veer off the subject to talk about Creethar’s hunter friends, or about Remrath or the good work that the young cook apprentices were doing in the mine, it stopped talking. Once it said angrily that the kitchen was not a suitable place nor was cooking proper work for a young Wem. When Gurronsevas asked why not, Creethar accused him of stupidity and lack of feeling.

Remrath had accused him of insensitivity, also without giving an explanation, just before Gurronsevas had been sent away from the mine. Feeling puzzled and intensely frustrated, he returned to the subject of food.

That was the one topic that he was able to discuss with complete authority. Gurronsevas could talk about food in all its multitudinous forms and flavors, and with it the weird and even more wonderful variety of beings who had been served his culinary creations. Of necessity this led into a discussion about off-worlders, their beliefs and philosophies and social practices, including the individual preferences and eating habits of the sixty-odd different species which together made up the Galactic Federation.

He was trying very hard to plant the idea in Creethar’s mind that Wemar was one inhabited planet of many hundreds, while hoping that among the other intelligent species he was describing there might be one society whose behavior was similar enough to that of the Wem for the other to react, emotionally or verbally, in a manner that would enable Prilicla or himself to put a crack in this wall of Wem silence.

But Creethar’s emotional and verbal responses were unchanged.

Prilicla said, “I, too, feel and share your disappointment, friend Gurronsevas. Creethar feels a deep interest and curiosity about the things you are telling it, and there is an even stronger feeling of gratitude towards you because your conversation is taking its mind off some serious personal trouble. But its despair and anger and fear are still present and have been reduced but not changed by anything you have said to it.

“The patient’s strongest feeling at present is of friendship towards you,” Prilicla went on. “You may not be consciously aware of it, but you have developed the same feeling towards it, just as you did following prolonged contact with its parent, Remrath. But I feel increasing weariness in both the patient and yourself. With rest a new approach to the problem may suggest itself.”

“Creethar is due for discharge in less than seven hours,” said Gurronsevas. “I think we have been overcautious in concealing the news of its imminent release. Now is the time to tell it. We have little to lose.”

In a gentle, reproving voice Prilicla said, “I can feel your frustration, Gurronsevas, and I sympathize. But every time you even hinted at the subject of its return to the mine, there was an adverse emotional response followed by a long, angry silence. There is much to lose.”

For a moment Gurronsevas was silent, then he said, “You tell me that Creethar and myself feel friendship for each other. But tell me, are we good enough friends to be able to excuse each other’s bad behavior, insults or unintended hurtful words?”

Without hesitation the empath replied, “I feel your determination. You will tell Creethar the news whatever answer I give. Good luck, friend Gurronsevas.”

For a moment Gurronsevas said nothing as he tried to choose words that were right and at the same time would excuse him in advance for any hurt they might cause this strange being who had become his friend, then he said, “There is much I want to say to you, Creethar the First Hunter, and many questions I would like to ask. I have not asked them before now because, whenever I tried to do so, you grew angry and would not speak to me. Remrath will not speak to me either and, for reasons we do not understand, has forbidden the off-worlders to return to the mine. But now we have only a few hours left to talk together, and exchange questions and answers . . .”

“Be careful,” said Prilicla. “Creethar’s emotional radiation is changing, and not for the better.”

“. . . Your wounds and infections are healed and clean,” he went on carefully, “and your physical condition is as good as we can make it. You will be returned to the mine before noon.”

Creethar’s body jerked suddenly against its restraints, something it had not done for many days, then became still. Its face turned suddenly towards Gurronsevas, but the eyes were tightly closed. What stupid piece of xenophobia or cultural conditioning, he wondered angrily, could cause such a severe reaction in a mind that he knew to be intelligent, civilized and in many ways admirable? He was not an empath, but Prilicla’s next words told him only what he already knew.

“The patient is becoming seriously disturbed,” said Prilicla urgently. “The feelings of friendship towards you are being negated by an upsurge of the background fear-anger-despair emotions that troubled it earlier. But it is fighting very hard to subdue those adverse feelings towards you. Can you say something that will help? Its distress is increasing.”

Gurronsevas sub-vocalized a word that he had been forbidden to speak as a child and had only rarely used as an adult. The patient’s reaction to what should have been good news was all wrong, and suddenly he felt both unsure of himself and angry that he was causing anguish to a friend without knowing how or why. In all other respects Creethar’s thought processes and conversation were normal, but in this one respect the Wem was totally alien. Or was it the medical team, or even Gurronsevas himself who in this single respect were alien, and if so how?

He was missing something, Gurronsevas felt sure, some essential difference that was both simple and vitally important. An idea was beginning to stir in the depths of his mind, but trying to coax it out into the light seemed only to drive it deeper. He wanted to ask Prilicla for advice, but he knew that if he bypassed the translator to do so, Creethar would think that he was keeping secrets from it, and that would not be the right thing to do just now.

He did not know what to say, so he said what he felt.

“Creethar,” he went on, “I feel confused, and guilty, and very, very sorry for the mental pain I am causing you. Somehow I have failed to understand you. But please believe me, it is not now and has never been my intention or that of the others on the ship to hurt you. Nevertheless we, and especially I through ignorance and insensitivity, have caused you past and present mental anguish. Is there any apology I can make, or anything else that I can say or do that will ease it?”

Creethar’s body grew tense but it was not fighting the restraints. It said, “For such a fearsome creature you can be sensitive at times and grossly insensitive at others. There is something that you might do for me, Gurronsevas, but I am ashamed to speak the words. It is not the kind of favor that one ever asks of a relative or a close friend, or even a new, off-worlder friend like yourself, because it would be distressing for them.”

“Ask it, friend Creethar,” said Gurronsevas firmly, “and I shall do it, whatever it is.”

“When, when my time comes,” said Creethar in a voice that was barely audible, “will you go on talking to me about the wonders you have seen on other worlds, and stay close to me until the end?”

The brief silence that followed was broken by Prilicla, who said, “Gurronsevas, why are you feeling so happy?”

“Give me a few minutes to talk to it,” he replied, “and Creethar and the rest of you will feel happy, too.”

CHAPTER 32

The litter bearing Creethar had its sun canopy fully deployed so that the patient was hidden from sight. When Prilicla had said that it was only fitting that Gurronsevas and no one else should accompany it to the mine entrance, the only objection had come from Naydrad who was worried by the thought of an inexperienced driver being in charge of an anti-gravity vehicle.

Tawsar, the returned hunters, and all of the teachers with the exception of Remrath had been joined by the young working parties, so that the slope outside the mine entrance was covered by tightly-packed Wem bodies, except for a small area at the front of the crowd that contained three small handcarts. Slowly and silently Gurronsevas guided the litter to within a few yards of the carts, then reduced power to the anti-gravity grids. While the litter was settling to the ground he opened the canopy to reveal Creethar.

The assembled Wem were hushed and respectful as befitted the occasion, their feelings towards the off-worlders remaining hidden. Even the youngest of the children were silent as the crowd stared at the still figure of their former First Hunter whose body was clean and undamaged except for its right hind-limb, which was encased in a transparent cast. But when Creethar raised its head suddenly and stepped onto the ground the reaction, the sudden outburst of shouting and screaming, and the milling about of Wem bodies, was beyond anything in Gurronsevas’ experience. He wondered how this storm of emotional radiation was affecting Prilicla on Rhabwar.

But the empath had been gently insistent that, following their lengthy pre-discharge conversation with Creethar, there would be no risk. The expected emotional storm, it felt, would be comprised of shock, surprise and uncertainty, with minimum hostility. After all, it had been Creethar’s own idea to hide the facts from its own people until the last possible moment so that its homecoming would have the maximum effect.

Limping only slightly, Creethar moved close to the hand-carts and stopped to look down at them. The noise from the crowd made it difficult to think, but rather than inarticulate screaming and shouting, the sound was changing to that of many conversations that were being shouted only because everyone else was shouting. And the movements within the crowd had almost ceased, but one eye showed him a young adult who looked like Druuth disappearing into the mine entrance, hopefully on the way to fetch Remrath. The others brought him the picture of Creethar looking up from the carts and raising its arms for silence.

“My family, friends and fellow hunters,” it said slowly and clearly when silence finally came, “you have made a serious mistake regarding the intentions and the abilities of the off-worlders on the ship. It is the same mistake that I was making until a few hours ago. But now you can see for yourselves that I am not a dismembered collection of dead meat ready to be loaded onto these carts and taken to the kitchen. I am alive, and strong, and healthy. This is because our off-world friends are not and have never been preservers of meat.

“They are preservers of life.”

Creethar paused. From the crowd there came a sighing sound, like a wind blowing gently over grass, as they all seemed to inhale as one in surprise and wonder. But silence returned as it resumed talking, describing all the things that had been said and done to it by the off-worlders. Only once did it stop, when its parent and its mate appeared suddenly in the mine entrance and began pushing their way to the front of the crowd. But Remrath gestured for Creethar to go on speaking and walked past it to stand beside Gurronsevas.

In a voice that carried only to him, it said, “We grievously misjudged your friends on the ship and, after all that you have done for us, you most of all. I was thinking too much like an ignorant and backward Wem, and I am sorry. You, and your preserver friends, are again welcome in our home.”

“Thank you,” said Gurronsevas in matching voice. “I, too, am deeply sorry, for being so stupid and insensitive, and for not listening with more care to the words you were saying to me. It was a misunderstanding.”

A misunderstanding . . .

Gurronsevas cringed inwardly with shame and embarrassment at the memory of some of the things he had said to Remrath. At the time he had thought it strange and rather charming, but not important, that the arts of cooking and healing were practiced by the same person, and that among the Wem these individuals were also known as preservers. If he had been thinking properly he would have realized that in a society that had come to regard the eating of their increasingly scarce food animals as their only long-term hope of survival, meat from any source would not have been wasted. The clues had been plain for him to see. And when he had used the word “preservers” while referring to the medical team, believing that “healer” and “preserver” were synonymous so far as the Wem language was concerned, he had not been thinking at all.

If their positions had been reversed and Remrath had offered to tell Gurronsevas in detail what the off-world preservers—the beings who were thought to be responsible for cleaning and cutting away infected tissues and sectioning-up and preparing the edible body parts for the kitchen as would technicians in a slaughterhouse—were doing to his beloved offspring, physical violence rather than an angry silence and expulsion from the mine might have been the result.

The Wem had been forced to regress in many areas, but they still retained their intelligence and a civilized culture. That was why Prilicla had felt that it would be better for the contact to be renewed by their ex-patient and, as usual, the empath’s feeling had been accurate and Creethar was doing fine.

“. . . The off-worlders came here to tell us how we can live better lives on our sick but recovering world,” Creethar was saying, “but it is only knowledge and advice they bring us. They have explained how and why the sickness came to Wemar many centuries ago, and how we can cure that sickness and keep it from returning . . .”

Knowing that the Wem had long since lost the precise language of science, Gurronsevas and Prilicla had described the ecological catastrophe that had befallen Wemar in simple words, and Creethar was doing the same. In words that they and it understood, Creethar described Wemar’s centuries-past Time of Plenty and the terrible, continuous poisoning of the land, sea and air and the creatures who lived on or in them, and on which that short-lived Golden Age depended. It told of the vast quantities of noxious vapors that had been released into the air, to find their way high into the sky where they attacked and destroyed the vast shield that protected all of Wemar from the harmful parts of their sun’s light.

Gradually the smallest and most delicate sea-dwellers, those on which the larger fish and in turn the Wem depended for food, perished from the polar and temperate oceans. On land the unshielded sunlight blighted or killed the vegetation that fed the small and large grazers who fed the predators and the Wem themselves. Under the two-pronged attack of starvation and the sickness of a daylight that blinded the eyes and caused uncovered parts of the body to dry and rot away, all forms of animal life were dying in their millions. Their planet was withering and its depleted population shrinking with every weak and sickly generation that was born.

But the Wem who had brought down this catastrophe upon themselves were tough and adaptable, and so, although they had no way of knowing it at the time, was their world. The entire planetary population sickened and the technology that had housed them and harvested their food and processed their meat collapsed in ruins all around them. But a tiny proportion of them did not die, because they learned to protect themselves and their children from the deadly, invisible part of their once friendly and health-giving sunlight, and the few that remained relearned how to live in caves like their earliest ancestors. They grew crops in tiny areas of sheltered valleys, and traveled, hunted, and fished by night. The growing of vegetables and edible grains out of the direct sunlight was not a popular activity because, until the coming of the off-worlder master of cooks, Gurronsevas, it was believed implicitly that the diet of a healthy and virile adult Wem had to consist predominantly of fish or meat.

Holding stubbornly to the belief in meat-eating had been causing the remaining Wem to die, either from starvation or unnecessarily in the hunt. For the docile food animals were long gone and the few species that had adapted to become nocturnal, cave-dwelling predators had lost their docility. A similar adaptation had occurred in the sea depths where large fish attacked and ate each other or Wem fish hunters.

“. . . But the monstrous reduction of population,” Creethar was saying in a declamatory voice, “and the death of all transport and manufacturing technology had one beneficial effect: it enabled the ailing Wemar to begin its recovery. Over the centuries the great living creature that is our home world has dispersed and dispelled the poisons from the land and sea and partially renewed the invisible shield above us, which allows only heat and light to reach the surface. As a result, the plants are beginning to grow again and the animals and sea creatures forsake their caves and burrows and ocean depths and thrive; but for many generations we must husband our food resources by breeding animals, not hunting and eating them to extinction because of our unnecessary hunger for meat, until we have completed the work of replenishing our planet.

“But the off-worlders advise caution,” Creethar continued. “Prolonged exposure to sunlight will still harm us, but not to the extent that it did in the past, and our children’s children it will not harm at all. Other problems face the Wem when the surviving families and tribes join together again; we must persuade the Fat Ones at the equator to give up their simple but very dirty technology. We must do this peacefully, the off-worlders say, by using our minds rather than our spears, because there are too few Wem remaining on Wemar for violent solutions. And when we begin to redevelop our technology, they will advise us on methods of keeping it clean so that we will not poison our world again . . .”

“Your offspring,” said Gurronsevas softly, “is speaking very well. I am impressed.”

Remrath dismissed the compliment with an untranslatable sound, but it sounded pleased as it said, “As a youth Creethar was a teacher and a debater long before he became an adult hunter, and he will not allow anyone to forget the new wisdom you have given us. Of that you and your off-worlder friends can be sure.”

“When I was telling Creethar about these matters,” Gurronsevas went on, “my intention was only to take its mind off some deep worry that was troubling it. It was only early this morning that I discovered that it was worried about what it thought was its imminent death. Now it seems to understand the true meaning of what it heard better than I did. But then, I am only a cook.”

“A First Cook who will change the eating habits of a world,” said Remrath. It allowed time for Gurronsevas to make his own untranslatable Tralthan reaction to a compliment before going on. “Everyone assembled here, from the youngest to the oldest, came to mourn and celebrate Creethar’s return to us, and to share and eat the meat of his body. Instead they are digesting the words of the off-worlders and Creethar the Hunter and Teacher.”

Prilicla’s voice sounded in his earpiece. It said, “This is going very well, friend Gurronsevas, as I felt it would. Even the contactors on Tremaar are pleased with you. Captain Williamson sends its compliments and says that it was a stroke of genius on the hospital’s part to send its Chief Dietitian on the Wemar mission, and the report that it is sending to Sector General on what must be the first known instance of culinary first contact will make them very pleased with you as well. I felt I should give you the news without delay, since you may still be feeling uneasy about Colonel Skempton’s reaction to your return. There is no need to worry. The Wemar success will ensure that your past misdemeanors will be forgiven and forgotten. Good, I feel your pleasure and relief.”

“. . . Very soon Gurronsevas and the preservers of the ship must leave,” Creethar was saying. “They are fearsome beings, especially their master of cooks, who is a creature out of the most terrifying dreams of children. But even the youngest have met it and come to call it friend. The off-worlders cannot stay long with us because there will be much work awaiting them on other worlds or amid the wreckage of the great ships which travel the dark spaces between the stars, where they will be needed to heal and repair sick or damaged beings so that their lives will be preserved as was mine. They told me that the other off-worlders who follow them will not stay long among us either, because they know that the Wem are a proud and able species. They will help us gladly, but they will not allow us to become too dependent upon that help, for that could give us a sickness of the mind that would be permanently crippling. Instead they will help us to help ourselves.

“If we do this, they say, then the time taken for us to replenish our planet, rebuild our civilization and technology, and finally to visit our off-world friends among the stars, will be short indeed . . .”

“My friend,” said Remrath very seriously, “we will not eat meat tonight, and I and Druuth and all of us are glad. Thank you.”

Gurronsevas was uncomfortable with displays of emotion, especially his own. He looked around at the cheering crowd, and finally said, “A last-minute change of menu like that can be a real problem for the kitchen staff. Can you use another cook?”

Sector General 10—Final Diagnosis

James White

CHAPTER 1

The ship’s Orligian medical officer did not speak as it escorted him into and along the boarding tube to the hospital entry point, and that was the way Hewlitt wanted it. He did not like extraterrestrials and, on the few occasions when it was necessary, he preferred to discuss his business with them on a long-range communicator that was not fitted with a viewscreen. He did not like this one because the brownish-grey spikes of fur projecting through the gaps in its body covering twitched from time to time, making him itch at the thought of the parasites that might be infesting the creature. He felt a great relief when they left the narrow tube and entered the reception area beyond, because he was able to move farther away from the hairy, unprepossessing entity.

Another extraterrestrial of a type he had never seen before was standing beside an antigravity litter and obviously awaiting their arrival. This one was very large, heavily built, and supported by six thick tentacles, one of which was encircled by a band bearing what was presumably the insignia of rank or identity of the wearer. It wore no other body covering and he was relieved to see that it was hairless, although its personal hygiene was suspect since there were several patches of what looked like dry, flaking paint on the smooth skin of its flanks. He could see two lidless, recessed eyes covered by a hard, transparent material, but no other features apart from a fleshy membrane growing like a cock’s comb from the top of its head, and whose purpose was revealed as an organ of speech when the creature moved closer and vibrated it at him. “I am awaiting the arrival of a DBDG patient,” it said. “You are plainly an Earth-human of the DBDG physiological classification, but you do not appear to be traumatized or displaying any lesser form of distress. Perhaps I have made a mistake and you are not— “No mistake, Nurse,” said the Orligian, breaking in. “I am

Surgeon-Lieutenant Turragh-Mar, of the Monitor Corps supply vessel Treevendar, which was requested to convey this patient from its home world to Sector General. But now I must return to my ship without delay. This is Patient Hewlitt, and these are its case notes.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said the nurse, accepting the tape and slipping it into a recess on the litter’s control panel. “Is there any more recent clinical information that the physician-in-charge should know about?”

Turragh-Mar hesitated, then said, “There has been no change in the patient’s clinical condition since it was transferred from the planetary hospital to Treevendar six days ago. It remained as you see it now, apparently in good health. During that time I formed the opinion that, in spite of its long and complicated case history, there is a psychological component to the patient’s problem.”

“I understand, Doctor,” said the nurse. “But Patient Hewlitt can be assured that, however complicated its problem may turn out to be, we will do our best to solve it.”

Turragh-Mar gave a short bark that came through its translator only as a short bark. It added, “I wish you luck.”

“Patient Hewlitt,” said the nurse as the Orligian disappeared into the boarding tube, “please climb onto the litter and make yourself comfortable. I am taking you to Ward Seven on the twentyninth level, where you will—”

“I am not climbing into anything!” said Hewlitt, anger and uncertainty and an instinctive dislike of this monstrous creature making his voice louder than he had intended. “There is nothing wrong with me right now, especially with my legs. I shall walk.”

“Please believe me, sir,” said the nurse, “you will feel much more comfortable in the litter.

“I would be much more comfortable,” he replied, “if you would not talk about me as if I was a, a thing. On the way here that hairy Orligian apology for a doctor did it when speaking to other ship’s officers, and within seconds of my arrival you were doing it, too. I am a human being, a ‘he’ or a ‘him,’ not an ‘it.’ You will kindly remember that in future, Nurse.”

For a long moment the other neither moved nor spoke. Then it said, “I know that you are human, just as all members of intelligent species think of themselves as being human. From my lectures on other-species anatomy I recognize you as an adult male of the DBDG Earth-human classification, but I must continue to refer to you as an ‘it’ unless some future clinical condition involving the reproductive organs or associated endocrinology requires me to be specific regarding your gender.

“Unfortunately,” the nurse went on, “the identification of an entity’s sex is not always as easy as it is in your case, especially among beings like myself, who are able to change sex several times within a life span, or with species who require more than two sexes for procreation. But it is a sensitive area, Patient Hewlitt, and often a wrong identification can be irritating or even, among some species, grossly insulting to the being wrongly identified. I believe that it will feel more comfortable and natural for you to think of me and any other being who is not of your own species as an ‘it’, just as we do with you. Now will you please board the litter.”

“Is your species hard of hearing, Nurse?” he said very loudly. “I said that I would walk.”

The other did not speak, but it leaned backward slightly so that its enormous weight was balanced on the middle and rear tentacles. The two forelimbs uncurled suddenly, and before he could react, one had wrapped itself around his waist while the other pinioned his legs together at knee level while he was swung high into the air and deposited gently onto the litter. Their grip was firm but not uncomfortable, and he did not try to break free, because the tentacles felt hard, like warm, flexible metal, and immensely strong.

During the brief moment that he was airborne, Hewlitt saw that the limbs encircling him could act as both arms or legs. On the back of each one there was a roughened knuckle on which the creature walked while the more delicate extremity that divided into fingers was curled upward and inward away from the ground. Then the litter’s padded body restraints swung inward to immobilize his upper legs, the vehicle’s transparent canopy rose from each side but did not close at the top, and a hinged backrest unfolded until he was sitting upright. At least he was being allowed to hear as well as see whatever was going on around him.

Remembering the many previous litter rides in Earth hospitals, when there had been nothing to look at but a boring succession of white corridor ceilings and strip lighting fixtures, he appreciated that.

“Whether they are patients or staff,” said the nurse, making no mention of the way it had just manhandled, or somethinghandled, him, “newcomers usually find traveling the corridors of Sector General on foot to be an intimidating experience at first. You may consider yourself fortunate that as a patient you are not allowed to walk.”

“But I am able to walk!” Hewlitt protested as the litter was guided smoothly toward the corridor exit.

“Most of our incoming patients,” said the other, “are in no condition to walk, talk, look around them, or argue with their nurse. It is a general rule that cannot be changed because of one exceptional case.

The door opened at their approach. Hewlitt immediately closed his eyes, and it was several seconds before he could force himself to open them again. All at once he was very glad of the thick, transparent canopy surrounding him.

Creatures out of the worst nightmares he had ever experienced, and a few new ones that he would probably have whenever he next went to sleep, were passing in both directions along the wide corridor, and the occasional human being among them only made the others look worse. Some of them were separated by a few yards, but more often they were clumped together into groups moving at different speeds who jostled past each other. There were massive, multitentacled beings terrifying in their great size and obvious physical strength; others who were horrifying and repugnant in the nauseous growths and slime sheen covering their dreadful, misshapen bodies. Some of the shapes were so ridiculous that he had trouble believing his eyes. One of the creatures was covered with silver fur that rippled and tufted continually as it undulated past the litter on about twenty legs. He remembered seeing a picture of one somewhere, and that their home world was called Kelgia. Gradually he was able to identify a few other familiar shapes from the extraterrestrial menagerie that was passing by.

The large, six-legged elephantine being with the four tentacles and immobile dome of a head was a Tralthan; a large, low-slung crustacean with the beautifully marked carapace that clicked past on thin, bony multijointed legs was, he recalled, a Melfan; and the small biped who looked like a half-size Earth-human covered in tightly curled red fur came from the planet Nidia.

The Nidian bumped gently against the side of the litter as it went past. It barked something at his nurse, possibly a reproof for bad driving, which was ignored. Like the cacophony of hooting, chirping, barking, or gobbling conversations going on all around him, it was just so much irritating, organic noise. This meant that the litter’s translation device must have been programmed only for the languages of the nurse and himself.

Hewlitt disliked being kept in ignorance of anything that was being said around him. He wondered if he would be allowed a personal multitranslator during his stay in hospital. Probably not. If the medics here were anything like some of the ones he had met on Earth, they would not want their patient to know what was going on.

Especially if they were not sure themselves.

His unpleasant memories of many unsuccessful treatments on his home world were driven from his mind by the sight of a great, hissing metal juggernaut that was heading rapidly toward them on a collision course. He pointed and yelled, “Nurse, look out! Slow down, dammit, and move aside.”

The nurse did none of those things, and the metal monster veered aside at the last moment and passed with a few inches to spare. Through the partly open canopy came the hot, odorless smell of escaping steam.

“That was the environmental protection vehicle of an SNLU,” said the nurse. “It belongs to a heavy-gravity life-form that evolved in an atmosphere of high-pressure superheated steam. We were in no danger from it.”

The nurse removed one of its tentacles from the litter controls to point along the corridor before going on. “You will already have noticed that the beings you can see fall into two distinct types: those who avoid others, and those who are avoided by others. This is due to differences in medical rank, the insignia of which is displayed on a band worn around a limb or some other prominent bodily extremity. I am giving you this information now because it will also serve as a guide to establishing the relative seniority of the various doctors and nursing staff you will meet during treatment. You will soon be able to tell the difference between the band markings that I wear, which are those of a nurse-in-training, and a charge nurse, an intern, a member of the Psychology Department, a senior physician, or one of the diagnosticians.

“Theoretically,” it went on, “the staff member possessing the greater medical seniority has right of way. But there are many who believe that it is stupid to suffer contusions or some lesser bodily discomfort by holding too strictly to this rule and, if the other being is more massive and well muscled than they are, simply get out of its way regardless of differences in rank. That is why nearly everyone gets out of my way. But in the case of a patient like yourself who is presumably in urgent need of treatment, the litter bearing you has priority of passage regardless of the low rank, very low in my case, of the nurse guiding it.”

Feeling reassured, Hewlitt looked more closely at the beings around him instead of cowering and closing his eyes at their approach. A person can get used to anything, he was thinking, but a few minutes later he was not so sure.

“What . . . what was that disgusting, horrible thing that just went past?”

The nurse did not reply until they had turned in to an intersection and the creature was out of sight. Then it said, “That is a physiological classification PVSJ, an Illensan chlorine-breather, wearing the protective envelope necessary in an oxygen-rich environment. They have very sensitive hearing. You would do well to remember that.”

Hewlitt could not remember seeing anything that looked like an ear, or an eye or a nose or mouth for that matter; just a spiny, membranous body that looked like a haphazard collection of oily, rotting vegetation writhing within the yellow fog inside the loose, transparent body cover.

“Nurse,” he said with great vehemence, “no matter what my future treatment is to be, I do not want a thing like that anywhere near me!”

The nurse’s speaking membrane vibrated, but no speech came through its translator. Then it said, “We will arrive in Ward Seven within a few minutes. I expect to be allowed to assist with your nursing care, Patient Hewlitt, and if there is any other way that I can help with nonmedical advice or information you have only to—”

“Aren’t there any human doctors and nurses in this place?” he broke in sharply. “I want to be treated by people of my own species.”

“There are many Earth-human DBDGs on the medical staff,” the nurse replied, “but they might not want to treat you.

For a moment surprise and disbelief rendered him speechless, and not until his litter swung into a narrower and less populated corridor did the nurse answer the question that he had been too angry to ask.

“You are forgetting that this is a multispecies hospital,” it said, “and recognized throughout the Galactic Federation to be the biggest and best of its kind. The people who are accepted for positions or advanced training here are selected from the best that their home planets’ medical establishments can provide, and their purpose in coming here is to practice other-species medicine and surgery. So you will understand that one of them would not take your case unless specifically ordered to do so for a particular clinical reason. A DBDG Earth-human doctor would not feel that it had come all the way to Sector General just to treat another Earthhuman when there are countless millions of those on Earth and the Earth-seeded worlds.

“Your Earth-human doctors and nurses want to work on the juicy ET cases,” it went on. “You will come to understand that this is a very good thing, because much more care and attention, as well as a higher degree of personal and professional interest, is given to other-species patients. ‘When a same-species doctor is treating its patient, certain clinical shortcuts may sometimes be taken, or incorrect assumptions made, or important symptoms cloaked by overfamiliarity with the patient’s physiology. The occasions when mistakes like this occur are rare. But when an other-species medic is in charge of treatment, it takes nothing about its patient for granted. It is forced by the physiological differences to be very careful indeed, so that the incidence of clinical error is even rarer. Please believe me: you will be in very good hands, or whatever other appendages are appropriate.

“And remember, Patient Hewlitt,” it added as the litter made another sudden change in direction, into a wide doorway, “to me, you are an ET case—with all that that implies. We’ve arrived.”

Ward Seven was a large, brightly lit room about five times longer than it was wide, Hewlitt saw, with a clear area of floor running between two facing rows of beds. He felt pretty sure that they were beds because, in spite of their weird shapes and sizes and the strange equipment hanging above some of them, there was one at the other end of the room that was suitable for the use of an Earthhuman. Just inside the entrance on his left there was a nurses’ station and food-service facility enclosed by transparent walls, but the litter moved past it too quickly for him to see who or what was working there.

The space taken up by the combined station and kitchen allowed only eight bed spaces on that side, while there were twelve along the opposite wall. A few of them were enclosed by screens, and the quiet gobbling and barking of alien voices was coming from one of them, but without a translator he could not tell whether it was a medical consultation, friendly gossip, or the sound of an other-species patient in pain. Before he could ask, the litter stopped and he was lifted smoothly and deposited in a sitting position on the chair by his bedside.

The nurse pointed in turn to the three doors in the end wall that paralleled his bed and said, “The first one is the multispecies waste-elimination facility for mobile patients, the second is the bathroom, also multispecies, and the other one is for patients who require assistance to perform these operations. Your bedside cabinet is similar to the one you used on Treevendar, and the few personal effects you were allowed to bring with you will be moved to it later today. You have a call button in case you need attention, and there is a ceiling-mounted sound and vision pickup linked to monitors in the nurses’ station in case you need urgent attention but are unable to call for it yourself. Your reading light is directional so that you will not inconvenience other patients during rest periods, and you have an audio plug, an earpiece, and a small viewscreen tuned to the in-hospital entertainment channels. The programs were recorded a long time ago, so you may not want to view them unless you are trying to put yourself to sleep without sedative medication.

“You are in bed eighteen,” it continued. “As well as being the most convenient position to the toilet facilities, it is farthest from the ward entrance and the nurses’ station. There is a generally held belief within the hospital, which has never been officially denied, that the closer a patient is to the ward entrance, where the doctor on call and the ward nurses can reach it with minimum delay, the more serious is its clinical condition and prognosis. You may like to take some comfort from that knowledge.

“And now, Patient Hewlitt,” it went on briskly, “please undress, put on the hospital garment lying across your chair, and get into bed quickly before Charge Nurse arrives. I will remain outside the screen. If you need help, call me.

The nurse and its litter moved aside and the bed screens unrolled silently from their recess in the ceiling.

For what seemed like a long time Hewlitt held the hospital garment in his hands without moving. It was smooth, white, shapeless, and, like all the others he had known, at least two sizes too small. He did not want to lie in bed dressed in this thing; he wanted to sit in the chair and maintain some feeling of independence by wearing his own impeccably styled clothing. But then he remembered the nurse’s vast strength and its closing remark that, if he needed help, he should call it. Had that been a politely worded threat to the effect that if he did not undress himself he would be undressed by force?

He would not give that tentacled monster the satisfaction, or perhaps the pleasure, of undressing one of its juicy ETs.

While he was climbing into bed, Hewlitt heard someone else approaching his bed, someone who made a soft, slithering noise rather than the sound of walking feet as it came. There was an unpleasant background sibilance to the translated words when it spoke.

“Nurse,” it said sharply, “your paint is flaking. Give me the patient’s case notes and your report, quickly, then go to your dining area without delay.”

“Yes, Charge Nurse,” the other replied. “When Treevendar’s medical officer, a Monitor Corps surgeon-lieutenant called Turragh-Mar, gave me the case notes, it said that there had been no observable symptoms or change in Patient Hewlitt’s physical condition, but suggested the presence of a psychological component. The only evidence of this was its marked xenophobic reaction displayed during the ride here. I assumed from our earlier conversation that the patient has had very limited—if any—contact with other-species beings, and was likely to be disturbed by the sight of the hospital staff using the intervening corridors; and that my instructions to allow it to see them was intended to prepare it for the closer, in-ward contacts that it would experience later. By the time we reached the ward, the patient seemed to have its xenophobia under partial control, except for one species that it still finds visually distressing . . .

“Thank you, Nurse,” the other voice broke in. “Now go at once for a respray before you collapse from hunger at my feet. I will take over from here.”

The screens rose and disappeared into the ceiling to reveal the ghastly thing standing at the foot of his bed. Instinctively he pressed himself against the backrest in a vain effort to put more space between them.

“How are we feeling today, Patient Hewlitt?” it said. “I am Charge Nurse Leethveeschi and, as you have already noticed, I am an Illensan.

CHAPTER 2

Inside its chlorine envelope the thick, fleshy, yellow-green leaves twitched and slid open to reveal two stubby legs covered by what looked like oily blisters as the creature moved back from the foot of the bed.

“Do not be afraid, Patient Hewlitt,” Leethveeschi said. “I have no intention of coming closer, much less of touching you, unless some future clinical emergency requires it. It may be helpful to consider the visual effect of your flabby, pink, smooth-skinned body on my aesthetic sensibilities. So please stop trying to push yourself backward through the wall and listen to me. You may close your eyes, if it helps. First, have you eaten recently? Second, do you have an urgent need to eliminate body wastes?”

“Y-yes,” Hewlitt replied. Just to be contrary he kept his eyes open, trying to stare the disgusting creature down. But there were too many dark, wet swellings showing between its oily fronds and membranes for him to know which of them were eyes. He added, “Just before I left the ship. And no, I don’t have to go to the toilet.”

“Then you have no reason to leave your bed,” said the charge nurse, “so please remain in it until Senior Physician Medalont has examined you and officially pronounced you capable of moving about the ward without nursing assistance. The next meal will be served in a little over three hours and your examination will take place before then. But there is no cause for alarm, Patient Hewlitt, because the procedure will be noninvasive and predominantly verbal.

“When you are allowed out of bed,” Leethveeschi went on, you will be given a translator programmed for the languages used by the ward patients and medical staff. It seems that you have had limited opportunities for other-species contact, and here you will be able to remedy that. Talk to the other patients as soon as you feel comfortable doing so and you are not getting in the way of the medical staff. Patients who have screens around their beds are either undergoing treatment, resting, or being isolated for other reasons, and those you must not disturb. Most of the patients will talk to you, if they are feeling sociable, and you need not worry about their outward appearance, because all of the patients here are ugly, gross, and visually repellent.

“Without exception.”

He wondered if there had been a glint of humor in a few of the dark, wet blisters that might have been looking at him as it spoke the words, but dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

“In the bed opposite is Patient Henredth, a Kelgian,” it continued. “Diagonally on your left is Patient Kletilt, from Melf, and beside you is an Ian named Makolli who is being transferred to Level Forty-Seven later today, so you may not get the chance to talk to it. I don’t know who or what we will be sent in its place. But for now, Patient Hewlitt, you should try to relax, or sleep if you can, until the doctor sees you.

Leethveeschi’s body parts slithered and writhed together in a revolting fashion, and he realized that it was turning to go. He was pleased that the disgusting thing was leaving and wondered why he stopped it. After all, his question could have waited.

“Charge Nurse,” he said firmly, “I have no wish to talk to anyone in this place unless it is absolutely necessary for my treatment. But there is one person I might be able to talk to with, well, less discomfort. That is the nurse who brought me here. I would not mind if it took part in my treatment, and I would prefer to call for it if there was something I needed. Please tell me its name?”

“No,” said Leethveeschi with equal firmness. “Since it is the only Hudlar nurse attached to my ward, you will have no trouble identifying it. Just point a manipulatory appendage at it and call ‘Nurse’ loudly.”

“Where I come from,” said Hewlitt, trying not to lose his temper, “that would be considered the height of bad manners. Are you being deliberately unhelpful? You told me your name and those of the patients around me, so why not tell me the Hudlar’s name?”

“Because,” said Leethveeschi, “I don’t know it.”

“That is ridiculous!” Hewlitt burst out, no longer able to hold his temper with this loathsome and obviously petty-minded creature. “You are in charge of the nurses on the ward and you expect me to believe that you don’t know all their names? Do you think I’m stupid? Oh, just forget it. I will ask the next time I see it and it will give me its name itself.”

“I hope not!” said the charge nurse. It did something with its body that made it turn and move back until it was disconcertingly close to his bedside again.

“Regarding your degree of stupidity, Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “I am constrained by politeness not to comment. But it is possible that you are ignorant rather than stupid, and I am allowed to reduce your level of ignorance.

“Our Hudlar nurse wears a band around one limb that shows its rank and hospital staff number,” Leethveeschi went on. “The number is used for administrative purposes and is the only identity known to us. Since other species find Hudlars impossible to tell apart, if one of them has to be picked out of a group this is done by calling out the last few digits of its staff number. It is not called by name because the Hudlars consider their names to be their most private and personal possession. Among their species the name is used only by close members of the family, or among those who are intending to become life-mates immediately prior to conjugation.

“It seems that you may have formed a liking for our Hudlar nurse,” it added, “but in the circumstances it is better that the relationship stops short of a personal exchange of names.”

Leethveeschi returned to the nurses’ station, making disgusting, untranslatable noises that sounded like someone in the last stages of pulmonary failure but were probably the sound of Illensan laughter. He felt sure that the heat of his embarrassment was warming the whole ward. Then he flung himself back against the pillows to glare at the monitor lens in the ceiling, wondering if the sudden reddening of his face would worry an observer and some other horrible medical creature would come hurrying to investigate.

Apparently not. Several minutes passed and there were no further visitations. But his relief was mixed with irritation as he wondered if he would have to do something melodramatic like falling out of bed and breaking an arm to attract attention. His embarrassment had faded, but it was being replaced by the old, familiar feelings of helpless anger and despair.

I should not have come here.

He looked along both sides of the ward at the large, complicated beds, several of whose occupants were not, unfortunately, screened from view, and beyond to the nurses’ station, where the alien shapes were rendered a little less frightening by distance, and listened to the quiet barking and moaning and gobbling sounds of other-species’ conversations. He had always felt distrustful of strangers, and even of relatives he had not met for a long time, because they usually represented varying degrees of change and disruption to the comfortable, organized, lonely, and moderately happy life he had made for himself. But now he was among the strangers who were stranger than he could ever have imagined, and it was his own stupid fault.

Hewlitt had been advised not to go to Sector General, by a succession of Earth doctors who had studied his psych profile and decided that it would not be a comfortable place for him. They had not, however, been able to do anything about his illness beyond stating the obvious, that his symptoms were unusually varied, nonspecific, and, at times, violently nonresponsive to the indicated medication. It was suggested that his trouble might lie in an overactive mind that was having a disproportionately large influence on the body containing it.

Being a solitary person out of necessity rather than choice, Hewlitt had had to take responsibility for looking after his own wellbeing, which included guarding himself against accident, illness, and infection. But he was not, or at least not entirely, a hypochondriac. He knew that there was something seriously wrong with him and that, in these days of advanced medical science, it was his right as a Galactic Federation citizen to demand that it be put right by somebody, somewhere.

He did not like being among strangers, but neither did he like the prospect of being intermittently and inexplicably sick for the rest of his life, so he had insisted on his rights. Now he was wondering if it would not have been better for him to stay and die comfortably on Earth. Here the treatment, and certainly the doctors prescribing it, were likely to cause him more mental anguish than the disease.

All at once Hewlitt wanted to be back home.

His attention was drawn to the nurses’ station entrance, where two creatures had emerged and were moving down the ward toward him. The first one was a long, fat, silver-furred being who undulated along the floor on more legs than he was able count and who belonged to the same species as Patient Henredth in the bed opposite. It was accompanied by the Hudlar nurse-for some reason he had begun to think of it as his nurse, possibly because it was both familiar and polite-whose flanks appeared to have been repainted since he had seen it last. In the Earth hospitals quite a few of the nurses haa used cosmetics, although only on their faces.

For a moment he wondered if his nurse was considered beautiful by other Hudlars; then he sat up straight in the bed and steeled himself for his first medical examination by a giant extraterrestrial caterpillar. But they stopped at the bed beside his, the one containing Patient Kletilt, moved inside its screens, and completely ignored his existence.

He could hear three different voices talking quietly. There was the Kelgian modulated moaning sound that must have been coming from the doctor, an erratic scraping and clicking noise that he had never heard before but that had to belong to the Melfan patient, and-with lesser frequency, suggesting that it was in response to questions or instructions-the remembered sound of the Hudlar nurse’s speaking membrane. But none of their translators were set for human speech, so he did not know what they were saying.

That irritated him, because every few minutes the fabric of the screen bulged outward as if something large and round, like the Hudlar’s flanks, or small and sharp, like something else, moved behind it. In spite of the fact that it would probably have horrified him, Hewlitt wanted to know what was going on.

Whatever it was lasted for about twenty minutes; then the Kelgian doctor emerged from behind the screens and undulated toward the nurses’ station without even a side glance at him. He could hear the Hudlar nurse moving around Kletilt’s bed, apparently doing something to or for the patient; then it, too, appeared and began following the doctor. He did not point and shout “Nurse” as Leethveeschi had advised; he waved to attract its attention.

The nurse paused to make an adjustment to its translator, then said, “Is there anything wrong, Patient Hewlitt?”

You fool, he thought, it should be obvious what is wrong. But he tried to keep his tone polite as he said, “I was expecting to be examined, Nurse. What is going on? That doctor completely ignored me!”

“That doctor,” the nurse replied, “was arranging for Patient Kletilt’s transfer to a different ward, and I was repositioning the patient during the examination. It is Senior Physician Karthad, who is currently the hospital’s specialist in other-species obstetrics and gynecology and has no interest in your case. But if you will wait for just a moment longer, Patient Hewlitt, your own doctor will be here to examine you.”

CHAPTER 3

He had seen pictures of the Melfan species as well as a few lifesize specimens in the corridors during his trip to the ward, but this was the first one that had been motionless and very, very close. It still looked like an outsize crab that was wearing its skeleton on the outside. But this time he barely noticed the thin, tubular legs projecting from the slits where the bony carapace and underside joined, because he was staring at the head with its big, vertically lidded eyes, enormous mandibles, and pincers projecting forward from the place where ears should have been. The two feelers growing from the sides of its mouth were so long and thin and fragile that they looked ridiculous by comparison. The creature’s fearsome head moved closer and, inevitably, it said, “How are we feeling, Patient Hewlitt?”

Just as inevitably, Hewlitt replied, “Fine.~~

“Good,” said the other. “I am Dr. Medalont, and I would like to give you a preliminary examination and ask a few questions, if you don’t mind. Please fold back your blanket and lie face downward. There is no need to remove your garment; my scanner imaging will not be affected by it. I shall explain everything as we go along.”

The scanner was a small, flat, rectangular object that reminded Hewlitt of an old-time book. Its “spine,” Medalont told him, contained the depth-focus and enhancement controls; the matte black underside that was being moved slowly over every square inch of his body surface held the microsensors; and the top surface displayed a picture of the underlying organic structures. An enlarged scanner image was being repeated on the bedside viewscreen, possibly for the benefit of the nurse. He twisted his neck to look at it.

“Stop wriggling, Patient Hewlitt,” said the doctor. “Now lie face upward. Thank you.”

One of its pincers gripped him gently by the wrist and straightened his arm by his side. A feeler curled down to lie vertically along the crease inside his elbow, while the other one dropped like a soft, furry feather across his nose and mouth, making him fight a sudden urge to sneeze. A few minutes later the pincer and the feelers were withdrawn and the doctor straightened up.

“If I remember my Earth-human DBDG anatomy and vital signs correctly,” said the doctor, adding a series of quiet, untranslatable clicks that might have been the Melfan equivalent of a chuckle, “I am inclined to agree with your self-diagnosis. Apart from a little general muscular tension, which is understandable in these circumstances, you are in very good physical condition.”

This was how so many of the other examinations had ended, Hewlitt thought angrily, with the doctor pronouncing him fit. A few of the early ones had laughed at him, too, or accused him of wasting their time. This Medalont seemed to be a polite one, in spite of being an extraterrestrial, and would probably satisfy itself by wondering aloud what he was doing here.

Instead, it said, “I would like to ask you a few questions, Patient Hewlitt. They are questions you will have been asked many times, and your answers are in the case history. But I am hoping that those answers, because of their constant repetition, may have become inaccurate or incomplete, and I may be able to uncover information missed by my predecessors. Except as an infant and very young child on Etla, you have never traveled beyond the atmosphere of Earth, your home world. Correct?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt.

“Were there any other-species contacts on Etla?”

“I can remember seeing a few extraterrestrials,” he replied, “but not well enough to describe them now. I was only four at the time and they frightened me. My parents said that I would grow out of it but kept me out of the way whenever they had other-species visitors. Obviously I didn’t grow out of it.”

“There is still time,” said Medalont. “What do you remember of your childhood illnesses? Begin with the earliest episodes, please.”

“Not much,” Hewlitt replied. “I was a pretty healthy infant, I learned later. But when my parents died in the flyer accident it was decided to return me to my grandparents on Earth, and I was given the usual immunizations against Earth-human child and adult diseases. That was when the trouble started. There were very few Earthpeople living on Etla at that time, and as my parents had not planned on returning to Earth, there had been no need for them to worry about giving me preventive shots.”

“Do you know the reason for that?” asked the doctor.

“I think so,” said Hewlitt.

“Then tell me,” said the other. “Explaining it to me aloud might give you something less to worry about while living among all us aliens.”

Hewlitt disliked being humored. He was neither a simple child nor a senile oldster, and it irritated him when some medical knowit-all implied that he was dim-witted, or worse, uneducated. He said, “If you sneeze I won’t be affected by your Melfan germs, and vice versa. The same situation applies to all the other life-forms in the hospital. It is a matter of evolution and environment. Germs that evolved on one world cannot affect or infect beings who are native to another. On Earth people said that some hospitals, usually the very old or badly run ones, were places one went to catch other people’s diseases as well as, hopefully, getting rid of one’s own.

“Is that why there is only one patient of any given species in this ward?” he ended. “To eliminate the risk of own-species crossinfection?”

Dr. Medalont blinked its eyes hard enough for Hewlitt to hear the eyelids clicking together. Then it said, “That is not a reason the hospital would admit to officially, and there are other reasons. You seem to be well-informed medically, but would you now kindly return to the account of your early onset of symptoms?”

“Listening to the number of doctors that have discussed my case over the years,” Hewlitt replied, “I couldn’t help learning a few things. But all right, back to the symptoms. After the first immunization shot before moving to Earth, I was told that I’d had a bad reaction to it: high temperature, body rash, and inflamed mucous membranes, all of which cleared up within a few days; the symptoms were not entirely those of the diseases I was being vaccinated against. The same thing happened after I arrived on Earth, with different symptoms and recovery times. And I can remember other times when I just did not feel well, when I would become suddenly tired even though I hadn’t been playing very hard, or get sick and vomit for no reason, or run a slight temperature or break out in spots. But the symptoms were not severe enough for me to remember them in detail or how long they lasted. My grandparents were curious but not seriously concerned. They took me to a local doctor who agreed with them that I was a sickly child who seemed to be catching every virus in the book.

“But I wasn’t sickly,” he went on, angry at the memory of that first, unjust accusation. “Between times I was very fit and was always picked for the school team and track events when . . .

“Patient Hewlitt,” Medalont broke in. “These episodes of nausea, minor skin eruptions, and the other symptoms that were not related, at least as far as you knew at the time, to the immunization shots. Could they have followed the administration of other forms of medication? A mild palliative for a headache, perhaps, or a painkiller given after an accident during a sporting contest that you were too excited to remember? Or did you eat something you should not have eaten, like uncooked or unripe vegetation?”

“No,” said Hewlitt. “If somebody had butted me in the stomach during a game I would remember it. And if I had eaten something that made me sick, I would have remembered that, too, and especially not to eat it again. I’m not stupid now and I wasn’t then.”

“Just so,” said the doctor. “Please continue.”

Feeling angry and impatient, he continued, as he had done so many times in the past to so many medics who had made halfhearted attempts to hide their impatience while listening to him. He described the sudden onset of a wide variety of symptoms that were apparently without cause and, while inconvenient and at times embarrassing, were never serious enough to be disabling. At the age of nine, five years after he had been returned to Earth, his aunt had taken him to the family’s aging general practitioner. That doctor had made the first positive, or perhaps it was a completely negative, contribution to his problem by deciding not to administer any form of medication whenever his inexplicable and relatively painfree symptoms appeared. There was evidence, the doctor had said, that the number and variety of symptoms increased in direct proportion to the amount of medication administered, so the sensible course was to withhold all medication and observe the results. He could still come to see the doctor if or when symptoms reappeared, but henceforth they would do nothing but talk about them.

He had also been given an appointment to see a psychiatrist, who had listened to him with sympathy during the course of several weeks before telling his grandmother that Hewlitt was a physically healthy, highly intelligent, and very imaginative young man who would grow out of his problem with the approach of maturity.

I realized later,” Hewlitt went on, “that neither of them believed I had anything wrong with me. The psychiatrist said so in polite polysyllables, but the doctor did the right thing by not doing anything. For three years after his negative treatment, the symptoms were reduced in frequency and strength so that, unless a rash or something appeared on a visible part of my body, I didn’t mention them to anyone. But when I reached puberty, the trouble began happening every few weeks and some of the symptoms were very embarrassing. Even so, the family doctor continued to withhold medication and the frequency of onset began to reduce again. From the time I was fourteen until I was twenty there were only three, well, attacks, but the symptoms and some of the things that happened between times were distressing and very embarrassing . . . . . “Now I understand,” Medalont broke in, “why your case history advises against prescribing medication without prior discussion with the patient. Your aged local doctor displayed the good sense that many of us younger and more enthusiastic medics lack, by deciding that when in doubt, and when the condition was not life-threatening, it was better to do nothing. But now that the episodes have become more distressing, you will have to trust us. If you are to be cured we cannot continue to do nothing for you.

“I know that,” said Hewlitt. “Shall I go on?”

“Later,” said the doctor. “The main meal is due shortly and Leethveeschi will scold me if I deliberately cause a patient to starve. Nurse, consultation mode, please.”

A pincer and a digited tentacle rose to touch their respective translators briefly, and thereafter their conversation was completely unintelligible to him. Hewlitt took it for as long as he could, about three minutes, before anger and frustration got the better of him.

“What are you saying about me?” he burst out. “Talk so I can listen, dammit. You’re just like the others. You think it’s all in my mind and that nothing is wrong with me but an overactive imagination. Is that what you think?”

The doctor and nurse touched their translators again, and Medalont said, “You may listen to us if you wish, Patient Hewlitt. We are not hiding anything from you except, possibly, our own clinical confusion regarding your case. Is what others think important to you?”

“I don’t like people thinking that I’m a liar,” said Hewlitt in a quieter voice. “Or that there is nothing wrong with me.”

The doctor was silent for a moment. Then it said, “During the days or weeks to come there will be many strange beings talking to you, and thinking about you in their strange fashions, in an effort to find the answer to your problem. But one thing they will not be thinking is that you are a liar. If there was nothing wrong with you, you would not be here. Excuse me.

“There can be little doubt,” it went on, turning both of its large, protruding eyes toward the nurse, “that there is a psychological component to Patient Hewlitt’s condition. While the clinical work is proceeding we will request a concurrent investigation by the Psychology Department. Bearing in mind that the symptoms include a measure of xenophobia, one of the Earth-humans, O’Mara or Braithwaite, would be best . . .

“With respect, Doctor,” the nurse broke in, “Major O’Mara would not be my choice.

“You are probably right,” Medalont replied. “It is of the same species, an able psychologist, but not a pleasant entity. A less abrasive personality would be best. Lieutenant Braithwaite, then.

“For the time being,” it went on, “we will continue the nomedication regimen, with the exception of mild sedation if the patient itself requests it. The patient has had no experience of sharing a room with members of other species and may require assistance getting to sleep, but be watchful in case the sedative brings on another attack. The onset of symptoms can be sudden and disproportionately severe. For this reason, in addition to the bedside visual surveillance, I want it to wear a personal medical sensor at all times with priority flagging on your station monitor. The patient may leave its bed and move about the ward at will, to satisfy its curiosity or to socialize with other patients provided its presence at another bed is not clinically inconvenient at the time. There will be no restrictions regarding its diet, but for the time being it should eat meals alone by its bedside.”

Dr. Medalont returned its attention to Hewlitt and said, “Many of the beings who come here have an initial aversion to watching members of other species eat. It is nothing of which you should feel ashamed. The first time I saw a Kelgian eating glunce stew it made me want to turn myself inside out.”

“No!” said Hewlitt, trying to control his growing panic. “I will not eat or socialize with any of the creatures in here-now, soon, or ever. That, that big elephant thing I saw coming in, the one beside the nurses’ station, looked like it could eat me.”

“Patient Cossunallen is an herbivore,” said the doctor, “so do not be concerned. Making social contact with the other patients is recommended but not obligatory. You should remember, however, that at present you are an unusually healthy patient who may not wish to spend all your time in bed except for an occasional trip to the washroom. Boredom, not the medical staff, may force you to socialize with the other patients.”

Hewlitt made a loud, incredulous sound, which he knew did not translate.

“I will have to leave you now,” Medalont said. “If you have questions that the nursing staff cannot answer, which is unlikely, I will be back to see you again before the next sleep period. Enjoy your lunch.”

The light clicking of Melfan feet and the heavier but softer sound of Hudlar tentacles receded up the ward, leaving him to stare at the inside of the bed screen and worry about the dreadful things a place like this would expect him to eat. A few minutes later the Hudlar nurse pushed between the screens to place a covered tray on his bedside table.

“As yet we have no information regarding your food preferences,” it said, “so we have selected a meal that is acceptable to many of the Earth-humans on the staff. It is composed of a brown, flat slab which is called steak, I think, with other lumpy vegetable objects. Before you start to eat, please wait until I attach some equipment to your body. The sensor on your chest lets the nurses’ station know how you are doing from moment to moment, and the translator, which I will hang around your neck, is programmed for the languages used by the ward patients and medical staff. It will let you know what everyone is saying about you and everyone else.

“I thought that you might feel more comfortable eating in visual privacy,” it went on, “at least until you settle in. That is why I have not raised your screens. I must leave now, but push the call button if you need anything. All right, Patient Hewlitt?”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” he said. “But, Nurse . . .

He broke off in confusion, not knowing why he felt so grateful to this monstrous creature and wanting to say more than a simple word of thanks. Maybe he could say something complimentary.

The nurse was backing through one of the overlapping sections of screen, and he could see that its body paint had left a large smear on the fabric. It stopped moving and said, “Yes, Patient Hewlitt?”

“Nurse,” he said awkwardly, “I didn’t expect something like you to be so, well, considerate toward me. I mean, you look like nothing on Earth . . .

“I should hope so,” said the Hudlar.

“I didn’t mean that to be taken literally,” he said. “I just wanted to say thanks and, and your body makeup looks very smart.”

The nurse made a small, untranslatable sound and said, “Hudlars do not use body decoration, Patient Hewlitt. That is my lunch.”

CHAPTER 4

During his first night in the ward, Hewlitt could not sleep. His bed was very comfortable, the shaded light from his bedside was subdued, and he was more than tired enough because his watch was still set to ship rather than hospital time, and it was telling him that it was early afternoon of the day following his arrival. But his heavy eyes would not stay closed and he decided that, consciously as well as subconsciously, he must be terrified of losing consciousness in this place.

For what seemed like hours he lay listening to the night noises of the ward that drifted through his screens. The continuous sighing of the ventilation system that had been inaudible during the day seemed to grow louder by the hour, as did the quiet sound of the nurses’ feet, or whatever, as they attended to the patients. Occasionally he could hear the moaning or bubbling noises of patients in pain, although, considering the painkilling medication available, it was more likely to be the sound of extraterrestrial snoring.

In desperation he switched on the bedside viewscreen and, using an earpiece so as not to bring a nurse down on him for disturbing the other patients, he searched for the entertainment channels. Most of them were intended for other-species’ viewers, but even though his translator reproduced the dialogue, a Tralthan or Melfan situation comedy looked more like a horror play to him. When he found one that was designed for Earth-human viewing, the plot and dialogue were close to prehistoric. It should have sent him straight to sleep, but did not.

He returned to watching a Tralthan family performing weird, incomprehensible actions and saying banal things while doing them, until his screens opened to reveal a massive Hudlar body.

“You should be asleep, Patient Hewlitt,” it said in a voice so quiet that it barely reached him. “Is anything wrong?”

“Are you the nurse who brought me here today,” he asked, “or another one?”

“All the other nurses, including Leethveeschi, have been relieved,” it replied, “but my species is able to go for long periods without sleep and I will be completing the night duty. Tomorrow and the day after are my rest and study days so you will not see me until the day after, if you are still here. Your body sensors indicate raised levels of tension and fatigue. Why are you not sleeping?”

“I—I think I’m afraid to sleep,” he said, wondering why the admission of a weakness to an extraterrestrial seemed less embarrassing than it would to a human. “If I slept in this place I would have nightmares, and wake up again feeling worse. I suppose you know what nightmares are?”

“Yes,” said the nurse. It raised a forward tentacle and waved the tip in the direction of the ward beyond the screens. “You would have nightmares, about us?”

Hewlitt did not reply because he had already answered the question, and he was beginning to feel ashamed.

“If you go to sleep and have nightmares about us,” the nurse went on, “and then wake up to find that your nightmares have substance and are all around you, either suffering with you as fellow patients or trying to cure you, isn’t trying to stay wakeful a waste of time? Knowing that we will be here when you awaken might give your nightmare less force so that your mind might decide to dream about something more pleasant. Isn’t that a logical suggestion, Patient Hewlitt, and worth trying?”

Again, Hewlitt did not reply. This time it was because he was trying to come to grips with Hudlar logic.

“Besides,” said the nurse, “that Melfan quiz-forfeit show is injurious to mental health, regardless of the viewer’s species. Would you like to talk to me instead?”

“Yes—I mean, no,” said Hewlitt. “There are patients here who are sick and more in need of your attention. I have nothing wrong with me, at least not right now.

“Right now,” the nurse replied, “all of the other patients are quiet, comfortable, and stable and are being monitored in their sleep. You are awake, and, for a young and mentally active trainee nurse, night duty can be boring. Is there anything you would like to say or ask?”

Hewlitt stared at the great, six-tentacled monster with its speaking membrane rippling like a fleshy flag and the skin that covered its limbs and body like seamless armor. Then he said, “Your paint is beginning to flake again.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said the Hudlar, “but there is no risk. It will last until the day staff comes on duty.”

“I do not understand you,” said Hewlitt. “At least, not well enough to ask questions.”

“From your earlier words about my use of cosmetics,” said the nurse, “I thought that might be the case. Do you know why Hudlars use nutrient paint?”

He was not terribly interested in anything extraterrestrials did. But this one wanted to talk, if only to relieve its boredom, and listening to it might take his mind off the extraterrestrial menagerie around him. A case of listening to one known monster in order to forget his dread of the unknown others. And after all, it might be trying in its own way to reassure him.

“No,” he said. “Why, Nurse?”

The first thing he learned was that Hudlars did not have mouths. Instead they had what they called organs of absorption, and from there one question led to another.

The species had evolved to intelligence on a heavy-gravity world with a proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The lower reaches of its atmosphere resembled a thick, semiliquid soup filled with tiny, airborne forms of animal and vegetable life which were ingested by the absorption mechanism covering the Hudlars’ back and flanks; and, because they were an intensely energy-hungry species, the process was continuous. The home planet’s atmosphere was very difficult to reproduce, so that in off-world environments such as the hospital it had been found more convenient to spray them at regular intervals with a concentrated nutrient paint.

“Sometimes,” the nurse went on, “we concentrate too deeply on what we are doing and forget our next meal spray. When that happens we grow weak from the effects of accelerated malnutrition wherever we happen to be, and the first member of the medical or maintenance staff to come along, or even an ambulatory patient like yourself, revives us with a quick respray. There are racks of Hudlar food tanks in most of the main corridors and wards, including the one on the wall beside the nurses’ station. The sprayer mechanism is very easy to use, although I hope you will never have to use one on me.

“It disrupts the routine to have a Hudlar collapsing in the middle of a ward,” it continued, “and the nutrient makes a mess on the floor or nearby beds. That would severely irritate Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, and we would not want that to happen.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” he said, unable to imagine a severely irritated chlorine-breather but agreeing anyway. “But, but meals painted on from the outside . . . that’s terrible. I thought I had problems.”

“I am not the patient here, Patient Hewlitt,” said the nurse, “and your sensors are registering a high level of fatigue and I am being selfish by keeping you awake. Are you ready to go to sleep now?”

The thought of being left alone again, his dimly lit bed like a raft surrounded by a dark sea peopled with fearful alien monsters, with this one monstrous exception, brought the fear that had been held in check by their conversation to come rushing back. Hewlitt did not want to go to sleep, so he answered indirectly in the negative by asking another question.

“I don’t see how it could happen,” he said, “but do you people have the equivalent of stomach ache? Or do you ever take sick?”

“Never,” said the nurse. “You must try to sleep, Patient Hewlitt.”

“If you don’t take sick,” he persisted, fighting a conversational rearguard action, “why do Hudlars need doctors and nurses?”

“As very young children,” the other replied, “we are subject to a wide variety of diseases, but by puberty we develop a complete immunity to them which lasts until a few years before termination, when age-related psychological and physiological degeneration takes place. Diagnostician Conway is heading a project to train Hudlar medical staff who will alleviate the more distressing aspects of the condition, which responds only to major surgery, but the work has many years to go before the aged population as a whole will benefit.”

“Is this the work you are training to do?” Hewlitt asked. “To care for the Hudlar aged?”

The nurse had no features that he could read, because it had no face and the rest of its smooth, hard body was as expressionless as an inflated balloon. But when it replied it spoke quickly, giving him the feeling that it might be embarrassed or ashamed of its answer.

“No,” it said. “I am studying general other-species medicine and surgery. Within the Galactic Federation we Hudlars are a unique species. Because of the nature of our body tegument we are able to live and work in a great many hostile environments. We can survive pressure variations ranging from the very dense down to the vacuum of space, and we do not need an atmosphere in order to absorb our nutrient paint. Hudlars are greatly in demand for work in conditions where other species would be severely hampered by their environmental-protection equipment, and especially on space construction projects. A Hudlar medic with Sector General qualifications, who would be able to bring medical assistance to space construction workers of many different species without the timeconsuming necessity for donning protective garments, would be a valuable asset on-site.

“Ours has never been a rich planet,” it added. “No mineral resources, no fabricated items to trade, no scenery to attract visitors. It has nothing that anybody wants, except its immensely strong, tireless people who can work anywhere and are very well rewarded by the other Federation species for doing so.”

“And after you have achieved fame and fortune in space,” said Hewlitt, “I suppose you will settle down at home and have a large family?”

The nurse still seemed to be bothered about something. He wondered if it could be feeling ashamed for leaving home and training for a well-paid job in space and thereby ducking the responsibility for looking after an aged and sick relative. He should not have asked that question.

“I will have half of a large family,” it said.

“Again,” he said, “I do not understand you.”

“Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “you are not very well informed about Hudlars. I was born and currently remain in female mode, and I intend to continue in this form until I choose to mate for the purpose of procreation rather than pleasure. That is when the gravid female, myself, because of the physiological necessity for avoiding further sexual contact with my life-mate, changes gradually into male mode and, concurrently, my mate slowly becomes female. A Hudlar year after parturition, the changes to both are complete, the offspring requires diminishing attention, and the mother-that-was is ready to become a father-to-be and the father-that-was has the opportunity of bearing the next child. The process continues until the desired number of offspring is reached, usually an even number so that the childbearing is equally divided, after which the lifemates decide together on which one will remain in male or female mode for the rest of their lives.

“It is a very simple, balanced, and emotionally satisfying arrangement,” it went on. “I am surprised that the other intelligent species have not evolved this system.”

“Yes, Nurse,” said Hewlitt.

He could think of nothing else to say.

CHAPTER 5

Hewlitt had been lying awake or, more accurately, trying hard to stay awake because of the completely alien and unknown living nightmares sharing the ward with him as patients and medical staff. But now he was wondering if it was extreme fatigue that was dulling his emotional reactions and causing him to relax, because he could not imagine anything more alien than the spaceproof skin, weird eating habits, and routine sex changes of this friendly monstrosity, and it was no longer unknown.

“Nurse,” he said, “thank you for talking to me for so long. I think I can sleep now.”

“No,” said the Hudlar firmly. “I would advise against that, Patient Hewlitt. The day staff will be coming on duty in twenty minutes and they will be waking everyone so that they can be washed before the first meal is served. We have three other ambulatory patients here, and you may prefer not to share the washroom facilities with them on your first morning in the ward, so it might be more comfortable for you if you get in there and finish first.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Hewlitt without hesitation. “But I’m tired, Nurse. Can I wash later?”

“Bearing in mind your uneasiness in the close proximity of other species,” said the nurse, “I will not accompany you. Instead I will remain close by the washroom in case your personal monitor, which you must not remove while cleansing yourself, should signal an emergency condition or you request help because of unfamiliarity with the equipment.

“If a very high level of mental and physical fatigue is present,” it went on, “you have the option of taking a blanket bath. This operation would be carried out by our three junior trainees, a Melfan and two Kelgians, who would be pleased at the chance to gain more experience in handling and bathing a nontraumatized Earthhuman like yourself. I know that they are particularly anxious to master the technique of scraping away the fur bristles that grow overnight on DBDG faces, and they would be pleased to perform this service for you.

Before it had finished speaking, Hewlitt had thrown back the covers and swung his feet onto the floor, where a pair of soft ward shoes were waiting for them. Then he stood up quickly and said, “I like your first suggestion better, Nurse.”

The Hudlar moved aside to allow him to leave.

About twenty minutes later he was climbing back into bed, feeling clean and fresh and less tired, when the ceiling lights brightened to full strength and the day staff came bustling along the ward. A Kelgian pushing a small trolley loaded with basins and towels poked its furry head and shoulders between the screens and said, “Good morning, Patient Hewlitt. You look clean. Are you?”

“Yes,” he said, and it disappeared.

A few minutes later he heard two patients approaching and then passing his bed on their way to the washroom. One seemed to be large and heavy and walking on more than four feet, while the other one moved with an irregular, tapping sound. He knew they were patients because one was complaining about being wakened when it had only just succeeded in getting to sleep, and the other was insisting that Leethveeschi was conducting illegal sleepdeprivation research and it was being brainwashed as well as waiting to have the croamsteti on its kuld duct replaced. His translator reproduced the original word sounds, so presumably there was no equivalent part of an Earth-human body. He sympathized with them, whatever they were, over their missed sleep.

He had just settled back in the bed and closed his eyes, and the sounds of the ward were beginning to fade, when the Kelgian nurse reappeared, this time carrying his breakfast on a tray. Or maybe it was another Kelgian. As yet he could not tell the difference between one outsize, furry caterpillar and another, and doubted if he ever would.

“Sit up and eat at the bedside table, Patient Hewlitt,” it said. “Your particular species is subject to digestive upsets with accompanying regurgitation, I have learned, if gravity is not allowed to aid the movement of food to the stomach. Enjoy.”

“I don’t want to eat, Nurse,” he said, trying hard to control his irritation, “I want to sleep. Please go away.

“Eat it, then sleep,” said the nurse. “Or try to eat some of it, or Charge Nurse Leethveeschi will eat me.”

“It would?” said Hewlitt, the return of his earlier fears bringing him fully awake. In this place it might not be joking.

“Of course not,” said the nurse. “But only because it is a chlorine-breather and my body meat would poison it.”

“All right, I’ll try,” he said, knowing that way out here in Sector General, as it had been on the ship, the food would be synthesized. But when he raised the tray cover to look inside and the odor wafted up, he realized how long it had been since he had eaten, and added, “It looks and smells very good, Nurse.”

“It is a visually disgusting and nauseating mess,” said the nurse, backing hurriedly through the screens, “and it smells even worse.

“You don’t have much tact, do you, Nurse?” said Hewlitt, but its multiple footfalls were already receding up the ward. Then another voice called out to him from the bed opposite, belonging, he recalled, to a Kelgian patient called Henredth.

“What is tact?” it said.

Hewlitt ignored the question and tried to close his ears to the other questions that followed it until he had finished his breakfast, after which his eyes closed by themselves.

He wakened to the sound of quiet, alien voices and the sight of the screen that was still around his bed, which made him realize where he was. But somehow the realization was not as terrifying as it had been yesterday and, after a few minutes listening through his translator, he pressed the button that raised his bed screens.

Hewlitt saw at once that the Ian who had been in the bed beside his, Patient Makolli, had been moved while he had been asleep, because there was an Orligian lying there now. He recognized the species at once because it was the same as that of the medical officer on Treevendar, but this specimen seemed much older. The parts of it that were not hidden by the blankets-its head, arms, and upper chest-were covered by reddish brown fur that was streaked with grey. It was wearing a personal monitor like his own as well as a translator, but it took no notice of him. He was not sure whether it was asleep, anesthetized, or being antisocial.

In the bed opposite, Patient Kletilt had moved its viewscreen to what, for a Melfan, must have been a more convenient position for viewing in bed. Its eyes were hidden by the back of the set and it did not appear to be interested in anything or anyone but the program it was watching. Hewlitt had not known that his set could be swung over the bed like that and he made a mental note to experiment with it later.

In the bed beside Kletilt the Kelgian patient, Henredth, and a nurse belonging to a species he had never seen before, were talking together, but so quietly that his translator missed most of what they were saying. Beyond them there was a huge, elephantlike creature that he recognized as being a Tralthan. Instead of lying in a bed it stood on its six blocky legs, surrounded by a complicated framework to which was attached the harness that held it upright. He remembered reading somewhere that Tralthans did everything including sleeping on their feet, and even the healthy ones had great difficulty getting up again if they fell onto their sides.

He was still thinking about that and wondering why the creature was in hospital when Senior Physician Medalont, followed by Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, emerged from the nurses’ station. They skittered and squelched respectively along the center of the aisle, speaking to nobody and looking only in Hewlitt’s direction. He knew what the doctor’s first words would be.

“How are we feeling today, Patient Hewlitt?”

“Fine,” he replied, as it knew he would.

“Patient Hewlitt’s monitor readout since its arrival,” said Leethveeschi, “supports its nonclinical and subjective selfassessment. The patient appears to be in optimum health.”

“Good,” said the senior physician, clicking one of its pincers together in a gesture that might have signified approval but that looked threatening. “I would like to have another long talk with you, Patient Hewlitt, this time covering the episode that resulted in your first admission to an Earth hospital when you . . .

“But you already have that information,” Hewlitt broke in. “It’s in my case history, in much more detail than I could possibly remember now. There is nothing wrong with me, at least not right now. Instead of wasting time talking to me, surely you could visit patients who are more in need of attention?”

“They received attention,” Leethveeschi joined in, “while you were sleeping. Now it’s your turn. But Patient Hewlitt is right. I have more important things to do than listen to two healthy beings talking to each other. Do you need me here, Doctor?”

“Thank you, no, Charge Nurse,” Medalont replied. It returned its attention to Hewlitt and went on, “I am not wasting my time talking to you, because I am hoping that today, or sometime soon, you will tell me something that is not in your case history, something that will enable me to solve this clinical conundrum . . . . .

The interrogation resumed at the point where it had ended the previous day, and it seemed to last forever. If Hewlitt could have read the other’s bony exoskeletal features, he felt sure that they would have been registering disappointment. But they were forced to break off when the voice of the charge nurse spoke from his bedside viewer. Until then he had not known that the device included a communicator.

“Doctor,” said Leethveeschi, “the midday meal is due in thirty minutes. Will you be finished with your patient by then?”

“Yes, at least for today,” said Medalont. To Hewlitt it went on, “I try to do something more for our patients than bore them to death with questions. We will need to make a series of tests, which means me taking samples of your blood for path lab investigation. Don’t worry about it; the process is completely painless. Please uncover your upper arm.

“You-you’re not supposed to give me anything that might . . . began Hewlitt.

“I know, I know,” said the doctor, its rapid, clicking speech sounding more impatient than usual. “If you remember, it was I who told you that you are to receive no medication of any kind until we have identified the condition we are treating, which is why I require a fairly large sample. I am withdrawing blood, Patient Hewlitt, not injecting medication. You will feel nothing, but if the sight distresses you then close your eyes.

He had never been distressed by the sight of his own blood, at least not in the number of small quantities that the doctor seemed to consider a large sample. When it was over, Medalont thanked him and said that it would have to hurry if it was to make a lunch meeting on time.

As the doctor had promised, Hewlitt had not felt a thing, and a small area of nonsensation persisted inside the fold of his elbow where the samples had been withdrawn. He relaxed back into the pillows but decided to stay awake until after lunch by watching and listening to the other patients who were within range of his translator. Compared to his blind near-panic of yesterday, he was surprised by the growing curiosity he was feeling about them.

Hewlitt did not know how much time went by, because it was too much trouble to bother lifting his wrist to look at his watch. He continued to feel fine, comfortable, without pain, and very curious about the thick, grey fog that had drifted into the ward and was keeping him from seeing the other beds. The sounds of the ward, too, were fading, but he was able to see and hear the flashing red light and the strident beeping noises coming from the monitor on his chest, and Charge Nurse Leethveeschi looming over him and shouting into its communicator.

“Bed eighteen, classification DBDG Earth-human. Two-plus minutes into cardiac and respiratory arrest. Resuscitation team, move!”

Something like a column of oily seaweed projected from Leethveeschi’s body and pushed a bulge in the creature’s protective envelope to flop onto Hewlitt’s chest. He felt the steady, regular pressure of a heart massage, and the last thing he saw was the charge nurse leaning closer.

No, not mouth-to-mouth, he thought desperately, you’re a bloody chlorine-breather . . . . .

CHAPTER 6

The sight of the procession that was emerging from the nurses station brought all other activity and conversations in the ward to a halt. It was led by Senior Physician Medalont, followed by Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, his nameless Hudlar nurse, and a Kelgian and a Nidian intern who were guiding a float containing the multispecies resuscitation equipment between them, and an Earthhuman wearing a green Monitor Corps uniform who brought up the rear. Inevitably they traveled the full length of the ward to gather in a semicircle around his bed.

Coming close to death five hours earlier had not made him feel any less fearful of ETs, nor had it improved his disposition one littie bit.

“What the hell are you going to do to me this time?” he said.

“Nothing that I haven’t already done,” the senior physician replied in a voice that might have been reassuring to another Melfan. “Do not be concerned; I am simply withdrawing another blood sample. Please bare your upper arm.

The Kelgian intern looked at its Nidian colleague, its silvery fur tufting into spikes. It edged the resuscitation trolley closer and added, “If you do nothing, Patient Hewlitt, then neither will we.”

One of the things he had learned from his few brief conversations with the Kelgian patient in the adjoining bed was that members of that species were incapable of telling a lie. To another Kelgian, the continuous, subtle, and expressive movements of their silvery fur displayed what they were feeling and thinking from moment to moment, like a form of visual telepathy; so they did not know or understand the meaning of the word. They had the same difficulty with concepts like tact, politeness, diplomacy, and bedside manners.

Once again Hewlitt felt the tiny circle of metal pressed against his skin. Medalont said, “The instrument currently in contact with your arm contains one very fine, short, recessed needle whose entry you will not feel, and another that is longer and slightly thicker. The first one injects a local anesthetic which desensitizes the underlying nerve endings, and the second withdraws the blood. Good, here it comes. Thank you, Patient Hewlitt. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Hewlitt replied. “How am I supposed to feel?”

Medalont ignored the question and said, “Are you aware of any changes of sensation, however small, anywhere within your body?”

“No,” he said.

“Any feeling of discomfort in the chest or arms,” it went on, “or difficulty with breathing? Tingling or loss of sensation in the extremities? Headache?”

“No,” said Hewlitt. “There is a numb patch where you took the blood. It feels the same as last time.”

“If present,” said Medalont, “the symptoms would be minor, an early warning of possible trouble to come. They could be so minor, in tact, that you may be unsure whether or not you are imagining them.”

“So far as I know,” said Hewlitt, making an effort to control his temper, “I have no minor, imaginary symptoms.”

The Earth-human in the green uniform smiled briefly and resumed doing and saying nothing.

“Have you any nonphysical symptoms?” Medalont persisted. “An anxiety or fear, perhaps, that could intensify to the point where it might cause stress on the physical level? I realize that I am moving into Lieutenant Braithwaite’s territory, but . . .

“You are,” said the uniformed man, speaking for the first time. “But feel free, everyone else does.”

Before the senior physician could reply, Hewlitt said, “If you mean am I worried then yes, I feel worried, very worried. Until I came to this place I never had a heart attack, but I don’t think I feel bad enough to frighten myself into another one.”

“Were you feeling frightened before the first one?” asked Medalont.

“No, just sleepy and relaxed,” said Hewlitt. “But right now I’m scared.”

“We won’t allow anything to happen to you this time,” said Medalont, “so try not to worry.

For what seemed like a very long time there was silence from everyone. Leethveeschi’s body pulsed slowly inside its chlorine envelope, the Hudlar’s speaking membrane remained still, the Kelgian’s fur was rippling along its body as if blown by an unfelt wind while its Nidian partner checked the equipment on the resuscitation float, and Medalont opened and closed its pincers once every few seconds like some kind of silent, organic metronome. It was the senior physician who spoke first.

“Charge Nurse, give me your estimate again of the elapsed time between my first withdrawal of blood sample, the monitor’s signaling the patient’s distress, and the sequence of events which followed.”

“Out of consideration for the feelings of the patient,” said Leethveeschi, “who appears to have some understanding of medical nomenclature, it might be better if that information were withheld.”

“And I,” said Medalont, “am hoping that with full information available the patient may be able to shed some light on its own condition. Go on, Charge Nurse.”

“Approximately twelve and a half minutes after you withdrew the blood sample and left,” said Leethveeschi, in a tone as corrosive as the chlorine it was breathing, “the patient’s monitor signaled an emergency condition. Ten seconds later the life signs went flat, completely flat, and sensory response and cerebration began the shutdown characteristic of approaching termination. The nursing staff were outside the station and busy preparing to serve a meal so I responded, preferring not to waste an additional few seconds needed to relay the information to another. Considering the stability of the patient’s condition until then, I suspected that equipment rather than cardiac failure had occurred. When I reached the patient and initiated chest massage forty seconds later it had lost consciousness, and it remained in that condition until the resuscitation team arrived six and one-quarter minutes later—”

“Are you sure about that, Nurse?” Medalont broke in. “In the excitement could subjective factors have caused you to exaggerate? Six minutes is not a good response time.”

“Patient Hewlitt was not responding either,” said Leethveeschi, “and I was watching the clock while I worked. The ward clock is not subject to exaggeration.”

“The charge nurse is right,” said the Nidian medic with a side glance at its partner, “and so are you, Doctor. Normally it would be considered an inexcusably slow response time. But we had an accident on the way, a collision with a food delivery float whose servers moved clear when they saw our flashing lights but left their vehicle in the middle of the ward. There were no casualties-just a mess of other-species meals spread all over the ward floor and nearby beds.

“Patient Hewlitt,” the Kelgian doctor broke in, “chose an inconvenient time to arrest.”

“We had to spend a few minutes checking for equipment damage,” the Nidian doctor went on. “A jolt that would restart a Tralthan’s heart would cook an Earth-human’s in its own . . .

“Yes, yes,” said Medalont. “After six-plus minutes you revived the patient. What degree of mental or verbal confusion did you observe while it was returning to full consciousness?”

“No, and none,” the other replied. “We did not revive the patient; Charge Nurse Leethveeschi must have done that before we could attach the lines. The patient did not appear to be confused at all. Its first words were to tell the charge nurse to stop hitting it in the chest or it would damage its rib cage. Its words were coherent, well organized, and distinct, if not very respectful.”

“I’m sorry,” said the senior physician. “I had assumed your equipment brought the patient back. Well done, Charge Nurse. I hope the patient was not too disrespectful.”

“I have been called worse names,” said Leethveeschi, “and I was relieved rather than insulted by its response.

“Indeed, yes,” said Medalont. To the Kelgian it went on, “Continue, please.”

“When it was clear that Patient Hewlitt was fully conscious,” it replied, “we joined the charge nurse in asking it questions aimed at discovering whether or not there had been a loss of cerebration. We were still doing that when you returned to ask it more of the same questions. The rest you know.”

“Yes,” said the senior physician. “And after two hours of questioning there was no detectable memory or speech dysfunction or loss of physical coordination. Patient Hewlitt’s monitor registered optimum levels on all life signs, just as it is doing now.

“But now,” Leethveeschi said, with a wet, floppy gesture toward the ward clock, “it is four and a half minutes beyond the time that elapsed between the original blood withdrawal and the onset of the first cardiac episode.”

While the medics were talking, Hewlitt had been trying to think of a way of both apologizing to the charge nurse and thanking it for saving his life, but the meaning of what the loathsome creature had just said drove all thoughts of gratitude from his mind.

“What’s going on here?” he burst out. “Are you just standing around waiting for me to have another bloody heart attack? Or are you disappointed it didn’t happen?”

For a moment there was silence, and stillness except for the Hudlar nurse who moved a tentacle toward him and lowered it again. Then the Medalont said, “We are not disappointed, Patient Hewlitt, but otherwise your assessment of the situation is accurate. The first cardiac incident had to be caused by something, and there was a possibility, admittedly a very slim one, that my extraction of the blood specimen was responsible. Although you were not to receive any medication, I overlooked the fact that a trace quantity of local anesthetic is injected routinely prior to blood withdrawal so as to render the procedure pain-free. The timing and circumstances have now been reproduced, so far without results, which means that we must look elsewhere for the cause. Unless . . . Your facial skin coloration is darkening, Patient Hewlitt. How do you feel now?”

Ifeel like strangling you, he thought. Aloud, he said, “Fine, Doctor.”

“The monitor confirms,” said Leethveeschi.

“In that case,” said Medalont, looking at the others in turn, “you will maintain monitor surveillance, station the resuscitation team within a two-minute response distance, and allow the patient to compose itself before lunch. Never fear, Patient Hewlitt, we will find out and cure whatever it is that is troubling you. But for the present we will leave you alone.”

“Not entirely alone,” said Braithwaite. “I would like to have a few words with him.”

“As you wish, Lieutenant,” said the senior physician as it and the other two doctors withdrew. Leethveeschi and the Hudlar nurse held back.

“You are not to do anything that will disturb my patient,” said the Jllensan in its most authoritative charge-nurse voice. “Nor will you ask or say anything that is likely to precipitate another medical emergency.

Lieutenant Braithwaite looked from the irate chlorinebreather to the hulking, massively strong body of the Hudlar and back again. “Nurses,” he said, smiling, “I wouldn’t dare.”

When they were alone he sat down on the edge of Hewlitt’s bed and said, “I’m Braithwaite, Other-Species Psychology Department. It makes a nice change to talk to someone who has the right number of limbs and things.”

Hewlitt still felt like strangling or at least verbally assaulting someone, but this Braithwaite character had not said or done anything to make himself a candidate. Not yet. Instead he looked along the ward in the direction of the nurses’ station and the figure of Leethveeschi and ignored the psychologist.

“What are you thinking about?” Braithwaite said when the silence began to drag. He smiled and added, “Is that the kind of question you are expecting me to ask?”

“You didn’t call me Patient Hewlitt like the others,” he replied, turning to face the psychologist. “Was that intentional, or because you don’t think there is anything wrong with me so I’m not a real patient? Or did you forget my name?”

“You need not call me Lieutenant or Braithwaite,” said the other, and the silence returned.

Finally Hewlitt said, “All right, I’ll answer your question. I am thinking about that ghastly charge nurse, and wondering howl can say that I’m sorry for misjudging it and thank it for saving my life.”

Braithwaite nodded. “I’d say that you have the words about right, and all you have to do is say them to Leethveeschi rather than me.

For some reason Hewlitt was finding it difficult to maintain his anger toward this man. He said, “You are here to tell me, or to try to convince me, that my problems are all in my mind. This has happened to me many times, man and boy, so let’s not waste our time being friendly. Yes?”

“No,” said Braithwaite firmly. “I intend to waste time being friendly.”

The lieutenant changed his position on the side of the bed, moving so close that he had to support his weight with one arm stretched across Hewlitt’s thighs. Hewlitt could feel the other’s breath on his face as he said, “Do you mind me sitting here? Would you prefer me to move back, or stand?”

“It’s the extraterrestrials I worry about when they come too close,” he replied. “Just don’t sit on my legs.”

Braithwaite nodded. The polite and seemingly innocent question-and-answer had established the fact that he was not emotionally distressed by the close proximity of another human being, which was a useful psychological datum that eliminated one potential area of trouble. From long experience Hewlitt knew what the other was doing, and the lieutenant was probably intelligent enough to know that Hewlitt knew.

“We both know that yours is not a simple case,” Braithwaite went on, with a glance toward his monitor. “You appear to be completely healthy, while suffering from an intermittent and nonspecific condition which, if the recent cardiac arrest was a symptom, is life-threatening. We also know that a serious problem in the body can have a proportionate effect on the mind, and vice versa, even when there appears, as now, to be no apparent connection between the two. I would like to find and identify that connection, but only if there is one.”

He waited until Hewlitt gave a wary nod, then continued, “Normally a patient is admitted to this hospital because he, she, or it is sick or injured. The problem and clinical solution are usually obvious from the start, and the medics can use the facilities of the Federation’s leading hospital to treat or remove or repair the condition and, in most cases, to send the patient home good as new. But when the problem has or appears to have a psychological component .

“You use your tongue,” Hewlitt finished for him.

“My ears, mostly,” said Braithwaite, ignoring the sarcasm. “Very soon, I hope, you will be doing all the talking. You should begin by describing any unusual events or circumstances that you can remember prior to the first onset of symptoms. Tell me what you as a child were thinking about the situation at the time, not what your doctors and relatives thought later. Go ahead, you talk and I’ll listen.~~

“You want me to tell you all about the times when I wasn’t sick?” said Hewlitt. He inclined his head in the direction of the diet kitchen, where the ward serving floats loaded with meal trays were emerging, and added, “But there isn’t enough . . . It’s lunchtime.”

Braithwaite sighed and said, “I would like to finish this talk with you as soon as possible, in case Medalont, who has the rank, thinks of doing something more urgent and positive for you. Would you do me a favor by ordering a meal for me? Nothing special, whatever they are giving you will do nicely.”

“But you’re not a patient,” said Hewlitt. “Yesterday I heard Leethveeschi telling an intern not to be a lazy scrassug, whatever that is, and to go to the staff dining hall instead of sneaking food from the ward kitchen. I don’t think the charge nurse will allow it.”

“The charge nurse will allow it,” said the lieutenant, “if you ask to speak to it about a personal matter which you feel is important. After the medical melodrama of five hours ago it will not want to risk a refusal. When it comes, say what you told me you wanted to say to it, that you are sorry for misjudging its actions and are grateful for it saving your life. Then you can say that you feel our talk could be important to your case, and would it be possible for it to order up another DBDG meal for me so that the conversation can continue without interruption.

“Illensans receive a lot of professional compliments from the staff,” Braithwaite went on, “because they are very good at what they do. But not from the patients, who are rarely here long enough to appreciate their good points. It comes of being the only chlorinebreathing, as well as the ugliest, species in the Federation. But if you do as I say, it will be too surprised and pleased to refuse you anything.”

Hewlitt was silent for a moment; then he said, “Lieutenant, you are a selfish, devious, calculating son of a . . . of a scrassug.

“Of course,” said Braithwaite. “I’m a psychologist.”

He was beginning to sweat at the idea of actually calling the loathsome Leethveeschi to his bedside. He said, “I was thinking of saying those things to it, but later,” he said. “I need more time to work up the nerve.

Braithwaite smiled and pointed at the communicator.

CHAPTER 7

The first and best-remembered early unusual incident had happened when he was a few days past his fourth birthday. His parents had been working at their separate home terminals, safe in the knowledge that they would be free from interruptions, because each was sure that the other was watching out for him, and doubly sure in that he was unable to leave his room without being seen.

Normally there would not have been a problem, because he would have been busy at his own, scaled-down terminal with its garish paint job and the extra flashing lights, playing with the latest educational adventure game that had been his birthday present. But that day he was feeling restless and bored because the educational content of the game was getting in the way of the adventures, and the room’s high, open window was offering the promise of more enjoyable things to do in the garden.

His parents had made two further wrong assumptions: that he would not climb out of the window because he had never done so before; and that their garden, when eventually he grew bored with it, too, had a childproof fence.

Beyond the garden fence the world was a very exciting and, although he did not know it at the time, a dangerous place. The whole area had been devastated by a major battle in the civil war that had resulted when the planetary population had risen to overthrow an interstellar government that had fought and lost an interstellar war that the deliberately misguided population had never wanted, even though a great many of them had suffered and died to support it. A few of the ruined houses had been repaired and occupied by off-planet advisors and reconstruction specialists like his parents after the area had been sensor-scanned and any live ordnance or vehicle power packs removed. The broken and rusting remains had been left where they were. Like the ruined houses, they were being overrun by the wild vegetation that was the ultimate winner of every battle and, on this occasion, by one small boy.

He waded through the long grass that seemed to be everywhere, and wandered happily between the trees and bushes, climbed over broken sections of road paving, and explored one of the ruined buildings. Inside were small, furry animals that ran away from him, and one with a long, thick tail that climbed into the roof beams and scolded him until he went away. He was careful to avoid the occupied houses, because they might not contain people like himself. On the single occasion that his parents had taken him for a walk beyond the garden, they had told him that there were otherspecies families in the neighborhood, and that while they would not deliberately harm him, their young could do unpredictable and possibly dangerous things while playing with other-species children.

There had been no need to remind him of the time when he was learning to swim in the communal pooi and a Melfan kid of his own age, thinking that he was an amphibian too, had pulled him to the bottom to play. Since then he had been scared of extraterrestrials, regardless of their shape, size, or age, and tried not to go anywhere near them.

But there were much better places to explore than other people’s gardens, which might have nasty, other-species kids playing in them. Everywhere he looked there were the scattered shapes of armored vehicles showing dark rust amid the sunlit greenery. Some of them looked as if they were not broken and were ready to move any minute; others were lying on their sides, and one had been knocked upside down. Most of them had their doors hanging open, and a few had holes in them that were bigger than the doors, but the edges were sharp and tore his shirt when he tried to crawl inside. He found one that had a gun barrel hanging low enough for him to swing on it. One of its tracks had come off and was lying along the ground like a narrow, rusting carpet with grass and flowers pushing through it. Small animals were hiding in some of the vehicles, but they ran away whenever he climbed in. One of them was filled with the sound of insects, and he knew that he might be stung if he tried to explore that one.

Then he found one that had no insects or animals inside, and with enough sunlight shining through the open hatches to show a bucket seat facing the vehicle’s control console and screens. The seat was soft and dirty and so big that he had to sit on the edge to reach the control keys. Everything was rusty except for the plastic bits, which were covered with thick, sticky dust. He had to rub the keys with his fingers to see what color they were. Neither the dust nor the rust, which was all over his shirt and trousers by then, nor the dead master screen facing him, made any difference to the battles he was fighting.

This had been a real fighting machine with a real soldier in it, and in his imagination the screen was filled with bright images of enemy tanks and aircraft that exploded even more brightly as soon as they attacked him, because his was a very special, secret tank and he was invincible. He had heard his father and mother talking about the times when such battles had really happened, but they never thought them exciting or interesting and they acted as if everyone concerned in them were sick or something.

But now he was shooting at anything he wanted to imagine- dive bombers, attacking spaceships, horrible other-species soldiers coming at him through the trees-and shouting out loud with excitement when he blew them out of the sky or wiped them out as he always did at the last moment. His parents were not there to stop him yelling, or to remind him that the pretend targets he was shooting down had imaginary people inside them, and that it did not matter what kind of horrible monsters he was pretending to shoot at because they were still people.

Some of their other-species neighbors really were horrible monsters, at least to him, and if any of them had visited the house and found him shooting down things that looked like the visitors, his parents had said, they might take offense and consider the whole Hewlitt family to be less than civilized and not call again. Big peopie never seemed to have any fun.

Gradually he was running out of imaginary enemies to destroy. The sun was no longer shining into the vehicle, and the rusty metal looked almost black instead of red. It was silly, but he started thinking about the being who had driven the tank, and what would happen to him if it came back and found him playing inside. He climbed out so quickly that he tore his trousers again.

The sun had gone down below the trees, but the sky was blue and clear and there was still plenty of light. He could not see anything nearby that he wanted to explore, and he was beginning to feel hungry. It was time to go home, sneak back through the window, and ask his mother for something to eat. But he could see nothing but trees and long grass in every direction.

When he climbed onto the top of the largest vehicle he could find, the view was better. Not far away there was a tall tree standing on the edge of a deep ravine. It had lots of thick, twisting, leafy branches growing close to the ground and nearly all the way to the top, where there was a cluster of bare, thinner branches with fruit hanging from them. From the top he should be able to see his house.

It was another adventure, he told himself as he began to climb, but this time it was real instead of a pretend one. He was not feeling scared, just hungry and all alone, and he wanted to see where his house was so that he could return and eat and end this game. As he climbed higher he could look down through the branches onto the floor of the ravine, where there were more rusting shapes, including a fat, round one directly below him. Then he climbed up into sunlight and was dazzled so that the inside of the ravine became dark and blurred.

Still he could not see any houses, because smaller trees instead of long grass were in the way, so he climbed higher. Then two things happened at once: he reached the top of the tree where the clusters of fruit were and he saw his house. The house was closer than he had expected, and between him and it there was a signpost in the shape of a small tree with funny branches on it. But his arms and legs were very tired, he felt hot and thirsty as well as hungry, and the clusters of fruit were hanging just above him, bobbing gently in the wind that was beginning to blow through the high branches.

At the end of a great adventure, he thought, there should be a reward. The fruit had to be it.

The branch he was sitting on was thick and strong, and one of its twists took it within reach of a fruit cluster. No longer feeling tired, he crawled along it, gripping the twigs growing from it to hold himself steady. The sun was beginning to go down behind the trees, and below him the lower branches were getting harder to see and the ravine was just a dark green blur. He stopped looking down, because the cluster of fruit above him was almost touching his head.

When he tried to pull off the first one, it squashed in his hand. With the second one he was more careful and it came away in one piece.

It looked like a big pear, but none of the pears he had seen in the Earth vegetation tapes had dark green-and-yellow stripes running vertically from the stem to the heavy end. He already knew from the way the first one had squashed that it was full of juice, and this one was so heavy and squishy that it felt like a small balloon filled with water. The juice that had spilled over his hand was drying already and was making it feel nice and cool. He watched the last damp patch on his wrist steaming as it dried off.

He still felt hungry and wanted to eat something solid, but he was hot as well after his climb and a drink of cold juice would be nice, too, so he held on to the branch with only his legs and took the fruit in both cupped hands.

The juice had a funny taste, not nice but not nasty, either. Not wanting to make a mess, he bit out a tiny hole with his teeth and sucked the fruit empty. When he used his fingers to widen the hole, the skin split open along one of the green-and-yellow lines and he discovered that it was not empty. As well as the juice there was a soft, yellow spongy mass with black seeds in the center. He spat out the seeds because they burned his tongue, and the rest of it had the same taste as the juice but it helped fill his stomach better.

He was still not sure whether he liked the fruit or not. While he was trying to make up his mind about eating another one, he felt a pain in his stomach that came and went and grew steadily worse every time.

For the first time since leaving the house he felt scared and wanted to go home. He began bumping himself backward along the branch toward the main trunk, where he could climb down again, but the stomach pains were so bad that they made him yell out loud, and tears were making it hard for him to see what he was doing. Then one very bad pain made him grab his stomach with both hands, and he felt himself falling sideways. For a moment he hung upside down with his legs still wrapped tightly around the branch, but when he tried to pull himself upright again the pains got so bad that he could think about nothing else. He felt himself falling.

He saw sunlit leaves whipping past him, then others that were in shadow, and felt branches hitting his back, arms, and legs; then it was dark for a moment and nothing was hitting him. He knew where he was when he hit the steep slope of the ravine and began rolling to the bottom, then all at once his arms, legs, and back were feeling as sore as his stomach. The side of his head and body hit something that broke under his weight, and the pain in his stomach and everything else faded away.

He wakened to the sound of many voices, two of them belonging to his parents, and with a spotlight shining down onto the floor of the ravine around him. In the beam he could see an adult wearing Monitor Corps uniform and an antigravity belt floating down to him. His parents and some other-species people were scrambling down the slopes using their hands, feet, or whatever. The monitor landed beside him and knelt down.

“So you’re awake, young man,” he said. “What have you been doing to yourself. But first, where does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt now,” he replied, pushing a hand against his stomach and then feeling the side of his head. “It doesn’t hurt anywhere.”

“Good,” said the man. From a satchel hanging from his shoulder he produced a flat instrument with a tiny lighted screen on one side and began moving it slowly across the surface of Hewlitt’s head, limbs, and body.

“I ate some fruit from that tree up there,” he went on. “It gave me a bad tummy ache and I fell off.”

“That is a very tall tree,” said the other, in the same tone of voice Hewlitt’s father used when he thought he was being told a very tall story. “Put your hand down again and don’t move until I’ve finished scanning you. Did you fall asleep at any time since the fall?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I don’t know how long. The sun was going down when I fell. You woke me up.

“Out for four, maybe five hours,” said the man in a quiet, worried voice. “When I help you to sit up, tell me if anything hurts, right? I want to do a head scan.”

This time the scanner was moved very slowly over the front, top, and sides of his head and down to the back of his neck; then the monitor put the instrument back in his satchel and stood up. Before he could speak, Hewlitt’s parents arrived. His mother knelt down and grabbed him so tightly in both arms that he could hardly breathe, and she cried while his dad asked questions.

“He is a very fortunate young man,” he heard the medic say in a quiet voice. “As you can see, his clothes are cut to ribbons, probably from playing among the war relics and from a long slide down into the ravine, but there isn’t a scratch on him. He told me that he had eaten some fruit from that Pessinith tree up there. He says it gave him stomach cramps and that he fell from it and has been unconscious since before sunset. Now it isn’t my job to argue with an overimaginative child, but look at the facts. The stomach disorder has disappeared; a fall from the top of that tree should have resulted in cuts, abrasions, fractures, and concussion, but his skin isn’t even broken. A four-hour period of unconsciousness should be accompanied by some form of traumatic wounding that I could not have missed.

“From the state of his clothing,” the monitor went on, “I would guess that he overtired himself playing among the wreckage, and when he climbed down here he simply fell asleep. The stomach ache and his alleged fall could be an appeal for sympathy and an attempt to divert parental wrath.”

His mother had stopped crying and was asking him if he was really all right, but between her words he could hear his father saying that the wrath would be minimal because they were so glad to find him safe and sound.

“Children wander off and get lost sometimes,” said the monitor, “and sometimes it doesn’t end so well. We’ll give him a ride home in our gravity sled, but only because he may still be overtired. I’ll call in and check on him again tomorrow, although it really isn’t necessary-he is in fine shape. You have a very healthy young man there, and there isn’t a thing wrong with him . . .

The warm feeling of his mother’s arms around him and the sight of the floodlit ravine and the overtalkative monitor medic faded, to be replaced by the familiar surroundings of Ward Seven and another monitor officer who was watching him and saying nothing.

CHAPTER 6

He thought I was lying,” said Hewlitt, trying to hide his anger. So did my parents, the few times I tried to tell them about it, and so do you.

Lieutenant Braithwaite studied him in silence for a moment before he said, “The way you have just told it, I can understand why. He had good medical and anatomical reasons for thinking you were lying and, because most people trust the members of the medical profession, your parents believed him rather than their, well, imaginative four-year-old son. I don’t know what or who to believe, because I wasn’t there and the truth can be a very subjective thing. I believe that you believe you are telling the truth, but that is not the same as me believing you are a liar.”

“You’re confusing me,” said Hewlitt. “Do you think I’m a liar but don’t want to come straight out and say it?”

Braithwaite ignored the question and said. “Did you tell your other doctors about the ravine incident?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but I stopped doing so. None of them were interested in hearing about my lucky escapes. The psychologists thought that it was all my imagination, just like you.”

“I suppose,” said Braithwaite, smiling, “they asked you whether or not you disliked your parents, and if so, how much? Sorry, but I have to ask, too.”

“You suppose right,” said Hewlitt, “and you’re wasting your time. Sure there were times when I disliked my parents, when they didn’t do or give me what I wanted or they were too busy to play with me and made me work on school stuff instead. This didn’t happen very often, only when something urgent came up and they were both busy. They were attached to the cultural-contact department in the nearby base, and both of them were in the Monitor Corps but didn’t wear the uniform often because they worked mostly from home. But I wasn’t neglected. My mother was nice and could be coaxed into doing things for me, and my father was harder to fool but was more fun. One or the other was usually at home, and they spent plenty of time with me once I’d done the schoolwork. But I always wanted more time with them. Maybe that was because I knew, somehow, that I was going to lose them and there wasn’t much time left. I really missed them. I still do.

“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head in a vain attempt to lose those memories, “your psychological colleagues decided that I had been behaving like a selfish, scheming, and normal four-yearold.”

Braithwaite nodded and said, “The psychological trauma of losing both parents at the age of four can have long-lasting emotional effects. They were killed in a flyer crash and you survived it. How much can you remember about the accident, and your feelings about it then and now?”

“I can remember everything,” he replied, wishing that the other would change to a less painful subject. “At the time I didn’t know what was happening, but I found out later that we were flying over a forested area on the way to a weeklong conference in a city on the other side of Etla when there was a major malfunction. We were using the small aircraft flight level, five thousand feet, and there must have been a few minutes before we hit the trees. My mother climbed into the backseat where I was strapped and wrapped herself around me while my father tried to regain control. We hit hard and tree branches pushed through the floor and one side of the fuselage and I passed out. When they found us next day my parents were dead and I was completely unhurt.”

“You were very lucky,” said the psychologist quietly. “That is, if a kid who had just lost both parents could be considered lucky.”

Hewlitt did not reply, and after a moment Braithwaite went on, “Let’s go back to the tree you climbed, or believed that you climbed, and the fruit you are supposed to have eaten that gave you the severe stomach cramps. Was there ever a recurrence of those symptoms later, before or after the flyer accident?”

“Why should I tell you,” said Hewlitt, “when you are thinking that I imagined everything?”

“If it is any consolation to you,” said Braithwaite, “I haven’t decided what to think.”

“All right, then,” Hewlitt said, feeling that this was going to be another waste of time. “For the first few days after I fell into the ravine I felt nauseated every time I ate something, but not badly enough to upchuck, and after that with reducing frequency until it went away altogether. It came back for a short time after I moved to my grandparents’ place on Earth, but I suppose that could have been due to the change of food and cooking. On Etla and on Earth, no medical cause could be found for these mild attacks of nausea, and I first began to hear the phrase ‘the condition has a psychological component.’ It hadn’t happened for years until I tasted my first synthesized meal on Treevendar, and then it was mild and happened only once. Obviously it was my imagination.”

Braithwaite ignored the sarcasm and said, “Would you really like to know that it was your imagination, or would you rather not be sure? Think very carefully before you answer.

“If I’m imagining things,” said Hewlitt sharply, “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t know it.”

“Fair enough,” Braithwaite replied. “How well do you remember that tree you say you climbed on Etla, and the appearance of the fruit you may have eaten?”

“Well enough to draw a picture of it,” said Hewlitt, “if I could draw. Do you want me to try?”

“No,” the psychologist replied. He leaned sideways until he could reach the communicator keyboard with one hand and tapped briefly. When the screen lit up with the Sector General emblem, he said, “Library, nonmedical, vocal input, visual and translated vocal output, subject former Etlan Empire, planet Etla the Sick.”

“Please wait,” said the cool, impersonal voice of the library computer.

Surprised, Hewlitt said, “I didn’t know I could get the library on that thing, just the nurses’ station and the so-called entertainment channels.”

“Without the correct access codes, you can’t,” said Braithwaite. “But if you ever feel so bored that you want to browse, I could probably get you authorization. You won’t be given the codes for the medical library, though. When a case is thought to include a degree of hypochondria, the patient concerned should not be allowed access to a virtually unlimited number of symptoms.”

Hewlitt laughed suddenly in spite of himself and said, “I can understand why.”

Before Braithwaite could respond, the library voice said, “Caution. The Etla data is accurate but not yet complete. Following the large-scale police action taken against the then-Etlan Empire by the Monitor Corps, and the subsequent acceptance of its planets as members of the Galactic Federation twenty-seven standard years ago, the required transfer of Etlan botanical information to Central Records has been given a low order of priority owing to an intervening period of social unrest. The current situation is stable, the native intelligent life-form is physiological classification DBDG and nonhostile, and visits by other Federation citizens are encouraged. Please state your area of interest.”

A large-scale police action, Hewlitt thought. There had been a savage and mercifully short interstellar war fought between the Etlan Empire and the Federation, brought about by the need of the ruling group to maintain itself in power while diverting the attention of its citizens from its own shortcomings. But the function of the Monitor Corps was to maintain the Federation’s peace and not fight wars, so the response to the Etlan invasion of a whole galactic sector was a police action rather than a war. The fact that peace and stability had returned to the Etlan worlds meant that the Federation had won it.

“Etlan native flora,” said Braithwaite, interrupting Hewlitt’s cynical train of thought. “Specifically, a listing of all large fruitbearing trees, ten meters tall or higher, found in the south temperate zone. Display for twenty seconds’ duration unless requested otherwise.”

For some reason Hewlitt was beginning to feel uneasy. He looked at Braithwaite and opened his mouth to speak, but the lieutenant shook his head, pointed at the viewscreen, and said, “You described your tree as being very tall, but it may have looked tall because at the time you were a very small child. I thought it better to start with ten meters.”

It was like one of his childhood botany lessons, Hewlitt thought, a steady succession of tree pictures which in the present situation he found anything but boring. Most of them were strange to him, both in shape and foliage and in the fruit they bore, while others resembled the large bushes he had seen growing outside the garden fence. But one of them . . .

“That’s it!” he said.

“Hold: replay and expand data on the Pessinith tree,” said Braithwaite into the communicator. Then he said to Hewlitt, “It certainly looks like the tree you described: thick, twisted branches, with four thinner ones without bark at the top bearing the fruit clusters. And the color of the foliage is right for late summer when you climbed it. Library, run and repeat close-ups of the fruit showing seasonal growth and color changes.”

For several minutes he watched while the screen showed the fruit going through its cycle of green bud to small, dark brown sphere to the fully ripe, green-and-yellow-striped pear shape. It was so familiar that he had a twinge of remembered stomach cramps, and the feeling was so strong that he missed hearing the library computer’s boring recitation of the relevant nonvisual information.

“That is it,” he said again. “Definitely. Now do you believe me?”

“Well,” said Braithwaite, shaking his head in a way that suggested confusion as much as negation, “I now have another reason why that monitor medic didn’t believe you. And you haven’t been listening. That tree doesn’t reach the fruit-bearing stage until it is fifteen to twenty meters tall, and the fruit hangs from the topmost branches. If the tree was overhanging a ravine, and you fell from the top, you should have broken your stupid little four-year-old neck. Instead you escaped without a scratch.

“I suppose it is possible that intervening branches slowed your fall,” he went on, “or you fell into a thick bush before hitting the side of the ravine and rolling down. Stranger accidents have happened before now, and it would explain why you, an intelligent and seemingly well balanced person, are sticking to this incredible story. But that isn’t all you say you did. Don’t talk, Patient Hewlitt, just listen.”

In the silence the calm, impersonal voice of the library computer sounded clear and almost loud.

“. . . While the fruit is ripening,” it was saying, “the spongy internal mass absorbs all of the juice and grows to fill the striped envelope which, before parturition, becomes tough and flexible. When the semiliquid, sponged-filled fruit strikes the ground, it bounces or rolls a short distance until chemical sensors in the skin indicate an underlying soil type suitable for germination, whereupon the area of skin in contact with the ground decomposes, enabling the sponge to release its liquid content and seeds into the soil and begin its own slower process of decomposition. This has a twofold purpose, in that the rotting spongy material promotes initial growth in the seeds, while the juice permeates the surrounding soil and inhibits or kills off competing growths.

“Warning,” it went on. “The fruit of the Pessinith tree is highly toxic to all known warm-blooded oxygen-breathing physiological classifications as well as the native Etlan life-forms of all species. It has been investigated for possible medicinal use in trace quantities without success. Two cubic centimeters of the juice ingested by an entity of average body mass, such as an adult Orligian, Kelgian, or Earth-human, causes a rapid loss of consciousness and termination within one standard hour, and three cubic centimeters would have the same effect on a Hudlar or Tralthan. The effect is irreversible and there is no known antidote . . .

“Thank you, Library,” said Braithwaite. His voice was calm, his face expressionless, but he hit the communicator’s cutoff key so hard that it might have been a mortal enemy. For a long moment the lieutenant stared at him without blinking. Hewlitt told himself that it was going to happen again, that another medical person was about to tell him that he had imagined everything. But when the psychologist spoke there was curiosity rather than disbelief in his voice.

“A few drops of Pessinith fruit juice will kill a fully-grown man,” he said calmly, “and you were a four-year-old child who sucked dry the contents of a whole fruit. Can you explain that, Patient Hewlitt?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Neither can I,” said the lieutenant.

Hewlitt took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he trusted himself to speak. He said, “I have been talking to you for over four hours, Lieutenant. Surely that is long enough for you to establish whether or not I am a hypochondriac. Tell me-and be truthful, not polite.”

“I’ll try to be both,” said the psychologist. He sighed, then went on, “You are not a simple case. There are episodes in your childhood that could have led to severe emotional disturbance in later life, but so far I have found nothing to indicate that any lasting psychological damage was done. Your personality is well integrated, your intelligence is above average, and you appear to be coming to terms with your initial xenophobia. Apart from being hypersensitive and constantly on the defensive because up to now nobody has believed that there is anything wrong with you . . .

“Up to now?” Hewlitt broke in. “Does that mean you are beginning to believe me?’’

Braithwaite ignored the question and went on, “Your behavior is not characteristic of a hypochondriac who, as we know, produces imaginary medical symptoms for psychological reasons, such as a need to attract attention or gain sympathy, or to escape some deeply concealed, nonphysical problem or event that the hypochondriac refuses to face and where illness is the only perceived defense. If the latter, and you were able to hide it from yourself for most of your life, and from me during a four-hour interview, then it must be something pretty terrible that you have made yourself forget. But I cannot believe that you are hiding anything like that from me. But neither can I believe that you ate Pessinith fruit or fell from that tree. That escape was not just incredibly lucky, it was downright miraculous!”

Braithwaite stared at him without blinking for what seemed a long time. Then he said, “The medical profession is not comfortable with miraculous occurrences, and neither am I. That is Lioren’s area of expertise. But even the Padre is unhappy with them, because it believes that the advances in medicinal science have rendered them obsolete. Do you believe in miracles?”

“No,” said Hewlitt firmly. “I have never been a believer in anything.”

“Right,” said Braithwaite. “At least that gets one nonphysical factor out of the way. But there is another that we should eliminate as well-specifically your early xenophobia. That may have been caused by an incident involving an off-worlder so frightening that you now refuse to remember it. I would like to conduct a test.”

“Can I refuse to take it?” said Hewlitt.

“You must understand,” said Braithwaite, again ignoring his question, “that this is not a psychiatric hospital. My department is responsible for maintaining the mental health of a staff comprising sixty-odd different life-forms, and keeping that bunch happy and out of each other’s hair, or whatever, is more than enough for us. The test will help me to decide whether to hand you back to Medalont for further medical investigation or recommend your transfer to a planetary psychiatric facility.”

Hewlitt felt the old anger and embarrassment and despair welling up in him again. From the Galactic Federation’s leading hospital he had expected something better. Bitterly, he said, “What are you going to do to me?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Braithwaite, smiling again. “It will be uncomfortable for you, not life-threatening but with a high level of stress, and I’ll try not to allow things to get out of control.”

CHAPTER 9

A nightmare, Hewlitt told himself as he fought a sudden urge to hide his head under the blanket, was a nonphysical event from which he could expect to wake up. His problem was that he was not asleep.

There were fifteen of them walking and tapping and slithering in procession down the ward and, he knew with a dreadful inevitability, they were heading for his bedside. Three members of the group were familiar, he saw as they halted in a semicircle around him: his Hudlar nurse, Lieutenant Braithwaite, and Senior Physician Medalont. The nurse’s speaking membrane remained still, the psychologist smiled in silent reassurance, and everyone else joined in maintaining the silence until Medalont broke it.

“As you may already know, Patient Hewlitt,” said the senior physician, “Sector General is a teaching hospital. This means that at any given time a proportion of its medical staff is composed of trainees who hope one day to qualify as multispecies doctors and nurses who may choose to practice here, or as medical officers attached to one of the Federation’s space construction projects. Long before that stage is reached the trainees must gain basic experience of other-species’ physiology, which is where you come in. You are not obliged to submit to physical examination by trainees, but most of our patients do so willingly because they know that we have their best interests at heart.”

Hewlitt forced himself to look at the trainees one by one. He identified two Kelgians, another Melfan, who differed from Medalont only in the markings on its carapace, three Nidians, and a six-legged elephantine Tralthan similar to one of the patients in the ward, but the rest of them were strange and therefore frightening. He wanted to shake his head but it would not move and his mouth was too dry to say “No.”

“To be accepted for training here,” the senior physician went on, “the entities around you must first have demonstrated a particular aptitude for advanced surgical and medical work and possess wide experience in their former planetary hospitals. I mention this so that you will know that they are not complete medical idiots in spite of what some of their tutors may say about them.”

A quiet cacophony of alien sounds that did not translate emanated from the members of the group. Probably, Hewlitt thought, it was a dutiful response to their superior’s little joke.

Medalont ignored them and said, “You have already been examined and had physical contact with your other-species nurse and myself without any accompanying physical discomfort. I can further assure you that if any of the trainees do or say anything to cause you distress, I shall have very harsh words to say to them afterward. May we proceed, Patient Hewlitt?”

They were all staring at him with far too many eyes. Braithwaite and the nurse moved closer. The lieutenant was frowning and smiling at the same time in a strange expression that combined worry with reassurance, Hewlitt thought, and all the other expressions were unreadable. He opened his mouth, but the sound that came out was not even translatable by himself.

“Thank you,” said Medalont; then, to the others, “Well, who wants first crack?”

Inevitably it was the biggest one present, the Tralthan, who lumbered forward to stand by his bedside. One of the eyes projecting from its domelike, immobile head curved down to regard his face; another was directed at Medalont and the other two somewhere behind it. Two of the four tentacles growing from its massive shoulders were lowered to within a few inches of his chest, one of them holding a scanner, and he did not know where the surprisingly quiet voice was coming from when it spoke.

“Please do not be alarmed, Patient Hewlitt,” it said as he tried vainly to burrow backward into his bed. “The examination will be verbal or physically noninvasive, unless my questions should invade your privacy, in which case I shall not expect an answer. My intended specialty is other-species intercranial surgery, so I shall be concentrating the scanner examination in that area. I would like to begin at the rear base of the cranium where the nerve trunks enter the upper vertebrae.

“Could you please sit up,” it went on, “and rest the front of your head on the joints midway along your ambulatory appendages? I think the nonmedical words for them is knees. Is this so?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt and Medalont together.

“Thank you,” it said. With one eye still fixed on the senior physician it continued, “The Earth-human DBDG classification is fortunate in that the length of the nerve connections between the visual, aural, olfactory, and tactual sensors and the brain proper are shorter than in the majority of other intelligent life-forms, including my own, and the advantage in reaction times during the presapient stage of their evolution undoubtedly led to species dominance. But the cranial contents are densely packed so that the charting of neural pathways is difficult, and precise work is required if a surgical intervention becomes necessary. When you open and close your upper and lower mandibles, Patient Hewlitt, is there subjective evidence of compression effects on the brain stem?”

“No,” said Hewlitt and the senior physician together. Medalont gave the impression that it considered the question a stupid one, and added, “Enough. Who’s next?”

The creature who came forward had a narrow, tubular body covered by brown and yellow stripes and supported by six long, very thin limbs. Two sets of wings sprouted from the sides of its body, but they were so tightly folded that he could not be sure which color predominated, and two long, black, furry antennae projected from the top of its insectile head. It raised itself almost upright by placing its middle limbs on the edge of his bed and looked down at him with enormous, lidless eyes.

His first impulse was to swat it the way he swatted all large insects that came too close, but he stopped himself. To a creature as fragile as this one, any kind of blow would be sure to inflict serious injury, which meant that he had nothing to fear from it. Besides, he had never ever swatted a butterfly, even though he had never been faced with a specimen as big as this one.

“I am a Dwerlan, Patient Hewlitt,” it said, taking a scanner from the equipment pouch strapped to its body. “Since I am the only member of my species currently attached to the hospital and we are not a well-traveled race, I hope this first meeting with one of us will cause you the minimum of emotional distress. My interest is in other-species general surgery and so, with your permission, I shall examine you from the head to the nonmanipulatory digits on your feet . . .

A big butterfly, Hewlitt thought, with an impeccable bedside manner.

. . . You are not the first Earth-human DBDG that I have examined and recorded for later study,” it went on. “But the others, as is usual in a hospital, were in a diseased or damaged condition. You are an apparently perfect physical specimen and as such are of particular interest to me for purposes of clinical comparison. I will begin by taking your pulse at the temporal and carotid arteries and at the wrist, since emergencies can arise when a scanner is not available.”

Its head tilted forward and inclined to one side so that one of its antennae touched the side of his head and throat, so lightly that if his eyes had been closed he might not have felt it.

“As well,” it continued, “with the equipment I am using, it will not be necessary for you to uncover your body completely, particularly in the area containing the genitalia. From my nonmedical be- havioral studies I know that Earth-humans subscribe to a nudity taboo which makes them sensitive about openly displaying this area. As I have no intention of causing you embarrassment, Patient Hewlitt, whether you are male or female—”

“Can’t you see it’s a male, stupid?” one of the Kelgians broke in. “Look at the flat, vestigial mammaries. Even through the bed garment you can see, or more accurately you cannot see, the contours on its chest. In females they are fully developed, which gives the female DBDG its characteristically top-heavy appearance- It broke off as Medalont raised one pincer, clicked twice, and

said, “Enough. The time for clinical argument is not now, when the patient can overhear and, perhaps, draw its own conclusions regarding your medical ability.”

The next one to come forward was the Kelgian responsible for the interruption. It stood on its three rearmost sets of tiny, caterpillar-like legs and curled over the bed like a furry question mark. Being a Kelgian, it would not have a bedside manner.

“My examination will be similar to that of my Dwerlan colleague,” it said, “but I would also like to ask questions. The first one is, What is an apparently healthy patient like yourself doing in hospital? According to the senior physician’s case notes, there is nothing clinically wrong with you, except that you have displayed lifethreatening cardiac symptoms for no apparent reason. What is wrong with you, Patient Hewlitt? Or what do you think may be wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” said Hewlitt, “twice.”

Like all Kelgians’, this one s manner was impolite, honest, and completely forthright because that was the only way it knew how to behave. If his reaction was the same it would not be offended, because politeness and diplomacy were alien concepts to it. That was one of the things he had learned since coming to this medical madhouse, and he might be able to put that knowledge to use now by asking the right questions. Kelgians did not know how to lie.

“The condition is intermittent,” Hewlitt went on, “with no detectable cause or advance warning symptoms. But my case notes must have told you that, too. What else did they tell you?”

“The notes also discussed the possibility that you yourself are the primary cause,” said the other, “and that the condition is due to an intense hysterical reaction triggered by a deep-seated psychosis which manifests itself on the physical level, and that a rigorous psychological investigation has been undertaken to prove or disprove this theory. Turn onto your left side.”

“So far,” said Hewlitt, looking at Braithwaite, who smiled and looked at the ceiling, “there has been no evidence of a psychosis, deep-rooted or otherwise, because there isn’t any to be found. If there was some past childhood experience or event or crime buried in my subconscious, so terrible and heinous that I have forced myself to forget it, surely there would be gaps in my memory or bad dreams or some indication other than the sudden onset of a cardiac arrest?”

The Kelgian’s fur was moving in fast, erratic waves from its nose to the section of the body hidden by the bedside. It said, “I am not an ET psychologist, not even a Kelgian psychologist, but I disagree with you. It is generally accepted that a memory deeply buried is likely to have effects in direct proportion to the depth of its burial when it is uncovered. There is something hiding inside your mind that does not want to come out. If the threat of its discovery can cause a cardiac arrest as well as the other symptoms listed during similar episodes in the past, then it must be located, identified, and uncovered very carefully if you are to survive the experience.”

This time it was the Kelgian who looked at Braithwaite, who nodded in agreement. So once again everyone was thinking that it was all in his mind. Trying to control his anger, which was unnecessary when talking to a Kelgian, Hewlitt said, “And how would you locate and identify this thing?”

There was a moment’s silence, broken by Medalont, who said, “The patient seems to be examining its doctor now. But I, too, am interested in the answer.”

The Kelgian’s fur rose into spikes and subsided before it said, “As yet Senior Physician Medalont has been unable to discover a clinical reason for your condition, Patient Hewlitt, and Lieutenant Braithwaite has found no evidence of major psychological disturbance. But if there is something there you must be aware of it, you must feel that something is wrong however tenuous the feeling might be. I suggest that an even closer investigation be made of your feelings, a more thorough one than is possible using the lieutenant’s verbal examination techniques.

“An examination by a Cinrusskin empath like Prilicla,” it ended, “might be able to detect feelings that you were unaware of having, and probably the reasons for them.”

“But I feel well, usually,” Hewlitt protested. “And wouldn’t I be the first to know if I didn’t? Anyway, I have met some pretty horrible-looking people since I came here, but I don’t remember if one of them was a Cinrusskin.”

“If you had seen Prilicla,” said the Kelgian, “you would remember it.”

Before he could reply, Medalont clicked a pincer for silence and said, “And you must also remember that Cinrusskins are empaths, not telepaths, who can detect and isolate the most subtle feelings, but not the reasons for them. The suggestion of exposing Patient Hewlitt to an emotion-sensitive is a good one, so good that it has already been suggested by Psychology Department and myself. Regrettably, it cannot be adopted until Senior Physician Prilicla returns from Wemar, two weeks hence. In the meantime, Patient Hewlitt has kindly agreed to assist your training by submitting to a multispecies examination by all of you. You have lectures to attend and your time here is limited. Let us proceed.”

Some of the examinations were less gentle than others, but none so uncomfortable that he felt it necessary to complain, and he had to answer the questions instead of trying to ask them. Finally it was over. Medalont and the trainees thanked him individually and departed, leaving him alone with Braithwaite.

“You survived that very well, Patient Hewlitt,” said the lieutenant. “I’m impressed.”

“And what about your special, uncomfortable, and stressful test that you won’t allow to get out of hand?” said Hewlitt, “Will I survive that as well?”

Braithwaite laughed. “You just did.”

“I see,” said Hewlitt. “You were seeing how my nonexistent psychosis would react to a mass attack by aliens, right? Well, I still don’t feel comfortable with them around me, but for some reason I seem to be feeling more curious, I mean really curious about them, rather than frightened. Why should that be?”

“Curious, that’s good,” said the psychologist. Without answering the question, he went on, “You have another problem. The amount of time that a hospital doctor can spend with any patient, especially a non-urgent patient undergoing negative treatment like yourself, is very small. Have you any ideas for keeping yourself amused during the next few weeks?”

“Are you trying to tell me,” said Hewlitt angrily, “that nothing will be done about me, apart from using my body as a kind of healthy benchmark for trainees, until this Prilicla character arrives to read my emotions? Then, I suppose it, too, will tell me that there is nothing wrong with me, that it is all in my mind, and that I should get a grip on myself, go home and stop wasting everybody’s time. And until then you are going to do nothing at all?”

Braithwaite laughed again and shook his head.

“It isn’t funny, dammit,” said Hewlitt. “At least, not to me.

“It will be,” said the lieutenant, “after you meet your first Cmrusskin. Prilicla doesn’t talk that way to people. And we are trying to do something other than keeping you under close medical surveillance. It isn’t much, I admit, but a suggestion has been made that there could be some truth in your story about eating the poisonous fruit if-and this is a pretty tenuous theory-the juice that is lethal in small quantities has curative properties when taken in bulk. I can’t give you the medical reasons why that should happen, but there is one known precedent. In that particular case there were long-term aftereffects which might explain, although again I don’t know how, the intermittent nature of your symptoms. That is why we are sending to Etla the Sick for samples of the fruit so that Pathology can make an independent investigation of its degree of toxicity.

“The two-way hyperjump between here and Etla,” he went on, “and a couple of days to find, gather, and pack the fruit, plus the time needed for the analysis, means a wait of two weeks minimum. During that time nothing much will be happening to you, unless Prilicla returns early or Medalont comes up with another form of treatment. That’s why I wanted to know how you plan to pass the time.”

“I don’t know,” said Hewlitt. “Reading and viewing, I suppose, when you give me the library codes. Was it your idea about the Pessinith fruit?”

Braithwaite shook his head again. “I wouldn’t want to be associated with a weird idea like that. It was Padre Lioren’s. It is a Tarlan BRLH attached to Psychology Department, who will probably visit you within the next few days. Visually it is a pretty fiercelooking character, but it might be able to help you, and after the way you behaved during the trainees’ examination its appearance shouldn’t cause you any problems.”

“I suppose not,” said Hewlitt, refusing to feel pleased at the compliment. “But . . . does what you have been saying mean that you are beginning to believe me?”

“Sorry, no,” Braithwaite replied. “As I told you earlier, we believe that you believe yourself, which is different from us believing that what you tell us is completely true. The Pessinith fruit incident is evidence, the only piece of hard evidence you have given us, that can be checked. We must try to prove or disprove it and move on from there.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” said Hewlitt. “By feeding me with Pessinith fruit and seeing if I die?”

“As a nonmedic I cannot answer that,” Braithwaite replied with another smile. “There would be safeguards, of course, but you are probably right.”

CHAPTER 10

Hewlitt knew that it was not a symptom which would register on his medical monitor, but he was beginning to wonder whether there was such a condition as terminal boredom allied to atrophication of the tongue.

Apart from asking how he was feeling and saying “That’s good,” Medalont said nothing to him. His Hudlar nurse, although friendly enough and helpful when it did speak, was absent for most of the day on lectures and busy at other times. Braithwaite called for a few minutes every day on his way to the dining hall and insisted that, because they were on his own rather than the department’s time, they were social rather than professional visits. He gay Hewlitt a few useful library access codes and talked a lot withou saying anything. Charge Nurse Leethveeschi had time for him onl if his monitor signaled a medical emergency; the lieutenant’s Tar Ian colleague, Padre Lioren, had yet to appear.

The ambulatory patients who passed his bed on the way to th bathroom-a couple of Melfans, a newly arrived Dwerlan, a Kel gian, and one slow-moving Tralthan-sometimes talked amon themselves but never to him, and the few conversations he coul overhear from farther up the ward were never widened to include Patient Hewlitt. He could not talk to the patients in the beds beside and opposite him because they had been transferred somewhere else.

He was growing heartily sick and tired of listening to the condescending voice of the library computer for hours on end. It was beginning to make him feel as he had done as a boy when confronted with an unending succession of thinly disguised school lessons. Then as now he had felt bored and restless, but then there had been an open window beckoning and beyond it a landscape filled with interesting things to play with. Here there were no windows that opened and nothing but space outside them if they had. In a desperate attempt to relieve his restlessness he decided to walk up and down the ward.

He had walked the length of the ward twice and was on his third lap when Leethveeschi waddled out of the nurses’ station to bar his path.

“Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “please do not walk so fast. You could collide with one of my nurses and injure them, or they you. As well, and I realize that the thought may not have occurred to you, it shows great insensitivity on your part to parade your obvious physical fitness in this fashion before the other patients, some of whom are seriously ill, injured, or bedridden. You may continue with your exercise, slowly.”

“Sorry, Charge Nurse,” said Hewlitt.

Moving at the slower pace, Hewlitt felt awkward just staring straight in front of him or down at the floor ahead, so he began to sneak quick looks at the patients he was passing. The majority of them did not look at him, probably because they were sleeping, they were too ill, or they thought him as ugly as he did them. The other patients followed him with their eyes, too many eyes in some cases, and it came as no surprise that the only one who spoke to him was a Kelgian.

“You look all right to me, for an Earth-human,” it said, rippling the fur that was not concealed by a large rectangle of silvery grey fabric taped to its side. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” said Hewlitt, stopping and turning to face it. “The hospital is trying to find out.”

“Leethveeschi called out the resuscitation team for you the day you arrived,” it said. “It must be serious. Are you going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Hewlitt replied, “and I hope not.”

The Kelgian was lying on its side in a large, square bed on top of the blanket and with its furry body curved into the shape of a flattened S. It drew itself up, flattening the S even more, and said, “Seeing you Earth-humans balancing like that on just two legs makes me uneasy. If you want to talk, sit on the bed. I won’t break. I won’t bite, either; I’m herbivorous.”

Hewlitt sat sideways on the edge of the bed, taking care that his hip did not touch the other’s furry body or stubby, caterpillar legs. He had always liked talking to people, and provided he closed his eyes or looked away from time to time, he might be able to fool himself into thinking that the creatures in this place fell into that category.

Now that the Kelgian had mentioned it, he realized that a creature who moved on twenty feet would feel a little strange about someone who used only two. The feeling was mutual.

He cleared his throat and prepared to make polite conversation, if it was possible to do that with a Kelgian.

“My name is Hewlitt,” he said. “I noticed you passing my bed a few times, usually with a Tralthan or a Dwerlan and once, I think, with a Duthan. I’ve been keying into the.library to learn and identify the different physiological classifications so that I’ll know what as well as who is doing things to me, but some of them I’m still not sure about.”

“I am Morredeth,” said the Kelgian. “You are right about the Duthan and the other two. When we passed your bed you did not speak. We decided that you were either very ill or very antisocial.”

“I did not speak because you were always talking to your companions,” he said, “and interrupting you would not have been polite.”

“Polite,” that word again!” said the other, its fur rising into spikes. “There is no equivalent meaning in our language. If you wanted to speak to me you should have done so, and if I had not wanted to listen to you I would have told you to be quiet. Why must non-Kelgians make everything so complicated?”

He decided to treat it as a rhetorical question and asked, “What is wrong with you, Morredeth? Is it serious?”

The silence began to lengthen and still the other did not reply. Kelgians were psychologically incapable of telling a lie, Hewlitt reminded himself, but there was nothing to keep them from remaining silent if they did not want to answer. He was about to apologize for asking the question when the other spoke.

“The original injury was not disabling,” said Morredeth, “but the resulting condition is very serious, and incurable. Unfortunately, it will not kill me. I do not wish to talk about it.”

Hewlitt hesitated, then said, “Do you wish to talk about something else, or would you prefer me to leave?”

Morredeth ignored him and went on, “I should try to talk about it, Lioren says, and think about it instead of trying to push it out of my mind. Right now I want to talk about the other patients, the medical staff, and anybody or anything else so that I will not have to think about it. But I can’t talk and think about other things all the time, not when the patients are sleeping, or when the night nurse stops talking to me because it has other things to do, or when I fall asleep myself. I don’t know about your kind, but Kelgians have no voluntary control over the subject of their dreams.”

“Nor have we,” said Hewlitt, looking at the rectangle of silvery fabric attached to the other’s body and wondering what terrible injury it concealed.

Morredeth saw where he was looking. It ruffled its fur and said, “I will not talk about it.”

But you have been not-talking about it, or talking all around it, since I sat down on your bed. A psychologist would be able to make something of that, Hewlitt thought. Aloud, he said, “You mentioned a person called Lioren. I have been told that a Tarlan with that name might be calling on me soon.

“Not too soon, I hope,” said Morredeth.

“Why do you say that?” Hewlitt asked, beginning to feel uneasy. “Is it a particularly unpleasant creature?”

“No,” the other replied. “I have found it to be a pleasant entity, at least for a non-Kelgian. I have not been here long enough to know what exactly it does, but Horrantor tells me that it is usually sent to patients that the medics are no longer able to help. You know, the hopeless cases.

Hewlitt did not like the sound of that, and wondered if Braithwaite’s earlier reference to Lioren had been entirely factual. Not everyone, in fact not anyone, was as forthright as a Kelgian.

“Who is Horrantor?” he asked. “One of the medics?”

“One of the patients,” said Morredeth, pointing. “That one. It is coming to find out what we are talking about. You can feel the floor shaking.”

“What is wrong with it?” said Hewlitt. He kept his voice low in case the Tralthan patient, too, was reticent about its medical problems.

“Surely that is obvious,” the Kelgian snapped at him, “when it is walking on only five legs. The strapped-up leg was crushed in an industrial accident, rebuilt with microsurgery, and will be good as new. There was damage to the reproductive system and birth canal which still require treatment, but don’t ask it for the gory details. At least, not while I’m with you. I have heard more than enough about its reproductive plumbing, and anyway, it reminds me of my own problems. Oh, Bowab is heading this way, too. We usually play cards, bellas or scremman, to pass the time. Do you play any card games?”

“Yes, no,” said Hewlitt. “What I mean is, I know the rules of a few Earth games, but I don’t play them well. Is Bowab the Duthan who is walking behind Horrantor? What is wrong with it?”

“You are very indecisive, Hewlitt,” said Morredeth. “Either you can play or you cannot. Bellas is a Tralthan game of skill similar to Earth whist. Scremman is from Nidia originally and, according to Bowab, who considers itself an expert, is a game of chance played by skillful, passive liars and cheats. I don’t know what is wrong with the Duthan except that the problem is uncommon, and medical rather than surgical. This is the hospital’s main observation, transition, and sometimes recuperation ward for patients lucky enough to survive-which, Leethveeschi tells us, is most of them. They send some pretty weird patients here sometimes.”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt, watching the two who were approaching and wondering whether, in the present company, the remark was aimed at him.

Horrantor came to a stop at the bottom of the bed, its injured leg barely touching the floor. One each of the four, extensible eyes projecting from around the immobile dome of its head were directed at Morredeth, Bowab, Hewlitt, and, for some reason, the distant nurses’ station. The Duthan moved to the side of the bed opposite Hewlitt. He wondered whether the irregular brown patches of fur on its otherwise dark green, centaurlike body were a symptom of its medical condition, or a natural feature like the thick, white line that began in the center of its forehead then widened along the upper and lower spine to disappear into the long bushy tail, but decided not to ask. It folded its rear legs, stood on the forward set, and leaned its elbows and forearms on the bed. Both of its eyes, which were capable of looking in only one direction at a time, were staring at him.

Hewlitt hesitated, then introduced himself and followed with a brief description of his problem. He could think of nothing else to talk about, because all they had in common was a collection of symptoms.

Horrantor made a low, moaning sound that might have indicated sympathy and said, “At least we know what is wrong with us. If they don’t know what is wrong with you and you feel physically fit, it might take a long time before they find a cure.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Bowab, “more than enough time to become terminally bored. Unless, of course, you can find an amusing way of passing the time. Are you a gambling person, Patient Hewlitt?”

Before he could reply, Morredeth said, “Even a Kelgian could change the subject more gradually than that. Hewlitt knows how to play cards, but not bellas or scremman. We might be able to teach it, or it might prefer to teach us one of its games.”

“That would give you initial advantages, Patient Hewlitt,” said Horrantor, turning another eye in his direction. “With us as ~opponents, you would need them.”

It was obvious that these people had a high opinion of themselves as cardplayers, and he was tempted to try confusing them with the rules of a complicated and partnered game like whist-or better still, bridge. But if their self-assessment was accurate, they might not be confused for long.

“I would prefer to learn than teach,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t think that I would need to bring Earth playing cards with me.”

“You don’t,” said Bowab, as it reached into the pocket of its abbreviated apron, the only item of clothing that it was wearing, and drew out a very thick pack of cards. “If anyone needs them, Leethveeschi can request a pack from the staff recreation level. That’s how we got ours. We’ll play a few practice games with the cards faceup to let you know what is going on. But let’s not waste time, Morredeth. Squeeze up the bed and give us some playing space.

The Kelgian coiled itself into a flatter S so that the bottom of its bed was left clear, then twisted its conical head and upper body sideways until its short arms hung over the playing area. Bowab, Horrantor, and Hewlitt were already in position when the Tralthan said, “Leethveeschi is heading this way. What can it want with us at this time of the day? Is anybody due medication?”

“Patient Hewlitt,” said the charge nurse, stopping so that it could look at him through the clear space between Horrantor and Bowab. “I am glad to see that you have begun socializing and indulging in a group activity with other patients, and Lieutenant Braithwaite will also be pleased when he hears about it.

“But there is a hospital regulation governing the group activity in which you are about to engage,” it went on. “The game must be played for mental exercise only. No personal property, negotiable Federation currency, or promissory notes of any kind may be exchanged as a result of playing it. You find yourself among a group of civilized predators, Patient Hewlitt, and the thought that comes most readily to my mind is best described by the Earth-human phrase ‘a sheep among wolves.’ Please try not to become too excited in case your medical monitor reports it as a clinical emergency. Also . . .

One green, shapeless hand dug into a pocket attached to the outer surface of Leethveeschi’s protective envelope and withdrew a small, plastic box, which it tossed onto the bed beside him.

These are used by your species, among others,” it continued, “to remove food scraps adhering to the spaces between their teeth. Doubtless you will find another use for them. Good luck.”

After the charge nurse left them it was Bowab who was the first to find its voice.

“Toothpicks, a full box!” it said. “We had to divide half a box among us. Hewlitt, you are a millionaire!”

CHAPTER 11

The game was not as complicated as Hewlitt had first thought, even though it was played with a pack containing seventy-five cards in five fifteen-card suits, each with its own individual symbol and color: blue crescents, red spears, yellow shields, black serpents, and green trees. The highest-value cards were the Ruler, his-heror-its Mate, and the Heir, followed in descending order by the values twelve to one. Unlike the Earth games he knew, where the ace had the highest value, the Poor One, as it was called, was the lowest card-except when a hand contained a twelve of the same suit, in which case the combination could depose one of the three riding cards.

There were historic and sociopolitical implications to the game, the others explained, in that the merging of the lowest and the highest non-Ruler cards signified a popular uprising, a palace revolution, or, in present times, a successful corporate takeover. Three, four, or five cards of the same number in different suits had particular values, and if the hand also contained a ten it could depose two of an opponent’s Rulers. There were other combinations of numbers and symbols of lesser power which were capable ofreducing the value of an opponents’ single cards or combinations, but Hewlitt thought that it would take a little time to learn them all.

The players could request an extra card free during the first three rounds of the game, but were required to discard it or another from their hands each time, and after that they had to buy the cards from the dealer, called the Ruler of the Game, by raising the stake. Players who did not buy extra cards either had bad hands and were unwilling to waste money, or very good ones and were sitting tight.

A further complication was that each player had two discard piles of up to three cards placed faceup, but only he, she, or it knew which pile was for permanent discard and which was for returning to the hand, if required, before the end of the game. It was possible to discover which was the true discard pile by studying the body language of an opponent, always bearing in mind the possibility that it was probably generating false signals.

“During the first few games we will go easy on you,” said Horrantor, with an untranslatable sound that might have been the Tralthan equivalent of laughter, “and point out your mistakes as we go. I think you now understand the rules well enough for us to begin.”

“But not well enough,” said Bowab, hunching closer to the bed, “to begin cheating.”

“Cheating, yes,” the Tralthan went on. “You must always remember, Patient Hewlitt, that your opponents will try to cheat; that is, to take unfair advantage of you in any way possible to them. This includes using their physiological differences against you. For example, it may not have occurred to you that, with me standing as I am next to you, one of my eyes can be extended laterally so as to see across your hand. There is also the fact that Duthans have the ability to sharpen the focus of their eyes when the object, in this case your own eyes, are remaining at a fixed distance. The reflection of your cards in your eyes is clear, especially the card you are lifting into your hand, so you should obscure your opponent’s view by slitting your eyes and looking through the unsightly fringes of hair on the edges of your upper and lower eyelids. More subtle methods of cheating will be used against you which, in the beginning, we will allow you to detect and counter for yourself.”

“Th-thank you,” said Hewlitt.

“Stop talking and deal,” said Morredeth.

The next two hours passed very quickly until the arrival of the Hudlar nurse with the announcement that the evening meal was about to be served.

“If you wish to continue with your conversation and group activity,” it said, “you may eat together at the table outside the nurses’ station; otherwise the meal must be delivered to your individual beds. Well?”

Horrantor, Bowab, and Morredeth said “the table” in unison, and Hewlitt said the same a moment later.

“Are you sure, Patient Hewlitt?” asked the nurse. “You have limited other-species’ social experience, and seeing some of them at table for the first time may be psychologically disquieting. Or have you dined with off-wonders before now?”

“Well, no,” he replied, “but I don’t want to interrupt our conversation. I’m sure it will be all right, Nurse.”

“The trick,” said Horrantor, “is to look at nobody’s platter but your own.

But when the trays arrived he could not help sneaking a glance at the others’ platters, and decided that their food looked unappetizing but not revolting. It was the sight of Horrantor pushing enormous quantities of cooked vegetation-it had at least six times the body mass of an Earth-human and no doubt needed generous helpings-into an opening that he had not suspected was a mouth that he found most disconcerting. Morredeth was an herbivore also, and made a lot of noise while demolishing a selection of crisp, uncooked, and unidentifiable vegetables. He could not tell what Bowab was eating, although it had a strange, spicy smell, and he noticed that none of them was looking at his platter.

Was it simple good manners, he wondered, or was the sight of his synthetic steak and mushrooms having an even worse effect on them?

As soon as they were finished the other three returned their trays to the delivery float, so Hewlitt did the same. He did not know whether this was to save time and effort for the nursing staff or to clear the table quickly for another game. Either way he thought it was a good idea.

While Bowab, the overall winner of the previous game, was dealing he said, “You people are really devious and nasty and vicious as players. I wouldn’t call those last three games going easy on me. It isn’t fair. I’ve lost half of my toothpicks already.”

“Think of it as the involuntary payment of tuition fees,” said Bowab. “Besides, scremman isn’t a fair game, it is you who are fair game.

A furry centaur who makes jokes, Hewlitt thought. He laughed politely and said, “It is a most unfair game, so far as I am concerned, because winning depends not only on a player’s capacity for misdirection, concealment, and bluff, but on the accurate reading of an opponent’s expression. Under all that Kelgian and Duthan fur I don’t even know if there are expressions to read, and Horrantor’s head skin is about as expressive as Hudlar hide. Until I came to this place I spoke to off-worlders only by communicator. You people are so completely strange to me that I wouldn’t know a revealing expression if I saw one.

“Since coming here,” said Bowab, “we have seen you studying the library’s physiological classification system used to describe and identify Federation citizens, which includes basic information on their sociopsychological behavior. During the last game you were quick to discover my true discard pile. Either you are being too modest, Patient Hewlitt, or you are not as ignorant as you are leading us to believe.

“In which case,” said Horrantor, joining in, “you have learned that there is a psychological extension to scremman which operates during the breaks between play. You are indeed progressing well.”

“And should I also learn,” said Hewlitt, “not to be disarmed by compliments?”

“Of course,” said Bowab.

He laughed again and said, “Then if I admit to ignorance on any subject, it would not weaken my position because the admission would be treated as a possible misdirection aimed at concealing a strength. But what do you do with a person like Morredeth? Surely it must be at a disadvantage because it cannot tell a lie?”

“Kelgian misdirection,” said Horrantor, “involves concealing the intentions by not saying anything. We must try to discover what it is thinking by observing its fur movements. They are subtle and very difficult for a non-Kelgian to identify.”

Bowab looked at Horrantor and back to Hewlitt, making a growling sound that did not translate. He could not be sure, but he thought that the Duthan was trying to warn him about something.

“When I was a child,” Hewlitt went on, “I knew one furry creature well enough to guess at what it was thinking, or at least feeling. Sometimes I could make it change its mind and play when it wanted to sleep, and at other times it was able to make me do what it wanted. It was called a kitten, that is an immature cat, which is a nonsapient Earth-evolved pet that was technically the property of my parents although its behavior suggested that the opposite held true. It was a handsome female which, because of the peculiar mottled, brown color, was given the name of a sugary home-made candy Earth-people call Fudge. When it was angry or frightened its fur rose, which was an instinctive response from predomesticated times which made it look larger and more fearsome, but it soon learned more subtle methods of communication.

“If it wanted food,” he continued, “it would rub its head against my ankles or, if its needs were persistently ignored, it would unsheath its claws and try to climb up my legs. When it rolled from side to side on its back and punched at the air with its paws, that meant it wanted to play, and if it curled up on my lap with its eyes closed, limbs folded under its body and chin on its tail, it wanted to sleep. Sometimes it did not seem to know whether it wanted to sleep or play on my lap.

“But it was a very active and friendly entity,” said Hewlitt, and for a moment he could almost see it walking stiff-legged and tail ~ erect around the center of their table and pushing at the cards with a forepaw, “so it did not object when I made its mind up for it and began patting and stroking and tickling it, very gently, on its stomach and under its chin and around its ears. It liked that but pretended it didn’t by striking my hand with its paws, softly and with its claws sheathed. Most of all it liked me to stroke its back, especially when I began by gently pressing my fingertips on its head between the eyes and moving them slowly between its ears and along the spine to its tail, which by then was standing up straight. When I did that it would purr, which is the noise cats make when they are feeling pleasure . . .

“This conversation,” said Morredeth, its fur rippling in uneven waves, “is becoming very erotic and for me unpleasant. Stop it at once.

“It is bothering me, too,” Bowab agreed, “but pleasantly. Why are you talking so much about this furry pet of yours? In character or behavior did it resemble Morredeth or myself? Was it a special, nonsapient friend? What happened to it and where is the story leading?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to offend anyone,” said Hewlitt, “and I don’t know why I am talking about that cat now when I haven’t even thought about it for years. Maybe it is because it was my first nonhuman friend. It was very friendly and did not resemble anyone here, especially while you are playing scremman, but it was too adventurous for its own good. There was an accident when it ran too close to a large antigravity vehicle and was crushed by the outer edge of the repulsor field. It did not appear to be badly injured because it was still breathing and there was only a small amount of blood around its mouth and ears, but my parents said that there was no hope for it and they would send for the pet healer to have the poor thing put out of its misery. Before they could stop me I lifted it and took it to my room, and locked the door so nobody could take it away from me, then I nursed it in bed with me all night until . . .

“Until it died,” said Horrantor in a voice that seemed too soft and low for it to be coming from such a massive creature. “A sad story.”

“No it isn’t,” said Hewlitt. “I nursed it until it was better. Next morning it was walking about good as new, and butting my ankles to be fed. My parents could not believe it, but my father said that cats had nine lives, that is an old Earth saying based on the fact that they have great agility and sense of balance and rarely fall, and that this one must have used all of them at once. I suppose it died eventually of old age.”

“A sad story with a happy ending,” said Bowab. “That is the kind I like best.”

“Are we going to talk about furry pets,” said Morredeth, its fur tufting into strange, uneven spikes and waves that might have denoted anger or impatience or something else entirely, “or play scremman?”

The question answered itself as Horrantor began to deal. Hewlitt tried to placate the Kelgian, who for some reason did not like him talking about cats. He said, “The reason I brought up the subject of my pet, and especially its fur, was that I was thinking about the unfairness of my not being able to read other-species expressions. Horrantor and Bowab do not show any changes of expression that I can detect, and Morredeth shows far too many for me to read. Perhaps I will learn to do it in time, but right now it is Morredeth who should be complaining about unfairness because you two have had longer to observe its fur movements than I have.”

“Patient Hewlitt,” Morredeth broke in, its fur rippling and tufting as if there were a strong wind blowing along the ward, “you will not learn to read my feelings no matter how long we are here. Even another Kelgian would have trouble doing that.”

The game continued in a disapproving silence and Hewlitt knew that he had said the wrong thing again.

CHAPTER 12

The thought of what that wrong thing might have been, and how he could avoid repeating the mistake, was still in Hewlitt’s mind when the game was halted by the Hudlar nurse telling them to return to their beds for the evening medication round and, hopefully, to sleep. The other three players passed his bed, Morredeth without speaking, on their way to and from the bathroom, but he did not talk to any of them about it in case he made matters worse. He was not being given any medication, which meant that he would be visited last.

The Hudlar nurse had only to check the sensor connections to his medical monitor and would have nothing more to do, barring emergencies, until its next round of observing sleeping patients in another two hours. Ahead of it stretched a long spell of night duty during which, he hoped, its boredom and his curiosity could be relieved by a few questions.

“Try not to use the viewscreen tonight,” it said. “Charge Nurse Leethveeschi tells me that you’ve had enough excitement for one day. Playing scremman makes the time pass quickly and I’m glad that you are making other-species’ friends. But now you must sleep.”

“I’ll try, Nurse,” he said. “But there is something worrying me.

“Is there pain?” it said, moving quickly to the bedside. “Your monitor is registering optimum life-sign levels for a healthy DBDG. Please describe the symptoms. Be as specific as you can.

“Sorry, Nurse, I misled you,” he said. “It has nothing to do with my physical condition. During the day I offended another patient, the Kelgian, Morredeth, but I don’t know what it was that I said or did that was offensive. We were playing scremman and the other two seemed to be trying to tell me nonverbally to stop whatever it was I was doing or saying. I would like to know what it was I was doing wrong so that I will know not to do it again and, if it was serious, to apologize.”

Even though it had no features that he could identify, the nurse appeared to relax. It said, “I don’t think this is anything to worry about, Patient Hewlitt. During a game of scremman that lasted for many hours, as I have been told yours did, the exchange of insulting and critical words is a common occurrence . . .

“I noticed,” he said.

and such words are forgotten by the next deal,” it went on. “Just forget the incident, as the others will have done by now, and go to sleep.”

“But it didn’t happen like that,” he said. “At the time we were between games and the words were spoken while we were eating lunch.”

The Hudlar was silent for a moment while it looked along the beds on both sides of the ward. Everyone but Hewlitt and itself seemed to be asleep, so that there was nothing more urgent to claim its professional attention. He felt pleased, and a little ashamed, of his newfound ability to maneuver this medical monstrosity to his will.

“Very well, Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “what was the subject of conversation, and can you recall the remark that caused Patient Morredeth to take offense?”

“I already told you I couldn’t,” said Hewlitt. “I was simply describing and talking about a small, furry animal, a household pet . . . Do Hudlars keep pets? . . . I had played with as a child. Morredeth did not object to anything I was saying until it suddenly accused me of talking dirty, and Bowab agreed with it. At the time I thought they were joking, but now I’m not so sure.

“In its present condition,” said the nurse, the speaking membrane vibrating in the Hudlar equivalent of a near whisper, “Patient Morredeth is unusually sensitive about its fur. But you were not to know that. Tell me what was said, exactly?”

Was it possible, Hewlitt wondered suddenly, that the nurse was using him instead of the other way around? Was it pleased and eager to use any excuse to ease the boredom of night duty by giving nonmedical support to a worried patient, and would that be its clinically acceptable excuse to Leethveeschi for what might turn out to be a prolonged midnight chat? He took his time and repeated everything that had been said leading up to and during the description and behavior of his cat while it was being petted. He did not think that a being whose skin was like flexible steel could have erotic fantasies about fur, but in this place one could never be sure of anything.

When he finished speaking, the nurse said, “Now I understand. Before I try to explain what happened, tell me how much you already know about the Kelgian life-form.”

“Only the information given in the introductory paragraphs from the nonmedical library listing of member races of the Federation,” he said, “most of which was historical material. The Kelgians are physiological classification DBLF, warm-blooded, multipedal, and possessing a cylindrical body covered overall with mobile, silvery fur which is continually in motion while the being is conscious and, to a lesser extent, when it is dreaming.

“Because of inadequacies in the Kelgian speech organ,” he went on, “their spoken language lacks modulation, inflection, or any other form of emotional expression. But they are compensated for this by their fur, which acts, so far as another Kelgian is concerned, as a perfect and uncontrollable mirror of the speaker’s emotional state. As a result, the concepts of lying or being diplomatic, tactful or even polite are completely alien to them. A Kelgian says exactly what it means or feels because the fur is revealing its feelings from moment to moment, and to do otherwise is considered a stupid waste of time. Am I right so far?”

“Yes,” said the Hudlar. “But in this situation the medical library data would have been of more use to you. Did Morredeth discuss its condition with you?”

“No,” he replied. “When I asked, it said that it didn’t want to talk about it. I was curious but decided that its ailment might be embarrassing and was none of my business anyway, and dropped the subject.”

“Sometimes Patient Morredeth will not talk about its troubles,” said the nurse, “and at other times it will. If you ask tomorrow or the next day it will probably tell you about its accident and the long-term results, which are very serious but not lifethreatening, in great detail. I am telling you this because nearly everyone in the ward knows of Morredeth’s problem, so I am not breaking patient confidentiality by discussing the physiological and emotional aspects of the case with you.”

“I understand,” he said.

“You do not understand,” said the Hudlar, moving closer to his bed and lowering its voice in inverse proportion to the distance, “but soon you will. If any of the anatomical terms I use are unclear, which is unlikely considering your medical history and prior experience of hospital treatments, please stop me and ask for a layperson’s explanation. Shall I begin?”

Hewlitt stared at the nurse’s massive body balanced on its six, curling tentacles and wondered if there was any intelligent species, regardless of its size, shape, or number of limbs, whose members did not enjoy a good gossip.

Remembering the trouble that a few unthinking words had caused with Morredeth, Hewlitt decided not to ask the question aloud.

“Anatomically,” the Hudlar went on in exactly the same tone as that used by Senior Physician Medalont to its trainees, “the most important fact that you should know about Kelgians is that, apart from the thin-walled, cranial casing that protects the brain, the DBLF classification has no bony structure. Their bodies are composed of an outer cylinder of musculature which, in addition to assisting with locomotion, serves as protection for the vital organs within it. To the minds of beings like ourselves, whose bodies are more generously reinforced with bone structure, this protection seems far from adequate. Another severe disadvantage in the event of injury is the complex and extremely vulnerable circulatory system. The blood supply, which has to feed the large bands of muscle encircling the body, lies just beneath the skin, as does the nerve network that controls the mobile fur. Some protection is given by the thickness of the fur, but not against deep, lacerated wounding of more than one-tenth of the body area sustained as the result of Patient Morredeth being thrown against an uneven metal obstruction during a space collision . . .”

An injury which in many other species would be considered superficial, the nurse explained, could result in a Kelgian bleeding to death within a few minutes.

The emergency coagulant administered at the time of the accident had checked the bleeding and saved Morredeth’s life, but at a price. On the ambulance ship and later in hospital the damaged major blood vessels had been repaired, but even Sector General’s DBLF microsurgery team had been unable to save the capilliary and nerve networks that had served the lost or damaged fur. As a result the beautiful Kelgian fur, which played such an important tactile as well as an aesthetic visual role between them during the preliminaries to courtship and mating, would never grow properly in those areas. Or if it did grow, the fur would be stiff, yellow, lifeless, and visually repulsive to another Kelgian of either gender.

It was possible to have the damaged area covered with artificial fur, but the synthetic material lacked the mobility and the deep, rich luster of living fur and would be immediately recognized for what it was. Kelgians in Morredeth’s situation were usually too proud to be seen wearing such a patch and elected instead to live and work in solitude or with minimum social contact.

“The other Kelgians on the medical staff,” the Hudlar went on, “tell me that Morredeth is, or was, a particularly handsome young female who has no longer any hope of mating or living a normal life. At present its problem is emotional rather than medical.”

“And I,” said Hewlitt, feeling hot with embarrassment, “had to talk to it about my cat’s beautiful fur. I’m surprised it didn’t hit me with something. Is there nothing more that can be done for it? And should I apologize, or would that just make matters worse?”

“In the space of a few days,” said the Hudlar, ignoring the question, “you appear to be at ease, or even on terms of friendship, with Horrantor, Bowab, and Morredeth. On arrival you displayed symptoms of severe xenophobia which have since disappeared. If this is a true reaction to your first multiple, other-species contacts and not just a polite pretense of accepting an emotionally disturbing situation that you could do nothing about, then I am impressed with your ability to adapt. But I find your recent behavior, well, surprising.”

“It wasn’t a pretense,” he said without hesitation, “and I’m not as polite as all that. Maybe it was because, as the only healthy patient in the ward, I was bored and curious, and it was you who suggested that I should try talking to the other patients in the first place. They all looked like waking nightmares to me and still do. But something, I don’t know what exactly, made me want to meet them. It was a surprise to me, too.”

The nurse’s speaking membrane vibrated, too slowly for any words to form, and Hewlitt wondered if he was seeing the Hudlar equivalent of a stammer of hesitation. Finally it said, “To answer your earlier question, there is nothing more that can be done for Morredeth other than to change its dressings, which will heal the surface wounding without regenerating the damage to the underlying nerve network, and to apply the nonmedical treatment prescribed by Senior Physician Medalont at the suggestion of Padre Lioren, who until now has been visiting Morredeth every day. Today it called but remained in the nurses’ station, where it listened to the conversation picked up by your medical monitor before—”

“It listened to our private conversation?” Hewlitt broke in. “That, that was wrong! I didn’t know my monitor could be used that way. I, we might have said something that others were not supposed to hear.”

“You did,” said the nurse, “but Leethveeschi is used to hearing derogatory remarks about itself. Your monitor is capable of picking up words spoken very faintly in case you feel something is going wrong before the instrument does and call for help. Lioren said that the scremman game with a new and untutored player was helping to take the patient’s mind off its troubles, and was probably doing more good than anything it could have said or done just then, and that it would visit Morredeth tomorrow.”

Before Hewlitt could reply, it went on, “Morredeth’s nonmedical treatment includes a reduction in night sedation, which has been massive up until now, so that it will have more time to be alone with its thoughts. Medalont and Lioren are hoping that this will enable it to come to terms with its emotional problems. During the day, you may have noticed, it does not give itself time to think. As of tonight I have been instructed not to speak more than a few words to it unless there are strong medical reasons for doing so. You Earth-people have a saying that describes the situation very well, but my own feeling is that a healer should never be cruel to be kind, especially when a patient’s suffering can be reduced by engaging in a friendly conversation with it. I am not, therefore, in agreement with this proposed course of treatment.”

Once again the nurse’s speaking membrane twitched silently. Hewlitt clapped a hand over his monitor, hoping that he was covering the sound sensor so that no word of its mutinous feelings would reach a more senior medic who might want to listen to the conversation later.

“Earlier you asked me what you should do about your insensitive behavior toward Morredeth,” the nurse said as it turned to leave. “If you see that the patient is continuously wakeful, as it will be, it would do no harm then to apologize and talk to it.”

He watched as the nurse moved along the darkened ward, in complete silence despite its tremendous body weight, and thought that for a great, hulking creature with hide like flexible metal it had a very soft heart. He did not have to be an empath, Hewlitt thought, to know what the other expected of him.

For psychological reasons that it found objectionable, the nurse had been forbidden by its superior to engage Morredeth in extended conversation and, without actually disobeying its instructions, it was making sure that someone else did.

CHAPTER 13

Hewlitt lay propped on one elbow so that he could see across the intervening patients to Morredeth’s bed, listening to a ward full of extraterrestrials making their various sleeping noises and wondering how long he should wait before approaching the Kelgian. Its bed was screened and there was a faint glow visible on the ceiling, but the light was steady as if it was coming from the bedside lamp rather than an entertainment channel on the viewscreen. It was possible that Morredeth was reading or had already fallen asleep with its light on, and one of the strange noises he could hear might be the Kelgian snoring. If so it would have harsh things to say to the stupid Earth-person who wakened it.

To be on the safe side he decided to wait until Morredeth paid its nightly visit to the bathroom and talk to it after it had returned to its bed. But tonight it seemed that nobody needed to use the bathroom and he was becoming intensely bored with nothing to look at but rows of shadowy, alien beds and the single, glowing patch of ceiling above the Kelgian’s position. Even the entertainment channel would be more exciting than this, he thought, and decided to make his apology without further delay and then try to get some sleep himself.

He sat upright, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and felt around with his feet in the darkness until they found the sandals. They were hospital-issue and much too large so that the soft, flapping sounds they made against the floor seemed much louder now than they had during the daytime bustle of the ward. If Morredeth was awake it would hear him coming, and if it was asleep he would owe it a second apology for waking it up.

Morredeth was lying like a fat, furry question mark on its uninjured side, its only covering the large rectangle of fabric that held the wound dressings in place. With all that natural insulation, Hewlitt supposed, a Kelgian would not need blankets very often. Its eyes were closed and its legs were tucked up and almost hidden by the thick, restless fur, but the small, erratic movements did not necessarily mean that Morredeth was unconscious.

“Morredeth,” said Hewlitt, in a voice so quiet that he barely heard it himself, “are you awake?”

“Yes,” it said without opening its eyes.

“If you can’t sleep,” said Hewlitt, “would you like me to talk to you for a while?”

“No,” said Morredeth, then a moment later, “Yes.”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Talk about anything you like,” said the Kelgian, opening its eyes, “except me.

It was going to be difficult, Hewlitt thought, talking to a being who could not lie and always said exactly what it thought, especially when there were no other normally polite liars present to keep him reminded of the social niceties. He would have to be very careful or he might end up talking honestly, like a Kelgian. The feeling that he was about to do just that was very strong and he had no explanation for it.

Why am I thinking this way? he asked himself, not for the first time. This isn’t like me at all.

Aloud he said, “My primary reason for coming to see you is to apologize. I should not have talked about my furry pet to you in such detail. I had no intention of causing you emotional distress, and since learning of the long-term effects of your injury, I realize now that I was being thoughtless, insensitive, and stupid. Patient Morredeth, I am very sorry.”

For a few seconds there was no response except for the agitated rippling of the other’s fur, so marked that the edges of the fabric covering the wound dressings were twitching in sympathy. Then it said, “You had no intention of causing distress, so you were ignorant, not stupid. Sit on the bed. What is your secondary reason for coming?”

When Hewlitt did not reply at once, Morredeth said, “Why do non-Kelgians waste so much time thinking up many words for their answers when a few would do? I asked you a simple question.”

And you will get a simple, Kelgian answer, Hewlitt decided. He said, “I was curious about you and your injury. But you have forbidden me to talk about you. Shall I return to my bed?”

“No,” said Morredeth.

“Is there anything or anyone else you would like to talk about?”

“You,” said the Kelgian.

Hewlitt hesitated and Morredeth went on, “My ears are sensitive and I have heard nearly every word that has passed between the medics and yourself. You are healthy, you receive no medication or treatment, except once when it made you pass out and the resuscitation team arrived, and nobody will say what is wrong with you. I heard you tell the Earth-human psychologist how you survived poisoning and a fall that should have killed you. But a hospital is for the sick and injured, not for people who have already recovered. So what is wrong with you? Is it a personal or shameful thing that you do not wish to talk about, even to a member of a different species who might not understand your shame?”

“No, nothing like that,” Hewlitt replied. “It is just that telling you all about it would take a long time, especially if I had to stop to explain some of the Earth-human social behavior and customs. Besides, talking about my troubles would make me remember how little the Earth medics were able to do because they refused to believe that there was anything at all wrong with me, so I would feel frustrated and angry and probably end up complaining to you all the time.”

Morredeth’s fur rippled into a new and visually more attractive pattern, making him wonder if it might be feeling amusement. It said, “You, too? That is the reason why I do not want to talk about myself. You would have complained about me complaining.”

“You have much more to complain about than I have,” said Hewlitt, and stopped because the other’s fur was standing out in spikes again, and the bands of muscle encircling its body were tightening as if they were about to go into spasm. He added quickly, “Sorry, Morredeth, I’m talking about you instead of me. What would you like me to talk about first?”

The Kelgian’s body relaxed, although the fur was still restive as it said, “Talk to me about incidents from your illness that you have yet to tell or, if they are unusual or shameful or depraved, you did not want to tell Medalont or the trainees. I might find your words entertaining enough to be able to forget my own problems for a while. Are you willing to do that for me?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt. “But don’t expect too much entertainment or eroticism. At the time I was on Earth and living with grandparents who didn’t have a furry pet that I could play with. Some of the episodes are very embarrassing. Do Kelgians experience puberty?”

“Yes,” said Morredeth. “Did you think we were sexually active from birth?”

“Puberty can be an embarrassing time,” said Hewlitt, treating the question as rhetorical, “even for normally healthy people.”

“Then describe your embarrassment and lack of health in detail,” said Morredeth, “if you have nothing more interesting to talk about.”

I could have picked a less personal subject, he thought, feeling surprised at his complete lack of hesitation as he began to speak. Maybe the fact that the other belonged to a different species had something to do with it, and talking to a Kelgian patient was no different from telling his symptoms to a Melfan senior physician or a Hudlar nurse, except that Morredeth’s curiosity was more intense and less clinical.

As he was describing his transition from solitary studies on his home computer into the higher education system with its increasing emphasis on group studies and team and solo athletic events, at which he did very well, and the opportunities to form friendships with the female students that his growing reputation as an athlete provided, Morredeth interrupted him.

“Are you complaining about this situation?” it said. “Or being boastful about your good fortune?”

“I am complaining,” Hewlitt replied, his voice raised with remembered anger, “because the opportunities and advantages were lost. Nothing ever happened. Even when I was strongly attracted to a particular young female and, I believed, she to me . . . well, it was very unsatisfactory and frustrating and, and painful.”

“Were you more strongly attracted to someone or something else?” asked Morredeth. “To a female who was not attracted to you? Or had you developed even stronger feelings for one of your small furry creatures?”

“No!” said Hewlitt. He looked at the sleepers in the nearby beds and lowered his voice. “What kind of person do you think I am, dammit?”

“A very sick Earth-person,” Morredeth replied. “Isn’t that the reason you are here?”

“I wasn’t that sick,” said Hewlitt, laughing in spite of himself. “I wasn’t sick at all, according to the university medics. They said that I was a perfect physical specimen in every respect. After many embarrassing tests and experiments were carried out, they said that there was no anatomical or hormonal reason why, after I had achieved full mental and physical arousal, my seminal fluid should not have been expelled. They also said that by some involuntary or unconscious method which they did not understand I was checking the mechanism of ejaculation at the penultimate moment, and that the sudden interference with the flow caused immediate pain followed by diminishing discomfort in the genital area until the material was reabsorbed. They suggested that my problem was probably due to a deeply buried, childhood emotional trauma that was showing itself in episodes of shyness so intense that it manifested itself on the physical level.”

“What is shyness?” said Morredeth. “My translator assigns no Kelgian meaning to the word.”

If a being always said exactly what it thought, it could not be expected to understand shyness. Explaining shyness to such a being might be like trying to describe color to a blind person, but he would try.

“Shyness is a psychological barrier to social interaction,” he said. “It is a nonphysical wall that keeps a person from saying or doing what he or she is wanting very badly to say or do; for emotional reasons, usually involving inexperience or oversensitivity or even cowardice, the words or actions are suppressed. Among Earthhumans it is very common during puberty, when the initial social contacts between the sexes are being made.”

“That is ridiculous,” said Morredeth. “On Kelgia the feeling of a male or female for one of the opposite sex is impossible to hide. If the attraction felt by one for the other is very strong but is not reciprocated, the first has the option of persisting in its attempt to influence the second until the feeling is returned or of transferring the affections elsewhere. The successfully persistent ones usually make the best life-mates. Did the psychological treatment enable you to break through your shyness barrier eventually and allow normal coupling?”

“No,” said Hewlitt.

For the first time in his experience the Kelgian’s fur almost stopped moving, but only for a moment before it became even more agitated. Morredeth said, “I’m sorry. That situation must be very frustrating for you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“The senior physician might be able to help you,” said Morredeth, trying to mix reassurance with honesty. “If it cannot solve your problem, Medalont will take it as a personal insult. No matter how serious the disease or injury, Sector General has the reputation of curing everything and everybody. Well, nearly everybody.”

For a moment Hewlitt stared at the other’s fur, which was being stirred into waves and eddies as if it were an agitated pooi of mercury; then he said, “The senior physician has my medical history, but as yet it hasn’t asked me about my involuntary celibacy. Maybe, like the university’s psychologist, it thinks the trouble is all in my mind. But the problem wasn’t, isn’t, painful so long as I avoid close, one-to-one female contact.

“When it became clear that the psychologist was getting nowhere,” he went on, keeping his eyes on the increasing agitation of Morredeth’s fur, “he decided that I was stubbornly refusing to respond to all his attempts at psychotherapy. I was told that living out my life without female companionship, which was probably what I secretly wanted to do, was rare but not in itself unhealthy. Many highly respected people in the past had done so, and made significant contributions to philosophy and the sciences while devoting themselves to the religious celibate life as writers and teachers, or by sublimating their sexual urges in scientific research . . .

He broke off because Morredeth’s body as well as its fur was showing increasing agitation. The underlying bands of muscle were going in and out of spasm, causing it to twist and turn and bounce against the bed.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “Shall I call the nurse?”

“No,” said the Kelgian, the upper part of its body threatening to roll onto the floor. “I don’t want any more of your stupid interference.”

Hewlitt wondered if he should raise the screens so that the bed would be visible from the nurses’ station, then remembered that the other was probably on a monitor. He looked at the writhing body again and said, “I was only trying to help you.”

“Why are you doing this cruel thing?” said Morredeth. “Who told you to do this to me?”

“I, I don’t understand you,” he said, feeling baffled. “What did I say?”

“You are not a Kelgian,” said Morredeth, “so you do not fully understand the mental hurt I feel. First you talked about stroking your furry pet, and then apologized for your insensitivity. Now you are talking about yourself and the impossibility of you ever finding a mate, but it is plain that you are really talking about me and my problems. You must have been told to do this. When Li-oren tried to do these things to me earlier, I closed my ears. Who told you to talk to me like this? Lioren? Braithwaite? The senior physician? And why?”

His first impulse was to deny everything, but that would have been unfair because Kelgians did not know how to tell, nor would they expect to be told, a lie. Either he should say nothing or tell the truth.

“It was the Hudlar nurse,” he said, “who asked me to talk to you.

“But the Hudlar isn’t a psychologist,” Morredeth broke in. “Why did it do such a cruel thing? It is unqualified and it was tinkering with my feelings. I shall report its behavior to the senior physician.”

Hewlitt tried to reduce the other’s growing anger by saying, “Every person I ever met thought they were good, if untrained, psychologists . . .“Including me, he added silently. “. . . just as they believed themselves to be expert ground-car drivers and in possession of a brilliant sense of humor. The trouble is, psychologists rarely agree on their methods of treatment. Are you feeling pain?”

“No,” said Morredeth, “anger.”

Considering the species of the patient, he thought, the words had to be accepted as the literal truth. As he watched the increasing agitation and violence of the fur and body movements, he wondered if he was seeing the Kelgian equivalent of bad language that the other had no need to vocalize.

“Don’t be angry with the Hudlar nurse,” he said. “It told me that Lioren had asked and received permission from Senior Physician Medalont to reduce your night sedation so that you would have more time alone to consider your position and, they hoped, come to terms with it. To assist the process, the medical staff on night duty was forbidden to speak to you apart from the few words required while checking your life signs. The Hudlar did not agree with this form of treatment but was unable to disobey its medical superiors. Out of concern for your expected mental distress, and learning that I wanted to apologize for the furry-pet business, it asked me to talk to you.

“It did not tell me what to say,” Hewlitt went on, “only that I should try to take your mind off your troubles. Unfortunately I was not able to do that, but the fault is mine and the Hudlar is not responsible for my insensitivity and your anger.

“Then I shall not report its misconduct,” said Morredeth. “But I am still angry.”

“I understand,” said Hewlitt, “because in the beginning I felt the same anger, frustration, and bitter disappointment. The embarrassment of knowing that my friends were laughing and whispering behind my back and thinking of me as some kind of sexual cripple was .

“Your crippling was not plain for all to see,” Morredeth broke in, a sudden, muscular spasm bringing its body close to the edge of the bed. “My friends will not whisper or laugh, they will be kind and avoid me so that I will not be able to see their feelings of revulsion. You do not understand.”

“Try to lie still, dammit!” said Hewlitt. “You could fall out of bed and hurt yourself. Stop rolling about like that.”

“If the sight displeases you, leave me,” said Morredeth. “A Kelgian can sometimes control but never conceal feelings. Strong emotion is associated with involuntary fur and body movement. Didn’t you know that?”

No, but I know now, said Hewlitt under his breath. Aloud, he went on, “Even the Earth psychologists say that relieving one’s feelings is often better than keeping them bottled up. But I don’t want to leave, I’m supposed to be talking and helping to take your mind off your troubles. I’m not doing a very good job so far, am I?”

“You are doing a terrible job,” said Morredeth, “but stay if you want to.”

The violence of its body movements seemed to be diminishing, and Hewlitt decided to take a risk by not changing the subject.

“Thank you,” he said. “And of course you are right. Your situation is much worse than mine because it is permanent and visible to everyone. But that doesn’t mean that I cannot understand your feelings, because for many years I have shared the same kind of problem in reduced intensity. I don’t think that the emotional scars, and my need to live and work alone and avoid personal social contact with females, will ever heal completely. I do know how you must feel, but I also know that you will not always feel so badly.

“Have you ever thought that Lioren may be right and the Hudlar nurse wrong?” he went on. “Or that it is better to face up to your problem here and now, in hospital where help is available, instead of at home where you say you will be all alone? Or that you will not always feel so badly as you do now? People, Kelgians as well as Earth-humans, can adapt to almost anything . . .

“You even talk like Lioren . . .“began Morredeth, when it happened.

The other’s fur looked no more agitated than it had been a few minutes earlier and the uncontrolled body movements had begun to subside, so that the spasm which straightened Morredeth into a long, furry cylinder and rolled it over the edge of the bed farthest from him was completely unexpected. Without taking time to think, he grabbed its body with both hands to pull it back onto the bed. His fingers tightened over the cover for the wound dressings and he checked the other’s fall just as the retaining tapes snapped and the fabric came away in his hands.

The Kelgian gave a long, high-pitched moan like the sound of a falsetto foghorn; then its body spasmed again and rolled back to the opposite side of the bed on top of him. Hewlitt half fell, half slid onto the floor with Morredeth on top of him.

“Nurse!” he yelled.

“I’m here,” said the Hudlar, who was already inside the screens and looming over them. “Are you injured, Patient Hewlitt?”

“N-no,” he stammered. “At least, not so far.”

“Good,” said the nurse. “The DBLF classification have never used their feet as natural weapons so you will probably remain in an undamaged condition. I require assistance for a few moments but I am unwilling to waste time, or appear incapable of dealing with a simple emergency, by calling for a nurse from another ward. Are you willing to assist me?”

Me assist you? Hewlitt thought. The sound he made did not translate even to himself, but the Hudlar took it as an affirmative.

“Your present position on the floor is ideal for our purpose, it went on, “which is to help me hold Patient Morredeth still. Please put your arms around it and grip its back fur in both hands. Tighter than that, please, you will not cause pain. Regrettably, four of my limbs are needed to support my body mass, which leaves one to help you immobilize the patient and one to administer the sedative. Good, that’s it exactly.”

With both hands trying to grip the fur and the inside of his forearms pressing against its back, and helped by the one Hudlar tentacle gently but firmly encircling its neck, he strove to keep Morredeth still while the nurse located the correct injection site. The Kelgian was still making its high-pitched, moaning sound while trying its hardest to escape from between his arms by walking up his stomach, chest, and face with its twenty-odd feet. Fortunately the legs were short, thin, and not heavily muscled and the feet, which had no toenails or other bony terminations, were like small, hard sponges, so he felt as if he were being continually prodded with padded drumsticks. The experience was disconcerting rather than painful. Morredeth’s exertions must have been making it perspire, because he was aware of an increasing body odor that smelled faintly of peppermint.

He was aware of a sudden feeling of weakness in every muscle of his body, as if his strength had been drained away from him, and there was a hot, tingling sensation in his hands and bare arms where the skin was in contact with fur that was curling and twisting against his palms and between his fingers. The experience was so alien, and ticklish, that he had to make an effort not to laugh. Suddenly Morredeth arched its back and tried to twist free and he almost lost his grip.

“Sorry, my hands are sweating,” he said. “It nearly got away just then.”

“You are doing well, Patient Hewlitt,” said the nurse, replacing the hypodermic sprayer in its satchel. “In a few seconds more I will be finished. Your temporary loss of grip may have been due to your digits encountering fur that is covered by the oily medication used on the dressings in addition to the patient’s perspiration. Also, I have learned that Earth-human DBDGs sweat from the palms of the hands even when the process is not accompanied by a marked rise in body activity and temperature. It can be an indication of a severe emotional reaction to a situation that is or is likely to become stressful . . .

“But my palms are sweating,” Hewlitt broke in, in an attempt to head off another of the nurse’s medical lectures, “all the way up to the elbows.”

“Either way,” the Hudlar went on, “you are at no risk. Kelgian pathogens cannot cross the planetary species’ barrier and . . . Ah, I believe Patient Morredeth is beginning to relax.”

The Kelgian’s leg movements had ceased and its body was becoming a dead weight across Hewlitt’s stomach and chest. With two tentacles free now, the nurse inserted them on each side of the body’s center of gravity and lifted Morredeth onto the bed. By the time Hewlitt had scrambled to his feet, it had arranged the other’s limp body in the flattened S shape that resting Kelgians seemed to find comfortable and was replacing the loosened dressings, but not before he caught a glimpse of the large area of uncovered skin and lank, discolored fur.

“Patient Hewlitt,” the Hudlar went on, “please wash the Kelgian medication from your hands. It will not harm you but you may find the smell unpleasant. Then return to your bed and try to sleep. I will check later to see if you have sustained any minor abrasions that the excitement of the moment may have driven from your mind.

“Before you go,” it went on, “I must apologize for my late arrival. Your medical monitor includes an audio pickup and recording device so that the data is available for later study. It was obvious from the way the conversation was going that something like this might happen and that a fast-acting sedative shot would be needed. The medication is new and I am required to double-check with Pathology, if a senior ward medic is not present, before administering it. That was why I did not arrive until you were calling for help.”

Hewlitt laughed. “And all the time I was thinking that your response time was impressively fast. But if the conversation with Morredeth was being recorded, does this mean you will be in trouble over what you said, or rather what I said you said, about your disagreement over your instructions for withdrawing Morredeth’s sedation and forbidding you to speak to it at night?

“How is it now?” he added. “Are you sure it will be all right?”

There was no way of telling what the other was thinking, but Hewlitt had the feeling that it was worried as it said, “Several people, including Medalont, Leethveeschi, and Lioren will study your monitor’s voice recording, and many words of criticism will be spoken to me. But you must have noticed that Hudlars have thicker skins than most other life-forms. Thank you for your concern, Patient Hewlitt, and now will you please return to your bed. Morredeth is well and sleeping peacefully—”

It broke off then, because the involuntary ripplings of the Kelgian’s fur had slowed almost to a stop. The tip of one of the nurse’s free tentacles moved quickly to a point close to the base of Morredeth’s skull, the digits apparently feeling for a pulse; then it reached into the equipment pouch and came out grasping a scanner, which it moved to two separate positions on the patient’s chest. The other tentacle tip stabbed at a key on the communicator, and on the ceiling above the bed a red light began a steady, urgent blinking.

“Resuscitation team,” it said. “Ward Seven, bed twelve, classification Kelgian DBLF. Estimated five seconds into cardiac arrest, both hearts . . . Patient Hewlitt, go back to bed. Now.”

Hewlitt backed away from the bedside, unable to take his eyes off the still body and fur until he was outside the screens, but he did not go to bed. Instead he waited close by until the resuscitation team with its equipment float arrived, less than a minute later. The red light in the ceiling ceased its flashing and there was a sudden absence of sound as a hush field went up around Morredeth’s position.

That must have been done to avoid disturbing the sleeping patients, he thought, and not just to stop him from listening to what was going on. He was not sure how long he waited in the darkness, watching the moving shadows that were being projected onto the bed screens, and straining to hear what they were saying, until the team members emerged. But his curiosity went unsatisfied and his concern unrelieved, because they left the ward without speaking to each other. The Hudlar nurse, its large shadow unmoving, remained inside the screens.

He waited for what seemed a very long time, but the Hudlar did not leave Morredeth’s bedside. Feeling sad and guilty and disappointed, he turned away and walked to the bathroom to wash the traces of Kelgian medication from his hands and arms; then he went back to his bed to lie with his eyes closed.

Twice during the rest of the night he heard the Hudlar moving quietly along the ward as it checked on the sleeping patients and the one who was only pretending to sleep, but it did not have to speak to him, because his monitor was giving it all the clinical information it required. Probably the nurse was feeling responsible for what had happened, because it had been its suggestion that Hewlitt talk to Morredeth. But he felt responsible as well, and he was almost afraid to speak to it. Instead he lay still and quiet, wondering how it was possible for him to cause a person s death simply by talking to it, and feeling worse both physically and mentally than he had ever felt in his entire life.

He was still awake and wondering when the ward lights were switched on and the day staff came on duty.

CHAPTER 14

The morning medical round was both abbreviated and incomplete. Senior Physician Medalont was accompanied by Charge Nurse Leethveeschi rather than the usual group of trainees; they visited only the most seriously ill patients, and spent most of their time at Morredeth’s bed, which was still surrounded by screens and a hush field.

They were still there when Horrantor and Bowab stopped by his bed on their way from the bathroom. It was the Duthan who spoke first.

“We don’t feel like playing scremman today,” Bowab said. “Nobody seems to know what happened to Morredeth. I tried to ask a Kelgian nurse, but you know Kelgians, they either tell you the truth about everything or say nothing at all. Do you know anything?”

Hewlitt was still feeling guilty over his part in the incident, and he would have preferred not to talk about it. But these two had been Morredeth’s friends, or a least short-term, hospital acquaintances, and they had a right to know. He did not want to lie to them, but not being a Kelgian, he could edit the truth.

“There was an emergency,” he said. “The nurse called the resuscitation team and said that Morredeth’s hearts had stopped. When they arrived they put up a hush field around the bed. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“We must have slept through it,” said Horrantor. “But the Hudlar is nice and likes talking. Maybe it will tell us everything when it comes on duty tonight—” It broke off to point toward the nurses’ station. “Look who’s coming down the ward with Padre Lioren. Thornnastor! What is it doing here?”

The creature belonged to the same species as Horrantor, but its body was larger, its hide had a great many more wrinkles, and it was, of course, walking on six rather than five feet. The question answered itself when they stopped at Morredeth’s position and it disappeared with Lioren behind the screens. A Kelgian nurse guiding an antigravity stretcher with its canopy opened arrived a few minutes later and followed them inside.

“It must be pretty crowded in there by now,” said Horrantor.

There was no reply and the silence lengthened. In an attempt to erase the mind-picture of Morredeth lying on the bed with its fur completely motionless, he said, “Who is Thornnastor?”

“We’ve never met, you understand,” said Horrantor, “but it must be Thornnastor because it is the only Tralthan in Sector General who is qualified to wear diagnostician’s insignia. It is the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology. They say it rarely leaves its lab, and usually it sees people only when they are dead or in small bits.”

“Horrantor!” said Bowab. “You have about as much tact as a drunken Kelgian.”

“Sorry,” said the Tralthan, “it was an insensitive choice of words . . . Look, they’re coming out.”

The Kelgian nurse emerged first and undulated toward the ward entrance, guiding the litter, which now had its canopy closed, followed by Thornnastor, Medalont, and Leethveeschi. The screens rose into their ceiling slots to show Lioren looking at the empty bed with all four of its eyes. When the Tarlan moved a few seconds later it did not follow the others.

“It’s heading this way,” said Bowab, in the growling, overloud equivalent of a Duthan whisper. “Hewlitt, I think it is looking at you.

Lioren continued looking at him with two of its eyes while it approached and stopped at his bed. The other two it directed at Bowab and Horrantor as it said, “My apologies for the interruption, friends, but would this be a convenient time for me to have a private conversation with Patient Hewlitt?”

“Of course, Padre,” said Horrantor. Bowab added, “We were just leaving.”

It waited until the others had moved away; then it said, “I trust this is a convenient time for you. Are you willing to talk to me now?”

Hewlitt did not reply at first. This was the first time that he had seen the Padre at close range, and the information given in the library tape he had studied had not prepared him for the actuality. The Tarlan physiological classification was BRLH, an erect quadrupedal life-form with its four short legs supporting a tapering, cone-shaped body. Four long, multi-jointed, medial arms for heavy lifting and handling sprouted from waist level, and another four that were suited to more delicate work encircled the base of the neck. Spaced equally around the head were four eyes whose stalks were capable of independent motion. An adult Tarlan was supposed to stand eight feet tall, but Lioren was above average in height and body mass. Close up it was an intimidating sight and, after the events of the previous night, he was not sure that it would have kind words to say to him. Instead of answering he asked another question, the one that had been troubling his mind for the past six hours.

“What happened to Morredeth?”

The Tarlan’s strange, convoluted countenance was no easier to read than a Hudlar’s as it said. “We don’t know what happened to Morredeth, but it is well now, and has no problems.”

Considering Lioren’s profession and remembering Morredeth’s newly vacant bed, those were the words of consolation that a padre would be expected to use to a bereaved relative or friend. They were the words that he had been hoping not to hear.

The busy sounds of the ward faded as Lioren reached forward with a medial hand to turn on the hush-field projector. He had no idea which facial orifice it was using to speak, but the voice was quiet and gentle as it said, “There appears to be three people who carry varying degrees of responsibility for what happened to Patient Morredeth. The Hudlar nurse, myself, and you. I would like to begin by talking about your contribution.”

Before Hewlitt could reply, it went on, “The Hudlar has already told you that all of your conversations since your monitor was fitted have been recorded and added to your case history for later study. This was done without your knowledge or consent because of the unusual nature of the case. Medalont felt that your words would be less inhibited and clinically more valuable, even though most of the recorded material would be extraneous and useless, if you were kept in ignorance of what was being done. Now you know that everything you say is being recorded, but I am less interested in words about yourself than in your emotional reaction to Patient Morredeth’s injury. Did you have strong feelings about its disfigurement, and are you willing to talk about them?”

Hewlitt began to relax. He had been expecting criticism from Lioren and had only now realized that a hospital padre would not use harsh or critical words.

“Yes,” he said. “But don’t expect too much, Padre. I didn’t have any strong feelings about Morredeth other than the sympathy one feels for the misfortune of someone who is not a close friend. When I discovered how badly the damaged fur was affecting it, I tried to help by talking about the problem I’d had during my teens and early twenties. I must have said the wrong things.”

“In a very difficult emotional situation,” said Lioren, “you tried to say the right things. Some of the things you did say were . . . Is the problem you discussed with Morredeth solved, or not? Your case history says that you have not taken a life-mate or formed any short-term partnerships.”

Wondering why the conversation had veered from Morredeth’s troubles to his own, he said, “The problem isn’t solved. I am not comfortable in female company even though my attraction and initial physical response to them was and is normal. I am afraid of a recurrence of the embarrassment, the embarrassment of both partners, and the pain that comes instead of the intense pleasure that should follow consummation. It is a situation which I have no wish to repeat . . . Why are you asking me about this? Are you criticizing my behavior in some fashion? Do you think it is a moral rather than a medical question?”

“It is a medical question,” Lioren replied without hesitation. “But if the matter troubles you to the extent that you might be helped by spiritual guidance or reassurance, please tell me. I have a wide knowledge of the tenets and beliefs of the principal religions practiced throughout the Federation and may be able to help you. I am very interested in your own religious beliefs if you hold any. If you do not, then please rest your mind. I am not going to preach or proselytize.

“One of the reasons for asking the question,” it went on, “is that I no longer practice medicine, but I have some experience in the field and sometimes enjoy trying to second-guess my former colleagues. At worst it is a venial offense, a small sin of pride. And who am I to criticize another being who prefers the celibate life?”

“Sorry, Padre,” said Hewlitt, “I’m feeling antisocial this morning. What did you want to know?”

Lioren made a low, gurgling sound that did not translate and said, “Everything you are willing to tell me. But first, you still appear to be sensitive about your, ah, extended puberty, but this matter was fully covered during your conversation with Morredeth so we will ignore it for now. Instead I would like to know if there were any other episodes, physical, psychological, or religious, which also troubled you even though they were considered unimportant or of too minor a nature for your medics to record them in your case notes. Do you remember any past incidents of that nature?”

“If they didn’t go into my case notes,” said Hewlitt, “I may have forgotten them. Whenever I thought there was anything seriously wrong with me I had the bad habit of complaining about it, loudly and often.”

Lioren was silent for a moment. When it spoke again it seemed to be uncomfortable and it was regarding him with all four of its eyes.

“You are a very strange case, Patient Hewlitt,” it said. “From our study of your recorded conversations with Medalont, Braithwaite, the Hudlar nurse, and your three cardplaying friends, and especially from the sensitivity displayed during last night’s dialogue with Morredeth, we have decided that there is little wrong with your mind. Making due allowance for mental effects left by your lifelong war with the medical profession, you have displayed a personality that is stable and well integrated. If there is a psychological component to your problem, which we are beginning to doubt, it is so deeply buried that we can find no trace of it.”

“I kept telling everybody that it wasn’t my imagination . . . began Hewlitt.

Lioren continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “As well, you are a remarkably healthy specimen of an Earth-human DBDG. Apart from the inexplicable cardiac arrest on the evening of your arrival, your monitor has shown optimum clinical readings since you were admitted. The present slight lowering of life-sign indications we attribute to your night spent without sleep while, I have no doubt, you were thinking about Morredeth.”

“So I have a healthy mind in a superman’s body,” he said, making no attempt to hide his anger. He was about to be discharged from the hospital, as had happened so often in the past, as some nonspecific type of malingerer. “Thank you for yet another confirmation of that fact, Padre. What do you want me to tell you?”

The Tarlan leaned over his bed and opened its mouth. For the first time he saw its very large teeth and felt its breath on his face as it spoke. He felt pleased with himself that he was able to stay in bed and not run terror-stricken up the ward. One could become used to anything in this place.

“I don’t know,” the Padre said. “Anything. Everything. Something that will enable me, as you Earth-humans say, to get my teeth into this problem.”

“Teeth?” said Hewlitt, his eyes still on the other’s open mouth. He forced a laugh and went on, “As a matter of fact I did have some trouble with my teeth. It was when I was a child, on Etla, but it was a minor problem. I was seven years old and the first two of my second set of teeth were beginning to grow and the old ones were refusing to come out. My mouth was painful, but I was more worried about not getting money from the tooth fairy in exchange for the loosened teeth when I left them on my pillow during the night. Do you know about the Earth tooth fairy? I’ll tell you about it later. When the third new tooth pushed up and the old one stayed in place, our dentist lost patience and pulled out all three of the old ones. After that my teeth behaved normally and the money was waiting on the pillow as expected. But I don’t think the tooth business is important.”

“Who knows what is important in your case,” said the Padre, “but in this instance I agree with you. Are there any other unrecorded and possibly unimportant incidents you can remember?”

The longer Hewlitt talked the more he remembered. A few of the minor incidents, he was surprised to discover, had been included in his case history. The rest was a boring catalogue of the usual childhood and teenage skin eruptions and rashes, none of them serious or long-lasting, and the accidentally cut fingers, bumps on the head, and skinned knees sustained at home or in school. His cuts and abrasions had always healed quickly, even when they had looked at first to be serious enough to require sutures.

“I didn’t like doctors when I was young,” he went on, “because they insisted on prescribing medication that made me feel worse instead of better. At first I thought Medalont was going to do the same, but instead it took me off all medication and, apart from the arrest on the first night, there has been no trouble. Shall I go on, Padre? Is this the kind of information you’re looking for?”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for, Patient Hewlitt,” said the Tarlan, “or if I’d recognize it if I found it. But if all you and your many doctors say is true, and taking into account the two inexplicable clinical episodes that have involved you since you came here, there is only one obvious explanation that remains. Naturally it is more obvious to me than to you even though I myself am most reluctant to accept it.”

The Tarlan was leaning so far over the bed that Hewlitt wondered if its bottom-heavy, inherently stable body would overbalance and fall on him. The features were unreadable but its tension could almost be felt.

“Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “are you a member of a religious sect?”

“No,” he said.

“Before they died in the flyer accident,” it went on, leaning even closer, “were your parents or subsequently your grandparents members of such a sect? It may have been very small, probably restricted in numbers because of its inability to proselytize among a largely materialistic population, but it would have been highly moral, intensely devout, and utterly certain in its beliefs. Even though you were very young at the time, did your parents or grandparents, or perhaps a teacher at school, instruct you in the beliefs and disciplines of such a faith?”

“No,” he said again.

“You have not taken enough time to search your memory, said Lioren. “Please do so now.

Its body swayed backward until it was upright again, and Hewlitt was not sure whether the movement signified a relaxation of tension or disappointment.

“I’m sorry, Padre,” he said. “When you mentioned religion to me earlier, and I refused your offer of spiritual consolation, I assumed that you would know that I was not a religious person. Why are you asking so many religious questions? I have never been a believer.”

When it replied, Hewlitt was glad that a hush field was around his bed, because the Padre’s voice would have carried to the other end of the ward. It said, “I am asking them because they must be asked, and because religious beliefs can often have a strong effect on a psychological or medical condition. Mostly I am asking them because of what you did last night.

“As a result of you speaking to Patient Morredeth,” it continued without lowering its voice, “and even though its clinical condition was giving no cause for concern at the time, the patient became emotionally distressed, culminating in severe convulsions. You assisted the duty nurse by restraining the patient while a sedative shot was administered, but by then both of its hearts had arrested. While the activity could never be described as dignified, much less solemn, the process that is called ‘the laying on of hands’ took place.

“When the resuscitation team arrived they were very irritated,” it went on, its voice quieter but not quiet, “because they had been called to the same ward twice in two days on emergencies that had turned out to be false alarms. Thornnastor is completely baffled, a condition rare indeed in the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology, and has transferred Morredeth to its lab for closer investigation into an incident that is completely without precedent. And Patient Morredeth is happy because its missing and damaged areas of fur have regrown good as new.”

Lioren paused, and an almost plaintive note entered its voice as it said, “To a hospital with the reputation of performing medical miracles routinely, a real one is a major embarrassment. A miraculous cure is, well, disquieting even to me.

“Do you have any other explanation, Patient Hewlitt?”

CHAPTER 15

During the week following Morredeth’s transfer to Pathology, Hewlitt noticed a change in everyone’s behavior toward him, but there was nothing so definite or unpleasant that it warranted a complaint. Senior Physician Medalont’s words to him were few and had nothing to do with his case, Charge Nurse Leethveeschi was almost polite, his Hudlar nurse was friendly but less talkative, and, when he tried to play three-handed scremman with Patients Horrantor and Bowab, it seemed that they had both developed a speech impediment. Everyone around him, to use a phrase much favored by his grandmother, was walking on eggs.

The only being who was willing to talk to him at length was Lioren, whose visits seemed always to end in long, unresolved, and often heated religious arguments that the other, because of his often stated lack of beliefs, preferred to call philosophical debates. Whatever they were, they shortened his days and kept his mind busy far into the intervening nights, and for that he was grateful. Even so, the Padre would not have been his first choice as the most amusing of companions, especially, as now, when it was trying to steer the conversation once again onto the increasingly tiresome subject of what could have happened to Morredeth’s fur.

“When I spoke to Morredeth earlier today,” said the Tarlan, “it told me that Pathology could find nothing wrong with it. There were no signs of a deterioration in its newly regenerated fur and, in its opinion, Thornnastor is running out of reasons for keeping it under observation and must soon allow it to go home. In case it doesn’t see you again, it sends good wishes and thanks for whatever it was you did to cure it . . .

“But I didn’t do anything,” Hewlitt broke in, “except wrestle with it. I told you to tell it that.”

“I did,” said the Padre, “but it said that, just in case you did do something, it is grateful. It has trouble believing in miracles, too.”

“There are no miracles,” said Hewlitt, not for the first time. “There are just natural laws that we don’t understand or haven’t discovered yet. Because we understand how this one works, it is one miracle we perform several times a day without even thinking about it. Right?”

As he spoke, Hewlitt switched on the bedside communicator and keyed in the library menu, wondering if Lioren might take the hint and go away. It had not done so on previous occasions and the Padre was nothing if not consistent.

“A few centuries ago, vision transmission would have been a miracle,” Lioren agreed, and went on, “Morredeth is very pleased and proud about the overall condition of its fur. It insisted on me placing my hands along its flanks and feeling the thickness and mobility which, it claimed, has never before felt so good. On Tarla such an activity is conducted only in circumstances of intimacy and deep emotional involvement, but Morredeth wanted me to feel its fur and at such times I can be a complete moral coward. The sensation was peculiar, unexpected, and very difficult to describe. Ifelt . . .”

“Utterly ridiculous?” asked Hewlitt. “That was howl felt when the same thing happened with Horrantor. Medalont asked me, as a clinical experiment, to lay my hands on the Tralthan’s damaged limb. According to the senior physician, Horrantor’s leg injury has complications that are slow to respond to treatment. Medalont, Leethveeschi, two Orligian nurses, and the resuscitation team were standing by in case something dramatic happened. I think they were all relieved, even Horrantor, when nothing did.

“There was no second miracle. Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” said Lioren. “I feel like they did. Miracles make me very uncomfortable and insecure in my beliefs and disbeliefs, and I would as soon have proof that they did not happen.

“They don’t, Padre,” said Hewlitt. “Can we talk about something else?”

“It must be nice to feel such certainty,” said Lioren, flexing its medial arms in a gesture that would probably have meant something to another Tarlan. “But I wonder if, in all the vastness of space and time and the immutable laws of cause and effect and perfect balance of forces that is Creation, there isn’t room for the occasional miracle. But why did it happen here?”

Hewlitt shook his head, seeing no chance of getting away from the interminable subject of Morredeth’s fur and the inevitable religious argument, and said, “It didn’t happen here. Miracles are impossible, Padre. If they were to exist in your big, complicated, wellordered universe, or Creation as you call it, they would be out of place, a defect in the perfect Scheme of Things. There is simply no room for miracles in your universe.”

“An interesting philosophical idea,” said Lioren. “It suggests that our Creation is flawed because an apparently supernatural event or events took place within it. Bearing in mind the hypothetical attributes of the Supreme Being, why should He, She, or It create an imperfection of any kind?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “This isn’t my area of expertise. But can we suppose that this universe was created as a prototype, an early model that requires modification and a little fine-tuning from time to time. The intrusion of random supernatural events into a universe supposedly based on natural laws might be evidence of this tinkering. Thank God . . . Oops, just a figure of speech, Padre . . . it doesn’t happen very often.”

“If you believe that . . .” the other began.

“I am not believing anything, Padre, just talking.”

The Tarlan was silent for a moment, then it said, “If this universe is imperfect, that presupposes, eternity being what it is, without beginning or end, that there was, is, will be one that is perfect. Would you like to, ah, just talk about that for a while?”

“I haven’t had a chance to think it out properly,” he replied, smiling, “so I am making it up as I go along. Unlike this universe, everything would be perfect. There would be no natural laws, because if they were present it would mean that it, too, had faults and was in need of tinkering. There would be no time, no space, no physical or mental restrictions so that every event that took place would be miraculous. I expect you, and the other believers living in this imperfect creation, would call it Heaven.”

“Go on,” said Lioren.

Hewlitt said, “The difficulty I and an awful lot of other people have with religions is that they do not adequately explain why there is so much evil, or more accurately, tragic accidents, natural disasters, and illness, gross misbehavior in individuals and groups toward each other and, in short, so much suffering in this universe. Living in an imperfect Creation would go a long way to explaining why these things happen, especially when there is the expectation of moving to the perfected universe after death.

“This is a pretty heretical theory,” Hewlitt ended. “I hope my irreverence hasn’t offended you, Padre?”

“I agree,” said Lioren. “Heretical and irreverent, but not entirely new to me. To do my work here I need a wide knowledge of the religious beliefs and practices of many worlds, and often the many religions practiced on a single world. I am reminded of the writings of an Earth-human theologian called Augustine who was in the habit of wondering aloud, but in reality asking polite but awkward questions of its God. One of the questions was ‘What were You doing before You made the universe?’ There is no record of this Augustine person ever receiving an answer, at least not during its lifetime on Earth, but you have taken the idea a stage further by suggesting that the Creator of All Things has produced a prototype which we are still inhabiting.

“I am not offended or even surprised, Patient Hewlitt,” it went on. “Where other-species’ religious beliefs are concerned, nothing surprises me. But the VTXM Telfi single entity I have been visiting these past few days came very close to doing so. It, they, share the belief that they were created in God’s image, but that their omniscient and all-powerful Creator is composed of an infinite number of small, weak, and individually stupid entities like themselves who together make up a Supreme Being which one day they hope to join.

“For a species who evolved intelligence and a civilization,” the Padre went on, “by linking together into a gestalt of individually specialized beings, it is understandable why they would believe such a thing. But I found it very difficult at first to understand or talk to it about the infinite number of persons that will make up its one God, or to give the spiritual consolation it needs. Of course, there are many religions which believe that there is a small part of God in every thinking creature . . . Do you know anything about the Telfi?”

“A little,” said Hewlitt, still trying to steer the other away from the subject of theology and, by association, miracles. “There was a brief entry in the nonmedical library’s listing of Federation citizens. They operate in groups as contact telepaths to pool their mental and physical abilities. They live by absorbing the combination and varying intensities of hard radiation that bathes their home world, which circles very close to the parent sun. For travel off-planet their ship life-support radiation has to be reproduced artificially. Sometimes the environmental systems malfunction and, if they are lucky, they are rescued and end up here. But they are radiation-eaters, and no ordinary person could get close enough to them to talk and hope to go on living. Did you use a communicator or wear protective armor?”

“Thank you for the implication that I might be an extraordinary person,” said the Padre. It made an untranslatable, Tarlan sound and went on, “But the answer to both questions is no. There is a fallacy among nonmedics that the Telfi cannot be closely approached or touched without the use of remotely controlled manipulators. To live they must absorb the radiation normally provided by their natural environment but when, for clinical reasons, the radiation is withdrawn for several days and they are weak from their equivalent of hunger, their radioactive emissions drop to a harmless level. When one of them was withdrawn from its treatment chamber during my visit, I was close enough to be able to touch it, which I did.

“That is one patient,” Lioren ended, “who really needs a miracle.”

It was obvious that the Padre felt sorry for the Telfi, and Hewlitt sympathized with its feelings, but the subject had returned to miracles. He decided to go on the offensive, as inoffensively as possible, and said, “If you are suggesting that I lay my hands on a Telfi, forget it. Surely the proper method of achieving a miracle is for you or the patient to pray for one. A miracle is supposed to be a supernatural occurrence, not something that is dependent on the cooperation of an unbelieving middleman. If you don’t believe that, Padre, what do you believe?”

“I cannot tell you what I believe,” said Lioren. “In the interests of the patients who might be unfairly influenced if I was to speak of my own beliefs, I am obliged not to divulge that information.”

“But why?” said Hewlitt. “What possible difference could your personal beliefs make to an unbeliever?”

“I don’t know,” Lioren replied, “that’s the problem. I have detailed knowledge of more than two hundred religions that are practiced, or more often not practiced, throughout the Federation. My function here is to listen sympathetically, to give reassurance, encouragement, or consolation to the terminally ill or seriously troubled patients in whatever way seems appropriate. Because of my background, which you must be aware of by now but are too polite to mention, there are always a few patients who want more than reassurance. In their distress they come to respect and trust me and, erroneously, to think that I know best. They want religious certainties which they think that I, with my wide knowledge and experience in dealing with their kind of problems, can provide. This I cannot do, because I must not take advantage of their confused and frightened state to compare one religion with another, or to suggest one which I think is the true one. No matter how wild and incredible some of their beliefs are, influencing an entity to change or even doubt its own religion, however small or temporary that change or doubt might be, is a responsibility I will not accept. I played God only once and I shall not do so ever again.”

The Padre made another untranslatable sound and said, “I am particularly careful with unbelievers. It would be a terrible thing if some time in the future my words were to turn you toward religion.”

“Now that,” said Hewlitt, laughing, “would take a real miracle.”

Lioren’s reply was silenced by the sudden arrival of Leethveeschi, who gestured toward the ward entrance and said, “Patient Hewlitt, prepare yourself for visitors. Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway, Senior Physicians Medalont and Prilicla, and Pathologist Murchison are here to see you. With that collection of high-powered medical talent interesting themselves in your case, I do not foresee you remaining here as a patient for long. Padre Lioren, Prilicla apologizes for interrupting your conversation and asks if you would please distance yourself from the patient and wait with the others so that your presence will not interfere with its investigation.”

“Of course,” said Lioren.

He watched it move up the ward to join the group that was standing and, in one case, hovering about thirty meters away. He barely noticed Medalont and the Tralthan and Earth-human diagnosticians, Thornnastor and Conway, or even the mature but strikingly beautiful female Earth-human who had to be Pathologist Murchison, because all of his attention was focused on the enormous but incredibly fragile insect that was flying on three sets of slowly beating, iridescent wings toward him.

As it drifted to a halt above his bed and he felt the faint downdraft from its wings, Hewlitt remembered that he had always disliked insects, and the larger they were the more he wanted to swat them. But this one was the most delicate and beautiful creature he had ever seen. Even his tongue was paralyzed with wonder.

“Thank you, friend Hewlitt,” it said, the quiet trilling and clicking sound of its speech forming an almost musical background to the translated words. “Your emotional radiation is pleasant and most complimentary. I am Prilicla.”

“What,” he said, finding both his voice and his anxiety again, “what exactly are you going to do to me?”

“I have already done all that is necessary, friend Hewlitt,” it replied, “so there is no reason for your anxiety.”

The others who had been waiting must have overheard it, because they were moving closer. When they had gathered around his bed, Prilicla raised its voice and went on, “At the present time there are no detectable abnormalities present in Patient Hewlitt’s mind, nor were there during my earlier examination of Patient Morredeth, who should now be discharged and sent home without further delay. I feel the disappointment in all of you, naturally, and I am sorry. So far as I am concerned I can feel absolutely nothing wrong with the patient.

“Friend Hewlitt,” it went on as it made a feather-light landing on the bottom of his bed, “how would you like a ride in an ambulance?”

He saw Prilicla’s body begin to tremble and realized that the empath must be sharing his own feelings of anger and bitter disappointment, feelings that he had suffered so often in the past. He said, “Don’t try to humor me, dammit! You think there’s nothing wrong with me and you’re going to send me home.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Prilicla. “This time the ambulance will be taking the patient from hospital to the scene of the original accident.”

CHAPTER 16

Even though his stay in Ward Seven had just about obliterated all traces of his xenophobia, Hewlitt was relieved to discover that on this particular ambulance the Earth-human DBDGs were in a majority of five to three.

During nonmedical operations, he learned, the special ambulance ship Rhabwar was commanded by a very serious young officer called Major Fletcher, while three other Monitor Corps lieutenants, Haslam, Chen, and Dodds, were responsible for communications, engineering, and astrogation, respectively. Since Hewlitt was not allowed to leave the casualty deck, he would have little contact with any of them or they with the medical team unless the ship was called to a medical emergency requiring their presence on the casulty deck. If that happened, command transferred to the team’s senior medical officer, who turned out to be the empathic Cinrusskin GLNO Prilicla, until the emergency was resolved.

He had been surprised, and later, when he came to know her better, very pleased, to find that the empath’s principal assistant was Pathologist Murchison. The remaining two medics were a Kelgian DBLF specialist in heavy rescue operations, Charge Nurse Naydrad, and Dr. Danalta, who was physiological classification TOBS and the most alien and, at times, familiar creature that Hewlitt had ever seen or expected to see.

Danalta was a polymorph who could make itself look like anything or anyone, and it loved to show off. But when it was the shape-changer’s turn to watch over him, especially when he was expected to sleep and not talk, it sat on the deck by his bedside like a lumpy, green pear that was featureless except for the single, large eye and ear that it extruded for the purpose.

Except for the natural sleeping periods prescribed for Earthhuman DBDG patients, he was not confined to bed.

During his first day on board, there was one very thorough physical examination, which included the withdrawal of tissue and blood specimens. While it was being done, the entire medical team stood and hovered around his bed, displaying a degree of readiness that was hair-raising in its implications while radiating a level of anxiety that even he could feel, in case he reacted in some clinically melodramatic fashion. Apart from that one examination nothing whatever was done for or to him and, because he had not reacted in any fashion whatever, they spent the next two days asking him endless questions while trying to avoid answering his.

Pathologist Murchison was a fellow Earth-human as well as being closer in personality and appearance to Hewlitt’s idea of what a medical guardian angel should look like. The next time she was on casualty watch, he tried to start a polite argument with her in the hope that she, at least, would let something slip that would tell him what they were planning to do with him.

Hewlitt knew that he did not have to control his irritation because Prilicla was resting in its cabin and out of empathic range. He began, “Everyone seems to be asking me the same questions that Medalont and all my other doctors have already asked many times, and I am giving the same answers. I’d like to help if I can, but how? You won’t answer questions or tell me anything at all about my condition. What do you think is wrong with me, and why won’t you tell me what you are trying to do about it?”

The pathologist swung around in her seat at the diagnostic console and looked away from its big viewscreen, which had been displaying a succession of still images that resembled the top surfaces of slabs of pink and purple-veined marble, but were more likely to be sections of other-species tissue with something nasty wrong with them. Maybe, Hewlitt thought, she had been expecting the pictures to bore him to sleep.

She gave a long sigh, and said, “This information would have been given to you during the post-landing briefing tomorrow but, seeing that there has been no change in your clinical condition over the past three days, there is no good reason for keeping it from you until then. You will not like the answers I give you because . . .

“Is, is it bad news?” he broke in. “I’d rather know the worst. I think.”

“If you want answers,” she said, “don’t interrupt. This is embarrassing for me as it is.”

Embarrassing for you, Hewlitt thought. He said, “I’m sorry, please go on.

She nodded, then said, “It is not good news, or bad news, it is no news. First, we kept asking the same questions in the hope that you would tell us something new, something you omitted to tell Medalont or the others, something that we can believe and act upon. According to Prilicla, your emotional radiation indicates that you are not consciously lying, but the truth you are telling us is not helpful at all. Your second question, what is wrong with you. Well, so far as we have been able to discover, you are not only well, you are an unusually fit and healthy specimen of an Earth-human male DBDG. The answer is that nothing is wrong with you.

She took a deep breath that expanded the spectacular chest inside her tight, white coveralls, further reminding him that he was a healthy male, and went on, “That being the case, Patient Hewlitt, we should declare you a healthy hypochondriac with psychological problems and tell you to go home and stop wasting our time as many of your other medics have done in the past . . .

She held up one small, well-formed hand and said, “No, don’t elevate your blood pressure, we aren’t going to do that. At least, not until we have found an explanation for your strange early case history and the more recent regeneration of Morredeth’s damaged fur, which may or may not be related. We are hoping to find the relationship, if there is one, on Etla. That is where the initial strange occurrences took place, and where your help, advice, and memories of those early episodes will be much appreciated during the investigation.

“So the answer to your third question,” she ended, smiling, “is that we don’t know what to do with you.”

“I’d be pleased to help,” Hewlitt said, “but my childhood memories might not be accurate enough for your purpose. Have you thought of that?”

“According to the Psychology Department,” she replied, “your memory is like everything else about you, well-nigh perfect. Now, Patient Hewlitt, will you please go to sleep and let me work.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “What are you doing?”

She sighed again and said, “Among other things I am comparing a series of enlarged scanner visuals of DBDG and otherspecies brains, including your own, in the hope of finding a structural variation or abnormality that might explain how you were able to do some of the things you have done, if it was you and not another as yet unidentified agency that was responsible. I don’t really expect to find evidence of a faculty that enables its possessor to perform miracles, but I have to try. Now go to sleep.”

A few minutes later she went on, “Are you sure you have told us everything? Were there any incidents, so minor or trivial that you didn’t think they were worth mentioning, like the episode with your teeth, for example, while you were a child or adult? How about contacts with people who were ill, either at home or in your working environment? For some reason the case notes make no mention of your profession or occupation. Did you have any contacts with animals, other than your kitten, that might have been ill or recently recovered from an illness, or were there any other . . .

“Do you mean my sheep?” said Hewlitt.

“I might mean your sheep,” said Murchison. “Tell me about

“Them,” he corrected.

“You’re a shepherd?” she said. “I didn’t think they had shepherds these days. Go on.”

“I’m not and they do,” he said. “Sheepherding is a rare, specialized, and very well paid job, especially when they work for me. I inherited the family business from my grandparents, because my father was the only son and he preferred a career in the space service. When he died in the flyer crash, well, I was the last Hewlitt. The case notes didn’t mention my job because nearly everyone on Earth knew who I was and what I did.

“I run Hewlitt the Tailor.”

“And I have the feeling that I should be impressed,” said Murchison. “Sorry, but I wasn’t born on Earth.”

“Neither were ninety-odd percent of the Federation citizens,” he said, “so I’m not offended. It is a small but very exclusive company that can charge the Earth and moon for its services, which is to provide handcrafted, custom-built garments made from the original, handwoven or spun tweeds and fine worsted materials. In these days of cheap, synthesized clothing there are people who are willing and wealthy enough to pay our prices, or even to try bribing their way onto our waiting list. But in spite of the fearsome prices we charge, the profit margin isn’t excessive. We have to maintain herds of sheep and other wool-bearing animals, who are classified as protected species. They still need to be shorn periodically, which is how we get the raw material for our weaving mill, but the high level and cost of health care our animals are given you wouldn’t believe.

“My job requires periodic inspection visits to our herds,” he went on, “which includes feeling the quality of wool on a few of the animals before shearing. But they are never, ever allowed to take sick or catch any infectious diseases. So I’m sorry. This information isn’t very useful to you, is it?”

“Probably not useful,” she agreed, “but interesting. We’ll need to give it some serious thought.”

“And I’m not a tailor,” he ended, “just an impeccably dressed company figurehead, when I’m not wearing a hospital nightshirt.”

Murchison smiled and nodded. “We were all wondering why an apparently non-urgent case like yours was referred to Sector General. Maybe one of your rich and influential clients might have had something to do with it, especially if he happened to be a highly placed medic anxious to get onto your waiting list.”

“But surely not influential enough,” said Hewlitt, “to have an ambulance ship like Rhabwar assisting with my case. Why am I considered that important?”

He knew at once from her sudden lack of expression that she was not going to answer. Instead she smiled again and said firmly, “No more questions, Patient Hewlitt. You can count sheep if you like, but go to sleep.”

She continued to watch him until he closed his eyes; then he heard her resume the quiet, intermittent tapping on her console. In the darkness behind his closed lids, the background silence of a ship in hyperflight became diluted by the soft, metallic creaking and humming noises interspersed with the distant, muffled, and barely audible voices of the crew that drifted aft along the communications well, sounds that at other times he would not have been aware of hearing. He lay for a subjective eternity, trying not to think about anything at all while wriggling to relieve the increasing discomfort of his sinfully comfortable bed until he could take it no longer.

“I’m not sleeping,” he said, opening his eyes.

“That is what your monitor has been telling me for the past two hours,” said Murchison, trying to hide her irritation behind a smile. “But it is always nice to have verbal corroboration. What am I going to do with you?”

Hewlitt recognized a rhetorical question when he heard one and remained silent.

She went on, “You are forbidden all medication, which, naturally, includes sedation. Rhabwar doesn’t have an entertainment channel to bore you to sleep because the occupants of the casualty deck are usually in no condition to be entertained. Danalta will be relieving me in an hour. Unless you want to spend the rest of the night watching it change shape, which is not a pretty sight, our closest equivalent to in-flight entertainment is the ship’s log of past operations. I can run that on the main screen if you like, with the nonmedical summary. Some of the material will provide useful background information for tomorrow’s briefing on Etla.”

“And will it bore me to sleep?” asked Hewlitt.

“I very much doubt it,” she replied. “Raise the backrest until you can see the whole screen without dislocating your neck. Okay? Here we go . . .

There had been time to call up the library information on Rhabwar before they had moved him on board, so he already knew that he was on a special ambulance ship whose primary purpose was the deep-space rescue, retrieval, and preliminary treatment of lifeforms in distress whose physiological classifications were hitherto unknown to the Federation. In the case of a distress call from a Federation vessel, whose flight plan, planet of origin, and crew species were known, it was simpler to dispatch a rescue vessel from the home planet with a team of same-species medics and life support on board.

With the retrieval of Rhabwar’s type of casualty, the situation was different and potentially more dangerous. In addition to being traumatized and their ability to observe and reason logically reduced by pain, shock, fear, and confusion, its casualties were more often as not thrown into a panic reaction caused by the sight of the grotesque creatures who were trying to rescue them. That was why Rhabwar’s crew had to include other-species technology experts and first-contact specialists as well as medics.

When it was not engaged on specialist rescue missions, the ship was expected to respond to the more general type of emergency ranging from large-scale space structural accidents to the coordination of medical disaster relief operations on-planet. But the majority of the missions, as well as being the most entertaining and hair-raising, were those which the log noted as requiring unique solutions.

The present mission, he had overheard Murchison tell Naydrad, would probably hold the all-time record for being both the weirdest and least dangerous they had ever been assigned.

Because his hearing was very good he had also overheard the medical team making obscure references to problems they had encountered on previous missions, to beings called the Dewatti, a pregnant Gogleskan called Khone, and the Blind Ones and their incredibly savage servants, the Protectors of the Unborn, among others. But now, as the the images of devastated ships, drifting masses of space wreckage with the dead or dying debris it contained, and the pictures of barely living organic wreckage occupying his own and the other beds around him filled the screen, those references were no longer obscure.

Murchison had been right. The pictures that were unfolding were not conducive to sleep, and so keen was he not to miss anything that he closed his eyes only to blink. He noticed neither the arrival of Danalta or the pathologist’s departure, and he grew aware of events beyond the borders of the big viewscreen only when the deck lighting came on, the screen darkened, and he felt the gentle downdraft from Prilicla’s wings as the Cinrusskin hovered above his bed.

“Good morning, friend Hewlitt,” it said. “We have emerged from hyperspace and will be landing in five hours’ time. I feel from you the emotional radiation characteristic of a high level of fatigue, although you consciously admitted its presence. It would look bad for all of us if you yawned your way through the briefing, so relax, empty your mind, and close your eyes for ten seconds and you will find yourself asleep. Trust me.”

CHAPTER 17

Rabwar possessed the delta-wing configuration and flight characteristics but not the armament of a Monitor Corps light cruiser. It was the largest class of vessel in service capable of aerodynamic maneuvering within an atmosphere as well as being able to land with minimal effect on the local environment. That was not an important consideration here because, so far as Hewlitt could see, the area where he had played and strayed in his youth remained as he remembered it, a wreckage-strewn, overgrown wilderness. While the ship was descending onto a clear area midway between his former home and the clump of tall trees with the ravine runfling through them, he was able to trace with his finger on the main viewscreen the path he had taken all those years ago.

Present at the briefing, which was held on the casualty deck because it was the largest compartment in the ship, were the medical team, Captain Fletcher, Hewlitt, and, onscreen, the grey, furcovered features of Colonel Shech-Rar, commander of the local Monitor Corps base. The officer projected the image of a very busy and impatient Orligian.

“Your names and Rhabwar’s reputation precede you, Doctor,” it broke in before Prilicla had completed its friendly, informal introductions. “Let us not waste time. Sector General has requested my full cooperation during your stay here. What is the nature of your mission, how long will it take, and what facilities will you require?”

Hewlitt, who had been introduced as a nonmedical advisor, wondered whether its service career had been spent among too many Kelgians or two few Cinrusskins or if its bad manners were an inherited characteristic.

“Regretably, Colonel,” Prilicla replied, with no detectable change in its friendly manner, “I am not at liberty to divulge the precise details of our mission, other than to say that it involves the investigation of incidents which took place over twenty years ago and which may have an important bearing on a present medical research project. It is not a matter of Federation security, a Galactic Secret, or anything of a sensitive or important nature for which, I am sure, you would have full clearance. At present the information is restricted because of simple patient confidentiality. As soon as the investigation has been completed and evaluated, I have no doubt that you will be informed of the results.”

“Is there a possibility that your investigation will pose a health risk,” said Shech-Rar, “either to my base personnel or the native population? This was Etla the Sick, remember. We succeeded in clearing it of all its ghastly diseases many years ago, and our ongoing cultural contact mission would not be helped if the people were given an unnecessary reminder of their past. Do not try to obscure your purpose with a screen of medical polysyllables, Doctor. Can you give me this assurance?”

“Yes,” said Prilicla.

Shech-Rar showed its teeth, whether in a smile or a scowl Hewlitt could not be sure, then said, “A clear, single-syllable answer. Good. But when a vessel like Rhabwar arrives on a confidential mission that is neither important nor sensitive, that is curious and so am I. No matter, Doctor. What do you need from me?”

It took only a few minutes for Prilicla to detail its requirements, but it was obvious from Shech-Rar’s voice when it spoke that suspicion had replaced its former impatience.

“I was not assigned here until five years after these incidents took place,” said the colonel, “so I have no direct responsibility in the matter. The flyer accident to the subject’s parents, which to my mind is the only incident worthy of attention, was fully investigated. The findings were that the cause was a combination of adverse weather conditions, a power system malfunction that affected the control linkages, and pilot error, the error being in not waiting until the storm had passed. You are welcome to a copy of the report. But why is it that young people with long lives ahead of them take needless risks while the old ones, with much less time remaining, are so careful?”

The colonel made an untranslatable sound, as if irritated with itself for digressing into philosophy, and went on, “In spite of what you have told me, the arrival of Rhabwar and your team here is the true measure of the mission’s importance. However, if your investigation is likely to uncover any long-past act of negligence or other misbehavior on the part of any of my officers, I will not allow you to question them until I have satisfied myself that they have Corps legal representation before answering any charges. Is that understood, Doctor?”

The empath’s fragile body and limbs trembled for a moment, as if it was sensing Shech-Rar’s emotional radiation at extreme range; then it said, “I assure you, Colonel, it is not that kind of investigation. We require permission to explore the locality where the incidents took place and, if they are still on Etla, interview the beings concerned. We are interested in their recollections, nothing more, and will make allowances for any lapses of memory. The approximate timing of the event is known to us, but we will need your help in identifying the people concerned. At present we do not even know their names.”

“That information will be on my predecessor’s file,” said the colonel. “Wait.”

Rather than the transmission ending, when Shech-Rar’s image disappeared it was replaced by the Monitor Corps symbol on a field of deep blue, indicating that the wait was not expected to be a long one. On Rhabwar everyone remained silent, not wishing to start a discussion that was sure to be interrupted. Hewlitt watched the screen until the hairy features of the colonel reappeared.

“The names you require,” said Shech-Rar without preamble, “are Stillman, Hamilton, and Telford. Major Stillman, who was then a surgeon-lieutenant, is now retired but still attached to the base as an Etlan cultural advisor, as is Dr. Hamilton, the civilian specialist in other-species dentistry. Should you need to interview it, Surgeon-Captain Telford, the senior base medical officer at the time, was posted to Dutha three years ago. The present encumbent, Surgeon-Lieutenant Krack-Yar, will make the hospital records available and discuss them with you on request.

“The matter is not important enough to warrant going to Dutha,” said Prilicla. “In the absence of the original medical officer, a copy of its records and the flyer accident investigation report will be fine, as soon as you find it convenient, Colonel.”

Shech-Rar looked at someone offscreen, nodded, then said, “Is fifteen minutes soon enough?”

“You don’t believe in wasting time, Colonel,” said Prilicla. “Thank you, yes.”

“Rather than send you the names, locations, and a map,” said Shech-Rar, “it will waste even less of your time if Major Stillman acts as your guide and escort. He can take you over the ground and introduce you to the people concerned as well as, hopefully, telling me what you are really doing here . . .”

Definitely, thought Hewlitt, the colonel had spent a long time among Kelgians.

“The residence you mentioned,” it went on, “is no longer occupied by Earth-humans. Do you still need to visit it?”

For an instant the Cinrusskin’s hover became less stable. Then it recovered and said, “Yes, Colonel. If only to apologize for landing Rhabwar uninvited in their backyard.”

Being an emotion sensitive, Priicla always tried to avoid doing or saying anything that would cause an unpleasant emotional reaction in others, because the other person’s anger or distress would be shared by the empath. Even though the colonel was well beyond the range of its empathic faculty, the habit of always saying the right thing was strong. But there were times, Hewlitt had found, when the little entity could be very economical with the truth. He had the feeling that this was one of them.

“Major Stillman will meet you at your airlock in three hours,” said the colonel. “Is there anything else you need from me, Doctor?”

Before Prilicla could finish saying no and thanking it again, the transmission ended.

“I could have taken you to the site, and the house, without Stillman’s help,” said Hewlitt. “Why do you want to go to the house anyway? The real reason, I mean, not the polite, socially acceptable one that you gave the colonel.”

“If we refused the assistance of the local Monitor Corps, friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla, “the colonel would be sure that we were trying to hide something. We are not hiding anything, because we still don’t kr~ow if there is anything to hide except, perhaps, our own future embarrassment.

“I have no good reason to visit the house,” it went on, “other than to cover old ground in the hope that a useful idea will occur to us, or to you, while we are doing so. I feel you radiating disbelief combined with disappointment. Perhaps you were expecting a more substantial reason. But the truth is that we have no clear idea of what, if anything, we will find there.

“We will proceed with the briefing now . . .

They might not know what they were looking for, Hewlitt thought, but Captain Fletcher and the entire medical team were going out well equipped to find it. His translator was working, but the language was too specialized and technical for him to understand and make a contribution, so he listened without speaking until there was an interruption from the wall speaker.

“Communications. The material promised by Colonel ShechRar has come in. Instructions?”

“Put it on our repeater screen, friend Haslam, and run the accident report first,” said Prilicla. It drifted closer until the downdraft from its wings stirred his hair, and went on, “You are welcome to remain, friend Hewlitt, but if at any time you find this material or our conversation distressing, please feel free to return to your bed and raise the hush field.”

“It happened a long time ago,” he said. “I was too young to be told all the details, but now I want to know. Thank you, but I feel sure that I’ll be all right.”

“I will know how you feel, friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla. “Proceed, friend Haslam.”

The report began with the service ID pictures of his parents, which surprised him because they looked no older than he was now, and in his mind they had always been so much bigger and older than himself. They had been looking very serious for the camera, he thought as the other personal and physiological details unrolled, but that must have been one of the few times when they had not smiled at him. The memories came flooding back, sharp and clear and corroborating in every detail the reconstruction of the accident investigators.

At the time his father had been too busy to even to look at him, but his mother had smiled and told him not to be afraid as she climbed over the backrest of the copilot’s position to squeeze down beside him. She had held him very tightly in her lap with one arm while her free hand redeployed the safety harness around both of them. Outside the canopy, the sky and the tree-covered mountains were spinning around them, with the trees coming so close that he could see individual branches. Then she had pushed his head forward, folding him in two on her lap with the back of his head pressed between her breasts. There had been a sudden shock that flung them sideways and apart, a loud, tearing crash, and the feeling of rain on his face and cold air rushing past as he fell.

He remembered an explosion of pain as he hit the ground, but nothing else until one of the rescue party that had responded to the flyer’s automatic distress beacon asked him where he was hurt.

According to the report, the flyer’s canopy had been speared by one of the treetops and was found still lodged in the upper branches, while the rest of the ship crashed to the ground and rolled down the mountain for a distance of forty-five meters before breaking up and catching fire. Because the local vegetation was sodden after a day of heavy rain, the flames did not travel up the slope to the point where the sole survivor, the seven-year-old Hewlitt boy, was lying. The report went on to discuss at length the technical evidence gathered by the investigators, which Prilicla passed over for later study by Captain Fletcher, and ended with brief details of the autopsy, disposal, and treatment of the victims.

His parents had sustained massive trauma, and the indications were that they had probably died, and were certainly unconscious, before the fire engulfed them. Hewlitt had been found in a state of shock and confusion but otherwise unharmed, and it was assumed that the small patches of blood on his clothing belonged to his mother. Although unhurt, he had been kept under observation in hospital for the nine days it took the next-of-kin, his grandmother, to arrive and collect him and arrange for the disposal of his parents’ remains.

His grandmother had not allowed Hewlitt to see the bodies because, he now realized, the cremation had simply completed the process already started by the fire.

For a moment the old but never quite forgotten pain of loss and grief returned like a great, dark vacuum filling his chest, and he tried hard to control his feelings because Prilicla was watching him and becoming unsteady in its flight. He pushed the remembered pain out of his mind and tried to concentrate on the next report that was coming up on the screen.

“Thank you, friend Hewlitt,” said the empath, and went on, “As we can see, this report relates to the medical condition, treatment, and behavior of the survivor during its nine-day stay in hospital. Even then the younger Hewlitt was presenting its doctor with problems.

“They began,” Prilicla went on, “when the base medical officer, Surgeon-Captain Telford, prescribed oral sedation. Although uninjured, the patient was close to physical exhaustion and emotionally distressed by the loss of its parents and was unable to sleep. The result was a violent but nonspecific reaction that included abdominal discomfort, respiratory difficulty, and a rash covering the skin of the lower chest and back. While the surgeon-captain was still trying to discover what was happening, the symptoms subsided. A different type of sedation was prescribed and, as a precaution, only a minute initial dose was administered, by subcutaneous injection. This time the result was a cardiac arrest which lasted for two-pointsix minutes, accompanied by a brief recurrence of respiratory impairment, both of which passed without any detectable aftereffects.

“As you can see,” Prilicla continued, indicating the treatment summary at the bottom of the screen, “Dr. Telford diagnosed a hyperallergenic reaction, cause unknown, and forbade further medication. Instead, the emotional problems were treated with verbal tranquilization and reassurance provided by a same-species nurse who was nearing retirement age, and by allowing the child, who was apparently neither ill nor injured, to tire himself out and forget some of his grief by allowing him to visit and talk to other patients, who included serving space officers with many interesting stories to tell . . .

“That nurse was very nice to me,” Hewlitt broke in, his voice quiet with remembered sadness that he had not felt for many years, “and I realize now that some of those stories might not have been true. But the treatment worked and . . . I’m sorry for interrupting, Doctor, I didn’t mean to remember out loud.”

“Don’t apologize, friend Hewlitt, your memories of the time are valuable to us,” said Prilicla. A moment later it went on, “There is an entry here to the effecrthat the then Surgeon-Lieutenant Telford was completely mystified by your atypical reaction to two simple and well-tried types of sedative medication. But it had no opportunity to discover, identify, and list what he assumed to be the allergenic substances that were causing the reaction before your relative arrived to take you to Earth. Dr. Telford had no reason, other than its unsatisfied curiosity, for keeping an otherwise healthy child in hospital.

“And now,” it ended, “has anyone anything they would like to say about this report?”

There were a few things Hewlitt would have liked to say, but he knew the question was not directed at him. It was Pathologist Murchison who spoke first.

She said, “Even though the condition was atypical in that the symptoms appeared and receded with unusual rapidity, Telford’s diagnosis of what appeared to be a wide-ranging and nonspecific allergy was sensible in the circumstances, as was his decision not to attempt further medical treatment until he knew exactly what was going on. Essentially, that is what the patient’s medics did on Earth and later in Sector General. In a word, nothing . . .

“Pathologist,” Naydrad broke in, its fur spiking with impatience. “You are restating the problem, not offering a solution.”

“Perhaps,” said Murchison, who knew her Kelgians well enough not to be irritated by the interruption. “But the point I’m trying to make is that the allergy symptoms appeared at a very early age and were repeated, with minor variations, here, on Earth, and in Sector General. This makes me wonder if the patient was born with the condition and we should be looking for a genetic rift of some kind. There are no recorded instances of anyone being allergic to the food produced by the synthesizers, which is the kind most off-planet visitors favor, and certainly not baby-formula varieties. And there would be no allergic response if . . . Hewlitt, were you breast-fed as an infant?”

“If I was,” he replied after a quick search of his earliest memories, “I was too young to remember.”

Murchison smiled. “Too bad, but it may not be important. If you were breast-fed and weaned onto synthesized food, that might explain why the first recorded allergic reaction was to medication. There is another possibility. The symptoms first appeared in the base hospital a few hours after the flyer crash. You were not hurt, but it is reasonable to assume that the fall through the branches onto the soft, wet ground rendered you temporarily unconscious. Certainly, your shocked and confused condition when found is symptomatic of a recent concussion. But it is possible that you sustained minor lacerations or abrasions, too minor in the circumstances for the rescuers to bother recording them, and that something was introduced into your system which caused the later allergic reaction. It might have been something living in the tree or on the ground, a spore or an insect or even a small animal that bit you, or a toxic substance with unknown properties that gained entry though a scratch from the foliage itself. I suggest a search of the crash site. If the suspect organism or material is native to Etla, it will still be there.

“And stop tying your fur in knots, Naydrad,” she went on. “I know that pathogens native to one world cannot affect any being who evolved on another. I also know that physiologically the natives of Etla and Earth are almost identical, so much so that there are theories about a prehistoric colonization program by common, star-traveling ancestors. But attempts at procreation between the few base personnel who, for emotional reasons, felt impelled to widen cultural contact by marrying Etlan men or women were unsuccessful. But if there is an overlap, no matter how small, in the gene structure of the two species, then that, too, should be investigated. And if Patient Hewlitt would submit to tests, very closely monitored and using trace quantities of Etlan native medication to minimize the risks, we might find the exception that proves the rule.”

“No tests, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, before Hewlitt could say the same thing in stronger language. “No medication of any kind, Etlan or otherwise, until we have a clearer idea of what we are looking for. Perhaps you have forgotten that friend Hewlitt has already been affected by Etlan native vegetation, when it ingested toxic fruit prior to falling from a tree?”

“I have not forgotten,” said Murchison, “that the younger Hewlitt survived two falls without injury. That was very fortuitous and it may also be significant if we assume that something in the fruit he consumed before the first fall caused the hyperallergic reaction following the flyer accident. The record of events during and after the second fall are supported by objective clinical evidence, but the circumstances surrounding the first is subjective, uncertain, and supported only by childhood memories that may prove to be untrustworthy. For example.

“Considering the small physical size of the patient at the time,” she went on, “the distance fallen may have been exaggerated. The fruit consumed, which was later identified by others as being highly toxic, may have been a visually similar but nontoxic variety, and the period of unconsciousness afterward could have been due simply to natural fatigue after a long afternoon at play. Children can tell tall stories, and sometimes in retrospect they can even believe them themselves, but until we have objective evidence . . . Patient Hewlitt, please control your emotional radiation!”

He was trying very hard to suppress the anger and bitter disappointment he was feeling, because Prilicla’s fragile body was being shaken by the emotional gale of Hewlitt’s making. Murchison was the only same-species medic on board. When she was not being the cool and clinical team pathologist, she had been a friendly, relaxed, competent person who instilled trust. Certainly he had liked and trusted her and had thought that she, at least, was beginning to believe him, but she had turned out to be just like all the others.

“I did not call you a liar,” she said, apparently reading his mind, “only that at present I need more proof that you were telling the truth.”

He was about to reply when the voice of the communications officer cut him short.

“We have a signal that the ground vehicle with Major Stillman on board is leaving the base,” said Lieutenant Haslam. “He is estimating arrival in eighteen minutes.”

CHAPTER 16

Hewlitt watched with a mixture of surprise and professional interest as the stout, grey-haired man who was to be their guide unfolded from his tiny ground vehicle and came forward to meet them. Stillman was not in uniform and was wearing instead the native dress of short cloak, kilt, and soft, calf-length boots. The outfit looked comfortable and not without a certain style, even though, in this instance, the flowing line of the cloak was spoiled by the wearer carrying too much junk in the concealed pockets. Unlike the coveralls worn by Murchison, Fletcher, and himself, he could tell that the garments were not the product of a synthesizer. He was considering the possibility of introducing the Etlan kilt to a few of his more sartorially adventurous clients when Prilicla drifted forward to meet the other halfway.

“Friend Stillman,” said the empath, “I must begin by apologizing for meeting you at the bottom of the boarding ramp, rather than inviting you inside where you could satisfy the intense curiosity you are feeling about the ship, but I formed the impression that Colonel Shech-Rar did not want us to take up too much of your time.”

It had already taken several minutes for Stillman to recover from what must have been his first meeting with a Cinrusskin empath-apart from a brief, appreciative glance at the eminently noticeable Murchison, he had barely noticed the others-and to find his voice.

“I—I’ve retired, Dr. Prilicla,” he said, smiling. “My time is my own, not the colonel’s, so take up as much of it as you like. And yes, I’ve heard a lot about Rhabwar and would dearly love a look over the ship. But if it is all right with you, I think we should do as the colonel says first so that I will have more time left to satisfy my curiosity about other things.”

“As you wish,” said Prilicla. “What were the colonel’s instructions to you?”

“To visit the house first,” Stillman replied. “The present occupants work on the base, but they have been excused duty for the rest of the day and should have returned home by the time we arrive. There may be a problem if you want to meet the dentist in person. At present Dr. Hamilton is visiting our other base, on Yunnet continent, and is not due to return for another three days, but if you only need to talk to him he has instructions to contact you as soon as possible at the house or the ship. After that you will be able to spend as much time as you require in the ravine.”

They were being given full cooperation, Hewlitt thought cynically, but with such enthusiasm that they were being allowed the minimum time to think or guard their tongues.

The exterior of the house looked familiar except for the front entrance, which had been enlarged and its steps replaced with a ramp to allow easy passage to the Tralthan residents, who had seen their approach and were waiting just inside the door to welcome them. Stillman, who was obviously well known to the couple, introduced them as Crajarron and Surriltor. They exchanged names without, of course, performing the uniquely Earth-human custom of shaking hands. The interior of his once familiar home was completely unrecognizable.

Most of the room dividers he remembered had disappeared, as had all but a few chairs and relaxers needed for other-species visitors because Tralthans, who could not sit down, preferred large, unobstructed expanses of flooring. Remembering Patient Hossantir’s sleeping arrangements in Ward Seven, he recognized the double-sized, padded sleeping pit in one corner as the bedroom area. In contrast to the emptiness of the floor space, the walls were almost hidden by book and tape racks, pictures and woven hangings whose subjects were unclear, and narrow, cone-shaped containers of aromatic vegetation.

While he was trying to think of something complimentary to say about the place, Prilicla apologized for the inconvenience of having an ambulance ship land with no advance warning beside their charming home.

“Apologies are unnecessary, Dr. Prilicla,” said Crajarron, with a dismissive wave of one tentacle. “You are the first Cinrusskin we have met and we are grateful for this very pleasant break in our routine. Can we offer hospitality, solid or liquid sustenance, perhaps? Our food synthesizer has many other-species’ programs.

“Regrettably, no,” said Prilicla, “we have already eaten.”

Murchison, Stillman, and Hewlitt looked at the empath, knowing that it could feel their hunger. It had not told a lie, but neither had it said how long ago they had eaten.

“We came to apologize for the intrusion of our ship,” it went on, which is engaged on an investigation into an incident that occurred when friend Hewlitt was a child living here with its parents. While we were here it wished to visit its old home and, bearing in mind its sudden departure following the flyer accident, to ask if you knew what had happened to an entity to which it was emotionally attached at that time.

Hewlitt stared at the others in turn. Stillman looked as puzzled as he himself felt, but Murchison did not look surprised at all. His cat must have died of illness, accident, or old age years ago. Why was Prilicla asking questions about it now?

Crajarron turned two of its eyes in Hewlitt’s direction and said, “Do you mean the small, furry Earth-being of limited intelligence called Snarfe? It was adopted by another Earth-human household, but it refused to stay there and kept returning to its old home. When we came to live here we found it wandering about the house and garden. Later we learned that some members of its species form attachments for persons and others for places. It had a friendly disposition and, once we learned its dietary requirements and how not to step on it when it tried to attract our attention by climbing our legs, it remained with us as a house pet.”

Hewlitt blinked, remembering that well-loved cat when it had been little more than a kitten, and feeling surprised by his sudden feelings of sorrow and loss. But Crajarron was making a strange, irregular hissing sound that did not translate. He realized that it was a Tralthan’s attempt at making the push-wushing sound Earthpeople made when trying to attract the attention of a cat only when Fudge appeared in the entrance and stalked slowly toward him.

Nobody spoke as the cat stopped, looked up at him, then began to circle his feet, butting his ankles and gently lashing his lower legs with the thick, furry tail. It was a form of nonverbal communication that had no need of translation. He stooped, picked it up with both hands, and held it against his chest and shoulder. When he ran his fingers gently from its forehead along its back, the tail stiffened and it began to purr.

“Fudge,” he said, “I certainly didn’t expect to see you again. How are you.

Prilicla flew closer and said, “Its emotional radiation is characteristic of a very old and contented entity who is without physical or mental distress and is presently enjoying the stroking of its fur. If it could speak it would tell you that it is well, and to please continue what you are doing. Friend Murchison, you know what to do.”

“Yes indeed,” the pathologist replied, producing her scanner. “Crajarron, Surriltor, may I?” To Hewlitt she added, “This won’t hurt at all, just hold it steady for a moment while I scan. I’m recording for later study, if necessary.

Fudge must have thought that she was playing a new game, because it took a double swipe at the scanner with claws sheathed, then returned to the enjoyment of the petting while she completed the examination.

“Do you wish to reclaim your property, Earth-person Hewlitt?” said Crajarron. Both Tralthans were directing all of their eyes at him, and he did not need an empathic faculty or the sight of Prilicla trembling to know that the interspecies social relations were cooling fast.

“Thank you, no,” he said, returning Fudge to the floor. “Plainly the cat likes it here and would be unhappy elsewhere, but I am grateful for this opportunity to renew an old friendship.”

The atmosphere thawed at once, Prilicla regained flight stability, and Fudge transferred its affections to Surriltor by jumping onto one of the Tralthan’s massive feet. A few minutes later their polite exchange of farewells was interrupted by the house communicator’s double chime, signaling an incoming call.

It was Dr. Hamilton.

“Sorry I won’t be able to answer your questions in person, Dr.

Prilicla,” he said. “Stillman will have told you that I’m visiting the

Vespara establishment on Yunnet right now. One of the joys of

being an other-species peripetetic dentist on this world. How can

I help you?”

While Prilicla was explaining what it wanted, the two Tralthans, not wanting to eavesdrop on what might be a private conversation, moved to a corner of the room and raised their hush field. Hewlitt stared hard at the screen, trying to remember the other’s face and voice, but the only memory that came was of shining instruments and hands projecting from white cuffs. Perhaps he had not looked at the other’s face long enough for it to register.

“I remember the incident,” said the dentist, “not because it was important but because it was the first and only time I was asked to extract teeth that would have detached themselves naturally. At the time I decided that the child was overimaginative, timid, and unwilling to inflict what he believed would be serious pain on himself by pulling out the teeth with his fingers, as most children do, and his mother had taken him to me to sort out the problem. It was too minor a procedure to require an anesthetic and, I remember now, there was a note in his med file warning against the use of painkilling medication because of a then unidentified allergy.”

“We are still having trouble identifying it,” said Murchison. “What happened to the teeth? Did you keep or examine them following the extraction?”

“There was no reason to do that,” said Hamilton, and laughed. “They were just ordinary children’s first teeth. Besides, if you are unfamiliar with the tooth-fairy myth current among young Earthchildren, he insisted on having them back for financial reasons.

“Is there anything else you can remember about the incident, friend Hamilton?” said Prilicla. “No matter how odd or unimportant it may have seemed at the time.”

“Sorry, no,” the dentist replied. “I never saw the child again, so presumably the rest of his baby teeth detached normally.”

Hewlitt barely heard the end of the conversation, because he was remembering something else about those teeth, something he had almost forgotten until the dentist’s words brought it back. He had not told anyone about it, then or later, because they would have said that it was all his imagination. Even as a child he had hated people telling him that he was imagining things.

“Friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla, drifting closer, “your emotional radiation, comprising minor levels of irritation, caution, and expected embarrassment, suggests that you are hiding something from us. Please tell us about it. We will not laugh or embarrass you. Any new datum on this case could turn out to be important.

“I doubt that,” he said, “but here it is . . .”

Apart from one loud, untranslatable sound from Naydrad, they watched him until he had finished speaking. It was Prilicla who broke the incredulous silence.

“Dr. Hamilton made no mention of this,” said the empath. “Did you show the teeth to or discuss them with anyone?”

“He didn’t examine the teeth before he gave them back to me,” Hewlitt replied. “They were fine and very hard to see, anyway. There were five or six of them, pale grey in color and about an inch long, on each tooth. They were in my hand all the way home, but I didn’t show it to my grandmother because she was a bit irritated with me over what she thought was an unnecessary visit to the dentist. By the time we got back to the house they were gone. They must have dropped off or been blown away by the groundcar’s airconditioning. I know, none of you believe me.

Murchison laughed, then shook her head and said, “I’m sorry. But it is difficult to believe you when you keep telling us about so many strange, unsupported, unrelated, and completely incredible symptoms. Do you blame us?”

Prilicla’s spidery limbs were trembling again. It said, “I promised that we would not cause embarrassment to friend Hewlitt, who feels that it is telling the truth.”

“I know he thinks he is telling the truth, dammit,” said Murchison. “But I ask you, hairy teeth!”

This time it was Stillman who exercised the diplomacy characteristic of a cultural contact specialist by changing the subject.

“Dr. Prilicla,” he said. “Would you like to visit the ravine now?”

Hewlitt waited until they were outside before he said, “I knew that was Fudge the instant I saw it, and I know it recognized me at the same time. I can’t describe . . . It was a really strange feeling.”

“Your feeling of recognition toward your nonsapient little friend was complex,” said the empath. “I have never before encountered an emotional response quite like it, and I would not have been surprised if you had asked the Tralthans for the animal to be returned to you. I am pleased at your response to the situa . . . Friend Murchison, you are feeling confused and dissatisfied about something. What is it?”

“That cat,” she replied, glancing behind her at the house. “My parents liked cats and never had less than two of them at home, so I’m familiar with the species. For example, the life span of a healthy cat is twelve to fourteen Earth years, not double that period, so Snarfe has no business being alive. Dr. Stillman, how sure are you that it is an Earth cat and not a more long-lived Etlan or otherspecies look-alike?”

“Very sure,” the surgeon-captain replied. “When the culturalcontact people came to Etla, and it was clear that they would be staying here for a long time, the Corps leaned over backward in the matter of bringing out their personal effects, including, in one case, a pet cat. A few weeks after arrival it produced a litter of six kittens who were all found foster homes. Snarfe was one of them.”

“Then why,” said Murchison, “should an ordinary Earth cat double its life span here?”

Stillman walked several paces before he said, “I’ve often wondered about that myself, ma’am. My theory is that on Etla the cat was not exposed to any of the feline diseases it would normally have encountered on Earth and, as we know, Etlan pathogens have no effect on off-world species. Here it was isolated from all lifethreatening or physically debilitating diseases and should die only from accident or old age, after using up all nine of its long and very healthy lives.”

Murchison smiled. “We know that Fudge had one bad accident and survived it,” she said. “That is a nice theory, Doctor, but is there supporting evidence? What about the other kittens from the same litter?”

“I was afraid you would ask that,” said Stillman. “One lost an argument with a log transporter. Ml five of the others died naturally, so far as I know from old age, about ten years ago.

“Oh,” said Murchison.

CHAPTER 19

Prilicla broke the long silence that followed by saying, “Friend Hewlitt, we would like to begin retracing your path from the position of the old hole in the garden enclosure where you escaped to the tree from which you fell. If you are ready, please lead the way.

On the other side of the garden fence he began half walking, half wading through the long, thick growth that looked like Earth grass unless one looked at it more closely, ignoring the insects that were too small for the differences to show, and staring up at the hot, blue sky with its scattered cloud shapes that were too irregular and normal to look alien. Stillman kept pace with him but did not speak, and the others were lagging too far behind for him to hear what they were saying. They were probably talking about him, he thought angrily, and discussing the clinical and psychological implications of his latest flight of fancy.

“I wasn’t sure at first, Dr. Stillman,” he said, trying to start a conversation that might change his mental subject, “but I recognized you, too. You seemed to be much taller then, but I suppose all adults are giants to a four-year-old. Apart from that you haven’t changed much.”

“I didn’t recognize you at all,” said Stillman. He smiled and patted his ample waistline. “You have grown up while I grew out.”

“It was lucky finding you still here,” Hewlitt went on. “I thought the Monitor Corps moved its people all over the galaxy.”

“I am very lucky to be here,” said Stillman.

They walked in silence for at least thirty paces, and he was beginning to wonder if his words had somehow given offense when the other went on, “On this Etla we have an ongoing culturalcontact situation that is, well, delicate, because in so many ways the natives are not alien. When dealing with an intelligent species that is completely alien, if a misunderstanding occurs, allowances are made on both sides. Here we are trying both to understand and gradually reeducate a culture that took a wrong turning. Or rather, they were misinformed and misguided by their emperor into mass xenophobia and defending themselves offensively against a no flexistent threat. We had to gain their trust and show them-we are still showing them-that other-species intelligent life-forms are like themselves, not necessarily bad or good, just different.

“Even in your time we had a few other-species personnel attached to the base,” Stillman went on. “The idea was to dilute the Etlan xenophobia by showing aliens working beside us in harmony, and occasionally we would send them out with a covert guard on very carefully arranged visits to public places. They would be spectators at important sporting events, or go on sightseeing trips where the sightseeing was two-way or, most important, to meet and talk to children in schools. Now the base personnel and specialist civilian support comprises three Etlans for every one Earth-human or other-species being, so the cultural-contact program is progressing well.

“But the problem is complicated by the fact that, even though they are nice, friendly people, they are very proud. Even I forget sometimes how different they are; mistakes can still be made. That, as well as its natural lack of charm, is the reason Shech-Rar is not pleased to have a wildly assorted bunch of extraterrestrials conducting an unspecified investigation and blundering around in ignorance of the situation.

“Nothing personal,” he added, “but you have just received a condensed and edited version of my lecture to newly arrived Corps personnel.”

Hewlitt did not think it was his place to reply. He could hear the others moving closer, but apparently they were more interested in listening to the two in front than talking. The silence continued until Stillman gave a small, awkward laugh and spoke again.

“If an officer is able and dedicated and successful in gaining the natives’ trust,” he said, “his superiors like him to remain for as long as possible so as to give continuity to the process. Apparently I displayed unusual aptitude by insisting on marrying an Etlan and staying here after my service retirement date. She is the reason why I told you I was lucky to be here.”

“I understand,” said Hewlitt.

The other seemed to sense his embarrassment. He said, “Don’t worry, I’m not going maudlin in my old age. We met during my second year here. She was what they call a Mother Teacher of the Young, one of the people who instruct four- to seven-year-olds, and the first Etlan to agree to introduce a Tralthan teacher equivalent and share her class with it. She had already accepted the idea that the best time to instruct children was before they had a chance to acquire their parents’ prejudices. She was a widow. There were an awful lot of widows and orphaned children about at the time. We could have none of our own, naturally, but we adopted four before we became too old to . . .

“Doctor,” said Murchison, lengthening her stride until she drew level with them. “I know that the species difference is a bar to procreation, but it might answer a few puzzling clinical questions, or maybe puzzle us even more, if you knew of an exception to that rule. Do you? And if so, is it possible that one of Hewlitt’s parents was an Etlan. Or that he was an Etlan fosterling?”

Stillman shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. I knew his parents very well before he was born, and I was present when he arrived.”

“It was a pretty wild idea, anyway,” said Murchison, holding up her hand and clenching it into a fist. “You are looking at a hand clutching at hypothetical straws.

Hewlitt remained silent. He was aware of a strange feeling of temporal double vision. The grass was waist-high as it had been to the four-year-old Hewlitt, the trees and bushes had grown taller and thicker, but so had he, and the smell of sun-warmed vegetation and the droning and ticking sounds of insects were exactly the same. Only the distances between the landmarks had shrunk with age.

“I remember this very well,” he said, and raised his hand to point. “The first bush I played around is there.”

“Can you remember eating anything here?” said Murchison. “A wild berry, perhaps, or did you pull a blade of grass and chew on it? I’m thinking in terms of a possible antidote to the toxic material ingested later.”

“No,” said Hewlitt, and pointed again. “That ruined house was next. But I’m surprised it wasn’t pulled down or rebuilt by now. The whole area is still a wilderness.”

“That is deliberate,” said Stillman. He looked all around him before going on. “This was the place where the battle which finally overthrew their imperial representative was fought, and the area where all the off-wonders are housed. It is intended both as a reminder of the bad old days and the promise of the new. So far it seems to have worked. On public holidays this is a nice, quiet place to picnic, except when the Etlan children find some off-world kids to play with, when the noise can be horrendous.”

The house was little more than a shell with its roof open to the sky and weeds growing in the debris covering the floor. There were scorch marks on one wall, but after the passage of so many years the burnt smell was probably due to memory rather than lingering smoke. A different generation of small animals and insects scampered or crawled through the weeds, and Murchison asked if he remembered being bitten or stung by any of them. He shook his head, but she asked Naydrad to help her gather and trap a few random specimens for later analysis.

“Next,” he said, pointing, “I went to that burned-out fighting vehicle, over there.”

This time it was Fletcher rather than Hewlitt who was doing the exploring. They heard him crawling through the dark interior, muttering not quite under his breath that it was a tighter squeeze for a man than a child, until his head and shoulders reappeared through the entry hatch.

“It is a medium-level-technology mobile gun platform,” he reported, “with control positions for a crew of three. The larger weapon is designed to fire exploding shells; the smaller used beltfed solid projectiles. The ammunition, fuel, and most of the circuit boards have been withdrawn. There is nothing left but a few items of equipment not worth salvaging and a lot of insects. Do you want specimens?”

“Yes, please,” said Murchison. “Different, if possible, to those from the house.”

“To me,” said Fletcher in a disgruntled voice, “one squishy insect looks much like another.”

“If you need information on local insects, ma’am,” said Stillman, that is one of my wife’s subjects. She would be pleased to help. What kind of information are you looking for exactly?”

“We don’t know exactly, Doctor,” Murchison replied. “It is possible that the younger Hewlitt was having too much fun at the time to remember being stung or bitten, and that could have a bearing on what happened to him later.”

“I understand,” said Stillman, “I think.”

They followed him to the vehicle that lay on its side with its stripped tread lying like a metal carpet beside it, and to the other vehicles he had played in, on, and around. The others had stopped speaking, because Hewlitt was talking and remembering every detail as he walked. Finally they came to the tall tree with the twisted branches and green-and-yellow, pear-shaped fruit that overhung the steep slopes of his ravine.

“Those branches only look strong,” said Stillman as Fletcher was about to start climbing. “They won’t bear the weight of an adult.”

“That is not a problem, friend Stillman,” said Pnilicla. The slow beating of its wings increased in frequency and it rose like a stately, iridescent dragonfly to hover above the fruit-bearing branches of the treetop.

“Please be careful, Doctor,” Stillrnan called after it, in a worried voice. “The skin is thin at this time of year and the juice is deadly stuff.”

The Major did not speak again, although it was obvious that he wanted to interrupt several times while Hewlitt was describing how he had picked and eaten the fruit, fallen, and wakened at the bottom of the ravine with the younger Stillman bending over him. While they were climbing down the steep slope to the bottom, he kept his lips pressed so tightly together that they might have been held closed with sutures.

“I feel you wanting to say something, friend Stillman,” said Pnilicla. “What is it?”

The monitor officer looked around the rock- and wreckagestrewn floor of the ravine, then up at the fruit-bearing treetop. Unlike the first time Hewlitt had seen it, the sun was bright and high and showed just how dangerous the place was and how very lucky he had been to survive the fall without serious injury.

Stillman cleared his throat and said, “On Etla that tree belongs to a rare and, in spite of its lethal fruit, protected species. This one is very old and slow-growing and at most is only a few meters taller than when the young Hewlitt fell from it, and this is a deep and dangerous ravine. If he had climbed to the topmost branches, eaten even a single mouthful of that fruit, and then fallen down here, he would have been dead. Twice.

“I have no wish to offend you,” he went on, looking straight at Hewlitt. “My explanation at the time was that you had been overtined, hungry, and thirsty after playing for many hours in the sun. The sight of the fruit at the top made you try to climb the tree, but gave up the attempt and slid down the slope rather than falling to the bottom. The condition of your clothing at the time, plus the fact that there was not a single scratch or a bruise on you, supports this theory. After trying to climb the tree and seeing what you thought was a cluster of edible fruit at the top, you fell asleep so that your memory of the event was a mixture of dreams and reality.

“Sorry,” he ended. “You may not be aware of lying, but neither can you be telling the truth.”

For several minutes the medical team maintained a diplomatic silence while busying themselves with the collection of plant and insect specimens at Murchison’s direction. Hewlitt was well used to the polite disbelief of others, and Stillman was just another doctor who had decided that an overactive imagination was all that ailed him, so his feelings were of irritation and disappointment rather than anger. That was why he was surprised when Pnilicla’s flying showed signs of instability-he knew that it was not his own emotional radiation that was the cause-and less surprised when the empath answered the question before anyone could ask it.

“Friend Fletcher,” it said. “You are radiating high levels of curiosity and excitement. Why?”

The captain was kneeling beside a thick, torpedo-shaped object that was almost hidden by undergrowth and soil washed down from the slopes by rain. Fletcher opened his equipment pack and withdrew what looked like a high-penetration scanner.

“There is evidence of foreign technology here,” he said. “This object is structurally more sophisticated than the other wreckage hereabouts. I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve had a closer look at the interior.”

“It might not be important,” said Stillman, “but Hewlitt was found sleeping beside that thing. At the time I was too interested in his condition to bother looking at another piece of wreckage.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Murchison, moving quickly to join Fletcher. “Danalta, Naydrad, until we know what this means, forget about the bug and plant specimens.”

Still trembling from the emotional radiation of the others as well as its own excitement, Pnilicla alighted on the ground beside them. “Ml recorders are on, friend Fletcher,” it said. “When you are ready.”

The captain’s words and actions were precise and unhurried as he described aloud what he saw, thought, and did at every stage of his examination, so much so that Hewlitt wondered if the other was talking for posterity in case the thing blew up in his face. Pnilida, with whom cowardice was a prime survival characteristic, and everyone else were standing or hovering as close to Fletcher as possible without getting in his way and seemed not to be worried. Hewlitt moved closer to join them.

According to Fletcher, the object was just a hollow cylinder under three meters long and half a meter in diameter, with two sets of four triangular stabilizers projecting from the midsection and tail. The outer surface of the casing was pitted and discolored and showed evidence of surface melting that suggested it had been subjected to a brief period of ultra-high temperature. There was also a trace of radioactivity, very faint and harmless, indicating that it might have been briefly exposed to an external source of intense radiation as well as heat. Propulsion was by a single, integral chemical booster that occupied three-quarters of the volume. From the analysis of the burnt residue and a rough estimate of the vehicle’s weight, he judged the range to be about sixty to seventy miles.

There were two small, recessed compartments with opened, hinged flaps spaced about one meter apart along the longitudinal axis, equidistant from the vehicle’s center of gravity. The remains of four rotted strands of cable sprouted from the openings, suggesting that the vehicle was intended to be soft-landed in the horizontal position by twin parachutes. There was no sign of the parachute fabric because, Fletcher said, it was either biodegradable or it had been torn off by branches on the way down.

“The first ten inches of the nose section hinges downward,” Fletcher went on. “It probably fell open on landing and was later covered by soil and grass. Apart from the latch mechanism it seems to be filled with dense padding that has not rotted. The forward quarter of the vehicle, where normally I would expect to find the warhead, is filled with the same padding except for a cylindrical space five inches in diameter running along the longitudinal axis for a distance of three-quarters of a meter. Inside the hollow there is a five-inch circle of plastic, thickly padded on the forward face and with the other side attached to a short bar and . . . and what looks like a piston mechanism designed to expel a cylindrical container of some kind from the hollow interior. But, owing possibly to a malfunction or a rough landing, the piston traveled only halfway along its track so that the container was not completely expelled and, an unknown time later, it was shattered.”

The gloves he was wearing were like a tough, transparent second skin, combining sensitivity of touch with maximum protection. Fletcher kept his eyes on the scanner display as he moved his free hand into the opening.

“As well as about a million insects nesting in the padding,” he continued, “there are small pieces of glasslike material inside and, yes, I can see more of them partially buried in the grass and soil around the hinged nose cone. They appear to be highly polished on one side and covered with a dark brown, matte coating on the other. I expect you will want specimens?”

Murchison dropped onto her hands and knees beside him and said, “Yes!”

Hewlitt could not remember ever hearing a word spoken with such vehemence and suppressed excitement. Fletcher gave her one of the fragments, which she placed in the portable analyzer hanging from her equipment harness. Everyone waited for her to speak.

“Our analyzers agree,” she said to Fletcher. “It is a thin, brittle, very strong glasslike plastic. The degree of curvature indicates that it is a fragment of a cylindrical flask. Apart from a few small traces of insect excrement, the outer surface is clean and highly polished. The opaque coating on the inner surface appears to be a synthetic nutrient, probably in solution, that has since dried out. I will need more specimens and a lengthy session with the ship’s analyzer to tell you the form of life it was meant to feed. Ml I can say now is that the vehicle contained an organism or organisms that needed to be kept alive.”

Fletcher was about to hand her another one of the fragments when he stopped to look at Stillman.

“Doctor,” he said, “did the Etlans ever use chemical or biological weapons?”

CHAPTER 20

Hewlitt took an instinctive step backward, his body breaking into a sweat that was not due to the warmth of the sun, but nobody else moved. Either they were all lacking in imagination, which was unlikely, or there was no danger in the situation. He took another step backward anyway.

“Not to our knowledge, Captain,” Stillman replied. “There is no historical record of them ever being used in Etlan planetary wars, and they would be pretty ineffective in a space battle. Besides, this world was sick enough already. They could have been developed secretly by the emperor’s scientists, and toward the end of the rebellion he might have been desperate enough to use everything he had, but I would say not. The casualty lists of the period mention traumatic injuries resulting from explosions, shrapnel, and gunshot wounds, not disease.”

He paused long enough for Fletcher to pass Murchison three more fragments before going on. “In any case, chemical or biological weapons are designed to burst on impact or in the air above the target. This one was soft-landed by parachute, the expulsion mechanism malfunctioned, and it didn’t break open until it was struck by something.”

“Or someone,” said Prilicla.

One by one they turned to stare at Hewlitt, as surprised by the empath’s words as he was himself. It was Stillman who spoke first.

He said, “If you mean that it was the Hewlitt child who fell onto this thing, smashed it, and released whatever was inside, I can’t help you. He was lying beside it, but it was dark and I was too busy examining him to notice whether there was any broken glass lying around. Besides, Etlan pathogens cannot affect anyone from off-planet. We all know that. And, well, he looks as if he hasn’t had a day’s illness in his life.”

There was a faint trembling in Prilicla’s limbs as it nerved itself for the effort of telling another person that he was wrong.

“Friend Hewlitt has a long history of nonspecific illnesses,” it said, “all of which responded negatively to treatment. For that reason, diagnosis has been uncertain and the strange succession of symptoms displayed was initially and perhaps mistakenly thought to have a purely psychological basis. Our provisional diagnosis is that he suffers from a wide-ranging, hyperallergic reaction to all forms of medication used so far. We are fairly sure that the condition is not life-threatening, except when an attempt is made to administer medication orally, by subcutaneous injection, or by external application and massage into the dermis. It is a clinically confusing picture.”

Stillman shook his head, then pointed at the torpedo. “And is this thing helping to reduce your confusion?”

A faint tremor shook the empath’s body as if someone, perhaps Prilicla itself, was generating unpleasant emotional radiation. Instead of answering the question, it said, “Friend Stillman, I have been feeling your hunger and that of the others since I refused the Tralthans’ offer of hospitality at the house. My reason for doing so is that Rhabwar’s food synthesizer was recently reprogrammed by Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas himself, and we could do a better job of satisfying it on the ship. Would you like to dine with us on board, now?”

“Yes, please,” said Stillman.

“I am also detecting feelings of negation and intense curiosity from one of the team. Friend Fletcher, is there a problem?”

“The problem is this soft-landed vehicle,” the captain replied. “I would like to have a closer look at the actuator mechanism controlling the piston. It seems to be unnecessarily sophisticated for the simple job it had to do, but I prefer to keep the structure intact and undisturbed. For that I need Danalta to extrude the specialized limbs and digits that will enable us to examine and disassemble the actuator from inside. I have no wish to be insubordinate, Doctor, but from me you must be feeling intense curiosity rather than hunger.”

Prilicla gave a low, trilling sound that did not translate before it said, “Very well, the two of you are excused. Friend Murchison, do you wish to join the mutineers?”

The pathologist shook her head. “I can do no more here,” she said. “The coating on the fragments is a synthesized nutrient material suited to the needs of a wide range of warm-blooded oxygenbreathers. There are a number of unidentified organisms present; they may belong to the original contents of the flask or they may be native to Etla, or both. A full analysis isn’t possible with this portable equipment, so it will have to wait until we return to the ship, and after lunch.”

With its iridescent wings catching the sunlight and seeming to reflect every color in the spectrum, Prilicla rose high above the edge of the ravine to disappear in the direction of the ship, leaving Fletcher and Danalta to complete their investigation and the others to return as they had come.

The empath seemed to be in an awful hurry, Hewlitt thought. It was the first time he had seen the Cinrusskin act in a manner verging on the impolite.

“There are times,” Stillman said to Murchison, who was climbing beside him, “when I wish I could fly. Or better still, that I hadn’t allowed myself to become so three-dimensional in my old age.”

Murchison smiled politely but remained silent until they reached the top; then she said, “Surgeon-Captain Stillman, will you answer a question?”

“You sound very formal and serious, ma’am,” the other replied, “which means the question will be the same. I will if I can. “Thank you,” said the pathologist. She took three long, swishing steps through the long grass and went on, Something very strange must have happened here during the rebellion. I know the accounts and dispatches are not secret, but when I tried to brief myself on the subject I discovered that the Monitor Corps would make them available only to accredited historians and scholars, who, it turned out, were in no hurry to publish.

“The reason given,” she went on, “was that the former worlds of the Etlan Empire were being assimilated into the Galactic Federation and it would hamper the process if all the reasons for the rebellion on this world in particular were made available to the merely curious, or worse, to those wishing to abstract the more dramatic incidents to produce shallow and insensitive treatments for the mass-entertainment channels. The natives here, I was told, are still troubled by the war crimes committed against them by their emperor and must not be reminded of them.

“But what exactly were those crimes?” she continued. “Was chemical warfare or biological experimentation on sapient beings among them? It might aid our investigation if we knew. Or are you, too, forbidden to talk?”

Stillman shook his head. “No, ma’am. I can talk to people who will not misuse the information. It will be given on a patient confidentiality basis, because the emperor, and the exclusive families who were the hereditary imperial advisors, were very sick people.

“Have you another question, ma’am?” he added, smiling. “A nice, simple one that will not need a couple of hours and a very nasty slice of history to answer properly?”

Murchison did not reply until they were about to ascend Rhabwar s boarding ramp.

“Yes,” she said. “Do you know if Fudge ever went exploring in Hewlitt’s ravine?”

Captain Fletcher and Dr. Danalta, whose curiosity regarding the object in the ravine was still outweighing their hunger, were listening on their communicators to Stillman giving his long answer to her first question because they, like Hewlitt, had not been present during the single, epic, and only multiple-ship engagement of the war, the climactic battle for Sector General.

“For political reasons,” Stillman was saying as he loosened his kilt’s waistband to relieve the pressure on his recently expanded stomach, “the Monitor Corps does not refer to the Etlan conflict as a war. The idea of a fifty-world empire tucked away in a hitherto unexplored galactic sector opening undeclared hostilies on a totally unprepared Federation was, well, destabilizing to say the least, and had to be played down.

“There has been only one interstellar war,” he continued, “the one between Earth and Orligia, whose cessation brought about the formation of the Galactic Federation. Since then it has been generally accepted that interstellar warfare for economic or territorial gain is logistically and economically impossible. It costs too much and there are too many uninhabited planets just waiting for colonization. If the belligerent culture or its rulers were sufficiently demented to be motivated by hatred alone rather than the expectation of gain, their victim worlds could simply be detonated or otherwise rendered uninhabitable. But a culture does not develop the technology to get into space, much less to mount successful interstellar colonization projects, without learning the basic lessons of civilization, that is the ability to understand, cooperate, and live together in peace. So it was axiomatic that any new species we discovered that had an interstellar-travel capability had to be highly civilized as well as technically advanced.

“Where the Etlan Empire was concerned,” he went on, “the Monitor Corps had to consider the possibility that it was the exception to that rule. But until we were sure, everything possible was done to conceal the locations of the Federation worlds from them while we found out all we could about their culture and at the same time played down the true gravity of the threat. That is why we, as the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, prefer to think of it as a large-scale police action . . .

“Doctor,” said Naydrad, its fur tufting into spikes of irritation, “with hundreds of armed ships dogfighting all around us and non-nuclear torpedoes blowing chunks out of the hospital’s outer hull, it felt like a war, not a riot! Were you there?”

“Yes,” said Stillman. In the quiet, serious tone of one who is recalling unpleasant memories, he went on, “I was the junior medic on Vespasian when she collided with that Etlan transport, and helped move the casualties into the hospital. When Conway, who was the senior surviving medic by that time, saw that I had escaped with only a few bruises, he told me that they were desperately short of staff and put me to work in an other-species ward somewhere. The hospital’s translation computer had been knocked out and trying to communicate was . . . Anyway, it might have felt like a war but officially it is recorded as a police operation involving organized and heavily armed lawbreakers.

In the silence that followed, Hewlitt looked from Stillman to Murchison to Prilicla, who were all reacting in characteristic fashion to their memories of a terrible experience they had shared. He felt excluded, but for the first time in his life he was grateful for being an outsider.

Stillman gave an abrupt shake of his head and continued, “The trouble began when one of your ex-patients, a very high-powered entity called Lonvellin, discovered what it called Etla the Sick Planet . . .

“I am familiar with the Lonvellin case,” Prilicla broke in. “It was the then Senior Physician Conway’s patient and I assisted with the emotional radiation readings while it was unconscious . . . I’m sorry. Friend Stillman, please go on.

Following its discharge from Sector General, Lonvellin had boarded its private starship and resumed the interrupted search for a world, said to be in a hitherto unexplored section of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, about which it had heard some very disquieting rumors. In spite of its physiological classification of EPLH, its massive body and fearsome natural weaponry, Lonvellin was a highly intelligent, compulsively altruistic, extremely long-lived, and intensely independent being who made it very plain that it did not and probably never would need help from anyone in rectifying any nasty situation it might find because it had been curing ailing planetary cultures for the greater part of its very long life.

It had come as a great surprise to the Monitor Corps when Lonvellin contacted them with the news that it had found the world it had been seeking and asked them for specialized assistance.

Conditions on the world Lonvellin had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric. It needed advice in the medical area before it could take effective action against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed planet. It also asked that beings of physiological classification DBDG, and specifically Earthhuman entities, should be sent to act as information gatherers. It explained that the natives were of that classification and were violently hostile to all off-wonders who did not closely resemble themselves, a fact that was seriously hampering Lonvellin’s activities.

From the mass of evidence gathered over many months’ observation and monitoring of communications channels from orbit, Lonvellin judged the planet, called Etla by the inhabitants, to have been a thriving colony world that had regressed because of the effect of a wide variety of diseases affecting more than sixty-five percent of the population. But the presence of a small and still functioning spaceport meant that Lonvellin’s first and usually most difficult problem, that of making the natives trust an alien and perhaps visually horrifying being who had dropped out of their sky, should have been simplified, because the inhabitants were already used to the idea of off-planet visitors.

Lonvellin’s intention had been to play the role of a not very bright off-wonder who had been forced to land in order to make repairs to its ship. For this it would require various odd and completely worthless pieces of metal or plastic, and it would pretend great difficulty in making the Etlans understand what it needed. But for this worthless material it would exchange artifacts of great value, and soon the more enterprising inhabitants would begin to take advantage of the situation.

At that stage Lonvellin did not mind being exploited, because the situation was going to change. Rather than give items of value, it would offer to perform even more valuable services, including that of a teacher. Then it would tell them that it considered its ship to be beyond the technical resources of Etla to repair, and as had happened on many previous occasions, gradually it would be accepted as a permanent resident. After that it would have been just a matter of time before it was able to begin changing the Etlan situation for the better, and time was something with which Lonvelun was well supplied.

“To an immensely long-lived and highly intelligent being like Lonvellin,” Stillman went on, “it was all an elaborate and intricate game that it had played successfully many times in its past. It was a good game in that the populations of the worlds concerned benefited as well as rewarding the player with the satisfaction of a job well done. But this time Lonvellin’s game went disastrously wrong. From the moment it landed on the outskirts of a small town and revealed itself, it was kept too busy with the ship’s defenses to begin to play . . .

Unable to proceed without discovering why a race with experience of space travel should be so violently xenophobic, and not being in a position to ask questions itself, Lonvellin had called for Earth-human assistance. Because of the incredibly high incidence of disease among the population, it had also asked that the senior physician who had been in charge of its case at Sector General advise and assist as well. Shortly afterward, cultural-contact specialists of the Monitor Corps accompanied by Conway had arrived, sized up the situation for themselves, and gone in.

The Etlans were contacted simultaneously at two levels. The first was by a few trained linguists and medics who were landed covertly and concealed their translators under native dress, no other disguise being necessary because the physiological resemblance was so close. Problems with accent and pronunciation were disguised by the pretense of having a speech impediment, it being difficult to identify an accent when the speaker had a stutter or a disease affecting the mouth and tongue, a medical condition that was very common on Etla.

On the second level, a large Monitor vessel landed openly at the spaceport; the Corpsmen admitted their off-world origin and conversed normally by translator. Their story was that they had heard of the plight of the native population and had come to give what medical assistance they could. The Etlans accepted this story, revealing the fact that every ten years an imperial vessel was sent to them loaded with the newest drugs and with healers on board familiar with their use, but in spite of this their medical condition continued to deteriorate. The strangers were welcome to do what they could, but the impression given was that if the medical efforts of an empire covering nearly fifty worlds was powerless to help them then the Monitor Corps was wasting its time.

The majority of Etlans were friendly, trusting people who talked freely about themselves and their empire. The Corps’ contactors were also friendly, but more reticent.

When the subject of the strange and frightful entity called Lonvellin came up, the Corps pretended complete ignorance and their opinions about it leaned heavily toward the middle of the road.

But the really important information had come from the covert investigators. They discovered that the natives were terrified of Lonvellin because they had been taught that all extraterrestrials were disease carriers. The first medical lesson that all star-traveling cultures learned, that pathogens evolved on one planet could not affect the beings of another, had been withheld from them.

Deliberately.

“At least their intense and continuing fear of contracting new infections was understandable,” Stillman continued, “because Etla was a very sick planet. It was a seventh-generation colony world, widely settled but not heavily populated, that had been dogged with ill health for more than a century. At the time an incredible sixty-five percent of its men, women, and children were affected by a wide variety of diseases, most of which were accompanied by a large degree of physical disablement. Very few of the conditions were life-threatening but a high proportion were disfiguring. Many of the contagious diseases would have responded to isolation and simple medical treatment, but their medical science was primitive and there were no research facilities because the empire did all their medical thinking for them.

“The situation was driving us out of our medical minds,” he went on, “because so far as we could see all of the conditions we had seen were curable. If we could have declared the planet a disaster area and moved in massive medical support, the problem would have been solved within a few years at most. But we had a delicate first-contact situation on our hands: the people were proud and independent and, at that time, still loyal and grateful to their emperor on Imperial Etla and to the people of all the other worlds called Etla that made up the empire for their continuing support. The arrival of massive medical aid from strangers would have been demeaning to them and might even have been mistaken by the onplanet imperial representative, who so far had avoided contact with the Monitor Corps, and the large military establishment he maintained, as a hostile invasion from space . . .”

In order to reassure the Etlan authorities regarding Federation intentions, and to discover why the medical aid sent to their ailing colony world was so small and infrequent, a Monitor vessel with a senior medical officer on board was sent to Imperial Etla. It was possible that distance had diminished the urgency of the plight of their sick brothers, but when the unarmed courier vessel signaled its approach and landed openly at the planetary capital’s spaceport, it was immediately surrounded by elements of the imperial guard.

The reason given for this apparently unfriendly act was that a xenophobic reaction could be expected from the less intelligent among the local population and the security of the visitors was of paramount importance. This was also why the ship’s crew, with the exception of their medical officer, should remain on board and make no attempt to communicate with anyone until the authorities had prepared the psychological ground.

Their medic was given the warmest of welcomes by the imperial advisors and interrogated in a manner both thorough and friendly about all aspects of the Federation while at the same time being accorded the honors normally reserved for a visiting head of state. Meanwhile the sensors on the courier vessel were uncovering some very disquieting information regarding what the broadcast media was referring to openly as the Plague Planet as well as obvious-obvious, that was, to the Corps’ political analyst on board-deficiencies in the administration and financial structure of the Etlan Empire.

Their first discovery was that the Plague Planet was out of sight but most definitely not out of mind. On every street intersection and at frequent intervals along the intercity roads there were display boards advertising the plight of their desperately ill brothers on Etla the Sick in graphic and often horrifying detail, all pleading for contributions for the relief of their suffering. Every one of the vision channels ran supporting stories at frequent intervals, and the appeal was invariably mentioned by candidates seeking political office. It was the most promoted and popular charity, not only on Imperial Etla but on every other planet of the empire, and the contributions were continuous and generous.

It was impossible to believe that the donations funded the dispatch of only one aid ship every ten years.

They already knew that the ship arrived, unloaded, and left without delay, because none of the crew would stay a moment longer than necessary on that planetary pesthole. The cargo was transferred to Imperial Representative Teltrenn’s estate, a large, parklike tract of land surrounding a palace and barracks whose perimeter was guarded by a heavily armed, elite force. The reason given for the military presence among the unarmed colonists, who were required to supply them with food and low-ranking support personnel, was that they were there to guard against a possible offworld invasion. At intervals of a few months, there seemed to be no great urgency about the process, Teltrenn traveled to distant parts of the colony world to distribute the new medication, information on its administration, and news of the continuing research being done on Imperial Etla.

It would have been faster and more efficient to supply the colonist medics with the new material and instructions simultaneously, but Teltrenn insisted on bringing it to them in person so that he could pass on the personal sympathy as well as the good wishes of their emperor.

This lack of urgency aroused the suspicions of Conway and the other Corps medics, who analyzed the various plague vectors going back over several decades. They found that many of the earlier diseases were disappearing, probably because the sufferers and their families were developing a natural resistance to them. But invariably a new disease appeared to replace the old, usually one involving visually horrifying skin eruptions, multiple limb deformities, or uncontrollable palsies that were, against all the laws of medical probability, rarely fatal.

All of the evidence pointed to the incredible and horrifying conclusion that the much loved and respected Imperial Representative Teltrenn was deliberately and systematically spreading diseases, not trying to cure them, and that the reason was financial.

CHAPTER 21

Even the pennies donated by a poor but sympathetic population in response to a local disaster appeal could amount to a significant total, and the Etlans were a generous and caring people who were constantly being reminded of the dreadful plight of their brothers on Etla the Sick. Those continuing contributions from the population of fifty inhabited worlds were vast beyond belief, and with a single relief ship being dispatched every decade, it was obvious that only a tiny fraction of the total donations was going to the people for whom it was intended. Instead it was being treated as a covert form of taxation and diverted into the imperial treasury for the benefit of the emperor and the proliferating families and personal armies of his hereditary representatives.

This was not a situation that the Federation could tolerate, and when direct questions regarding the misappropriation of the funds were asked, on Etla the Sick and on Imperial Etla, Teltrenn and his emperor panicked. Missiles with chemical warheads-plainly they wanted to avoid the destruction of their spaceports by using nuclear devices-were directed at the Monitor vessels, which deployed their meteorite shields and escaped.

The medic who had been visiting Imperial Etla was never heard from again.

On the Plague Planet there was enough advance warning from the ship on Imperial Etla for the Monitor Corps personnel to be withdrawn safely before Lonvellin, who insisted that it was safe inside its ship’s screens, died in a nuclear fireball.

The emperor could not allow the truth of what he was doing to be known by the imperial citizens, so he blamed the Federation for what had happened on Etla the Sick, accusing it of the crimes he himself had been committing for over a century. He said that while the Monitor Corps personnel they had seen resembled human beings like themselves, he had discovered from one of them that the majority of their Galactic Federation was composed of visually horrifying, depraved, and sadistic monsters rendered even more terrible because of their high intelligence. For the first time in its long history the very existence of the Etlan Empire was being threatened from space, and their only defense was an all-out offensive war. The imperial propagandists and the xenophobia instilled into them from earliest childhood did the rest, and a vast, crusading war fleet was assembled.

“But we are neither stupid nor completely trusting when meeting strangers,” Stillman went on. “We do not tell them where we live until we are sure that they will be friendly visitors. On both Imperial Etla and here nobody with knowledge of the coordinates of Federation worlds was allowed to meet an Etlan. That is standard first-contact procedure. But one set of coordinates is known to every spacegoing medical officer in the Corps, those for Sector General, and the imperial advisors had a Corps medic in their hands.

“That was why the Etlan war fleet attacked the hospital,” he continued, “to capture rather than destroy it in the hope of finding more addresses. That information had to be concealed for as long as possible, which was the reason why Sector General’s patients and all of the medical and maintenance staff with any knowledge of astrogation had been evacuated, leaving only a few hundred volunteers on duty . . .”

An unforeseen result of the staff shortage was that the battle casualties from both sides were treated in the hospital, it being impossible to tell the difference between Earth-human and Etlan wounded, and the medics refused to make the distinction anyway. The casualties overflowed the wards and corridors not blasted open to space, so that patients who had been enemies found themselves recovering in adjacent beds with, in the Etlan case, visually horrifying monsters caring for them. The opposing sets of patients continued fighting with the only weapons left to them: words. It was a bitter, bloodless battle in which the Etlans learned the truth about what was happening on their Plague Planet. The end result was that the two highest-ranking patients, each representing one side, brought the external hostilities to an end.

The Etlan war fleet re-formed and left to visit every world in the empire to spread newly discovered truth and to offer their help in removing the emperor, his hereditary representatives, and the private armies they maintained.

“It was the biggest and most widespread rebellion in known history,” Stillman went on, “but the Etlans were proud as well as angry. They told us that it was a family fight and to stay away from all of the worlds called Etla, with one exception, until they had settled the matter for themselves. And it was here, in this area, that the war on Etla the Sick began and ended. It began when Teltrenn launched a nuclear missile at Lonvellin’s ship; there is a crater marking the spot about ten miles to the west. The end came when the inhabitants, supported by the locally recruited personnel who had captured some armored vehicles, fought the climactic battle that led to the surrender of Teltrenn’s army. But the natives are still a little ashamed about what they did, even though they had every reason to do it. That was why Shech-Rar didn’t want you blundering around on a nonspecified investigation and in your ignorance trampling on some very sensitive feelings.”

He looked at one of Prilicla’s delicate limbs, which was hanging within a few inches of his head, and added, “I don’t think the colonel has anything to worry about.

“Thank you, friend Stillman,” said the empath.

The monitor officer gave a long, satisfied sigh and went on, “Before he left Sector General, the Etlan fleet commander, who had firsthand experience of Federation medical science as practiced in Sector General, asked us to please return to Etla the Sick and complete the work interrupted by the war. We did that and, as you have seen for yourselves, the xenophobia has disappeared along with all the other diseases imported by the late emperor. This is no longer a sick planet.”

There was a long silence that was broken by Murchison, who said, “I like happy endings, too, and I don’t want to spoil yours. But how sure are you that this place is clean? I know cross-species infection is supposed to be impossible, but with the large number of artificially created diseases that were released here, could one of them have evolved or mutated to the stage where it was able to cross the species barrier? Or let us suppose that Teltrenn, feeling angry and frightened and spiteful, launched a biological weapon against his formerly loyal and docile charges. There was a malfunction and the weapon did no harm except possibly to infect the Hewlitt child . . .

She was interrupted by the humming silence of a speaker that is active but not yet in use. There was the sound of an Earth-human throat being cleared followed by the voice of Captain Fletcher.

“Doctors,” he said, “I have completed the examination of your chemical weapon and I think you are all on the wrong track. The missile has many of the characteristics of a biological weapon, but our reconstruction of the course elements programmed into the guidance system, which was damaged by close proximity to a nuclear detonation, indicates that the original target was sixty miles northwest of here, which is a deserted, mountainous, and heavily wooded area that would not normally be settled for a very long time. Surely an odd place to target a biological weapon. As well, the missile is not a product of Etlan technology. It is a modified Federation device.

“There is more,” he went on, anticipating the questions they were about to ask. “The payload was enclosed in a thin-walled, plastic container that was strong enough to withstand the shock of a parachute landing, but not the impact and continuing pressure of a heavy object. Pathologist Murchison has already reported that the inner surface of the container fragments was coated with nutrient, and my investigation of the shape, size, and placement of the pieces indicates an impact by a large body, soft rather than hardedged like a rock or other solid debris, that is consistent with the mass of a small child falling from a tall tree and dropping onto it.”

They were all staring at the wall speaker in complete silence, and the only movement on the casualty deck came from Naydrad’s fur. Fletcher cleared his throat again and went on, “Another interesting datum is that the actuator mechanism that should have opened the payload container is a very precise atomic clock set for a little over one hundred years.”

Hewlitt did not understand the implications of everything the captain had been saying, but one thing was clear. After a lifetime of being treated in error as an overimaginative hypochondriac, it was impossible for him to keep quiet.

“Now you have to believe me,” he said, and laughed. “I don’t know why I’m laughing about it, but I did catch something here when I was a child and nobody would . . .

He broke off because Prilicla had dropped to the deck again, its wings and body trembling, and Murchison was directing accusing looks at everyone in turn. Hewlitt had already noticed that she often went into what Naydrad called maternal mode when someone’s unguarded emotional radiation was upsetting her superior.

“Whoever is responsible for this,” she burst out, “control your feelings, dammit!”

Prilicla’s trembling subsided, but not entirely. It said, “Calm yourself, friend Murchison, the loss of emotional control is my own. I was thinking about Lonvellin, and friend Hewlitt’s loose tooth, and feeling very, very stupid. But now, hopefully, I am recovering the use of my mind. Friend Fletcher.”

“Doctor,” said the captain.

“We must return to Sector General at once,” it went on. “Power Room, prepare to lift off as soon as the captain and Danalta are back on board. Communications, notify the hospital of the presence of a possible cross-species infection involving a wide range of nonspecific allergic reactions and originating with Patients Hewlitt and Morredeth, who are required for further clinical examination. Advise that all medical staff or patients who had physical contact with the named patients are to quarantine themselves in lightweight environmental-protection envelopes, which they will wear at all times when on duty or they themselves are under treatment. If minor injury or work-stress-related discomfort occurs among these staff members, such as headaches or muscular fatigue, they must not self-administer or be given sedative or painkilling medication. Patients under treatment are not to be given new medication of any type or in any form. Further instructions will follow when Patient Hewlitt’s test results are available.

“Dr. Stillman,” the empath went on, “while you were still on the way back from the ravine I prepared a tape for you, edited to remove the sections that were not relevant to the mission, of the Meeting of Diagnosticians which took place before we left the hospital. It will answer many of the questions we have been avoiding until now. Colonel Shech-Rar and yourself may take whatever action is appropriate in the light of this information. But as nobody else, to your knowledge, has displayed the nonspecific Hewlitt symptoms after a time lapse of twenty-odd years, the risk to you is small. For the present we have nothing more to do on Etla and must leave without delay.

“Friend Naydrad,” it continued. “We have a four-day hyperjump to Sector General. That should give us enough time for a fullscale clinical investigation and test of responses to the complete range of DBDG medication currently in use, including types already used on Patient Hewlitt but discontinued because of the allergic reactions. In case there is an emergency, set up for continuous levelthree monitoring . . .

“But I don’t understand,” said Stillman, raising his voice above the sounds of a ship preparing for imminent departure. “Lonvellin died. Its ship was vaporized with it inside before Hewlitt was even born.”

“Unless you wish to make an unscheduled visit to Sector General, friend Stillman,” said Prilicla as the sound of Fletcher and Danalta climbing the boarding ramp reached them, “you must leave the ship at once. There is no time to explain now, but I shall send copies of our findings to the colonel and yourself in due course. Please excuse my bad manners, thank you for your cooperation, and good-bye.”

Hewlitt waited until the Monitor Corps officer disappeared through the personnel lock, and then he said, “I don’t understand what the hell is going on, either. Why do you want to test me with medication you know has nearly killed me in the past?”

“Compose yourself, friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla, beginning to tremble again. “I do not believe that you will be at serious risk. Please return to your bed and remain there until I give you permission to leave it. Your hush field will be maintained while we are discussing ideas and procedures that you might find unsettling.”

CHAPTER 22

Hewlitt kept his eyes on the flickering, grey noncolor of hyperspace outside the direct-vision panel and waited for something calamitous to happen to him. He did not look at any of the others, because they were watching him, waiting for the same thing to occur while smiling or otherwise trying to radiate encouragement. The amount of monitoring equipment surrounding him and the number of sensors taped to his body were not encouraging.

“You told me that I was to be given no medication of any kind,” Hewlitt said as Murchison touched another hyposprayer to his upper arm and the unfelt dose was administered. “Now you seem to be trying me on everything in stock. Why, dammit?”

The pathologist watched him closely for about three minutes, then said, “We changed our mind. How do you feel?”

“All right,” he replied. “No change except that I feel a little drowsy. How am I supposed to feel?”

“All right, and a little drowsy,” said Murchison, smiling. “It was a mild sedative I gave you. It should help you to relax.”

“When Senior Physician Medalont tried to give me a sedative,” said Hewlitt, “you know what happened.”

“Yes,” said Murchison. “But we have tested you with that particular medication, and a few others in minute quantities, without any sign of your customary hyperallergic reaction. I’m trying another, a new one that was not available to your planetside doctors. What do you feel, now?”

Hewlitt felt the downdraft from Prilicla’s wings against his face and chest as the little empath flew closer, but he knew that particular sensation was of no interest to the pathologist.

“Still nothing,” he replied, then, “No, wait. The whole area is going numb. What’s happening?”

“Nothing you need worry about,” said the pathologist, smiling again. “This time I’m testing a local anesthetic. According to the monitor your life signs are optimum. But are there any other symptoms, a mild itching of the skin, a general feeling of unease or any other symptoms, possibly subjective, which could be your subconscious giving an early warning of trouble to come?”

“No,” said Hewlitt.

Prilicla made a soft trilling sound that did not translate, then said, “The patient is being polite while trying to control intense feelings of curiosity, concern, confusion, and irritation. Perhaps the relief of the first would reduce the intensity of the other three. You have questions, friend Hewlitt. I can answer some of them now.”

But not all of them, Hewlitt thought. He was surprised when Murchison spoke first.

“You know that we all have questions, sir,” she said, looking from Danalta to Naydrad and back to Prilicla. “Why all the fuss over an ex-patient who died a quarter of a century ago? What was the reason for that signal calling for precautions against cross-species infection when we know it is impossible anyway? Why the sudden return to Sector General and the battery of tests ordered for Patient Hewlitt?”

“Those,” said Hewlitt, “would have been my questions as well.”

Prilicla drifted to the deck, perhaps in preparation for a surge of emotional radiation that would make it difficult to fly, and said, “There are similarities, specifically in the manner of the early negative response and subsequent acceptance of medical treatment, in the cases of Patients Lonvellin and Hewlitt. There is a possibility that I am wrong and the similarities are coincidental, but either way I must know before we reach the hospital. Friend Hewlitt is available for investigation but, regrettably, Lonvellin is not.”

Murchison shook her head. “Maybe not in person,” she said. “But if you need a close comparison, why not call up its case history from Records?”

“Lonvellin’s records were wiped during the Etlan bombardment,” Prilicla said, “when the main computer was knocked out along with the entire other-species translator system.

“I remember that,” said Murchison in a voice that suggested that it was not a pleasant memory, “but I remember nothing about a patient called Lonvellin.”

so that the only records of the case remaining to us,” it went on, “are held in the fading memories of Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor and myself, who were the people directly concerned with the patient’s treatment. Since it was discharged cured and its subsequent death was in no way due to our treatment, no effort was made to replace the case history from our recollections. Do not blame yourself for not remembering Patient Lonvelun. At the time you were a final-year trainee, not yet specialized in other-species pathology, and still to become the then Senior Physician Conway’s life-mate, although I remember that your emotional radiation when your duties brought the two of you together was quite . . .

“Doctor,” said Murchison, “surely our emotional radiation in that situation was privileged.”

“Hardly,” said Prilicla, “since your emotional involvement at the time was common knowledge to everyone in the hospital. Besides, every Earth-human male DBDG on the staff produced similar emotional radiation in your presence, although the feelings were diluted by envy when the two of you were formally mated. While you were alone together I should have thought it unlikely that you would have spent your time in detailed clinical discussions of your current patients.”

“You are right,” said Murchison. The softness in her voice suggested that her mind was distant in time and space and that the place was a very pleasant one.

Prilicla allowed a moment for her to return to the here and now before going on. “This is the same information I taped for Shech-Rar and friend Stillman, and you may scan the original record at any time. But the proceedings of a Meeting of Diagnosticians might be difficult for a layperson to comprehend, so I will summarize and simplify it for friend Hewlitt’s benefit . . .

Lonvellin had been discovered alone and unconscious inside an undamaged ship following the release of its distress beacon. Originally it was thought that the being was a criminal guilty of murder and possibly cannibalism, because the translation of the ship’s log indicated the presence on board of another entity, a personal medic of some kind who had apparently been guilty of mistreating its employer and of whom there had been no physical trace. For this reason, and because the patient was a physically massive being who was well armed with natural weapons, it had been admitted and treated under Monitor Corps guard until the truth became known.

Lonvellin had been a warm-blooded oxygen-breather of physiological classification EPLH. Its cranium was protected by an immobile, osseous dome, pierced at regular intervals for visual, aural, and olfactory sensors, set atop a pear-shaped, scaly body possessing five shoulder-level tentacles, four of which terminated in clusters of specialized digits and the other in a heavy, osseous club with which it had, presumably, battered its way to the top of its evolutionary tree. Its method of locomotion was snail-like, but not slow, using a wide apron of muscle around the lower body.

The EPLH presented what appeared to be a widespread and well-developed epithelioma covering the entire body, although a cancerous skin condition of that type did not normally render a patient deeply unconscious. A fast-acting specific suited to the patient’s metabolism was administered subdermally and the early results were good. But within a few minutes the patient became physically disturbed and somehow managed to neutralize the effect of the medication so that the area under treatment returned to its previous condition. During this episode the biosensors reported that the patient had remained deeply unconscious, anesthetized and supposedly incapable of all physical movement. Since the indicated medication was ineffective, the surgical removal of the affected scales was begun but this, too, was resisted. Following the excision of the first few scales, the remainder grew deep root systems which penetrated underlying organs so that their removal was impossible without the risk of inflicting life-threatening damage.

In the hope of finding an explanation for this clinically inexplicable situation, including the fact that it reacted physically while supposedly unconscious and incapable of movement, Conway requested an examination of the patient’s emotional radiation.

“That was where I came in,” Prilicla went on. “We discovered that there was another thinking entity inside Lonvellin, a separate and distinct and fully conscious person who was not being affected by the medication given to the patient and whose presence did not register on their diagnostic instrumentation. Friend Conway, making one of the intuitive leaps that are the mark of future diagnosticians, said that the reason might be that it was both all-pervasive and too small for normal scanner detection. It had formulated a hypothesis based on what little was known or deduced from the examination of the patient, the references to a personal physician in the ship’s log, and the psychological and behavior patterns that were common to the very aged . . .

Lonvellin was an aging member of an extremely long-lived species. In common with all beings of advanced age it was subject to increasing physiological deterioration in spite of its efforts to maintain itself in optimum physical and mental condition so that it could continue with the planetwide sociological projects which had become its only interest and reason for living. It would have foreseen the time when it would require the services of a skilled medic on a continuous basis, and that quality of medical assistance was unlikely to be available on the type of backward world where Lonvellin was accustomed to doing its work of healing sick planetary cultures.

But somewhere in the recent past-recent because the creature was new to the job and had made mistakes-Lonvellin discovered and Conway had deduced the presence of the ultimate healer.

It was nothing less than an intelligent, organized collection of viruses living within its host and maintaining the body it occupied in perfect health while protecting it against invading pathogens as well as stimulating and directing the natural mechanisms of healing to repair physical injury. But it was a thinking creature inside a body that was deeply unconscious and therefore incapable of thought, and its emotional radiation could not be hidden from an empath like Prilicla. Conway tested his theory by mounting a crude, physical attack on Lonvellin that its natural defenses could not cope with, a spike driven very slowly into the body where there was an underlying vital organ. This tricked the virus creature into collecting itself under the puncture to defend the area with a small, dense, organic plate composed of its own and a small amount of Lonvellin’s body material.

As soon as the process was complete, Conway excised the creature, discovering that its body mass was little more than that of an Earth-human’s closed fist, and placed it in a sealed container for later investigation. The patient’s epithelioma and the newly inflicted surgical wound were treated routinely without any further interference from Lonvellin’s resident physician.

The original problem had been caused by the ignorance of the virus creature, who had been attempting to maintain the host’s physical condition by retaining the dying body scales, which, in Lonvellin’s species, were shed periodically so that new ones could grow. The mistake could be excused by the fact that, in spite of the intelligence of both entities, there was no direct communication between host and symbiote, merely a weak, empathic bond which allowed the transmission of feelings rather than thought.

In spite of the mistake, Lonvellin forgave its personal physician and insisted on having it returned to its former place. Sector General would dearly have loved to investigate this unique lifeform, but ethically the virus creature fell into a grey area between sapient being and disease, so the hospital acquiesced. Lonvellin and its resident physician moved to Etla the Sick, where it and its ship were vaporized. At the time everyone was sure that the virus entity had perished with its patient. That was the state of knowledge when the Meeting of Diagnosticians sent Rhabwar to Etla in the hope of finding an explanation for the Hewlitt-Morredeth incidents. They did not expect the medical team to succeed.

“But now we know that Lonvellin foresaw the possibility of a lethal attack,” Prilicla went on, “and made preparations that would enable its intelligent symbiote to survive. There was limited communication between the two, but I should think that the warning of an imminent nuclear strike furnished by the ship’s sensors, and the terrible knowledge that its immensely long life was about to end, was enough of an emotional shock to drive the virus creature out of its host’s body and into the survival container carried by the escape vehicle. The container was fitted with a time-release delay of one hundred standard years in the hope that, when the contents were released, both the war and the population’s xenophobia would have been long forgotten. But the nuclear strike must have occurred seconds after launch, the escape vehicle was damaged, and the virus creature was released prematurely by an Earth-human child falling out of a tree and smashing the container.”

“So that’s what happened to me,” said Hewlitt. Sheer relief that an explanation, no matter how incredible, had been found for his lifetime of apparent hypochondria made him laugh out loud. “Are you telling me that it wasn’t a disease that ailed me, it was a bloody doctor?”

CHAPTER 23

I was fairly sure that is what happened to you,” Prilicla replied, “when I made the connection between the incident of your childhood teeth and Lonvellin’s scales, which also grew rootlets and refused to come loose. If we now accept that everything you have told us was true, let us fit the facts to our new theory. Consider.

“When you climbed that tree, ate the toxic fruit, and fell into the ravine,” Prilicla said, “you should have died. Probably as the result of trauma associated with a fall from that height, and certainly from the quantity of poison you ingested. Instead, the virus creature’s survival pod was ruptured and it invaded your damaged body. Discovering that you were a suitable host who was terminating, it sustained you while it repaired the physical damage and stimulated the natural detoxification mechanism of your body to neutralize the poison. It was able to do so quickly, I assume, because at the time your body mass was about one-twentieth that of its previous host. How and why this was done we cannot know until we devise a method of communication more precise than empathy.

“My own feeling,” it continued, “is that the virus entity cannot exist for long on its own, that its continued survival depends on it occupying the largest and potentially the most long-lived creature it can find and, by abstracting the necessary data from the genetic cell material, extending both their lifetimes by maintaining the host in optimum physical health. But the creature is not infallible. It did not realize that there are times when a host body should not be maintained without change because some of the changes are normal and healthy. Lonvellin’s problem with the aging scales it could not discard and your teeth that refused to loosen, plus your long history of allergic reactions to all forms of medication, are proof of this.

“But there is also evidence that the virus creature is under the partial control of its host,” said Prilicla, and paused.

For a moment Hewlitt thought that it might be a pause to allow one of the others to comment, but there was no response. He wondered whether the empath was taking time to choose the right words or simply needed to rest its speaking organ.

“For example,” Priicla resumed, “there is the incident with the injured cat. You had a strong, emotional attachment to this entity, so much so that you took it to bed with you in the childish hope of nursing it back to health. So intense was your need to make it well again that the feeling caused the virus creature to invade the kitten, repair the multiple trauma, and restore it overnight to full health before returning to what it must have known was a more long-lived host.

“And many years later,” it continued, “when you became friendly with Patient Morredeth and were affected by the distress it was suffering and would continue to suffer for the rest of its life because of its damaged fur, you made close physical contact with it and the same thing happened.”

“But I wasn’t expecting anything to happen,” Hewlitt protested. “It was accidental-I just pushed my hands against its fur.”

“Even though the injury was not life-threatening,” Prilicla went on, “Morredeth was restored to nominal physical condition, its disfigurement cured as completely and thoroughly as were the injuries to your cat. Unlike the case of your household pet, the virus creature did not return to your body after completing its work. Why not?”

Hewlitt took the question to be rhetorical and remained silent, as did the others.

“It is natural for any organism to evolve,” Prilicla went on, “and for one with intelligence to learn and seek new experience. I feel sure now that Lonvellin’s former personal physician has evolved over the past quarter of a century. Perhaps the change came about as the result of proximity to a nuclear detonation, although normally that would inhibit organic growth, or it could be a normal process of evolution, whatever that may be in a collection of viruses. Either way there is evidence of increasing sensitivity both to empathic direction and reaction to external events. It was only three child-teeth that refused to loosen. Subsequent teeth behaved normally, and many of the later conditions were temporary and did not recur. This caused your symptoms to be attributed, wrongly as we now know, to an overactive imagination. Quite rightly, none of your medics on Earth or in Ward Seven would risk readministering medication that had already produced an allergic reaction. If they had, and your symbiote had learned enough about your metabolism by then to realize that the foreign material was harmless, your response to a second dose might have been normal.

“The behavior of the virus creature during your stay in Sector General shows a distinct change,” the empath continued. “Unlike the creature I remember, whose emotional radiation was composed primarily of fear and anxiety to return to Lonvellin as quickly as possible, it now seems more willing to transfer to other bodies. Perhaps it is no longer satisfied with you as a host.”

“In the circumstances,” said Hewlitt dryly, “I feel grateful rather than offended.”

Prilicla ignored the interruption and went on, “It may be that, after a quarter of a century of occupancy, the virus creature was growing bored with the DBDG life-form and wanted to find one that was more interesting, and Sector General was the ideal place to find interesting life-forms. But I prefer to think that, for its own continued long-term survival, it needed to seek out one with an extended life span like that of its former host, Lonvellin. That is why it vacated a short-lived, nonsapient life-form like your cat and returned to you as soon as its work was done. It did not return to you, or perhaps in the ensuing confusion it did not have the opportunity to return, after it entered Morredeth and regrew the Kelgian’s fur. But neither did it remain with Morredeth. I know this because it was not in occupancy when I scanned Morredeth before leaving the hospital. The past four days of testing and my monitoring of your emotional radiation since you joined Rhabwar show that it is not in you. Nor was it in your aged, onetime pet.

“The most serious and urgent question facing us now,” it ended, “is who it is occupying at present and what is it going to do next?”

Hewlitt was still feeling relieved and happy that he was free of the creature at last, but there was a nagging doubt in his mind about his good fortune. Everyone was watching him. Danalta had no expression that anyone could read, Murchison’s smile had stopped short of her eyes, Naydrad’s fur was being pulled into small, tight ripples, and Prilicla had been trembling since it had begun talking. He felt the need of further reassurance.

“Is it possible,” he said, “that the virus learned how to hide its emotions from you?”

“No, friend Hewlitt,” the empath replied without hesitation. “Whether or not an organic entity is sapient it has feelings, and often the smallest and least intelligent beings have the strongest and most disturbing emotions. I remember that the feelings of Lonvellin’s personal physician were characteristic of a highly intelligent mind. No thinking and, therefore, feeling entity can hide its emotional radiation from me. Only a nonorganic computer could do that, because it doesn’t have any.

“Try not to worry, friend Hewlitt,” it went on. “In the past it has made unintentional mistakes, but otherwise it maintained and left Lonvellin, your pet, and yourself a legacy of perfect health. The cat, who is extremely aged for one of its short-lived species, is proof of that. I would say that, barring accidents, you also will have a proportionately long and healthy life.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Hewlitt, and laughed. “But am I missing something? Why is the creature a serious and urgent problem when you said yourself that it means no harm and is doing good work? So you have another weird, other-species doctor loose in the hospital. What else is new?”

Murchison did not smile, Danalta’s body wobbled, and Naydrad’s fur twitched into even stranger patterns, and it was clear that Prilicla was not appreciating his attempt at humor either.

“The virus creature does not intend to do harm,” it said. “But then, it was not trying to harm you when its good intentions resulted in twenty years of clinical confusion and psychological distress. At present it seems anxious to experiment by changing hosts as often as possible, and the unintentional harm and confusion it could cause in a multienvironment hospital, where there is a choice of sixty-odd different species among the patients and staff, doesn’t bear thinking about.”

For an instant Hewlitt felt the twisting sensation of an emergence from hyperspace. The direct-vision panel was showing the starry blackness of normal space and the blazing, multicolored lights of Sector General, which made the hospital look enormous even at Jump distance. Only he seemed to be looking at it.

“Our first priority is to find, isolate, and withdraw the creature from its current host,” said Prilicla, speaking to the others. “Then we must learn to talk to an entity who has no direct channels of communication other than the feelings it receives and radiates. Somehow we must devise a means of two-way communication so that we can reassure it, and obtain its permission for an extended, clinical investigation, before asking questions about its evolutionary background, physiology, physical and psychological needs, and, most important of all, its method and frequency of reproduction. If all goes well, and we can only hope that it does, we must decide whether or not it or its offspring can be allowed any more hosts.

“I should explain that the personal physician of Lonvellin, Morredeth, and yourself,” Prilicla went on for Hewlitt’s benefit, “could render all other physicians redundant. It is the only known specimen of a truly unique life-form, and if the species can reproduce itself in sufficient numbers and be active among other species without harmful side effects, medicine throughout the Galactic Federation will be reduced to the practice of accident and emergency surgical procedures.”

They were all looking at the empath so intently that the accompanying emotional radiation had forced it to land again. Hewlitt was at a loss to understand it. Surely the things the empath had been saying were good and exciting news for any truly dedicated member of the medical profession. Why did he have the distinct impression that Prilicla was trying to reassure the others as much as itself, and it had failed? Hewlitt was the first to break the silence.

“I’m sorry if you still have problems,” he said, “and I don’t want to appear selfish, but I have more questions. If the virus creature has left me, and your tests have shown that I am no longer allergic to medication, does that mean that I’m cured of the other problems, too? And does it mean that when I return to Earth I won’t have to, well, avoid female company or . . .

“That is exactly what it means,” Murchison broke in, “when you return home.”

Hewlitt gave along, satisfied sigh. He wanted to tell these people how grateful he was for all they had done for him. Even though they had not believed him at first, they had not given up on his case as all the Earthside medics had done. But the right words would not come and all he could say was “So my troubles are over.

“Your troubles,” said Naydrad, “are just beginning.”

“There speaks a true misogynist . . .“Hewlitt began, when there was an interruption from the wall speaker.

“Dr. Prilicla, the hospital is transmitting a recorded message with an Emergency Three coding on all non-Service frequencies. It says that all incoming ships with noncritical casualties on board should divert to the nearest same-species hospital. Only urgent cases which have obtained diagnostician clearance are to be admitted until further notice. Incoming transport and supply vessels are requested to position themselves beyond the inner beacons and prepare for a possible mass evacuation of all patients and staff. They say it is a power-generation problem and Maintenance is dealing with it.

“I’m trying to raise someone who knows what the hell is going on . . .

CHAPTER 24

Hewlitt returned to Sector General, but not as a patient and not to Ward Seven. Instead he had been assigned Earth-human DBDG single accommodation. Since patients like himself were not allowed to bring many personal possessions with them, the place was bare but comfortable. He was issued with a set of medic’s coveralls which, with the addition of a helmet and surgical gauntlets, doubled as a lightweight environmental protection suit. All direct physical contact with other people was forbidden, but the helmet was allowed to remain open because the intelligent virus was not transmissible by air. He was told not to go exploring within the hospital unless accompanied by one of Rhabwar’s medical team or a member of the Psychology Department. In the event, he was accompanied and questioned so much during the first three days that the compartment was used only for sleeping.

With great reluctance he had agreed to remain in the hospital, it being very difficult not to agree when Prilicla asked a favor, in the hope that he would be able to help find the virus creature’s current host. Counting all the patients and staff, there were more than ten thousand places for it to hide. When he told the other that his contribution would be negligible and he would rather go home, Prilicla had changed the subject.

Early on the fourth day, Braithwaite called to take him to what the lieutenant thought would probably be a lack-of-progress meeting in the chief psychologist’s office. As soon as they arrived it was clear that everyone had been waiting for them.

“Mr. Hewlitt, I am Diagnostician Conway,” said a tall Earthhuman whose features were shaded by his helmet. “For your benefit I shall outline the situation as simply as possible while hoping that you won’t be offended by the simplification. Please listen carefully and feel free to interrupt if you think it necessary.

“In order to avoid unnecessary speculation and consequent mental distress among the hospital personnel,” he went on, looking in turn at the people who were crowding Chief Psychologist O’Mara’s office, “I suggest that all knowledge of this search and its object be limited to those present, who are the only people with some idea of what we are looking for, and, naturally, the senior staff members who are already aware of the problem . . .

And the suggestion of a diagnostician, Hewlitt had learned, was nothing less than an entry in future history.

. . . even though it is extremely unlikely that we will find the entity in its natural state,” he continued, “which the last time I saw it was a fist-sized lump of pink, translucent jelly, although the coloration may have been due to a minor loss of blood while it was being surgically excised from Lonvellin’s body . . .

Major O’Mara, Hewlitt decided, had to be the elderly, sternfaced officer in Monitor green who was seated at the big desk with Braithwaite standing beside him and Conway and the Rhabwar medical team facing them. They were all wearing lightweight suits, including Prilicla, who was using a gravity nullifier pack to hover because its wings were tightly folded inside the protective envelope. Apart from Naydrad, who had found a physiologically suitable piece of furniture to occupy, everyone stood and listened in silence.

“There was no opportunity for a close study of the creature,” Conway said. “Being an intelligent life-form, we required its permission for such a thorough and, for it, perhaps hazardous investigation. The only communication channel available was its emotional radiation, which provided accurate information on its feelings but no clinical facts. When Lonvellin insisted that its personal physician be returned to it without delay, reabsorption took place in eight-point-three seconds via the mucosa of an eating orifice. Except for the presence of two sources of emotional radiation and the increase of body weight, which matched exactly that of the virus creature, we could detect no physical indication of its presence within the host.

“But we must find this indetectable parasite,” he continued, “and quickly. It is an intelligent organism that so far has tried to be helpful even though its attempts, in the Hewlitt case, caused longterm physical and psychological distress. But an organism that can jump the species barrier, and has absolutely no medical knowledge beyond its own limited experience, cannot be allowed to run loose inside a multispecies hospital.”

Conway paused to look at everyone in the room before returning his attention to Hewlitt. When he spoke, his voice was calm and clinical, but the emotional accompaniment was causing Prilicla to wobble badly in flight.

“It is imperative that we reduce the field of search,” he said, “either by eliminating certain individuals or groups who are possible hosts, or by concentrating our efforts on finding the probables. The psychology staff are already plugged into the grapevine in the hope of hearing gossip about patients whose condition has deteriorated following treatment, or who have improved suddenly for no apparent reason. They will pass their findings, if any, to us for clinical investigation. But in a hospital, patients’ conditions will worsen or improve normally without the help of our intelligent virus friend.

“As an ex- host with long-term, personal experience of the organism,” Conway ended, “do you have any suggestions that might help us?”

As the only nonmedic in the room, Hewlitt was surprised that a question had been directed at him first. He wondered whether Diagnostician Conway was being polite or feeling really desperate.

“I, I didn’t even know it was there,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Speaking for the first time, O’Mara said, “You must know something even though you may not realize you do. Were you ever aware of any thoughts or feelings that seemed foreign to you at the time, or of seeing people, objects, or events from a viewpoint that might not have been your own? Do you remember having strange dreams or nightmares, or of behaving in what seemed to be an un~ characteristic fashion? The creature’s occupation of your body was complete and physically traceless but your mind, even subconsciously, should have been aware of it. In retrospect, can you remember anything of that nature?

“Think carefully.”

Hewlitt shook his head. “Most of the time I felt very well, and at intervals very angry when I wasn’t well and nobody would believe I was sick. Now I know the reason for what was happening to me. But that thing was inside me for most of my life, so I don’t know how I would have felt if it hadn’t been there. I’m not being much help.

“Neither are you taking much time to think carefully,” said O’Mara dryly.

“Friend Hewlitt,” said Prilicla, who was sharing his feelings of embarrassment and irritation and wishing to reduce them, “we realize that the question is unreasonable because by its very nature the creature is undetectable. But consider this. For more than twenty years you have been occupied by an entity who had the ability to read your body’s genetic blueprint and, as when you accidentally poisoned yourself and suffered grave injuries in a fall and a flyer accident, restore you to optimum physical condition. This may have been simple self-preservation on its part, an evolutionary need to maintain a healthy and long-lived host. It is even possible that your friend derives pleasure and satisfaction from adapting itself to new life-forms. But maybe there is more. A highly intelligent being can be expected to have other, less selfish and more subtle feelings, like altruism, a sense of justice, or simple gratitude. It was able to share your emotions, at least those which were simple and most strongly felt, although those associated with your transition through puberty probably confused it as much as they did you. Some of them, those which led to the restoration of your dying pet and Patient Morredeth’s damaged fur, it understood well enough to be able to act on them.

“Did it do this because it was sharing your grief,” Prilicla went~ on, or was it simply taking advantage of the chance to explore another life-form? Either way, it left that kitten in a state of health that has been maintained long past the normal life expectancy for that species. It left you, Patient Morredeth, and, presumably, an as yet unknown number of others in the same condition of perfect health. We would like to know why. If friend O’Mara can gain some idea of how this entity is motivated, we will have a better chance of finding and trapping it.”

“I would help you if I could . . .“Hewlitt began, when the chief psychologist raised a hand.

“We know that,” said O’Mara. “This thinking entity occupied your body. It must have used your sensory input because it was aware, however imperfectly, of your outside world and was under your emotional direction during the incidents with the cat and Morredeth. I realize that the situation was abnormal in that you had no physical or psychological baseline with which to make comparisons. But if you were sharing sensory input and feelings, it is logical to assume that the process was two-way and that you had some awareness of the creature’s thought processes even though you did not recognize them for what they were.

“You probably think I am clutching at straws,” the chief psychologist ended. “I am. Well?”

Hewlitt was silent for a moment as he tried to organize his thoughts. Then he said, “I want to help you, Major O’Mara. But if I were to recall the memories and feelings of twenty-odd years, they might not be clear or accurate and some of them would be influenced or distorted by my present knowledge of what was really going on. Isn’t that so?”

The psychologist’s steady, grey eyes had been fixed on Hewlitt’s face since he had begun speaking. O’Mara said, “And the next word you say will be ‘But.’”

“But,” said Hewlitt obligingly, “the things that happened to me since my arrival in Sector General are clearer, and some of my feelings surprised me. To explain I have to go back to when I was a child.”

O’Mara continued staring at him. He seemed to have forgotten how to blink.

Hewlitt took a deep breath and went on. “I was too young at the time to be told or even to understand the cultural-contact reasons why all the off-worlders attached to Etla base were expected to show an example to the natives by other-sp~ies socializing, which included showing them the Tralthan, Orligian, Kelgian, or whoever’s children playing together, under supervision, of course. One day the supervisor happened to be looking at another area of the swimming pool when I was dragged under by a Melfan amphibian who thought that I could breathe water, too. It was an accident and I was more frightened than hurt, but I never attended the other-species playground again. My parents told me I would grow out of my fear, but they didn’t push it. That was the reason I was at home and, feeling bored, wandered off to explore and had that accident in the tree.

“From your monitoring of my conversation in the ward,” he continued, “you already know that my work on Earth is interesting but not exciting and never involved meetings with off-worlders. I saw them on the Earth-vision broadcasts but did not, as my parents had promised, grow out of my childhood fear of them. There were a few extraterrestrials attached to the hospitals I attended, but I refused to allow them anywhere near me, and believing that I was really a psychiatric case, my doctors agreed to keep their otherspecies medics away from me.

For a moment O’Mara’s eyes were hidden by a frown of impatience. He said, “Presumably this is leading us somewhere?”

“Probably nowhere,” Hewlitt went on, ignoring the sarcasm. “On the way here I was in the care of a great, hairy, self-opinionated Orligian medic who also thought it could effect a cure by convincing me that my problems were due to an overactive imagination. I knew consciously if not subconsciously that, in spite of its appearance, it would not harm me. It was the first other-species person I had met since childhood. I felt curiosity as well as fear in its presence, but disliked its manner too much to ask questions.

“Then I arrived here,” he continued quickly. “I was met by a Hudlar nurse, and on the way to and inside the ward I passed or lay close to creatures the like of which I had not imagined in my worst nightmares. Even though I knew they were medical staff or patients, I was still so terrified by them that for a long time I was afraid to go to sleep. But I was curious, too, and wanted to know more about them in spite of being afraid. I felt frightened by Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, but curious as well.”

Naydrad made a gurgling, untranslatable sound. Hewlitt ignored it, as did O’Mara and the others.

“Within a few hours,” he continued, “I was asking questions of the Hudlar, Leethveeschi, and Medalont. Next day I was talking and playing cards with other patients. The point I’m trying to make is that this was not the kind of behavior I expected of myself. The xenophobia I felt at the time was mine all right, but the intense and continuing curiosity about the other life-forms around me must have belonged to somebody else.”

For a moment it seemed that the office had become a still picture in which everyone was looking at him. Motion and sound returned when O’Mara nodded and spoke.

“You are right,” he said, “but not entirely. It seems that your parents were right and you did grow out of your fear of otherworlders within hours of your arrival here. Prilicla was greatly impressed by you. It tells me that when you met the medical team on Rhabwar for the first time, your xenophobia was minimal, well controlled, and temporary. This was at a time when the virus creature was no longer in occupation. Since the Morredeth incident when the virus left you, the curiosity and interest you felt regarding ETs was entirely your own.”

“I suppose that is a compliment,” said Hewlitt, smiling.

O’Mara scowled. “An observation,” he said. “My job here is to shrink heads, not swell them. But we may have something useful here. Can you describe this shared curiosity and its degree of intensity, and, assuming that the virus was principally interested in other life-forms as potential hosts, were you aware of this more selfish purpose behind your feeling of curiosity? For example, did you form the impression that the virus entity was able to move to another host of its own volition? And are you completely sure the transfer was dependent on your emotional state, as was the case with your cat and Morredeth? Try to recall your feelings, all of them, and take time to think about your answer.

“I don’t need time to think about it,” Hewlitt protested. “On the two occasions that the virus moved out of me I was feeling deep sympathy, so I cannot be absolutely sure if those feelings were necessary for the transfer. Where the cat was concerned, I held on to it all night, but the contact with Morredeth was over in a minute, maybe a little more. I remember wanting to pull my hands away because the stuff smeared over the wound and dressings felt unpleasant, but at first I couldn’t move my hands. When I did pull them away, I remember that my palms and fingers felt strange, there was a hot, tingling sensation in them that disappeared after a few seconds. It was probably subjective. I didn’t mention it before because at the time nobody was believing anything I said and it was probably unimportant anyway.

“And do you remember anything else that is probably unimportant?” said O’Mara.

Hewlitt took a deep breath and tried to ignore the sarcasm for Prilicla’s sake rather than the major’s, then said, “If we assume that physical contact is required for the creature to transfer to a new host, and it was continually interested in the possibility of making such a move, what about my interest in Leethveeschi and that doctor who drove into the ward in a pressurized tank? I am very sure that I wanted no physical contact with either of them, especially the charge nurse, so the curiosity could not have been mine. Does that mean the creature wastes its time on feelings that are impossible for it to fulfill, or is it capable of transferring itself to any living being regardless of species?”

O’Mara gave a short, irritated sigh. He said, “There was always the chance that you would add to the problem rather than help provide the solution. If you are right and our friend is not confined to transferring into warm-blooded oxygen-breathing hosts, that will seriously complicate our search.” He looked at the medics in turn. “Is such a radical, cross-species transfer possible?”

Diagnostician Conway was the first to speak. He said, “As close to impossible as makes no difference.

“Until Patient Hewlitt arrived among us,” said O’Mara with the sarcastic edge returning to his voice, “we thought it impossible for a microorganism that had evolved on one world to survive in a life-form from another.”

Conway did not take offense. He said, “That is why I said close to impossible, sir. However, there are major differences in the metabolism and life processes of a chlorine-breathing host, and the biochemical adaptation needed would be, again, close to impossible . . .”

“And who would want to live inside an Illensan anyway?” said Naydrad.

“As for more exotic life-forms like the TLTUs, SNLUs, or VTXMs,” he went on, ignoring the interruption and glancing toward Hewlitt to show that the explanation was for his benefit, “I would say with more confidence that they are completely unsuitable as hosts. The first breathes high-pressure, superheated steam in an environment which, in the old days, was used to sterilize infected surgical instruments. SNLUs are methane life-forms with a complex mineral and liquid crystalline structure which decomposes at temperatures in excess of eighteen degrees above absolute zero. As for the VTXMs, the Telfi are another hot life-form, not because of an elevated body temperature but because they need to absorb high levels of hard radiation to support their life processes.

“It follows that these three life-forms can be eliminated as potential hosts,” the diagnostician ended, “because a virus would be unable to survive in any of them.”

Before O’Mara could reply, Prilicla made an unsteady landing on top of an unoccupied piece of furniture. Its trembling was minor and of the kind, Hewlitt had discovered, indicating that it was nerving itself to the major effort of saying something disagreeable.

“It is possible that you are wrong, friend Conway,” it said. “And I, too, may be contributing to the problem rather than its solution because we cannot exclude the Telfi as possible hosts. Our virus was able to survive when its escape vehicle was in close proximity to the nuclear detonation that destroyed Lonvellin’s ship. The outer casing of the creature’s pod was partially melted and superficially damaged by flying wreckage, but it had also absorbed sufficient radiation for strong traces to be present after twenty-five years. At the time it took the young Hewlitt as a host, it had been occupying that pod and absorbing significantly higher, although diminishing, levels of radioactivity during the five years following the original contamination.”

“Oh,” said the diagnostician.

O’Mara actually smiled, although it was clear that his face muscles were unused to that form of exercise. He said, “Does anyone else want to make a fool of itself? Hewlitt, you are wanting to say something.”

For a moment Hewlitt wondered if the chief psychologist had an empathic faculty like Prilicla, then decided that it was probably the result of training, observation, and long experience. He shook his head and said, “It probably isn’t important.”

“If it isn’t,” said O’Mara, “I’ll be the first to let you know. Spit it out.”

Hewlitt was silent for a moment, wondering how such a thoroughly unsympathetic person had been able to survive and rise to a high position in a caring profession like psychiatry; then he said, “Something has been bothering me about the meeting with my cat on Etla. It was an ordinary, black-and-white cat, and big and fat instead of being the skinny near-kitten I remembered, but I recognized it. And even though I had changed physically, grown four or five times more massive and with marked differences in face and voice, it recognized and came toward me at once. You are probably thinking that I am being sentimental about a childhood pet . . .

“The thought had crossed my mind,” said O’Mara.

but I think it was more than fond memories,” Hewlitt went on, “because I had almost forgotten about that cat until I was admitted to the hospital and Lieutenant Braithwaite started questioning me about my childhood. It was as if there was a bond between us, a feeling almost of pride in some kind of shared experience that seemed to go beyond the child-and-his-pet relationship. The feeling is tenuous, very difficult to describe, and, well, it is probably due to all this talk about intelligent virus invasions. This time my imagination may really be running away with me. I should not have mentioned it.”

“But you did mention it,” said O’Mara, “even though doing so has caused you to feel embarrassed and even ridiculous. Or are you hoping that I, or one of the other fine, incisive, clinical minds here assembled, will decide whether or not it was worth mentioning?”

The fine, clinical minds in the room joined Hewlitt in remaining silent. He returned the other’s stare, wondering if O’Mara’s lids had been glued permanently in the open position.

“Very well,” the psychologist went on. “Think carefully about what you have just said and follow it through. The word ‘impossible’ has been used too loosely here, so I shall resist the temptation to use it again. Are you suggesting, however reluctantly, that this strange, tenuous, indescribable feeling that you had for your onetime pet, and which you believe it reciprocated, was a legacy that may have been left by your common viral invader? And are you also suggesting that the ex-hosts of the virus might share this peculiar, insubstantial feeling of a shared experience and be able to recognize each other? Presumably I am right because your face is becoming very red, but I would like verbal corroboration.”

“Yes, dammit,” said Hewlitt. “To both questions.

O’Mara nodded and said, “Which means that you could act as some kind of virus witch-finder with the ability to track down our quarry through its previous and, presumably, its present hosts. Naturally, we are grateful for any help you can give us but, well, apart from the instant recognition and the vague feelings you say you shared with the cat who, regrettably, is unable to offer corroboration, have you any other evidence, observations, or vague, indescribable feelings to support your contention?”

He looked away from O’Mara, feeling that the heat of his embarrassment must be warming the whole room.

“Friend O’Mara,” said Prilicla. “At the time the incident occurred I was aware of the feelings of the cat and friend Hewlitt. They were as described.”

“And as I suggested, little friend,” said O’Mara, “they were vague, indescribable, subjective, and probably useless.” He turned to his communicator, which was already live, and went on, “Has the Padre returned? Good, send it in.” To Hewlitt he said, “We have medical matters to discuss which do not require your presence. I feel sure that I have embarrassed you more than enough for one day. Thank you for your assistance. Padre Lioren will escort you to the dining hall.”

In the instant that the Tarlan entered the room it stopped dead, all four of its eyes directed at Hewlitt’s reddening face. He stared back at it, wanting to speak but knowing that he was going to be ridiculed again.

“Mr. Hewlitt,” said O’Mara in a voice whose sarcastic tone had been replaced by one of sympathy and concern. “You have many years’ experience of having your words disbelieved by the medical and psychiatric fraternity, so I hoped that your feelings would not be seriously wounded by my own incredulity. In the circumstances your reaction seems abnormal. Please, what is it that you are not wanting to tell me?”

“The vague feeling of recognition I was trying to describe,” said Hewlitt, raising a hand to point at Lioren, “is coming from the Padre.”

“I can confirm that,” said Prilicla.

For the first time since he had entered the office, Hewlitt saw the chief psychologist blink.

CHAPTER 25

“Padre,” said O’Mara, swiveling his chair to look up at the Tarlan standing in the doorway, “have you been hiding something from us?”

Lioren bent one eye in the psychologist’s direction and kept the other three trained on Hewlitt as it said, “Not intentionally. This is as much of a surprise to me as it is you. Your instructions were that the psychology staff in the outer office listen in to this meeting for later discussion. I returned early from the AUGL ward and overheard Patient Hewlitt’s description of his feelings about the cat. I-I need a moment to think.”

“Take it,” said O’Mara. “But Padre, organize your thoughts, try not to edit them.

“Very well,” said Lioren. It did not appear to be offended by the other’s remark unless turning one of its eyes toward the ceiling was a derogatory gesture on Tarla. After a short pause it went on. “In the course of my duties I am aware of many subtle and often indescribable feelings that I have for my charges, both patients and staff, and of similar feelings they have toward me. Even though we Tarlans find physical contact between strangers distasteful, very often I find it necessary when the laying on of hands or a simple handclasp is required to convey feelings that are too difficult for either of the persons concerned to articulate. Until Hewlitt described the bond that it felt existed between its pet and itself, and I realized that a similar feeling existed between the two of us and another former patient, Morredeth, I had not considered the matter of any importance. Now it has become very important because it seems that I became a host to the virus creature. I also know how and when the transfer must have taken place.

“At the time I was not aware of anything unusual about the incident,” the Padre went on. “The damage to a young Kelgian’s fur is a particular tragedy, since it is both an unsightly deformity which precludes mating and a severe impairment of its primary channel of communication. From the time Patient Morredeth learned that the condition was permanent it was in urgent need of nonmaterial support. In common with the majority of civilized worlds, Kelgia has several religious beliefs the precepts of which are familiar to me, but Morredeth subscribed to none of them. All that I could offer it during my daily visits was sympathy and conversation and, well, gossip about other patients and staff members in an attempt to take its mind off its own troubles. The attempt was unsuccessful and the patient remained in a condition of deep, emotional distress until, on the visit following its physical encounter with Patient Hewlitt, there was a total remission of symptoms.”

Lioren paused and for a moment the tall, angular body concealed by the narrow cone of its cloak trembled, apparently at the recollection, then grew still.

“In spite of being the hospital padre,” it said, “I have difficulty accepting an event, no matter how inexplicable it may seem, as miraculous. But not knowing then of the existence of this intelligent virus creature, I was almost convinced otherwise. Morredeth’s behavior following its cure was abnormal in that it was almost insane with delight and relief. I had already touched, or rather stroked, the area of damaged fur in an attempt at giving nonverbal reassurance. But it insisted that I share its joy by feeling for myself the mobility of the regenerated fur with one of my medial hands. That was when it must have happened.

“The fur was indeed highly mobile,” Lioren continued, “so much so that long tufts of it wrapped around and became entangled in my digits. For a moment my hand was held tightly against the skin, and I was afraid to pull it free in case I uprooted strands of the newly grown fur. I was aware of my palm being wet but was unsure whether the perspiration was the patient’s or my own, and at the time I had no idea that the sudden presence of moisture was associated with the creature’s mechanism of transfer. Shortly afterward I removed my hand from the fur without difficulty, congratulated Patient Morredeth on its cure, then left to visit other patients.”

“But didn’t you feel anything?” Hewlitt said before anyone else could speak. “Like better, healthier, or at least different? Did you feel anything at all?”

O’Mara frowned at Hewlitt before returning his attention to Lioren. He said, “They would have been my questions, too. Well, Padre?”

“I do not remember any unusual feelings,” Lioren replied, nor was I expecting them. Perhaps my present feeling of being close to another one of the virus creature’s ex-hosts was obscured by my relief and pleasure over Morredeth’s cure. As well, my health is excellent so it would be difficult for me to feel better physically, although I am less certain about the health of my mind. Apparently our virus creature s ability as a healer does not extend to clinical psychology.”

What kind of psychological problem, Hewlitt thought, could be troubling a highly moral and altruistic being whose popularity among the patients and staff was second only to that of Prilicla? He was wondering if he dared ask when the answer was provided by the chief psychologist.

“Padre,” he said, “you were exonerated of all guilt for the deaths of the Cromsaggar, and soon, I hope, your subconscious will also accept that verdict. But while we are on the subject, on Cromsag you were seriously injured and given emergency treatment by a ship’s medic not fully experienced in Tarlan physiology. As a result there was some minor scarring. Are the scars still visible?”

“I don’t know,” said Lioren, “because I rarely look closely at my own body. Narcissism is unknown among Tarlans. Shall I remove my cloak?”

“Please,” said O’Mara.

Two of Lioren’s medial hands emerged from slits in its long, blue cloak and began releasing the fastenings. Feeling vaguely embarrassed, he looked at Prilicla, who was hovering close by, and whispered, “Should I turn my back?”

“No, friend Hewlitt,” the empath replied. “Tarlans do not subscribe to the Earth-human nudity taboos, and the Blue Cloak of Tarla that it wears is a symbol of professional and academic eminence as well as providing a site for many concealed, internal pockets. Look closely. Friend Lioren has turned completely around and, and I see no scars.

“Because there are none,” said Lioren. Its four eyes were turned downward and hanging from each stalk like single, heavy fruit. “The surgery was neat though hurried so that the scars were not obvious, but now they have completely disappeared.”

O’Mara nodded and said, “Apparently our virus has left you its usual visitor’s card, a perfectly healed and healthy body. That is all the confirmation we need that you were a host. Or maybe you still are.” He looked at Prilicla. “Is the virus still in residence?”

“It is not,” the empath replied. “There is only one source of emotional radiation emanating from the Padre and it is its own. At this range, if another intelligence was present I would detect it at once.

“You would detect it without any possibility of error,” asked O’Mara, “regardless of the species of the host?”

“Yes, friend O’Mara,” Prilicla replied. “I could not help but detect it. Emotionally its presence would be obvious, as obvious as if you were to grow a second, thinking head . . .

O’Mara actually smiled. “In this medical madhouse that might be an advantage.

“I am less certain with a person like friend Conway,” the empath went on, “who thinks he has eight or nine minds. That confuses the emotional radiation and adds an element of doubt.”

“Diagnostician Conway,” said Hewlitt firmly, “is not a former host.”

“I concur,” said Lioren.

“And I’m glad,” Murchison said, laughing. “Having a multiply absentminded husband is bad enough.”

The chief psychologist gave a single, impatient tap on his desktop and said, “We digress. For reasons that are obvious we must treat the discovery of the creature’s present whereabouts as a matter of extreme urgency.

The reasons are not obvious to me, Hewlitt thought, but he was not being given the chance to ask questions.

“To find it we have one empathic detector who can spot its presence provided the host is within conversational distance and is not a diagnostician, and two ex-hosts who can only identify the people who have already been inhabited if they are within visual range. In both cases the exact distance involved has yet to be established. All of these former hosts as well as the current one must be traced without delay. We are fairly sure that Hewlitt’s only contact within the hospital was Patient Morredeth, from whom the Padre received the virus before it moved to another patient . . .

“With respect,” Lioren broke in, “it might not have been to another patient.”

O’Mara gave a small, irritated nod and said, “Padre, I have not forgotten that your work includes counseling members of the staff as well as patients. You must interview all of them again, identify the one who inherited the virus from you, and, if it is no longer in residence, trace and talk to all of that person’s subsequent contacts until you find the present host. Report the location to this department, request Monitor security assistance and a medical quarantine, and remain with the entity concerned until Dr. Prilicla arrives to confirm the presence of the virus.

“Little friend,” he went on, “if you have no objections I would like you to carry out a simultaneous search, initially of the warmblooded, oxygen-breathing wards, main dining hall, and recreation level. You may well find the creature first. But whoever does find it, regardless of the host species, it must be physically isolated, re strained, and the necessary steps taken to prevent the virus from transferring to another host. You will then try to use you projective empathy to reassure the virus entity until we can devise a better method of communication. But on no account must you operate beyond your limits of physical endurance. We need you as a detector and communicator, not a casualty.”

“I am stronger than I look, friend O’Mara,” said Prilicla. “Well, a little stronger.”

The Earth-humans in the room laughed, including O’Mara, who went on, “There are two reasons why I want Hewlitt and the Padre to operate as a team. One is that I do not fully understand the vague and perhaps untrustworthy feeling of recognition that you have described as existing between former hosts, so that if you act together there would be less chance of both of you missing a contact. The second is that an ex-patient running loose inside the hospital, especially one who has a limited knowledge of its geography or experience of avoiding accidental damage by other life-forms, would very soon be readmitted as a casualty unless he had a, well, guardian angel in attendance. For this reason you have been transferred to accommodation closer to the Padre. Do either of you object to this arrangement?”

Hewlitt shook his head and watched while Lioren lowered two of its eyes in a gesture which probably meant the same thing.

“Good,” said O’Mara. “But you should think before agreeing so quickly to anything. I want both of you to spend every waking moment on this search. Since Prilicla is uncertain about its ability to isolate the virus from the other taped entities inhabiting their minds, your first step will be to eliminate the diagnosticians. There is a meeting in three hours’ time on Level Eighty-Three, Lioren knows where, and in view of the problem with the hospital’s powergeneration system, they will all attend. Wait outside the entrance, take a good look at them as they go in, and report your findings to me without delay. You will have many problems, Hewlitt, but the Padre will help you with them. Unless you two have anything else to contribute, this ends the nonmedical part of the discussion.”

“Wait,” said Hewlitt. “I’m worried about the power problem you mentioned. When Rhabwar was coming in we were told that the main reactor was . . .

“Worry if you must,” O’Mara broke in. “It is a technical problem to which we cannot begin to suggest a solution, and we have medical problems enough without us wasting our time trying.”

He nodded toward the door.

Fear was still his predominant emotion, Hewlitt thought as he traveled once again through the crowded, three-dimensional maze of hospital corridors on foot. He had not realized at the time how pleasant it had been to be riding in the security of a gravity litter driven by a Hudlar nurse so physically massive that everyone gave them the widest possible berth, and he knew that his present experience shouid have been even more terrifying. But the other-species confrontations, which could have resulted in physical and possibly life-threatening collisions, had not occurred because there was always a firm, medial Tarlan hand on his shoulder guiding him out of trouble. The reason he was so afraid but not paralyzed with fear was very difficult to understand.

He decided that his strange absence of terror must be due in part to Lioren, who kept talking about every walking, crawling, or wriggling nightmare they passed as if they were mutual acquaintances, and frequently in terms which, if the information was not already widely known as gossip, was stretching the rules of confidentiality to their elastic limits. A nightmare, he thought, should not have amusing stories told about it if it was to retain its full, terrifying effect. He wondered if he was at last beginning to see these creatures for what they were, and feeling an at times fearful curiosity about them instead of merely looking at them and wanting to react with his feet by running away.

Perhaps his uncharacteristic and continuing interest in the hospital’s extraterrestrials was a form of contagious curiosity and a legacy of the virus creature. He was about to mention the idea to the Padre when they turned into a long side corridor that, apart from themselves, was silent and empty.

“Staff accommodation,” Lioren explained. “It isn’t always as quiet as this, but right now the occupants are either on duty or asleep. This one is yours. I won’t go in because the place will be crowded enough with just you in it. But you should find it comfortable enough. Go in and look around.”

The room was a little larger in area but with a lower ceiling than his cabin on the ship that had brought him to Sector General. He was relieved to see that the overhead lighting was recessed, because his hair was brushing against the ceiling.

“The beds are much too short,” he protested. “My feet will hang over the end onto the floor.”

“Naturally,” said the Padre, bending forward so that it could move one eye and an arm into the room. “It belongs to two Nidians who are absent on a ship-rescue training course for the next few weeks. The beds are movable and can be joined end-to-end. Behind the brown door is a multispecies washroom similar to the one you used in Ward Seven. I hope the wall decorations are not distasteful to you. Both of the former occupants are male and obviously prefer Nidian female subjects to landscapes.”

Hewlitt looked at the pictures of red-furred teddy bears in what must have been provocative poses and tried not to laugh. He said, “I do not find them offensive.”

“Good,” said Lioren. “Over there is your control console. The seat is height-adjustable, the keys are large enough for Earth-human digits, and the display screen can be fine-tuned to your visual requirements. You can call up the usual entertainment, library, and training channels, and the yellow studs enclosed by the green rectangle control the menu display and selection instructions for the food dispenser. Are you as hungry as I am? Would you like to rest or go to the dining hall?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt, “and I don’t know. Squeeze inside, I want to talk. Can I order something for us, and what would you suggest?”

Lioren hesitated, “By tomorrow your dispenser will have been reprogrammed to supply basic Earth meals,” it said. “The taste difference between Nidian and Earth-human food is practically indistinguishable, and equally revolting to a Tarlan. I would prefer to use the main dining hall and so, I feel sure, would you. There the own-species menu is more extensive so that you would have no trouble finding something you like.”

It was Hewlitt’s turn to hesitate. He said, “Will it be very crowded? Worse than the corridors, I mean? And how am I expected to, well, behave?”

“All of the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers on the staff dine there,” said the Padre, “although not, you will be pleased to hear, at the same time. Everyone will be sitting, kneeling, or standing around tables and eating, not trying to avoid colliding with each other. Besides, if we can find an empty table close to the entrance- and there should be no problem there, because it is not a popular area-we will be able to work while we eat.”

“Work?” said Hewlitt, feeling stupid. Too much was happening to him in too short a time. “How?”

“By exercising our newly acquired talent for detection,” said the Padre, “and scanning the staff members as they arrive or leave for evidence of past occupation by the virus. Even if the results are negative, it will be an effective method of eliminating a large number of staff members from the search so that we can concentrate more of our available time on the patients and on-duty ward staff. The present host must be found, quickly. A virus entity like that loose in a multispecies hospital doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“But why?” asked Hewlitt. “So far as I can see the creature has done no harm to anyone, the reverse in fact. The hospital is in the business of healing people and so is the virus creature. Why is everybody so worried about it? I wanted to ask O’Mara about that earlier but he didn’t give me the chance. And on Rhabwar they avoided the question.”

Lioren backed into the corridor and waited until Hewlitt had closed the room door behind him before it said, “Regrettably, I must do the same.”

“But why, dammit?” Hewlitt said angrily. “I’m not a patient anymore. You don’t have to keep medical secrets from me.”

“Because we don’t have the answer for you,” Lioren replied. “Your mind will be easier if we do not burden it with the unnecessary weight of our own fears and uncertainties.”

“Personally,” said Hewlitt, “I prefer uneasiness to ignorance.”

“Personally,” said Lioren, “I prefer to expect the worst while hoping for the best, which means that I am never disappointed when a result is less than a total disaster or, as may well be the case here, our concern is unfounded. We must avoid frightening ourselves unnecessarily. And the answer to your earlier question is that there aren’t any.

“Any what?” said Hewlitt.

“Table manners,” said the Padre. “Nobody will care about your method of ingestion, nor will they mind if you deliberately avoid looking at a table companion to whom you are talking in order to avoid seeing the disgusting messes some of us push into our mouths.

“And now, Patient Hewlitt,” it ended, “we have work to do as well as food to eat.

CHAPTER 26

On Rhabwar he had watched Prilicla weave strands of Earth spaghetti, its favorite non-Cinrusskin dish, into lengths of slim, yellow cable that it had drawn into its tiny mouth while hovering above its platter; and Naydrad, who did not use its hands while eating but buried half of its narrow, conical head in the shredded, oily green stuff it preferred until the bowl was empty; and even the shape-changer, Danalta, who sat on top of or leaned against anything it wished to digest until only the desiccated, inedible remains were left. And earlier he had shared Ward Seven’s dining table with Bowab, Horrantor, and Morredeth. The result, he was pleased to discover, was that he was able to watch the Padre refueling without the slightest trace of abdominal discomfort.

Lioren ate using the fingers of two of its upper, manipulatory appendages, with the tiny hands encased in a pair of silvered, disposable gloves that had arrived, like Hewlitt’s knife and fork, in the utensils pack on its food dispenser tray. The Padre was precise and almost dainty in its movements as the food was lifted to its eating orifice, and the lumps of brown and yellow spongy material being consumed were too strange for Hewlitt to imagine what they might be or to feel repelled by them.

He hoped that the reverse also held true, because his synthesized steak was very good. There was no way of knowing; Lioren had not spoken since they had entered the dining hall.

“We’ve eaten,” said Hewlitt with a glance toward the nearby entrance, where a group of Kelgians intending to dine was dividing around the massive form of a Tralthan who was just leaving, “but so far we haven’t been working. Or did you feel something from somebody that I missed?”

“No,” Lioren replied, and resumed eating.

It sounded irritated and impatient. More than two hundred staff members had walked, slithered, wriggled, or lumbered past their table since they had begun the meal. Like himself, the other might have been beginning to wonder if their ability to detect former virus hosts was mostly imagination or self-delusion.

“Perhaps the feeling, immaterial bond, or whatever it is works only between Tarlans, Earth-humans, and cats who are already well acquainted with each other,” he said, when the silence lengthened, “and we don’t know any of these people well enough for the beforeand-after difference to register. Do you think we’re wasting our time here?”

“No,” said Lioren again. It took a moment to clear its plate, then went on, “The staff duty rosters are arranged so that the dining hail will not, in spite of what your eyes and ears are telling you, be overcrowded. But at any given time there is less than five percent of the warm-blooded oxygen-breathing staff using it. The Illensan chlorine-breathers, the Hudiars, the ultra-low-temperature methane life-forms, and the other exotic types have their own arrangements, as also have the patients. You are mistaking an early absence of results for failure.”

“I understand,” said Hewlitt. “You are telling me, tactfully, that I must be a more patient ex-patient and we should continue as we are doing.”

“No,” said Lioren once again. “We are not . . .

There was an interruption from the menu-selection unit, which was displaying a red, flashing screen while its speaker began repeating a translated message in a brisk, officious voice.

“Diners who have completed their meal should vacate the table without delay so as to free it for use by subsequent diners. Your time is up. Any unfinished professional or social conversations should be continued elsewhere. Diners who have completed . . .

“We are not allowed to stay here without eating,” Lioren went on, raising its voice. “The sound output will increase in volume the longer we delay our departure, and contacting Maintenance to disable the audio circuit would waste too much time. We could always change tables and order another meal, but speaking personally I no longer feel hungry enough to attempt that . . .”

“Nor I,” said Hewlitt.

“. . . so I suggest that we begin the calls on my suspect patients,” the Padre continued. “The first one is in your old ward. It was admitted after you left, and Charge Nurse Leethveeschi is expecting me. Unless you are one of those beings who become comatose after eating a large meal and need to sleep?”

This time it was Hewlitt’s turn to say no.

The recorded message ceased as soon as they rose from the table, which was immediately taken by two hairy Orligians wearing senior physicians’ insignia, but neither of them had the indefinable feel of having been former hosts of the virus.

As they were leaving, Prilicla flew in to hover gracefully inside the entrance. The empath spoke to them but did not ask how they had fared because it was already aware of their disappointment. They stood watching it for several minutes as it drifted across to the group of mixed-species diners around the nearest table, ostensibly to talk to friends but in reality to try to discover a mind or minds that contained two sources of emotional radiation instead of one. It was likely that the fragile little empath had friends at every table in the vast room. Remembering the Cinrusskin’s lack of stamina, Hewlitt wished it luck and hoped that it would find what it was looking for before it crash-landed from sheer fatigue.

Prilicla broke off its conversation to call out, “Thank you, friend Hewlitt.”

A few minutes later they were in one of the crowded main corridors, but only a part of Hewlitt’s mind was on collision avoidance.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “and worrying.”

Lioren’s reply did not translate.

“And wondering about this strange ability we have to recognize each other as past hosts,” he went on. “A few minutes ago, when I felt concern for Prilicla and wished it good luck without speaking, it responded to the feeling even though it was distant and its attention elsewhere. There was nothing strange in that, because the Cinrusskin empathic faculty is very sensitive even at that range. But what about our own ability? Is it, too, a low order of empathy that is enough to allow simple recognition and nothing more? And if so, how close do previous hosts have to be to recognize each other? Do they have to be in line of sight? Does a physical barrier have any effect? Would you mind helping me conduct an experiment?”

“I don’t know, six times,” the Padre replied, “and what kind of experiment?”

“But this is not an experiment,” Lioren protested when he finished explaining what he wanted, “it is a game for very young children! It would, however, provide useful data. 1ff agree to cooperate you must never reveal to another person that I, a mature adult who is qualified to wear the Blue Cloak, played this game with you.

“Ease your mind, Padre,” said Hewlitt. “At my age I wouldn’t want people to know I played hide-and-seek, either. I suppose you should be ‘it’ since you know where the best hiding places are . . .

The long corridor they were in ended with a T-junction that housed the complex of ramps, stairs, and lifts leading to upper and lower levels. Along each wall there were many doors, which opened into wards, storage compartments, equipment bays, and the maintenance tunnel network. The idea was that Hewlitt would turn his back for ten minutes so that Lioren would have time to conceal itself, either close by or a a distance along the corridor. The only rules were that the Padre would hide itself in an empty compartment rather than in a ward, which would have caused comment and risked disrupting the medical routine, and that he would seek out its hiding place by the use of the instinct, empathy, or whatever it was that he had inherited from the virus creature and not by looking behind doors.

After twenty minutes of standing before potential hiding places, ignoring the questions and critical comments of passersby while trying to feel for the presence of Lioren with his mind, he had exhausted all the potential hiding places without success. Disappointed, he used his communicator.

“I felt absolutely nothing,” he said. “Come out, wherever you are.

Lioren emerged from a door he had scanned a few minutes earlier and hurried toward him. It said, “Neither did I, even though I heard you pause outside my hiding place. The sound of Earthhuman footsteps is quite distinctive. But I felt the sense of recognition again, as soon as I saw you.

“Me, too,” said Hewlitt. “But why do we have to be able to see each other?”

The Padre made a quiet, gurgling sound that did not translate and said, “God, and possibly the virus creature, knows.”

Hewlitt puzzled over the question in silence all the way to his old ward. Apart from calling O’Mara to pass on the new information, the Padre refused further discussion of the subject. It was possible that a large part of Lioren’s mind was on the troubles of the patient it was about to visit.

“Patient Hewlitt,” said Leethveeschi the moment he entered the nurses’ station, “what are you doing here?”

He knew that the charge nurse was used to the Padre visiting its ward, but it did not sound pleased by the presence of a former patient and proven disruptive influence like himself. Hewlitt was still trying to find a suitable reply when Lioren answered for him. He noted that the Padre did not actually lie, but it was sparing in its use of the truth.

“With your permission, Charge Nurse,” Lioren said, “it will accompany me so that it may observe and talk to the patients and, if it is able, provide me with nonmedical support. I will insure that it does not talk to anyone who is currently undergoing treatment or is in an unfit condition to hold a conversation. Ex-Patient Hewlitt will not, I assure you, cause any more trouble.”

A section of Leethveeschi’s body twitched inside its chlorine envelope in what was probably a nonverbal gesture of assent. It said, “I think I understand. The experience with Patient Morredeth has caused it to decide, or perhaps strengthen a decision already made, to become a trainee priest-counselor. This is very laudable, exPatient Hewlitt, and you have a fine mentor.”

“My real reason for being here . . .“Hewlitt began.

“Would take too long to explain,” Leethveeschi broke in, “and right now I haven’t the time to listen to an other-species theological self-examination, interesting though it might be. You may talk to any of my patients who are able to talk back. But please, let us have no more miracles.”

“That is a promise,” he said as he followed the Padre into the ward.

They had already eliminated Leethveeschi and the other staff on duty in the nurses’ station from their list of former hosts, as well as the patient Lioren was visiting. It was a Melfan called Kennonalt whose support sling was surrounded with a worrying profusion of biosensor and life-support equipment. He did not find out what was wrong with it because, apart from exchanging names, Lioren had made it clear that the conversation with Kennonalt was to be private and that Hewlitt should spend the time checking the other patients until the Padre rejoined him.

His slow, zigzag progress down and from side to side of the ward was a trip through familiar territory, although he could not be sure of the familiarity of the patients because he still had difficulty telling one Tralthan, Kelgian, Melfan, or whatever from another. Most of them seemed glad of the chance to talk, a few appeared to be heavily sedated or were simply ignoring him, and one was undergoing treatment that could not be interrupted. But he was able to look at them, patients and medical attendants alike, closely and for more than enough time to eliminate them as former hosts. His last visit was to a Tralthan and a Duthan who were playing two-handed scremman at the ambulatory patients’ dining table. By the time he spoke they, too, had been eliminated.

“Horrantor? Bowab?” he said. “Are you well?”

“Ah, you must be Patient Hewlitt,” said the Tralthan. “My limb is mending, thank you, and Bowab is doing very well, both medically and in this accursed game. It is pleasant to see you again. Tell us about yourself. Were they able to find out what was wrong with you?”

“Yes,” he replied. Choosing his words with care, he went on, “I no longer have the complaint and feel very well indeed. But it was an unusual condition, they told me, and they asked if I would help them tie up a few medical loose ends by remaining for a while. It was difficult to refuse.”

“So now you’re a healthy lab specimen,” said Bowab in a worried voice. “It doesn’t sound like much of an improvement. Have they done anything nasty to you yet?”

Hewlitt laughed. “No, and it isn’t like that at all. I have my own quarters in the staff accommodation area, a small room that belonged to a couple of Nidians, and I’m free to wander all over the hospital so long as the Padre is with me to see that I don’t get lost or run over by somebody. All they want me to do is talk to people and answer questions.”

“You always were a strange patient,” said Bowab, “but your convalescence sounds even stranger.”

“To be serious for a moment,” said Horrantor. “If all you do is talk to people and answer questions, presumably they also talk to you, or talk among themselves in your presence. Perhaps by accident or in ignorance of your nonstaff status, do they ever tell you things that you are not supposed to know? If so, and if you are allowed to answer, would you answer one of our questions?”

This sounded like something more serious than a patient’s normal hunger for the latest hospital gossip, Hewlitt thought. It was a time for caution.

“If I can,” he said,

“Horrantor has a nasty, devious mind,” said Bowab, joining in again, “and an imagination to match. That is why it beats me so often at scremman. We overheard some of the nurses talking together. They stopped very quickly when they realized that we were listening. Probably it was only staff gossip, or maybe nothing but our complete misunderstanding of an incomplete conversation, or it was something more than gossip. It is really worrying us.”

“Everybody enjoys a good gossip,” he said, “but it isn’t supposed to worry you sick. What is your question?”

There was a moment’s silence while Bowab and Horrantor looked at each other. Then the Duthan said, “According to what the charge nurse told me about ten days ago, I should have been discharged by now for convalescence in a home-planet hospital. In Sector General they don’t believe in wasting either their time or their unique medical resources on patients who are no longer in need of them. But yesterday when I asked Leethveeschi why I was still here and if there was anything it wasn’t telling me, it said that there was no environmentally suitable transport available to take me home and that there were no medical problems for me to worry about.

“About the same time,” Bowab went on, “Senior Physician Medalont held a bedside lecture on Horrantor. It told the trainees that the patient was sufficiently recovered to be discharged without delay. That should have been within a few days, because the majority of the supply and transport vessels that come here, sometimes as often as four or five in a week, are crewed by warm-blooded oxygen-breathing species who are required by Federation law to provide accommodation for most of the other warm-blooded oxygen-breathers who need to travel. Traltha and Dutha, remember, are commercial hub worlds on the way to practically everywhere. But the reason Leethveeschi gave for Horrantor still being here was the same as mine, the nonavailability of environmentally suitable transport.”

“Don’t forget to tell it about the emergency drill,” said Horrantor.

“I won’t,” said Bowab. “The day before yesterday a twentystrong maintenance team descended on the ward to conduct what Leethveeschi said was an emergency evacuation drill. They detached the beds of the most seriously ill patients from their wall supports, fitted them with extra oxygen tanks and antigravity grids, and deployed the airtight canopies, after which they moved all of us out of the ward and along the corridor to the intersection that leads to Lock Five before bringing us all back again. Leethveeschi timed the operation and told the team that they would have to do better than that; then it apologized to us for the inconvenience and told us to return to our game and not to worry. But while the maintenance people were leaving-and complaining about the charge nurse’s personality defects and the unfairly high standard of performance expected by their superiors in a major evacuation drill, the like of which had not been practiced for about twenty years-we overheard a few odd scraps of conversation that worried us very much.

“Our question,” Bowab ended, “is what exactly are they hiding from us?”

“I don’t know,” said Hewlitt, and added under his breath, “exactly.”

That was the literal truth, but he was remembering his return in Rhabwar and the general signal from Reception for all ships to hold beyond the approach beacons unless carrying casualties in urgent need of attention. An unspecified technical problem that Maintenance was dealing with had been given as the reason, and in any case the signal had not applied to the special ambulance ship.

Hewlitt did not feel as reassuring as he sounded when he went on, “I haven’t heard any rumors about an evacuation, but I’ll listen and ask around. Have you considered the possibility that you misunderstood the incomplete conversations you overheard? All large, staff-intensive organizations carry out emergency drills from time to time. When someone realized that it had not been done in Sector General for twenty years, the hospital authorities must have decided that it had to be done sooner than yesterday and, naturally, it was the junior staff who suffered the inconvenience.

“It could be that Leethveeschi is right,” he added, mentally crossing his fingers, “and you have nothing to worry about.”

“That’s what we keep telling each other,” said Horrantor, “but after playing scremman together for so long, we have difficulty believing anything we say.”

“Speaking of which,” said Bowab, “would you like to join the game? One of us could buy you in as a short-term political consultant and watch for indications that you are going to change sides . . .

On the edge of his field of vision he could see the Padre approaching slowly down the ward, moving from side to side and looking at or exchanging a few words with the patients as Hewlitt had done earlier. He said, “Sorry, not this time. I’ll have to leave in a few minutes.”

When they were in the corridor again, he said, “From the patients and staff I felt nothing. You?”

“Nothing,” said Lioren.

“But I did hear an interesting rumor,” said Hewlitt. He went on to recount the observations and suspicions of Horrantor and Bowab and the wording of the signa] that had been received by Rhabwar. He knew that the Padre would not deliberately misinform him, and that if the other could not tell the truth it would ignore his questions. He ended, “Have you heard any rumors of an evacuation, and do you know what is going on?”

It was a few moments before Lioren replied, and then it said, “Next we go to the eighty-third level and the Meeting of Diagnosticians.”

CHAPTER 27

First to arrive was a large, slow-moving, and aged Tralthan whom Lioren identified as Thornnastor, the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology. They watched it from the moment it appeared from a side corridor that was about thirty meters distant until it drew abreast of their position opposite the the room where the meeting was to take place. Without bending an eye in their direction or saying a word, it turned in to the entrance.

“No?” asked the Padre.

“No,” Hewlitt agreed. “But why did it ignore us? We’re big enough to see and there’s nobody else in the corridor.”

“It has a lot on its minds . . .” Lioren began, then broke off to say, “Here come three more. Conway and the chief psychologist we already know are clear. The Kelgian is Diagnostician Kurrsedeth. No?”

“No,” said Hewlitt again.

Conway nodded as he passed, O’Mara gave them a scowl of impatience, and Kurrsedeth said, “Why are the Padre and that Earth-human DBDG staring at me like that?”

“Right now,” said O’Mara dryly, “they have nothing better to do.”

A refrigerated vehicle which Lioren identified as belonging to Diagnostician Semlic turned in to the corridor. The Vosan was an ultra-low-temperature, methane life-form whose crystalline metabolism made its unsuitability as a virus host a virtual certainty. In contrast to the cold that was radiating from Semlic’s vehicle, since the passage of O’Mara Hewlett had been self-generating a lot of internal heat.

“How,” he said, “did such a sarcastic, ill-mannered, thoroughly obnoxious person ever get to be the hospital’s chief psychologist? Why hasn’t a member of the staff committed a lifethreatening act of physical violence on him long since, as I feel like doing now?”

Lioren taised a medial arm to point along the corridor and said, “This one is Colonel Skempton, another Earth-human DBDG as you can see, who is in charge of supply, maintenance, and nonmedical administration. It is the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Sector General and, I think we can agree, it has never been a host of the virus creature.”

“Right,” said Hewlitt. “But what I don’t understand is why isn’t someone like Prilicla doing O’Mara’s jpb? It is sympathetic, reassuring, pleasant all the time, and it really feels for its patients. And on that subject of empathy, why doesn’t its empathic faculty work on diagnosticians? Or do I add another three questions to the list of those you will not answer?”

The Padre did not look at him when it spoke, because its eyes were directed up and down the corridor. It said, “Your last three questions have a single answer which, subject to interruptions by arriving diagnosticians, I am free to give you because it has no bearing on the present emergency.

“First,” it went on, “Prilicla is much too gentle and and sensitive to hold the position of chief psychologist, while O’Mara is sensitive and caring but not gentle . . .

“Sensitive and caring?” said Hewlitt. “Is my translator on the blink?”

“We haven’t much time,” said the Padre. “Do you want to hear or talk about Major O’Mara?”

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m listening.”

As the hospital’s chief psychologist, Lioren went on to explain, O’Mara’s overall responsibility was the smooth and efficient mental operations of the ten-thousand-odd members of its medical and maintenance staff. For administrative reasons he carried the rank of major and, theoretically, this placed him among the lower links in the Monitor Corps chain of command. But keeping so many different and potentially hostile life-forms working together in harmony was a large job whose limits, like O’Mara’s actual authority, were difficult to define.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect among all levels of its personnel, and in spite of the careful psychological screening they were given before being accepted for training, there were still occasions when serious, interpersonal friction threatened to occur because of ignorance or misunderstandings over other-species cultural and interpersonal behavior. Or a being might develop a xenophobic neurosis which, if left untreated, would ultimately affect its mental stability and professional competence.

It was the major’s duty to detect and eradicate such problems before they could become life- or sanity-threatening or, if therapy failed, to remove the potentially troublesome individuals from the hospital. This constant watch for signs of wrong, unhealthy, or intolerant thinking, which his department performed with such zeal, had made him the most disliked entity in the hospital. But the chief psychologist was doubly fortunate in that he had never sought the admiration of others and gave every appearance of enjoying his work.

“O’Mara has a particular and personal responsibility,” Lioren continued, “for safeguarding the sanity of the diagnosticians, who are in simultaneous possession of . . . The one who is approaching us now is the Melfan diagnostician, Ergandhir. The last time we spoke it was carrying seven tapes. Have you any feelings of recognition for it?”

Hewlitt waited until the Melfan had clicked past on its four, exoskeletal legs and gone in to join the others, then said, “No. And it was another one who completely ignored our presence. From what you just said I thought you two knew each other.”

“We know each other very well,” said Lioren, “so I must assume that the forefront of Ergandhir’s mind is currently occupied by one of its Educator taped entities who does not know me, and never will since the original donor is no longer alive.”

“I hate to ask another question,” said Hewlitt, “but will you explain that?”

“It is part of the same question,” the Padre said, “and I’m trying to answer it.

Educator tapes were very much a mixed blessing, Lioren explained, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological and clinical information needed for the treatment of patients in a multispecies hospital. That was why the incredible mass of data required to care for them was furnished by means of the Educator tapes, which were the complete brain recordings of great medical specialists of the past belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until the treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. Senior physicians with teaching duties were often called on to retain two or three of the tapes for long periods, which was not very pleasant for them, and their only consolation from their points of view was that they were better off than the diagnosticians.

They were the hospital’s medical elite. A diagnostician was one of those rare entities whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently and simultaneously up to ten physiology tapes. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.

There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a diagnostician was mad.

“You must understand that it is not only the physiological data that the tapes impart,” the Padre went on. “The complete memory and personality of the donor entity who possessed that knowledge is impressed as well. In effect a diagnostician subjects itself voluntarily to a most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different in motivation and character that . . . Well, geniuses in any field are rarely nice people. These donor entities have no control over the host’s thinking or bodily functions, but a diagnostician who does not have a stable and well-integrated personality can sometimes fool itself into believing that the opposite is true and it is no longer in charge of itself. Getting used to walking on two feet when your mind insists that you have six is bad enough, but the food preferences, the dreams that come when the body is asleep and the mind has no conscious control, are much worse. Worst of all are the other-species sexual fantasies. They can be really disturbing.

“With some of the diagnosticians,” the Padre ended, “O’Mara has its hands full.”

Hewlitt thought for a moment, then said, “Now I understand the reason for Pathologist Murchison’s remark about her husband being multiply absentminded, and Prilicla’s uncertainty about detecting the virus’s emotional radiation if its host is a diagnostician, but I find it impossible to believe that . . .

He broke off as another diagnostician waddled and squelched into view wearing a transparent suit with the helmet open. It was a Creppelian octopoid, Lioren said, a warm-blooded amphibious life-form who could breathe air or water. Owing to a skin condition associated with advanced age, it found it more convenient to breathe air and more comfortable to keep its body immersed in water. He did not catch its name because even through his translator it sounded like nothing so much as a short sneeze. When they agreed that it, too, had never been a virus host, Lioren spoke into its communicator.

“The last one has just gone in, Major,” it said. “With the exception of Semlic, who was invisible inside its environmental protection, all of the diagnosticians and Colonel Skempton are cleared.”

“Right, Padre,” O’Mara replied. “You two resume your search at once, and don’t waste time.”

The sound of other-species’ voices raised in anger or argument followed them as they moved away, but the sounds were too muffled for Hewlitt’s translator to make any sense of them. Lioren said, “Our next call is the AUGL ward. What is it that you find impossible to believe?”

“No offense intended,” said Hewlitt, “but I think your profession has made you feel too kindly disposed toward the chief psychologist. Nobody can convince me that he is anything but a sarcastic, bad-tempered, ill-mannered, unfeeling person who is sensitive and caring about nobody but himself. Every time he opens his mouth he reinforces that belief.”

The Padre made an untranslatable sound and said, “It is true that Major O’Mara has personality defects, and there are many people on the staff who will tell you that the only thing that keeps them sane is the fear of what O’Mara will do to them if they dare go mad. This is an exaggeration for humorous effect on their part. It is also completely untrue.”

“If you say so, Padre,” he said.

They were moving along a main corridor again. Hewlitt was avoiding other-species collisions without Lioren’s guiding hand on his shoulder and holding a conversation at the same time. He felt surprised and pleased with himself.

“Believe me,” said the Padre, “if a being of any species is in serious need of psychiatric help, there is no better person in the hospital, and that includes myself, to give it. O’Mara takes the bad cases, those which could lead to permanent mental damage or to otherwise well-motivated and dedicated members of the staff being expelled from the hospital, and more often than not it saves their sanity as well as their future careers. But those files are closed to the other psychology staff, and neither the major nor its patients will talk about the treatment they were given afterward.”

He did not know why, but Hewlitt felt sure that one of the patients concerned had been Lioren itself.

“O’Mara will tell you that the entire hospital staff are its patients,” the Padre went on. “Most of them require minimum attention or no treatment at all and with them, it says, it can relax and be its normal, bad-tempered, sarcastic self. But when it begins to show concern toward a person, as it did to you when you showed signs of psychological distress on recognizing me as a former virus host, that is the time to worry. You recovered quickly, however, so O’Mara reverted to its normal behavior pattern toward a person it again considered to be one of its mentally healthy and well-adjusted patients.

“Instead of anger,” it ended, “you should be feeling relieved and complimented. And perhaps a little incredulous.”

Hewlitt laughed. “Thank you for the incredible information,” he said. “But seriously, I have another question, the one I asked you earlier. What are you all hiding from me?”

“My previous answer was designed to change the subject by giving you something else to think about,” Lioren said. “We are approaching the AUGL ward. Can you swim?”

CHAPTER 28

In the outer robing compartment, Lioren checked the helmet seals and air supply of his protective suit, a process that was repeated by Charge Nurse Hredlichli in the water-filled nurses’ station, before he was allowed into the ward. Hewlitt wondered if Illensans had a medical monopoly on the senior nursing positions; the two wards he had experienced so far had both been in the charge of chlorine-breathers. Considering the fact that they were separated by the fabric of two protective suits and a few meters of intervening water, the distinctive chlorine smell was probably due to his imagination.

“The patient I am visiting is AUGL Two-Thirty-Three,” said Lioren. “That is the physiological classification for this waterbreathing species, and the case number is used because they do not exchange names other than with members of their family. They are visually frightening, extroverted, and, unless you forbid it, playful in the company of smaller beings, but they will never deliberately harm another sapient creature.”

The Padre began swimming toward the ward entrance, its awkward, twelve-limbed, pyramidal body looking almost graceful underwater. It went on, “Most people feel a certain trepidation at their first sight of a Chalder, and it will not be considered as a lack of emotional fortitude if you are unable to make close physical contact. This is not a dare, so take your time and go out and talk to them only when or if you feel ready.”

For what seemed a longtime, Hewlitt stared through the transparent wall of the nurses’ station into a dim, green world whose outlines were softened by what seemed to be drifting masses of decorative vegetation although, he thought, the larger pieces might have been patients. Hredlichli and a Kelgian nurse were concentrating on their monitors and ignoring him, so without further hesitation he swam slowly into the ward.

The nurses’ station was less than ten meters behind him when, at the limit of visibility, one of the indistinct, dark-green shadows lying in the angle between wall and floor detached itself and came rushing silently toward him like a great, organic torpedo, taking on a terrifying, three-dimensional solidity the closer it came. As it slowed abruptly to a stop, the pressure wave and turbulence from its close approach and the rapid beating of its many fins sent him spinning end over end.

One of the massive fins swept up to lie for an instant along his back, feeling like a soft, firm mattress as it steadied him. Then it withdrew for a short distance to begin circling him, almost nose to tail, like a gigantic, open-ended doughnut that had to be at least twenty meters long. He was free to swim up or downward, but for some reason his arms, legs, and voice refused to work.

At close range he could see that the creature resembled an enormous, armored fish with a heavy, knife-edged tail, a seemingly haphazard arrangement of stubby fins and a collar of thick, ribbon tentacles projecting from gaps in its body armor. When it was in motion the tentacles streamed backward to lie flat along its sides, but they were long enough to reach forward beyond the thick, blunt wedge of the head when it was at rest. The nearer of its two lidless eyes, looking to be about the size and shape of an upturned soup dish, watched him as it circled closer. Suddenly the head divided to reveal a vast, pink cavern of a mouth edged with a triple row of triangular white teeth. The mouth opened even wider.

“Hello,” it said. “Are you the new trainee nurse? We were expecting a Kelgian.”

Hewlitt opened his own mouth, but it was a moment before he found his voice. “N-no,” he said. “I’m not a medic, just a layperson visiting the Chalder ward for the first time.”

“Oh,” said the Chalder. “I hope my approach did not frighten you. Please accept my apologies if it did, but you did not react like a first-time visitor. I am Patient AUGL Two-Eleven. If you give me the case number of the person you wish to visit, I would be pleased to take you to it.”

He was about to introduce himself when he remembered in time that the Chalders did not exchange names, and avoided serious embarrassment for them both. The other’s compliment must have made him him foolhardy, because he found himself saying, “Thank you. But I do not wish to speak to one particular person. Would it be possible to meet and spend a short time with all the patients?”

Patient Two-Eleven closed and opened its mouth several times. Hewlitt wondered if it was about to object when it said, “That would be possible, even desirable, especially to the three patients like myself who are overdue for discharge and are growing bored. But time is limited. The main meal of the day will be released in less than an hour. The food is synthesized, naturally, but highly mobile and lifelike, and smaller beings like yourself are required to vacate the ward during meals in case of an accidental ingestion.”

“Don’t worry,” said Hewlitt, “I shall certainly leave before then.

“That is sensible,” said the Chalder. “May I make an observation and a suggestion that may possibly offend you?”

Hewlitt looked again at the massive, armored body and size of its teeth, then said, “No offense will be taken.”

“Thank you,” it said, moving closer and slightly past him so that only one enormous eye, a side view of the mouth, and a stiffly projecting fin were visible. “Earth-humans are not very efficient in water; you move slowly and must expend much energy to do so. If you would grip the base of the fin that is close to you and hold on tightly with both hands, we can move between the patients in a fraction of the time you would otherwise require.”

Hewlitt hesitated. “The fin looks, well, fragile. Are you sure I won’t damage you?”

“Not at all,” said Two-Eleven. “Admittedly I have been unwell, but I am much stronger than I look.”

Unable to think of a suitable reply, Hewlitt grasped the base of the fin whose thick, red-veined stem sprouted from a gap in the scaly armor like an enormous, translucent rhubarb leaf. He tightened his grip as he felt an invisible something trying to pull him loose, then realized that it was increasing water pressure caused by their motion and that the whole ward, its decorative foliage, the massive figures of the patients, and the diminuitive medical staff were slipping past at speed.

There were no beds in the ward, he saw at once, and realized that that should not have surprised him considering the environment. What appeared to be the equivalent of bedridden patients were tethered loosely to the insides of open-ended treatment frames that looked like uncovered box kites. One of these patients, whose entire body surface was cracked and discolored by either age or disease, was being attended by Lioren. The majority of the others were floating without restraints close to their personal, marked-out areas of wall or ceiling, their eyes fixed on illuminated viewscreens and presumably being entertained. At the far end of the ward, which was apparently their destination, two Chalders were drifting motionless nose to nose. When Two-Eleven and Hewlitt approached, their massive tails flicked and they swung into a ponderous turn to face them, their vast mouths already gaping open.

“You may dismount now,” said Two-Eleven, bringing forward a ribbon tentacle to point. “These are Patients One-NinetyThree and Two-Twenty-One. And this is an Earth-human visitor who would like to talk with us.”

“I can see that it isn’t one of your body parasites,” said OneNinety-Three. “What does it want to talk about? The stupid reason we are still here?”

Before Hewlitt could reply, Two-Twenty-One said, “Please excuse our friend, small air-breather. A combination of impatience, boredom, and homesickness has eroded its manners. Usually its behavior is much better, well, a little better, than this. But its question remains-why are you here and what do you want to say to us?”

Hewlitt waited while the three of them changed position until they hung side by side facing him. The sight of one Chalder jaw and triple set of teeth had almost unnerved him, but three of the enormous mouths gaping open within a few meters of his head was ridiculous rather than frightening, and he felt himself begin to relax. He decided that this was another time to be sparing and perhaps a little inventive with the truth.

“I don’t know what I want to talk about,” he replied. “The subject doesn’t matter, I just want a few minutes’ conversation. I am neither a medic nor a psychologist, just a former patient helping with some follow-up research. Until I am allowed to leave the hospital there is nothing interesting for me to do, so I asked, and was given permission, to spend the time meeting and talking to as many patients and members of the staff as possible.

“Practically every member species of the Federation is represented here,” he went on, “while on Earth I would be lucky to meet five off-worlders in a lifetime. The opportunity was too good to miss.”

“But there are over a hundred Chalders on Earth,” said TwoEleven. “They are advising on the repopulation and education of the semisapient ocean mammals which your ancestors nearly rendered extinct.”

“Most of them are Chalder scientists and their families,” said Hewlitt. “Only a few Earth-human marine biologists are given permission to meet or work with them. Nonspecialist visitors like myself were forbidden, but here visits between fellow patients are allowed.”

“Even so,” said One-Ninety-Three, “it seems to me that a lifeform as physically fragile as yours is taking a serious risk simply to avoid the boredom of waiting to go home. The Chalder environment is friendly compared with some that you will find here. Was there a psychological component to your former illness?”

“Most of the medics at home thought there was,” said Hewlitt, knowing that the irony was lost on them, “but in Sector General the cause of the trouble was removed and the Earth doctors were proved wrong. There is no serious risk, because Padre Lioren has agreed to be my guide and guardian.”

“The hospital must feel an obligation to you,” said the other, “to grant such an unusual request. What was wrong with you?”

He was still trying to think of a suitably unrevealing reply when One-Ninety-Three said, “Probably it was one of those disgusting reproductive problems that these non-egg-layers are prone to. You can see that it doesn’t want to tell us, and anyway, I don’t think I want to know.”

Hewlitt wanted to protest at the implication that he was a non-egg-laying female, but if he did not know whether he was talking to male or female Chalders he could hardly object to them making the same mistake with him.

“Usually,” he said, “the juiciest gossip is associated with some physical or emotional aspect of the reproductive process. You will find me less reticent when telling you about other people’s embarrassments.”

“We understand,” said One-Ninety-Three, “but right now we would prefer to know when we are likely to be sent home. Have you heard anything on that subject?”

“Sorry, no,” said Hewlitt. “But I will try to find out.”

That much is true, he thought, remembering the warning to Rhabwar and the emergency drills that had been held in his former ward. Whether or not he would be allowed to pass on his findings was another matter, because he was beginning to suspect that the explanation was neither simple nor pleasant. But it soon became clear that all the Chalders really wanted to talk about was home.

At first he had expected that their attempts to explain the water world of Chalderescol to him would be like trying to describe a sunset to a person who was color-blind, but he was wrong. Within a few minutes he was experiencing the freedom of an ocean that, apart from two small areas at the poles, covered the planetary surface in places to a depth of over a hundred miles.

The Chalders had battled their way to the top of their evolutionary underwater tree, learned to survive and later to control and utilize the power from their undersea volcanic activity while husbanding the living, nonsapient resources of the most beautiful world in the Federation, although the small-eyed air-breathers like himself required pressure vessels and visual enhancement to appreciate it. They were already a highly civilized species before their discovery of fire and the beginnings of the technology that enabled the very few of their number to fly through the near-vacuum above their ocean and into the space beyond. But no matter how far or often they traveled or their reasons for doing so, they remained a part of Chalderescol’s mother ocean and needed periodically to return to it.

Considering their enormous body mass, the size and complexity of life-support required, and the extreme danger and discomfort involved in traveling in space, Hewlitt wondered why they did not stay at home.

“Why does any otherwise sane person want to travel in space?” said Two-Eleven, making him realize that he had been wondering aloud. “That is a very large philosophical question, and much too complex for debate if you still want to speak to the other patients before the lunch hunt begins. Hold on to my fin again . . .

His experience with the first three Chalders meant that he was able to speak briefly to the other patients with some understanding of their feelings, or at least without making a complete fool of himself. He stopped beside but did not speak to the gravely ill patient Lioren was visiting, because they were already having a conversation and he thought it better not to intrude. But from his moment of floating beside its treatment frame he was able to establish that it, along with the rest of the ward’s other patients and medical staff, had never been hosts of the virus creature.

He returned to find the food-dispenser outlet beside the nurses’ station open and, drifting horizontally in the water before it, what seemed like more than a hundred flattened, ovoid shapes just under a meter in diameter. Their upper surfaces were covered by irregular patches of dull color while the underside was pale grey. A long, low dorsal fin ran fore and aft, and the rim at the stern was pierced by three circular openings. While he was moving forward for a closer look his hand touched the object, sending it into a slow roll. Suddenly Charge Nurse Hredlichli was beside him.

“What . . . ?“began Hewlitt, and broke off as a shapeless, Illensan limb shot forward, grasped the object, and pulled it level again.

“Do not alter the trajectory,” it said in its usual impatient voice. “For your information, if you do not already have the knowledge, that is a container of concentrated food enclosed in an edible shell and propelled by concealed capsules of high-pressure, nontoxic gas which simulates the movement through water of a fleeing, nonsapient native crustacean. It has been found that mobile food increases the patients’ appetite and has beneficial psychological effects. If the food vehicle were to crash edge-on into a wall or deck and burst, it would leave a mess that my nurses would have to filter out and remove when there are more important duties requiring their attention. Please reenter the nurses’ station and stay out of my head fronds. Patients, your attention please . . .

Its voice was coming from the ward’s wall speakers as well as his headset, and Hewlitt was being ignored.

“The main lunch release is imminent,” Hredlichli went on. “It will be followed in fifteen minutes by the containers marked with concentric blue circles, which are the special diets required by Patients One-Ninety-Three, Two-Eleven, and Two-Fifteen. Kindly remember that these are not to be consumed by anyone else. Patients confined to their treatment frames will have lunch delivered to them by the nurses once the mobile patients are fed. All medical staff who are not already in the nurses’ station return there at once. Padre Lioren, this includes you.

Lioren returned but did not seem disposed to speak to anyone. Perhaps its mind was still on its sick patient. Hewlitt watched as fans of bubbles jetted from the sterns of the lunch vehicles and they began to accelerate down the ward, their numbers thinned by heavy, darting shapes and clashing jaws. The shape of Hredlichli, looking like a grotesque, plastic-wrapped sickly vegetable, was still drifting close by, and for the first time since his arrival it seemed to have nothing to do.

There were times, he thought, when by pretending to have a little knowledge it was possible to obtain a lot more. He decided to risk a question.

“Charge Nurse,” he said in a brisk, confident voice. “The AUGL classification are not easy to move in an off-world environment. How long would it require for an emergency evacuation of all the patients in your ward, and how would you personally assess the chances of success?”

Inside Hredlichli’s protective envelope a group of oily yellow fronds twitched as it said, “Obviously you are already aware of the emergency. This surprises me because the information is restricted to the very senior medical and maintenance staff and to one charge nurse, myself, whose ward poses a particular problem. Or are you more than a mere curious visitor, and there was another reason why you wished to speak to every patient in my ward?”

The answer to both questions was yes, Hewlitt thought, but he could not say so because the knowledge of the virus creature was also restricted. He wanted to ask for more details about the emergency, but could not because he was supposed to know them, and his earlier curiosity was being diluted by a growing fear.

“Sorry, Charge Nurse,” he said, “I am not at liberty to answer that question.”

More parts of Hredlichli twitched grotesquely. It said, “I do not approve of the secrecy where this ward is concerned. My Chalders are overlarge but they are not stupid. Even in this hospital there are too many people who equate large size with a lack of sensitivity. If my patients were to learn that there is a malfunction in the power-generation system that threatens the entire hospital and that they, because of their great size and consequent difficulty of evacuation, would be among the last to leave or, worse, that there might not be time enough to modify enough ships to ac commodate them, they would not panic or try to break out. Your poisonous, rarefied atmosphere outside this ward would be as deadly to them as my own chlorine or space itself. Those that were left behind would accept their fate, and no doubt insist that their medical attendants save themselves, because they are intelligent, sensitive, and caring monsters.”

“I agree,” said Hewlitt. He had recently met all of them and knew. He had also had frightening confirmation of the reason for the emergency drills that were apparently being conducted everywhere but the Chalder ward, but uppermost in his mind was a sudden and inexplicable liking for this ghastly chlorine-breather. He added reassuringly, “It might never happen, Charge Nurse. This is a problem for the maintenance engineers. No doubt they will be able to solve it in time.”

“Considering the time it took for them to repair the waste extractor on One-Eighty-Seven’s treatment frame,” Hredlichli replied, returning to character, “I lack your confidence.”

All of Lioren’s eyes had been directed at him while he was talking to the charge nurse, but the Padre did not comment and it remained silent after they returned to the corridor. Hewlitt wondered if his conversation with Hredlichli had caused the other to take offense.

“Are we agreed,” he said, “that there are no former virus hosts in the Chalder ward?”

“Yes,” said Lioren.

The word had punched a small hole in the other’s wall of silence. But Hewlitt’s fear was growing and so was his impatience to know more, and he knew that his next words might close the hole again.

“Did you know the reason for the evacuation drills?” he asked. “Were you deliberately keeping it from me?”

“Yes,” said the Padre.

Before Hewlitt could ask the obvious question, Lioren answered it.

“There were three reasons,” it went on. “You have already been told one of them, that you are not a specialist in the relevant field so that being given complete and accurate information could not have contributed to a solution of the problem. As well, the knowledge would have worried you unnecessarily and might have had an adverse effect on your conduct of our search. And my own incomplete knowledge was gained in circumstances which preclude me passing it on. In any case, you found out as much about the emergency from Hredlichli as I did, so I now feel free to discuss the situation with you. In general terms, at least.”

“Does that mean,” he said, trying to control his irritation, “that there is something that you are still not telling me? For my own peace of mind, naturally.”

“Yes,” said Lioren.

This time it was Hewlitt who erected the wall of silence, because the words he felt like using were not those normally spoken to a Padre, and it was Lioren who was trying to demolish it.

“The next call,” it said, “is to a patient in the SNLU ward. It is an ultra-frigid, methane life-form with a crystalline tissue structure that is hypersensitive to bright light and minute increases in temperature. The environmental-protection vehicle is cumbersome, heavily insulated, fitted with sensory enhancement and remote manipulator systems. Because of the patients’ extreme aural sensitivity it is necessary to attenuate external sound output and amplify the input. It is a very quiet ward. You will be able to move close to my patient, and the three others who are under treatment, when I introduce you, but then you must leave the two of us alone as you did in the Chalder ward and talk to the others. You will not have to concern yourself with your vehicle’s controls; one of the staff will guide it remotely from the nurses’ station.”

Still feeling angered by the other’s implication that he could not be trusted with sensitive information without losing his emotional control, Hewlitt remained silent.

“You will find,” Lioren added, “that the SNLU environment will cool even the hottest temper.

CHAPTER 29

Not only was the ward cold and dark, but heavy shielding and sulation protected it from the trace quantities of radiation and heat given off by ship traffic in the vicinity of the hospital. There were no windows, because even the light that filtered in from the distant stars could not be allowed to penetrate to this area. The images that appeared on his display had been converted from the nonvisible spectrum, giving them the ghostly, unreal quality of fantasy, so that the scales covering the patients’ eight-limbed, starfish bodies shone coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, making them resemble a species of wondrous, heraldic beast.

When he turned off his translator while moving between patients so as to listen to their natural voices, the sound was like nothing he had ever heard before. So clear and cold and beautiful were the sounds that he could almost imagine that he was hearing the musical, amplified chiming of colliding snowflakes. Even though there were no virus hosts in the ward, and Hewlitt doubted that anything other than an SNLU could survive for more than a few minutes in that environment, it surprised him how sorry he felt when the time came to leave.

Lioren’s next visit was to the quarters of an off-duty Melfan nurse called Lontallet. Again he was introduced and, after removing it from their suspect list of former virus hosts, he waited in the corridor while the other two went inside to talk.

The wait was neither long nor boring, because the corridor was invaded by a slow-moving column of patients. He counted thirty of them comprising five different oxygen-breathing species, several of whom were being transported in gravity litters. From the overheard conversations of the nursing attendants he discovered that it was both an evacuation drill and an utter shambles. The last of them was moving away when the Padre rejoined him.

“Did they pass by slowly enough for detection?” it asked. “Did you feel anything from them?”

“Yes,” said Hewlitt. “And no. Where to next?”

“To the dock airlock on Level One,” Lioren replied, “and calling on the wards and scanning all the passersby in the corridors between. We will have to work much faster now. No longer may we speak at length to any of the patients. A few words or a brief visual contact is all we can allow ourselves. Are you feeling tired?”

“No, curious,” said Hewlitt. “And hungry. We haven’t eaten since—”

“In the short term,” the Padre broke in, “our hunger is not lifethreatening. I contacted the department from Nurse Lontallet’s room. O’Mara is in conference, this time by communicator with the waiting ships’ captains, but it left a message for us. The situation has worsened but so far the exact nature of the technical emergency has not been made public. At present there are three separate evacuation drills in progress, but as yet there are no ships at the boarding locks. The patients are complaining about the inconvenience, the medical staff know that something serious is going on and are wanting answers, and in spite of their efforts to project clinical calm, their uncertainty is being communicated to their patients and each other. Psychologically, this is a dangerous situation which must not be allowed to continue.”

“But what is the problem, exactly?” said Hewlitt. “Not enough ships for a complete evacuation, or what? Keep it a secret from me if you have to, but surely the other people here are used to emergencies, medical emergencies, at least, and would react better in conditions of full knowledge, even if the knowledge is frightening, than total ignorance.”

Lioren increased its pace along a clear section of corridor as it said, “Assembling enough ships to empty the hospital should not be a major problem, considering the Federation’s past response times on disaster-relief operations. It may be that they can’t talk about the problem because they don’t fully understand it themselves, or there is more than one problem.”

“Are you trying to confuse me,” said Hewlitt, “or give me some kind of clue?”

Lioren ignored the question and went on, “Prilicla reported nothing unusual from the dining hall. The virus creature was not occupying any of the diners whose emotional radiation it scanned, but due to its low stamina, it requires a lengthy period of rest before it will be able to resume the search. That leaves us as the only people who are able to detect the virus, O’Mara says, and we must find it with minimum delay. As well, from now on we are ordered to seal our helmets and use only suit air to avoid wasting time when changing environments.

“But that would save only a few minutes . . .” Hewlitt began, then ended, “Never mind.”

It was a stupid order, he thought, when all but two of the wards they would be visiting belonged to warm-blooded oxygenbreathers with similar atmospheric composition and pressure requirements as themselves. Maybe the emergency could affect the thinking of even the chief psychologist.

Their next ward was one of the few in Sector General-the Chalder section they had visited was another-where only one species of patient was treated. For the first time he was able to see, at close range and in horrendous, sharp focus rather than through a semitransparent chlorine envelope, not only one but a whole ward full of uncovered Illensan bodies. He was not surprised to find that none of them had harbored the virus, because he could not imagine any creature, no matter how desperate it was for a host, wanting to occupy a body like that.

Ward followed ward, as did the bewildering succession of patients and medical staff, many of them belonging to species he was meeting for the first time. There was no time to ask questions or wait for answers. None of the beings were as visually unpleasant as the Illensans and neither had any of them been former virus hosts. The speed of their visits aroused comment, as did the odor of chlorine emanating from their unnecessary protective suits, but the presence of the Padre insured that the remarks were polite. In the intervening corridors all of the people they met gave similar negative results.

“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Hewlitt, “if we aren’t deluding ourselves with our host-recognition capability. We have an indescribable-well, I suppose you could call it a fellow feeling for each other. But the feeling might be for each other and nobody else. And there is something wrong with this whole situation. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I think you know and could tell me.”

Lioren stopped so suddenly that Hewlitt had to take three paces backward. They seemed to have left the medical levels, because the people who passed them were wearing Maintenance coveralls and the doors and side corridors bore the interspecies symbols for power-transmission stations, heat-exchanger systems, and, above the opening just ahead of them, a radiation warning. He wondered what kind of ward he would find up here.

“Are you tired?” asked Lioren.

“No,” said Hewlitt. “Are you trying to change the subject?”

“As you may already have heard,” said the Padre, “I trained here as a medicbefore . . . What I’m trying to say is that I know my Earth-human physiology well enough to be aware of your physical limitations. By now you should be very tired as well as hungry. My next and final patient contact is classification VXTM. That is a radiation-eater and therefore completely unsuitable as a host entity for the virus. It is also a terminal case and is being visited for no other reason than that I visited it once and it requested as many subsequent visits as were possible. You may as well take this opportunity to eat or rest.”

“I’m not tired,” said Hewlitt. “Have you forgotten that the legacy left us by the virus is one of optimum health which presumably includes a body that operates at peak efficiency and is less subject to fatigue? Am I right in thinking that, following our recent high level of physical activity, you also are feeling less tired than you would normally have been?”

“I dislike arguing with you,” said the Padre, “especially when, as now, you are right. I have much on my mind and this is not an important matter. But very well, we are not as tired as we should be.”

It was clear that Lioren was irritated with him, probably for good and perhaps religious reasons so far as a padre making a sick call was concerned. He tried to apologize.

“I seem to have spent my whole life arguing,” he said, “usually with medics who were sure they were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry, it has become a bad habit that I should curb. If you have strong personal or religious reasons for not wanting my company on this visit, just say so. But I also feel that if we have checked all of your possible virus contacts together up to now, in the interests of consistency we should finish the job that way even though we may be wasting our time.

When the Padre did not respond, he laughed and went on, “As well, if you consider the Telfi radiation-eaters as unsuitable hosts, what about that ultra-low-temperature SNLU? Could a virus exist that close to absolute zero, and if it is an intelligentvirus, why would it want to?”

Lioren ignored his attempt at humor. It said, “I do not know enough about the virus creature’s motivations to be able to speculate about why it would do anything. And if you remember your home world’s natural history, there are many instances of simple forms of life surviving for extended periods under your polar ice layers, sometimes for millions of years.”

“And do you remember,” said Hewlitt, trying hard to control his own irritation, “my telling O’Mara that our virus creature passed through the fringes of a nuclear detonation? And that it survived the experience for more than twenty years before it infected me?”

They had to move aside quickly to avoid two Orligians in Monitor Corps uniforms who were driving their equipment litters like racing vehicles, but it was a few minutes before Lioren spoke.

“I do not remember that,” it said, “because I did not overhear that part of the meeting so that information is new to me. But there is a vast difference between the short burst of radiation sustained by the virus and the intense, lifelong exposure required by the Telfi. You are arguing with me again, but again you may be right. Very well, you may accompany me into the Telfi section.”

“Thank you,” said Hewlitt. “After I see the patient the two of you will be left alone to speak in private.”

“That will not be necessary this time,” said the Padre. “The patient is close to death. Beyond its self-knowledge of that fact, it has not said that there is anything troubling its mind. As you would expect, all of the Telfi religions are based on various forms of sun worship, but it has not said whether or not it believes in any of them. All that it needs or wants at this time is contact with another intelligent creature, or creatures, who will listen to it and speak in the Language of Strangers until it is no longer capable of forming thoughts or words. While it is suffering all we can do is stay with it for a while and listen in the hope that we are doing some good.”

Lioren turned without warninginto a side corridor so that Hewlitt had to hurry to catch up. He said, “Wouldn’t the patient feel better if one of its friends were with it at a time like this?”

“Obviously,” said the Padre, “you know very little about the Telfi.”

“Not much,” said Hewlitt, feeling his face grow warm at the implication of ignorance. “I never expected to meet one socially, so there was no reason to learn more. I know they are radioactive, very dangerous, and, well, not approachable people.”

“Their environment is hostile,” said Lioren, “not the people. And very few Federation citizens need to meet or learn about the Telfi person-to-person, so your lack of knowledge is not a reason for you to feel offended. Before you meet this patient you will have to learn a little about how the Telfl live, and, more important in this case, how they die. Are you able to absorb knowledge while moving your lower limbs a little faster, I hope?”

“I’ll be able to keep up with you,” said Hewlitt.

Lioren ignored the deliberate ambiguity and went on. “I have promised to touch and listen to the last thoughts, if it still has the strength to articulate them for the translator, of the dying Telfl astrogator part Cherxic. So far we have had no success with our search for the virus. I want to take a little of the time we seem to be wasting to keep my promise.”

“And do you have a little time,” said Hewlitt, “to listen to me?”

“Yes,” said the Padre without hesitation. “For some time I have sensed in you an emotional disturbance, but whether it is anger directed at me because of unsatisfied curiosity or some more serious, personal concern that distresses you I do not know. If the latter, is the matter urgent? Either way I will listen, now or later, but you know as well as I do that now is not a good time. Can you tell me simply, and I hope briefly, what is troubling you?”

Hewlitt did not look at the other as he replied, “You are right, Padre. I am curious and angry with you for not satisfying my curiosity, and I am growing increasingly frightened by the fact that you have been forbidden to satisfy it. So I keep asking myself questions that I’m not qualified to answer, and worrying. There is something about this whole business that bothers me.”

“Go on,” said Lioren, stopping before a rail containing Earthhuman radiation protection suits in various sizes. “Put one on without removing the garment you are wearing. It would be better if you talked while I help you to dress.”

It would also waste less time, he thought, but the Padre was too polite to say that.

“Right,” said Hewlitt. “So far as we know, the only beings to be infected or invaded by this virus creature were myself, my cat, Morredeth, you, and some other as yet unknown person or persons. It left us with a legacy of unusually good health and, for some reason, a strange ability to recognize former hosts. Why would it want to do that? And what exactly did it do to us?”

Without waiting for a reply he went on, “Is it telepathy, or an empathic faculty like Prilicla’s? We can’t receive each other’s thoughts or feelings with accuracy, so probably not. I don’t know enough about xenobiology or the behavior of extraterrestrial viruses, intelligent or otherwise, and nobody, yourself included, will answer questions. But am I right in thinking that the recognitive ability could only have come about as the result of a physical change of some kind within us? Was this invisible, two-way name tag that identifies us to other hosts merely a side effect and did something else happen, something the virus does to everyone it occupies? Has the long-term survival of the creature’s species got anything to do with it? Have we all been seeded by the thing and are busy growing virus- creature embryos?”

He had stopped moving and was standing balanced on one foot and with the other one pushed deep into the leg section of the radiation suit. The Padre was standing behind him, supporting the upper body section and not moving or speaking, either. The lengthening silence was broken by the Padre.

“I was forbidden to answer your questions,” Lioren said, “for the reasons you have already been given. It was to avoid causing you mental distress by listing our more frightening speculations. But I will not continue to withhold answers when it is plain that you are discovering them for yourself.”

Hewlitt was silent. He was no longer sure that he wanted his questions answered.

“You already know that the most important factor in the treatment of multispecies patients,” Lioren went on, “is that we can provide it without risk of cross-infection, because pathogens native to one world cannot be transmitted to a life-form that has evolved on another. We have derived much professional comfort from the fact that, throughout the explored galaxy, no exception has ever been found to this rule. Until now.”

“But the virus isn’t harmful,” Hewlitt protested. “It isn’t a disease. The opposite, in fact.”

-“Yes,” said the Padre. “But it is still a virus, a form of multispecies pathogen, with all that that implies. Admittedly it seems to be an intelligent, perhaps a highly intelligent organism who intends no harm to anyone, but we cannot be sure of that. We may be mistaking a simple, selfish need to occupy and maintain a host in optimum health for altruism. Certainly that is a very comforting and reassuring thought, but in a place like Sector General we cannot afford to ignore the possibility that, whether its behavior is guided by intelligence and altruism or is the result of a highly evolved survival instinct, it is the worst medical nightmare that any of us can imagine.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re so worried,” said Hewlitt. “It only cures people.”

“You are forgetting what it has done,” said the other. “On six separate occasions that we know of it has crossed the species barrier. It has done so with ease and without triggering the host’s natural defenses, although later it hyperreacted to any medication or toxic material introduced into the host body. In essence it is a superpathogen, an organized, intelligent collection of viruses which is capable of modifying its structure to adapt and survive within a wide range of temperatures and the physiologies and metabolisms of an as yet unknown number of former hosts . . .”

“Wait,” said Hewlitt. “Did the medical team on Rhabwar know about this and deliberately keep it from me?”

“Yes,” said the Padre, “as soon as they realized Lonvellin’s personal healer was involved and you were no longer hyperreacting to new medication, but Prilicla didn’t want you to worry.

“On the way back from Etla,” he said, “I remembered Naydrad saying that my troubles were just beginning. I thought it was talking about something else.”

“It wasn’t,” said Lioren, and went on, “potentially an organism that can do all that is very dangerous indeed. It might not intend to harm anyone, but the mechanism that enables it to transfer so easily between species could also serve as a bridge that would allow the transmission of lethal pathogens between the species of its former hosts. If such an adaptable, multispecies strain were to get loose in the hospital it is possible that the virus creature could cure the victims as it has done on previous occasions, provided we could communicate and make our needs known to it. But it is only one individual who would be trying to cure patients one at a time, and if there were a hospital-wide epidemic that would not be fast enough. Sector General and possibly the entire Galactic Federation would be in very serious trouble.

“It would mean the end of our present free and open contact between planetary cultures,” Lioren ended, “and we would be forced back to inhabiting only our own home planets or, if we did go visiting, taking the most stringent decontamination precautions.”

“So that,” said Hewlitt, “is the reason why the evacuation ships have been forbidden to dock.”

This time he was not asking a question.

CHAPTER 30

For a moment Hewlitt felt that his body was so cold that he could have been back in the SNLU ward without his protective suit, and he wondered why the sweat breaking on his forehead was not dropping off as hailstones. All of the Padre’s eyes were turned on him, and he did not know whether its next words were driven by impatience or the need to administer a therapeutic change of subject.

“Try not to think about it now,” it said. “You are about to meet your first Telfl, regrettably one who is dying. There is information you must have and precautions you must take, both for your own safety and to avoid further distressing Patient Cherxic. Listen carefully, if possible without asking questions . . .

Lioren went on to describe the conditions on Telf, a planet that orbited some thirty million miles from and presented the same face to its parent sun. It was a world whose flora occupied the grey area between vegetable and mineral, a world where the temperature and radiation levels were lethal to every other intelligent species known to the Federation. It was a truly hellish place to all but the Telfl inhabitants.

They were a quasi-animal life-form that had evolved on the dayside hemisphere and required the continuous high levels of heat and hard radiation given off by their sun in order to live. As well as a spoken language they possessed a telepathic faculty which operated between individuals, and especially the members of a family gestalt, who were in physical contact at the time.

Their civilization was very old and well established by the time they achieved space travel, life-support for the Telfl being difficult to reproduce inside a ship, and the proportion of malfunctions and crew losses among them were considered very high when measured by Federation standards. But that had not kept them from traveling between the stars and, eventually, joining and sharing in the commercial and cultural benefits of Federation membership, which included making frequent use of its medical service.

Provided a Telfl ship with space casualties on board could be brought to Sector General quickly enough, it was possible to help them. The problem was that when a Telfi casualty’s radiationabsorption mechanism failed because of a sudden withdrawal or a catastrophic surfeit of its radiant food supply, or a traumatic injury producing the same effect, the hospital had a maximum of one hundred hours from the time the injuries were sustained to initiation of treatment. This included reproducing in the required intensity and duration the cocktail of radiation that would enable the casualty to recover.

The need to reproduce this variety of curative radiation was the only reason why Sector General maintained a small fission reactor, which was little more than a functioning museum piece, among its contemporary fusion equipment. Over the years the hospital had learned how to treat a large number of the nontraumatic conditions as well, the Telfl equivalents of respiratory, intestinal, or gynecological problems, but often it was work for a physicist as much as a physician.

“The patient we are about to visit,” Lioren went on, “is the last and only surviving casualty of three sustained when their ship suffered a malfunction, the nature of which neither of us would understand. Cherxic was part of the specialized gestalt entity responsible for operating the vessel and, since it is no longer a functioning member of its group, the others have closed ranks as best they can and all physical, verbal, and telepathic contact with Patient Cherxic has been severed due to . . .

“You did say,” Hewlitt broke in, “that this is a civilized species?”

“Yes,” said Lioren. Its eyes and medial hands moved quickly over the seals of his suit, and then it went on, “That’s fine. Leave off one of your gauntlets-and the surgical glove, too, you won’t need them while visiting Cherxic-but double-check your glare shield for yourself while I dress. The visual radiation where we are going is vicious stuff.”

“The suit fabric,” said Hewlitt doubtfully, “seems very thin.”

“The fabric and visor materials are imported from Telf,” said the Padre, “where they were developed for the protection of offplanet visitors. Neither you nor any offspring you may produce need worry.

“If we were carrying virus embryos,” he said, trying to hold his voice steady, “would Prilicla be able to detect them?”

“Yes,” said Lioren, “provided they had developed to the stage of being aware of themselves.”

Hewlitt was still trying to think of a suitable response when it continued, “Patient Cherxic does not want, nor would any other Telfl even consider asking for, the presence of a family member or friend at such a time. Dying slowly while remaining conscious is a very unpleasant experience for any life-form, and for the Telfl who retain their telepathic faculty until the end, it is not one they wish to share with others of their kind. There is severe pain even while the sensorium is closing down, accompanied by fear that cannot be controlled or concealed because a telepath is incapable of controlling either, and for a being used to close physical and mental contact with its fellows from birth, there is a strange and terrible isolation, a loneliness so intense that nontelepaths can scarcely imagine it. And it is only nontelepaths like ourselves who are able to comfort a dying Telfi, by talking to it on the translator, listening to its final thoughts, and allowing it to feel contact with another sentient being for the last time, because it knows that we are feeling sympathy but will not be able to feel its pain.”

Hewlitt had yet to meet the dying Cherxic, but already he was feeling a little ashamed that his sympathy for the other was being outweighed by his own selfish fear.

“What do they look like?” he asked. “And when you said close contact, how close did you mean?”

“We’ll go in now,” said Lioren. “Follow me and don’t worry, the radiation where we are going is all in the visible spectrum.”

The airlock seal swung open to reveal a boarding tunnel whose other end blazed like a square sun. By the time they had traversed it, his eyes had grown accustomed to the intense light, but in spite of his glare shield he still had to look through slitted eyes to see the details of the compartment beyond. The equipment projecting from the walls and ceiling was a blur to him, both visually and intellectually, but in the center of the deck there was a tethered gravity litter with two long, opened metal boxes resting on it. He followed as the Padre moved across the room to stand beside them, thinking that a coffin looked much the same on any world, although putting them in their last resting place before they were clinically dead showed a certain lack of sensitivity.

“These two are dead,” said Lioren in a quiet, disapproving voice, making Hewlitt realize that he had been thinking aloud. “Both of them died within a few minutes of my arrival. They were left in the lock chamber close to the boarding tube so that the physical presence of their bodies would not cause distress to the living members of their gestalt, and for the convenience of Pathology, which will be sending someone to collect them. Since the Telfi do not reverence their dead other than in memory, the bodies have been donated to the hospital for research purposes on the understanding that the remains will ultimately be consigned to the surface of a sun, any sun. It is a custom among the members of their space-traveling gestalts that this be done. Excuse me, I must ask whether it is possible to meet Cherxic again. It may already have died, but please remember that death must never be mentioned in conversation with a Telfi.”

“Right,” said Hewlitt. “But earlier you mentioned making contact . . .

“Padre Lioren and Patient Hewlett, an Earth-human DBDG, wish contact with the damaged part Cherxic,” it said into the communicator. “Is this possible, and convenient?”

The sound in his earpiece resembled a long, modulated burst of static which the translator reproduced as, “You are welcome, Lioren, as is the stranger Hewlitt. A short visit is possible. Please wait.”

The Padre moved closer to Hewlitt and joined him in looking down at one of the dead Telfi. When Lioren spoke there was sadness in its voice as it said, “The suffering and loneliness is long and there is little we can do to ease either, but the part Cherxic still lives.~~

After all that he had heard about this exotic, radiation-eating species, Hewlitt had not expected them to look so ordinary.

Apart from the extra set of forelimbs growing from the base of the neck, the Telfi resembled nothing so much as a large terrestrial lizard just under five feet long from bulbous head to vestigial tail. The body was lying on its stomach so that the two tiny, lidless eyes and the mouth, which was closed, were the only features visible. All four of the stubby walking limbs were bent double to lie flat against the body while the two, longer forward manipulators were stretched forward and crossed so as to allow the chin to rest on the crossover point. The skin was pale grey with a mottled and veined effect all over that made the body resemble a sculpture in unpolished marble.

Hewlitt felt the need to comment, and remembering that one should never speak ill of the dead, he said, “The, ah, skin color is interesting. Beautiful, in fact.”

“You must not say that to Cherxic when you meet it,” said the Padre sharply. “To a Telfi the pale skin is neither interesting nor beautiful, it is a symptom of advanced radiation starvation and a lethal failure of the absorption mechanism. You may touch it if the act is not repugnant to you. Rest your bare hand anywhere on the body surface.”

After putting his foot in his mouth with the remark about the cadaver’s beautiful skin, Hewlitt felt obliged to touch the body. Surprised, he said, “It’s very warm.

“It is no longer absorbing energy,” said the Padre, “and has risen to room temperature. Touching the top of the head with a slow, stroking motion worked best with Cherxic. Physical and verbal contact is a poor substitute for gestalt telepathy, but the patient appeared to derive some comfort from both.”

Hewlitt stopped with his hand still resting on the pale marble, lizard skull. “Wait right there,” he said. “I tried to ask this question earlier but you . . . Are you telling me that you actually laid your bare hand on Cherxic in the same way as you did when you felt Morredeth’s fur?”

“Yes,” said the Padre. “But there is no need to feel so excited about it. Physiologically the Telfi are not suitable hosts for the virus creature. It would be like trying to infect a nuclear reactor.”

A great light was beginning to dawn. Hewlitt said, “I told you already that the virus survived a close encounter with a nuclear detonation and, and the hospital’s reactor has been, well, very sick.”

The great light, he realized, was external as well as internal because the big, inner seal of the lock was swinging open to reveal the shape of a Telfi. Behind it there was another closed, transparent door that gave a view of the ship’s interior. He decided that it must be a very healthy Telfi, because in spite of the high level of illumination, it reflected no light at all. It and the others that he could see beyond the transparent seal were like so many mobile, lizardshaped black holes.

And every single Telfi that Hewlitt could see he recognized at once as being past, and one present, hosts of the virus creature.

There was a burst of modulated static as the one in the open lock moved closer and spoke.

“I am the part Cherxic,” it said. “Please touch me, my offworld brothers and benefactors, one at a time. Our ship will be returning to Telf very soon and there is important information that must be passed to you.”

CHAPTER 31

He watched as Cherxic moved between them and as the Padre, whose curiosity was greater or its cowardice less than Hewlitt’s, placed one uncovered medial hand on the Telfi’s head. Lioren’s body trembled for a moment although it did not seem to be in any distress. No words were spoken and he had still to learn how to read a Tarlan’s facial expression, so he had no idea what was going on. A few more minutes passed before the Padre lifted its hand away and it was his turn.

Unlike the body of the dead Telfi he had touched, the dense black skin of Cherxic felt cold, and there was a faint, warm tingling in his palm similar to the sensation he had felt when he had pressed his hand against Patient Morredeth’s damaged fur. But this time the tingling was moving up his arm, across his shoulder and into his head. For a moment his sensorium went wild as tiny, random sensations of warmth, cold, pressure, pleasure, and pain occurred all over his body, while bursts of color that were beyond his previous experience or imagination and odors familiar and utterly strange were flooding his senses.

For some odd reason the memory picture of his cat came into his mind, and the way it had circled and stamped gently with each paw in turn as it had tried to push his lap into a more comfortable shape before it curled up to sleep. Now something was pushing and probing at his mind, trying to make itself fit more comfortably, and it was both gentle and persistent.

Suddenly there was a great, soft explosion of knowledge.

Hewlitt was still running through his bright, newly acquired memories like an excited small child exploring a new playground when the virus creature retraced its path along his shoulder, arm, and palm to return to Cherxic. Without a word the Telfi left the lock chamber and the inner seal closed behind it.

There was nothing more to be said to it, they knew, and nothing left to ask.

They maintained their silence while Hewlitt followed the Padre as it guided the gravity litter containing the two Telfi cadavers through the boarding tube and into the hospital lock chamber. The seal had closed behind them and emitted a loud, double chime accompanied by a visual warning indicating that the Telfi vessel had broken the docking seals before Lioren spoke, and then it was into its communicator.

“Braithwaite? Lioren. I must speak to Major O’Mara. It’s urgent.”

“O’Mara,” said the voice of the chief psychologist. “Go on, Padre.”

“We are calling off the search,” said Lioren. “The last and only remaining host of the virus creature has been found. It is currently inhabiting a member of the Telfi gestalt whose ship is leaving as we speak. The vessel is to be given departure clearance without delay. And you can cancel the evacuation drills and disperse the waiting ships. The problem with the power-generation control systems is over and . . .

“I don’t see the connection,” O’Mara broke in sharply. “Are you trying to tell me there is one?”

“Yes,” said Lioren. “When two unusual events occur at the same time, the chances are that they have a common cause. I had forgotten that particular unwritten natural law and it was Hewlitt, not me, who made the connection. There is no longer any danger to anyone inside the hospital, either from a nuclear detonation or a cross-species contagion, and we will give you a full report as soon as we reach the department.”

“Wait,” said O’Mara, “where you are.

For what seemed a long time Hewlitt stared at Lioren, who was looking with all of its eyes at the two dead Telfi, before the chief psychologist’s voice returned.

“You’re right, Padre,” said O’Mara, “Engineering confirms that the instability in the nuclear power and distribution systems has rectified itself, why or how they don’t know, and the emergency is over. It happened within the past fifteen minutes. But that was the lesser of the two problems. There is still the matter of the multispecies virus loose in the hospital and, with respect, you two are so deeply and personally involved that your assurance that there is no danger could be, well, more an unconscious product of wishful thinking than clinical fact. Is Hewlitt fully aware of the situation?”

When it was clear that Lioren was not going to reply, he said, “Yes, I think so.”

“Then let there be no doubt in your mind, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara, “that you two are in serious trouble. I am personally very sorry about this, we all are, but your trouble started when you were infected by the virus creature as a child on Etla, and here it was passed to ex-Patient Morredeth, Padre Lioren, and, an idea which I find completely incredible, a Telfi whose physiology and environment is less suited to a microbiological form of life than one of our hottest autoclaves. There are probably other hosts that we don’t know about. That is why, when our power generation showed indications of increasing instability that would not respond to the failsafe systems, we kept calling emergency evacuation drills instead of moving everyone into the ships that had been assembled for that purpose. We could not afford to take the risk of turning a multispecies disease of unknown potentiality loose in the Federation.

“Padre, I have no wish to offend you,” the chief psychologist went on, “by doubting the words of a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla. But the will to survive in you two as individuals, and for the citizens of the Galactic Federation as a whole, is an evolutionary imperative that may be superseded by any ethical considerations. That is why Kelgia has been instructed to place ex-Patient Morredeth in orbital quarantine on arrival. Similar instructions will be sent to Telf regarding the ship that has just left, and to Etla regarding that cat. You two will be placed in isolation for intensive study by Pathology, and the decision is about to be taken to dismiss the evacuation vessels and replace them with a Monitor Corps sector subfleet with orders to interdict Sector General to all external contact. This could result in serious destabilization throughout the Federation, but it seems that we have no choice. Do you understand our position?”

“It sounds,” said Hewlitt, with a small, uncontrollable shiver that was partly of dread as well as a reaction to well-meaning stupidity, “that you would have preferred the hospital to blow up and save everybody a lot of trouble. But please believe us, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“I’m sorry, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara. “If the Padre has broken communicator contact with us, please ask it to speak. Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor as well as Murchison, Prilicla, and Colonel Skempton are with me. You may already know that Lioren was once a highly respected senior physician in Sector General. No offense, Hewlitt, but right now we need to hear the report from a medical professional.”

One of Lioren’s eyes moved up to regard Hewlitt for a moment; then the Padre returned all of its attention to the Telfi dead. He could almost feel the other’s present sorrow and its old, remembered pain. It did not speak.

“Lioren is unable or unwilling to speak to you right now,” he said, “nor will it speak to me. But we have become very close to the Telfi and each other during the past few minutes. I understand the situation as well as the Padre does, and I am willing to speak.”

“It isn’t like the Padre to behave this way,” said the chief psychologist, in a voice that mixed impatience with concern. “But I suppose we must settle for a bloody amateur. Talk, dammit.”

Hewlitt took a firmer grip on his temper and said, “The Padre may indeed have taken offense at your suggestion that we are lying; I certainly did. But it is also gravely troubled by the thought of two dead Telfi who, if it had only known what we now know, might not have died. But in the event it decided to comfort Patient Cherxic, whose case was also terminal although the condition was not as far advanced as that of the other two. The mistake, which was not deliberate and not a reason to punish itself, was on a much smaller scale than the results of the wrong decision it made a few years ago, but its distress over the Cromsag Incident is never far from the Padre s . . .

“Lioren spoke to you about Cromsag?” O’Mara broke in. “It never speaks of that to anyone, not even me.

“It did not speak to me,” said Hewlitt. “As of a few minutes ago, after the virus creature transferred temporarily from Cherxic to Lioren and then to me, I knew everything that was in the Padre’s mind

He had to break off, because it sounded as if six voices were trying to ask six different questions at once. He looked at the Padre for help, but Lioren’s eyes were still on the dead Telfi and he knew that its mind was on the terrible occurrence in its past when a planet had been all but depopulated because of a single wrong dec~sion. Sympathy for the Tarlan made his voice sound harsher than he had intended.

“If you don’t stop asking questions,” he said, “I won’t be able to answer any of them. Please be quiet and listen to me.

He was surprised at how quickly the voices died away until he realized that O’Mara had been giving them the same message, in much less polite language.

“Yes,” he said, “the virus creature briefly reentered my body, specifically my brain. And no, the process did not render me telepathic. The effect is closer to that of the Educator-tape experience remembered by the then Senior Physician Lioren, except that the process is gentler and without the psychological disorientation associated with the sudden transfer into one’s mind of the memories and personality of a completely alien donor. This was not a mindrecording, it was the transfer of memories by a thinking, sensitive entity who, because of the debt it felt it owed us, was anxious not to cause mental distress.”

“Wait,” O’Mara broke in, and there was a suspicious edge to his tone when he went on, “Are you saying that the memories were diluted, changed, or even edited?”

“Diluted with the passage of time,” Hewlitt replied, “but not distorted. You have experience with treating telepathic species and must know that it is impossible to lie with the mind. I know everything that was in the mind of the virus creature, who, because there seems to be only one of it, does not have a name. That includes its future intentions, which in a telepath cannot be concealed or edited in any way.

“Go on,” said O’Mara.

“During the recent second visitation,” he continued, “I was made aware of the memories of all its previous hosts. Strongest were those of Lioren, Cherxic, and the other members of the Telfi gestalt among whom it was invited to transfer at will. When you think about it, an organized, self-aware, intelligent virus has much in common with a gestalt entity. But it was the Telfi contact telepathy that enabled it, for the very first time, to achieve perfect communication with other sapient beings. Without knowing how or why, this was the ability it had been searching for all of its life. But even more important were the Telfi radiation-based metabolism and experience in adapting their horrendous environment to their needs, together with their promise of long-term cooperation that will, hopefully, enable the virus creature to make another and most hazardous future change of hosts. That was the reason for the initial investigation and experimentation, unsettling for the hospital staff but never life-threatening, that caused the problem with the power-generation and control systems.

“I don’t have the technical vocabulary, but it seems that the structure of the virus is such that it is possible for it to interpenetrate and exert a measure of control on the subatomic level.”

Hewlitt paused for a moment, then moved onto more familiar ground. He said, “I was also given the Morredeth material and, strangely, the feelings of the creature from the time I first became its host as a child. That was a weird experience. Before that there was its time with Lonvellin, and before that a succession of non-sapient hosts stretching far beyond even its own recollection.

“The virus creature is old, very old . . .

There was no knowing what environmental influences had caused it to evolve intelligence or if there had ever been other sapient virus creatures; it could well have been a genetic accident and unique of its kind. In the beginning its hosts had been small, and rather than infecting and killing them through uncontrolled proliferation as did normal pathogens, it tried to insure its own longterm survival by maintaining the hosts in optimum physical condition for as long as possible. It transferred when, in spite of its efforts, a host grew too old or was killed by a larger predator, whereupon the predator became the new host.

A great many centuries must have elapsed before the highly intelligent and extremely long-lived explorer Lonvellin visited its home world and, believing that no off-world pathogen could affect it, took no precautions and acquired a most unusual and unique parasite.

Instinctively the virus realized that it had found an organism that could be made to survive for a very long time indeed, but the new host’s body was so massive and strange and complex that it had extreme difficulty adapting to the new surroundings. Lonvellin, however, who must have been subject to many irritating and uncomfortable illnesses during its long life, would have deduced the virus’s presence and capabilities from the fact that the incidence of its former maladies was dropping toward zero. But at that time the virus creature could not communicate with its host, nor was it aware of the reasons why certain obscure metabolic processes were taking place in that massive and confusing body. All it was able to do at the time, and then only with great difficulty, was to maintain its host in the same physiological condition as it had been in when found.

The virus made mistakes.

One of them, its stubborn retention of dying skin material which would normally have been discarded and replaced with new growth, brought Lonvellin to Sector General. Another was allowing the then Senior Physician Conway to trick it into leaving its host and revealing itself as a separate entity. At this stage in its continuing evolutionary development the virus creature was sapient but not very bright.

After it was reclaimed by Lonvellin, it traveled to Etla, where it had a narrow escape from the nuclear detonation that killed its host. That incident came close to killing the creature as well, but instead resulted in a structural mutation which later enabled it to enter and adapt to a radiation-eating Telfi host.

It saved the Hewlitt child’s life twice, after the poisoning and potentially lethal fall from a tree and following the flyer crash, but it was still making mistakes, such as halting the blood circulation by arresting the heart so as to give it more time to negate the effect of any fast-acting foreign medication introduced, which eventually resulted in the adult Hewlitt being sent to Sector General. It was learning, however, and becoming increasingly aware of the host’s mind and feelings as well as its own. The process began with Lonvellin, but the incident with the mutilated cat was more important than was realized because it was the first time that the virus had been influenced by psychological factors, specifically the emotional pressure of a child’s grief for a dying pet, into changing hosts.

“The transfer was temporary,” Hewlitt went on, “because it was not in the creature’s interests to move from a long-lived host to a small and shorter-lived one. By then it was being driven by curiosity and the urge to experiment as well as by its need to survive into the indefinite future, but for a long time there were only Earthhumans like myself available and it had not yet fully understood the workings of my body. By the time I arrived here it was becoming intensely curious, more aware of its surroundings and hungry for the new experiences that were available in a place that is filled with very interesting and long-lived potential hosts. When it felt my sorrow and sympathy for Patient Morredeth and I accidentally touched, or perhaps was subtly influenced by it to place a bare hand on, the wound where the fur had been destroyed, it transferred to its first Kelgian. Later it moved to the Padre and then to Cherxic and, in turn, to each of the surviving members of the Telfi ship gestalt, where the latest and most significant but not, it believes, the final adaptation occurred. From the telepathic and technically highly specialized members of the ship gestalt it learned how to communicate mind-to-mind with its subsequent hosts, and to understand and control at the particle level the radiation on which the Telfi live. The covert and Telfi-guided experiments with the hospital’s power system were part of its learning process.

“Now it has everything it needs to survive into the indefinite future,” Hewlitt went on. “Individual Telfi will die, many with less frequency now that it is moving among them, but the gestalts replace or increase their membership and will continue to amass information and experience. It has found the perfect host species. With the willing cooperation and the radiation-absorption mechanism of the Telfi as its launching point, it will grow in size and intelligence and power, and it will continue to evolve until it is able to populate the stars or, a risk which it fully accepts, kill itself in the attempt.

“The hospital will not be troubled with the virus creature again.”

In his earpiece there was a long, hissing silence that was broken by a voice that was so quiet and distorted with emotion that it could have belonged to anyone.

“So it intends to infect and populate the stars,” it said. “I don’t doubt that it means what it says, because we already know that it is impossible to lie with the mind. That could lead to the breakdown of the Federation, perhaps the end of free and unprotected otherspecies contact, perhaps of all intelligent life because of an uncontrollable, interspecies contagion sweeping the member worlds, if we don’t act at once. We’re sorry, Hewlitt, but that action must include isolating Lioren, Morredeth, the Telfi ship’s crew, yourself, and even your childhood pet from all future contact for the rest of your lives.”

“No!” said Hewlitt angrily. “Why don’t you people listen to me, or believe me when you do listen? Padre, will you explain it to them, please?”

While the voice from O’Mara’s office had been speaking, the Padre had closed the Telfi caskets and returned its attention to Hewlitt. He had the feeling that Lioren’s emotional distress had eased or was at least under control again.

“I couldn’t explain it any better myself,” said the Padre. “Carry on, but be quick. Our covered litters and, dear me, an armed escort are arriving.”

Hewlitt took a deep breath and chose words that were short and simple. He said, “O’Mara, all of you are wrong, twice. None of the virus creature’s hosts are infected, or contagious, nor have we been implanted with its seed or embryo. It doesn’t work like that. The creature is an intelligent, organized collection of viruses, a single and very selfish individual who will not willingly allow parts of itself to be detached and thereby reduce the capability and intelligence of the whole. My problems during and after puberty were caused by the fact that, while it could understand the need of a host to eliminate body wastes, the expulsion of healthy living material like seminal fluid was totally foreign to it because, at that time, it could not conceive of the possibility of any entity wanting to propagate its kind rather than surviving for itself alone. It still has difficulty accepting the idea of countless billions of us sacrificing ourselves so that our various species will survive.

“On Etla, on Earth, and in the hospital,” he went on, “there was absolutely no risk of secondary infection. Perhaps in the future, if its plans work out, it may be able to divide itself, but that time is a very long way off and even then we would be in no danger from it. For now the virus can occupy only one entity at a time, and it does not leave its host with a disease but with a level of physical, lifelong health that is immediately obvious as a kind of organic artist’s signature to all of its former hosts.

“It does this out of gratitude,” Hewlitt went on, “for the knowledge and experience provided by the host. It considers itself a tenant who is obliged to pay rent.”

The litters, their canopies open and ready, were accompanied by two massive Hudlar medics and eight armed Monitor Corpsmen who were large by Earth-human standards. The men’s expressions showed a mixture of embarrassment and determination. Hewlitt spoke quickly.

“Believe me,” he said, “neither the Federation nor its citizens have anything to fear from the virus creature. It is no longer interested in the extremely short-lived natives of any planet. Even though the project will take many of our lifetimes to complete, its ambition is to populate the stars one at a time and beginning with the Telfi’s parent sun, which, in astronomical terms, is growing old and sick. While there is always the chance that it will obliterate itself in the attempt, it considers the risk well worth taking. To inhabit a sun that can be inhabited and given intelligence, stability, and control of all its internal processes is the virus creature’s ultimate goal.

“An intelligent star,” he ended, “would be the most long-lived entity there could ever be.”

This time it was Diagnostician Conway, Prilicla, and Thornnastor who were doing most of the talking while the litter personnel and escort waited for them to decide what they were going to do. For several minutes it seemed that the Padre and himself had been forgotten as they debated the possibility of retracing Lonvelun’s travels before its arrival in Sector General with a view to finding the virus creature’s planet of origin and other, perhaps nonsapient members of its species who could be studied and, hopefully, helped to proliferate. If it was offered, the assistance of former virus-creature hosts would be invaluable. All necessary precautions would be taken and there would be many problems to overcome, but if they were successful they could foresee a distant future when the citizens of the Galactic Federation would carry only one virus and be otherwise completely disease-free. All that would be left for the medical profession would be the treatment of accident and surgical emergencies. It was the chief psychologist who had the last, impatient words.

O’Mara said, “Doctors, enough. Your future hypothetical problems will not be solved in the next few minutes. Padre Lioren, Hewlitt, relax. We have decided that it is safe to allow Morredeth to land on Kelgia and the Telfi crew to return home with their new friend. The armed escort is dismissed but you two will board the litters and proceed with minimum delay, not to the isolation chamber in Pathology but to this office for an immediate and detailed debriefing . . .

Hewlitt made a small, untranslatable sound which only the Padre heard. In a loud, reassuring whisper Lioren said, “Don’t distress yourself, friend. The major’s office has its own food dispenser, and if we aren’t allowed to eat then we won’t talk.”

. . . and a Hudlar-guided litter will get you here sooner than traveling on foot,” O’Mara went on. “Is there anything else you need to tell me before then?”

Hewlitt was not sure whether the words were the result of fatigue, malnutrition, or sheer relief. He laughed and said, “Only that I have a psychological problem. I seem to have become an exhypochondriac with absolutely nothing wrong with me who wants to stay in hospital. I don’t want to go back to minding Earth sheep.”

Sector General 11—Mind Changer

James White

CHAPTER 1

Far out on the galactic rim, where star systems were sparse and the darkness close to absolute, SectorTwelveGeneralHospital hung in space. Too vast by far to be considered a space station, too small to be called a metal moon, in its three hundred and eightyfour levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent species 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 lived by the direct conversion of hard radiation. Its thousands of viewports were constantly ablaze with lighting in the dazzling variety and intensity necessary for the visual sensors of its extraterrestrial patients and staff, so that to approaching ships the great hospital resembled a gigantic Christmas tree.

The most brilliant feature of all was the flashing pattern of warning beacons outlining the perimeter of the fusion reactors. But for the next few hours the real source of power within the vast establishment would lie behind a group of three yellow, lighted panels of moderate intensity on Level Thirty-Nine—although, O’Mara thought cynically, the people wielding that power would have been the first to make token denials of that fact.

But today he was receiving some very confusing signals from the beings who were standing, sitting, hanging, or otherwise reclining at ease around the big table. Something unusual had happened or was about to happen, or Skempton would not have been able to ensure this full attendance. By the nature of things within this medical madhouse that meant a surprise, almost certainly an unpleasant surprise, for someone here. As he stared slowly at the others in turn, he knew that the DBDGs present, as well as the few ETs who had learned how to read Earth-human facial expressions, were aware of his irritation.

With the exception of the hospital’s administrator, Colonel Skempton, and himself, they were the hospital’s medical elite, diagnosticians all and the heads of their respective departments. This was the first monthly Meeting of Diagnosticians that he could recall where all staff members had turned up and were staring at the colonel in silence instead of complaining loudly to each other about having better things to do elsewhere.

Definitely, O’Mara thought, the surprise was going to be an unpleasant one.

Around the big table the silence deepened until the quiet bubbling sound from the environmental protection vehicle of the water-breathing Diagnostician Vosan began to sound loud. Inside its protective chlorine envelope, Lachlichi twitched disgustingly but silently, and the highly refrigerated sphere containing Diagnostician Semlic radiated a supercooled silence, while the tentacles of Diagnostician Camuth, the Creppelian octopoid, made impatient, slapping noises against the floor. The others were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers who did not need to wear environmental protection, or even clothing apart from their badges of medical rank, with the exception of the three Earth-humans present. Diagnostician Conway had on his surgical white coveralls, while Colonel Skempton and himself wore their dark green Monitor Corps uniforms. It was the colonel who finally broke the silence by clearing his throat.

As he knew it would, the Kelgian diagnostician, Yursedth, reacted at once. Its mobile, silvery fur rippled into angry eddies as it said loudly, “That noise illustrates the basic design flaw in your Earth-human physiology, Colonel, that of having the functions of respiration and speech served by the same air passage. Surely you can exercise some voluntary control over the process when you prepare to speak, and refrain from making that disgusting sound.”

The concepts of politeness, diplomacy, or otherwise hiding the truth were totally alien to Kelgians because, to another member of their species, the movements of their highly mobile fur expressed exactly what they were thinking and feeling from second to second, so that trying to vocalize a different message would have been a stupid waste of their time. Skempton ignored the outburst, as did everyone else in the room, and spoke.

“Before we get down to the routine business,” he said, and added with a small, dry laugh, “if anything about this medical menagerie can be described as routine, I have two important announcements to make. They are the results of discussions and decisions taken at the highest level, that of the Federation’s Medical Council and the subcommittee tasked with the supply, maintenance, and administration of Sector General. These decisions are irreversible, not subject to debate or amendment and, naturally, they will not please everyone.

He had the precise, colorless voice of a bookkeeper, O’Mara thought dryly, although over the years the excellence of his bookkeeping had earned him the highest nonmedical position in the hospital. As Skempton paused for a moment to look slowly around the table, his expression remained emotionless and his gaze lingered on O’Mara for perhaps an additional millisecond. But O’Mara was too good a psychologist to be blind and deaf to the other’s body language.

The decisions, whatever they were, had certainly pleased Colonel Skempton.

“My first announcement,” the colonel resumed, “is that I shall be relinquishing my position as the hospital’s administrator and will shortly be leaving Sector General. This was not my decision, but as a serving Monitor Corps officer I have to go when and where I’m told. I am being appointed to a similar, but I think a much easier job, in the multi-species Monitor Corps base at Retlin on Nidia, with the substantive rank of fleet commander. I am not unhappy about this move because, large and well-appointed as our recreation level is, it is too small to include a proper golf course. So I look forward to relearning the game after twenty years’ lack of practice . . .” He looked at O’Mara for a moment before ending, and playing it on real grass under a real sky.”

O’Mara was the only other person in the hospital who knew about, and had helped the other to fight, his continuing war against claustrophobia and its related neuroses—a common enough problem among the hospital staff, especially with newly arrived trainees. In Skempton’s case the war had gone well, although it had never been truly won.

Without changing his expression, he gave the colonel a nod of sympathy, understanding, and congratulation that was too brief for the others to see.

“Isn’t that the game where Earth-humans knock a small ball into a slightly larger hole with a stick?” said Yursedth with a disapproving ruffle of its fur. “Our children play a game like that; the adults have more important things to do. But your promotion and anticipated juvenile pleasures, Colonel, are both well deserved.”

Coming from a Kelgian, it was a highly complimentary speech. Everyone else around the table made the untranslatable sounds that were the extraterrestrial equivalents of murmurs of agreement.

The colonel dipped his head briefly in acknowledgment, then went on, “Before naming my successor, who has already been chosen, I must first inform you about two important changes in the job specification. Henceforth the position of hospital administrator will no longer be filled by a serving officer of the Monitor Corps but by a senior member of the medical staff. The reason the Federation’s Medical Council gives for this is . . .

Chairs, benches, and support frames creaked as their occupants changed position suddenly to stare at Thornnastor, the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology and the acknowledged senior member of the medical hierarchy. Thornnastor, who did not use furniture because its species did everything including sleeping on their six elephantine feet, used its four extensible eyes to stare back at all of them simultaneously.

It stamped two of its feet for emphasis, and when the loose equipment about the room had stopped rattling, it said, “Don’t look at me. With respect, Colonel, I’m a pathologist, not a glorified supplies clerk. If I have been considered for the position, I respectfully decline it.”

Skempton ignored the interruption and continued . . . is that someone with medical experience and a detailed understanding of the medical needs of the hospital—rather than a Serviceindoctrinated, glorified supplies clerk, even one with my lengthy experience in the job—will eventually occupy the position. The new appointee will have to satisfy the Federation’s Medical Council, but more importantly our own medical staff, regarding his, her, or its fitness for the post . . .

Inside its ultra-refrigerated protective sphere, the tiny, crystalline entity that was Diagnostician Semlic spoke in a voice like the amplified but ineffably sweet chiming of colliding snowflakes. From their translator packs came the words “Who the hell is it?”

“The first of the new-style hospital administrators” Skempton replied, looking directly at O’Mara with an expression that was sympathetic rather than congratulatory, “will be our chief psychologist.”

For a moment surprise left O’Mara incapable of speech, a condition so rare that he could not remember the last time it had happened, but he did not allow his feelings to show in either his expression or his voice.

“I’m not qualifled” he said firmly.

Before the colonel could reply, Ergandhir, the Melfan diagnostician, raised one of its thin, exoskeletal limbs and began clicking the pincers loudly together for attention.

“I agree” it said. “Major O’Mara is not qualified. Shortly after joining the hospital I was surprised to discover that it had no formal medical training or qualifications, but that it was virtually running the place, and that in real terms its authority, with respect, Colonel, exceeded your own. But you have just stated that the appointee must be medically qualified, so you appear to be contradicting yourself. Are you waiving that requirement in O’Mara’s case? If for some reason you are already changing the rules.”

It had been an even longer time, O’Mara thought with angry embarrassment, since anyone had so much as dared mention his lack of medical training to his face, much less publicly and in such distinguished company. He thought about using a few pungent and appropriate words that would lift the skin off Ergandhir’s back, even though as a Melfan that area was covered only by a bony carapace. But the other was still talking.

Its time served in Sector General exceeds that of everyone in this room” Erghandir was saying, “because it joined Sector General before the final assembly of the structure was complete. Since then, as head of the Department of Other-Species Psychology, it has held the place together by showing the inhabitants of this medical madhouse how to live and work together as a unit. Its experience in this respect is unequaled. But I have an orderly mind, Colonel. I would like to know why you make rules one moment and break them the next—although, needless to say, I have no problem with your choice of administrator.”

Around the table there were more untranslatable noises signifying approval. Yursedth said, “It has never been a requirement that the administrator be popular.”

Their reaction gave O’Mara a warm feeling of surprise and pleasure, which he did not allow to show in his face because that would have been a totally uncharacteristic reaction from the most disliked person in the hospital, but he decided that the nonexistent skin on Ergandhir’s back was safe. He nodded toward the Kelgian, then looked steadily at Skempton.

“Yursedth is correct,” he said. “But I repeat, Colonel, I am still not qualified. My experience in procuring medical and maintenance supplies is nil. In this area the job is far beyond my level of competence.” In a very disrespectful voice he added, “I, too, will respectfully decline.”

“You will not decline,” said the other firmly, “because the alternative would mean you leaving Sector General at once. Besides, my department is efficient and my staff are very good, good enough to make me feel redundant most of the time, and they will take care of all the routine matters involving procurement and transportation of supplies, with or without supervision. You must be left free to do the more important and urgent work—which, we believe, you are uniquely qualified to do.”

“Which is?” said O’Mara.

Skempton stared back at him but appeared to be ducking the question. Obviously there was something he was finding it difficult to say, something which O’Mara might not like to hear.

The colonel went on. “I’ve no intention of breaking all the new rules on the first day. As I have already said, this is to be a civil appointment. You will therefore have to resign your rank of major in the Monitor Corps. This should be no hardship since it was originally given to you for purely administrative reasons and Corps discipline never has meant anything to you, especially . . .” He smiled faintly. “. . . in the matter of obeying the orders of senior officers. You will, of course, retain your position as head of MultiSpecies Psychology because henceforth the positions of administrator and chief psychologist are to be merged into one. But as a civilian administrator you will not have to accept orders from any other person within the hospital, which is simply regularizing the unofficial situation as it is now, and obey only the one general directive of the Federation’s Medical Council . . .”

“Which is?” O’Mara broke in again, this time making no attempt to conceal his impatience. If there was anything he disliked, it was having to repeat a simple question.

The other hesitated, forced a smile, then said, “The good news is that your appointment will be temporary. It will last only for as long as it takes for you to select, evaluate, and fully train your successor.

For a moment there were so many excited, other-species voices speaking at once that his translator was making the derisive beeping sound that signaled input overload. O’Mara did not speak until everyone was quiet again.

“And the bad news?” he said.

Skempton looked very uncomfortable, but his voice was steady as he replied, “You have given exemplary service to this hospital for a very long time, Major, or I should say, ex-Major O’Mara. I fully agree with the majority of the Medical Council who say that, in the early years especially, it could not have functioned without you. But choosing and grooming your successor to a level of excellence that is as close as possible to your own may well be the most important and professionally challenging project you will ever undertake. And when you have completed it to your own satisfaction.

The colonel paused. When he went on, his expression, O’Mara thought, showed an odd mixture of reluctance, sympathy, and deep anxiety, as if he was experiencing both sorrow and the expectation of an imminent emotional eruption.

“Well, Administrator O’Mara” he ended awkwardly, “I have already said that you have served this hospital for a very long time. As soon as you have completed this assignment, you will be required to leave and take your long-overdue retirement.”

CHAPTER 2

O’Mara remained silent for the rest of the meeting and left for his quarters before any of those who had waited behind could congratulate or commiserate with him on his promotion and forced retirement, but he knew that his bad manners would be considered entirely in character. Although he had shown no outwerd reaction to his sudden elevation and limited future in Sector General, the news had shaken him badly. A certainty that had supported his entire professional life was to be taken away from him and, as soon as possible, he needed to settle down for a lengthy period of reappraisal. As the hospital’s administrator his authority was such that he could absent himself for as long as he thought necessary for him to come to terms with a major problem that was both professional and emotional, but as the chief psychologist he could not spare the time right now.

He remained in his rooms only long enough to remove the insignia of rank from his uniform. As he did so he realized for the first time that, apart from a few sleepsuits, he did not have anything to wear that was not Monitor Corps issue.

On the way to his office he scarcely noticed the pre-lunch crowd of multi-species medical and maintenance staff thronging the corridors leading to the dining hall. The heavyweight Tralthans and Hudlars and the species driving environmental protection vehicles, and the Melfans, whose wide-spreading, bony limbs could cause painful bruising of the shins, he avoided as a matter of long habit, and the smaller life-forms he ignored because they avoided him. Even the species who said that they couldn’t tell one Earthhuman from another knew the green-clad being with the grey head fur as the chief psychologist. He did not speak to any of them, and they knew better than to speak to him unless an emotional emergency of some kind was involved.

Padre Lioren and Cha Thrat were still at lunch, so Braithwaite was alone in the outer office.

“I heard about your appointment a few minutes ago” said the lieutenant. He stood up quickly behind his console and smiled, but he knew better than to try to shake hands. “Congratulations, sir.”

O’Mara wasn’t surprised. The hospital grapevine was an extremely rapid, if not always accurate, channel of communication. He scowled.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant” he said. “I won’t allow my new eminence to change me in any way. And you don’t have to call me ’sir’ anymore. As a civilian it is a courtesy I no longer expect.”

Braithwaite’s eyes flickered toward the undecorated collar and empty shoulder tabs on O’Mara’s tunic; then they returned to his face.

Still smiling, he said, “Force of habit. Besides, I have been known to extend that same courtesy to members of the civilian staff, if they deserve it. But, well, how do you feel about it, sir?”

Braithwaite’s tone sounded concerned as well as curious, O’Mara noted, so perhaps his customary dour lack of expression had slipped a little. He ignored the question but contrived to answer it anyway.

“If my aging and no doubt untrustworthy memory serves me correctly,” he said sourly, “Cresk-Sar has a half-hour appointment with me in twenty-five minutes. Use the time to refuel in the dining hall. As soon as the senior physician leaves, I want to see all three of you together to discuss in detail my feelings about this situation and how it will affect the department. Meanwhile, Lieutenant, sit down and finish those psych file updates.”

As usual, Gurronsevas had ensured that his lunch would be the most enjoyable period of the day. The chief dietician and former renowned multi-species chef de cuisine had caused an awful lot of trouble during its first few weeks at Sector General, and had come very close to being pitched out on its large, Tralthan ear, so it was continually trying to return the favor it thought it owed him for saving it from that fate. It was a good time to think unpleasant thoughts and allow the pleasure of the meal to dilute them.

Occasionally he had thought about his age and the dreadful inevitability of his having to retire someday from Sector General, the world he had helped build and the only life he had known since his early twenties. He had been an immensely strong young man then, and over the years his fitness checks had been optimum, until recently. Now old Thornnastor, who must be nearly as advanced in years as he was if one allowed for the lengthier Tralthan life span, and young Conway were forever hinting that he should take it easier, slow down and reduce his workload. By accident Gurronsevas had let slip the fact that it had been necessary to modify several of its sauces to disguise the taste of the supportive medication that was now being included daily in O’Mara’s food intake. He was returning the dishes, all empty if not quite licked clean, to the insulated serving tray when the attention signal on his console beeped at him.

“Yes?” he said.

“Senior Physician Cresk-Sar is here, sir,” said Cha Thrat in its deep, Sommaradvan voice. “Are you ready for it?”

“Yes,” he said again.

Cresk-Sar opened the door and waddled quickly into the room like a hyperactive teddy bear. It was barely a meter tall, with tiny eyes that were almost hidden by tightly curled facial fur that was tinged around its mouth and ears with grey, as was the longer body hair that poked out in untidy tufts between the straps of its equipment harness. Aging is happening to all of us, O’Mara thought sadly. The Nidian senior tutor was the most frequent visitor to his office but, thankfully, it brought with it only the problems of its students.

O’Mara keyed his board for the latest trainee psych reports and pointed at the edge of a recliner that had been designed for a Melfan but that should be comfortable enough for a short meeting. If it wasn’t, then Cresk-Sar could always take the option of making it shorter.

“Your latest batch of trainees seems to be a pretty average bunch,” he said, turning aside from his screen. “There is the usual incidence of anxiety neuroses regarding underperformance during the coming examinations, professional inadequacy when faced with treating their first other-species patients, and, of course, their conviction that never ever will they learn to fully understand the thought processes of their medical-colleagues-to-be. They are right, of course, but that doesn’t stop you or any of the other seniors from doing your jobs. And yes, there is one of them, a Tralthan, for God’s sake, who is reporting dreams indicative of the fear-well-controlled, I admit-associated with possible sexual molestation and penetration by one or more of its other-species colleagues. What could a six-legged, tentacled elephant possibly fear from a bunch of Kelgians, Melfans, Nidians, and one Earth-human female, all of whom are less than one-quarter of its body mass?”

Cresk-Sar made a barking sound that did not translate, its Nidian equivalent of laughter. “As we know, sir, large muscles do not preclude emotional sensitivity.”

O’Mara knew that very well, but it was a sensitivity he had tried to hide over the years. Irritated at having an old wound opened, he said sharply, “I don’t anticipate any serious emotional problems developing among this lot, Senior Physician. Or are you about to tell me I’m wrong?”

“Yes,” said Cresk-Sar, fidgeting on the edge of the Melfan rediner. “I mean, not exactly. It’s . . . The problem is minei”

For a long moment O’Mara stared at the other in silence. The thick, overall covering of fur made reading its expression impossible, except for the tiny, dark eyes and the body language, which were signaling tension and distress. He softened his tone to an extent that those who thought they knew him would not have believed possible.

“Take your time, Cresk-Sar.”

But the other did not want to take its time, because its staccato, Nidian speech poured out like the barking of an agitated dog. “It’s Crang-Suvi’ it said, “and me. She is the only other Nidian in the class. She’s very young, with dark-red fur and a voice and personality that, that . . . Dammit, she’s a Nidian male’s wishfulfillment dream. But she seems to be basically insecure for reasons which you know about and probably understand far better than I do . . .”

While the other was talking, O’Mara had called up CrangSuvi’s psych file, and he did understand. Even though Cresk-Sar was repeating much of what was showing on the screen, he listened patiently without interrupting.

. . . She is a Graduate of Excellence from Sanator Five.” the senior tutor went on, “which is Nidia’s foremost teaching hospital. Any hospital on a dozen planets, or the Corps’ medical service, would be glad to have her but, like everyone else in her class, she has always had her mind set on making it as a Sector General graduate and applying for a staff position here. She is intelligent, able, caring, unusually beautiful, shows no marked signs of xenophobia, and is used to getting what she wants. Personally, I’ve no doubt at all that Crang-Suvi will make it, but I can’t tell her so because that would be unfair to the other trainees. But she isn’t so sure and, within a week of her arrival, she indicated that she would like to increase her chances by providing sexual favors to her senior tutor. She says that the age differential is unimportant, and she refuses to take no for an answer . . .

O’Mara held up his hand. “Has sexual contact taken place between you?”

“No” said Cresk-Sar.

“Why not?” said O’Mara.

The other hesitated for a moment, during which O’Mara thought that at least the matter involved two beings of the same species; otherwise, if word of the affair had got out, it would have become really messy and a matter for someone’s resignation. In the circumstances they both knew that the hospital’s long-serving and most highly experienced tutor would not normally have been the one to resign-unless, of course, the situation had reached the stage of emotional involvement where they both felt it necessary to leave together. That would be bad, he thought, for Cresk-Sar, CrangSuvi, and Sector General, but otherwise gifted and intelligent people did stupid things at times.

“Take your time” he said again.

Cresk-Sar made a loud, self-irritated sound that did not translate; then it answered his original question.

“There are four reasons why not,” it said miserably. “She is less than one-third of my age. She gives no promise of a permanent or even a lengthy relationship. I would be taking an unfair and selfish advantage of what would be a very pleasant situation, which would not influence the result of her finals one bit, although the psychological effect on her classmates, who would have difficulty believing that she was not being given an unfair advantage, would not be good. And, well, there is Surgeon-Lieutenant Warnagh-Lut, who would not like it. Do you know about Warnagh-Lut?”

“Not officially” said O’Mara dryly. His department took official cognizance of an event or activity only when it was highlighted in orange or red on the relevant psych file.

The other went on, “She-Warnagh-Lut, that is-is closer to me in age and temperamentally much more suitable. But as a serving medical officer, even though her department is responsible for looking after the Corps maintenance personnel at the hospital, she could be sent anywhere in the galaxy at short notice. Had this not been so, we would have proclaimed our life-mate status long since. But now Crang-Suvi has, well, disturbed things. You understand?”

O’Mara nodded. He said, “You, and your continued mental well-being, are more valuable to this establishment than any trainee, no matter how gifted. It can be returned to its home world immediately, with or without an explanation. Right?”

“No!” said Cresk-Sar vehemently. “That isn’t necessary. Besides, it would be a terrible waste of future medical talent. I just want Crang-Suvi off my back, or whatever. I’ve tried to do it, but she just ignores me and, well, it’s very difficult to ignore her. Could you just make her understand the situation and, well, talk to her like a stern father? In my trainee days, I seem to remember you doing that to me more than once.

Feeling relieved, O’Mara nodded again. He approved of people with problems who provided their own solutions.

“I can do that for you, of course.” he replied. “But initially I think Cha Thrat should approach your little disturbance before the chief psychologist has to take official notice of this particular misdemeanor, which would mean an official reprimand going on its training record. Cha Thrat is also female, and thankfully the only Sommaradvan in the hospital, so it will be more sympathetic. The department will handle it.”

Deliberately he had followed the hospital practice of referring to Crang-Suvi and Cha Thrat as “it” because, to a member of any other species, the difference was considered unimportant unless there were clinical reasons for specifying another being’s sex. In many cases the visual differences were hard to detect, and much trouble and emotional distress had been caused in the early days by other-species members of the staff being mistakenly identified in company. So he called everyone who was not an Earth-human man or woman “it” regardless of sex, while the other-species staff did likewise where Earth-human males and females were involved. Besides, he thought dryly, it was much handier when the other species concerned had more than one sex.

But now that the other’s problem was being solved it was time, O’Mara thought, that he stepped back into character. There was no sense in giving the impression that he was going soft.

In a brisk, dismissive voice he said, “Is there anything or anyone else bothering you, Doctor?”

“No, sir,” the other replied, slipping from the high edge of the Melfan recliner onto the floor and turning to leave. “But I would like to congratulate you on your new appointment. It is welldeserved.”

O’Mara inclined his head; then on impulse he said, “In my new capacity as administrator I can see to it that the Monitor Corps allows your Warnagh-Lut to remain in Sector General indefinitely, if that is what you both wish.” He smiled sourly and added, “After all, there is no point in me having ultimate power if I don’t occasionally abuse it.”

Cresk-Sar gave an untranslatable bark of thanks and waddled hurriedly out of the office as if it had good and urgent news to tell someone. O’Mara sighed in self-irritation. Watch it, he told himself, you are definitely going soft. Then he keyed the attention signal to the outer office and held it down until Braithwaite replied.

“In here, all of you. Now.”

CHAPTER 3

They trooped in single file into the big inner office in reverse order of seniority. The Tarlan ex-surgeon-captain and present Padre Lioren was first, followed by the Sommaradvan former warrior-surgeon Cha Thrat, with O’Mara’s principal assistant, Braithwaite, bringing up the rear. O’Mara waved a hand loosely toward the furniture.

“This will take time.” he said. “Find a place to sit.”

Braithwaite was lucky in that there was one Earth-human chair; the others had to settle for the best they could find, because the Sommaradvan and Tarlan cultures had yet to be discovered when the room had been furnished. No doubt Maintenance, who argued that anything that was not an emergency had to be considered low priority, would get around to remedying the discrepancy one of these years.

While O’Mara pretended to stare down at his large, bluntfingered hands on the desk before him, he watched them through lowered brows as they settled themselves comfortably or uncomfortably and stopped fidgeting. He was thinking that one didn’t have to have a history of insanity to work in Other-Species Psychology, but that precondition conferred certain advantages, even where their chief was concerned. Every member of his staff was flawed in some respect, but today he was regarding them all clinically and dispassionately from a completely new viewpoint.

Braithwaite looked relaxed, self-assured, and incredibly neat. Even when he was leaning back onto his shoulder blades in an armchair, his uniform gave the impression that he was about to undergo a fleet commander’s inspection. Cha Thrat was a physiological classification DCNF whose large, cone-shaped body possessed four stubby legs, four medial arms, and another four arms at shoulder level that were thinner with hands terminating in finer, more sensitive digits. Physically, Lioren resembled Cha Thrat except that its body, legs, and arms were longer and less muscular, but the resemblance was no closer than that between a giraffe and a horse.

O’Mara raised his head. “I want to discuss briefly my promotion to administrator” he said, “and its effect on the future work of this department, the change of emphasis in certain of your duties that will become necessary, and what I expect from all of you as a result. Feel free to interrupt if you are quite sure you have something of value to say. But I shall begin by talking, in order of length of service and experience, about you.”

He waited until a second bout of fidgeting had abated, then went on, “I know that you have all broken the rules by sneaking a look at one another’s confidential psych files, so what I say should not cause embarrassment. If it does, tough. Braithwaite first.”

Without changing his position in the deep armchair, the lieutenant somehow gave the impression that he had come to attention.

“You” he went on briskly, “deal well with the office staff and routine and you are good with people regardless of species. When sympathy is needed you are sympathetic, firm when the being concerned isn’t doing enough to help solve his, her, or its problem, and you never, ever lose your temper. To your present superior you are respectful without being subservient, and you gently but firmly resist any attempt at bullying. As my principal assistant you’re close to ideal. Intelligent, efficient, adaptable, dedicated, uncomplaining, and completely lacking in ambition. In spite of completing your medical training here, you refused to take the Corps exams for surgeon-lieutenant. You have found your niche in Other-Species Psychology and you don’t want to go anywhere or do anything else. When you were offered a major promotion off-hospital you turned it down.

“But enough of the compliments, Lieutenant,” he went on. “On and under the surface your personality is so well adjusted that it is almost frightening. Your only defect is that in one respect you are a total and abject coward. You want to be and you are a trusted and resourceful second-in-command who enjoys the power and advantages that the position confers, but you are intensely afraid of taking the ultimate responsibility that would go with the top job.”

Without the smallest change of expression, Braithwaite nodded. He was a man who was comfortable with the truth about himself. O’Mara turned to Cha Thrat.

“Unlike the lieutenant” he said, “you are not afraid of anything. On Sommaradva you were a leading warrior-surgeon who, in spite of your patient being the first other-species entity you had ever seen, was able to intervene surgically and save the life of a leading member of the contact team. Because of the team’s gratitude, plus the fact that they wanted to do the Sommaradvan authorities a favor because the contact was not going well, you were sent here as a trainee, in spite of hospital objections, for political rather than medical reasons.

“In the event your surgical ability and technique were acceptable” he continued sourly, “but your strict adherence to Sommaradvan medical ethics was not. You were free to attend lectures, but soon nobody would accept you for practical work on the wards. We found you a job as a trainee in Maintenance, where you did well and became popular with a large number of the junior-grade medical and maintenance staff trainees until you messed up there, too. I’m not quite sure how you ended up here. Some people think I took pity on you.

“Some people,” he added dryly as he turned toward Lioren, “don’t know me very well.”

He paused for a long moment, thinking about what he should say to this entity who had suffered and was still suffering. O’Mara’s words and manner toward a patient and a colleague were different. With an emotionally distressed person he could be as gentle and sympathetic as the situation required, but to a mentally healthy nonpatient he preferred to relax and be his normal, badtempered, sarcastic self. In spite of the Tarlan’s continued good progress over the past two years, Lioren fell somewhere into the grey area between therapist and patient. But whatever he said, the Padre would accept it without complaint because it would consider that it deserved every physical and mental cruelty it would ever receive.

When Lioren had joined Sector General he had been a Wearer of the Blue Cloak, Tarla’s equivalent of Earth’s Nobel Prize for Medicine, and it had shown itself to be an unusually able and dedicated other-species physician and surgeon before transferring to the Monitor Corps’ medical service, where its promotion to surgeoncaptain had been deservedly rapid.

Then had come the terrible Cromsaggar Incident.

While it was in charge of a disaster-relief operation on Groinsag involving urgent treatment for a planetwide epidemic, a mistake had occurred that had virtually decimated the surviving population. As a result it was court-martialed for professional negligence and exonerated. But it had disagreed with the findings of the court, felt that it deserved the ultimate penalty, that it would never be able to forgive itself, and it had made a solemn promise that it would never again practice its beloved medical arts for the rest of its life, which it did not expect to last for more than a few days. With the aid of O’Mara’s highly unorthodox therapy, it had been able to forgive itself in part and extend its life expectancy, but Tarlans did not take their solemn promises lightly so it had never nor would it ever practice medicine on any being again.

Instead it had learned to sublimate its need to alleviate the suffering of others by bringing to them not the healing knife but the gentle, understanding, and sympathetic words, words that really meant something because the recipients knew beyond any possible doubt that they came from a person whose suffering had been so much greater than their own.

In every hospital, O’Mara knew, there were always patients whose condition was more serious than one’s own, so that the less serious cases found hope and consolation, and even felt themselves fortunate, in the knowledge that they were not as bad as that poor bugger down the ward.

It was a psychological truism that had enabled Lioren to put his mental anguish to constructive use. Its preferences were the truly hopeless cases, patients or staff members who were mentally distressed and did not respond to normal psychotherapy, or who were in desperate need of spiritual consolation, or who were terminally ill and afraid. It had turned its brilliant mind to gaining a basic knowledge of all the religious beliefs and practices known within the Galactic Federation, which on average numbered twelve to every inhabited planet. Its results, considering the difficult emotional area it had made its own, were exceptionally good.

Moral cowardice in an embarrassing situation, O’Mara decided finally, was the first refuge of the intelligent. He went on, “Padre, everyone knows everything about you and you are beyond embarrassment, so talking about you would be a waste of my time and breath. The point I’m making is that to begin with, all of you were flawed in some respect, but that has not affected the quality of your work in the department. To the contrary, it has given you a greater sensitivity and insight where your patients are concerned. But as a result of my recent promotion, from now on I expect you to do better, and much more.

“In case the grapevine omitted the details,” he continued, looking at them in turn, “my current position is this: I have been appointed administrator while retaining my position and duties of chief psychologist for the interim period necessary for me to find, evaluate, train, and choose my successor, who will also be expected to perform both jobs. It has been decided that in future the entity who holds this position must be a civilian, so that he, she, or it will not be influenced by the Monitor Corps, as well as having formal medical training and experience in other-species psychology to enable it to understand and satisfy the peculiar medical and nonmedical needs of this establishment. Because of its importance and the unusual nature of the qualification required, the position has been advertised on all the professional nets. Much of my time will be taken up familiarizing myself with my new duties while you help me winnow out the wishful thinkers, preferably at long range, so that we can short-list and concentrate on the one or two who might possibly measure up for the job.”

He nodded curtly to indicate that the meeting was over, then said, “Don’t bother asking questions until you’ve had a chance to think about them. From now on I’ll be watching you closely and hitting you with a few surprises from time to time. Cha Thrat, Lioren, if you’re tired, go rest in the outer office. Braithwaite, I have a job for you?

As the others were leaving, he went on, “Lieutenant, Diagnostician Yursedth is due in half an hour. It is having troublesome dreams and waking episodes of psychosomatic peripheral neuropathy associated with one of its Educator tapes. Talk to it, identify and erase the culprit tape, then reiinpress a same-species tape with what you consider to be a more amenable personality with a similar medical background. I shall be picking the retiring administrator’s brains for the rest of the afternoon and, no doubt, trying to duck invitations to his farewell party?

He held Braithwaite’s eyes for a moment, but he did not allow the sympathy he was feeling to reach his voice as he went on, “The Yursedth case could be tricky, and this will be the first time that you’ve erased and reimpressed a tape without supervision. If you have a problem with it, Lieutenant, don’t call me. This one will be entirely your responsibility?

Braithwaite nodded and turned to follow the others. His carriage was erect, his uniform was impeccable, his features were without expression, but his face looked very pale. O’Mara sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to remember the mechanics of interviewing a candidate for a difficult and responsible job.

As they had applied to himself.

CHAPTER 4

It had been the same office, but those days the walls had been covered only by sickly green anticorrosive paint rather than a selection of restful landscapes from a dozen worlds, and instead of the extraterrestrial furniture that made the present office look like a medieval torture chamber, there had been only two hard, upright chairs on opposite sides of a bench whose plastic worktop was buried under an untidy heap of printouts. Major Craythorne had occupied one chair and O’Mara the other.

That job interview, with the breaks necessary for eating, sleeping, and long periods of work experience, lasted for three years.

Suddenly he was back to the there and then, feeling the anxiety or perhaps it was the last hurried, undigested meal heavy in his stomach. Again he was smelling the supposedly odorless paint and hearing the high-pitched, intermittent sound of a nearby power drill that was forcing the major to swear mildly and pause from time to time.

“You have to remember, O’Mara,” said Craythorne, not for the first time, “that your face and manner do not invite trust, and your features show no depth or subtlety of mind even though we both know those qualities are there, and that on several occasions you have tinkered curatively with troubled other-species personalities. On the surface your consultation technique is crude but effective, so crude that your poor patient has no idea how deeply and sensitively he, she, or it has been probed and manipulated while you are appearing to bully them. Have you ever considered trying to be, well, insincerely polite?”

O’Mara sighed in angry impatience, but silently with his mouth open so that the other couldn’t detect it, then said, “You’re familiar with the Earth saying, sir, about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? You know I don’t work well in an atmosphere of insincere friendliness.”

Craythorne nodded calmly, but whether it was in answer to the question or the statement was unclear, so probably it was to both. He said, “Forget it for now, O’Mara. Your next assignment is to settle in a group of Kelgians. With them insincerity or politeness would be a waste of time because both concepts are completely alien to them. You’ll feel right at home. Have you any prior experience with that species?”

O’Mara shook his head.

The major smiled. “If I had time to tell you about them, which unfortunately I don’t right now, you wouldn’t believe me. They arrive in two hours. Before meeting them you should brief yourself on the library computer . . .

In the corridor outside their doorless office, someone dropped something heavy and metallic that made the whole room ring like a discordant bell. Craythorne winced and ended calmly, “. . . which, fortunately, is one of the few facilities in this place that is up and running.”

The major was a man O’Mara would have dearly liked to hate, but couldn’t because he was so damned likable. No matter how or why one of his subordinates messed up, he never lost his temper. Instead he just looked so disappointed that the culprits felt so sorry they never made the same mistake again. His manner was polished, invariably correct, and the greying hair and thin, sensitive features could have belonged to a career diplomat. Even in the issue coveralls he looked impeccable. It was as if the ever-present mixture of oily grime and metallic dust that stained everyone else’s clothing did not so much as dare approach his. He gave the impression of being, and truly was, a good man. He had opened up a job for O’Mara when all O’Mara’s options had closed.

“Major,” said O’Mara enviously, “how the hell did you get this way?”

The other smiled again and shook his head. “You keep trying to probe my hidden inner depths, and I yours. But trying to practice psychoanalysis on each other’s deeply buried psychoses is a waste of time, because as psychologists we don’t have any. We’re supposed to be sane, well-integrated personalities. It’s in our contracts.”

“Your contract, maybe . . .” O’Mara began.

Before he could go on, Craythorne said in a tone of gentle dismissal, “If you aren’t familiar with the new library computer consoles, there are plenty of mad genuises working down there who will be glad to help you out.”

Only a few of the freight elevators were working and they were usually so full of men and equipment that it wasn’t worth spending time waiting for a chance to squeeze into one. Besides, he was used to threading his way through many miles of corridors still under construction that were identified only by their hospital level and corridor numbers daubed with paint at the intersections. He slowed his pace to go around a couple of large, sweating and swearing men in Monitor Corps green coveralls, one of them a sergeant, who had been installing a heavy length of ceiling ducting, one end of which had fallen onto the floor. The NCO called out to him as he was passing.

“You” he said sharply, “help us lift this damn thing into position again and hold it. I’ll show you where it fits . . .

It was obvious where it fitted. Without speaking, O’Mara pulled a nearby bench into a more convenient position, lifted the loose end of the ducting onto the top surface, and jumped up himself. Then he lifted it without effort to the ceiling and held it accurately in position while the other two secured it.

“Thanks, friend’ said the sergeant. “Obviously you know what you’re doing and I need you here for a couple of hours. Whatever else you you were about to do, forget it.”

O’Mara shook his head and jumped to the floor.

“It’s okay” said the sergeant in a manner suggesting that he was unused to receiving negative responses. “I’ll fix it with your squad leader. On this job the Corps instructions take precedence over those given by civilian contractor supervisors.”

“SorryP said O’Mara, turning to go. “I really have to be somewhere else.”

“Hold it right there” said the other angrily. “Have you some kind of difficulty in comprehension . . . ? What is it, Bates?”

The sergeant broke off as O’Mara turned back to look at him. It would not have been the first time that he had had to win an argument with his fists. But that had been in the bad old days and Craythorne would not like it if he started doing it again. Besides, the second Corpsman, Bates, was staring at his face and tugging urgently at the sergeant’s sleeve.

“I know this one, Sarge.” he said in a respectful undertone. “Forget it.”

O’Mara turned away again to resume his interrupted journey to the library. He had gone about twenty yards along the corridor when he heard the sergeant saying loudly, “He’s Major Craythorne’s assistant, you say? But what the hell is a bloody psychologist doing with muscles like that?”

It was a question that had been asked many times by many people during O’Mara’s life, and the answer, based on visual evidence alone, was usually provided by the questioner, who took one look and saw no reason to listen to anything he had to say.

Since his early teens, O’Mara’s life had been a series of such frustrations. He had lost both parents when he was three and his aunt, probably because of ill health plus the fact that he had been a really obnoxious child, had not given him the support needed against adults and superiors who kept telling him what he should be and do with his life.

Teachers took one look, relegated him to the sports field, and considered his efforts to study an interesting and unnecessary anomaly. Later a succession of company personnel officers could not believe that a young man with such square, ugly features and shoulders so huge that they made his head look inoronically small by comparison could be really interested in brainy stuff like electronics, medicine, or psychology. He had gone into space in the hope of finding a different situation and more flexible minds there, but in vain. Despite constant efforts during interviews to impress people with his quite considerable intelligence, they were too impressed by his muscle power to listen and his applications were invariably stamped APPROVED SUITABLE FOR HEAVY SUSTAINED LABOR.

So he had gone from one space construction job to another, always working with people whose minds as well as their bodies were muscle-bound, and ending with this one on the final assembly of Sector Twelve General Hospital. Here he had decided to relieve the physical monotony by using his intelligence to secretly tinker with other people’s minds.

It was not something one did to one’s friends, he thought, but then he had never had any.

One piece of covert therapy performed on an Earth-human workmate, plus some very rule-of-thumb treatment he had given to a space-orphaned and emotionally disturbed Hudlar infant weighing half a ton, had brought him to Graythorne’s attention. Not only had the investigating officer exonerated him of all blame in causing the accident that had killed the baby’s parents, but the ensuing trial had uncovered the finer details of his curative tinkering with the emotional problems of a seriously neurotic workmate and had impressed the other to the extent that the major had offered him, for a trial period that would last only until he showed himself incapable of doing it, a job where brains rather than his overlarge muscles were needed. It had turned out to be the hardest and most satisfying job he had ever had.

It was a job he didn’t want to lose.

But satisfying the major this time, he realized as soon as the library data on the Kelgian species and culture began to unroll, would not be easy. Of course, neither had any of his recent assignments. That first other-species job had nearly killed him at the time, but there were days when he found himself wishing that he had nothing more complicated to do than feed, bathe, and baby-sit half a ton of squalhing Hudlar infant.

Two hours later he was waiting inside Personnel Lock F on Level Thirty-Seven and watching the first Kelgians he had ever seen, other than in the library pictures, come crawling toward him along the boarding tube. At least they are warm-blooded oxygenbreathers like me, he thought dryly, but that was the only point of similarity.

They were like fat, silver-furred caterpillars averaging more than two meters from conical head to upturned tail, undulating forward on twelve pairs of stubby feet, although the four sets closest to the head were slightly longer, thinner, and terminated in delicate, pink hands. Their tiny, tightly grouped facial features were too alien to be readable, but, he had learned, the involuntary motion of the highly mobile fur that tufted, spiked, or rippled in waves along their entire body surface told everyone, or at least every other Kelgian, exactly what they were feeling from moment to moment. The result was that telling a lie or even trying to shade the truth was a complete waste of time where their species was concerned.

The Kelgians were soft and visually appealing creatures. Had they been scaled down by a factor often, as a boy he would not have minded keeping one as a pet, if he had been allowed to keep pets.

He backed away a little as they moved out of the boarding tube and began spreading around him in a semicircle. They had raised their bodies upright and were balancing on their rearmost four legs, and their heads were curved forward so that their tiny faces were at eye level. It felt as though he were being surrounded by a bunch of furry question marks.

So far as he was concerned, O’Mara realized with a stirring of butterflies in his stomach, he was close to being in a firstcontact situation. If he should do or say something wrong, it was unlikely that he would cause an interstellar war to start. The Kelgians were reputed to be a highly intelligent, technologically advanced, and civilized species who probably knew more about Earth-humans than he did about them and they would, he hoped, make allowances.

Faced with this situation, what would the cool and impecca- bly mannered Major Craythorne say and do?

O’Mara held out his hand toward the nearest Kelgian, then abruptly brought it back to his side. The library computer had not mentioned this form of physical greeting. With two-handed people of Earth it was a sign of friendship and trust, a legacy of a time when it made good sense for people meeting for the first time to grab and thereby immobilize each other’s weapon hand. But the Kelgians’ hands were ridiculously tiny and there were too many of them. O’Mara had the feeling that he had just avoided making his first mistake.

Instead he said slowly and clearly, “My name is O’Mara. Did you have a comfortable trip, and would you prefer to see—”

“My name is Crenneth” the one facing him broke in, its fur stirring restively. “The ship accommodation was cramped and uncomfortable and the food terrible. The speech of the Earth-human crew was rapid and precise. Why are you speaking so slowly? We do not have a problem with verbal comprehension. Do you?”

O’Mara choked, cleared his throat, and said, “No.”

“Are you a Healer?” Crenneth asked. “If so, what is your level of seniority?”

“No” said O’Mara again. “A, a psychologist” Silently he added, Without qualifications.

“Then you are a Healer of the Mind,” the other persisted. “What’s the difference?”

“We can discuss the difference when there is more time.” he replied, deciding that he was not going to reveal his lack of formal training, or anything else of a personal nature, to this inquisitive, outsized caterpillar on first acquaintance. He went on, “Earlier I was about to ask if you would prefer to see your living quarters, or visit the dining hall first? Your personal effects are being moved to your quarters as we speak.”

“I’m hungry” said one of the others, its fur rising in spikes. “After that indigestible ship food, your dining hail is bound to be an improvement.”

“There are no guarantees,” said O’Mara dryly.

Crenneth rippled its fur. In a manner which suggested that it was the Kelgian spokesperson and the one with the rank, it said, “Our quarters first. You lead the way, O’Mara. Are Earth-humans able to talk while they walk? I expect balancing a long, upright body on only two feet requires some concentration. Does jerking your head up and down like that indicate a negative or an affirmative reply?”

“Affirmative,” he replied as they moved off. He had the feeling that Crenneth was about to speak again but had stopped itself. They were approaching the end of a long, unpainted corridor and from both branches of the intersection came the increasing sounds of hammering and drilling interspersed with shouted Earth-human voices.

When they reached the intersection he saw that the corridor in both directions was scattered with wall and ceiling scaffolding units containing men with paint applicators or thin sheets of sharpedged metal which they were swinging around with little regard for the safety of passersby. More panels lay flat on the scaffolding, their sharp edges projecting beyond the work surfaces into the corridor. O’Mara was about to tell the Kelgians to halt, but they were already hanging back, their fur tufting and rippling in a way that suggested great agitation.

He faced into the slightly less cluttered corridor and looked for someone in authority. But he could see no Monitor Corps coveralls or insignia of rank to read, so obviously the men were employed by one of the civilian contractors. He filled his lungs.

“Men!” he shouted above the background noise. “I want to speak to your squad leader. Now.”

A large, red-faced man jumped down from a section of scaffolding about twenty yards away and dodged quickly between the intervening equipment to stand facing him. The red facial coloration, O’Mara decided, was due to irritation as well as hard work. He tried the Craythorne approach.

“Sorry for the inconvenience” he said, nodding along the corridor, “when you’re obviously busy. I’m taking a group of newly arrived Kelgian nurses to their quarters on Forty-Three, and I would like you to clear a path for them through the—”

“The hell you would,” the other broke in, looking past O’Mara’s shoulder for a moment. “I’ve got just two hours to finish this stretch of corridor. Take them to the dining hall and feed them lettuce, or whatever else overgrown caterpillars eat, until then. Otherwise go up to Fifty-One, the freight elevator is supposed to be working to that level now, and the ramps down to Forty-Nine are clear. Then if you take a left past the—”

While the squad leader had been talking, O’Mara had decided that he could not go around for the reasons that neither of them could be completely sure that the way would be clear and he did not want his party diverting all over the hospital while trying to find a way to their quarters. He shook his head.

“Going around is not an option” said O’Mara.

“Who d’you think you’re ordering around?” the squad leader said angrily. “Get your trainees out of here and stop wasting my time.”

The men working nearby had stopped to listen, followed by the ones who were farther down the line. It was as if a strange wave of silence were rolling slowly down the corridor.

“Your scaffolding, especially the sections with wail plating projecting over the edges, is on wheels,” said O’Mara in what he hoped was a quiet, reasonable voice. “It can be easily moved against one wall to let my people pass in safety. The same applies to the paint and other loose stuff lying around, which you will have to stow and take away soon, anyway. I’ll lend a hand to move it.”

Deliberately the squad leader did not lower his voice. He said, “No you won’t, because you don’t give me orders and you’re not coming this way. Move off. Just who the hell d’you think you are, anyway?”

O’Mara tried hard to keep his temper in check and his voice low. Two more of the men nearest to them had jumped to the floor and were moving to join their boss. He waited until they were close; then he looked them up and down and nodded to each before speaking.

“I don’t have an identity problem” he said, “so I know that my name is O’Mara. In case I’m tempted to report this matter later, it would be better not to know your names. My trainees will move along this corridor, without trouble, I trust, because we do not want to give other-species medical staff a bad impression. Please clear a path for them. I’m afraid I must insist.”

Craythorne would approve of my gentlemanly manner and phraseology, he thought. Not so the squad leader. He gave O’Mara specific instructions where a brainless, overmuscled gorilla trying to use fancy language should go and the various physiologically impossible acts he should perform on himself when he got there, regrettably in language that was clear enough to be processed by the Kelgians’ translators. O’Mara had had more than enough of people who held it to be a law of nature that brains and brawn were mutually exclusive, and he felt a terrible urge to finish the argument their way, with his fists, head, and feet. He held up one hand.

“Enough!” he said in a cold, quiet voice that cut the other off in midword. “If this argument is about to become physical, which I would rather it didn’t, we have twelve nurses available whose training covers the treatment of the three, or maybe more, Earthhuman casualties that will result. It is your move.

Craythorne, he thought, would certainly not approve of me now

CHAPTER 5

For a few seconds there was total silence in the corridor. The squad leader’s face was darkening toward purple. The man on his right was smiling and the one on his left was looking thoughtful but not afraid; his hand moved toward his boss’s arm as if to restrain him, then he let it fall again. This one, O’Mara thought, was able to think even if, for the sake of a peaceful life, he was in the habit of letting the squad leader do the thinking for him.

As space construction workers they were highly paid but, so far as the majority of them were concerned, not highly intelligent or well educated. They didn’t have to be. But their ignorance was a temporary condition that could be relieved. O’Mara nodded to the man on the left to show that his words were for him as well as for his boss before returning his attention to the squad leader. Regretfully, he thought, I’ll try to do it Craythorne’s way one more time.

“While we’re all thinking about what to do next.” he said, allowing a smile to touch the corners of his mouth, “there is something you should know about Kelgians-if, that is, some of you are meeting them for the first time. Physically they are not very strong. Apart from the delicate bone structure of the spine and brain casing, they are made up of soft muscle tissue in broad, circular bands along their body length. These muscles need a lot of blood and the veins are close to the skin, which means that even a small surface wound is serious for them because their mobile fur makes it difficult to control the bleeding. The effect on the fur is even more serious . . .

It sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but he was simply paraphrasing the introductory material, intended for primary-school children, on Kelgian physiology from the library. But the man on the right was frowning in concentration, the thoughtful one on the left was staring at the Kelgians, and the squad leader’s face was shading through red to pink.

. . . because the fur is their most expressive and, to them, beautiful featureP he went on quickly. “To every other Kelgian the fur movements are an extension of their spoken language that shows exactly what they are thinking and feeling. For example, a male can’t hide his feelings for a female or, whether or not she returns them, hers for him. They can never be coy or play hard to get. The fur is very sensitive. If it is injured or damaged in any way, it is the equivalent of a severe physical disfigurement or bad facial scarring to us. A scarred Kelgian would, well, have great difficulty finding a mate . . .

“I wish it was that simple with our women” the one who had been concentrating broke in. The thoughtful one added, “So you’re saying that if they get cut by sharp edges of plating, or get their fur smeared with paint or oil, the ladies are in bad trouble.” Without waiting for O’Mara to reply, he said, “Boss, do we clear a path for them?”

The squad leader hesitated. His face had returned to its natural color, but plainly he was a man who did not like losing an argument. It was time to give him back the initiative, O’Mara thought, and appeal to the better side of his nature, if he had one.

“They have been traveling for a long time” he said, “and some of them badly need to use the, ah, facilities in their quarters.” He grinned. “Your corridor is messed up enough as it is.”

The other hesitated, then guffawed loudly. “Right, O’Mara, you’ve got it. Far be it from me to get a lady into serious trouble. Give us ten minutes.”

There was only one small holdup while the party was moving in single file along the cleared section of corridor. Word had been passed down the line that a party of other-species nurses were going through and the men began whistling. Crenneth wanted to know the meaning of the strange, untranslatable noise. O’Mara decided to hide behind the literal truth.

He said, “It is a sound they make when the think another person is beautiful.”

“Oh, that’s all right then.” said Crenneth. “Are we expected to whistle back?”

It was ten minutes later when they were entering the brightly painted and completed section containing the Kelgian living quarters that Crenneth spoke again. It said, “For your information we are not, at our ages, subject to involuntary incontinence, if that is what you were suggesting back there. I did not allow any of my people to correct you because your situation at the time seemed uncertain and an interruption might not have been helpful. But there is a question I wanted to ask earlier.”

“Ask it now,” said O’Mara.

“Why are you, a Healer of the Mind, showing us the way to our accommodation,” it said, “rather than a person of lesser professional rank? Are you curious about a species you are meeting for the first time? Or do you have professional reasons for observing our behavior?”

For a moment he wondered how the ultra-polite Craythorne would have responded to questions like that. But he wasn’t the major and he would feel more comfortable if he started out the way he intended to proceed or, if he messed up, how he would very shortly finish. Besides, the library material had stated several times that politeness, like tact or telling lies, was a concept that Kelgians did not understand and they found its use both confusing and irritating.

“Yes to both questions” said O’Mara. “You are among the first of the other-species medical staff to arrive here. I wanted to make your acquaintance as soon as possible since in the future I may, or may not, be called on to treat you in my professional capacity, or possibly to have some of you expelled from the hospital as psychologically unsuitable for service here. You will appreciate that my first impressions of your behavior could be important.”

Crenneth remained silent while its agitated fur told everyone but O’Mara what exactly it was feeling. It could not tell a lie, but there was nothing to stop its exercising the option of silence.

From somewhere among the group following them a voice said, “It thinks we’re all mad.” Another said, “After the higher nursing examinations and psychological fitness tests we had to take before we were even allowed to volunteer for this place, I think it’s right.”

They did not understand politeness, diplomacy, or the many other ways Earth-humans had of hiding the fact that they were lying, O’Mara thought, but surely it must be possible to ease the exact and perhaps frightening truth with an honest compliment.

He looked at Crenneth and raised his voice so that everyone else would hear him as he said, “From an objective viewpoint, you are all mad. However, an unusually high degree of dedication, unselfishness, and the placing of the health and future welfare of others before your own individual happiness are allowable neuroses. In fact, the fabric of galactic civilization is based on them.

“But.”

They had reached the entrances to their quarters but it seemed that none of them wanted to go inside. Instead they stood around him, watching and listening while their fur did things that were incomprehensible to him, at least for the present.

Very seriously, he said, “You are all filled with enthusiasm and dedication and the noblest qualities of your profession, but that may not be enough. When this hospital goes into full operation there will be upward of sixty different life-forms, with sixty different sets of species’ behavioral characteristics, body odors, and ways of looking at life, on the medical and maintenance staff. Living space will be at a premium, so you will be working, eating, and, on our communal recreation level, playing together. A very high degree of species adaptability on the social level will be required.

“Undoubtedly some of you will encounter serious psychological problems” he went on, “whether you think so right now or not. Given even the highest qualities of mutual respect and tolerance you hold for your colleagues on the staff, there will still be occasions when inter-species friction occurs. Potentially dangerous situations will arise, through ignorance or misunderstanding, or, more seriously, a being could develop an unsuspected xenophobia which could affect its professional capabilities, its mental stability, or both. A Melfan medic, for example, who had a subconscious fear of the furry vermin with lethal stings that are native to its planet, might not be able to bring to bear on a Kelgian patient the proper degree of clinical detachment required for its treatment. Since Melfans are a six-limbed, exoskeletal species, some of you might feel the same way about them.”

O’Mara paused for a moment, but there was no response. They were watching him in absolute silence, even though their fur was rippling and whipping about as if an unfelt gale were blowing along the corridor.

He went on, “Updated training reports and psych profiles will be maintained in our other-species psychology department, whose purpose is the earliest possible detection and eradication of such problems or, if therapy fails, the removal of the individual concerned from the hospital before the situation can develop into open conflict. Guarding against such wrong, unhealthy, or intolerant thinking is a duty which the department will perform with great zeal, so much so that that it will irritate or anger you to the extent that you may want to tell us, sometimes to our faces, exactly what you think of us. But justifiable invective we do not consider to be a symptom of wrong thinking?

Earth-humans might have laughed politely at his attempted pleasantry; then he remembered that Kelgians always said exactly what they thought.

“Your sleep will be troubled with nightmares, perhaps sexbased fears or fantasies so terrifying that you do not yet believe them possible. When you awaken from them you will be expected to go on duty and work with these nightmares, and make friends with them, or learn to respect and obey them if they happen to be your superiors. If you have a problem with this, as a last resort you may request psychological assistance. But if you have understood the implications of what I have been telling you, you already know that it would be better for everyone concerned if you solved these problems yourselves.

“After you have had time to settle in,” he continued, “you will be contacted by the Earth-human senior tutor, Dr. Mannen, regarding your sleeping, eating, training, and lecture schedules. He has a dog, a nonsapient, nonhostile Earth quadruped which he will expect you to acknowledge, or perhaps admire even though it has no medical training . . .”

Like me, he added silently.

“You will find Dr. Mannen to be an excellent teacher, friendly, helpful, and with a personality that is more pleasant than my own- “That’s the best news we’ve heard today.” said one of the Kelgians behind Crenneth.

O’Mara ignored it. As he turned to go he gestured toward their waiting quarters and ended, “Good luck with your studies. Professionally, I hope never to see any of you again?

“‘thank you, O’Mara? said Crenneth, with a sudden ripple of its fur. “We also hope never to see you again.”

CHAPTER 6

The reason for their forthright language and behavior, he had decided there and then, was that in Kelgians the physiology and psychology, the fur and the feelings of the mind that controlled it, were difficult to separate. Unlike other species, who had to depend on words alone to communicate, they did not have to carry the psychological baggage of lies, or of having to hide their true feelings from others, or the stress of not knowing the truth about what other people were thinking about them. The Kelgian emotional life was beautifully simple. And now, almost fifty years since he had first met that first group of them, he still had a warm and special regard for them even though he could never admit to such a thing. Apart from Prilicla, their single Cinrusskin empath, who knew more about the hidden contents of O’Mara’s mind than did anyone else in the hospital, the Kelgians were his favorite species in Sector General, because they said what they thought and everyone knew exactly where they were with them.

They were his kind of people.

O’Mara sighed, opened his eyes, and completed the process of easing himself back into present space and time. It was necessary that he see Colonel Skempton, and he had to go at once if he was going to leave Braithwaite to deal alone with their latest psychological hot potato. He left via the outer office without talking to anyone.

The administrator’s private office was much larger and more luxuriously appointed than O’Mara’s in the Psychology Department. The floor covering was so deep and soft that one waded through rather than walked over it, and there was a greater variety of other-species’ furniture that really was comfortable for beings who had occasion to use it. Behind the enormous, tidy desk, which was empty except for its inset console and communications screens, there were two chairs instead of the one that was usually there. They both looked as sinfully comfortable as the extraterrestrial relaxers. Skempton pointed at the empty one beside him.

“There was no need to tidy up your desk just for me” said O’Mara dryly as he sat down. They both knew that the colonel had a neatness fetish and that his desk always looked that way. He swiveled his chair to face O’Mara and stared directly at his chest for a few seconds without speaking.

“As you have seen” said O’Mara caustically, “I’m still wearing my uniform with the insignia removed. This is not because I yearn for my former rank or have any deep attachment to the Monitor Corps, or for any other sentimental or psychological reason. There are just too many people in this place who can’t tell one Earthhuman from another, but they think of me as the one with grey hair and a Monitor green uniform who doesn’t bother to wish anyone the time of day. I’m wearing it as a simple aid to identification, so you don’t have to commiserate or avoid hurting my bruised feelings because I don’t have any, bruised or otherwise. And as a civilian I don’t even have to call you ’sir’ . . .

“I don’t remember you ever calling me ’sir,’” Skempton broke in, smiling. “But as the new civilian administrator everyone, including as a courtesy the military personnel, will call you ’sir’ at all times, whether they feel respect for you in any given situation or not. Do you handle megalomania well, O’Mara?”

“So if you have instructions, advice, warnings, or other unclassifiable knowledge you wish to share with me?” O’Mara continued, ignoring the interruption, “let’s cut to it at once. I would appreciate your advice even though I probably won’t take it. Then you can formally introduce me to your staff, having first indicated which heads I should pat or the asses, if any, I should kick. Right?

“And the megalomania will be a temporary condition,” he added sourly, “because so is this new job.”

Skempton nodded sympathetically. “Choosing and training a successor capable of filling your shoes could take time,” he said seriously, “so your temporary job could last for as long as you need. Or even want.”

“Are you trying to compliment me,” said O’Mara, “or lead me into temptation?”

“Yes, twiceP said the colonel. “But seriously, the hardest part of the new job is being pleasant, and firm, too, of course, with everyone. In this office you won’t be dealing with emotionally troubled patients, they will all know that they are saner, more intelligent, and fully capable of doing this job better than you can. Maybe some of them are, but they are too high in their comfortable medical specialties to seriously consider ousting you. They will come to you with legitimate requests for equipment, medical supplies, or additional staff that have, they will insist, much more merit than the similar requests of their colleagues.

“You will listen to themP he went on, “and tell them exactly what you think of them, but always under your breath, and do whatever is humanly, or nonhumanly, possible. Considering the resources of the Federation and the Monitor Corps, that is quite a lot. The ones who know exactly what they need will tell you without wasting time. You will give them what they want or tell them gently why they can’t have it until the week after next, or whenever, and find a compromise solution to their particular problem. But with the others you will listen and be diplomatic, I hope, and do nothing at all.”

He gave O’Mara a worried smile and continued, “This is because all they want to do is talk to you, and complain about the nasty things they think their colleagues are saying behind their backs, or about the apparent and sometimes real attempts certain other department heads are making at empire-building by grabbing their unfair share of the top trainees. Or they will complain about the difficulties of fitting their workload into the allotted time, or stuff like that. Basically it is just high-level griping which you will listen to with an occasional sympathetic or encouraging word as appropriate or, in extreme cases, a promise to look into it as soon as your own workload allows. But usually you won’t even have to say or promise anything, or do anything that your subordinate staff can’t do or aren’t already doing.”

When Skempton paused for breath, O’Mara made a pretense of sounding shocked and said, “And is that what our respected chief administrator has been doing for the past twelve years?”

“Shameful, isn’t it?” said the colonel, laughing for the first time. The process smoothed away the worry lines in his face and relaxed his mouth so that for a moment he looked younger than O’Mara had ever seen him since he had taken over the administration of the hospital. He went on, “There are moments of drama when I have to earn my salary, when saying and doing nothing isn’t enough. But the point I’m making is that, regardless of their size, shape, species, or rank, listening will be the most important part of your job. Mostly you’ll just have to listen and make appropriate noises while they talk out and solve their own problems and go away happy until the next time.”

Suddenly O’Mara found himself laughing, too, although he could not remember how long it had been since he had done that. He said dryly, “That sounds very like what I do in Other-Species Psychology.”

“Maybe that” said Skempton, “is why they gave you my job in the first place.”

Irritated with himself, O’Mara allowed his features to fall back into their usual unfriendly configuration. He said, “Are you trying to compliment me again? There’s no reason to waste time on pleasantries when you’re leaving the place and can’t hope to benefit from them. Have you anything else to tell me about the job? Or have you any more helpful advice to give me?”

Skempton’s smile faded and his tone became businesslike as he said, “No more advice, only information. The first applicant for your job arrives in three days’ time. It is Dr. Cerdal, a Cemmeccan, physiological classification DBKR, and the first member of its species to come to Sector General. It was asked to donate a mind recording for the Educator tape program, so it thinks it’s good. So do the Federation medical and psychiatric examiners who put it on their short list. So far it has been the only suitable candidate. What you think and the action you take will, of course, be up to you.”

O’Mara nodded. The colonel turned and keyed his console before going on, “Whatever you may finally decide, you should know that the position of Administrator of Sector Twelve General Hospital is the most sought-after post in the field of multi-species medicine. The would-be candidates are important enough to exert political as well as medical influence, which is why the Federation’s medical examiners are winnowing out the hopeless hopefuls from the few who might stand a chance, so that you can assess and/or train the applicants without being swayed by external influences-if, that is, it’s possible to influence you with anything or anybody.

“The data on Cerdal’s qualifications, experience, and behavior before the examiners will be copied to you for later study. Maintenance has Cerdal’s quarters ready for it, nothing lavish even though it is an important being on its home world, and we’ll leave the rest to you. Sorry for dropping you in at the deep end . . .

“This place” said O’Mara, “is one perpetual deep end. It always has been.”

The colonel’s smile returned briefly as he continued, “By the time Dr. Cerdal arrives, I shall be on my way to Nidia and a future of being an ever more high-ranking military bookkeeper on a world where the only deep ends will be sand bunkers and water traps.”

Gruffly, O’Mara said, “I wish the fleet commander joy of them.”

Skempton inclined his head and glanced at his watch. “Thank you” he said. “I don’t see you are a golfer, O’Mara. What does our feared and respected chief psychologist do with himself when he isn’t being feared and respected?”

O’Mara just shook his head.

“We all wonder about that, you knowP Skempton said, “and some of the ideas put forward are unusual and colorful and, well, weird enough to arouse your professional concern. Where do you take your leaves, dammit, and what do you do there? This is probably my last chance to find out.”

O’Mara shook his head again.

“Once I considered requesting a covert trace on you,” the other went on, glancing again at his wrist. “But you know me better than I know myself, O’Mara, so I couldn’t justify bringing in Monitor internal security just to satisfy my morbid curiosity regarding the possible misbehavior of a reticent colleague who . . .

“You’ve been looking at your watch,” O’Mara broke in. “If you’ve nothing else to tell me, I’ll stop wasting your time.”

“No, O’Mara,” said Skempton with a sudden, broad smile, “I’m wasting your time. I’m supposed to keep you talking here until some people arrive. Thornnastor, Conway, Murchison, Priicla, and any of the other diagnosticians or seniors who aren’t in OR. They’re bringing some special stuff that was brewed by Chief Dietician Gurronsevas, a concoction used widely on Orligia that has a blanket contraindication for all warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. You won’t be able to dodge them the way you did after this morning’s meeting, because they’ll be here any second now. In fact, that must be Thornnastor’s feet I hear in the corridor outside. This time I’m afraid you’re stuck with us.

“But don’t worry,” he went on, plainly enjoying O’Mara’s discomfort, “it shouldn’t last for more than two or three hours. It’s just an excuse for a party, but they also want to congratulate us properly on our new appointments, wish us well, and say nice things about my service here. They’ll be trying to say nice things about you, too.”

“I don’t envy them their job.”

CHAPTER 7

If anything, O’Mara thought, Dr. Cerdal resembled a Kelgian, although the resemblance was not close. The Cemmeccan’s caterpillar-like body was shorter and more heavily built and, rather than multiple legs, there were ten wide, semicircular bands of padded muscle spaced along its underside for ambulation and its fur was long, immobile, and jet black rather than silver. The four arms that grew from just below its large, round head and stretched backward for nearly half the length of its body were black and looked thin because they were completely hairless. The body fur continued forward without thinning to cover its face, so that the only features visible were its large, black eyes, and when it opened its mouth, it displayed an oral cavity and teeth that were also deepest black. According to the library computer there had been sound, evolutionary reasons for the body coloration, but to O’Mara it seemed that Cerdal was absorbing all the ambient light in the office like an organic black hole.

Rather than use his big, new administrator’s office, O’Mara had decided to hold the initial interview in the Psychology Department. There were three reasons for this. A gratuitous display of his new, lavish workplace would have been a waste of time and a great unkindness if the candidate was unsuccessful; all the training records and psyche files that it would be using were in the old office; and anyway, it was possible that Cerdal would be equally uncomfortable in either office until Maintenance provided some Cemmeccan furniture.

O’Mara tried to imagine how his predecessor Craythorne would have handled this situation while at the same time remembering all the advice Thornnastor, Skempton, Prilicla, and even young Conway, who was going a touch grey at the temples these days, had given him on how an administrator should behave while interviewing a high-level candidate. He took a deep breath and worked the long-unused facial muscles to produce a pleasant expression even though the other might not be able to read it.

“I am Chief Psychologist and Administrator O’Mara.” he said briskly, and with a nod to his left and right continued, “and these are my assistants, Padre and former Surgeon-Captain Lioren of Tarla, and the Sommaradvan former warrior-surgeon Cha Thrat. My principal assistant, Lieutenant Braithwaite, is manning the outer office. He is monitoring this interview and may put in a relevant comment or question. The proceedings will be informal and you may speak freely or interrupt at any time.

“For the present that is all you need to know about us,” he ended, smiling, “but we need to know everything about you. Please speak.”

Dr. Cerdal lay with the forward half of its body supported on part of a Melfan cradle so as to bring its head level with those of the interviewers. For several seconds it kept its jet-black Cemmeccan eyes only on O’Mara before the first low, gurgling words of its native speech came through their translators.

“First an observation, and questions,” it said. “I am being interviewed for the most important post in this establishment, as was expected, by the present incumbent. But why am Ito be questioned by and in the presence of subordinates? I had assumed the position to be one carrying complete authority and full responsibility for decision making. Is this authority and responsibility to be diluted? Is the position of administrator in fact a committee? Or is it that the present incumbent requires some form of moral support?”

Cha Thrat made a sound that did not translate, Lioren turned all four of its eyes in Cerdal’s direction, and O’Mara pressed his lips tightly together to contain a verbal explosion. Perhaps, he thought angrily, the Cemmeccans were closer to the Kelgians than he had realized. This one appeared not, or maybe it was pretending not, to understand the concepts of diplomacy, tact, or even a simple show of respect for authority. It was the Padre, who was obviously having similar thoughts, who spoke first.

“My study of the Cemmeccan material in our library did not suggest that you belong to a particularly impolite species.” it said. “Would you like to correct me, or comment?”

Cerdal’s attention moved, reluctantly, O’Mara thought, to Lioren. It said, “I understand, and at times appreciate, polite behavior. But in essence politeness is a social lubricant that smooths, but more often conceals, the rough surfaces of interpersonal contact that could be a later cause of conflict. No doubt there will be future cases here where the softer and more gentle contact will be the indicated therapy. During the present proceedings, however, I believe that a complete and honest response to questions will be of more long-term benefit to me than a pretense of subservience and obeisance. I do not believe that I am here to waste time?

From the desk communicator came the sound of Braithwaite clearing his throat. The lieutenant said, “Has the candidate, as an additional preparation for this interview, studied the hearsay evidence available to it regarding the similar behavioral characteristics of Administrator O’Mara in the hope that modeling itself on the present incumbent will increase its chances of landing the job?”

“Of course” said Cerdal without hesitation.

His anger had faded, but O’Mara chose to remain silent because the others were asking the questions he would have asked. And Cerdal, he thought, was handling itself well.

“Dr. Cerdal,” said Cha Thrat, speaking for the first time, “since you maybe the only Cemmeccan at the hospital for a long time, the future cases here that you mentioned earlier will involve beings not of your species. How many other-species patients have you treated?”

“Before I answer that question,” Cerdal replied, “you must understand that I was on the staff of the largest one-species Cernmeccan hospital, which also had provision for the limited treatment of emergency admissions from the principal star-traveling species sent to us from the nearby spaceport. There was no provision for chlorine- or methane-breathers or the more exotic life-forms. I treated five cases, two surgically with Educator-tape assistance and three with psychotherapy.”

“It is the latter three which interest us? said Cha Thrat. Without even a glance toward O’Mara for permission, it went on, “May we have the clinical details? A brief outline will suffice.”

Cha Thrat was enjoying this, O’Mara thought. As a warriorsurgeon it was probably more highly placed in its Sommaradvan medical hierarchy than the candidate had been on Cemmecca, and it was letting its feelings show. He remained silent.

“The Melfan was a space-accident casualty? Cerdal replied, answering Cha Thrat although its eyes remained on O’Mara, “whose limbs had to be broken to enable it to fit into a tiny, speciesunsuitable survival pod. A colleague repaired the physical damage, but as soon as it had regained partial mobility it made repeated attempts to escape from its room, and its emotional disturbance was so marked that it would or could not tell us what was wrong. I decided that our Cemmeccan accommodation, which for physiological reasons tends to be small and low-ceilinged and cramped by Melfan standards, was a factor which had reinforced the psychological damage caused by its recent confinement in a physiologically unsuitable survival pod. I moved the patient, together with its treatment frame and medical sensors, into an open, treeless area of our hospital’s park. Within a few weeks it made a full recovery, both from its physical injuries and an associated manic claustrophobia, and was discharged.

“It is fortunate that the Melfan exoskeleton is waterproof? it added, “because it rains a lot on Cemmecca.”

If it was an attempt at humor, O’Mara noted with approval, it was ignored by everyone. Lioren said, “Please continue.”

“The second case was an Orligian with a history of stressrelated illnesses associated with its job, a very responsible but temporary one, setting up the computer interface between our planetary network and the Monitor Corps establishment on Gemmecca. Questioning revealed that it was unmated and intensely dedicated to its work, which had involved its having to travel between many worlds during its entire adult life. I decided that the cause of its problem was mental fatigue combined with severe homesickness. But my investigation revealed that it wanted to return to the time as well as the place of its youth, so that the lengthy period of rest and recuperation on its home world that I prescribed was not entirely successful, although it was able to resume its offplanet career.

“The third case was a young, recuperating Kelgian who had sustained burn damage to its fur? Cerdal went on. “The area affected was small, but the delicate network of underlying nerve and muscle responsible for fur mobility was destroyed with no possibility of regeneration so that the patient, and every other member of its species, considered it to be grossly and permanently disfigured. Bearing in mind the part that the mobility of their emotionsensitive fur plays in the courtship, coupling, and long-term mating process, the patient knew that it could never attract a life-mate or even join in the briefest of temporary liaisons, and it developed an increasingly severe, sex-based urge toward further self-damage which, had the attempts been successful, would have left its body in an even more disfigured state.

“It was treated for nearly a year,” Gerdal went on, “during which it returned to its work specialty, but always working on Gemmecca and never appearing among other Kelgians. The periodicity of its attempts at self-disfigurement has been reduced. But it is not a successful case. Therapy continues.”

Although none of them would ever know why, it was a very sensitive subject where O’Mara himself was concerned. He was glad when Braithwaite’s voice broke the silence.

“On the subject of sex-based urges? said the lieutenant, “you will be the hospital’s only Gemmeccan. Will this be a problem for you? If it will be, please describe how you plan to handle it or, if it won’t be, why not?”

Cerdal’s attention remained firmly on O’Mara as it replied, “One or more of you must already have informed yourselves regarding my species’ mechanism of reproduction. But in case one or more of you are ignorant of the process I shall describe it briefly. Since none of you belong to my species and your interest is, I hope, clinical, I can do so with the minimum of embarrassment.”

Cha Thrat moved two of its upper hands together in the sign of Sommaradvan apology, a gesture which was probably lost on the Cemmeccan, and said, “Please go on.”

“There are three sexes,” said Gerdal. “Two, whose function roughly approximates that of the male and female among bisexual species, and the mother. All are, of course, sapient, but in general the male equivalent tends to be less willing to accept the long-term responsibility of raising children and has to be influenced in subtle ways to become a parent by entering the mother person with his partner. Sexual coupling and procreation takes place between both partners inside the mother, who also takes part and who, making allowances for the increased body weight of the couple and the growing fetus, continues with normal day-to-day activities. When parturition takes place and the couple with their child are expelled, the mother ceases to have any further part in the proceedings. The period that the couple and their developing offspring spend inside the mother is said to be an intensely pleasurable time. I have not yet had the experience myself.

“As a rule the mothers are psychologically very stable personalities? Cerdal went on, “but occasionally there is a physical dysfunction in the rather crowded womb equivalent which necessitates surgical intervention. When this occurs the surgeon, completely encased in an operating garment so that it will not inadvertently contribute genetic material to the fetus or receive pleasure sensations from the mother, also enters for the briefest time necessary to repair the damage. There are sometimes psychological problems with male- or female-equivalent parents who wish to remain in or reenter the mother, but such cases are rare.

It paused for a moment. When nobody spoke, it added, “My own sexual needs have, I believe, been sublimated to my lifelong dedication to the profession of healing minds. While I will be the only member of my species in Sector General, the mechanics of Cemmeccan sex are such that I do not believe that I would ever be tempted to experiment sexually with the members of other species . . .

“Thank God for that? said Lioren softly.

so that now and in the future? it went on, my entire mind, indeed my entire physical and mental output, will be devoted solely to the work of this hospital.”

O’Mara stared at Gerdal for a few seconds while the Gemmeccan stared back. He was quite happy to let Lioren make the running.

“You will realize, Dr. Gerdal? said the Padre, “that your otherspecies experience is grossly inadequate for the duties you will be called on to perform here, and that you will need training if you are to have any hope of performing them to the standard required. This interview is not in itself of major importance. Much more depends on the assessment of your psychological reactions, general proficiency in dealing with patients whose minds are beyond anything in your previous experience, and the control or lack of it of your xenophobia on the conscious and unconscious levels during training ~

“I understand? said Cerdal. It was still looking at O’Mara.

“Your training? Lioren continued, “will be given principally by what you may consider to be the subordinate members of this department, Braithwaite, Gha Thrat, and myself. We will be advising and more often as not criticizing and telling you where you went wrong. Will you have a problem with that?”

“No? said the Cemmeccan. “At least, not until my training is complete and my appointment to the job is confirmed. Then I may have critical words of my own to say. But I must repeat my earlier question.”

“Go on,” said Lioren.

Obviously choosing its words with care and with its attention still focused on O’Mara, Cerdal continued, “I am being considered for the most senior and responsible position in the hospital. Why then is this interview being conducted not by the present incumbent but by underlings? To a person of my high professional standing I find this demeaning, even insulting, unless there is a very good reason or excuse for your behavior. Bearing in mind the grey coloration of your head fur, is it possible that you are no longer capable of performing your duties adequately and require more youthful assistance? This would be a completely acceptable excuse.

Beside him Cha Thrat and Lioren were still as statues, and on the communicator he could hear Braithwaite making noises which suggested that someone was strangling him. All of them were waiting for a verbal explosion of nuclear proportions, but O’Mara had a contrary streak that delighted in doing the unexpected.

He smiled and said, “A possibility you have not considered, Dr. Cerdal, is that I am conducting not one interview but four, and that my assistants, unknown to themselves until this moment, are your fellow candidates for the job.”

Before anyone could speak, O’Mara raised a hand and looked at each of them in turn. He said, “Spare me your token protestations of inadequacy. False modesty makes me sick. Your experience with this department’s work makes all of your prime candidates as my replacement, as do your qualifications in medicine. The fact that the lieutenant’s medical knowledge is rusty from disuse, and Cha Thrat is not allowed to practice here, and Lioren, for personal reasons, has forbidden itself to practice, is unimportant. The administrator will not be expected to treat patients.

“Gha Thrat, Padre? he continued briskly, “I know exactly how much you have to do. Continue doing it. Braithwaite, free some time to show Dr. Gerdal around what it hopes will be its future empire. And remember, I will be watching and from time to time testing all of you. Your future promotion depends on your increased levels of professional competence, behavior under stress, and my own personal whim . . .

He allowed his face to crack into one of its rare smiles.

. . . not necessarily in that order of importance? he ended. “Your preliminary interviews are over. You may go.

CHAPTER 6

Close on half a century earlier, the idea of promotion was something that O’Mara had not felt happy about-although, to be honest with himself, the fact that it had never been offered might have played a large part in forming that feeling. Now, for the first time in his working life, he was being offered one and his first reaction was to shake his head. Vigorously.

“A facial expression reflecting pleasure,” said Major Craythorne gravely, “and a simple word of thanks with a few questions tacked on regarding your exact status, job description, and increased level of pay is what I expected from you, not an outright refusal. This is the first step on a ladder you must have wanted to climb all your life, O’Mara, and with your proven capabilities the succeeding steps will be easier. What are you afraid of?”

Craythorne sighed, wrinkled his nose, and in a gentle, apologetic voice said, “I’d ask you to sit down for a while and talk about this, but you’re filthy and you stink to high heaven as would the chair when the next person comes in to sit on it,so I’m afraid you’ll have to take the good news on your feet. What the hell were you doing?”

“I was helping clear the blocked waste-disposal system on Level Thirty-Three when your- “What possible reason? the Major broke in, “did my xenopsychology assistant have for clearing blocked latrines?”

“Four reasons? O’Mara replied. “The squad leader had been called away; his men didn’t know what the hell they were doing, while I had, ah, previous experience in the job; I didn’t have anything urgent to do at the time; and, well, they asked me nicely for a change.”

Like everything else about him, Graythorne’s irritation was gentle and controlled. He said, “Listen carefully to me, O’Mara. You are never again to perform menial tasks like that just because you happen to have previous experience in them, or because you are asked nicely. From now on I want your position within this establishment to be clear to everyone. That is why I’m inducting you into the Monitor Corps and giving you an immediate promotion to . . .

He broke off and added, “At last it looks as if you’re going to say something. Very likely it will be offensive, but say it anyway before you blow a fuse.”

O’Mara took a deep breath and strove vainly for internal calm. He could almost feel his face radiating deep into the infrared. After a moment he said, “Sir, I’m not happy with the idea of promotion in a civilian job mostly because, unlike you, I don’t have the good manners or the knack of giving orders without also giving offense, or maybe even starting a fight. If absolutely necessary I could try to improve my manners, lengthen my temper, and learn to live with that situation. But joining a routine-indoctrinated and disciplineoriented organization like the Monitor Corps, and going through basic training and having to stand at attention and salute and . . . You know I don’t take orders very well, so I wouldn’t last a week. I’ve no wish to be personally offensive—”

“If it helps explain your obviously strong feelings in the matter? Craythorne broke in, “you have permission to be personally offensive. Within reason.

“All right,” said O’Mara, staring into a pair of eyes which, he had found over the years, had the disconcerting ability to stare back without wavering. “In the civilian sector I’ve had painful experience with nominal superiors who made a pretense at the habit of command but who needed their nominal subordinates to keep their nose, or a less delicate body orifice, wiped clean. If I did join the Corps and some NCO or officer, present company excepted, told me to do something that I knew to be wrong, and I could be severely disciplined for not doing it, well . . . Sir, joining the Monitor Corps is not an option?

Craythorne was still holding his eyes as he said quietly, “Joining the Corps is the only option, O’Mara, if you wish to remain in Sector General. I know you well enough to feel sure that, faced with the prospect of leaving, you will exert a considerable amount of self-control in order to remain here. Right?”

O’Mara swallowed and for a moment he couldn’t speak. The thought of leaving the hospital, with its nice or normally nasty construction crews and its increasingly weird intake of doctors and medical trainees, to return to the space construction gangs whose brains, if not actually dead, had never been given the opportunity to live, was too terrible to contemplate. He was beginning to develop a proprietary, almost a parental interest in the place and its people, and he knew that being forced to leave it would hurt more than anything in his short and already hurt-filled life.

But as a Corpsman O’Mara didn’t know if he was capable of that much self-control.

“I thought so? said the major. He gave O’Mara a brief, sympathetic smile of encouragement and went on, “For your information, the construction of the hospital is within a few weeks of completion and the civil contractors and their people are rapidly being phased out. Henceforth the Monitor Corps will be wholly responsible for all aspects of supply, maintenance, power requirements, supply logistics, catering, and so on. The only civilians here will be the medical staff, which is why, considering your lack of formal medical training, you have no choice but to be one of us. To stay here you must be a medic or a member of the Corps. I’m not breaking any rules, because for this place they haven’t been written yet; I’m just bending them a little.

“As the ranking officer on site? Craythorne went on, his smile broadening, “I have applied for and received permission to waive the usual basic-training procedures. I can’t imagine you ever needing to know about space ordnance or riot-control weapons here, so you are joining us as a specialist in other-species psychology and will continue with the work you are doing now. You will not have to worry about junior NCOs telling you what to do, although it might be a good idea to listen to their advice if or when they give it . . .

The major sat back in his chair, his face becoming politely stern.

. . . but you will, however, obey orders? he went on. “Especially mine. The first one is to clean up and call on Maintenance Technician Wenalont on Level Fifty-One, Room Eighteen. It has already altered the issue uniforms and kit to your measurements, which it has had for the past two weeks, and reports them ready for fitting.” He glanced at his watch. “Then at fifteen hundred hours precisely I want you back here for an important technical briefing from a medical VIP, and looking and smelling a lot more presentable. It will be a long session so don’t skip lunch.”

O’Mara’s mind and tongue were still paralyzed by surprise. He nodded wordlessly and turned to go. Craythorne wrapped a knuckle gently against the top of his desk.

“And if I ever hear of you cleaning latrines again? he added, you and your service career will both be terminated on the spot. Do you understand me, Lieutenant O’Mara?”

On the way to Level Fifty-One the main corridors were clear of major obstructions and, he noticed since the major had drawn his attention to the reason for it, the remaining equipmentinstallation jobs were being done by people in Monitor green coveralls while the only civilians he passed were wearing medical insignia and whites if they were wearing anything at all. He was already worrying about what exactly he should say and how he should say it to this Wenalont character, but in the event it was the other who did all the talking.

“I am Technical Sergeant Wenalont, sir? it said briskly. “As a Melfan I haven’t much use for clothing, since my exoskeleton is impervious to all but the most severe climatic changes, but my hobby is tailoring and the fitting of wearing apparel to weird and unusual body configurations. No offense is intended, I meant weird and unusual to me. We will begin from the epidermis out, with the undergarment and the tubular coverings for the feet and lower legs. Please strip off, sir.

I’m not supposed to take orders from NCOs, thought O’Mara, feeling his face growing warm. But then, he told himself, if they were preceded by “please” and he was called “sir” it was not technically an order.

“Now we will fit the outer garments? the sergeant went on a few moments later, “that is, the coveralls which serve as the working uniform, and the uniform proper. Once I have ensured that the fit is smart and comfortable, duplicates of all these garments will be sent to your new quarters on the officers’ level . . .

He felt Wenalont’s hard, bony wrists against the sides of his head as it pulled, settled, and straightened each garment onto his shoulders and neck. It never stopped talking about fastenings, insignia, and the types and proper positioning of antigravity or weapons belts and equipment harness. Then suddenly it was over. The sergeant grasped him firmly by the upper arms and rotated him to face the full-length mirror.

The man looking back at him was dressed in the full, darkgreen uniform with the Monitor Corps crest glittering on the collar and the insignia of rank and space service emblem decorating the shoulder tabs, one of which retained his neatly folded beret. O’Mara had expected the sight to make him feel ridiculous. He didn’t know how he felt exactly, but ridiculous was not one of the feelings.

He wondered if his sudden surge of mixed feelings was due to the fact that for the first time in his life as a quarrelsome, intellectually frustrated, and friendless loner he had become, without changing these characteristics one bit, a person who belonged to something. He dragged his mind back to the sergeant, who was talking again.

“The fit, sir? said Wenalont, moving around and staring him up and down with its large, insectile eyes, “is very good, neat without being constricting. You are unusually large and heavily muscled for an Earth-human male. If you were to appear dressed like that in the dining hail, I feel sure that the Earth-human females on the medical staff would be greatly impressed. But may I offer a word of advice, sir?”

The idea of him trying to impress female medics was so ridiculous that he almost laughed out loud. Instead he tried to be polite, as he thought Major Graythorne would have liked him to be, and said, “Please do.”

“It is regarding service dress protocol and saluting,” the sergeant went on. “In the space service we do not go in much for the exchange of such compliments because of the restricted living and working environment. As well, by the nature of things there are many fewer officers than there are other ranks, so that their subordinates would have to salute them perhaps three or four times a day while they would have to return these compliments hundreds of times a day, which can be time-wasting, irritating, and physically tiring for the officer concerned. As a simple verbal expression of respect, the word ’sir’ or its other-species equivalent, and the wearing of issue coveralls with appropriate insignia patches, is considered acceptable. The only exception is during occasions such as inspections or visits by high-ranking Corps officers or government officials when the full uniform must be worn and all the military courtesies performed.

“I hope you aren’t disappointed, sir? the sergeant went on, “but if you were to go to lunch in full uniform instead of coveralls, every subordinate you met or passed would stop whatever they were doing to exchange salutes with you, so that you would need to eat one-handed. But if that is what you desire—”

“No!” O’Mara broke in, and then for the first time in many years he laughed out loud. “I’m relieved, not disappointed. And, well, thank you for your help and advice, Sergeant. Unless you need me for anything else, I’ll change into coveralls again at once because I’m pushed for time.”

“A moment before you change? said the other. “My congratulations on your commission, sir.”

One of the sergeant’s long, shiny, sticklike and multi-jointed forelimbs swept out sideways and upward to come to a rigid halt beside its head and, for the first time in his life, O’Mara found himself returning a salute.

He did not have to undergo the embarrassing experience again, even though the dining hall for warm-blooded oxygenbreathers was crowded with Corps and medical personnel. His crisp new coveralls with their bright, painfully clean patches denoting his rank and departmental insignia, O’Mara was relieved to find, aroused no comment or even notice. During dessert he was joined by a trainee nurse who had asked politely to take the empty place at his table, but as it was a Tralthan with four times his body mass and six elephantine feet, he doubted that it had been attracted by his uniform.

CHAPTER 9

Even though the operating theater’s occupants were all warmblooded oxygen-breathers, it was clear that the atmosphere of stress and tension in the place could have been cut with a blunt scalpel. The bony features of the Melfan surgeon in charge of the team were incapable of registering any expression, as was the domelike head of its massive Tralthan assistant, but the mobile fur of the Kelgian anesthetist was twitching and tufting violently. The only person in the room who looked composed was the Earth-human who was the deeply unconscious patient.

The Melfan raised a forelimb and clicked its pincers together for attention.

“I should have no need to remind you of how important the next twenty minutes are to the future of other-species surgery? it said with a glance toward the overhead vision recorder, “or that this is considered to be one of the simplest procedures that are performed routinely in many thousands of hospitals throughout the patient’s home planet and on other Earth-seeded colony worlds. The diagnosis has been confirmed as a clinical condition which, due to the patient’s delay in reaching hospital, has become lifethreatening and requires immediate surgery. Are we all ready? Then let’s have it out.”

The blade of the scalpel, its handle designed to fit precisely the Melfan pincer, flashed brightly as it caught the overhead lighting; then the reflection became pink-tinged as it made a longitudinal incision in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen.

“Normally a shorter incision would suffice? said the Melfan, “but we’re not trying to impress anyone with the minimal size and neatness of the work here. This is strange country to all of us and I want to give myself room to look around. Ah, there is a thick layer of adipose tissue overlying the musculature, we’ll have to go deeper. Control that bleeding, please. Quickly, Doctor. Clear the operative field, I can’t see what I’m doing.”

There was a low, faintly derisive sound as the delicate tips of two of the Tralthan assistant’s tentacles holding the suction instrument moved in from the side ibriefly before withdrawing again a few seconds later to reveal the upper surface of the ascending colon at the bottom of the shallow, red crevice that was the wound.

“Thank you? said the Melfan surgeon, laying aside the scalpel. “Now we will tie off and excise the . . . Where the hell is it?”

“I don’t see it, either, sir? said the Tralthan. “Could it be attached to the underside of the colon or—”

“We’ve studied the anatomy of this life-form closely for a week? the Melfan broke in, “so we shouldn’t have to do this. Oh, very well. Library, display physiological classification DBDG, abdominal area, Earth-human male. Highlight position of the appendix.”

A few seconds later the large wall screen facing them lit up with the requested picture, the lower end of the ascending colon and the appendix projecting downward from it enclosed by a circle of red light.

“That’s where it is? said the Melfan, pointing with its free pincer at the outlined area, “and that is where we went in. But it isn’t here.”

“Sir? said its assistant, “the literature suggested that on Earthhumans this could be the simplest of all surgical procedures lasting only a few minutes, or one that can be taxing, difficult, and lengthy. This is because, and I may be quoting inaccurately from memory, the normally healthy organ, which is thinner than a digit and only two to eight inches in length, when diseased, inflamed, and filled with pus can be enlarged to many times that size. If this happens, the organ is very mobile and may grow toward one of a number of other organs within the abdominal cavity, so that the patient’s symptoms appear to involve a different organ. I’m still quoting from memory, but this can make an accurate diagnosis difficult. Is it possible that the case has been misdiagnosed?”

Without looking up, the Melfan said, “I am constantly referring to the same memories, Doctor. But what a stupid set of internal plumbing these Earth-human DBDGs have. One wonders how their species was able to survive and evolve intelligence. But no, for now we will assume that the diagnosis was correct. My problem, that whether the appendix is short and thin or lengthy, greatly distended, and growing into another area, or has perhaps become entangled with the small intestine, is that I can’t find either it or its attachment point to the bowel. Suggestions would be welcome, Doctor.”

There was a long pause before its assistant said, “I realize that it doesn’t appear to be either diseased or inflamed, but is it possible that the short length of organ visible to us is, in fact, a part of the distended appendix rather than the bowel? After all, it is in the correct position.”

There was another period of silence. The Kelgian anesthetist’s fur rippled with impatience. It said, “The patient’s condition is stable, Doctors, but it could terminate from old age while we wait.”

Ignoring the remark as one did with Kelgians, the Melfan went on, “I’m going to extend the incision in both directions so as to see more of this area of bowel, which will enable me to lift it into the operative field and find the attachment point even if it is hiding on the underside. After which we will release it from any adhesions or local entanglements and deliver it into the wound where we will tie off, incise, and complete the procedure. Here we go. Be ready with suction, Doctor.”

The incision was enlarged, its edges pulled apart, and the bowel lifted higher in the operative field.

“Still nothing visible,” said the Melfan. “Doctor, your digits have more tactual sensitivity. Go underneath and see if you can feel anything.”

“Nothing, sir? said the Tralthan.

The Melfan hesitated a moment, then said, “I’ll extend the incision again. We’ll save a few moments if you keep holding it. But carefully, it’s very slippery . . . Don’t grab for it! Let go!”

Its surgical assistant had laid aside the instrument that had held the section of bowel above the wound while the other hand continued to hold it gently and firmly in position. But not firmly enough. Suddenly the bowel slipped between the Tralthan’s digits and it made an instinctive grab for it, but succeeded only in pulling it higher above the operative field and into the path of the surgeon’s scalpel. A four-inch long incision appeared suddenly on the bowel which gaped open and began leaking its liquid contents.

“So now we’re faced with doing a bowel repair and we still haven’t found the appendix yet? said the Melfan surgeon angrily. “This, this is not going well. This minor operation is fast becoming a major disaster.”

It used a phrase that its translator, which had probably been programmed by people with less colorful Melfan vocabularies, refused to accept. Then it looked up directly into the vision recorder.

“Enough? it said, “I’m withdrawing from this one before we end up killing the patient. Same-species standby team, take over!”

Within seconds the OR door hissed open to admit three Earth-humans, already masked and gowned, and a floater bearing a tray of ergonomically suited instruments. Quickly the Melfan, Tralthan, and Kelgian medics withdrew from the table. Their places were taken by the new arrivals, who immediately went to work.

As the original team were filing quietly out of the room, the big wall screen in Craythorne’s office went dark as Councillor Davantry ended the playback and swung around to face them.

Davantry was a small, aging, soft-spoken Earth-human whose expression was grave and without the smallest trace of condescension-the kind of person who, like O’Mara’s chief, had the ability to make an order sound as if he were requesting a favor. He did not look at all like a god but, as he was a senior member of the Galactic Federation’s Central Medical Council, Craythorne had suggested that it would be a good idea to treat him as if he were. So far the major had not dared ask the purpose of the equipment in the opened, well-padded container in the center of the office floor.

O’Mara had the uneasy feeling that he was a god about to ask a favor that they could not refuse.

The councillor sighed and said, “You have just viewed one of several multi-species surgical experiments. It was also a horror story. Fortunately, none of the patients concerned terminated, although several came very close to it. There are many more such horror stories, if you want to view them. But they all make the same point, that practicing medicine and surgery-especially surgery-across the species divide is dangerous and, well, is a problem almost impossible of solution.”

O’Mara nodded and waited for a moment to give Craythorne the chance to respond; then he said, “I note the qualifier, sir. Does it mean that you have found one?”

“It means that there are two possible solutions, Lieutenant,” said Davantry, “Neither of which I particularly like. One is straightforward and probably unworkable, the other is simpler but, well, psychologically tricky. But first let us consider the reason for this hospital’s existence, which is to receive and treat the sick and injured of the sixty-odd intelligent species that compose the Galactic Federation. In the light of the experiment you have just seen, and discounting the few species who don’t travel in space, this would mean staffing the hospital with complete teams of physicians, surgeons, and medical and technical support staff of virtually every known life-form, on the off chance that a member of any one of those species would arrive needing treatment. It would be the same as providing sixty different one-species hospitals inside one structure. Sector General is big but not that big. It could be done but, to do it that way, the proportion of patients to staff would be ridiculously low and criminally wasteful of medical personnel, the majority of whom would have nothing to do but hang around waiting for a same-species patient to arrive. Inter-species conflicts could arise through sheer boredom.”

“More likely,” said Craythorne with feeling, “another interstellar war. But you have another solution, sir?”

“Or perhaps, Major” said Davantry, pointing at the opened crate, “I have more horror stories for you. They involve, or will involve, cross-species memory transfer.”

Craythorne leaned forward in his chair, looking excited. “There’s been a lot about it in the literature recently” he said. “Very interesting stuff, sir. It would be the ideal solution, but I thought the procedure was still experimental. Has the technique been perfected?”

“Not quite” Davantry replied with a small smile. “We were hoping that would be done at Sector General.”

“0h” said Craythorne. O’Mara said the same but under his breath. Davantry smiled again, and divided his attention between them as he spoke.

“This hospital,” he said in a very serious voice, “will be equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life. But we have just proved beyond doubt that no single individual can hold in his, her, or its brain even a fraction of the vast amount of physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity is a matter of ability and training but, we have discovered, the complete knowledge of an other-species patient’s physiology and metabolism can only be furnished by means of a complete memory transfer of the mind of a leading medical authority in the relevant field of the patient’s own species into the brain of the physician-in-charge, who can belong to any other species provided it has hands and eyes and has the required surgical training. With the help of what, because the original name is polysyllabic and cumbersome, we are calling an Educator tape, any medically trained being can treat any patient regardless of species.

“The Educator-tape application system’ he went on with a nod toward the opened container, “can impress a mind recording on the recipient’s brain within a few minutes, and be erased just as easily when the indicated treatment for the patient has been completed. The equipment and procedure has been thoroughly tested and the user is completely safe in that there is no physical trauma. But there is another problem.”

“Why am I not surprised?” said O’Mara. He thought he had been speaking under his breath, but Craythorne looked at him warningly while Councillor Davantry pretended not to hear and continued speaking.

“It is this,” he went on. “The tapes do not impart only physiological knowledge; the entire memory, personal and professional experience, and personality of the entity who donated the tape are transferred as well, and we know that all too often the top specialists in the medical or any other field can be aggressive, selfopinionated, and generally obnoxious people, because that is how most of them rose to eminence. Geniuses are rarely charming people. So in effect the tape’s would-be recipient must subject himself voluntarily to a drastic but temporary form of schizophrenia because another personality, an authoritive, forceful, and completely alien personality, is apparently sharing his mind. If the recipient’s mind is not also strong-willed and well integrated, especially if the tape is in place for several days, it will feel as if the donor mind is fighting for and perhaps threatening to gain control over it.”

Davantry looked steadily at Craythorne and O’Mara for a moment, raised his hands slightly, then let them fall again onto his lap.

“With the tape donor’s complete personalityP he went on, “are included all its pet peeves, bad habits, and major or minor phobias. For the long-term recipient, the different food preferences can be a difficulty and, during periods of sleep, alien dreams, nightmares, and particularly other-species sexual fantasies can be a real problem, although none of the previous subjects suffered lasting mental damage. But before your department administers a mindtransfer tape all this must be explained to the would-be recipient, especially to the first volunteer.”

There was a long silence. O’Mara stared at Craythorne, who stared back at him for a moment before looking back to Davantry. The major’s expression remained calm, composed, and quietly attentive, but when he spoke his face had lightened a shade.

“Since my department will be responsible for conducting these mind transfers.” he said calmly, “it follows that I should have firsthand knowledge of the psychological problems involved so that, logically, I should be the first volunteer.”

Davantry shook his head firmly. “If you insist, you may be the second volunteer, Major’ he said, “or preferably the twenty-second. I will need to demonstrate the mind-transfer procedure to you, and to have your training and experience available in your own stable and unaltered mind in case something goes wrong with the subject. I’m just a glorified meditech, not a trained psychologist.

“A subordinate,” he added, looking at O’Mara, “or even someone from outside your department is preferable. But he, she, or it must be a volunteer.”

“With the earlier subjects,” said O’Mara, looking right back, “what were the short- and long-term effects?”

“Short-term,” Councillor Davantry replied, “there was a marked lack of physical coordination, vertigo, and pronounced mental confusion. Usually the first two diminish or disappear within a few minutes. The third can reduce or increase over the space of a few hours or days, depending on the subject’s mental flexibility and strength of will. That’s why I want a trained therapist standing by, in case the subject panics or suffers other emotional problems, so that the mind tape can be erased without delay.”

O’Mara’s mouth was already opening but Craythorne broke in sharply before he could respond.

“Think about it for a moment, Lieutenant O’Mara.” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know that, sir,” said O’Mara, “but I will anyway.”

Later O’Mara was to wonder why he spoke as he did, at once and without any trace of hesitation. He had always liked trying to understand other people’s minds on an amateur basis, and now he had the chance to look at an extraterrestrial’s mind from the inside. Or maybe it was his new rank and position, with its responsibilities as well as privileges, that had gone to his head. More likely he was just being stupid.

It was too late for him to retract while Councillor Davantry was showing the major how to adjust the open-mesh lightweight helmet and connections to the contours of an Earth-human cranium and calibrate the associated items of equipment that were now winking, clicking, and humming on top of Craythorne’s desk. He was surprised by the gentleness of Davantry’s touch and astonished when this medical god placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Good luck, Lieutenant’ he said. “Major, switch on.”

His view of the office and occupants was blotted out by a sudden flash of light which faded quickly to be replaced with a flickering sensation, as if the scene were an unfamiliar image on a faulty viewscreen, before it settled into stillness.

“How do you feel, Lieutenant O’Mara?” said Davantry. “Confused? Frightened? Both?”

“Yes. No” he snapped. “Not both. I, I know a lot of stuff I’ve no business knowing, mostly medical information, and a lot of people, extraterrestrials, I definitely don’t know. You look ridiculous standing there. Flat, less three-dimensional. And you haven’t any fur to tell me what you are feeling and thinking.”

Davantry nodded and smiled. “I’m thinking that you are doing very well” he said. “Stand up and walk around your chair a few times, then try to walk to the office door and back.”

As soon as he stood up the room tilted alarmingly. He had to grab the ridiculous piece of furniture he had been sitting on to keep his balance and later while he was walking awkwardly around it. Then he steadied himself, tried not to look down at a floor that was much too far away, and moved toward the door.

He barely made it, because he was suddenly falling forward and had to put out his hands to the door surface to steady himself, but he still couldn’t stop himself from dropping painfully onto his knees. Then he climbed awkwardly to his feet, straightened up, and turned so that his back was propped securely against the door before he looked back at the suddenly distant chair and the two Earthhumans.

The one called Craythorne was watching him, the two semicircles of facial fur above its eyes drawn down in what some alien group of memories deep within his mind identified as a frown of concern. The other one nodded, showed its teeth briefly in what the same area of memory suggested was a smile of reassurance, and spoke.

“Very good, Lieutenant” it said. “Now walk back again.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said O’Mara angrily. “I’ve only got two bloody feet!”

“I know’ said the other gently, “but try anyway.

O’Mara used words that he did not remember knowing, steadied himself, and walked carefully into the middle of the room. He had gone only a few paces when he felt himself swaying to one side. Instinctively he raised and extended sideways his two thick, ungainly, Earth-human arms. For some reason this enabled him to maintain his balance until he reached the chair. He dropped onto it and used more words that he hadn’t known he knew.

The older Earth-human reached forward and flipped a switch on the side of O’Mara’s helmet. Without it changing appearance in any way, the office and the people in it were suddenly familiar again.

“That’s enough for now, Lieutenant” said Davantry briskly. “Your mind tape has been erased. But you’ll want to discuss the experience with the major before you run more tests. Remember to extend the exposure time gradually until you are comfortable with your mind partner and are quite sure of which one of you is boss . . .

To Craythorne he went on, “A good initial session, Major, and from now on you’ll be teaching yourselves. I have to return to my ship now; a councillor’s work is never done. Contact me only if you run into a serious problem.”

He was moving toward the door when the major said quickly, “Sir, my apologies. I hope you weren’t offended by the lieutenant’s disrespectful language and—”

Councillor Davantry raised a hand without turning. “Don’t worry about it, Major. Lieutenant O’Mara wasn’t quite himself. He was disrespectful, outspoken, and abusive because he had a Kelgian senior physician riding his mind, and Kelgians always behave that way.”

When the door had closed behind him, Craythorne laughed softly.

“I suppose that was not the right time,” he said, “to tell him that Lieutenant O’Mara always behaves that way, too.”

CHAPTER 10

Then as well as now there had been problems with Educator tapes, O’Mara thought dourly, except that with the passage of time the problems were more familiar and much more numerous, and now it was he rather than Craythorne who had the rank and ultimate responsibility for solving them-even when, as now, he was able to dump some of them onto his chief assistant. In that respect at least, nothing had changed.

“Braithwaite” said O’Mara sourly, “how the blazes do you always manage to look so neat? The only creases in your uniform are where they’re supposed to be, the vertical ones in your pants. Is it Monitor Corps conditioning, something in your DNA, or have you sold your soul to some sartorial devil?”

The lieutenant knew a rhetorical question when he heard one and replied with a polite smile.

“Ml right,” said O’Mara. “Diagnostician Yursedth. What happened?”

Braithwaite smiled again and said, “Initially there was a frank exchange of views. It said that, considering its position within the hospital, it deserved the attention of the chief psychologist. I told it that was so, normally, but as the new administrator you had more urgent matters to attend to and were being forced to delegate. It became personally uncomplimentary, toward both of us, and some of the phrases from the Tralthan component of its mind were particularly . . . inventive. But after a few minutes letting off steam, it agreed to talk to a substandard psychiatrist, me.

“And.” said O’Mara.

“Currently it carries four Educator tapes.” said the lieutenant, “Tralthan, Melfan, Dwerlan, and Earth-human. I checked the donors’ psych profiles and none of them seemed as if they would be particularly hard to live with, especially for a strong-willed Kelgian like Yursedth who has years of experience with mind transfers. Its own psych file shows nothing suspect in its past. As for the troublesome dreams, which are causing mental distress of nightmare proportions during sleep and continual worry for hours subsequent to waking, I can find no cause for them. The same applies to the bouts of peripheral neuropathy, which are almost certainly associated with the main problem because they so closely resemble the nightmares. If there is a culprit tape, as you called it, I couldn’t identify it. This is a strange one, sir, because there is no obvious reason why the subject’s problem should exist.”

O’Mara nodded. “You didn’t expect me to hand you an easy one, Lieutenant” he said. “What are you doing about this nonexistent problem?”

“The subject is becoming increasingly distressed” said Braithwaite, “and I don’t want to waste time duplicating someone else’s work, especially yours. Yursedth wouldn’t tell me, at the time it was still annoyed because it wasn’t being treated by you, whether you had already initiated any kind of therapy. Have you?”

O’Mara shook his head. “I barely glanced through Yursedth’s file to check on its current workload’ he said, “which was about normal for a diagnostician of its seniority. The original question stands, Lieutenant: what are you going to do?”

Braithwaite was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I already checked for stress due to overwork and found nothing unusual. I’m going to get it to talk about its dreams and psychosomatic episodes again, and listen even more carefully this time. If nothing else occurs to me, I’ll suggest erasing the Melfan tape. If any of the Educator tapes are causing the trouble it is likely, well, slightly more likely, to be that one. As you know, sir, while the Melfans have very precise and accurate muscle control and positional sense, but the exoskeletal structures covering their limbs and digits have no sense of touch. It is probably a forlorn hope, but that might equate with Yursedth’s waking loss of sensation in its limbs and other areas of its body and its persistent nightmares. One of them, the one that seems to trouble it most, is about it being in a hospital OR on Melf and unable to operate because of an unexplained, creeping paralysis. I would then erase the Melfan tape and, before impressing another, observe and question the subject closely for a few days or weeks, to see whether or not the troublesome symptoms were still present or receding. I would do the same with the other tapes in turn and, if that didn’t work, I’d erase all of them and observe the effects. If any.”

O’Mara sat back in his chair and kept his face expressionless. Everyone on the staff knew that Yursedth had teaching duties as well as ongoing surgical commitments using its own medical experience as well as that of its four other-species mind partners. Time, as well as considerable personal mental disruption, was required to acclimatize mentally after the erasure of long-term tapes, which was why junior medics were not allowed to retain them for more than a few hours after use. Much more time and considerable emotional hassle would be needed for Yursedth’s mind, which subjectively would feel suddenly empty, to accommodate the alien knowledge and feelings of four new mind partners. But Braithwaite knew all this.

Deliberately, O’Mara decided to give a noncommittal, unhelpful answer. He said, “I can only imagine what Yursedth will say about that”

“I didn’t have to imagine.” said Braithwaite feelingly. “It told me what it thought in detail when I told it what I intended to do, purely as a last resort. I hoped that would concentrate, well, scare its mind to the extent of producing a reaction that would furnish a clue to the basic problem. It didn’t. Apart from the verbal abuse it said that it would ask for a second opinion. Yours.”

“And you said?” O’Mara prompted.

“That you had given me sole responsibility for its case and that if you did speak to it, that was the first thing you would say,” the lieutenant replied, then hesitated. “I don’t know what the second thing would be.”

“The same as the first” said O’Mara carefully. “I expect you to talk to me about the case and report progress, if any. If you consider it necessary you may discuss it with your colleagues in the outer office, but not to the extent that you would be dividing the responsibility for treatment. I am not going to advise or second-guess you with Yursedth. So don’t worry, Lieutenant, this psychological hot, medium-roasted, or cold mashed potato is all yours.”

“But I am worrying, sir” said Braithwaite, “mostly about my proposed line of treatment. I was ashamed of even suggesting it. Just wiping all four mind partners is, is crude, like amputating a leg on the off chance of curing a sprained ankle. I want to try something a little more sophisticated, and I’m not asking for advice . . .

“Good,” said O’Mara, “because you wouldn’t get it.”

“. . . but I would appreciate your technical supervision.” Braithwaite went on, “during a tape impression of Yursedth’s suspect Melfan mind partner into another subject. Instead of working from subjective verbal data secondhand, I’d like to have a close look around that Melfan donor’s mind myself from the inside—”

“No!”

Braithwaite looked surprised. “I know we don’t usually do it, sir,” he said, “and that technically it’s against the rules, but I believe this to be a special problem which I might not be able to solve in any other way without wasting several days or weeks of Yursedth’s teaching and operating time as well as subjecting it to a lot of emotional hassle. With respect, sir, it was you who made the rules and, from what I’ve heard, broke them all before they could be made official.”

That was then, O’Mara remembered, during the early years before Craythorne and the newly promoted and eager Lieutenant O’Mara knew what they were doing. He had insisted on doing more while knowing much less than the major and he still carried the mental scars, many of them willingly, to prove it. We lived, as the old Chinese curse phrased it, in interesting times. He shook his head.

“No,” he repeated in a conversational tone, “because the staff in this department are expected to be more or less sane. Failing that, they are expected at very least to know exactly who and what they are at all times and in all circumstances. To function effectively a therapist in this place must retain his, her, or its mental objectivity. That cannot be done if you assimilate and go probing into a donor mind that may be psychologically suspect because the experience, no matter how hard you tried to be objective, is intensely and dangerously subjective. A form of insidious psychological merging takes place, and traces of the emotional involvement with the donor entity remain even after the tape has been erased. You know the rule and, if you’ve temporarily forgotten it, I’m reminding you now. If you go exploring in alien mental territory, Lieutenant, you might bring back mental mud on your boots. So your mind, such as it is, must remain exclusively your own.

O’Mara paused for a moment to stare hard into the other’s eyes. Without raising his voice he ~added, “If one of my staff was to break that rule, they would need to urgently consider other work options. Is that clearly understood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Braithwaite. “But what about the diagnosticians and seniors who carry anything up to six long-term tapes each? Were they told the psychological reason for that rule, and about the risks?”

O’Mara shook his head. “No” he said, “because the risk for them is nil, or at most very slight. All they are interested in is obtaining the other-species tape donor’s medical knowledge and experience for use in a current op or research project. The personality of the entity sharing their minds, be it nice, nasty, egocentric, or whatever, is something they try hard to ignore because they are physicians and surgeons who have neither the inclination nor the time to waste on delving into the reasons for their mind partner’s emotional behavior. The donor’s subconscious surfaces often enough when they sleep, or for some other reason lose concentration and awareness of their own identity. But when this happens they instinctively fight it and are, therefore, safe. To be sure of that we always check periodically for any sudden change in their psych profiles during long-term mind impressions.

“But you want to dive into the middle of an other-species mind’ he went on seriously, “perhaps a disturbed alien mind who may already have had psychiatric assistance from a therapist of its own species to control its psychoses. That is asking for serious trouble because neuroses and psychoses are subjective experiences which, unlike other-species pathogens, can be passed from one intelligent and disturbed mind to another that is more or less sane. If that were to happen to you, the only hope of a cure would be to bring in a therapist of the mind partner’s species as well as one of your own, me, to clean up the mess. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I don’t have the time.”

“Sorry, sir’ said Braithwaite. “Until you gave me the Yursedth case, I just accepted your general instruction about not taking Educator tapes without realizing the reasoning behind it. I’m still tempted by the thought of going into and viewing an alien mental landscape from the inside, and maybe help clear away some of the weeds, but . . . well, I’ll resist the temptation.”

O’Mara nodded. He said, “Your job, and everyone else’s in this department, is to clear away mental weeds. But you will continue to do it by using your knowledge and experience and the tools of observation and verbal probing and your own Earth-human, or Sommaradvan or Tarlan as the case may be, processes of deduction while at all times remaining yourselves. I won’t ask if you understand me, Lieutenant, because if you don’t, you’re fired?

“I do understand, sir” said Braithwaite, looking chastened but as cool and impeccable as ever. “But I don’t understand why you reacted so strongly when I mentioned the idea. Have you yourself been inside a disturbed, alien mind, sir, and have you firsthand experience with the long-term problems?”

A few days ago Braithwaite would not have dared ask such a question. Plainly the acquisition of full responsibility was bringing out some of the lieutenant’s hidden strengths. O’Mara remained silent.

“With respect,” the lieutenant went on calmly, “that could be the reason for your complete lack of social contact with the staff over the years, and your general antisocial behavior, which has made you the most disliked as well as the most professionally respected person in the hospital. It is difficult to believe that you like that situation. Would you care to comment, sir?”

For a moment O’Mara stared into the other’s eyes, which, he was pleased to see, stared right back. Then he sighed and deliberately looked at his watch.

“Was there anything else you want to ask me, Lieutenant” he said, “before you leave?”

Braithwaite departed, his curiosity unsatisfied, and O’Mara tried to concentrate on moving the mounting pile of administrative detail, which his two jobs had caused to double in size. But instead his mind kept sliding away from the now and into the then.

Increasing bouts of stupid nostalgia, he thought sourly, is a neurosis of the senile.

CHAPTER 11

The Lieutenant O’Mara in his mind picture had been less selfassured in his speech and manner, the appearance of his uniform fell into the gray area between untidy and disheveled, and it was Major Craythorne who looked as if he had stepped out of a Monitor Corps recruiting program. Then the conversation had been similar but the instructions, which Craythorne had the habit of disguising as friendly advice, were much less forceful. Part of the reason for that, he remembered, was that at the time neither of them knew what they were talking about.

“I wonder,” said Craythorne apologetically, “if you would be kind enough to investigate a dispute of some kind going on between trainees on Level One-Eleven. I don’t know what it’s about because the parties concerned haven’t approached me officially, but the maintenance chief in the area says he’s heard quieter riots. Inter-species friction must not be allowed to develop. Look into it, would you, and see if you can . . .

“Knock a few heads together until they see sense?” asked O’Mara.

Craythorne shook his head. . . talk some unofficial sense into them before it comes to our official attention and someone is expelled from the hospital. The disputants are Tralthans and Melfans, so the cranial-contact therapy you suggest would be impracticable, even for you.

“Figure of speech,” O’Mara muttered.

“I know,” said the major. “And both of us should be handling this one, but for the first time I’m making it your responsibility and will require you to turn in a full report and recommendations. Sorry about that. Trainees Edanelt and Vosan are taking more of my therapy time than I’d estimated.”

“Transference,” said O’Mara.

“Transference?”

O’Mara grinned. “I’ve been learning the professional vocabulary,” he said, “and even know what most of the words mean. And I overheard them talking about you in the dining hail. Professionally, both of them have the greatest possible confidence in you. They think you are kindly, sensitive, and understanding and, on the personal side, they see you as a close friend rather than a therapist. I couldn’t support the truth of these verbal statements because it’s difficult to read the facial expression of a being who wears its skull on the outside, but Edanelt said that if you hadn’t been an extraterrestrial-from its standpoint, that is-it would willingly carry your eggs . . .

He was interrupted by a quiet laugh from the major, who said, “Well, it’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Not always, sir,” said O’Mara. “This isn’t a laughing matter. If you weren’t so nice all the time to everybody, medical staff, subordinates, and especially me, people wouldn’t take advantage of your good nature. Everybody likes you, naturally, because they think you are a soft touch. What I’m trying to say is that if you were more unfriendly, or even nasty sometimes, the demands on your time by people who just want a friendly chat rather than being in urgent need of therapy would be significantly reduced.”

For a moment Craythorne stared down at his desk. When he looked up he was frowning.

“Lieutenant O’Mara,” he said, “please stop trying to psychoanalyze your superior officer. Prying into and trying to tinker with my mind, while doubtless interesting, is a waste of time that you must put to better use. I realise that you learned your other-species psychology the hard way, initially by baby-sitting a Hudlar for three weeks, but knocking some sense into people, while simple and direct, is not the indicated procedure in all cases. ’subtlety’ is also in the vocabulary you’ve been studying. Learn its meaning and try practicing it more often.

“And another thing,” he went on. “If you look unkempt that’s the way people will expect you to think. It’s probably too much to expect that you’ll wear it with pride, but that uniform is supposed to look functional and smart. On you it looks as if you’ve taken a shortcut through the maintenance tunnels in it, which you probably have. Comb your hair as if you meant it and try shaving more often. At least three times a week would be nice. The problem on One-Eleven needs attention. You may go.

O’Mara’s thumb was on the door button when Craythorne spoke from behind him.

“Am I being nasty enough, Lieutenant?”

“Not bad, sir,” said O’Mara, “but you need more practice.”

One-Eleven had been the first accommodation level to be completed and fully furnished to the requirements of five different other-species life-forms. The Maintenance Department was quietly but intensely proud of it and had promised that real soon, or at least as soon as possible, the other uncompleted and partially occupied accommodation levels would be brought up to the same standard of comfort. Since One-Eleven’s completion it had been the hospital’s most desirable place to live, but now, it seemed, the neighborhood was fast going to hell.

He already knew who the offenders were, but made his first calls in the side corridors housing the innocent bystanders. Perhaps the major would have considered this a subtle approach.

In the short corridor accommodating the Kelgian DBLFs, the first few door IDs were flagged ABSENT, ON DUTY or SLEEPING, DO NOT DISTURB. The fourth said OCCUPIED, but several minutes of almost continuous thumb pressure passed before the door was opened by a Kelgian wearing large, padded headphones which it was lifting from its ears. Behind it he could see a lighted screen showing clinically nasty things being performed deep inside a species whose organs he couldn’t identify~

The Kelgian ruffled its fur irritably at him and said, “I’m studying. Didn’t hear you. What do you want?”

“Information,” he replied, falling into the other’s direct mode of speech, “regarding complaints of high levels of organic noise in this area. Have you been inconvenienced by it?”

“Yes, but not now,” said the Kelgian. “My species has a low tolerance for being vivisected by Melfan pincers or trampled to death by Tralthan feet, so I was afraid to attempt to reduce the noise level at the source by remonstrating with them . . .” It tapped an earphone with one of its tiny fingers. . . so I took other measures. Go away.

Its door hissed shut before O’Mara could finish saying, “Thank you.

A few minutes later he was trying to talk to one of the Eurilian MSVKs, a storklike, tripedal nonflier whose atrophied wings were flapping so furiously that they all but lifted it into the air anyway, and whose angry, twittering speech didn’t allow him to get a word in edgewise.

. . . and you’ve got to do something about this!” the Euril was saying, not for the first time. “Somehow you’ve got to stop that infernal racket. It isn’t too bad when they visit each other’s rooms to talk over lectures, or whatever else they do. You hear the Tralthans rumbling at each other sometimes when they get excited and raise their voices, and the Melfans sound as if they’re beating their walls with sticks, but that’s just a noise nuisance and bearable. But then they go back to their rooms to settle for the night. It’s quiet for maybe an hour and we begin to feel safe. But when they start falling asleep the noise nearly blows me off my sleeping perch. And when they open their doors and the Tralthans and Melfans start complaining to each other about the noise they’re both making keeping the other party awake, by then everybody is awake and we’re lucky to get any sleep for the rest of the night. Or until next day during lectures when the tutors have harsh things to say to us for being inattentive. It’s quiet now because they are settling themselves to sleep, but any minute now . . . I’m not equipped to inflict physical damage, but more and more often I feel like murdering one of them, any one of them. You’ve got to do something before somebody bigger and stronger than I am does.”

O’Mara held up both hands placatingly. This was worse than he had been led to believe. For a moment he considered trying for a soft, conciliatory, Craythorne-type approach, then decided against it. The trouble that was developing here was much too serious for that. He would have to be tough.

“When you applied for a position here,” he said firmly, “you knew that you would have to work and live with persons of many different species. Are you no longer able to do that?”

The Euril didn’t reply. To O’Mara the expression on its feathered, birdlike face was unreadable, but he felt that the other was looking uneasy. Maybe hinting that it might be asked to leave Sector General was an unnecessary psychological overkill, especially as it was one of the injured parties.

Gently, he went on, “Don’t worry, that would be a measure of last resort. Did you complain person to person, and explain your problem to them directly?”

“I tried once, with one of the Tralthans,” the Euril replied. “It said it was sorry, but that many members of its species made noises in their sleep, that they couldn’t help it and that the only way to stop making the noises was for them to stop breathing. It sounded very irritated, the way we all are when we don’t get enough sleep. I didn’t want to risk irritating again someone with twelve times my body mass, and decided that complaining to the Melfans, who aren’t as big but are more excitable than Tralthans, would be better. It wasn’t. The one I spoke to used words that the translator wasn’t programmed to accept. Now I don’t talk to any of them.”

“But surely you talk to them during lectures,” said O’Mara, “or on the wards, in the dining hail, or on the recreation level?”

“A little,” the other replied. “But then it’s mostly answering questions from the tutor or charge nurse, or talking to wide-awake patients. If any of them make sleeping noises they do it somewhere else in the hospital, not here in study block. The dining hall is big enough to let everyone dine among their own people, so we don’t have to watch some of the others’ disgusting eating habits. The same goes for the rec deck. It’s better, and much more comfortable for us, if we stay away from them and them from us. Not just the snoring Tralthans and clattering Melfans, I mean everybody else.”

O’Mara started to speak, then decided against it because he could think of nothing constructive to say. The situation was much worse than he had thought.

One pint-sized furry Nidian still looked much like any other to O’Mara, but with the one who opened its door to him it was immediately obvious that the reverse did not hold true.

“You’re that other Earth-human psychologist, O’Mara,” it said. Even through the translator it sounded as if it were barking angrily at him. “What is a psychologist going to do about that damned noise? Tell me to think beautiful, positive thoughts and ignore it? Suggest I OD on tranquilizers? Move the source to the other side of the galaxy? What?”

“I agree,” said O’Mara, fighting an urge not to bark back at the irate little teddy bear, “that you have a legitimate complaint—”

“No!” snapped the Nidian. “I have a legitimate request. I want to be moved out of here. There’s Nidian accommodation on Level One-Fourteen, I’ve seen Maintenance working on it.”

“Level One-Fourteen isn’t just for Nidians,” said O’Mara quietly, but the other wasn’t listening to him.

“They haven’t finished the interior furnishings yet,” it went on, “and it won’t be nearly as comfortable as this place. But with a bunk and a chair and a console I’ll be able to study in peace, and during sleep periods Maintenance are considerate enough to stop hammering and drilling, so at night it will be quiet . . .

It was interrupted by a low, intermittent, growling sound from farther along the corridor that rose slowly in pitch and volume like a modulated foghorn before fading away. But the silence lasted only for the few moments necessary to lull a listener into thinking that it had gone away for good. The sound was muffled to an unknown extent by the sleeper’s room walls, but at times it was so deep that it seemed as if the accompanying subsonics were vibrating the bones as well as the eardrums. Before O’Mara could speak there was a new sound, a slow, irregular clicking like amplified castanets. The short periods of silence during the Tralthan snoring were filled by the Melfan sleeping sounds and vice versa. The noises weren’t all that loud, but together they were so nerve-shredding and insistent that O’Mara found himself clenching his teeth.

“I rest my case,” barked the Nidian. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

O’Mara remained silent, because right then he didn’t know how to answer. Another set of amplified castanets were starting up, but they faltered and died. A door hissed open and a Melfan emerged and moved diagonally across the corridor to stab at a door call button with a bony pincer. A blocky Tralthan head and forebody appeared and they exchanged complaints about wanting to sleep in loud rumbling and clicking conversations interspersed with beeps because their translators had not been programmed to accept some of the words they were using. O’Mara shook his head.

“The Earth-human word that applies here,” said the Nidian as it closed its door, “is ‘chicken.’”

For a few minutes O’Mara watched the two quarreling ETs until he was sure that the dire threats of violence would be verbal rather than physical. He told himself that he was not being a moral coward, but he wasn’t sure that he entirely believed himself. Trying to talk sense to those two when he didn’t know how to solve the problem would simply increase the level of noise, especially if they made him lose his temper. Before he talked to them he needed to know what he was talking about.

He had to see a doctor.

It would have to be a friendly, approachable, closemouthed doctor, he decided, who was neither a Tralthan nor a Melfan but who knew a lot about the behavior of other-species staff under stress.

CHAPTER 12

Senior Tutor Mannen was an Earth-human male DBDG whose age was indeterminate because his wrinkled, balding scalp was completely at odds with the fresh, youthful features visible from his eyebrows down. On the desk before him lay a neat pile of opened lecture folders and tapes, and frolicking around his feet there was a small, brown and white and very well house-trained puppy. The puppy went everywhere with him, except into OR, and there was a rumor, never officially denied by Mannen himself, that they slept together. The senior tutor looked up from his work, pointed to a chair, inclined his head in recognition, and waited.

O’Mara hesitated, then said, “Is your pup settling in okay, Doctor?”

Mannen nodded. “If you’re sucking up to me through my dog,” he said, grinning, “you must want a favor, right? You were lucky to catch me between lectures. What can I do for you . . .” He looked at his watch. “. . . during the next nine and a half minutes?”

“These days,” said O’Mara sadly, “everybody is a psychologist. Sir, it’s just that I need a little physiological or perhaps medical information on the Tralthan and Melfan life-forms. And, in confidence, your advice on how best to use it. My problem is this . . .

Quickly he described the serious interpersonal situation that was developing on Level One-Eleven, including the close to xenophobic reactions of the innocent-bystander life-forms. Suddenly Mannen held up one hand and with the other began tapping keys on his communicator.

“This is going to take more than nine minutes,” he said briskly. “Lecture Room Eighteen? I will be unavoidably delayed. Tell trainee Yursedth to take over the class until I arrive. Off.” To O’Mara he went on wryly, “The trouble with this place is that it accepts only the highest grade of applicants. Yursedth thinks it knows more about Kelgian obstetrics than I do, and it could well be right. Taking over the class for a while and making the senior tutor feel redundant is something it will enjoy, although its classmates certainly won’t. But enough of my troubles. Let us move to your problem.”

Mannen paused and a rueful expression passed briefly over his face as he went on, “As yet nobody has fallen asleep during lectures. A few of the normally boisterous ones have been quieter than usual but mistakenly, I now realize, I thought that they were paying more attention, although I couldn’t understand why the marks of these attentive ones were hitting the deck. So you see, the problem is mine as well as yours in that it can seriously affect future student training. Do you have a solution in mind for it, Lieutenant?”

O’Mara shook his head, then nodded uncertainly. He said, “Sir, only if there is a way to treat snoring, psychologically, medically, or surgically.”

“Snoring, and its other-species equivalents, afflicts around five percent of the galaxy’s sapient life-forms,” said Mannen. “It is in no way an abnormal or a life-threatening condition, except possibly when the sound drives a sleep-deprived partner to acts of physical violence. It isn’t due to a psychological disturbance; most snorers are quite sane, so that it cannot, so far as I know, be treated with psychotherapy. Every planet has its traditional cures, none of which are effective, or those which do work only by waking the person when he, she, or it begins snoring, which means the subject is deprived of sleep. That it not what we want here.

“Regarding the mechanics of snoring,” Mannen went on, slipping into his lecturing mode, “in Earth-humans it is due to the palate relaxing and dropping during unconsciousness while lying on the back. With Tralthans, who do everything including sleep on their feet, there is a similar relaxation of the muscles which intermittently short-circuits the expelled air from the four breathing passages into the airway used for speech; they call it ‘night-talking without words.’ The physiological cause of the Melfan sleep rattle is much more complex and very interesting . . . Sorry, Lieutenant, your only interest here is in stopping the condition, not studying how it works. Has anything I’ve said been helpful?”

O’Mara maintained a diplomatic silence.

“Thought so,” said Mannen dryly. “Regarding surgical intervention, this is a possibility in all of the cases but not an option. We can’t order our trainees to undergo unnecessary and in some species risky surgery just because they’re noisy sleepers. We’d soon run short on Sector General applicants and anyway, the Federation’s Medical Council wouldn’t allow it. I think the solution will have to be technical rather than medical, separation by distance or greatly increased sound attenuation at source. Well?”

O’Mara thought for a moment. Then he said, “When the hospital is fully operational, the medical and maintenance staff are going to be really packed in. Putting distance between snorers and nonsnorers will not be an option either, but you must already know that, sir. When I checked with Maintenance, they told me that the level of personnel soundproofing in the Tralthan and Melfan quarters had already been increased to the maximum conducive to normal living requirements. Any more and the music or dialogue on the occupants’ entertainment channels, even their own conversations, would be so off-pitch and muffled that . . . well, they’d feel like they were in padded cells and they wouldn’t like that one bit.”

“What about using hush fields?” said Mannen.

“I know about them, sir,” O’Mara replied. “Most of the wards have one, to sonically isolate a case whose audible output is causing distress to the other patients. Psychology is a small department and there are budgetary considerations. Maintenance says they are hellishly expensive.

“They are,” Mannen agreed. “But don’t look as if all your relatives had just died. By comparison, Training Department has an obscenely large budget. Some of it could be spent to ensure me of a continued supply of wakeful and attentive students, so don’t bother thanking me. Just tell me how many units you think you’ll need and I’ll talk to Major Craythorne about ordering them as soon as possible. Your problem is solved, so why are you still wearing that dissatisfied expression?”

“Sorry, sir,” said O’Mara, “but you’ve solved only part of the trouble, or will have in a few weeks or months from now when the units are installed. But that isn’t tackling the more serious underlying problem.”

“Go on,” said Mannen.

O’Mara tried hard to sound as if he wasn’t lecturing as he went on, “We know that lack of sleep causes short-term irritability that can, unless it is countered, grow into something more permanent and much worse. I’ve already detected the beginning of an intense xenophobic reaction in the Kelgian, Eurilian, and Nidian trainees I spoke to, and that is really dangerous. In time there will be members of sixty-odd, some of them very odd, intelligent species working here. They should not be collected into their own little same-species enclaves, with tight circles of same-species friends, all sharing in same-species social and recreational activities. This is expected to be the galaxy’s biggest and best multi-species hospital. If it is to work as it should then the staff has got to mix, and not only at lectures or on the wards . . .”

He stopped as Mannen held up one hand again and said, “Lieutenant, I’m not your grandmother, but if I was I’d tell you not to teach me to suck eggs.”

“Sorry, sir,” said O’Mara. “It’s something I feel strongly about.”

Mannen nodded and looked at his watch. “Right. What else do you want from me?”

“I would like you to start conning your students,” O’Mara said quickly. “I don’t mean tell them lies exactly, just shade the truth a little. And spend a few minutes of every lecture, longer if you can manage it, asking them about their personal feelings and progress rather than their clinical work. Be like a stern father no matter what size they are. You can say that you’ve noticed that some of them are looking tired and are falling behind in their studies but you are aware of the reason. Tell them about the hush-field units which will be installed in the quarters of those who really need them, but the process will be a gradual one over the coming months and, regrettably, some of them will have to make the best of the situation until then. Without saying so directly, suggest that their ability to adapt to this situation, and to understand the needs, behavior, and feelings of their other-species colleagues, can have a very beneficial effect on their grades, and that the last few of them to have their rooms fitted with hush fields can feel deservedly proud of themselves.

“As yet I haven’t discussed this idea with my chief,” he went on quickly, “but when I do, I’m sure Major Craythorne will be glad to talk to and encourage them along the same lines. He’s much better than I am at that sort of thing.”

“I disagree,” said Mannen. “Is that all?”

O’Mara hesitated. “No, sir. I don’t know how, but is it possible for you to modify the content of your lectures and study assignments so that one student, or students, have more understanding, or perhaps background knowledge regarding a particular assignment than the others, so that for the best results they will be forced to use a lot more of their free time outside of lectures and ward duties to exchange this knowledge and, well, be forced into using their free time to mix with each other to talk shop? They have to be forced, I mean encouraged, to mix. Is this possible?”

“Possible,” said Mannen, “but not easy. It would mean reorganizing my whole . . . Lieutenant, you’ve got a nasty, devious mind?

Pleased, O’Mara nodded. “I’m a psychologist, sir.

The other gave him a long look under lowered brows, then went on, “Right, your ideas are workable and I’ll do as you suggest. I’m not a psychologist, but as a clinical tutor of long experience I know when someone is trying to hide something from me. What else is in your nasty, devious mind, Lieutenant?”

O’Mara felt his face growing warm. He hesitated, then said, “I’d rather not say, sir. The major has given me full responsibility for this one and my idea is a bit unusual, and comes under the heading of a crude but effective solution. I haven’t thought it through properly and it might not work, so I think it’s better that you don’t know the details.”

Mannen nodded, looked at his watch again, and got quickly to his feet. “Just try not to wreck the hospital,” he said.

“I won’t, sir,” said O’Mara as he rose to leave. Under his breath he added, At least, not all of it.

His next stop was at his quarters, where he changed into his oldest and most stained set of coveralls, the ones that the laundry was continually sending him notes about suggesting that they should be sent without delay to the incinerator. It was likely that Major Craythorne would not be pleased by what he intended to do, and he didn’t want to make matters worse by ruining another uniform. Besides, he needed to find his way among the service tunnels under the dining hall, and that could not be done quickly if one wanted to stay clean.

He found Technician Lennenth working on one of the battery of cleaning, food-delivery, and systems-checking robots in its charge. It was wearing two sets of coveralls. Kelgians were inclined to be overprotective where their silver fur was concerned.

“O’Mara,” said Lennenth, “what do you want?”

“I want you to do me a big favor,” he replied.

“Earth-humans don’t always say what they mean,” said Lennenth. “Do you mean you want me to return the big favor you did for me?”

O’Mara shook his head. “You are under no obligation to do anything for me,” he said. “If you simply return that favor, we’re quits. But if you do this one for me, we’ll each owe the other a favor and that might come in useful in the future. Do you agree?”

“O’Mara, you’re making my head hurt,” said Lennenth. “Your help with the Tralthan waste-pumping system failure under Ward Fifteen earned me a promotion, so either way, I’ll do it. What exactly do you want done?”

“First,” he said, “are you still responsible for the dining-area cleaning and maintenance? Especially for driving that big cleaning vehicle?”

“Yes,” said the Kelgian, “and yes.

“Good,” said O’Mara. “On your next cleanup shift, which is six hours from now, I want to drive it. I’ll need your advice about maneuvering the brute between the table spaces, but this is what I plan to do . . .

As he went on speaking, Lennenth’s fur moved so violently that its coveralls looked as if they had been stuffed with maddened weasels. Its fur was still twitching uncontrollably when he stopped talking and the other found its voice.

“They’ll kick us both off the hospital for this!” it said. “O’Mara, I think you need therapy.”

“I don’t think they’ll kick us off the hospital,” said O’Mara, “and certainly not both of us. We’ll work out the details later, but you will be temporarily detached from your dining-area duties and sent to do something in a public area that will keep you busy for a couple of hours, so you will not be directly involved. I’ll put the order in writing, but you are not to show it to anyone unless the idea goes sour and they try to blame you.

“After all,” he added, smiling, “a mere technician, even a newly promoted technician first class, cannot disobey the direct order of a lieutenant.”

During the ensuing six hours before the dastardly deed was done, O’Mara tried to sleep or at least rest, in vain. Instead, he used the time to write his report and recommendations to Craythorne in advance of the event. He tried to make it as neat, clear, and concise as he could, because the major had a tidy mind and, as well, it might well be the last report he would ever write in Sector General.

But when he placed the report on the major’s desk next morning, Craythorne barely glanced at the title page before pushing it aside. It was the first time he had seen the other angry as Craythorne said grimly, “Thank you, O’Mara, but I haven’t time to read it now. Something more urgent and serious has come up. Someone has trashed the dining area, uprooted most of the furniture by tearing it off its floor attachments. A big cleaning and repair vehicle was used and it wasn’t an accident. This looks as if it was deliberately planned vandalism by a person or persons unknown while the technician in charge was absent. The damage can be repaired easily enough, but I want you to go down there and find out what the hell happened and why.”

“I know what happened, and why,” said O’Mara. “It’s in my report, sir.”

Craythorne blinked slowly; then, without taking his eyes off O’Mara, he reached sideways and pulled the report in front of him again. He said, “Then obviously I have time to read it now. Sit down, Lieutenant.”

There were five pages and the major didn’t speak until he had finished reading the last one. Then he placed his elbows on the desk, cupped his forehead in both hands for a moment, then looked up and said, “O’Mara, when you mentioned knocking people’s heads together to make them see sense, I thought you were joking.”

“Sir, I’m not knocking heads together,” O’Mara protested, “just forcing them close enough to talk, which they will have to do if they eat together. The damage in the dining area was precisely calculated so that there will not be enough physiologically suitable furniture for any given species to dine without having to make use of other-species tables, chairs, or whatever. They’ll probably argue or quarrel at first, have nasty things to say about each others’ eating habits, but they will talk and get to understand and make allowances for each other instead of isolating themselves into tight and potentially hostile same-species groups. Senior Tutor Mannen is restructuring his lectures so that, in their off-duty periods, they will be forced together to talk shop if they want optimum exam results.

“As well,” O’Mara went on excitedly, “he is helping fund hushfield installations for some of the sleeping quarters that will need them although, if my idea works out and they really begin to understand and accept each other, eating habits, sleeping noises, warts and all, we may not need many of them. But what we do need is enough time to allow the process to work.”

“Which is why,” Craythorne said, tapping the report, “you want the table repairs to be delayed for as long as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” said O’Mara quickly. “But I need your help there. I don’t have the rank to tell Maintenance to slow down, but you have. Regarding the trainees, what I thought we might do is introduce a little professional competitiveness into the process. The Educator tapes are about to be introduced, initially to senior staff members, although the trainees will be keen to try them, too. Maybe we, through Dr. Mannen, could suggest that the impression of an other-species mind tape is a landmark event, a high professional compliment, and that trainees who do not make an effort to fully understand the thought processes and behavior of their colleagues might not be considered suitable for the impression of otherspecies mind partners.

“In the meantime,” he continued, “we could plant the idea that anyone who is averse to using physically unsuitable table furniture and talking to other-species friends and colleagues is, well, something of a sissy. Or the ET equivalent.”

Craythorne nodded. “And you also want to rearrange the staff duty schedules, and particularly their mealtimes, so that there are never enough empty same-species tables to go round. We might even make that situation permanent as part of the other-species social acclimatization process. Maintenance would have a lot of complaints, but Maintenance always has a lot of complaints. It will be inconvenient at first but soon the constant shortage of tables will be accepted as a continuing fact of hospital life.”

He tapped the report again. “I like this, O’Mara. Your recommendations will be put into effect at once. Well done.”

O’Mara nodded. He was so pleased and relieved that no words would come.

Craythorne went on, “You handled this situation so well, bi~tt in such a direct, unorthodox fashion, that at the moment I’m reluctant to give you another problem to solve. But one thing surprises me.

“Sir?”

“Yes,” said the other. “You have never struck me, Lieutenant, as the type of person to whom anyone would want to do a favor.”

As he was leaving the office, Craythorne added, “Ignore the last remark, O’Mara, I’m still trying to be nasty.”

CHAPTER 13

Craythorne’s reluctance to give him another assignment lasted for all of three days. The major was busy smoothing the administrational wrinkles out of the nonrepairable dining-area project, so they were rarely in the department at the same time. It came as no surprise that the latest job came in the form of the cover-page summary of a trainee psych file and a note in Craythorne’s terrible handwriting. He read the file first.

Subject: THORNNASTOR. Physiological classification FGLI; species Tralthan; age, 87 Earth standard years with a normal life-expectancy of 150 years; graduate with honors University of Howth Medical School on Traltha; served 12 years as medical consultant on multi-species space construction projects in the Ballildon, Corso, and Lentallet systems; no close family or nonfamily emotional ties; accepted for advanced multi-species surgical training Sector General; first trainee to undergo an other-species Educator tape impression with no reported aftereffects, and permission has been given to retain the tape until its current medical project is completed, following successful completion of which it will be offered a position on the permanent staff at senior-physician level; previous clinical studies and ward work exemplary, but a marked deterioration has been noted over the past three weeks; psychological investigation requested by Senior Tutor Mannen before finalizing its promotion. Present living quarters Level 111, Room 18.

The note said, “Maybe it’s just homesick, or at 87 is having a midlife crisis. Talk to it, find out what if anything is going wrong in ts mind, but leave the hobnailed boots in your quarters.”

Plainly, O’Mara thought, Craythorne was still trying hard to be nasty.

Unless it was on the recreation deck or socializing somewhere, Thornnastor’s duty schedule placed it in its quarters an hour before it was due to retire for the night. As he left the elevator on OneEleven and found the right door number, he wondered if it was one of the snorers. He heard and felt the deck vibration as it approached and opened its door.

“My name is O’Mara,” he said, trying not to feel intimidated by a highly intelligent six-legged elephant who might or might not be emotionally disturbed, “from the Other-Species Psychology Department. If it’s convenient, I’d like to talk to you.”

“I know of you, O’Mara” said Thornnastor. “Come in. The inconvenience will be all yours if you have no prior experience of my species’ lack of furniture. I suggest that you sit on the edge of the sleeping pit.”

Thornnastor’s accommodation was a large, empty cube rendered small by the size of the occupant. The walls were covered by pictures of home-world scenery and images too strange for O’Mara to even guess at what they might be, and a few trailing pieces of strong-smelling, decorative vegetation that partly concealed the door to the bathroom. A thick, semicircular shelf carrying a lighted viewscreen, a recorder, and lecture tapes was the only piece of furniture that projected from the walls. The deep, rectangular, Tralthan-sized sleeping recess in the center of the floor was entered by a sloping ramp. O’Mara moved down the ramp until the edge of the floor was level with the back of his knees, half turned, and sat down. He pressed his palms briefly into the thick, soft material that covered the floor.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to find something complimentary to say. “This is very comfortable.”

“My species does not require a high level of physical comfortP said Thornnastor. “The padding is there to deaden the sound of my footfalls so as not to inconvenience my neighbors with sound pollution. ‘While I welcome a legitimate interruption in my studies . . .” It pointed a tentacle at the lighted viewscreen. “. . . I would prefer it not to be a waste of time?

The mind tape it was carrying had been donated by a Kelgian, O’Mara thought, and it was obvious that the host’s behavior was being influenced by the donor, so a polite, roundabout approach would also be redundant.

“I’ve no intention of wasting your time or mine,” he said. “Senior Tutor Mannen has asked me to talk about the recent deterioration in your work which, because it has previously been of such a high standard, is causing us concern. The continuing decline became apparent a few days after you were impressed with a Kelgian DBLF mind tape, so we suspect a psychological component to your problem. Would you care to comment?”

Thornnastor turned one of its eyes in the direction of the viewscreen, followed by a tentacle tip, which switched it off; then all four of its eyes curled down to look at O’Mara. A few moments passed without a reply.

“If you are taking time to make a considered and accurate answer,” said O’Mara, “I can wait. But if you are unwilling to speak, why not?”

The Tralthan made a muted, foghorn sound that did not translate and otherwise remained silent. O’Mara sighed.

“There have been complaints of noise in this area during rest periods,” he went on. “The matter is being dealt with. But sleep deprivation can seriously affect the ability to concentrate. Is that the problem?”

“N&’ said Thornnastor.

“Is the behavior or a lack of understanding of your colleagues or the teaching staff affecting you?” he continued. “Has anything they have done or said made you feel insecure? Are you having an emotional or perhaps a sexual involvement with someone?”

“No” the Tralthan repeated.

“Then has it something to do with the mind tape?” he persisted.

The other remained silent.

I should have studied dentistry, he thought. This is like pulling teeth.

“Plainly there is a problem with your Educator tape” said O’Mara patiently, “which it is my job to help you solve. But we can’t solve it unless I know what it is. I have the feeling that you would like to talk about it. Please do so.”

Thornnastor made another untranslatable sound so deep that it seemed to vibrate his bones. Then it said, “This is stupid, ridiculous. There’s no reason why I should feel this way.”

“Whether or not it is stupid or ridiculous” said O’Mara, “is a purely subjective judgment on your part and as such has questionable value, as is the apparent lack of reason for your present feelings. Take as much time as you need to describe those feelings.”

The Tralthan raised and stamped the floor with its two middle feet. O’Mara felt the vibration even through the floor padding. In a Tralthan, he reassured himself, it was supposed to be a sign of extreme irritation, perhaps of self-irritation in this case. It was also an indication, he hoped, that the other was going to speak.

“I am being afflicted with intense feelings of homesickness” said Thornnastor in a low, ashamed voice, “for people and a planet I have never known. I’m supposed to have a stable, well-integrated mind. It is ridiculous and stupid to feel this way.

So it was the mind tape. O’Mara thought. At least he knew where the problem lay, and that, according to the unwritten laws of Major Craythorne, meant that he had taken the first step toward solving it. But it was beginning to look as if he was trying to analyze two patients here, the one presently looming over him and the tape donor at the other end of the galaxy who might not even be alive.

He said, “Not necessarily. The trouble may lie in the tape donor’s mind rather than yours. You know that mind from the inside. Tell me about it.”

“No,” said Thornnastor. He waited but that was all it would say. For some reason Thornnastor had gone into silent mode again.

“This isn’t helping either of us” said O’Mara. “Why won’t you tell me about this person’s mind? The communication is privileged and nothing you can tell me will have any possible effect on a tape donor whose mind is just a recording that cannot be hurt or helped or changed in any way, and who may well be dead by now. You are intelligent enough to be aware of this. Well?”

There was another long silence. He tried again.

“Regardless of species,” said O’Mara, “the beings who are invited to provide our mind tapes are the top people in their home worlds’ medical profession. But individuals who climb to the top, as we both know, are not always nice people. You already know that it is not just the donor’s medical or surgical skill that is impressed on a recipient’s mind, it is all of the memories, feelings, pet hates, prejudices, and psychological hangups, if any, that are transferred as well. You are required to ignore, for the period that the donor tape is in your mind and as far as you are able, all this nonmedical baggage and concentrate only on the medical material you need for your current project. Nobody thinks this is easy, and I can only imagine what—”

“You can have no understanding of what an other-species mind tape feels like” Thornnastor broke in, “unless you take the same mind impression. How otherwise can you possibly know or feel what I’m feeling?”

Even though it was a legitimate question, O’Mara had to control his irritation as he replied, “I was impressed with a mind tape only once, and briefly, to become acquainted with the mental disorientation that occurs when a completely alien personality is sharing one’s mind, so you’re wrong in thinking that I’m completely ignorant of the effects. But I am forbidden to take your tape or any other because it is my job as an Earth-human therapist to be objective, well-balanced, and self-aware so that I can work to remove the emotional problems in your mind. With an other-species mind partner muddying the mental water that would not be easy. This is the department’s policy. I don’t need to know what your tape donor felt in its past but what you are feeling now. Is this clear?”

“Yes.”

“Then talk to meg’ said O’Mara.

O’Mara took a deep breath that would enable him to say harsh things in a loud voice, then changed his mind and spoke quietly. He said, “Among Earth-humans there is a disrespectful but fairly accurate name given to people in my profession. It is ‘headshrinker.’ As the name suggests, my job is to shrink heads, to make the minds within them respond to the real world rather than live in a flawed reality of their own, and not swell them with flattery.

“Now,” he went on, “I have no medical training and, therefore, no real appreciation of your professional qualifications except through hospital gossip and the hearsay evidence of your colleagues and superiors, all of whom speak well of you. It seems that you are highly proficient as a surgeon, have the ability to inspire subordinate staff to perform to the same level of proficiency, and are speciesadaptable, imaginative, and justifiably ambitious. If your current progress continues you will shortly be appointed to the permanent staff here with the rank of senior physician, thus skipping the two intervening trainee levels. But enough of the flattery.”

O’Mara paused for a moment. He knew that the other was unlikely to be able to read Earth-human facial expressions, but he hoped the serious tone in his voice would get through the translator as he went on, “This appointment will require the continuing impression and erasure of the mind tapes necessary for the treatment of your future other-species patients, but it will definitely be withheld if you aren’t able to cope with your first experience of having a mind partner. Thornnastor, I am here to help you cope. Is the emotional problem you are experiencing so serious and mentally disabling that you want to give up a promising career in medicine because of it?”

“No” said Thornnastor.

“Again I remind you” O’Mara continued, “my interest in anything you tell me is purely clinical. Anything I learn will be a privileged communication, and I shall not be judgmental or feel shocked by anything you say. Now, is there something in your tape donor’s mind that has triggered past memories or experiences of your own, something about which you now feel ashamed?”

“No,” said the other loudly.

“Calm yourself’ said O’Mara. “I had no intention of giving offense. But I do need information. You said that you felt intense feelings of homesickness, for friends you never met and places you have never been and, initially, you appeared to feel shame over these feelings. Is it your mind partner who feels this shame or—”

“No,” said Thornnastor again.

“So it’s you who feels the shame,” said O’Mara. “Tell me why you feel it, in your own words and time. Tell me what is wrong with you, or what you think is wrong with you, because you are the only person who can give me a clue to what that is.”

O’Mara took a deep breath then let it out slowly. He said, “Thornnastor, I am becoming very irritated by your continuing use of that word. If you won’t talk to me about the problem, will you at least tell me why?”

“For three reasons,” said Thornnastor. “You are not a medic and would not appreciate my special difficulty, and you cannot know the complete workings of my mind or those of my mind partner. With respect and apologies, O’Mara, you are wasting your time here. There is nothing you can do to help me.”

O’Mara nodded. “Possibly not” he said. “But I can be patient and talk all around the problem, perhaps attack it from different directions. Would that help?”

“NoP said Thornnastor.

At least, O’Mara thought sourly as he left the Tralthan’s quarters, the other’s replies had been consistently negative. But if there was one thing he hated it was being told what he could or could not do.

When he returned to the department there was a message for him saying that Craythorne would be absent from his office for the next two hours. That, he thought, should give him enough time to read more than the first page of Thornnastor’s psych file and to study the available information on the entity who had donated that troublesome mind tape.

But the Tralthan’s file revealed much that was new and nothing that was useful. It seemed that Thornnastor was an exemplary trainee, a self-starter from the beginning, able, serious, strong-willed, and with an unusually stable and well integrated mind of which it was justifiably proud. Although it was otherwise polite and well-behaved in its same- and other-species contacts, the pride showed in its tendency to argue with its tutors during lectures, when it had the irritating habit of usually proving them wrong.

The information on Thornnastor could have been a copy of the material that appeared in all of the senior medical staff’s psych files. Barring unforeseen accidents, it was the psychological profile of a person who was heading for the top of its professional tree. The personal information on its mind partner, a Kelgian DBLF called Marrasarah, was sparse but interesting.

It began with a general explanation of the Educator-tape system and its uses followed by a warning to the effect that the donors of the mind tapes were not to be contacted for consultation regarding the material they had donated, or for any other purpose, unless their own express permission or that of a close relative was obtained. And even then the request would have to be investigated and approved by a special subcommittee of the Galactic Medical Council set up for the protection of the privacy of mind tape donors.

The principal reason for this many-layered protection was simply the passage of time. A person with the necessary eminence in its field to be invited to donate a mind tape was, in the usual course of events, at its professional and mental peak and already of advanced years. Such a being would not want to be subjected to the general hassle of questioning, no matter how polite and respectful the questioners were, regarding details of the mental legacy it had left by rising younger medics trying to second-guess it, especially if the donor mind in question had begun to age-deteriorate during the time since the tape had been made. O’Mara could understand that. It was simply a matter of showing consideration for the feelings of the old who had once been great.

But the interesting part was that Marrasarah wasn’t old. Instead it had been a brilliant and gifted young medical hotshot. No details were given regarding its meteoric progress in its chosen field. The cause listed for its ridiculously early retirement was “personal and emotional reasons resulting from burn injuries.” But in its case the strictures regarding noncontact were repeated and underlined.

O’Mara looked at the mind-tape container inside its file for a long time. It was obvious that Marrasarah had suffered a major emotional upheaval of some kind and had been seriously and perhaps permanently affected by it. But its professional knowledge and experience had been so valuable that it had been invited to make the tape before it retired-on the assumption, O’Mara supposed, that any future recipient would either be strong-willed enough to concentrate on the medical component and ignore the associated emotional problems or, if the psychological content was too troublesome, simply withdraw from the case, have the tape erased at the earliest opportunity, and take another that had fewer problems. But from what he knew of Thornnastor’s personality, the Tralthan was too proud and pigheaded to do that.

Even though he could explain the situation to Mannen and have Thornnastor excused from the case, he knew that the Tralthan would not want to put its promotion prospects on hold until another opportunity occurred. From what he knew of the other, it would also feel afraid that it would not be able to adapt to the next mind tape, either, and that its career as an other-species surgeon in Sector General would be at an end. It had probably decided that it was better to know the worst as soon as possible. O’Mara could sympathize with that feeling, but his sympathy alone wouldn’t solve the problem.

He could only do that by getting into the stubbornly uncommunicative Thornnastor’s mind, and the only path open to him was through the mind of the brilliant but seriously disturbed Marrasarah. He shook his head and took a long look at his watch.

Craythorne was due back within half an hour. He could wait, make his report, discuss his idea for treatment with his superior, who would warn him of the psychological risks and almost certainly order him not to proceed. Or he could do what he wanted to do in a few minutes before the major had a chance to forbid it.

The trick with any really close decision, he told himself as he moved with slow deliberation to the Educator-tape couch, donned the helmet, and pushed the Marrasarah mind tape into its slot, was to weigh the probabilities very carefully but not for too long.

Indecision could paralyze some people.

CHAPTER 14

For the first few minutes the sensations were exactly the same as ose he had felt after Councillor Davantry had administered that first Kelgian mind tape. There was the same feeling that he was looking at a strange office from a distance too high above the floor, and the same sensation of vertigo because he was balancing on two long, Earth-human legs rather than the twelve stubby ones possessed by Kelgians. But the disorientation and dizziness passed quickly and were replaced by something much worse. It was so bad that he was forced to sit down and fight desperately to retain control of the personality that was O’Mara.

Poor Thornnastor, he thought, if this is what it has to contend with. He tried not to think Poor me because the reason he was feeling this way was nobody’s fault but his own.

Unlike the Tralthan, he did not believe that he had a brilliant, stable, and well-integrated mind. But he had always had the reputation for being as stubborn as a mule, or one of its off-world equivalents, and he had never, ever allowed another person to do his thinking, or in this case his feeling, for him. Gradually but not completely he began to regain control over his mind.

Now he could understand why Thornnastor wouldn’t talk to him. A combination of the Tralthan’s professional pride and that of its even prouder mind partner precluded that, together with the emotional distress that had spilled over from Marrasarah’s tortured mind. In spite of its physical and mental suffering, the Kelgian’s mind had been sane when it had donated the tape. And it, too, had been a fighter and every bit as stubborn as O’Mara. But it had been suffering then, just as Thornnastor and himself were suffering now, but without the option of having its intensity of sorrow, anger, bitter personal loss, and a mess of associated emotions erased. Marrasarah had not deserved to be caught in that accidental lab fire that had destroyed much of its fur, but then history was full of nice people who got what they didn’t deserve and nobody, including himself, could do anything about that except feel bad.

But Thornnastor wasn’t history, at least not yet, and it was O’Mara’s job to do something about that if the Tralthan was not to become a minor entry as a promising failure in the annals of Sector General.

He began walking around the office because regular, noncerebral activity had always helped his mind to work better, and now it was working overtime. He stopped only long enough to call Mannen, who fortunately could see him immediately, and to leave a message for his chief saying that he was going to talk to the senior tutor regarding the Thornnastor assignment.

Craythorne would have no worries about that, but if he had told the other what he had just done and about the idea for treatment he would be trying to sell Mannen, the major would have been worried sick.

As soon as he entered, Mannen looked up from his desk and pointed at a chair that was suitable, but not comfortable, for Earthhuman occupation and waited.

“About Thornnastor. -” O’Mara began.

“So you’ve discovered what’s wrong with my star trainee?” Mannen broke in. “That’s good.”

“Yes” said O’Mara, “but it isn’t good.”

Mannen was trying unsuccessfully to hide his disappointment. He said, “We’d hate to lose that one, Lieutenant. But go on.

O’Mara was choosing his words with care so that he could hide the truth without actually telling a lie as he said, “Thornnastor was completely uncooperative during our interview and refused to tell me, except briefly and in the most general terms, why the Kelgian mind tape was causing it such intense emotional distress. With some patients we find an initial lack of cooperation, even outright hostility, and allowances are made for this, especially when the reason for the behavior is fully understood. But hostility in a patient doesn’t preclude us attempting to treat it or—”

“WaiC’ Mannen broke in. “Just now you told me that Thornnastor wouldn’t talk, except in general terms, about its troubles or its mind partner. How then did you come to fully understand its behavior? Did Major Craythorne allow you to take the same mind tape? And isn’t that, well, unusual?”

Obviously, thought O’Mara, I didn’t choose my words carefully enough to hide anything, or the other was smart enough to see right through them. He said, “I couldn’t think of any other way of helping Thornnastor with its problem. The major doesn’t know I’ve taken the tape. It isn’t unusual, it’s forbidden.”

“I knew that,” said Mannen, “but it isn’t any of my business what rules you break. But did you hint back there that curative therapy is possible? If so, what will the treatment entail, and will Thornnastor be able to perform its operation by noon tomorrow?”

“The treatment is radical, untried, and, well, risky,” O’Mara replied. “But if it goes as I expect it will, your star trainee, who is my patient, should be able to operate.”

There was an edge of sarcasm in the other’s voice as he said, “You are going to tell me what you intend to do?”

“Yes, sir,” said O’Mara. “But the pride Thornnastor has in its professional ability, and the intense embarrassment it is feeling over what it believes is its impending failure, is the reason for its silence. A similar degree of pride, plus a truly horrendous load of despair, anger, and deep, personal sorrow, it has inherited via the Kelgian Educator tape. Thornnastor has an unusually powerful mind that is also extremely sensitive. If it had been less sensitive to the medical condition it is sharing through its mind partner, and had less of that resultant fellow-species sympathy it feels toward its forthcoming Kelgian patient, it might have been able to ignore the nonmedical material in Marrasarah’s mind tape and we would have had no trouble. But, well, as things stand I shall tell it that no report of this case will ever appear outside the department’s confidential files, and there will be no future verbal discussion among the parties concerned. Naturally, I’ll have to make a detailed report on the case to Major Craythorne, which will probably land me in trouble, but I don’t want to do that until the therapy is complete. Sir, can I ask you not to—”

“Of course,” Mannen broke in. “Until then my lips are sealed. But what the hell are you intending to do?”

As O’Mara began telling him the other’s mouth opened to interrupt him and remained open without speaking until he had finished. Then Mannen closed his mouth so hard that his teeth came together with an audible click. He shook his head. O’Mara hoped it was in silent puzzlement rather than complete negation.

“Let me be sure I understand you, O’Mara” he said finally. “Thornnastor is having problems with its first mind transfer, so you want to give it three mind tapes to contend with?”

“Three more,” O’Mara corrected. “It will be four tapes altogether. And if you know the kinds of patients Thornnastor is most likely to have assigned to it in the near future, I’d like your advice on the species concerned so that the process will serve as a brief introduction to its mind partners to be. This is a matter of simple mathematics as well as psychology. With four tapes occupying its mind at once, the effect of their extraneous emotional material will be diluted to a quarter, especially during the op when it will have to concentrate on abstracting only the required medical information. Following the operation the tapes, all of them, will be erased and Thornnastor’s mind will be back to normal with its pride intact and without it having suffered any professional embarrassment. I think it is a simple, direct, elegant solution to the . . . ”

Mannen held up one hand. “The word that comes most readily to my mind” he said dryly, “is ’simpleminded? Thornnastor has expressed a special interest in performing Melfan, Illensan, and Earth-human surgery. Those are the mind tapes it is most likely to need in the future, if it has a future here. Dammit, you could totally wreck Thornnastor’s sanity,”

“In my opinion no, sir” said O’Mara. “The Tralthan’s mind is strong, well balanced, and highly adaptable. Besides, the otherspecies mind partners, unlike Marrasarah, will not be long-term visitors. There won’t be enough time for it to be seriously influenced by them.”

Mannen was silent for a long moment, then said, “Right. I’m becoming suspicious about my own sanity, but you’ve talked me into it. There is one condition.”

“Sir?”

“You must be present during the operation,” Mannen said firmly, “in case Thornnastor becomes mentally unstable and we need your help in pacifying it, because OR isn’t the best place for an outsized and overmuscled surgeon to run amok. Agreed?”

O’Mara hesitated. “I’ve no medical training?”

“We’ll be hip deep in medics down there,” Mannen said. “What we’ll need is someone to treat a disturbed doctor, not the patient. If Thornnastor does go unstable on us, what will you do?”

“Talk to it first and try verbal pacification,” O’Mara replied. “If that fails I’ll shoot it with an anesthetic dart gun previously concealed in the OR. Can you make sure that the dart is sharp and the anesthetic is strong enough? Tralthans have tough skins and a lot of body mass so we will need, I mean we might need, something that works fast.”

“Another one of your simple, direct solutions,” Mannen said. “Right, I’ll see to it.”

“I’d like to thank you, sir,” said O’Mara gratefully, “for cooperating in this unusual form of therapy?”

“You can do that by giving me back a fully sane and functioning Thornnastor,” said Mannen. “I’m almost afraid to ask, Lieutenant, but is there anything else you need from me?”

“Yes, sir,” said O’Mara, smiling. “I believe one of the otherspecies trainees is giving you some cause for concern. You can pick a likely candidate. Its condition is fictional, of course, but an element of hypochondria and the ability to talk about itself for long periods would be an advantage. It would have to be interviewed in its quarters, or in an empty lecture hall or anywhere but the Psychology Department during the hour preceding Thornnastor’s op. I will be impressing the three extra mind tapes then and can’t afford to have the major walking in and asking awkward questions?”

Mannen put his forehead into his hands and spoke to the top of his desk.

“Right,” he said. “But please go now before you destroy all my illusions, and confirm my worst fears, about what goes on in the Psychology Department.”

O’Mara smiled and left quickly. He had to talk to Thornnastor again and sell it on the multiple-tape idea before it retired for the night. It might take a long time and he as well as the Tralthan might lose a lot of sleep. But that, at least, would cut down on the volume of snoring in the area.

The glass-walled OR was in readiness when Thornnastor and O’Mara arrived outside punctually the next day. As it was primarily an examination of the surgeon’s procedure as well as an attempt to rectify serious traumatic damage to the patient, the room was more crowded than usual. The patient was already anesthetized and the other members of the operating team, two Melfans and one Earth-human, were standing by the table to assist, as were, not quite as close, Mannen and a Nidian tutor. Before they entered, O’Mara put a hand against the Tralthan’s leathery flank.

“Wait,” he said worriedly. “How are you feeling?”

Softly, for a Tralthan, Thornnastor growled, “How should a person with a quadruply split personality feel? I think I’ll be all right.”

O’Mara nodded and followed it inside; then he moved across the room to stand between Mannen and the other tutor.

“Recorders on?” said Thornnastor calmly. “Very well, I’ll begin. This is patient Murrenth, physiological classification DBLF, a shipboard technician in the Kelgian space service. It presented with internal injuries sustained as the result of being trapped briefly by shifting cargo, briefly because fellow crew members were able to rescue it within a few minutes. Initially it was thought that no serious trauma had occurred because the patient, perhaps for psychological reasons including the fact that the accident was partly its own fault, did not report any physical discomfort. Two days later it began losing fur mobility over the back and one side of the body. Its condition was reclassified to DBLF Emergency Three and it was rushed here.”

One of the Tralthan’s tentacles rose to pull down the scanner attached to the ceiling by a telescoping arm until it was positioned above the operative field. It curled an eye toward the wall-mounted diagnostic screen which was showing a massive enlargement of the scanner image.

“It was discovered that serious trauma had in fact occurred,” Thornnastor continued, “but too subtle for detection by the equipment available on the patient’s ship. The temporary pressure of the cargo that fell on Murrenth’s back and side caused a minor constriction of the blood flow through the capilliary system in those areas. This caused micro-clots to form which reduced the blood supply to the delicate muscles and nerve network controlling fur mobility. The condition has been worsening, an immediate surgical intervention is indicated, and . . .

“And the prognosis is lousy,” Mannen said softly to O’Mara.

“I’m afraid this is going to be an examination for surgical technique, not for a successful result?

“Care must be taken” Thornnastor was saying, “to comb the fur carefully from both sides of the entry-wound position before making the incision. Each individual strand of fur is a delicate part of the body to which it belongs, and the possession of its living and undamaged fur has immense psychological and interpersonal social significance for the being concerned . . .”

What it was not saying, O’Mara knew, was that to any Kelgian even the slightest blemish on their beautiful, silvery body fur or the smallest area of restricted mobility was the ultimate physical disfigurement, one that caused them to withdraw voluntarily from all social contact with their fellows as if they had been old-time Earth-human lepers. The fur motions were a completely involuntary process that could not be halted or modified in any way. This meant that the deep, helpless sympathy and revulsion that a whole Kelgian felt for such a disfigured one could not be hidden either, so that withdrawing from society was the only option short of suicide.

The mind-tape donor, the brilliant and gifted Kelgian surgeon Marrasarah, whose physical beauty had been surpassed only by the brilliance of her mind and warmth of her personality, had been driven to resign a promising career because of fur damage. Almost certainly a similar fate awaited patient Murrenth, so it was no wonder that its Kelgian mind partner had affected Thornnastor’s own mind so deeply. In many respects the personalities of the patient and surgeon were the same-and, now that he was so intimately aware of Marrasarah’s mind, feelings, and personality, O’Mara was finding it difficult at times to think of her as an “it”.

Even though Marrasarah was a living and suffering person in the minds of Thornnastor and O’Mara, it was simply a recording and nothing at all could be done for it. But here and now, if he understood the Tralthan’s feelings and motivation correctly, Thornnastor needed to cure Murrenth to stop that awful tragedy from happening again. It was a matter of professional pride but it was also deeply personal. The patient and the mind partner had become one. In its own mind Thornnastor was trying to cure both of them, and if the Murrenth procedure was as unsuccessful as all the medical probabilities insisted it would be, O’Mara hated to think of what it would do to the Tralthan surgeon.

“Field viewer set to fifty magnifications” said Thornnastor calmly. “Stepped-down scalpel and retractor to reduction factor ten. Ready? We will begin . . .

The magnifier slid forward on its telescoping arm and was interposed between the operative field and two of Thornnastor’s dirigible eyes as it picked up a knife whose large handle contained the mechanism which could deliver a cut ranging between a deep, sixinch, surgical slash to an incision so tiny and precise that it could only be seen by a microscope. With this procedure very precise work was possible, O’Mara knew as he turned his attention to the big diagnostic screen on the wall, provided the surgeon had rock steady hands or, in this case, tentacles.

On the screen the individual strands of fur looked like the slim, curving trunks of palm trees that were being bent slowly apart to reveal the heavily wrinkled organic ground surface from which they grew. A blade appeared, looking incredibly massive under the high magnification, and made an incision which cut cleanly between the parted trunks without touching much less damaging a single one of them. It went deeper, revealing the thin rootlets with their individual systems of tiny muscles that gave every hair its mobility, and these it avoided, too.

Like a thick, curving length of cable, one of the blocked capillaries appeared on center screen. A tiny longitudinal incision was made and a fine probe with a thickened tip inserted carefully into the opening. There was very little bleeding, just a few droplets which looked under the high magnification to be the size of footballs.

O’Mara closed his eyes briefly so as to shut out his view of the screen and to remind himself that Thornnastor was working inside a capillary not much thicker than a hair while it tried to find and dissolve a clot without blasting a hole in the affected blood vessel and undoing all its previous, meticulous work.

There were many such blood vessels and many clots. But there was something about the surgeon’s work that was not quite right.

“This is microsurgery of a very high order” he said quietly to Mannen, “but I don’t recognize the procedure.”

“I didn’t know you had medical training” said Mannen, then nodded. “Of course, I forgot that you have the Marrasarah mind tape, too. What’s wrong with it?”

Thornnastor cleared its breathing passages and made a loud, disapproving sound.

“As the being O’Mara has just observed” it said, “my procedure departs from normal Kelgian practice because I have made a synthesis of the surgical knowledge and experience of the three other mind partners that are available to me. The work is delicate and requires concentration. Apart from the necessary verbal contact between the operating team, I would appreciate absolute silence.”

Mannen, the Nidian tutor, and O’Mara maintained a complete and, in his own case, an admiring silence until Thornnastor withdrew, closed, and stood back.

“As you can see” it said, curling one eye toward the wall screen, “the interrupted blood supply to the root muscles has been corrected and the connective nerve network that controls fur movement is intact. But the patient must be massively sedated and its fur rendered motionless until the area has a chance to recover completely from the recently inflicted surgical trauma, and heal.”

Suddenly it stamped its two medial feet, a habit of Tralthans who were in the grip of strong emotion, making all the loose equipment in the room rattle.

“Thank you, everyone,” it ended. “I believe we have an optimum result.”

CHAPTER 15

As befitted his high position in the hospital’s hierarchy, Senior Tutor Mannen occupied the only Earth-human chair while O’Mara and Thornnastor, whose species had no use for furniture, stood before Craythorne’s desk. The major’s voice was quiet and calm as he spoke, but it was obvious that he was very, very angry.

“Doctors,” he said, “I’ve asked you here principally to apologize for Lieutenant O’Mara’s conduct in this case. Normally I encourage initiative in my people, and must therefore bear full responsibility for the results if they make mistakes, but in this case he was, well, overenthusiastic and badly overstepped the mark. I hope you will take it no further and will allow me to deal with it as an internal disciplinary matter?”

“Of course, Major,” said Mannen. He smiled suddenly. “But go easy on him.”

Craythorne shook his head, looking puzzled; then he spoke to the Tralthan.

“Now that O’Mara has erased the four mind tapes it impressed two days ago,” he said, “may I assume that psychologically you are back to normal, Doctor, and there have been no emotional aftereffects?”

“You may not assume that,” said Thornnastor. “And while ‘doctor’ is quite suitable and less verbally cumbersome for normal conversational use, you should know that this morning I was promoted to senior physician.”

“Then please accept my congratulations, Senior Physician Thornnastor,” said the major, smiling but looking worried. “Where am I wrong? Are you still suffering mental disorientation following the erasure of the mind tapes?”

“There is still some mental disorientation, naturally,” the Tralthan replied, “but that is because only the emotionally troublesome Kelgian tape was erased and, with Senior Tutor Mannen’s agreement and Lieutenant O’Mara’s cooperation, I elected to retain permanently the other three.”

“But, but why?” said Craythorne, still looking worried. “That was, is, very risky. We have no idea of the mental repercussions that could result. It has never been done before—”

“But it will be done again, said Mannen, looking at Thornnastor and O’Mara. “It will be done a great many times.”

The major shook his head. “You’ll have to explain.”

Thornnastor said, “With my mind filled with the memories and personalities of four other-species entities, the effect was as O’Mara foretold. The high degree of concentration required during the operation caused only the medical knowledge of my mind partners to be brought forward and the unwanted emotional material to fade into the background. I was able to call on medical data and operating experience of four top other-species surgeons, and synthesize that material into a radical new procedure. Without the multiple mind partners the operation would not have been successful.”

“The senior physician,” Mannen joined in, “tells me that it can accommodate its three mind partners very well and looks forward to them being permanent residents. And if Thornnastor can do that, why not others? Naturally, Major, we’ll need to consult your department regarding the emotional stability and general suitability of candidates for multiple mind impressions, but you must see where this is leading.

“Up to now,” Mannen went on quickly, so as not to give time for the Major to show his ignorance, “our plan was to have a surgeon-in-charge take just the one tape needed to treat his, her, or its other-species patient, then have it erased on completion so that the process could be repeated indefinitely with future cases. But when we have medics available who carry simultaneously the surgical knowledge and experience of several different species, much more is possible.

“Not only will they be able to devise and perform new surgical procedures as did Thornnastor here,” the senior tutor went on, his voice rising in quiet excitement, “but they will be able to head original research projects into xenobiology and multi-species medicine. And if we ever find a wrecked ship with injured survivors of a previously unknown species on board, these special doctors, whose minds will be crammed with physiological and medical data on a multiplicity of known life-forms, will be able to advise on treatment with a greatly reduced risk of our well-intentioned tinkering killing the people we will be trying to save. They will be a special group and we’ll have to think of a name for them, clinical synthesists, xenobiological diagnosticians, something like that . . .

Mannen broke off, looking almost ashamed at losing his clinical objectivity to the extent of showing human excitement and pleasure at this new development in the field he loved. He looked at his watch, stood up, and turned away. Thornnastor was already moving toward the door.

“Lectures. I have to go,” he said. Then he paused to smile at O’Mara and added, “Major, earlier I suggested that you go easy on the lieutenant. Go very easy on him.”

When they had gone, Craythorne nodded toward the vacated chair and said, “Lieutenant, I think you have raised insubordination to the status of a major art form and there are times, like now, when I could find it easy to be nasty to you. But you always wriggle out of trouble by the sneaky expedient of always being right. So . . . “’ He slapped a pile of folders that were lying on his desk. . . I’m giving you a long, boring, routine job which you may like to consider as a punishment. It’s the weekly trainee updates for inclusion, if you think there is anything that warrants further investigation, in their psych files. I don’t believe you will be able-or maybe I’m hoping that you won’t be able-to do anything creatively insubordinate with them. And when you’ve finished that chore, go to Level OneEleven and start practicing on the residents what you’ve been preaching to Mannen and me about the fun aspects of eating meals together and listening to each others’ sleeping noises.”

Craythorne stopped but continued to look at him without speaking.

“Sir,” said O’Mara, to fill the lengthening silence.

“Regarding the Thornnastor business,” Craythorne went on, “that was very well done, whether or not you knew what you were doing at the time. In the light of the emotional content, we will not use the Marrasarah tape on anyone again. You disobeyed standing instructions, for the first and only time if you want to remain here, by self-impressing the tape for a few hours before erasing it, right? So the disobedience has been rectified and the incident will not be mentioned again?

As he lifted the pile of folders, O’Mara nodded without speaking. Major Craythorne was a fine man and he didn’t want to lie to him and so, in Kelgian fashion, he remained silent. It was true that O’Mara had impressed himself with the Marrasarah mind tape. He just hadn’t erased it again.

His punishment took just two hours to complete and while it was routine it was not completely boring unless, O’Mara thought, boredom like beauty lay in the mental eye of the beholder. Each one of the two hundred-odd files contained information on the individual trainees’ past and current progress, with notes on lectures attended and the performance of ward duties, and particularly their person-to-person contacts with patients, by the relevant tutors and charge nurses.

In the majority of cases the notes consisted of a hastily scrawled “Progress satisfactory” or “Moving up, but not too fast.” One of them, signed by Mannen, said, “Not happy working with Illensans, but then who is? Will schedule another protective suit drill in chlorine environment soonest. No psych action required unless trainee’s fear increases.”

There were two other such entries, both in Mannen’s writing. One read, “Creesik (in), MSVK. Initial progress rapid and highly satisfactory but recently has been slowing down to slightly above average. Watching,” and the other said, “Neenil (f), MSVK. Initially a very slow starter but now picking up nicely. Keen, seems to have discovered extra motivation, but displays signs of fatigue. Have suggested that it spend a little more of its free time not studying so hard.”

Psychiatric action had not been requested on either of the last two cases, but O’Mara had a feeling about them, or maybe it was simply a hope driven by boredom that it would be nice if he could do a little therapeutic tinkering before the trouble, if there was going to be any trouble, could develop. He placed the two files on one side for closer study, telling himself that they both lived on Level One-Eleven and he would be in the neighborhood anyway.

When he returned to them, O’Mara decided that it would be a good idea to learn something about their home environment and physical body requirements before he began a covert, unofficial invstigation of their minds. At present all he knew about them was that one was female and the other male, that they were at different levels of training with lectures and ward duties that didn’t coincide, and so far as he knew the only thing they had in common was belonging to the same species. He called up the library computer and aked it to display general information, sociological environment, and medicine as practiced by physiological classification MSVK, the Euril life-form.

His reception on One-Eleven was less hostile than the first one had been. The usual proportion of door IDs were tagged ON DUTY or DO NOT DISTURB, and the people who did answer, with the exception of the Kelgians, showed a combination of politeness and impatience as they listened. That was understandable, because they had probably heard Mannen, Craythorne, or himself saying it already. The sleeping noises coming from a few of the rooms sounded slightly less horrendous, O’Mara thought, but that might be because he was getting used to them.

He found Creesik’s door ajar and marked simply ABSENT, but Neenil’s was tagged OCCUPIED and was opened at once.

“Trainee Neenil,” he began, only to be interrupted by the other’s twittering speech.

“Creesik,” it said. “I was just leaving?

“Please don’t leave on my account,” he said, thinking quickly. “I intended to visit each of you. If you will not be inconvenienced, it will be easier for me to speak to both of you at the same time?

“Then come in, O’Mara,” said Creesik.

It was the first time he had had more than a glimpse from the corridor entrance into a Euril’s living quarters although, in an attempt to show good manners by not staring, he used his peripheral vision to examine the place as another Euril dropped from a perch before the study alcove and screen and hopped forward to meet him.

“I am Neenil,” it said, the soft twittering of its voice forming a background to the translated words. “You have our attention?

“Thank you,” said O’Mara, still appearing not to look at his surroundings. The walls were covered with pictures of Euril land and seascape, a photograph of what looked like the immediate family flock, and a simple but quietly resplendent framed certificate which, judging from its place of honor above the study console, had originated from an important institution of some kind. Occupying one-quarter of the floor area in one corner was a circular nest standing to about Euril shoulder height, thickly upholstered and with light, padded sheets hanging over one edge. He went on, “If anything, this a social rather than a professional visit. I wanted to let you know what we are hoping to do about the nightly noise pollution?

Creesik cocked its head to one side and said, “Our senior tutor and your Major Craythorne have already discussed this with us, including the unavoidable delays expected in the arrival of the hush-field installations and in replacing the dining-hall furniture. We both formed the impression that these were problems we might have to solve ourselves. Was there anything else you wanted to say?”

“Only to ask if you have any other complaints or problems,” said O’Mara, trying to keep the conversation going. “To Earthhumans, yours is a very unusual species. How are you both settling in here, generally?”

Cocking its head again, Creesik said, “If you are wondering why and how a species with three legs and no hands is able to perform surgery, you won’t be the first to ask. We use our beaks rather than our nonexistent digits. What precisely did you want to know?”

In its condescending fashion the library computer had given him all that a nonspecialist layman enquirer needed to know about Euril evolution and history, couched in terms that had reminded him of his lessons in elementary school. The species no longer had the ability to fly because they had long since rid themselves in many subtle and deadly ways of the many-limbed and clawed predators from whom flight had been their only escape. Using their long, flexible beaks and precisely controlled neck muscles, they became tool users and ultimately developed the technologically advanced civilization that enabled them to travel to the stars. They had done it by using their brains and their beaks. In the area of surgery, they used a range of hollow, conelike instruments fitted to their beaks, and the rapid, pecking procedures they had developed were unequaled when speedy surgery was required. Eurils did everything, well, practically everything, including talk, with their mouths.

Before O’Mara could reveal that he wasn’t entirely ignorant, Neenil made a low, twittering sound that did not translate into words and said, “Speaking personally, I am content and completely happy here?

An enthusiastic response if I ever heard one, O’Mara thought, and wondered if his sudden smile would mean anything to them. He said, “Your contentment is reflected in your work. The senior tutor is well pleased with your recent progress and, in my capacity as a psychologist, I’m especially glad that contentment is the reason.

“But the senior tutor,” said Creesik sharply, “is not pleased with my progress. Is that why you’re here?”

There was unnecessary anger surfacing here, O’Mara thought, and perhaps a little guilt. He tried to avoid a lie by hiding behind the literal truth. “Your progress remains satisfactory, and I haven’t been asked to interview you. In your weekly reports, however, Dr. Mannen expresses a minor concern regarding the symptoms of fatigue or lassitude you have been displaying recently. That’s all.”

“So it’s just you who wants to know the reason for this minor, unimportant, and non-life-threatening debility?” said Creesik. Its neck feathers were practically standing on end and it was jumping up and down on its thin, birdlike limbs. This was the first time, O’Mara thought, that he had ever seen a person who was literally hopping mad. It went on angrily, “Why are you people always so concerned about sex?”

CHAPTER 16

There was an awkward silence while O’Mara tried to find the right words to extricate himself from this delicate situation without giving further offense. While deliberately not looking around the room he had noticed the rumpled nest and suspected that the two of them were an item, but he would certainly not have mentioned it. Suddenly Neenil made another soft twittering sound and in an obvious attempt to lighten the situation, it said, “Psychologists are always concerned about sex. This holds true on Euril, and probably on every civilized world throughout the Galactic Federation.”

O’Mara had never kissed another person in his life and, looking at that long, flexible, wrinkled beak with its tiny, pointed teeth, he wasn’t going to do it now. But he felt so grateful to Neenil for giving him an excuse to continue the conversation that for a moment he was tempted.

“I had not intended to discuss sex” he said, looking at Neenil, “but it seems that it is expected of me. This being so, I would say that the activity has had a very beneficial effect on your work. Why exactly this should be is for you to say, but only if you wish to discuss what is, after all, a private and personal matter.”

He looked at Creesik and went on, “This also explains the minor reduction of physical and mental effort you have displayed. In this situation, which involves a new relationship with an unusually attractive partner . . .” O’Mara couldn’t see any physical difference between the two of them, but he wanted to give Neenil the benefit of the doubt. . . an initial period of, let us say, overenthusiasm is normal with, of course, a consequent degree of physical debilitation. And there would be times when the minds concerned—find difficulty in concentrating on anyone or anything else. But in time this degree of urgency will diminish, the process will stabilize and when, or if, longer-term plans are made . . .

Creesik had stopped hopping and its neck feathers were lying flat again. It said, “O’Mara, have you a lot of experience in this area?”

“No.” Q’Mara replied, “but I’ve studied a lot of factual and fictional material on the subject. My knowledge is purely theoretical.”

There seemed to be a gleam of impish humor in Neenil’s tiny eyes as it joined in, “That is difficult to believe. My own factual knowledge of DBDG anatomy tells me that you are unusually large and well muscled, and singularly lacking in unsightly, wobbly slabs of adipose tissue, for a male of your species. I’m not able to judge the beauty or otherwise of your facial features. But then . . .” It made another low, twittering sound that did not translate and cocked its head to look briefly at Creesik. “. . . beautiful male facial features are not the prime consideration. Surely there is or has been a female DBDG on the staff who has—”

“No!” said O’Mara, more loudly than he had intended. In a quieter tone he added defensively, “As you know, the type of work I do doesn’t endear me to people, and my duties rarely allow me enough time to seek female companionship.”

“From my knowledge of DBDG physiology,” said Creesik, “I would say that the recent change in O’Mara’s facial skin coloration-bearing in mind that it has not indulged in any physical activity that would elevate its blood pres~.~re-is indicative of embarrassment. Stop teasing it, dear.”

“Nonsense” said Neenil. “Psychologists are never embarrassed talking about sex. We were reticent at first because it is a private thing, but not embarrassed. I don’t mind O’Mara knowing, if it hasn’t already guessed, that the improvement in my work is due to my wanting us to qualify together. With Sector General qualifications in multi-species surgery there isn’t a medical establishment in the Federation who wouldn’t hop at the chance to get us, and if you wanted to stay here I would, too, and . . .

. . . we would be life-mates and warm your eggs together” Creesik ended for it, “whatever happened.”

O’Mara was glad that the two love-birds (and he was not thinking of the word in any derogatory fashion) were talking to each other and letting him escape further embarrassment. But his relief was premature.

“O’Mara’ said Neenil, “I don’t understand why you are denying yourself such a great pleasure, satisfaction, and emotional cornfort. But you must know this from past experience . . .

“N&’ O’Mara broke in, then cursed himself for not remaining silent, Kelgian fashion. What was making him want to tell these people the truth?

There was a moment’s silence while they both cocked their heads to one side and stared at him. Creesik spoke first.

“No wonder.” it said, “you’re mad enough to be a psychologist.”

“Don’t joke about it, Creesik.” said Neenil. “This is very serious. O’Mara, are you saying that you have never wanted, never felt the need to love another person in your entire adult life?”

“I didn’t say that” said O’Mara, cursing himself again for telling the exact truth. Why the hell was he doing it? There was no weight on his conscience, nothing to feel guilty about, just the sudden surfacing of anger mixed with his helpless, hopeless feeling of sadness.

Neenil made a soft, sympathetic twittering sound, then said, “Have you loved someone in the past but the love was not returned?”

“No” said O’Mara.

“Are your feelings for someone of the present.” Neenil persisted, “but you have not spoken of them so that the entity concerned doesn’t as yet know what you feel?”

“Yes” he said.

“O’Mara” said Neenil, “you must speak to this female. Whether the answer is good or bad for you, you must speak your mind to her. If the answer is bad, well, among my species unrequited love is a serious condition but it is rarely fatal . . .”

“Now who’s making a joke?” said Creesik.

“I’m being serious.” Neenil went on, “Speak of what is in your mind, O’Mara. Then, at least, you will know what this person feels about you and be able to allow your emotional life, perhaps both of your emotional lives, to go on from there.”

“This person” said O’Mara, “doesn’t even know I exist and, and lives halfway across the galaxy.”

He shook his head in self-irritation. This was getting way out of control. The things he was saying he had never believed that he would ever tell to another soul, and most certainly not to Craythorne, who would probably fire him on the spot. But here he was talking about it, admittedly in the most general terms and without mentioning names or details, to a pair of enamored Eurils. He had to end this quickly and get away from here.

“I’m sorry’ he said. “This was to be a social visit. I came to talk to you, but not about something that I’ve never spoken of to any other person. As a psychologist, I can’t understand why I’m talking to you about it now. Perhaps I’m feeling envious over what you two have and I haven’t . . .

Neenil and Creesik were twittering again. It had a sympathetic sound. Their heads were cocked sideways and th<were looking at each other.

He looked at Creesik and went on, “. . . but no matter, I called at an inconvenient time and I’ll go now. There is no reason for you to leave.”

“You show great sensitivity, and delicacy, O’Mara” said Creesik, “but there is a reason to leave. If I stayed, neither of us would be able to finish our study assignments.”

It hopped toward the door. As he turned to follow, Neenil spoke again.

“This is not right, O’Mara” it said. “You must search for and find this being, and speak your mind to it. Promise me.”

O’Mara left without replying because he could not promise the impossible and he wanted to avoid hurting the other’s feelings with a negative reply. Neenil was coming across as a particularly nice and currently very happy person who in its present emotional state wished everyone else to be as happy as it was. Sadly, silently, and enviously he wished it and its partner joy.

He thought about the Euril conversation off and on during the next four days when the major and he were kept too busy sorting out minor other-species problems to do anything but nod at each other in passing. Once, when he was alone in the department, he did some serious thanking about them. The hospital grapevine, a fast-reacting plant with its nerve and speech centers in the dining hall, had not given the smallest twitch or whisper of gossip about him and his mysterious unrequited love, so obviously the Euril couple weren’t the kind of people who gossiped. He hadn’t seen them again but his liking for them was increasing.

Providing Creesik remained in Sector General as well, he thought Neenil would make a good therapist. He would bear that in mind in case his chief ever mentioned needing another assistant. As if on cue, Craythorne hurried through the department and waved him toward the inner office.

“Sit down and relax, LieutenanC’ he said, smiling. “You aren’t in any trouble, so far as I know. We’ve a lot of thin~s to talk about but none of them are urgent:’ He looked at O’Mara for a moment. “Unless that expression you’re wearing means that you have a more urgent problem to discuss?”

“This isn’t urgent, either, sir” he replied. “But it’s something you might want to think about.”

“Go on, Lieutenant.”

“There is no necessity at this stage to mention individuals and species” said O’Mara carefully, “but while I was talking to some of the people on Level One-Eleven it became apparent that pairing-off was taking place. Normally there would be nothing to interest the department in that, but in the situation here . . . .”

“In the situation on One-Eleven” said Craythorne dryly, “the trainees will be glad that some of the others are going to bed without making sleeping noises. Sorry, O’Mara, my jokes are never funny. Seriously, are you worried about an impending population explosion?”

“No, sir” said O’Mara, “not immediately. But the trainees who qualify for permanent staff positions here, and who become what the Kelgians call life-mates, will want to have families. We would be in serious trouble with their home-planet authorities, not to mention the Federation Primary Rule, for infringing their rights. When the hospital is up and running for a few years, it’s something we’ll have to think about.”

The major nodded. “You’re right. It won’t happen tomorrow, I sincerely hope. You have a word with Mannen about it. He likes talking to you, he says, because you don’t take as long as I do to get to the point. Tell him that, if and when, to tell us which otherspecies obstetricians we need to approach for mind tapes.” He laughed quietly and went on, “After all, the hospital’s first patient was an infant Hudlar, as you very well know. Was there anything else you wanted to say?”

“No, sir.”

“Good,” said Craythorne. “Now we can discuss a less longterm problem. Six months from now the real exotic~vill begin to arrive: SNLUs, TLTUs, VTXMs, people like that. Building accommodation for them will be a Maintenance problem, naturally, and they’ll be calling in same-species environmental engineers, and the Telfi ward will become part of the main power reactor. How exactly we’re going to treat the emotional difficulties of beings who breathe high-pressure superheated steam, or methane crystalline life-forms who live close to absolute zero, or gestalt entities who absorb hard radiation, I’m unable to say right now, but we’ll do our best. It will mean us putting in a lot of time on the library computer and, of course, getting more departmental help.”

Craythorne paused. O’Mara remained silent.

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant” the major went on. “The help in question is Earth-human, a retired Monitor Corps officer who volunteered himself for the position. He’s totally unlike you because he’s old, frail, and gentle, I’m told, except during philosophical arguments. He’ll be arriving two weeks from now.”

“I’ll be looking forward to meeting him then” said O’Mara with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.

Craythorne shook his head. “You won’t be meeting him then, because, Lieutenant, you won’t be here.”

O’Mara stared hard at the major, not speaking. He had thought that he was improving, losing some of the rough edges to his manner when dealing with people, but apparently he was still guilty of wearing his heavy boots and an old, frail, gentle exMonitor Corps officer was replacing him. Craythorne returned his stare without dropping his eyes, plainly reading the bitter disappointment on O’Mara’s face; then he shook his head again.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’ve worked very hard during these past two years with the department, but you’re beginning to show signs of stress. I don’t know what, precisely, is troubling your mind, and I know you would never admit to any weakness much less tell your superior officer if there was anything bothering you, but something most definitely is. This is the best opportunity you’ll have for a while to get away~om this place, so I want you to relax, rest, or at least do something strenuously different for a while, and sort things out for yourself. You have a lot of leave owing. Take it.”

O’Mara had not realized that he was holding his breath until it came out in a long sigh of relief. He said, “Thank you, sir. But I’ve no family or planetside friends. There’s nowhere I want to go and nothing else I want to do.”

The major frowned. “Lieutenant,” he said, “that answer falls into the grey area between a chronic lack of imagination and manic dedication to duty. As a psychologist I am prescribing a six-week change of scene, and as your superior officer I am making it an order. Go anywhere you like, but go.”

O’Mara spent the rest of the day tidying up clerical loose ends, speaking to the transport officer about the availability of outgoing flights, and trying to make up his mind where he wanted to go. But he kept thinking back to Neenil and the Euril’s last, concerned words to him.

“You must search for and find this being” it had said. “Speak your mind to it.”

CHAPTER 17

He had known, although he had never really expected to make use of the knowledge, that since he was a Monitor Corps officer on space service no commercial vessel (provided it had a species-suitable berth free and it was going in the right direction) could refuse to take him as a passenger. There was no restriction regarding destinations or the number of ship transfers he could make, but if he wanted to go fast and far it was best to stick to the busy commercial routes serving the long-established star-traveling cultures of Traltha, Orligia, Kelgia, and Earth. He was free to visit a more out-of-the-way planet or colony world if he wished, but that could mean spending a large proportion of his leave waiting for a suitable connection.

The Monitor Corps supply vessel Trosshannon plied the threecornered route between Nidia, Melf, and Sector General. As the initial letter of its name implied, it had been built on the heavygravity world of Traltha, where they built starships that were renowned throughout the Federation for their structural strength and dependability. It was said that on Traltha even the earthmoving machinery was put together by watchmakers. Trosshannon listed accommodation with environmental support for jive physiological classifications: Tralthan FGLIs, Melfan ELNTs, Hudlar FROBs, Kelgian DBLFs, and DBDGs like or unlike himself who were expected to use the same cabin type even though it was a tight squeeze for Orligians and the furniture was on the large size for Nidians, who considered themselves tall if they made it to more than a meter.

He met the eight-man, Earth-human crew, who were all Monitor Corps personnel, only at mealtimes. They were friendly enough but they made it clear that they were very busy and, other than at meals, they preferred him not to get underfoot. O’Mara spent most of that four-day trip in his quarters, which was exactly what he wanted to do. But Craythorne had been right about him being tired. He was surprised at how much of the time he spent sleeping.

O’Mara was feeling more relaxed than he had been for a long time when Trosshannon dropped into the Retlin transport complex on the outskirts of Nidia’s planetary capital whose name it bore. It was the largest space, air, and surface communication facility in the Federation as well as, from the point of view of the local families with young children who thronged the public viewing area, its most popular other-species zoo. As the moving walkway took him through the disembarking tunnel toward the main concourse, it felt strange to be the focus of so many curious eyes and excited, barking conversations and realize that to the many hundreds of tiny, red-furred beings staring at him he was just another strange extraterrestrial visitor.

Even though he was carrying all his belongings in a backpack so that there was no necessity for him to go though baggage claim, and Retlin was also reputed to be the most well-organized and wellappointed transport terminal on all of the civilized worlds, it was still easy for a strange visitor regardless of its species to get lost. An enormous, hairy Orligian wearing a weapons harness suggesting that it might be a security guard gave him directions.

The information facility comprised a long line of screened cubicles, each one bearing a stylized diagram represent<ng the various star-traveling races that made up the Galactic Federation, sized and furnished to suit the physical requirements of the user. He found one bearing the Earth-human symbol, and went inside to find a viewscreen displaying a plan view of the complex interior covering the facing wall, with a winking blue location light showing his present position and another that could be moved to the area where he wanted to go, and flashing guidelines to help him get there. Except for the comfortable, Earth-human chair-in Sector General people were not encouraged to sit and browse-it was similar to the information screens used on every level of the hospital.

He was able to find the Monitor Corps’ Personnel-in-Transit office without difficulty. Its wall decorations ran heavily to pictures of service vessels ranging from tiny couriers through longrange survey cruisers up to the mighty Emperor-class capital ships. With a single exception, its six reception desk consoles were being manned by people who weren’t men, but he chose that one because the others were busy. As he approached the empty position, a graying NCO wearing full uniform so clean and crisp that it reminded him of Craythorne on a ceremonial occasion looked up. The other’s eyes rested briefly on O’Mara’s coveralls and his beret tightly folded under the right shoulder strap, which meant that neither of them had to waste time saluting; then he gave a friendly nod.

“Sir?” he said.

O’Mara gave his name and service ID code and said, “I arrived within the past hour on Trosshannon and would like a berth on anything you have going to Traltha, Melf, Kelgia, or Earth. The destination isn’t important but the stopover time is. I don’t want to spend too much of my leave on Nidia.”

“Nidian low ceilings give me trouble, too” the other said, smiling, “but if you need to stay here for a while, there’s always the Earth-human officers’ quarters on the base. They’re very comfortable.”

“Thank your’ said O’Mara, returning the smile and looking pointedly at the other’s impeccable uniform, “but on Nidia Base I wouldn’t feel that I was on leave. Have you anything going anywhere soon?”

“I know what you mean” said the NCO. “Give me a moment to check, sir.”

On the base, O’Mara thought as the other began tapping keys, the uniform dress regulations would be less relaxed, and there would be a lot more saluting and fellow officers displaying too much friendly curiosity about his background. He was technically an officer but nobody, himself included, had ever considered him to be a gentleman. There could be trouble if their curiosity became too persistent. O’Mara thought that he would rather squeeze himself into a room in one of the local Nidian hotels.

“You’re in luck, sir” said the other suddenly, and hesitated. “Well, you might be in luck. How about Kreskhallar, Melfan registry, a medium-sized passenger vessel with a mixed-species crew and with accommodation for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, leaving from Dock Thirty-Seven just three and a half hours from now. It operates a continuous, round-trip, cut-price sightseeing tour of the big five-Melf, Earth, Traltha, Kelgia, Nidia, and back to Melf. Currently the passengers are mostly Kelgian on some kind of startraveling literary convention, it says here, with other-species passengers joining and leaving at their home planets. The luxury rating isn’t high, sir, only two stars, and with all those DBLFs . . .

“Thank you,” O’Mara broke in, “I’ll take it.”

The NCO looked concerned. He said, “Sir, if you’re not used to them, Kelgians can be a bit hard to take even one at a time. Before I book you in, are you sure about this?”

O’Mara nodded. “Go ahead, SergeantP he said, “I’m used to working with Kelgians.”

“You are?” said the other, giving him another close but unobstrusive visual examination as he tapped keys. Pla~ly his curiosity got the better of him because he went on, “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what ship?”

“No ship? he said. “Sector General?

“Oh? said the sergeant, looking impressed. He was still sitting at his console but somehow he gave the impression that he was standing at attention as he added, “Enjoy your leave, sir.”

As he had no idea what the food would be like on a two-star passenger vessel, or how long it would be before they served it, O’Mara decided to play safe by refueling in one of the complex’s multi-species restaurants. The place reminded him of the hospital’s main dining hail, but with the addition of wall murals showing Nidian land- and seascapes, and loud background music whose planet of origin he did not recognize but which was terrible. It had a discordant, urgent beat that, he decided, was intended to make the diners eat faster to escape from it. Out of sheer contrariness he ate slowly, blocking the music from his mind while he tried to think about what he could do with himself over the next six weeks, until it was time to board.

It was Kreskhallar’s passenger liaison officer, Larragh-Yal, an obviously overworked or perhaps just overwrought Nidian, who welcomed him aboard, wished him a pleasant voyage, and gave him directions to his cabin in a voice which, even through the translator, suggested that its mind was on other things. Probably, he thought wryly, the shipload of Kelgians. He was given a locator that would tell him how to get to the dining and recreation rooms, the observation deck, and the other passenger services, and asked if he had any special requirements.

“Only peace and quiet? said O’Mara. “I’ll be staying in my cabin most of the time.”

“With this bunch of furry sword-and-sorcery fanatics we have on board? it said, sounding relieved that he might turn out to be one of that rare breed, a minimum-maintenance passenger, “I don’t blame you, Lieutenant. But if you should need anything, the locator card will find me. I, ah, expect you already know th~t the Monitor Corps will reimburse our company for your travel fare, basic cabin accommodation, food, and a moderate quantity of liquid refreshment. Anything else you will have to pay for yourself.”

O’Mara nodded. “There will be nothing else.”

“I don’t want to sound mean, Lieutenant,” the other went on, nor do I have to stick too closely to the regulations in your case. After all, you’re the only Monitor Corps officer on the ship. Your presence would raise the morale of our security people as well as having a steadying influence on some of the passengers.

“Larragh-Yal? said O’Mara firmly, “I’m on leave.”

“Of course, sir? said the other. “But a sheathed weapon is still a deterrent.”

His cabin was about half the size of his quarters at the hospital, but comfortable if one only wanted to sleep rather than stay there most of the time. There were a viewscreen and a menu of multi-species entertainment tapes that looked old and tired even by Sector General standards, but the amenities did not include a food dispenser. If he wanted to eat alone he would have to order cabin service. The extra cost didn’t worry him, but the type of person he had once been did not feel happy with the idea of another intelligent entity becoming his servant for however short a time, nor did he know how an officer was expected to behave in that situation. He would feel awkward and embarrassed by the whole business.

The alternative was to use the ship’s dining room and meet people, some of whom, Larragh-Yal had implied, might not be too happy to meet him.

The whole idea was ridiculous. He had been working so long with Monitor Corps specialists-and he had even become one himself-that he had almost forgotten that the force’s primary function was the maintenance of the Pax Galactica, a duty it had performed so well over the past century since its formation that it had been given other jobs to do. Its vast, Emperor-class capital ships, each one capable of wrecking a planet although none of them ever had, were on standby for disaster-relief or ~-~olonizationsupport operations, because a vessel that could level a whole country could clear and till an awful lot of fallow land for settlers. The thousands of lesser ships, the light and heavy cruisers, transports and small communications vessels, while still retaining their weaponry and their highly trained and disciplined multi-species crews, practiced the arts of peace rather than war-although, on the rare occasions when widespread violence occurred which posed a threat to Federation stability, no matter how many ships and land forces had to be deployed or how much firepower was required to regulate the situation, it was always referred to as a police action. But usually the violence and the lawbreakers were stopped before it got that far, by infiltration, subversion, and other nonviolent dirty tricks. O’Mara had heard that the specialist Corps psychologists who now handled the first-contact situations had been nasty, devious, and quite brilliant in that form of activity, and he wondered if the polished and urbane Major Craythorne had ever had a hand in stopping a war or, he corrected himself, a riot that required police action on a planetary scale.

As the Galactic Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, the Monitor Corps had rendered redundant the large, national armies that once had fought each other on the member worlds, and taken over as the galaxy’s peacekeeper. In essence, regardless of the wide range of specialist duties the Corpsmen now performed, each and every one was regarded as a policeman, a form of life that was never supposed to be off-duty even when on leave. If, as Larragh-Yal had said, there were a few potential troublemakers among the passengers, they were people he could not help meeting when he went to the dining room or anywhere else on the ship, and they might not be happy with the idea of what they thought was a policeman mixing with them and trying to spoil their fun. O’Mara sighed and began to unpack.

He was finished by the time the launch warning and thirtysecond countdown was relayed over the ships’s PA sysm, and he watched through the cabin’s direct-vision port as Retlin Complex dropped away and the city proper and then more and more of the surrounding countryside crawled into his field of view. There had been no sensation of motion in spite of the high takeoff acceleration; the old vessel’s gravity compensators, at least, were working. He had been taken to space construction sites on ships where they hadn’t been, and traveling with a bunch of spacesick and regurgitating other-species workmates was not an experience he wanted to repeat. The planetary surface shrank until Nidia filled the viewport. He continued to watch it, telling himself that the ship was simply a scaled-down Sector General without doctors and he shouldn’t worry about it, until they were at jump distance and suddenly there was nothing to see but the flickering grey fog of hyperspace.

Shortly afterward the PA cleared its throat and said, “For the information of passengers who have come aboard at Nidia, the first Meal of Welcome for the next leg of our tour will be served in the dining room in three standard hours’ time. As you probably already know, it has become a tradition that all passengers, except for members of those species who do not customarily use body coverings or decorations, should wear formal dress for this occasion. Thank you for your attention.”

O’Mara was feeling hungry again. In three hours’ time he would be starving.

He dressed in full uniform, the first time he had done so since Sergeant Wenalont had fitted him with it, and feeling safe in the knowledge that as the only Monitor on board he would have to neither give nor return salutes, but to be doubly sure he folded his beret under the shoulder tab. As he stared at himself in the cabin mirror he thought that he looked well, very well, and remembered some of the other things the technical sergeant and tailor had said to him. He wondered if the passenger list included any young, unattached Earth-human females, then sadly put the tls<ought out of his mind. For him a shipboard romance was not an option.

He was a Corps psychologist, O’Mara reminded himself as he stared at his image, but he had to admit that he looked like everybody’s idea of a hefty, scowling policeman.

CHAPTER 16

The room had provision for seating three hundred diners, he saw from the entrance, and even though there were only about two hundred and fifty passengers present, there were no single or empty tables. Instead there were rows of long, twenty-place tables with species-suitable furniture that could be moved around if different physiological classifications wanted to eat and talk together, which many of them were doing. The Orligian headwaiter-or, since it was fully dressed, possibly headwaitress-came forward to lead him to an unoccupied space at a table.

It was probably ship regulation dress, but he thought the black trousers and the hairy head and hands projecting from the neck and cuffs of the stiff, white tunic made it look ridiculous as well as feel very uncomfortable because Orligians usually wore nothing but a light harness that allowed the air to penetrate their fur and cool their bodies.

He was shown to a table containing fourteen Kelgian passengers, a Nidian, two Melfans, and one from Earth, and, inevitably, given the place opposite the Earth-human female.

She was dark-haired, young, and slim, and wore the minimum of jewelry on her head and ears and on the front of her highcollared, formal dress, which fitted her like a thin coat of black paint. Back at the hospital the Earth-human nurses had taken to wearing their whites very tight because, they insisted, it aided them in making fast changes into their other-species environmental protection suits, even though the style did not suit some of them. With this one it did.

O’Mara gave her a brief nod and did the same to the few other-species diners who had turned to look at him, then sat down quickly and fixed his eyes on the menu display. Doubtless Craythorne would have said and done something different, but he just wanted to eat and not talk. That was not to be.

“Good evening, Lieutenant,” she said pleasantly. “I’m afraid it’s a fixed menu on the first night out, and for the rest of the time too, as a matter of fact, although the Earth-human food they serve is usually quite good. If you don’t like it or have any special preferences, you’ll just have to starve.”

“I am starving? said O’Mara, looking up at her, “and I’ve no special preferences. Food is just fuel.”

The Kelgian in the seat beside him spiked its fur in shock and said, “A culinary barbarian! But what else can one expect of a large, over-muscled carnivore. Probably a messy eater, too.”

The young woman looked suddenly concerned. She said quickly, “Lieutenant, please don’t feel offended, Kelgians always say

. . . exactly what they feel, ma’am? O’Mara finished for her. He tried to smile, an exercise to which his facial muscles were long unused, then glanced toward the Kelgian and added, “I don’t have mobile fur to show you how I feel, friend, but right now I am feeling very hungry but not, I think, hungry enough to eat you.

“There is doubt in your mind?” said the other.

Before O’Mara could reply there was a quiet, triple chime that came from somewhere inside their table, the place panel in front of him slid aside, and the first course rose into sight.

“Saved by the bell? said the Kelgian as it bent its over its own platter.

O’Mara didn’t have to speak again until the meal was finished, by which time he was pleasantly distended and feeling well disposed toward everyone in general but not, he told himself firmly, toward anyone in particular.

“You’re looking much happier, Lieutenant,” said the young woman. “What do you think of the ship’s food now?”

“It’s still only fuel? said O’Mara, “but premium grade.”

“That is a very large and energy-hungry body you have there,” she said. “But I’d say, even before we get to see you in a swimsuit, that you are a heavy energy user as well because you don’t seem to store any of it as fat. Do you like to swim?”

“The water restrictions on space service don’t allow it,” he replied. “I can’t swim.”

“Then I’d be happy to teach you,” she said, “just for the company. It isn’t a big pool, but the Kelgians, who make up most of the passenger list, don’t like getting their fur wet and the Melfans just sink and crawl about on the bottom so they say they might as well stay in air. We’re the only Earth-humans on board and will have the place to ourselves most of the time. There wouldn’t be many otherspecies onlookers to embarrass you if you didn’t do well at first. I’ve never taught anyone to swim before so it might be fun. Are you called anything else besides Lieutenant, Lieutenant?”

“O’Mara,” he said. “But about the pool, I’m not sure that I could . . .

“Joan? she said.

“Kledenth? said the Kelgian beside him, “if anyone is interested.”

“I don’t want to sound pushy? she continued, “but believe it or not, you’re the first Earth-human we’ve had on this trip and I’m dying to talk with someone who doesn’t need a translator. And of course you could swim, or at least stay afloat. If y~u take a deep breath and don’t quite empty your lungs, you won’t sink, and if you did get into trouble, I’d be there to grab you and hold your head above water. All you really need to swim is a bit of confidence?

O’Mara didn’t reply.

“Alternatively? she went on, “there’s the exercise machinery if you want to get hot and sweaty, unless you prefer playing table games like chess or scremman. Or there’s the observation gallery, where you can guzzle umpteen varieties of different other-planetary booze until you begin to see things crawling about in hyperspace outside. Which reminds me, do you know what Chorrantir, our only Tralthan passenger, said about alcoholics on its home world? It said that eventually they begin seeing pink Earth-humans.”

“Oh, God? he said, and smiled in spite of himself.

“Come on, Lieutenant O’Mara? Joan persisted. “That uniform looks good on you, but everybody on the ship knows by now that we have a Monitor on board, so you should relax and take it off What do you say?”

“This conversation? said Kledenth suddenly, “is much more interesting than the endless talking from my friends down the table about other-world legends and the heroic, or sometimes utterly reprehensible, figures who populate them. To some of these people it has become a religion rather than a hobby. Well, what do you say, O’Mara?”

“Nothing,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“But there’s nothing to think about? Kledenth went on, its fur rippling in small, uneven waves. “I know that you Earthhumans don’t have our ability to outwardly express inner feelings without ambiguity but, even to me, in this situation the bare words are more than adequate. The female concerned is young and probably physically attractive to you-although as a Kelgian I consider it to be an unsightly life-form whose wobbly chest lumps give it a ridiculous, top-heavy look-and plainly feeling bored and possibly sexually frustrated because she was the only member of ~ species among the passengers. Now a same-species male has come among us and the situation has changed for the better. Again I cannot speak with authority, O’Mara, but presumably you, too, are beautiful or have other male attributes which she finds attractive . . .

O’Mara felt his face growing warm. He tried to halt the other with an upraised hand, but either it didn’t know the significance of the gesture or was simply ignoring it.

. . . To me it is clear? Keldenth went on, “that this invitation to widen your experience by learning to swim will, I understand, require you to divest yourselves of all or most of those ridiculous body coverings, and place you in a situation of close physical intimacy which is also, if my understanding of Earth-human sexual practices is correct, the usual prelude to mating. I can foresee you having an interesting and enjoyable voyage. So what do you say, O’Mara?”

He looked away from Kledenth’s narrow, cone-shaped head with its tiny, bright eyes and the rippling neck fur and toward Joan, trying to find the right words to apologize for the embarrassment that the other must have been causing her. But she was staring intently at him, half-smiling and plainly not at all embarrassed but enjoying his obvious discomfit.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant O’Mara,” she said, “but Kledenth is quite right. After spending six weeks with a shipload of Kelgians, their habit of straight talking begins to rub off, so I’m beginning to say exactly what I feel. But it is wrong in thinking that I’m sexually frustrated. It’s same-species conversation and a pool partner I need, not sex. At the risk of sounding repetitious, what do you say?”

O’Mara looked at her but he couldn’t say anything. Suddenly she looked mortified.

“I know it isn’t usual with space service officers? she said, “but have you got a wife already, or a serious woman-friend somewhere?”

He could easily have lied his way out of trouble, but in Kelgian fashion she was being completely, and to Kelgians one always told the truth.

“No? he said.

“Then I don’t understand why you won’t . . .” Joan began, then stopped.

For a long moment she stared at him while her face slowly deepened in color. In the light of the preceding conversation, O’Mara would not have been surprised at anything she said or did, but he had never expected to see her blush.

“Looking closely at you? she continued, doing just that as her eyes moved from his chest and arms that filled the large uniform to the still young but lived-in face that stared out of his shaving mirror every morning, “I find this very difficult to believe, and I don’t want to give offense, but have I made a serious mistake? Do you not find my company attractive because I’m, well, the wrong gender?”

“No? said O’Mara seriously, “the wrong species.”

She stared at him openmouthed and aghast.

Kledenth said, “Are you getting therapy for it?”

Slowly she began to laugh, loudly and long. O’Mara stared at her without changing his expression until the laughter subsided into a broad smile.

“You sounded so, so serious when you said that? she said, “and you look so dour and unapproachable that I never suspected that you could have a sense of humor. But don’t ever make a joke like that in the pooi or you’ll be the one responsible for drowning me.”

In the event, neither of them drowned, although the enthusiasm she displayed while making sure he stayed afloat made the process feel like a bout of mixed wrestling. And while they were sitting on loungers at the edge of the pool before or after a swimming lesson it was worse, or better, because she could see that he was attracted to her. She kept telling him to relax, to be less serious about everything and to remember that he was, after all, on leave. It was obvious that he was becoming a challenge to her. But he wasn’t playing hard to get, just feeling too embarrassed and uncertain about himself to play at all. He kept trying to find e,~cuses to return to his cabin to avoid being alone at the pool with ler for too long.

He was, after all, only human.

In the dining room, on the recreation deck, and in the big observation lounge, where there would be nothing to look at but each other until Kreskhallar emerged from hyperspace, the soft assault continued although attimes it became less frontal. In the lounge there was nothing to do but talk, usually about and often with the other passengers, and drink various other-world concoctions that were intended to lower his resistance and/or remove his inhibitions, which they didn’t. She said very little about herself other than that she had recently graduated top of her year-she didn’t mention her specialty-and that to celebrate her parents had paid for this five-world, star-traveling convention that would enable her to visit worlds she was never likely to see otherwise while indulging her hobby among people of like mind.

O’Mara told her even less about himself, because the uniform, which he had taken to wearing on every social occasion like a suit of green armor, told her what he did in real life.

But there was one evening, when the ship was ten hours out of Traltha’s planetary capital, Naorthant, and the stars and myriad moons of the Tralthan system had been shining into the darkened observation lounge, when he had returned alone to his cabin with his resistance very low indeed.

Angrily he wondered why he was acting like some stupid knight errant from the legends that the passengers discussed endlessly among themselves. What was he trying to prove? She was an intelligent and very desirable young women, so much so that he couldn’t understand why she had any time for a coarse, ugly person like himself at all. And there was no way that it could become a permanent commitment, because it would end when Kreskhallar returned her to Earth in four weeks’ time. Nobody in Sector General would ever know about it, whatever “it” turned out to be, and if they did find out, neither Craythorne nor anyone e>~ would care. He was on leave, after all, and he had been told by his chief to relax and enjoy himself.

He wasn’t being unfaithful, he told himself again and again as he tossed sleepless in his bunk while in the darkness of the cabin pictures formed of Joan wearing even less than she had worn in the pool. It was utterly stupid, probably even insane, to feel that he was being unfaithful to someone who didn’t even know he was alive.

CHAPTER 19

H is idea of casual dress would have been a clean set of Monitor green coveralls with the insignia removed, but Joan would have none of that. Instead she insisted that he dress like a tourist for the sightseeing trips of Traltha’s famed beauty spots and, inwardly kicking and screaming, he was dragged into the Earth-human section of the spaceport’s shopping mall, where she became a sartorial tyrant regarding his wardrobe. He had never been the kind of person who merged into the background, O’Mara thought ruefully, but the result was so loud and garish that he was sure people would be able to hear as well as see him coming.

Traltha was a heavy planet pulling two-plus Earth Gs which meant that, except when sleeping or resting flat, they were required to wear gravity-nullifier harnesses at all times. O’Mara could have stood upright and moved about without one, but the others did not have his experience on space construction sites and could have fallen over and broken something and he would, after all, merely have been showing off.

The first time Joan appeared wearing hers she remarked that the antigravity harness could easily have doubled as a medieval Earth chastity belt.

On the atmosphere flights to justly famous Dunelton Gorge and the beautiful Bay of Trammith, and during the two-day stopovers for sightseeing, they traveled, talked, seriously and otherwise, and had all their meals together, but O’Mara had the feeling that a little distance was beginning to grow between them. By then he had learned how to swim well enough to try doing it from the gently sloping golden beach that fringed the bay, accompanied, naturally, by his shapely lifeguard. But their tour guide forbade all swimming, pointing out that Trammith was a nature preserve sparsely populated by a rare and protected species of sea predators who didn’t care what or who they ate, so there was no close physical contact with her either in or out of the water.

Had she simply given up on him, he wondered, because he had refused to take the many chances she had given him and was backing off while she still had some pride left? Or, now that he no longer wore uniform and was beginning to show more interest in her, was she trying to encourage him further by playing hard to get?

Only a nasty, devious-minded psychologist, he told himself, would have a thought like that.

He couldn’t believe that someone with his unfriendly personality could get into a situation like this. As soon as they returned to Naorthant spaceport he could simply detach himself from it by going to the Monitor office and boarding the next available ship going somewhere, anywhere, else. But that would be a stupid as well as a cowardly thing to do because, he was beginning to realize, he had been having a very enjoyable if recently a frustrating time on Kreskhallar. So whatever way the situation developed, he told himself firmly, it wouldn’t be all bad.

Early on the first night out they were on the recreation deck looking out at the stars and blue-green, mottled image of Traltha shrinking astern while they argued about the Arthurian legend of ancient Earth.

. . . This is another one of your legends that I’ve never understood? Kledenth was saying. “You had an aging, wise, and enlightened king who, because of the pressures of maintaining order in its country, neglected the physical and emotional needs of its much younger life-mate and queen, who in turn became so emotionally involved with its younger and physically more attractive bodyguard that it ignored the promises of fidelity it had already made and ultimately an unlawful mating for pleasure took place. As a result the once stable and prospering kingdom disintegrated and everybody died, or lived unhappily ever after. I read the story and watched some of the dramatizations, but I still can’t understand why the king allowed it to happen. Was it as wise as you say, unable to communicate its emotions, blind, or just plain stupid? I think it’s a bad story that doesn’t deserve to be told.”

“The point is’ said Joan, “that it’s a bad, sad story that could have been good. I don’t mind if the characters have to suffer provided there is a happy ending. But if people could read the signals correctly, there would be a happy ending without anyone having to suffer?

She looked at O’Mara and quickly looked away again.

“If it had happened on Kelgia” said Kledenth, “both the queen s and the bodyguard’s fur would have warned the king of what was happening right from the beginning. It could have paid more attention to its young life-mate or got rid of the bodygard, nonviolently since it liked them both. And speaking of emotional signals, O’Mara, are you still misreading or just ignoring yours?”

“My favorite character in that story is Merlin? said O’Mara, trying to move the conversation onto safer ground, “the magician who went through time in reverse and met the elderly king long before meeting Arthur as a boy. Merlin has never been given the attention he deserves, and even though time travel in either direction is impossible . . .

“There speaks the typical hardheaded technocrat? Joan said softly. “Is there no room in your mind for magic?”

“As a child I had plenty of room 1here for magic? said O’Mara, “but only while reading or, as now, talking about the story. Centuries ago it was the technocrats who formed groups and came together as you people are doing now, but they did it to discuss and write and dream about the effects of future advances in science. Now it has all happened. We have star travel, frequent contact and commerce with other-species sapients, antigravity, advanced medicine, everything, and so there is very little room left to us for scientific dreaming. Yet on every civilized planet there are individuals or groups who spend their spare time thinking about, writing about, or discussing the magic and legends of their pasts. Magic is all we have left.”

There was a moment of silence that was broken by Joan. “So you are a closet fantasy fan? she said. “O’Mara, you’re a strange and very interesting man, as well as being a waste of a valuable natural resource, with muscles.”

Kledenth rippled its fur and said, “O’Mara, normally I would tell you exactly what I think and feel about this situation, and you. But I have been studying a tourist book about polite and nonoffensive conversational usage and wish to practice it before we visit Earth. I think your insensitive behavior toward this female makes me conclude that you are mentally disadvantaged, visually impaired, and that your parents were unmarried.”

Before O’Mara could think of a suitably polite response he felt the instant of vertigo that marked their insertion into hyperspace followed by a momentary unsteadiness in the deck underfoot. The artificial-gravity system, he guessed, had made a less than smooth transition during the changeover from compensating for the five-G thrust of the main engines to the weightlessness of hyperspace. Right now the officer responsible would be having harsh words said to him, her, or it by the captain. Even minor fluctuations in the artificial G could cause nausea in some life-forms and spacesickness on a modern interstellar passenger vessel was just not supposed to happen. Apparently the others hadn’t noticed anything.

“Well, there’s nothing more to see here? said Joan. She tried to encircle his upper arm gently with her long, delicate fingers and pull him away from the viewing panel. “Let’s go for another swimming lesson. I haven’t shown you everything yet.”

CHAPTER 20

Their single Tralthan passenger had completed its round-trip tour and left the ship on its home world, where two others, who as honeymooners were no longer single in either sense of the word, had come aboard. As yet they had shown no interest in otherspecies legends or in anything but each other apart from galloping ponderously up and down the sloping ramp on one side of the pool.

“Theoretically,” said O’Mara, “it is possible for two Earthhumans and a pair of overenthusiastic Tralthans to swim together, but . . .”

“We’d be mad in the head to try it” Joan finished for him. Laughing, she added, “Am I right in thinking that you dislike the water, Kledenth?”

“You’re wrong,” said the Kelgian, ruffling its fur. “I intensely hate, detest, and abhor the water. Let’s move over to the lounger beside the direct-vision panel. There’s nothing to see, but at least we’ll be out of range of the liquid fallout.”

They picked their way between the multi-species exercising and gaming equipment that filled the remainder of the recreation deck area. Apart from the swimmers, two Nidians playing something fast and complicated that involved knocking two tiny white balls between them, and a Melfan who was lying reading on something that resembled a surrealistic wastepaper basket, they had the place to themselves. Kledenth curled itself into a thick, furry S on a nearby mattress while Joan and O’Mara stretched out on loungers.

With nothing but grey hyperspace showing beyond the big direct-vision panel, they lay watching the two Tralthans charging in and out of the pooi and slapping at the water with their total of eight tentacles while making untranslatable noises to each other that sounded like hysterical foghorns. Every few seconds they were hidden by clouds of self-created spray.

“Extroverts,” said Kledenth.

Joan laughed suddenly and said, “Now, there is a life-form that really enjoys swimming?

“Not so” said O’Mara, watching them and trying not to allow the concern he was feeling from reaching his voice. “They love playing in water and they’re safe so long as their breathing orifices aren’t below the surface for more than a few minutes. But their body density is too great for them to be able to stay afloat even with the aid of maximum muscular effort. Those two are being very foolish.”

“Lieutenant O’Mara” she said, wriggling her slender body int8 a more comfortable position on the lounger in a way that immediately upped his blood pressure, “I bow to your superior knowledge of nonswimming Tralthans. But they can’t go on not swimming and expending energy at that rate for much longer, and then it will be our turn to make fools of ourselves . . . What the hell!”

Slowly their loungers were tipping sideways as if trying to roll their bodies onto the deck, which had developed a gentle slope in the same direction. Water spilled over the nearest edge of the pool and rolled in a six-inch tidal wave toward them, breaking against the deck supports of intervening equipment as it came. Suddenly the deck tilted in the opposite direction, and the miniature tidal wave gurgled to a stop and began flowing back into the pooi as the deck and their loungers became level again. The Tralthans were still creating so much turbulence that they apparently hadn’t noticed anything.

Again O’Mara felt the instant of vertigo characteristic of reemergence into normal space. He didn’t have to look at the directvision panel to know that it was again showing the stars and that, even though they had been traveling for only a short time in the hyperdimension, the Traltha system had been left far astern. A few seconds later the lounger padding pushed him gently into the air as they went weightless.

This was not a normal occurrence, he knew, particularly on a passenger vessel. Plainly Kreskhallar was having problems, perhaps serious ones. Joan was looking frightened and Kledenth’s fur was agitated.

“There’s nothing to worry about? he said, knowing that he was lying reassuringly to one Earth-person even though there was a Kelgian present who would accept it as the truth. “Is this your first experience of weightlessness? It looks as if the artificial gravity is on the blink, so just hold on to something solid until . . .

He broke off as the ship’s public-address system cleared its throat.

“This is your captain? it said. “Please remain calm. A minor malfunction has occurred in our artificial-gravity system. There is no danger to the ship and the period of weightlessness is a temporary inconvenience for which I can only apologize. Will all passengers currently occupying their cabins please remain in them until further notice. Those in other parts of the ship, particularly if they are in large, open areas such as the recreation deck, must return to their cabins as soon as possible. Anyone who lacks experience in weightless or low-G maneuvering should request assistance from a crew member, or from a fellow passenger with the necessary ability to assist you to your quarters . . .

He was aware of sideways motion, so gentle and gradual that he wasn’t surprised that the others hadn’t noticed it.

“As you will already have seen if you are close to a direct-vision port,” the captain continued, “we have returned to normal space, where we are able to apply lateral spin to the ship so that centrifugal force in the cabin areas inboard of the outer hull will replace the artificial gravity for the time necessary to repair the . . .

“You may take me to my cabin, Lieutenant O’Mara,” Joan broke in, holding onto her lounger with one hand and grabbing O’Mara’s wrist with the other. “The captain just made that an order?”

“No!” said O’Mara loudly, pulling his arm away and looking all around the big room for the nearest communicator. He spotted it about twenty meters away on the far side of the direct-vision panel. It had been years since he’d worked in gravity-free conditions, he thought as he grasped the sides of the lounger, drew his knees up until his feet were between his hands and prepared to make a weightless jump but it was an ability that one never forgot.

“Dammit,” said Joan, her face red with anger and embarrassment, “you didn’t have to be so bloody definite about it!”

“I was talking to that stupid captain, not you,’ O’Mara said angrily. He launched himself carefully in the direction of the communicator and continued speaking quickly as he moved. “Listen to me, carefully. You and Kledenth get out of here. Push off from the loungers, gently, and aim where you need to go or you’ll spin and lose orientation. Or do it in stages by pulling yourselves along or pushing against intervening fixed equipment to the nearest side wall and then around to the entrance. On no account take a shortcut across the deck or ceiling or go anywhere near the pool. Tell that Nidian and the two Melfans to do the same, and the Tralthans if you can make them hear you. Water is dangerous stuff in the weightless condition because it falls apart into . . . Just listen while I’m on the communicator, I don’t have time to explain twice.”

He landed neatly on his hands and knees beside the unit, steadied himself, and jabbed the attention button. The screen lit with the image of the ship’s crest and a cool, translated voice said that the call would be dealt with as soon as possible and to please wait. He looked around quickly.

Joan was relaying his instructions to the other passengers while trying to help Kledenth, but the public-address system and the Tralthans were making so much noise that her voice lacked the necessary volume and authority to get results. So far as he could see, nobody had moved from their original positions. He jabbed the button again.

The captain was saying,” . . . We will increase our spin until the centrifugal force inboard of the outer hull matches the gravity pull of one standard Earth G although, until the artificial-gravity system is returned, the outer cabin wall will be the floor. Once again we apologize for this temporary inconvenience. That is all.”

O’Mara swore again and this time he kept his thumb on the button. Behind him he could see the water slowly rising above the sides of the pooi and, its edges still held by the cohesion of surface tension, begin to roll down on them like a vast gob of clear syrup. Suddenly bulges and ripples caused by movements of the Tralthans appeared all over the slow-moving, transparent mass. Great, uneven lumps grew out of the surface like fat, shapeless arms that broke free and moved like monstrous, slow-moving amoebas toward the inner hull. The Tralthan noise was beginning to sound frightened, the flailing of their tentacles agitated rather than playful.

He noticed the other button then, the yellow one with the transparent cover and the warning sign, and swore again. This time it was at his own stupidity for not remembering that, on the older Melfan-built civilian vessels, yellow was the color denoting urgency rather than red. He flipped up the cover so hard that it came away in his hand and stabbed at the button as if it was a mortal enemy.

A boney, Melfan head appeared. The eyes stared at him for an instant; then an impatient, translated voice said, “Passengers are not allowed to use this channel unless there is.”

“An emergency, I know? he broke in. “O’Mara, Monitor Corps, on the recreation deck. Please connect me with your captain. I must speak to him, her, or it at once. Meanwhile, cancel the orJer to spin the ship. Do that now?”

“Sir, you have no operational authority on this civilian vessel? the other replied angrily. “And the captain is busy right now.”

“Then I’ll talk to one of the responsible ship’s officers? said O’Mara. “Presumably that means you?”

The exoskeletal features were incapable of changing color or registering emotion, but he could hear the Melfan’s pincers opening and closing with a sound like castanets. He moved to the side of the screen to give the other a clearer view of what was happening in the room, then continued speaking.

“The weightlessness and now the increasing spin are combining to empty the swimming pool? he said, forcing himself to speak slowly and clearly. “Unless the spin, and the buildup of centrifugal force, is checked right now, within a few minutes, at the present rate of descent, many tons of water will fall against the inner hull. The hull structure will take it, but can the seals of the direct-vision panel?”

“The seals can take it,” said the Melfan, and added, “Well, probably.”

“With the falling water? O’Mara went on, “will be the weight of two adult Tralthan swimmers. Can they take that, too?”

“Negative? said the officer, swiveling its head to look offscreen. “Captain! Emergency Blue Three. Risk of imminent hull breach on the rec deck. I’m putting the image on your repeater screen. Kill the spin and return to weightless conditions, now!”

“No? said O’Mara sharply. “We need a little weight here, no more than one-eighth G, to allow the water to stabilize so we can rescue the swimmers and nonaquatics. Weightless it will be scattered in liquid lumps all over the place with no stable surface to swim to. In those conditions people can panic and drown.”

He stopped as the Melfan’s face was replaced by the hairy, Orligian features of the captain.

“Understood, Lieutenant? it growled through its translator. “No more thap one-eighth G. You’ve got it. I’m sending the ship’s medic, Dr. Sennelt, to you. It’s all I can spare right now. Keep this vision channel open so’s we can see what’s happening . . . ?”

Before the other had finished speaking, O’Mara had launched himself toward the tangled bodies of Joan and Kledenth.

The Kelgian was trying to wrap itself around Joan, who was trying desperately to push both of them sideways to escape the slowly falling mass of water that was now only a few meters above them. But neither of them were in contact with anything solid, so they were just rotating untidily around their common center of gravity. O’Mara landed on the nearest lounger, wrapped his lower legs around it, grabbed Joan firmly by the wrists, and pulled her free. Then he transferred his gfip to her upper arms.

“Listen to me? he said urgently. “There’s no time to get both of you to the side wall. You’ve got to jump straight up, as hard as you can, in a vertical dive through the water.” He glanced upward at the struggling, shadowy bodies of the Tralthans and added, “No, angle your dive to the right or you’ll hit those two. Dive fast and cleanly, like you always do. You might hit turbulence, air pockets, places where there’s nothing but bubbles that you can’t see through. Keep going, don’t stop to breathe or you could disorientate and drown, until your momentum takes you through to clear air and beyond to the entrance wall. Did you understand that? Now, hyperventilate for a few seconds, then go!”

She nodded and swore, still struggling to pull free of the panicking Kledenth. O’Mara knew exactly where to grab a male Kelgian to make it let go. He gripped her by the upper thighs, steadied her feet against the deck, and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Kledenth. Go!”

O’Mara wrapped both arms around the Kelgian’s middle, looked up quickly then sideways toward the wall. The lower surface of the water was rippling and growing enormous blisters that bulged downward less than two meters and about ten seconds distant in space and time. They might just make it to the side wall before the watery mass landed on them. Kledenth saw it, too, and began making high-pitched, terrified sounds. Just as he was about to kick away from the lounger framework on a path that would take them laterally along the deck, it tried to wriggle out of his arms.

“You’ll be all right? he said. “Hold still, dammit!”

But instead of holding still, Kledenth’s body went into a panic convulsion and suddenly O’Mara’s face was buried in rippling fur. One foot slipped from the lounger frame just as he jumped. Instead of flying toward the side wall they spun together into the deck. He had barely time to fill his lungs before the water was all around them.

Through the fog of air bubbles escaping from Kledenth’s fur he saw the dark, indistinct shape of one of the Tralthans falling slowly down on them. Desperately he felt around with his free hand in the opaque turbulence for the lounger frame, found it, and, bending at the knees and changing to a two-handed grip on the Kelgian’s frantically wriggling body, he planted his feet against the frame and prepared to kick out hard. But too late.

The Tralthan’s massive body landed on them, pinning O’Mara’s feet and the Kledenth’s lower body to the deck. There was a sudden, bright explosion of bubbles as the sudden pressure from the Tralthan’s body pushed all the air out of the Kelgian’s lungs. He fought the instinctive urge to grasp with the pain in his feet and fought instead to keep as much air as possible in his own lungs.

He was going to need it.

CHAPTER 21

O‘Mara released his grip on Kledenth and quickly bent double to get his hands under the Tralthan’s massive body. It was unconscious and unable to help him. In normal conditions it would have been impossible to lift it but, supported as it was by the water and with less than a quarter G acting on it, he should be able to roll the dead weight off his feet and the Kelgian’s trapped lower body.

The Tralthan’s body had lost three-quarters of its weight, but it still possessed all of its inertia. He gripped it solidly at the roots of two of its four tentacles and strained upward until he felt as if his arms would tear off at the shoulders. Slowly it began to move and just as slowly kept on moving. Suddenly his feet were free and so was the trapped Kelgian. But he had used too much of his available oxygen. The turbulence had settled and the water was no longer clouded by bubbles, but large, throbbing patches of blackness were keeping him from seeing clearly and he felt as if the Tralthan beside them were sitting on his chest. He wrapped his arms around Kledenth’s middle again, felt for the deck surface with his feet. The stale air in his lungs burst out in an explosion of bubbles as he used the last of the strength in his leaden legs to jump straight up.

He was startled at how soon they broke surface and, gasping desperately for air as he looked around, he immediately saw why. The captain had remotely opened the airtight doors at each side of the room. Presently they were under the surface and the pool water was gurgling through the openings into two large, adjoining storerooms. The surface was still puckered with tiny, steep-sided, lowgravity wavelets, but the level was dropping rapidly. Suddenly his feet were in contact with the deck and he was able to hold Kledenth’s head clear of the water.

The upper body of one of the Tralthan swimmers was emerging slowly from the water. It was choking and gasping and obviously in great emotional distress as it slapped at the water with its tentacles in a desperate effort to find its life-mate, who was still under the surface, but he knew that it would be fine as soon as it cleared its air passages. High above him the Melfan and the Nidian passengers were holding on to fixed equipment near the entrance and Joan was doing the same about five meters distant. He was about to call to her when a Melfan wearing an antigravity harness and with a caduceus on its crew insignia appeared in the entrance and came swooping down toward them. Dr. Sennelt had arrived.

“Doctor? he said urgently. “This is passenger Kledenth, Kelgian, non-aquatic, immersed and unconscious for two plus minutes with emptied lungs. Will you be careful to check for . . .”

“Don’t worry, sir? said the medic as it cradled Kledenth’s limp body in its triple-jointed forward limbs. “I’ll take over from here. How about you, Lieutenant?”

O’Mara shook his head. “I’m all right? he said impatiently. “But there could be internal trauma as a result of it being rolled on by a drowning Tralthan, who is still underwater, lying on its side and unconscious.”

“That could be very serious? said Dr. Sennelt as it tapped buttons on its antigravity harness and the limp body of Kledenth and it began rising toward the entrance, “but there’s nothing much I can do right now without special equipment to lift it upright and out of the water. I’ll have a team with a Tralthan-sized antigravity pallet here in ten minutes and be back myself to supervise?

“That could be too late . . .” O’Mara broke in.

“Meanwhile? Sennelt called back as it rose to the entrance, “I’m taking Kledenth to sickbay.”

O’Mara swore, not quite under his breath, looked at Joan, who was still clinging to the furniture above him, and said urgently, “Joan, would you climb down here, carefully but quickly please? I need your help.” He swung around to the other Tralthan, who was still gasping and spluttering but no longer seemed distressed, and pointed at its unconscious life-mate, whose flank and one side of its head were coming into view above the subsiding water level.

“You’ll be all right in a few minutes? he said quickly, “but right now I need you to help lift your life-mate onto its feet and hold it there. You know how important that is for your particular lifeform. Move around to this side. Slide your forward tentacles under it, just here and here. Now lift! That’s it. But hold it steady, it’s wobbling all over the place.”

With the two storerooms filled and nowhere else for it to go, the water level was no longer dropping. Only the Tralthan’s six stubby legs and underside were submerged now. O’Mara took a deep breath, hunkered down underwater, and, one by one, tried to pull the legs laterally outward as far as they would go in an attempt to give the body more vertical stability. It was the most intensive period of hard work that he had ever done and, he knew, if he hadn’t already been underwater he would have been sweating like a pig. When it was over and he surfaced gasping, Joan was beside him.

“How can I help?” she said calmly.

“With artificial respiration . . .” O’Mara began, but had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. Then he pointed to one of the Tralthan’s gills before going on quickly, “With their general physical structure and breathing orifices like those-they have four of them-you can understand that they can’t give each other mouthto-mouth resuscitation. But we can. It’s done by first filling our lungs, pressing our lips tightly around the gill opening, and blowing the air in hard. Wait for a count of three, then suck to remove some of the liquid content of the lung, spit out, and repeat the process as regularly and as quickly as you can. I’ll show you.”

He demonstrated briefly then looked at her. “You got that?”

Joan made a face and said, “Yes, but I’m not sure I want it. But oh, well, I did offer.”

Hesitating at first but soon getting into the rhythm, she joined O’Mara in blowing hard, sucking, and spitting out. Only once did she stop to look at him and wipe her lips with the back of her hand.

“Yuk? she said with feeling. “That stuff smells and tastes awful! Are you sure I’m blowing and sucking at the right body orifice?”

“Trust me? said O’Mara.

They continued working for perhaps a minute while the other Tralthan silently held its life-mate upright. It had stopped asking them if they knew what they were doing. He became aware that their patient’s legs were beginning to stiffen and its four tentacles, which had been hanging limply at it sides, were beginning to twitch.

“Quickly, back ofP.” he said urgently. “It’s coming to.”

Suddenly the unconscious Tralthan came alive again, stamping its feet and thrashing around with its tentacles while water, bubbles, and mucus jetted from its gills, until the comforting words and encircling tentacles of its life-mate made it settle down. Joan laughed quietly.

“I think we did it,” said O’Mara.

“Yes,” said Joan, raising a fist in triumph as she looked at him. “And would you believe that was my first time for giving mouth-tomouth?”

Before he could reply, Dr. Sennelt, followed by two other crew members guiding a wide antigravity pallet, dropped down beside them.

“And that’s the first time I’ve ever seen Earth-humans do it to a Tralthan? said Sennelt, clicking a pincer in appreciation. “Very nice work, people. But now we have to move you into the corridor. The Tralthans first, one at a time, then you two can share the pallet for the final trip. The captain is about to . . .

“This is the captain? broke in a voice on the PA. “I am pleased to tell you that the artificial-gravity system on the recreation deck is again functional and will be gradually restored to normal pull within the next fifteen minutes. Passengers are requested to stay clear of the area for three hours to enable us to mop up and replace damaged equipment. No injuries have been reported and we are returning to hyperspace as I speak. Once again, my apologies for any inconvenience caused. That is all.”

While the first Tralthan was being loaded onto the antigravity pallet and moved up to the corridor, Joan stood waist deep in the water looking up at him intently without speaking. Usually she had plenty to say, and her expression and uncharacteristic silence were disconcerting. He felt an awkward question coming on that he would rather not answer.

“That Tralthan resuscitation technique saved its life? she said. “You saved its life. Where did you learn to do that?”

“I meet lots of different species on space establishments,” he replied, telling the truth if not all of it, “and one picks up things. It was simply a bit of other-species first aid. But you did well, really well. It was an unpleasant thing to have to do, but you did it like a professional. You said this was a trip to celebrate your graduation. Was it from medical school?”

“No? said Joan. She looked uncomfortable for a moment, then added, “All right, yes. Technically, that is. I’ve just qualified as a vet.”

“I see? said O’Mara very seriously. “Then you were already accustomed to treating other species, even though the life-forms concerned are not usually sapient. And remember, it was we, not me, who saved its life.”

Before she could reply, the pallet returned from taking the second Tralthan to the corridor and the Orligian crew member guiding it growled politely at them to climb aboard. Their silence continued after they disembarked in the corridor and the transparent door of the recreation deck hissed shut behind them.

Gradually the walls of the corridor moved into the vertical again and the floor was down again, as was that of the recreation deck. Through the transparent door they watched the water roll from the opposite wall and pour out of the two storage compartments to slosh about the floor until it found its way back into the swimming pool. Apart from the items of furniture that had been demolished by the slowly falling Tralthans and a few puddles here and there, the place had returned to normal. Suddenly a nearby public-address speaker cleared it throat.

“This is the captain speaking? it said. “Would the Earthhuman passenger Kelleher and Monitor Corps Lieutenant O’Mara oblige me by coming to the control deck at hour twenty-one hundred this evening. Thank you.”

“O’Mara? said Joan, smiling, “the captain is going to thank us officially, and maybe even give you a medal. And so it should.”

She looked at him with sudden concern and went on, “But I’m not sure about the medal. There was a while back there when you seemed to be giving the captain orders. Senior ship’s officers can be a bit stuffy about insubordination, even from a passenger. Still, maybe it will just say nice, pompous things to you and allow you to travel free on this trip.”

“As a Corps officer in the space service? he said, “I travel free anyway. The thanks or medals aren’t important right now. It’s Kledenth that I’m worried about. Having a Tralthan land on it, even a quarter-weight one, could cause serious injury . . .”

He broke off as Dr. Sennelt appeared suddenly behind them. It said, “Passenger Kledenth is doing fine, sir. We’ve pumped out its lungs, are in the process of drying out its fur, and have given it a head-to-tail internal scan with optimum results. As a precaution we have placed it on continuous monitor observation, so it is unable to receive visitors at present. But please believe me, you have nothing to worry about. The Tralthan you resuscitated also said that it is fine and insisted that it requires no treatment other than the ministrations of its new life-mate. It elected to return to their cabin, presumably to rest. But it’s you two who concern me now. Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Have you any respiratory difficulties? Or delayed shock? Would anyone want to visit sickbay for a checkup?”

They shook their heads.

“Among Earth-humans? said the doctor, “I’m told that particular form of head gesture indicates a negative response. Good. The captain will speak to you after dinner, but before I leave you I would like to express my own personal thanks for what you’ve done. A passenger terminating during a pleasure cruise, whether through age, injury, or a stupid accident as this could have been, is a bad thing. It is bad in itself and, it shames me even to mention this, very bad for the future prospects of the small, independent, and, well, economically run spaceline to which Kreskhallar belongs. So we have to thank you for more than you perhaps realize. But now I have a long accident report to write.”

“Before you go, Doctor? said O’Mara quickly, “I’m still worried about Kledenth. I’d be grateful if you could let me know of any change in its condition, however small.”

As Sennelt turned to go it said, “I would be pleased to do that for you, sir.”

A few minutes after it left them the door of the recreation deck hissed open to allow four mixed-species cleaning and repair personnel with their robots to go inside. O’Mara had never derived much pleasure from watching other people work and, it seemed, neither had Joan because she was looking only at him. Before she could say anything, he pretended to shiver.

“The corridor air-conditioning is a bit low,” he said, smiling. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and dress for dinner.”

CHAPTER 22

A few of the Kelgians at their table noticed the absence of Kledenth and talked about it and the artificial-gravity failure, but only among themselves. Plainly the news of the recreation-deck incident was not yet common knowledge, and O’Mara didn’t want to talk about it, either. In fact, except for the occasional polite monosyllable, he was refusing to talk about anything. Joan was beginning to look annoyed with him. Then suddenly she stared over his shoulders and smiled.

“If you’re still worrying about Kledenth? she said, “you can stop right now.”

He twisted around in his chair to see Dr. Sennelt and Kledenth picking their way between the tables toward them. The Kelgian undulated forward quickly and curled its body into its seat. It was the doctor who spoke first.

“You wanted me to tell you how my casualty was progressing, Lieutenant,” it said, “so I decided to show you instead. Kledenth is physically mobile and says that it is feeling well, but hungry. Clinically these are very good signs. It has absolutely nothing to worry about.”

It clicked a pincer in farewell and turned away.

Joan was still smiling, but not O’Mara. He was relieved, but at the same time he was inclined to distrust a well-meaning but overoptimistic ship’s doctor who could have only limited physiological knowledge and experience where an other-species patient was concerned. Similar thoughts must have been going through Joan’s mind.

“It’s great to have you back? she said. “But how are you really feeling?”

“How d’you think I’m feeling?” Kledenth replied in its ungracious Kelgian fashion. “I was sat on by a Tralthan, nearly drowned, my fur got wet all over and stuck to me for hours. It was a horrible sensation, like I’d suddenly lost the ability to communicate feelings. I’m feeling terrible, but all right. Kelgians don’t have much bone structure, except in the head, so we’re inclined to squish and bounce back instead of breaking up. Your concern is appreciated.”

O’Mara still wasn’t satisfied. He said, “Are you sure there are no symptoms of—”

“Lieutenant? Kledenth broke in. “You’re beginning to sound like Dr. Sennelt, who told me that you probably saved my life. For that favor I feel grateful, more grateful than I can say in simple, unsupported words to a being who is unable to read my fur. But this great favor I shall totally discount if you cause me to die of starvation. I need to eat, O’Mara, not talk.”

Both Earth-humans laughed and O’Mara found conversation easier as they continued the meal. Even Kledenth was talking as well as eating, but mostly to its same-species friends farther up the table. But his attention kept drifting from Joan to the animated fur of the Kelgian beside him. He thought she hadn’t noticed until she leaned suddenly toward him.

“O’Mara? she said quietly, “what the hell is bothering you?”

He forced a laugh that sounded hollow even to himself and said, “You mean, apart from you?”

She shook her head impatiently. “Unfortunately,” she said, “I don’t bother you, at least not very much. You’ve hardly taken your eyes off Kledenth since it arrived. Why?”

He hesitated and tried to choose words which would sound neither egocentric nor too critical of the ship doctor’s ability, which, he felt sure, would in ordinary circumstances have been adequate. O’Mara was a layman, after all, and not supposed to know anything about the subject. But he did know a lot about Kelgian physiology, every bit as much as his mind partner and top medical specialist knew, and he would be in serious trouble if he told anyone else how he knew it, because the Marrasarah mind tape should have been erased. The trouble was that when a Kelgian was apparently sharing his mind, it was very difficult to lie.

“Sennelt is a good enough doctor,” he said. “What worries me is that it might not know enough about Kelgian anatomy.”

“And you do?”

“Yes? he said.

She frowned at him for a moment, then said seriously, “Apart from a few hints about space construction work, for which you certainly have the muscles, you’ve been reticent about what exactly it is that you do. Are you a medic, or were you once a medic, but for some reason want to hide that fact?”

He shook his head. “I have no formal medical qualifications.”

“But you think you know enough about other-species first aid? she went on, “to second-guess the ship’s medical officer? What the hell do you do, exactly?”

O’Mara wished again that there weren’t a truth-telling Kelgian influencing so much of his mind.

“I’m a psychologist,” he said.

She sat back suddenly in her chair, her face reddening with anger and embarrassment. After a moment she said, “And in the way of psychologists, you have been calmly and clinically observing my behavior while I was trying to, to make a fool of myself over you?”

O’Mara shook his head and held her eyes for a long moment, then said quietly, “I was observing myself, not very calmly nor dinically, trying not to make a fool of myself over you.

She continued to stare at him without speaking, but her angry color was slowly returning to normal.

Apologetically, he went on, “I should have told you, I suppose. But I’m on leave and, well, nobody needed to know.” He smiled. “If it helps you feel any better about it, I’m an other-species psychologist.”

“An other-species . . . ?” she began, then laughed quietly. “I think that makes me feel worse! But it explains your concern for Kledenth. Are you diagnosing a condition Sennelt missed purely from behavioral observation?”

“Not entirely? he replied, still telling the truth but not all of it. “In my job I’ve met, talked with, and come to know many Kelgians, one in particular very well, and I know how they feel and think. Kledenth may not yet be aware that there is anything wrong with it, but there is.

Joan’s anger and embarrassment had been replaced by interest now. She said, “If I understand you correctly, the compression of its body when the Tralthan fell on it, and the subsequent neardrowning, have caused a delayed-action but potentially severe emotional trauma. Are you trying to avoid or relieve this condition by tinkering with its mind?”

O’Mara shook his head. “Unfortunately? he said very seriously, “Kledenth’s condition is purely physical. If left untreated the emotional problems will surely follow.”

“Then I don’t understand you? said Joan. “Explain it to me.

He didn’t want to explain, because that would lead to telling her all about the mind-tape trials and virtually everything else about himself, but neither did he want to lie to her. He was saved from having to make the decision by Kledenth turning suddenly to rejoin the conversation.

“I thought I heard talking about me? it said. “Is it more interesting and important than the things these others are saying?”

“Probably not as interesting? O’Mara replied, slipping automatically into direct, Kelgian speech mode, “but certainly more important. Have you retold your adventure often enough, and heard enough praise and sympathy from your friends, to give us your undivided attention?”

Kledenth’s fur rose into irritated spikes, but Joan spoke before it could reply. Plainly she was happier with the more tactful and gentle approach.

“We were worried? she said, “in case you are not as well as Dr. Sennelt thinks you are. We think there may be aftereffects. To reassure us, the lieutenant wishes to ask you a few questions?”

“More than a few’ said O’Mara.

A new pattern of ripples disturbed Kledenth’s fur. It turned its attention from Joan and brought its small, cone-shaped head to within a few inches of O’Mara’s face and said, “Then ask them?

“Right? said O’Mara. “Your medial body and legs were pressed between the drowning Tralthan and the deck for a period of fourplus minutes before you were freed. Are you aware of any discomfort in these limbs, or from the muscles that operate them, or from the tegument overlaying those areas to which the fur is attached? Have you noticed any impairment of movement or lack of sensation in these limbs? Any feelings of surface pain, or tingling or any other unusual sensations from other parts of the body not directly affected by the temporary constriction? I realize that the recent nature of the incident and the associated emotional trauma means that there will be a psychological component in your relating of the symptoms. I shall make allowances for any emotional coloration, so be as objective or subjective as you wish. Speak.”

Joan was frowning again. “O’Mara, aren’t you being a little insensitive . . . ?” she began, but Kledenth cut her off.

“I am aware of many aches and pains” it said. “They may be subjective but from inside they feel as objective as hell. The doctor didn’t ask as many questions as this. What’s wrong? You’re beginning to frighten me.

He could see that growing fear, or rather the memories and clinical experience of the top Kelgian surgeon in his mind enabled him to see and read it from the tight, uneven pattern of ripples that were agitating Kledenth’s fur.

“Fear” he said, “is a temporary condition which disappears when the cause and uncertainty associated with it is understood and removed. Your condition may or may not be temporary, that is what I’m trying to establish. What exactly did Sennelt say and, more important, do to you?”

“It said a lot,” the Kelgian replied, “mostly reassuring things and advice about taking it easy for a few days and not worrying. It went over me with one of those portable scanner things, then suspended me in null-G while it used a hot-air fan to dry my fur. It made me walk around sickbay and watched until I told it I felt hungry, then it brought me here. What else did you expect it to do?”

O’Mara paused for a moment, thinking about the limited facilities and, comparatively, nonspecialized and even more limited experience of a ship’s medic who was expected to know only a very little about everything. Sennelt was a good enough doctor, but Kreskhallar wasn’t Sector General.

“In the circumstances.” O’Mara replied, “nothing else. Before or during the drying of your fur did Sennelt spray it with any surface medication, conditioner, or similar substance?”

“No” said Kledenth. “I wouldn’t allow it. My fur needs no such enhancements.”

“I can see that.” said O’Mara. “It is remarkably beautiful and expressive fur. But when you arrived with Sennelt and during the initial conversation with your friends, I noticed a slowing in its overall mobility compared to my earlier observations of you. The fur’s reduced response time to vocal and emotional stimuli is minor and could be due simply to delayed shock or associated psychological factors stemming from your accident, but I’m not entirely satisfied with Sennelt’s prognosis and I intend—”

“You think there’s something wrong with my fur!” Kledenth broke in, its fur standing out in spikes of fear and anger. “But, but what do you know, you’re only a bloody policeman! And if you happen to be right, what can you do about it? O’Mara, you shouldn’t frighten me with talk like this.”

Everyone else at the table had stopped talking to watch, and the fur on the other Kelgian diners was twitching in sympathy with Kledenth’s distress. Even Joan, who was unable to read fur, had sensed Kledenth’s feelings and was staring furiously at him. O’Mara raised a hand quickly before she could speak, knowing that she would consider the gesture ill-mannered, but he needed a moment to regain control. For the past few minutes his mind partner had almost taken over.

He knew that the feeling was purely subjective because the mind tape impressed only the donor’s memories. But those memories had included personal experience with dysfunctional fur that it would not have wanted any other member of its species to share. But now it was time to stop thinking and talking like a Kelgian and to say some kindly, reassuring Earth-human words to the badly frightened Kledenth, even though he knew that the reassurance he would give would be less than honest.

“Right now I don’t know what I can do for you.” said O’Mara, “but I promise to do something. In a short time Joan and I will be talking to the captain, who considers that it owes us a favor. I shall ask it for a long consultation with Dr. Sennelt, during which I shall ask for answers to the questions that are troubling us both. It is possible that my worries are without foundation and the doctor will be able to set my mind at rest when, naturally, I shall pass the good news to you without delay. But until then try not to worry because there may not be anything to worry about ~

Kledenth said a word that their translators had not been programmed to handle and its fur began to settle into normal levels of mobility. But before it could go on, the other Kelgians at the table began asking it more questions about what might be wrong and it was suddenly too busy to talk to him. Joan was still looking unfriendly rather than angry. She didn’t speak to him either until they were in the corridor on the way to their appointment with the captain. It was probably subjective, he thought, but it felt as if the airconditioning temperature had been reduced by quite a few degrees.

She said, “You were unnecessarily rough on Kledenth, especially for someone who might not know what he’s talking about. Earlier you told me that you weren’t a medic. But you weren’t talking first aid back there. Is there something you’re keeping to yourself, and are you going to tell me about it?”

“No” said O’Mara.

“Then all I can say” she said coldly, “is that if you were a doctor, or maybe a medical student who couldn’t pass the finals, then they certainly failed you on your bedside manner?

CHAPTER 23

The invitation to visit Kreskhallar’s control deck was a courtesy rarely extended to mere passengers, because it was there that the shipboard god, who was also known to lesser mortals as Captain Grulya-Mar, dwelt and had its august being. For a great, hairy, and bearlike Orligian, it was gracious, unsparing in its compliments and thanks, pompous and condescending. The condescension was probably due to its thinking that this was their first time to see a starship’s control deck, but it didn’t stop talking long enough for O’Mara to tell it that it was only half right.

He could see that Joan was tremendously pleased and impressed and was paying rapt attention to everything Grulya-Mar said or showed them, but he wasn’t sure that he could respect a captain who omitted to introduce its mixed-species fellow officers by name while acting as if they were part of the ship’s equipment he was pointing out. As the brief tour neared its end, the other’s gracious manner became increasingly diluted with impatience.

“I hope you have enjoyed this visit to my control center? it said, “but now there are operational matters I must attend to. Once again, my sincere and personal thanks, and those of my tour operator, for your quick thinking and assessment of the situation on the recreation deck, Lieutenant, and to both of you for your prompt and concerted action in what followed. You may well have saved two lives, Sennelt tells me, and you have certainly preserved the unblemished safety record of my ship.”

Joan, looking pleased and embarrassed, gave a final look around the control deck and said, “We were pleased to help. Thank you, Captain, for your time and courtesy.”

“It was a pleasure? said Grulya-Mar, “but as I’ve already said, the thanks are due entirely to you two, and if there is any favor, anything at all within my power, that I or any of my officers can do for you, you have only to ask.”

Joan began turning away, but stopped when she saw that O’Mara had remained still and facing the captain. He said, “Sir, there is something I would like you to do, and it isn’t a small, shipboard favor.”

The captain hesitated. There was too much facial hair for him to read its expression but its eyes had a wary look as it said, “What exactly do you want me to do for you, Lieutenant?”

“For myself, nothing? O’Mara replied. “The favor is for passenger Kledenth. I strongly suspect that its injuries require urgent specialist attention in a same-species hospital. I respectfully request that Kreskhallar divert to Kelgia without delay.”

“Impossible!” Grulya-Mar burst out. “Our next scheduled world is Melf, where our present Melfan passengers will be leaving us and new ones coming on board. My medical officer has examined Kledenth and reported it to be uninjured and in excellent health.”

“It will not remain that way for long,” said O’Mara.

“Your request is utterly preposterous? said the other angrily. “If you mention your suspicions to passenger Kledenth, you will only cause it unnecessary emotional distress. Sennelt is the expert in this field. Or have you medical qualifications that you haven’t mentioned to us?”

O’Mara shook his head, then said carefully, “I have no formal medical training, but in my work I’ve come to know many Kelgians well . . .” Especially the one who is presently sharing my mind, he thought dryly, and knew that what he was about to say was the absolute truth. . . and have picked up medical information of a kind that is not available to Dr. Sennelt.”

“In your work where?” said the other sharply.

“At Sector General,” said O’Mara.

There was a moment’s silence. He was aware of the captain’s organic ship’s equipment turning away from their control consoles to look at him. Joan was staring at him, too, looking impressed but puzzled. There were very few sapient beings in the Galactic Federation who were unaware of Sector General and what it stood for, and even the angry bristling of the captain’s fur was beginning slowly to subside.

“I see? said Grulya-Mar finally, returning to his pompous, condescending manner. “However, you yourself have admitted that you’ve no qualifications so that the medical information or hearsay that you have picked up, even in the galaxy’s most advanced multispecies hospital, is irrelevant. I will not alter my flight schedule, Lieutenant O’Mara, but I will compromise to this extent. Out of gratitude for the good work you did on the recreation deck, and to relieve the obvious if mistaken concern you feel for this Kelgian passenger, I shall instruct my medical officer to reexamine it in your presence in order to provide you with further reassurance. But only if you yourself can convince Kledenth of the necessity for the reexamination and to accompany you to sickbay.”

It raised a large, hairy hand and added, “You have my permission to go.

When they were back in the corridor leading to the passenger section, Joan said, “You’re a very reticent man, O’Mara. Why didn’t you tell me you were from Sector General? I’ve got a million questions I want to ask about that place, especially from somebody who knows the answers firsthand, and I’m sure the other passengers feel the same way.

“Maybe that’s the reason? he said dryly. “But I’ll answer some of your questions while we’re finding Kledenth and bringing it back with us to sickbay. If you don’t mind, I need you there, too. But persuading it to submit to another examination won’t be easy.”

“I don’t mind? she said. “In fact, I’m looking forward to having a ringside seat at this three-cornered medical battle, because neither Kledenth nor Sennelt will be pleased with you:’ She smiled suddenly and added, “But don’t worry about your powers of persuasion. A multi-species psychologist from Sector General should be able to talk anybody into doing anything.”

It took nearly two hours of intense conversation to convince Kledenth to return to the sickbay, and then it did so only because O’Mara had made it afraid again. Where he was concerned its manner was completely hostile, with Joan it was neutral, and toward Sennelt its fur was reflecting a desperate pleading that the doctor would be able to prove beyond a shadow of O’Mara’s doubts that it was all right.

As it spoke the Melfan’s voice was clinically calm but the pincers that were not engaged in moving the scanner over Kledenth’s lower body were clicking angrily.

It said, “As you can see, if you are capable of reading this deepscan image, the earlier compression effects have cleared and there is no interruption of the blood supply between the hearts, lungs, brain, and the major ambulatory muscles serving the legs and forward manipulators. The areas of subdermal contusion affecting the local capillary and nerve networks that you and, since you talked to it, passenger Kledenth are worried about is minor bruising and transitory. There is no justification for thinking otherwise unless, for some obscure psychological reason, you are trying to justify yourself.”

O’Mara took a firm hold on his temper, then reached forward to take an even tighter grip on the scanner, knowing that in a tugof-war between the Melfan’s pincers and his Earth-human hands there would be no contest.

“May I borrow this for a moment? he said, making a verbal pretense at politeness. He ran the scanner slowly over the area of bruising while closely studying the visual display before going on. “The general contusions are disguising the fact that the blood flow in the capillary network that supplies the tiny, individual muscles that control each strand of fur has been reduced. No gross, traumatic damage is apparent, but the stagnant blood is not clearing fast enough and the micromusculature is being slowly starved of nutrients. The condition is so gradual that there are no marked symptoms, and it is quite understandable that a nonspecialist like yourself would miss them. But the condition is irreversible and, if it isn’t dealt with urgently, complete necrosis of the muscles controlling the fur is at most a few days off. Doctor, will you look again at the . . .

“No? said Sennelt firmly. “There is nothing new or dangerous to see that would cause me to influence the captain into altering course. And let me remind you, Lieutenant, you are needlessly worrying the patient.”

“I am very worried? said Kledenth suddenly. “If I ask, would the captain change course for me?”

“At least you’re admitting that it’s a patient? said O’Mara angrily, before Sennelt could reply, “which implies that you think there just might be something wrong with it.” He turned suddenly to Joan and went on, “Please, you have a look at this area and tell me what you think. I’ll focus the scanner for you so you can . . .

He broke off as the doctor began clicking, loudly and continuously like an overloaded radiation counter. When it spoke its sarcasm was apparent even through their translators. “Does every passenger on this damned ship think it’s a medic? Well, given that we are not going to divert to Kelgia, what would you two would-be doctors consider an acceptable second form of treatment?”

Joan, unknown to the Melfan doctor, was far from being a medical ignoramus. Her face was reddening with anger and embarrassment, but before she could protest, O’Mara shook his head warningly at her. In its present mood Sennelt was likely to be even more sarcastic about a newly qualified veterinary surgeon. He strove for calmness and clinical objectivity.

“I would suggest massive bed rest with heavy sedation? he said, “in the hope that the reduced blood supply to the area will be enough to maintain the resting muscles. There should be roundthe-clock monitoring and, as the condition worsens to the point where both the patient and medical officer become aware of it, emotional support of a verbal nature will be helpful until . . .

“I need some of your verbal support right now? said Kledenth. “Enough!” said the doctor. “Frankly, Lieutenant, your behavior in this matter is incredibly insensitive and completely irresponsible. In spite of what you’ve done for us earlier, I intend to report this to the Monitor Corps authorities at our next port of call. As for your suggested line of treatment, passenger Kledenth may take massive rest here or in its own cabin, or indulge in violent exercise on the recreation deck, as and when it chooses. There will be no medical monitor or massive sedation because in my”-it laid heavy stress on the word—”professional opinion they are totally unnecessary. As for emotional support, that it deserves. I strongly suggest that you talk to it while it rests here, for as long as it takes for you to negate the emotional trauma you have caused. And if passenger Kledenth tires of listening to you, which it may well do since this is your sleeping period, it has my permission to return to its cabin and subsequently resume normal passenger activities at any time no matter what you say to it.

“I will leave you now? it ended, “before I use language not befitting a ship’s officer.”

The sickbay door hissed shut behind it and the clicking sound of its feet diminished as it moved down the corridor. Joan looked at Kledenth’s agitated fur and then at its face.

“I’m sorry? she said. “All I can do is talk to you, but I won’t know what to say because I don’t know what I’m talking about. Lieutenant, as an other-species psychologist can you think of anything appropriate to say or do?”

O’Mara was walking quickly around the room, staring through transparent doors into the medicine and instrument cabinets. A few of them were locked, but the fastenings were less than robust and were easy to force open. He didn’t answer until he had rejoined them.

“I have a lot to say and more to do? he replied briskly, “but I’ll need the agreement and help of both of you. First I want you to pay close attention to what I’m saying, and while I’m talking I want you”-he looked intently at Joan—”to run that scanner over the affected area so I can explain what you will be seeing . . .

O’Mara described a condition that was encountered rarely among Kelgians, and then usually in the very young, and a procedure to relieve it that was simple, radical, and not without risk. The alternative to not having the operation was progressive and irreversible paralysis of the medial body fur. It was his own voice he was using, but the calm authority and certainty of his manner was based on the specialist knowledge and clinical experience of the donor of his mind tape. As he finished his step-by-step description of the indicated procedure, he knew from the way Kledenth’s fur was reacting and Joan was looking at him that there was a yawning credibility gap opening between them. Even before she spoke he knew that he would have to end by telling them the truth. All of it.

“Lieutenant? she said, “you certainly sound as if you know what you’re talking about, but how do you know? This, as I’ve told you before, isn’t the kind of stuff you picked up in a first-aid lecture.”

“You don’t know what this means, O’Mara? Kledenth said, its fur rising in stiff, agitated spikes, “because you are not a Kelgian.”

“Believe me, I do know? said O’Mara. He took a few seconds to remind himself of how stupid he was being, because if either of them told anyone else of what he was about to say and do, he would be out of Sector General and the Monitor Corps within days and probably find himself sentenced to an indefinite stay in one of the Federation’s psychiatric-adjustment facilities. But that was a risk that neither he nor his mind partner considered important compared with the fate that might lie ahead for Kledenth. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

He told them briefly about his work in Sector General and, without mentioning Thornnastor or the tape donor by name, the psychological investigation that had led to him impressing himself with the Marrasarah tape, which, although it was completely against regulations, he still carried. The memory-transfer technique was not widely known, he explained, because single-species, planetbased hospitals had no interest in it unless one of their senior staff became so eminent in the field that it was invited by the Galactic Medical Council to be a mind donor.

. . . It is the complete memories and experience of just such a person that I carry in my mind now? O’Mara went on. “In its time it was reputed to be the most able specialist in thoracic surgery on Kelgia. That is why you have to trust and accept everything I tell you?

Joan was staring at him intently, her expression reflecting a strange mixture of wonder, excitement, and concern, while Kledenth’s fur was a mass of silvery spikes. It was the Kelgian who spoke first.

“So your mind is partly Kelgian? it said. “I wondered why you talked straight like one of us. But if half my fur is going to lose mobility like you say, what are you going to do about it?”

Without replying, O’Mara turned away and walked quickly to the medicine cabinets, where he began filling a tray with the instruments, anesthetic, and medication that would be required. He himself had no idea of what he was doing, but his mind partner knew exactly what was needed. The instruments were designed for Sennelt’s use, but Earth-human digits were acknowledged to be the most adaptable and efficient manipulatory appendages in the Federation.

“Oh, God? said Joan in a frightened voice when he returned with the filled tray, “he’s, he’s going to operate on you.

O’Mara shook his head firmly. He held out his hands to her at waist level, and rotated them slowly to show the thick, blunt fingers and the palms which, in spite of his recent elevation to the status of officer and gentleman, still bore the calluses of his years in space construction.

“These are not the hands of a surgeon . . .” he said.

He bent forward quickly, took her hands gently but firmly in his, and lifted them up. They lay cupped in his roughened palms, slender, beautiful, and strong, as if fashioned in warm and living porcelain.

but these are.

She shook her head, looking suddenly frightened, but she didn’t pull her hands away. He gave them a reassuring squeeze.

“Please listen to me? he said, “because I’m being very serious. You are used to operating on small life-forms, which means that at times the procedure requires fine work in a severely restricted operative field. The fact that your patients are nonsapient is irrelevant. You now understand the clinical problem and the necessity for immediate surgery if Kledenth is not to be condemned to a future that, for any Kelgian, is too terrible to contemplate. The procedure, although considered radical, is fairly straightforward. You have the necessary surgical skills and I shall be guiding your hands at every stage. Please.”

“Yes, Earth-person Joan? said Kledenth, “please do it?”

He was beginning to realize that her hands, like the rest of her well-formed body, were really beautiful. Even when she was being subjected to the present severe emotional stress, they weren’t shaking a bit.

CHAPTER 24

O‘Mara sat as comfortably as it was possible to be in Sennelt’s Melfan chair, watching the tiny dream-stirrings of Kledenth’s fur as it slept off the anesthetic while he tried to calculate the exact amount of trouble he could expect. But of one thing he was sure:

the trouble would involve himself and nobody else.

Before Joan, at his insistence, had returned to her cabin to get some sleep before breakfast, which was only three hours away, they had come to an agreement about the operation. She had performed it, her technique had been flawless, and the prognosis was favorable, but so far as outsiders were concerned she had not even been there. It was O’Mara who had done all the work, would bear the entire responsibility for and take all the blame or, if there was any, the credit for what could be regarded as an irresponsible and unlawful surgical assault on a defenseless patient. The patient, who was incapable of telling a lie, had promised to exercise the Kelgian option of saying nothing at all to anyone about the incident.

No matter what happened to himself, O’Mara was pleased that the not so innocent bystander would not be involved even though he, personally, was beginning to wish that he could be closely involved with her. He sighed, checked the audible warning on the monitors they had attached to Kledenth, then wriggled into a less uncomfortable position on the Melfan chair and tried to sleep.

But the inside of his closed eyelids were slowly becoming a three-dimensional viewscreen displaying pictures of Joan. He watched again the delicate precision of her technique as she worked on Kledenth, and saw her as she pointed out the scenery and talked animatedly about the beauties of the Dunelton Gorge, and in formal dress at dinner. But mostly the pictures, bright and sharp and tactile, were of her teaching him to swim in the pool. Some of the things she was saying and doing were not as he remembered them, and as a psychologist he could recognize the beginning of a wishfulfillment dream when he saw one. But before it could end as all such dreams end, he was awakened by the steady clicking of Melfan feet moving along the corridor.

Sennelt entered and stopped as if surprised to see anyone there. Then it hurried across the room to the sleeping Kledenth and saw the dressing that was covering the operation site. It looked at O’Mara for a moment and used words that his translator refused to accept, then jabbed keys on the rooms communicator.

“Captain? it said urgently. “Medical emergency in sickbay. I need you here at once. Lieutenant O’Mara is involved. Bring security backup.”

Grulya-Mar arrived within three minutes, accompanied by two security officers who, like itself, were large, muscular, and unarmed Orligians. They watched O’Mara intently without moving or speaking, which wasn’t surprising because Dr. Sennelt was plying its scanner and doing all the talking and beginning to repeat itself.

As I said, sir? it went on without looking up from the scanner, “this could be a very serious, perhaps even a tragic situation. Lieutenant O’Mara, unlawfully and on its own initiative, has performed an operation on passenger Kledenth. I don’t know what exactly it has done or was trying to do, but the surgical procedure was invasive. My knowledge of Kelgian physiology is minimal, normally I only have to contend with other-species minor accidents and abrasions, but in this case serious and potentially lethal damage could have been done. A nonmedic performing surgery, even if it talked the passenger into giving its permission, doesn’t bear thinking about . . .”

“Your recommendations, Doctor?” the captain broke in.

Sennelt put down its scanner and said, “The patient should remain in deep sedation so as to reduce the body movements which might otherwise cause adverse postoperative effects. Continuous round-the-clock monitoring should be maintained until specialist treatment is available in an own-species hospital. That means, sir, in the best interests of passenger Kledenth you must divert to Kelgia with minimum delay.”

Grulya-Mar hesitated for less than three seconds before it moved quickly to the communicator. The screen lit up with the head and shoulders of a Nidian.

“Astrogation? it said.

“Recompute and lay in a course for Kelgia? said the captain. “Do it now. Off.”

Grulya-Mar turned then to join the others in staring silently at O’Mara, who stared back at them for as long as he could before breaking the silence.

“Sedation, massive rest, and specialist attention on its home planet,” he said quietly, “was all I wanted you to do for it in the first place. I’m pleased that Dr. Sennelt agrees with me.”

The medic didn’t respond. Its pincers were snapping open and closed while its entire body quivered as if it was about to have some kind of fit. O’Mara wondered what the lead-up to a cardiovascular incident would look like in an exoskeletal life-form whose face could never change color. He turned his attention to the two Orligian security officers and added, “Now what?”

Like Grulya-Mar, they were large, heavily built, and at least ten inches taller than he was. He knew that he could take one of them and almost certainly both, because space construction was a tough school and he had had barefisted disputes with members of their species many times. But if the captain joined in as well, all four of them would be sharing the sickbay with Kledenth.

A fight like that could never be concealed from the passengers or Grulya-Mar’s superiors. Their star-tour operation would suffer, and so would the professional futures of the officers concerned. Besides, when Major Craythorne got to hear about it he would certainly not be pleased. O’Mara wasn’t pleased at the thought himself, because he had hoped that the bad old days of gaining respect solely by the use of his fists were long gone. But he was feeling bad over the trouble he was in, and even though he and his mind partner had had no choice but to operate on Kledenth, he hoped these hairy heavies wouldn’t push him too far. Similar thoughts must have been going through Grulya-Mar’s mind.

“Since you cannot leave the ship? it said in a voice of quiet fury, “and even though your mental stability may be in question, I see no reason why you should be forcibly restrained. At the same time it is in both our interests that the Kledenth incident be kept from the other passengers until we reach Kelgia and the full extent of the damage you have done is assessed by their medical authorities, after which you will leave my ship to await the indicated legal proceedings and disciplinary measures that will be taken by your superiors. Until that time you will confine yourself to your cabin and make no further use of the recreation-deck facilities or dining room. Is this agreeable to you?”

“Yes? he said.

While the captain had been talking, the two security officers had been edging closer in the expectation of imminent violence. They relaxed visibly and backed away again, leaving him a clear path to the door.

“Please leave now,” said Grulya-Mar.

O’Mara nodded, but paused when he was halfway to the entrance.

“May I be allowed communicator contact with sickbay? he said, “so that I can check on the progress of the patient?”

The captain gave an untranslatable growl and the hair bristled all over its body, but it was Sennelt, who was plainly anxious to maintain the peace, who replied.

“You may contact me here at any time, Lieutenant,” it said, then added with heavy sarcasm, “although I will not promise to take your medical advice regarding the patient’s treatment.”

He was in his cabin only a few minutes when a Nidian steward arrived to leave a breakfast tray, explaining that it contained the type and amount of Earth-human food that O’Mara usually consumed, but if he wanted something different to eat in future or if there were any card or board games or puzzles that might help him to pass the time, the lieutenant had only to ask. Plainly, he thought wryly, the captain was doing all it could to keep the ship’s madman pacified. But the characteristic heavy breathing and snuffling sounds from outside the door told him that Orligian security guards had been posted outside his door. He shifted the contents of the tray without really tasting it, then threw himself onto his bunk to think dark thoughts about his uncertain and probably unhappy future.

It was about an hour later that a quiet knocking on the door brought his mind back to the here and now. Thinking it was the steward returning for the breakfast tray he growled, “Come in.

It was Joan.

She was wearing an incredibly abbreviated white swimsuit and sandals with the incandescently patterned towel she had bought on Traltha draped around her shoulders. He began swinging his feet to the floor, but she moved forward quickly, placed a small, firm hand on his chest, and pushed him back into his bunk.

“Stay there? she said. “You didn’t get any sleep last night, remember. How is our patient and, more important, how are you?”

“I don’t know,” said O’Mara, “twice.”

She gave a small frown of concern, turned away, and sat down in the only chair. The cabin was so small that she was still disturbingly close.

“Seriously? she said, “what is going to happen to you as a resuit of this Kledenth business? Will it be bad?”

O’Mara tried to smile. “Same answer? he said.

She continued staring at him, her expression reflecting puzzlement and concern. For the first time since he had come aboard over two weeks earlier, she wasn’t actively trying to attract him, and for some strange reason that was making the attraction stronger. He wanted to look away from her steady, brown eyes, but he could not look anywhere else without feeling even more disturbed and possibly giving offense.

“All right? he said finally. “Depending on whether or not Kledenth’s op was successful, and in diminishing order of importance, I could be kicked out of the Monitor Corps, I could be prosecuted for pretending to be a doctor, sent for psychological reconstruction because I believed I was a doctor.” He forced a laugh. “Or maybe all three at once.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand you, O’Mara? she said. “You’re throwing your whole career away because of a Kelgian you thought was sick.”

“No,” he corrected her quietly. “I knew it was sick.”

“So you knew or thought you knew or maybe firmly believed that it was sick? she continued, “enough to talk me into operating on it. I still don’t believe I did that. It was something I’ve always dreamed of doing, of using my skill to save the life, not of someone’s pet but of a fully sapient being. I’ve no wish to repeat the experience, it carries too much responsibility, but you talked me through it. I think it was successful because you guided my hands at every stage and you seemed to know what had to be done. But I did it, not you, and it’s not fair that you should take all the blame when you didn’t even lay a bloody knife on the patient!”

“You did the real work? he said, “all of it with your own hands. They are very nice hands, sensitive, precise, lovely hands that did what they had to once you knew what that was. But as I said before, you will take none of the credit, now or ever, or you’ll be in worse trouble with the medical authorities than I am, and you must take none of the blame, either. Kledenth owes you an awful lot for saving its fur, but it has promised not to mention the op to anyone, on the ship or at home, and I’ve told it not to thank you verbally in case it is overheard and you land in trouble, too. Talking about it won’t help either of us, so you won’t be able to tell anyone, ever, unless possibly your grandchildren?

“I can live with that? she said, “but there must be something I can do.” She looked down at her hands suddenly and smiled. “Do you realize that is the first compliment you’ve ever paid me, and then it was only to my hands. Isn’t there anything else nice about me that you can compliment?”

O’Mara kept his eyes firmly on her face so as to avoid staring at the other nice things about her, but he couldn’t do anything about his peripheral vision. Neither could he trust himself to speak.

“A gentleman would invent a few? she said. Apparently changing the subject, she went on, “When you didn’t show at breakfast I came to see how you were, and to ask if you wanted to go to the pool. As an amateur, one-species psychologist I wanted to take your mind off your troubles and generally help you to relax. But that pair of grizzly bears outside said you were confined to quarters. I asked again nicely and tried very hard to make them change their minds . . .” She smiled and shook her head. . . but I guess I’m just not their type.”

“That much is true? said O’Mara, laughing in spite of himself. “But after yesterday I didn’t think I needed any more swimming lessons. You taught me very well, and the way you handled that Tralthan resuscitation was first-class.”

“Two more compliments? she said in mock disbelief. “O’Mara, I’ll make a gentleman of you yet. But there’s something else I’ve wanted to show you for several days now. We won’t need the pool.”

She stood up slowly and dropped her towel onto the chair before she moved to the edge of his bunk to bend over him. It was no longer possible to look only at her eyes and, he thought, in that swimsuit there wasn’t very much more that she could show him. He pushed himself up onto his elbows so that her nose bumped gently against his forehead. Her fingers brushed like warm feathers along the bristles at the side of his unshaven face and jaw; then they moved gently to the back of his neck. Her eyes were only a few inches from his. He felt her breath on his face as she spoke quietly.

“Just relax? she said seriously. “For this lesson I’ll begin by demonstrating a little same-species mouth-to-mouth.”

The demonstrations with many variations continued at every possible opportunity until Kreskhallar landed at Kelgia’s main spaceport. During those three days they didn’t even mention their worries about Kledenth to each other, and O’Mara, although he could not be completely honest with her, felt more relaxed and happier than he had ever remembered being in his entire life and, Joan told him several times, so did she. Their worries surfaced again as they stood at the cabin’s viewpoint staring down at the tiny shape of the ambulance that was taking Kledenth to hospital, but another four hours passed before the communicator lit to show the bony features of Dr. Sennelt.

“Lieutenant O’Mara? it said, “please come to the captain’s cabin at once. Your security guard will escort you there.”

“I want to go with you? said Joan pleadingly. “I won’t say anything or take any of the blame but, but I want to know right away what they’re going to do to you. O’Mara, please.”

He looked at her steadily for a moment, then he nodded and followed her into the corridor. The guards made no comment about Joan accompanying him to the captain’s large, well-appointed cabin, and O’Mara spoke before Grulya-Mar had a chance to object to her presence.

“As you know, sir,” he said quickly, nodding toward Joan, “this passenger’s help was invaluable during the swimming-pool incident, and I have kept her fully informed about the subsequent developments. Be assured, that information and anything else you tell me now will not be discussed beyond this room. What have you to say to me, Captain?”

Grulya-Mar nodded at Joan before returning its full attention to O’Mara, but for a long moment it said nothing. Joan, who was looking increasingly apprehensive as the seconds dragged past, gripped his arm tightly. Finally the captain made the disgusting, guttural sound that Orligians make when clearing the throat.

“I must begin by apologizing? said Grulya-Mar. “We have just received a signal from the hospital saying that the operation you performed on passenger Kledenth was radical-it has been done only a few times in their recorded medical history-impressive, and most of all, timely. Had it not been performed within a few hours of the compression injury being sustained, they say, Kledenth would have lost fur mobility and been disfigured for life. Against the doctor’s medical advice and my opposition you insisted that you knew best, and you did, because we have been assured that the patient is well and, barring future accidents, will continue so for the indefinite future. Dr. Sennelt and I apologize for misjudging you, and we thank you again for the good work done by both of you on the recreation deck . . .

Joan was smiling broadly. Her grip on his arm tightened, in relief now instead of apprehension.

but we are faced with a problem? the captain went on, “because the Kelgian doctors wish to thank you officially for . . .

“No? said O’Mara firmly. “If it came out that an unqualified nonmedic who happens to have a good memory for clinical detail had done the work, I would be in serious trouble. You know that. May I make a suggestion?”

“Please do? said the captain.

O’Mara looked apologetically at Joan, who nodded happily at him before he went on, “Officially I am a passenger who took no part in this. The only medically qualified person on the ship is Dr. Sennelt. Let it take the credit. The Kelgians would find that much easier to believe than the truth.”

“But I don’t deserve . . .” the doctor began. Grulya-Mar cut it off with a raised hand.

“Thank you, Lieutenant O’Mara? said the captain. “That solution satisfies everyone’s needs. As this was an unscheduled stop for a medical emergency, we will leave again within the hour and so avoid the possibility of the Kelgians wanting to meet and ask embarrassing clinical questions that my medical officer is not equipped to answer. When we return for our scheduled stopover in ten days’ time it will be old news, but if they still want to meet Dr. Sennelt it will be regrettably confined to its quarters with an incapacitating and non-life-threatening condition that precludes its having visitors. The secret of what happened here will be kept because it is in everyone concerned’s best interest to do so. But there is another matter, Lieutenant.

“I realize that I sound ungrateful? the captain went on, “but in addition to the possibility of you talking about this matter to your friend at the wrong time and perhaps being overheard, your continued presence on this ship would be a constant reminder and an embarrassment to my medical officer and myself. A few minutes ago we received a signal from passenger Kledenth’s family inviting you to stay with them whenever you are on Kelgia. They say that they owe both of you an obligation beyond discharge. You just have time to pack your personal belongings and leave before Kreskhallar takes off. O’Mara, I do not want to see or speak to you again.”

O’Mara felt Joan’s grip tighten on his arm again, and he spoke quickly to head off her impending eruption. He looked steadily at the two officers and said, “You are being ungrateful, but no matter. My leave is nearing its end and I plan to do a little traveling on Kelgia for a few days before returning to Sector General. I will not see or talk to you again, either, which will be a considerable negative pleasure. I’ll leave you, now.

Joan’s farewell at the mouth of the boarding tube was warm and sad but not tearful. She didn’t offer to stay with him during his final few days on Kelgia, because she had to resume her own life when the ship put in to Earth. But her arms were wrapped tightly around his waist and she didn’t seem able to let go. Neither did she seem able to stop talking.

. . . I don’t know what I expected on this voyage,” she was saying, “except to meet a lot of extraterrestrials and talk about their legends and, if I was really lucky, meet somebody interesting of my own species. Well, I did all those things, and more that I wouldn’t have believed possible for me. It feels as if we created a legend of our very own. I’ll never forget this. Or you.”

Two Nidian crew members were waiting nearby, impatient to remove the boarding tube. He detached her arms gently and said, “Nor I you. But I have to go.”

Reluctantly she stood back and looked up into his face. Her expression very serious, she said, “You are a strange person, O’Mara, a big, strong, ugly, caring, and, and a very gentle man that I would like to know better. There will be other leaves, and you know where I live. Or maybe Kledenth’s people will let us meet halfway on Kelgia.”

She stood on her toes and kissed him briefly but with feeling, and added, “As I remember it, I’m good at meeting you halfway.”

On his return to Sector General he reported at once to the department. Major Craythorne looked up and smiled as Q’Mara entered the chief psychologist’s office. He regarded O’Mara’s face intently for a moment.

“You look well,” he said, “relaxed and rested. How did you spend your leave?”

“I traveled a lot” O’Mara replied seriously, “did some sightseeing, visited with a friend, had a whirlwind shipboard romance. You know, the usual kind of thing.”

Craythorne raised his eyebrows, then laughed quietly.

“And you seem to have found a sense of humor too” he said. “For the next job I have for you, you’ll need it.”

CHAPTER 25

Over the next twelve years O’Mara settled into the abnormal routine that was considered normal for a member of the Other-Species Psychology Department. The early operational problems of the hospital had been solved; the medical and maintenance staff, regardless of species, had learned and accepted each other’s alien ways and were living together in often noisy accord. He was allowed to work with little or no supervision because, as Craythorne was fond of telling him, it was better for the major’s peace of mind to simply point him at a problem and take his report on its final resolution without having to worry himself sick about the unorthodox things O’Mara did in between. In that time he took many periods of leave as soon as they became due, traveling to wherever the available transport took him but always ending up on the same destination planet. His chief didn’t ask how he spent his leaves because, from the observed beneficial psychological results, Craythorne thought he knew. But on his return from his most recent one, O’Mara thought Craythorne looked almost ill at ease, which was strange behavior indeed for the major.

“Sit down, Lieutenant,” Craythorne said in the manner of one who is working around to a subject gradually. “During your absence the department managed to function without you but, needless to say, I’m very glad to have you back.”

“Sir,” said O’Mara, “are you trying to find a gentle way of telling me some bad news?”

“Remind me never to play poker with you, Lieutenant,” said Craythorne with a smile that looked disquietingly sympathetic. “The news is good and bad, depending on our points of view. I’m leaving the hospital.”

O’Mara didn’t speak and he tried not to think until he had enough information to know what to think about.

“In many ways I’m reluctant to go,” Craythorne went on, “but in the Corps one goes where one is told. Besides, it will mean a significant promotion for me in that it involves my taking complete responsibility for the psychological assessment of other-species recruits from the whole of Sector Ten. I could be a full fleet commander, administrative of course, in three years?

“Congratulations,” said O’Mara, meaning it but waiting for the bad news.

“Thank you,” said Craythorne. After a moment he went on, “We both know that the work of the department cannot be done effectively by Padre Carmody and yourself, so a new Earth-human psychologist called Braithwaite will be joining the staff. I’ve seen his psych file and had no hesitation about giving him the position. Admittedly he is a little green where other-species therapy is concerned, his personality is pleasant if a little serious, he is intelligent, adaptable, enthusiastic about the job, and, like myself . . .” He smiled. . . very well-mannered and impeccable regarding his uniform. I’m sure you’ll be comfortable with him and will soon be able to show him the ropes and settle him in very quickly?

“I understand,” said O’Mara stiffly.

The major smiled again and said, “What exactly do you think you understand?”

“I understand that I am to wet-nurse a keen young career officer until he is in a position to give me and everyone else orders in such a way that he sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about. Sir?

‘And you wouldn’t feel comfortable,” said Craythorne, “in the role of a stern but kindly father figure? Frankly, O’Mara, neither would I, but that is what you’ll have to do. But that isn’t all I want you to do.”

“First,” Craythorne went on, “a staff of three psychologists-and I’m including the padre because in many respects he is a more effective hands-on psychologist than either of us-are barely enough to operate this department. But that is all we’re allowed right now and that is why, in addition to dealing with the work piled on your desk in the outer office, you and the padre must bring the new man up to speed as quickly as possible. Before I leave, I’d also like you to learn to wear your uniform, if not with pride, then at least as if you hadn’t thrown it on as an afterthought. And while you’re doing that, I’d like you to lose that habit of speaking with almost Kelgian honesty in your conversations with members of the senior medical staff, because I won’t be here to apologize for you or act as a diplomatic buffer. So, just to keep me from worrying myself sick about you when I’m in far-off Sector Ten, will you do that?”

“I’ll try, sir,” said O’Mara in a voice totally lacking in selfcertainty.

“Good,” said Craythorne. “Until I leave, in three days’ time, I’ll be too busy tying up administrative loose ends and saying good-bye to our colleagues and, at times, past patients to spend much time helping you in the department.” He grinned suddenly. “Meanwhile I want you to move your paperwork in here and start using my desk. The sooner people get used to the idea that you are the new chief psychologist the better. Your mouth is open.”

O’Mara closed it without speaking. He was too surprised and pleased to have anything to say.

Craythorne stood up, leaned across his desk, shook his hand firmly, and said, “I know how you hate these embarrassing formalities, but this is probably the last chance I’ll have to tell you exactly what I think of you, which is a lot. My warmest congratulations, O’Mara. The promotion is well deserved and, when the Corps submitted a list of several other possible candidates, the hospital’s seniors would accept nobody but you . . . ?

He walked around his desk, still shaking O’Mara’s hand and letting go of it only to point at his vacant chair.

“Sit down,” he ended, “while it’s still warm.”

The biggest problem during the first few weeks following Major Craythorne’s departure and the installation of Lieutenant Braithwaite was remembering that he was supposed to sit in that chair instead of being sent all over the hospital to talk to and assess troubled staff members who just might become the department’s patients. Now Lieutenant O’Mara wasn’t sent to deal with them because, unless they were biting their tails or otherwise throwing emotional fits all over their wards, they had to make appointments to see the newly promoted Major O’Mara. A large part of the problem was convincing himself that he was now Sector General’s chief psychologist and acting the part because he just could not learn, never in a thousand years, to behave like his predecessor.

O’Mara had tried very hard. He had forced himself to smile at people more often, a strange and uncomfortable process for facial muscles unused to that form of exercise, and he felt sure that anyone capable of reading his expression would think that he was projecting the worst kind of insincerity, that of trying to act like the diplomat he most definitely was not, or that he was unsure of himself, unhappy with his new responsibility, or, worst of all, that he was unable to do his job. That was not so. He was fully capable of doing the job, provided he could do it his own way.

Trying to say one thing while meaning another had never come easy to him, and with the totally open and honest personality of Marrasarah sharing his mind, diplomacy was next to impossible. The people in the hospital, regardless of their species, social graces, or the kind of personal feelings they held toward him, would have to be told that. Fortunately, O’Mara thought as he summoned his staff to the inner office, he no longer had to tell them in person.

He looked up at them through lowered brows as they filed in to stand in front of his desk, the frail, old, and gentle Padre Lioren and the eager, fresh-faced, and impeccably uniformed Braithwaite, who constantly reminded O’Mara of his former chief except that the lieutenant had more and darker hair. Presumably their consciences were clear, because neither of them looked ill at ease, just warily expectant. In Other-Species Psychology one learned to expect the worst.

“Relax,” he said, “I am about to impart information, not add to your workload. And stand. You won’t be here long enough to warrant the expenditure of energy sitting down and getting up again.”

He placed his hard, callused hands fiat on the desk for a moment before looking up, then went on, “As a person my predecessor, Major Craythorne, was known throughout the hospital as a kind, gentle, and very approachable man. I am none of those things. For the past few weeks since he left us I have been trying to emulate him and, judging by the reactions I had to this new, softspoken, and polite O’Mara, totally without success. So I’ve decided to stop trying.

“I shall, of course,” he went on, “continue to treat my share of the patients, or rather the emotionally distressed doctors, nurses, and maintenance personnel who may become our patients, as and when necessary. These cases I shall handle with the degree of sensitivity and expertise required. I am, as you know, very good at this job. But I shall not, repeat not, try to be nice to people, regardless of their species or rank, unless I consider their particular condition warrants a soft approach. The old, nasty O’Mara is back. Is that understood?”

The padre nodded and said, “Good.” Braithwaite’s nod was more hesitant. As the new boy he hadn’t had the opportunity of meeting the old, nasty O’Mara and was worrying about what the future might hold.

“Since I have the rank,” he went on, “it seems a pity not to abuse it. My behavior toward patients will be as their conditions warrant. With the medical and maintenance staff, my friends if any, working colleagues, and those others I consider to be mentally healthy or at least quasi-normal, I reserve the right to relax and be my nasty, sarcastic, infuriating self.

“I know how much work you have out there waiting for attention” he added. “Standing there gaping at me isn’t getting it done.”

As they were leaving, O’Mara overheard the padre saying softly, “Relax, Lieutenant, he thinks we’re quasi-normal. Don’t you know a professional compliment when you hear one?”

O’Mara continued paying the same form of professional compliment and, thanks to the padre and Braithwaite talking freely about their chief, the people with whom he came into contact became more relaxed and even pleased in inverse proportion ~3 his degree of nastiness. His subordinates had done a good job of convincing everyone that, psychologically speaking, black was white. Only the seriously distressed personnel got as far as his inner office, his staff were fond of telling each other when he was within earshot, because the less troubled people preferred to trust themselves to the friendlier padre or Braithwaite-if they didn’t have second thoughts and decide to solve their problems themselves. Which was fine by O’Mara, because he had always held that in the long term self-help was the best kind.

As the weeks and months passed into years, O’Mara grew accustomed to his new rank, mostly by completely ignoring it and treating the higher and lower ranks as if they were the same. He saved the increased salary and duly took all of the leave to which a major was entitled, although sometimes he returned saddened and angry rather than relaxed. But Iron Man O’Mara, as rumor had it, was capable of suffering nothing less than metal fatigue, so he was not supposed to have emotional problems. If anyone out of polite curiosity asked where he had been or whether or not he had enjoyed himself there, he told them nothing in such a way that they never asked him again.

But there were times when he could not be impolite even with those people he admired and thought of as the closest thing he had to friends. Thornnastor-who had been appointed diagnosticianin-charge of Pathology, although it preferred to keep its subjects alive and advise on their cure rather than dissect them postmortem-had many problems. They were not its own because, in spite of its mind carrying six different other-species Educator tapes, it was the most intelligent and emotionally stable entity in the hospital. But it had to discuss the emotional upsets, interstaff conflicts, and possible xenophobic reactions within its department’s widening sphere of influence, as well as requesting psychiatric support with patients whose conditions included a psychological component. And there was Senior Tutor Mannen (whose other-species students insisted that he and his dog had a symbiotic relationship), who worried continually about the mental health and professional future of his charges. Mannen was especially concerned, as was O’Mara himself, about a male and a female Earth-human, both of whom were exemplary students with bright futures in other-species medicixie ahead of them. It was small consolation that the trouble they might cause themselves, their colleagues, and the succession of less brilliant superiors they would encounter on their climb to medical eminence would not be their own fault.

Mannen did not want him to tinker with two such strong, healthy, and well-integrated minds even if he’d had the right to do so, and when, at the senior tutor’s insistence, O’Mara interviewed them in depth, neither did he. Some personalities were better left as they were. But the situation with them would have to be closely monitored and, indirectly, controlled.

He had few ethical qualms about exerting influence of a nonpsychological type on them through the deliberate manipulation of their duty schedules. It was, after all, for their own good.

With the best will in the world-and he would admit only to himself that he liked and admired both of them very much-he would have to see to it that for the time being trainees Murchison and Conway were kept apart.

CHAPTER 26

Murchison had created a precedent and delighted Senior Tutor lViMannen by being appointed charge nurse of Ward ThirtyNine, the mixed Melfan, Kelgian, and Nidian surgical recovery unit, immediately upon graduation from trainee status. There she asked nothing of her nursing staff that she wasn’t able and willing to do herself, and she led her team politely, firmly, and with absolute fairness from in front. On O’Mara’s recommendation, delivered via Mannen, she was given increased responsibility for certain problem patients who were not responding to orthodox lines of treatment. As a result, her ability to observe, analyze, synthesize, and diagnose from the often sparse available data brought her work, as O’Mara knew it would, to the attention of Thornnastor, who said that she was performing original work of a quality not expected of a member of the nursing staff and, if she was willing, her talents could be more gainfully employed in its own department as a junior pathologist. Murchison, as her psych file said she would, was happy to transfer up and across the ladder of promotion, because original xenobiological research was the kind of work she had always wanted to do.

She allowed herself no distractions because, she had told Mannen pleasantly but firmly, she had no time to waste on socializing with its risk of her becoming emotionally involved with a male member of her species. This complete dedication to her career pleased the senior tutor very much, but not her Earth-human male colleagues, who were fond of admitting to everyone including O’Mara that, so far as they were concerned, she was the only person in the hospital that they found impossible to regard with anything resembling clinical detachment. Every one of them had attempted vainly to conquer and exploit what they considered to be one of the hospital’s most desirable natural resources, only to be rejected firmly and with such good humor that their feelings of desire never turned to dislike.

But unrequited love, as O’Mara knew from long experience, was rarely a life- or sanity-threatening condition.

The younger Conway, he remembered, had been the only Earth-human male on the junior staff who had not shown, or had done a good job of concealing, his feelings for her during the first few occasions when they made professional contact. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, anything but; it was simply that he honestly preferred making friends with other-species staff. He had told O’Mara during the initial interview that his life’s ambition was to practice medicine in a multi-species hospital, he had succeeded in gaining entry to the biggest and best in the galaxy, and a serious romantic relationship would be an unwanted distraction from his studies. Normally an Earth-human person who preferred socializing with Tralthans, Melfans, and the other even more alien patients and staff members would have been a matter for psychiatric concern, but in Sector General such an abnormality was a distinct advantage.

The psych profiles of Murchison and young Conway, he remembered, had been so alike that if the old adage about opposites attracting and likes repelling had held true they should never have become an item. But O’Mara had taken such a fatherly interest in them fulfilling their future potential that he had shamelessly tinkered, not with their minds, but with their single and later their joint work assignments. He had been deliberately hard on them by forcing them to make clinical adaptations and decisions and to take responsibility far above their nominal rank. And what he hadn’t done to them fate had-in the shape of the Etlan War and a succession of combined rescue and first-contact missions on the special ambulance ship Rhabwar-testing them not quite to destruction until they were really good, separately and together. At all times he had remained as sarcastic and nasty toward them as ever. But he wondered if they would ever realize how much he liked them as people and how intensely proud he was of the fact that Murchison, still so maturely beautiful that Earth-human males looked after her when she passed, was now in line to succeed Thornnastor as head of Pathology, while the brilliant young Conway, no longer quite so young, was the diagnostician-in-charge of Other-Species Surgery, and that he felt especially pleased that they were now life-mates.

With the exception of two other beings, one of whom would never visit Sector General in person and the other of whom would not talk to anyone other than himself about it, O’Mara was able to conceal those feelings. He shook his head abruptly in self-irritation at his increasing tendency to spend so much of his mental life in the past, looked at his watch, and prepared once again to have all his feelings read like an open book.

When Senior Physician Priicla entered the office a few moments later, O’Mara pointed at the item of furniture resembling a surrealistic wastepaper basket, which the Cinrusskin empath found most comfortable, then said gruffly, “Well, little friend, how am I feeling?”

Priicla made a musical trilling sound that did not translate because it was the Cinrusskin’s equivalent of laughter, and said, “You know your feelings, friend O’Mara, as do I, so there isn’t much sense in either of us listing them aloud. I assume the question is partly rhetorical. The other part may have something to do with your feelings of general anxiety coupled with the emotional tension characteristic of a mind that is about to make a suggestion that may not be well received. I’m an empath, remember, not a telepath.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that,” said O’Mara quietly.

“Observation and deduction” it went on, “even without the ability to read emotions, can amount to the same thing, as you would know if you played poker. I know what you feel, not what you think, so if you are forcing yourself to impart bad news, you’ll have to tell me exactly what you are thinking?

O’Mara sighed. “You are a psychiatrist’s psychiatrist” he said, in addition to everything else?

For a moment the other’s fragile, insectile body trembled in response to his emotional radiation, but it waited in silence for him to speak. O’Mara lengthened the silence while he tried to choose the right words to break it.

“Little friend” he said finally, “I intended the purpose of this meeting to be a discussion of possibilities and a request for help rather than to give you another work assignment. You may know that my time at Sector General is limited, and that I will be leaving as soon as I have chosen and installed my successor, who will be both the hospital’s administrator and its chief psychologist. The choice will be difficult?

Priicla opened its iridescent wings and shook them out before refolding them tightly against its body again. It remained silent.

He went on, “All of the people I have in mind, the outsider as well as those already on the staff, are good. I could leave now knowing that any of them would do an adequate job. But I want to know more than my own insight and experience can tell me about the successful applicant’s inner feelings. Frankly, I feel possessive. For a very long time the psychological health of this place has been my baby, the only one I have, or will ever have, and I don’t want to hand it over to a parent who is merely adequate. That’s why I feel it necessary, if you agree, that you monitor the feelings of all the applicants and report them to me so as to guide me in my final choice.”

“I know your feelings, friend O’Mara, and those of every other source of emotional radiation whether it is large and strong, simple, complex, weak, or even nonsapient. They cannot be concealed from me, but that doesn’t mean that I will impart them to a third party if the ethic governing privileged information is involved; otherwise I will be pleased to advise you. But you rarely take advice. Since I detected the presence of your Kelgian mind partner and you reluctantly confided the details to me, my advice has been that its continued occupancy of your mind has caused you as much emotional disruption as contentment over the years and that you should have it erased. I feel its presence still affecting you.

“It is,” said O’Mara, “but we both know that the Marrasarah business is not the strongest feeling in my mind, and that you are trying to change the subject)”

“Naturally” said Prilicla, its body trembling slightly, “because I feel you nerving yourself to say something that you believe I will find unpleasant. Be direct like your Kelgian mind partner and tell me what it is.”

“Right” said O’Mara. “But first I want to talk about you, little friend, before I talk to you. Think back to the time you first came here, for a probationary period because neither of us believed that an empath with your degree of sensitivity could survive here for long. In Sector General people in large numbers suffer physical trauma, fear, and emotional uncertainty. That is an accepted fact of hospital life. To an emotion-sensitive like you it must have been, and probably still is, hell. The therapeutic help I was able to give you in the early days was minimal. But against all the odds you did survive. Not only that, you assumed extra surgical responsibilities and remained effective and mentally stable during the processing of the hundreds of extra casualties that resulted from the Etlan War. When you were promoted to senior physician and took over medical charge of Rhabwar, you and your hypersensitive empathy climbed about in shifting ship wreckage and disaster areas so you could point out the dead from the dying inside their spacesuits and very often save the latter’s lives. And now, well, you don’t need to use telepathy or empathy or anything but your tiny ear slits to know that . . .

He broke off for a moment to smile, then went on, “Of course it’s only a rumor that you will shortly be promoted to full diagnostician, but I can unofficially confirm it.”

The empath’s pipestem limbs trembled faintly as it said, “Friend O’Mara, you are heaping me with high professional praise that I know is sincere. It should be making me feel good but it isn’t. Why are you emoting so much anxiety?”

O’Mara shook his head and said, “Before I answer that I want to talk about myself, briefly, you’ll be glad to hear. Since I started in this job over thirty years ago, without any formal qualifications and with an enormous chip on my shoulder, I deliberately refrained from trying to be friendly. Most of the people think they know the reason, that I’m a self-confessed, thoroughly nasty person who saves his professional sympathy only for the most troubled patients. But only you, little friend, with your damned empathy were able to piece together the complete truth.

“It has been a fact long hallowed by hospital tradition.” he went on, “that the chief psychologist be an uncouth, nasty, sarcastic, completely undiplomatic, and thoroughly unlikable person. But it is not an immutable law of nature. We should consider the appointment of an entirely different personality type, one who is well-mannered and diplomatic because he, she, or it always says the right thing, one who is sensitive to the feelings of others but who, when necessary, can politely be very tough. In short, one whom everyone loves rather than loves to hate. That kind of person would be ideal both as administrator and chief psychologist, wouldn’t you agree?”

Prilicla had begun to tremble again. “Other than among your own staff” it said, “where would you find such a paragon?”

“I might be looking at itP said O’Mara.

The empath began shaking so hard that it threatened to fall out of its chair. “Now I know the reason for your anxiety, friend O’Mara, because you’re expecting me to refuse, which I do. I’m not a psychologist, I’m a doctor who is soon, according to you, to become a diagnostician and the carrier of many other-species mind tapes. Half the time I’ll be so confused I won’t know who or what I am. At the risk of sounding impolite, friend O’Mara, I think you’re mad. The answer is no.”

O’Mara smiled. “The new appointment calls for medical as well as psychological qualifications. What better experience could an administrator have than to be a diagnostician with inside knowledge of the workings of many other-species minds, or a chief psychologist who is able to detect the deeply buried emotional problems that cause the minds of its patients to go wrong? That’s why I’d like you to consider offering yourself as a candidate. Personally, I think Administrator and Diagnostician-in-Charge of Psychology Prilicla would have a nice ring to it. Stop shaking and listen.

“Any one of my present staff could make a pretty good stab at the job,” he continued, “as could Cerdal, who is very highly thought of, not least by itself. If you refuse it, one of them will succeed. But mostly they are followers rather than leaders, gifted but reluctant to take final responsibility. They are perfect subordinates who will be pleased to take the day-to-day running of the department off your hands so that you will have maximum time available for administrative work and the really serious patients. There will be no bad feelings from any of them, except possibly from Cerdal if it chooses to stay, because you they really like. Relax, there’s no need to give me your answer right now.

Prilicla stood up. It said, “I can give you my answer now. It is no.

“Please, little friend,” said O’Mara, “take time to think about it.”

The empath clicked across the office floor on shaking Cmrusskin legs, then paused inside the door to make a soft, trilling sound.

“Don’t forget to say something nasty to me as I leave, friend O’Mara’ it said, “just so you can remain in character.”

CHAPTER 27

Lieutenant Braithwaite kept his eyes firmly on the remains of a large helping of synthetic steak, roasted potato slices, and mushrooms that no longer filled his plate, thanking the DNA he had inherited from his parents, which enabled him to indulge in the pleasures of overeating without suffering the penalty of becoming overweight, so that his enjoyment would not be spoiled by the sight of what Cerdal was eating. Because of the high level of background noise in the dining hall, they had to raise their voices to be heard, but their strong feeling of mutual irritation was making it very easy for them to shout at each other between the periods of angry silence.

“Dr. Cerdal, we are competing for the same job,” Braithwaite said after one of them, “but that doesn’t mean we have to dislike each other now or when one of us, or perhaps neither of us, is successful. But lately you have been displaying signs of a growing personal hostility toward me. Why?”

“It’s not only you,” said Cerdal without looking up, “but you are particularly irritating with your continual advice that is nothing but thinly veiled criticism. You gave me a patient who is visually loathsome, unfriendly, and has now refused even to speak to me. Tunneckis is, is impossible. I’ve spent days on end with it since it came out of surgery. You gave me the assignment knowing that I would fail, fail both to provide therapy for a stupid, uncooperative patient and to impress O’Mara with my fitness for its position. You and the others have shown me that strangers are not welcome here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Braithwaite. “We’re all strangers here, and some of us are a lot stranger than others, at least until we get to know each other. Lioren, Cha Thrat, or I could have taken the case, but you said that you had never before treated a telepath and it would be a challenge. You specifically asked for the assignment. I decided to give it to you.”

“But without obtaining your superior’s permission?” said Cerdal. “It was solely your own decision, correct?”

“Yes,” Braithwaite replied. He hesitated for a moment before going on, “As the new administrator, O’Mara has nondepartmental business to attend to at present. You know this. He instructed me to take full responsibility for such assignment decisions, which I did. Would you like to be relieved of the Tunneckis case?”

Cerdal looked up from its plate to stare at him for a moment; then it said, “Is that what you want, Braithwaite, to see me fail? But no matter. Following several days of attempted therapy I’ve come to regard the patient as a stupid, obdurate, disrespectful, personally repulsive, and worthless being who should not have so much of my time wasted on it. If O’Mara had given me the assignment, he would have wanted me to fail, too, just like the rest of you. And don’t waste my time or insult my intelligence with your lying, Earth-human protestations of innocence. And now I expect you’ll run as fast as those long, misshapen Earth-human legs will carry you to tell your chief exactly what I said with, I’ve no doubt, a few embellishments?”

Braithwaite felt his face reddening. He opened his mouth to speak, then brought his teeth together again with an audible click as he tried to impose calm on himself. In an angry Kelgian such a conversational exchange might have been excusable, but his first assessment of Cerdal was that it was a cool, self-assured, smoothtalking diplomat who was in complete control of its emotions. That impression had been shared by everyone else in the department during the job interview. So what he was seeing here was a serious, completely uncharacteristic, and potentially dangerous change in behavior which was verging on outright paranoia and possibly xenophobia. It was his duty to report such sudden and uncharacteristic personality changes to O’Mara. But he didn’t want to do that until he could also include the reason behind it.

“Doctor,” he said quietly, “are you feeling all right?”

Cerdal didn’t answer; instead it left the table without excusing itself.

He couldn’t approach Tunneckis directly for information, Braithwaite thought as he finished his meal, because it was Cerdal’s patient and that, in the other’s present touchy state of mind, would cause even more offense. But as a psychologist, O’Mara was constantly reminding him, indirection was the most well-used tool of his trade. Besides, it was information on Cerdal and not its patient that he needed, and that could be more easily obtained through a third party.

Culcheth was the Kelgian charge nurse on the mixed-species surgical recovery ward which included, at a distance sufficient to minimize the telepathic radiation of the other patients, the isolation chamber that housed Tunneckis. Because Culcheth was a Kelgian, Braithwaite would not have to waste time on misdirection or making tangential approaches.

“Charge Nurse, how is patient Tunneckis doing?” said Braithwaite. “This isn’t a visit, I just wanted to know your feelings regarding the patient. Is it friendly, cooperative?”

“Patient Tunneckis is doing as well as can be expected,” Culcheth replied, its fur spiking in irritation, “but neither of the diagnosticians will tell me what their expectations are. It cooperates because it has no choice. It is not friendly and I will say no more about it.”

The other couldn’t lie but it could refuse to speak. Braithwaite tried again.

“Our new psychologist has been attempting to treat it,” he said. “What do you think about Dr. Cerdal?”

Culcheth’s fur became even more agitated. “That, that organic black hole,” it said. “Its fur doesn’t move and it’s disgusting and its eyes . . . It’s like a nightmare I used to have as a child when—”

“But surely,” Braithwaite broke in, “you’ve grown out of childish nightmares? Especially in a place like this where you meet and work with them every day?”

“I still don’t like it,” said Culcheth. “Neither do my nursing staff. We won’t be happy until both Tunneckis and Cerdal leave the hospital.”

The charge nurse would say no more, and when he persisted with the questioning it became personally abusive. Kelgians always said what they thought, but this one, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t thinking straight.

O’Mara was spending a few hours in the luxurious administrator’s office when Braithwaite arrived looking cool and impeccable but more worried than usual.

“As I remember,” he said, pointing to the nearest chair, “you were supposed to handle your own problems for a while. If you’ve come up against one you can’t solve, for your sake I hope it’s serious. Briefly, what is it?”

“I think it’s very serious, sir,” said the lieutenant, “but I can’t be brief.”

“Try,” said O’Mara.

“Sir,” said Braithwaite, “we are all aware that you have introduced an element of competitiveness among the candidates for your job. That being so, I must first assure you that in no way have I tried to place Cerdal in a situation beyond its level of competence, or undermine its position in any way that would make it look bad and so eliminate it from the competition. I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that and with respect, sir, I’m not sure I want your job that much.”

“So Cerdal is the problem,” said O’Mara. “Are you still trying to solve it?”

The lieutenant nodded. “I feel sure that Cerdal is showing increasing signs of emotional disturbance,” he said. “Over the past few days it has displayed sudden and marked changes in personality and behavior, but that may be only a small part of a greater problem, the part that came to my attention first. I now have reasons to believe that a surgical post-op patient called Tunneckis, currently in recovery and in need of psychological suppport, may also be involved as well as a presently unknown number of other-species medical staff I’m also aware of a subjective change in my own personality. Without being overtly insubordinate, I no longer feel quite so frightened of or even respectful toward those in authority, including yourself, sir.

“Lieutenant,” said O’Mara dryly, “I’ve been hoping for years to hear you say that. Go on.”

“Sir?” said the other, looking puzzled, then went on, “I’m still trying, or maybe just hoping, to solve this problem by myself, but I will need the cooperation of senior department heads, certain members of their medical staff, and maybe their technical-support and maintenance personnel as well. I don’t have the rank to request the kind of help I need but you do, which is why I’m here. But frankly, sir, I’m not sure myself what is going on except that—”

O’Mara held up a hand. “Whose help do you need?”

“Initially,” Braithwaite replied promptly, “Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway, because I don’t think that ordinary minds will be able to solve this problem. If there is a problem, that is, and it isn’t simply a case of me scaring myself unnecessarily. And Senior Physician Prilicla will be needed for a precise analysis of the emotional radiation of the people involved, and you, of course, for your other-species psychiatric experience. Depending on developments there may be others.”

“Is that all?” said O’Mara with heavy sarcasm. “Are you quite sure it’s Cerdal and not yourself who’s emotionally disturbed?”

“Sir,” said Braithwaite, “this matter is serious. And it may be urgent.”

O’Mara continued to stare at Braithwaite’s face for a moment, while the other stared unblinkingly at his, which was very unusual behavior for the lieutenant. “Tell me exactly what help you need, begining with mine.”

Braithwaite gave a relieved sigh, then went on quickly, “First I’d like you to open Cerdal’s psych profile to me, or better yet, discuss its contents. From its initial job interview and during a few later conversations with it, I formed the opinion that it was a stable, well-integrated, if a trifle self-important, personality . . .

“You mean bigheaded,” said O’Mara.

. . . who would have no difficulty adapting to the multiplicity of life-forms we have here,” the other went on. “Over the past few days, since I assigned patient Tunneckis to it at its own request, Cerdal has displayed a marked change in its professional and social behavior, and there are clear indications of a worsening case of xenophobia. This behavior seems to me to be totally uncharacteristic in the entity I thought I knew. I made discreet inquiries and discovered that the people with whom it had had recent contact also noticed a change for the worse in its behavior, so much so that some of them have come to dislike it so much that they can barely bring themselves to speak to it anymore, and they, too, are exhibiting xenophobic behavior, of a lower intensity.

“I know that a mental abnormality isn’t contagious,” Braithwaite went on quickly, “whether it stems from patient Tunneckis or Dr. Cerdal. But Tunneckis is the one common factor in all this because Cerdal, and to a lesser extent the people associated with the patient’s post-op medical care, are the only ones affected. Ridicubus as the idea sounds, the mental-contagion theory has to be eliminated from the investigation before I clutch at some other stupid straw.”

The lieutenant took a deep breath and continued, “There could be a simple explanation for this behavior if Tunneckis bears a physical resemblance to something or someone in its past life about which Cerdal has a deeply buried phobia or if, during the course of Cerdal’s therapy, the patient has revealed something about itself that triggered this extreme phobic reaction. That’s why I wanted to look at its psych profile.”

O’Mara nodded, tapped keys on his console, then swung the screen around so that they both could read it.

“Move closer, Lieutenant,” he said, “and be my guest.”

Without appearing to do so, he was studying the information on the screen as intently as Braithwaite was doing. When they were finished the other sighed, sat back, and shook his head. O’Mara allowed a little sympathy to enter his voice.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said, “this is the profile of a person who is in all respects sane, well-adjusted, and completely lacking in xenophobic tendencies.”

Braithwaite shook his head again, stubbornly. “But, sir, that isn’t the profile of Cerdal as it is now. That’s why I need Prilicla to do an emotional-radiation reading on everyone concerned, beginfling with Cerdal and Tunneckis. And I want to know the details of what was done to the patient and, if there was any chance that the procedure was likely to cause more than the simple post-op depression, why we weren’t told about it. I’ve learned that the procedure involved some very delicate work and that Thornnastor and Conway insisted on doing it themselves. I feel sure something is badly wrong here, but I don’t know what exactly. Our two top diagnosticians are in the habit of coming up with answers to some very strange questions and maybe they’ll do it again, if only it is to tell me that I’m making a fool of myself . . .

He hesitated and for a moment the old, self-effacing Braithwaite returned as he added,” . . . which I probably am?

“Possibly you are, Lieutenant, not probably,” said O’Mara. He swung the screen around to face him again, hit the communications key for the outer office, and went on briskly, “Get Thornnastor, Conway, and Priicla up here at once . . . No, hold while I rephrase that . . . ? In an undertone to Braithwaite he said, “Dammit, Lieutenant, I keep forgetting my new eminence and the need for politeness and fake humility that is supposed to go with the job.” In a conversational tone he resumed, “Please locate and contact Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway and Senior Physician Prilicla, give them my compliments and tell them that their presence is required urgently in Administrator O’Mara’s office?

Braithwaite smiled. “Sir,” he said, “I couldn’t have worded that better myself.”

O’Mara ignored the compliment and added, “You stay where you are, Lieutenant. I don’t want to sound bike a fool to those three by relaying your suspicions to them secondhand. I know you don’t know what is going on, but before they arrive I want you to tell me what the hell you think is going on.”

CHAPTER 28

The world was known as Kerm in the language of its inhabitants, which was their spoken and written word for “world”. They didn’t often use those forms of communication, but their telepathic range was restricted to their own-planet species and did not extend to joining with the minds of the members of the startraveling other-worlders who made contact with them, including those of the Monitor Corps who asked and were granted permission to establish a cultural-study facility on their planet. While agreeing to its presence, they insisted that it be sited in an uninhabited area because, regardless of the species concerned, they received the closer-range thoughts of its personnel as a constant and distressing barrage of mental static. As a result the base was maintained in a state of voluntary mental quarantine and all messages between them were exchanged via sound or vision communicators.

Physiologically the Kermi were classification VBGM, the V prefix indicating the telepathic faculty in an otherwise unexceptional warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-form. Their body mass was similar to that of an average Earth-human but that, apart from a high degree of intelligence, was all that they had in common. Visually they resembled large, dark-brown slugs whose means of locomotion was a wide apron of muscle attached to the underside rather than legs. A cluster of three short tentacles, each terminating in four digits, grew from the tops of their heads. They were totally lacking in natural weapons of attack or defense.

The species had climbed to the top of the evolutionary tree by using their telepathic faculty alone, either to avoid danger or to cause the danger, in the shape of natural enemies, to avoid them. Too weak to fight and too slow to run, they learned how to control the minds of any predators who posed an imminent threat to either turn the predators against one another or to disappear from the attackers’ mental and sensory map. In time they widened the process by making use of these lesser life-forms to work for them and to maintain a balanced planetary ecology of flora and fauna and, ultimately, to give their nonsapient brothers who had helped them to develop their present civilization the protection they had earned and deserved.

There was a moment’s silence in the room while Diagnostician Conway, who had been giving the potted history of the Kerma culture, paused to look around at O’Mara, Braithwaite, Thornnastor, Prilicla, and back to O’Mara. When he went on there was a hint of embarrassment in his tone.

“Medical science on Kerm is pretty basic” he said, “and when a life-threatening condition arises with no possibility of a cure, there is nothing much that their doctors can do beyond giving mental solace. In a telepathic culture, remember, there can be no secrets between doctor and patient and this includes not only the bad news but the complete sharing of the associated pain. In this they are like the Telfi VTXMs and, like them, the being who is terminating will voluntarily withdraw itself and its mental and physical pain beyond the telepathic range of its friends so that they will not share its dying anguish.

“When the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Kerm base heard of the Tunneckis case” Conway continued, “it offered the facilities of Sector General. The patient was fully acquainted with the risks plus the fact that we would be learning as we went along instead of knowing what we were doing from the start. This did not matter to Tunneckis and it asked me to proceed. The patient’s condition was extremely serious although it was and is not life-threatening, but then neither is that of a Kelgian with dead fur. In the event, the operation was clinically unsatisfactory and Tunneckis now requires psychiatric support.”

In its open, bowl-shaped relaxer Prilicla’s limbs began trembling in response to a strong source of emotional radiation in the room. Thornnastor cleared its throats with a sound like a hoarse foghorn.

“Administrator’ it said, “Conway is being too hard on itself. It, or more accurately we, were operating in completely unknown surgical territory. There was no background anatomical or metabolic knowledge available at all. For religious and ecological reasons the Kermi will not allow strangers to interfere physically with the bodies of their dead or even to investigate those of their nonsapient brothers although in time, when the cultural contact with them widens, this situation may change. As it is, we had to learn what we could while the surgical procedure was in progress. This was not an ideal situation for the surgeon-in-charge.”

“I know all that” Conway joined in again, “but I think I still made a mess of it, O’Mara, and ended up handing your department a seriously distressed ex-patient to salvage what you can of its mind. Originally the patient had nothing more to lose and I considered the risks acceptable.”

The trembling of Priicla’s limbs increased for a moment, then subsided as Conway regained control of his emotional radiation and went on, “But why are you interested in the details of our surgical foul-up when it’s the mental fallout that should concern you? I’m far from happy about this result because frankly I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”

O’Mara looked at Braithwaite for a moment and said, “This is your case, Lieutenant.”

Braithwaite took a deep breath and managed to sound respectful as he said, “Sir, it’s because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, either, that I asked for you people. I’m hoping that something in the overall clinical picture, I don’t know what, might suggest a line of investigation?

“And if you don’t know what you’re looking for? said Conway, you have to look at everything. Right?”

Before Braithwaite had finished nodding, Conway was on his feet and moving quickly toward the big wall screen facing O’Mara’s desk. He tapped keys and the greatly enlarged features of a Nidian appeared.

“Medical records? it growled.

“Patient Tunneckis” said Conway briskly. “Planet of origin, Kerm. Cranial surgery, unique procedure, surgeon-in-charge Diagnostician Conway with Diagnostician Thornnastor and Senior Physician Prilicla assisting, location OR One-Twelve. Run the complete op without edits from anesthetic to the transfer to Recovery. Go.”

“Sir,” said the Nidian. “This one is flagged by you as restricted. It is marked for the information of the participating OR staff only, and on no account is it to be used for teaching purposes or general public viewing. Do you wish to amend this instruction?”

“Obviously? said Conway. “But I want one screening only to this location, please. Run it now.”

The big screen was suddenly filled with the sharp, bright image of OR One-Twelve, in which patient Tunneckis was held rigid by tight body restraints. A shaped block was further immobilizing its head while serving as a rigid support for the fixed-focus scanner that was centered above its closed eyes. A short length of the narrow, hollow tubing that would guide the instrument probe projected from one ear, and a two-sided viewscreen was suspended above the operative area at a height convenient to the surgeons’ eyes. Just below the screen on Conway’s side there was a small, rigidly mounted set of controls for the remotely controlled probe instruments. Thornnastor and Conway were bending over the patient and Prilicla was maintaining stable hovering flight close above it.

“This patient? said the image of Conway, with the briefest of glances toward the recording equipment, “was the single occupant in a self-controlled groundcar which sustained an accidental lightning strike. The safety systems functioned to earth the charge through the vehicle’s outer shell so that the patient apparently escaped without injury. Within a few hours of the accident, however, the patient reported an increasing impairment of its telepathic faculty which within five days culminated in it becoming telepathically deaf and dumb. Surgical intervention to relieve a dysfunction in the telepathic faculty is beyond the medical science of its home planet or, for that matter, any other world in the Federation, and we were asked to help. Is the patient ready?”

“Yes, friend Conway? said Prilicla. “The level of emotional radiation is characteristic of a deeply unconscious patient.”

As Conway nodded, the picture on the big wall screen split to show two images. One was a close-up of the patient’s head and Conway’s fingers gently inserting the tube into Tunneckis’s ear cavity, while the other showed the magnified deep scanner image of the operation site.

“Rather than open the cranium and hack a path to the trouble spot through brain tissue of whose sensory functions we are entirely ignorant? Conway went on, “we will approach as closely as possible to the operative field via an existing channel, in this instance through one of the two ear openings. Aural rather than telepathic deafness may result on that side, but probably not, because we can rebuild the inner-ear structure much more easily than the job we are attempting now. Increase to six magnifications. I’m going in . . .

Conway’s fingers were gently moving the thin, hollow tube inside the ear, but his eyes were on the magnified image, where it seemed as if a length of heavy piping with rounded edges was being forced in a series of jerks and pauses deeper into a narrowing, fleshy tunnel.

“That’s as close as we’ll get to the site without risking serious damage? said Conway finally. “Now we’ll move in with the fine stuff”

A cluster of cables that looked fine even under the high magnification was threaded into the hollow tube and moved forward to its inner end. They included a tiny but intense light source, an allaround visual sensor, and various cutting and sampling tools whose blades and bearings verged on the microscopic. The cable strands emanated from a flat, transparent box with a pair of metallic operating gauntlets inside it. Slowly and carefully Conway moved his fingers from around the fine strands of cable and slipped his hands into the box and the gloves.

“Magnification two hundred? said Conway. “Instrument motion reduction down one-five percent.”

Even the tiny movements of his hands and fingers, rendered incredibly minute by the reduction mechanism, looked like the awkward, barely coordinated motions of a twitching convulsive.

“Motion stepdown to one-fifty? he said.

On the screen the movements of the strand with the cutting head at its tip became smoother and more assured as it burrowed a path through the inner ear membrane and into the tissue beyond. It was closely followed into the narrow, fleshy tunnel it was creating by the light source, the vision pickup, and the instruments that would gather tissue and fluid samples for analysis. The tiny tunnel was beginning to look crowded.

“There is some collateral tissue damage? said Thornnastor.

“The reduced size of the instruments has rendered it minimal, and allowable.”

“This is new territory? said Conway quietly. “We don’t know what is allowable. Ah, we’re in.

The split-screen images from the external scanner and of Conway’s hands in the reduction gaunflets was replaced by the tremendously magnified view from the internal vision pickup that was moving through what appeared to be a series of interconnecting, submerged caverns. In the strong light their convoluted walls showed pink with patches of yellow and they were covered with plantlike growths whose tight clusters of slender stems were topped by single, crystalline flowers that were pale blue or red verging on black. The majority of the stems were headless and on the few that weren t the crystals looked deformed or damaged. Pieces of crystalline debris stirred in the eddies created by the motion of the invading instruments.

“I’ll need a specimen of the fluid for analysis,” said Thornnastor. “Also samples of that floating debris, which appears to be fragmented crystalline material, and a few complete crystals if you can detach them from their stalks. I’ll need stalk samples as well, complete with their crystal flowers.”

“Right? said Conway. “Increase the magnification to two hundred.”

A tiny amount of the fluid which included the debris was withdrawn. Then the cutter and grabs, looking like gigantic earthmoving machinery under the high magnification, moved in to harvest the required stalks and crystals.

“I have enough for the analyzer, now? said Thornnastor. “But the fluid is something more than a simple saline solution. This will take a little time.”

“I feel your concern, friend Conway? Prilicla’s voice joined in, “but it is unnecessary. There is no change in the patient’s emotional status even at the subconscious level, which is the most accurate guide to anything going wrong. The invasive procedure is so delicate that I doubt that it would have felt anything even if it had been fully conscious.”

There was a faint, rustling sound that might have been Conway sighing with relief, and then he said, “Thank you for the reassurance, little friend, you must have felt I needed it. But what we’re seeing here is an organic telepathic transmitter and receiver that is damaged and inoperative. Dammit, in primary-school science class I couldn’t even build a homemade radio that worked.”

It was Thornnastor who looked up with one eye from its analyzer to break the lengthening silence.

“This is interesting? it said. “The fluid is a complex of metallic salts, predominantly copper, with a large number of other minerals in trace quantities that have yet to be identified. It seems that the crystals, which are very faintly radioactive, grow within the fluid and attach themselves to the clusters of stalks only when they are fully formed. Apart from providing cup-shaped attachment points at their tips and serving as a protective sheath for the connective nerve pathway to the central brain, they are merely the supports for their individual crystals.

“We can reproduce the fluid? it went on, “and seed it with fragments of the damaged crystals and regrow and reirradiate them. Pathologist Murchison is standing by in the lab and it tells me that the crystals form so quickly that it should be able to complete the process in just over an hour. This would give us enough time for lunch.”

“What?” said Conway.

“Friend Thornnastor is a massive and energy-hungry lifeform? said Prilicla, “but it is simply making a pleasantry aimed at reducing emotional tension.”

The image showing the site of Tunneckis’s telepathic faculty remained steady on the wall screen, but the conversation of the operating team discussing it became so densely technical that O’Mara found it difficult to follow even with both his minds. He was glad when the regrown crystals in their growth medium arrived and were injected slowly into the cerebral fluid.

It was obvious even to O’Mara that there were problems.

The newly introduced crystals refused to attach themselves to stalks. Conway stepped up the magnification several times and, sweating in his effort to make minimal movements, tried to use his microinstruments to nudge and hold them together, in vain. The emotional radiation in the room was so intense that Prilicla, trembling in every limb, was forced to land. Finally Conway shook his head, regained enough control over his feelings for the empath to stop trembling, and looked up.

“The receptor cups on the stalks appear to fit the new crystals? he said calmly, “which means that either the reproduction of the new crystals or the fluid in which they were grown was at fault, or both, so that they are either rejecting or temporarily ignoring the stalks. I’m hoping, in fact I’m being hopelessly optimistic, that it is the latter and that the joining process simply requires more time. That being the case, and unless anyone has any other ideas, I suggest we withdraw at once in the hope that the patient, as so many of them do, proceeds to heal itself?”

There was total silence in O’Mara’s office as Conway switched off the wall screen before turning to face them again.

“The rest of this is simply the op debriefing and my general instructions to the medical staff of the recuperation ward? he went on, “and frankly I dislike listening to myself making excuses. Patient Tunneckis did not recover. In addition it has become emotionally disturbed to the stage where psychiatric assistance was requested. It’s gratifying to belong to a hospital with the reputation of doing the medically impossible, but, regrettably, we can’t do it all the time. Patient Tunneckis, I’m afraid, remains as it was, telepathically deaf and dumb.”

Conway silently resumed his seat and the silence lengthened. Thornnastor and Prilicla joined the others in saying nothing. O’Mara was totally surprised and very pleased when it was the usually quiet and self-effacing Lieutenant Braithwaite who broke the silence.

“Diagnostician Conway? he said politely, “I completely disagree.”

CHAPTER 29

Conway, Thornnastor, Prilicla, and O’Mara turned their total of ten eyes on the lieutenant, who kept his fixed unwaveringly on Conway. He spoke again before the other could react.

“There is evidence to suggest,” Braithwaite continued, respectfully but firmly, “that your patient is making some form of projective telepathic contact with the members of several different species, specifically those belonging to the medical staff who have been or are attending it. So far as I can gather from their reported conversations with the patient, Tunneckis and they are completely unaware of what is happening.”

Conway looked quickly toward O’Mara, then back to Braithwaite. He smiled and said, “Has your chief made you aware of the brain-itch phenomenon, Lieutenant? It’s very rare, but I’ve experienced it a few times myself around telepaths. It’s a temporary irritation, not a physical or mental health risk.”

Braithwaite nodded. “I’m aware of it, sir. It occurs when a member of a species who is not normally telepathic but whose distant ancestors possessed the gene for a telepathic faculty, and evolved speech and hearing instead, encounters a transmission that its long-atrophied receiver cannot process. The result, if they feel anything at all, is an unlocalized itching deep inside both ears. Occasionally, as happened with you, a complete telepathic mindpicture is received which fades within seconds. The effect with Tunneckis is more insidious and, I believe, dangerous.

“Since you took part in the operation” he went on, looking briefly toward Prilicla and Thornnastor, “are any of you aware of uncharacteristic changes in your behavior or thought patterns, however small? Do any of you find yourselves feeling unusual levels of irritation toward other-species colleagues or subordinate staff? Are you worried about what they might do to you someday? Do you find yourselves wishing you had own-species assistants rather than a bunch of weird aliens who

“Dammit, Lieutenant” Conway broke in, his face deepening in color, “are you suggesting xenophobic behavior in people like us?”

“In people with your wide, other-species experience and length of hospital service” Braithwaite replied calmly, “xenophobia is unlikely. But it is a possibility that must be considered.”

Before Conway could respond, Prilicla said, “Friend Braithwaite, the five sources of emotion4l radiation in this room give no indications of xenophobia, either now or in the past. You are now feeling relief. Why is that?”

“Because” said the lieutenant, “I thought you might have been infected, contaminated, influenced, whatever is the proper word to describe a telepathic contagion, by Tunneckis during the operation, as was our Dr. Cerdal while practicing its therapy. Obviously this did not happen. Perhaps the duration of exposure is a factor, which would explain why it is Dr. Cerdal-who as its therapist is frequently in attendance-is the person most strongly affected at present. The symptoms of the nursing staff, who have more important things to do than talk for long periods with the patient, are less obvious.”

“Dr. Cerdal’ said O’Mara before anyone could ask who it was, “is an able psychologist and one of the contenders for my job, although becoming one of my department’s patients is an unusual way of impressing me.

Conway smiled and Thornnastor stamped one of its medial feet in polite appreciation of O’Mara’s attempt to lighten the atmosphere, but Prilicla was shaking again. It was the slow, irregular tremor the Cinrusskin made when it was nerving itself to say something which might give rise to an unpleasant emotional reaction which its empathy would cause it to share.

“Friend Braithwaite” it said hesitantly, “have you considered the possibility that friend Cerdal’s problem may be self-generated? That the emotional pressures of competing for the top job, in surroundings which to it must seem very strange and perhaps frightening, have uncovered an unsuspected flaw in its normally well-integrated personality? And that your xenophobia theory, with apologies, is all wrong?”

“I’ve considered that possibility, Dr. Prilicla,” said the lieutenant, “and discarded it. But I would be very relieved and pleased if any of you can prove me all wrong.”

Prilicla made the musical trilling sound that was Cinrusskin laughter and said, “Then I would take great pleasure in relieving and pleasing you, friend Braithwaite. How, precisely, can I prove you wrong?”

The lieutenant told Priicla, followed by Conway and Thornnastor, what he wanted done. In the presence of three of the most senior medical staff in the hospital his manner was respectful, O’Mara was pleased to see, but without the slightest trace of subservience. He remained silent for several minutes after the three medics had left the office.

“You may not know exactly what you’re doing, Lieutenant” he said finally, “but you seem to be doing it very well. And now, after ordering the top medical brass around for the past ten minutes, presumably you have a job for me?”

“I would appreciate any help and advice you could give me, sir.” said Braithwaite. “Or instructions. If it is convenient I’d like us both to talk to Tunneckis’s ward staff?

“Suppose? said O’Mara, “I were to tell you, less tactfully than Prilicla, that you’re all wrong and advise you to cease and desist your present line of investigation forthwith, what then?”

“In certain circumstances? Braithwaite replied, calmly ducking the question, “negative advice can be helpful?

“Diplomat? said O’Mara in a voice suggesting that he had just used a dirty word. For a moment he looked around the large, beautiful, and well-appointed room, and through the transparent wall that revealed his mixed-species secretarial staff busy at their consoles, then went on. “If you do eventually make it to this office, Lieutenant, you’ll like it. Once the initial panic is over and you realize that you can be polite when you choose and not because you have to please others, you’ll be able to apply the diplomatic oil that will keep the hospital running smoothly. I can’t do that, and always feel happier when I’m somewhere else.”

He stood up suddenly and circumnavigated his enormous desk to stand beside Braithwaite before he added, “This is still your show. Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

Valleschni was the off-duty charge nurse on Tunneckis’s recovery ward, which meant that, when they asked and received permission to talk to it in its private quarters, they had to wear their protective suits while the chlorine-breather wore nothing. The personal nature of the conversation made it impossible for one of them not to look at the obnoxious thing. After a brief nod of greeting, O’Mara kept his attention fixed on a lank bunch of something oily and decaying hanging from one wall (it was probably decorative vegetation and, for a chlorine-breather, sweet-smelling) while he allowed Braithwaite to do the talking.

“I had thought? said the Illensan when the lieutenant had finished, “that a visit from two psychiatrists presaged important and perhaps fearful revelations concerning my own mental state. Instead you want to know precisely how much nursing time has been spent on Patient Tunneckis, which in my own case is only a few minutes per day, and whether there have been any self-observed changes in my own personality or behavior or in members of my subordinate nursing staff who, you say, may or may not require therapy; and you tell me that these changes that are so subtle that I could be forgiven for missing them.

“Are you quite sure? it added, squelching closer on legs that looked like stubby columns of yellow-green, oozing seaweed, “that it isn’t the psychiatrists who are in need of therapy?”

O’Mara started to laugh softly, then thought better of it. Unlike Kelgians, the Illensans were capable of polite conversation when they felt like it. Perhaps this one wasn’t in the mood. Or maybe it was feeling hostile and uncooperative because it had developed a low order of xenophobia after being exposed to Tunneckis’s psychological contagion, whose existence Braithwaite had still to prove. But more likely it was simply irritated at them for wasting its offduty time.

“I am aware of mood swings and behavioral changes in myself and my staff every day? Valleschni went on, “and some of them aren’t subtle. They can be caused by many things-worry about a tutor’s remarks in lectures, a sex-based relationship with a colleague that is not progressing well so that the ward work is suffering, or many things that have a purely subjective importance to the people concerned. These minor losses of temper or flashes of insubordination are directed toward myself as a person. My culture is fortunate in its scientific accomplishments, particularly in otherspecies medicine, and unfortunate in that the stupid, small-minded majority of oxygen-breathers like yourselves considers us less than physically beautiful. Even your own superior prefers to look at a stupid flower rather than at me. This being the case, it is understandable that we dislike each other, but I do not believe that xenophobia is the problem.”

“And I believe,” said Braithwaite, momentarily losing his temper, “that xenophobia is the problem and that . . . ?

O’Mara cut him off by gently clearing his throat. The lieutenant caught what was plainly a nonverbal signal to disengage.

“Now that we have made you officially aware of the problem? said Braithwaite, regaining his calm, “our department would appreciate having any further information you can provide. We will, of course, be interviewing the other members of the ward staff who have had close contact with patient Tunneckis. Thank you for your cooperation, Charge Nurse.”

When they were in the corridor, the lieutenant shook his head, nodded toward Valleschni’s door, and said, “Illensans are not usually so impolite, sir. That could be an early indication of a xenophobic reaction.”

“It’s still your case, Lieutenant? said O’Mara. “Where to next?”

Normally O’Mara did not use the dining hail, because he had always been uncomfortable making polite small talk with people discussing a subject-medicine-in which he had no training, or whose conversation might reveal the early symptoms of an emotional disturbance, or who were merely swapping hospital gossip, of which he might also have to take professional cognizance. His well-known irascibility and impatience with people, although they never suspected it, was principally due to the fact that he still carried the memories and personality of his mind partner, Marrasarah, and over the years that honest and intensely forthright Keigian tape donor and himself had become very close in their thinking. He had chosen therefore to eat privately in his office or living quarters, and so now all the diners were going to stare at him and wonder why the hell he was breaking with precedent. But in the event he and Braithwaite might just as well have been invisible, because the center of attention was elsewhere.

Practically all the staffers in the vast room were on their feet and raising a muitispecies din while gesticulating with arms, tentacles, or whatever, towards a table close to one wall, where he saw a sight that he had hoped he would never see in Sector General: an all-out, no-holds-barred, mixed-species fight.

“Call for a security detail? O’Mara snapped as he hurried towards it. “Armed and with heavy restraints.” But the lieutenant was already talking urgently into the nearby communicator and doing just that.

They were mixing it up so thoroughly that O’Mara had difficulty at first in seeing who and how many were involved among the debris of the partially demolished table and furniture, and the volume of untranslatable noise they were making gave no clue as to the reason for the fighting. But it was immediately obvious that they were fighting indiscriminately among themselves and not ganging up on one individual. That, O’Mara hoped, might reduce the severity if not the number of casualties. A Tralthan was trying to batter in the bony carapace of a Melfan, who was snapping with its pincers at the other’s leathery hide while jabbing with a stiffened leg at the lower torso of a large, bear-like Orligian, who was hanging onto one of the Tralthan’s free tentacles and trying to kick its elephantine legs out from under it. A well-muscled Earth-human charge nurse with blood that was probably his own running down his face and white tunic was in there somewhere using fists and feet. The Orligian’s fur was also showing patches of blood and one of the Melfan’s limbs was hanging limp. As O’Mara moved closer, a Nidian he hadn’t noticed until then was expelled from the affray and came to a skidding halt at his feet.

He went down on one knee and grabbed the tiny, red-furred figure by the shoulders.

“Why the hell are you fighting?” he yelled above the din. “Stop it, stop it at once or you’ll wreck your careers here.”

“I know that, dammit,” said the other crossly. “I was trying to stop it, but they have the advantage of weight. You try to talk some sense into them.”

O’Mara growled an apology, lifted the Nidian to its feet, and began circling the group of combatants, who were completely ignoring the advice he was shouting at them. Suddenly he saw his chance and moved in on the Earth-human and gave him a hard double kidney punch. As the other gasped and buckled at the knees, he grabbed him around the waist and dragged him backward onto the floor a few yards away.

“Don’t move from there, Charge Nurse? he said furiously, “or I’ll damn well stamp on your stupid face.”

As he returned to the fracas he felt so furious at the stupidity of these people who had started the first inter-species fight in Sector General’s history that he almost meant what he had said.

He took out the Melfan by encircling its underside with his arms and, keeping the side of his face close to the carapace so that it couldn’t reach around to poke him in the eyes, immobilized it by sliding it onto its back at a safe distance from the Earth-human charge nurse. Moving the Orligian was going to be much more difficult. Even in the old, wild days when his body weight was made up of muscle rather than fat, he had rarely bested one of them. Feeling ashamed of himself because he might almost be enjoying what he was doing after all the years of civilized behavior, he grabbed the other by its long, furry ears, planted a knee between its shoulder blades, and pulled back hard.

The Orligian gave a growling bellow, released its hold on the Tralthan’s tentacle, dropped onto its hands and knees, and tried to throw O’Mara over its head like a maddened horse trying to unseat its rider. It might have succeeded if a pair of slim, iron-hard Hudlar tentacles hadn’t encircled his waist and legs suddenly and dragged him away from it and high into the air. Another pair oftentacles were doing the same to the Orligian.

“What the hell are you doing?” said O’Mara, startled. “Put me down, dammit?

Below and between the suspended bodies of the Orligian and himself the Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated as it replied politely, “Only if you promise to forgo your attempt to settle your dispute by physical means. You are guilty of behavior unbecoming to civilized beings.”

“It’s all right, Nurse? said Braithwaite to the Hudlar, trying hard to keep from smiling. “The Earth-human was trying to separate the combatants. He’s one of the good guys.”

When O’Mara’s feet were on the floor again, he glowered at the other and said, “Are you enjoying this, Lieutenant?”

“Only a small part of it, sir; the rest is much too serious? Braithwaite replied, unabashed, then went on quickly, “While I was calling Security a Hudlar nurse was passing along the corridor and I asked for its help to . . .

He broke off and waved at six massive Orligians with a selection of pacifiers suspended from their equipment harnesses as they came through the dining-hall entrance at a dead run.

“Here’s the security detail now? he went on. “I suggest we take care of the wounded-at least there’s no shortage of medical assistance in here-then confine them under guard to their quarters until we can interview them individually and get to the bottom of this business.”

“Then do that? said O’Mara. “Is there something else on your mind?”

“Yes, sir? Braithwaite replied worriedly. “The Earth-human charge nurse and the Orligian I recognized, and the other two I’m fairly sure about even though Melfans and Tralthans still look the same to me. They are all currently attached to Tunneckis’s recovery ward.”

CHAPTER 30

Padre Lioren was a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla which, in Earth academic circles, would have been placed on the same level of professional achievement as the old-time Nobel Prize for Medicine-although, since the Cromsaggar Incident, it had forsworn the practice of the art. Everyone on the Sector General staff knew the reason that he was the Psychology Department’s otherspecies religious counselor rather than a senior physician, but nobody until now, not even a Kelgian like this one, had ever been so crassly insensitive and stupid as to remind him of it to his face.

Lioren took a firm grip on his anger with all eight hands and said gently, “What is troubling you, friend?”

“You are troubling me,” said the Kelgian, its fur heaving into angry tufts, “you sanctimonious bloody murdering hypocrite. Go away, and stop trying to poison my mind with one of your stupid religions. I won’t tell you anything or listen to a thing that looks like a diseased shumpid tree. Leave me alone.”

In general configuration his tall, cone-shaped body with the four stubby, rootlike legs, four medial and four upper arms could be described as resembling a Kelgian shumpid tree if the describer wished to be offensive, which for some reason this one did. But it was the reason for the other’s totally uncharacteristic behavior that interested him.

“I’ll leave you alone,” said Lioren quietly, “if that is what you really want. But what I want to do is to listen to your troubles, and personal insults if they are part of the problem, not try to teach you anything you don’t want to learn. And there are many trees on Tarla that look a little like me, and some of them are infested by small, furry creatures that resemble you. Both species live and grow in the manner originally ordained for them with no choice in the matter. Unlike them, we are self-willed, civilized, and sapient.

“Supposedly? he couldn’t help adding.

The Kelgian’s fur continued to ripple and tuft in what was plainly intense agitation, but it remained silent.

“Please remember,” Lioren went on, “even though I am attached to the Psychology Department, I am not bound by its rules nor am I required to report anything you may tell me to my superior or include it in your psych file unless you give your permission to do so. There is complete confidentiality. Plainly something is troubling you that is serious enough to affect your behavior toward your superiors, the other ward staff, and, I’ve been told, your off-duty other-species friends. Whether the problem is personal, ethical, or even criminal in nature, it will go no further than we two unless or until you allow otherwise. Now would you like to tell me about it?”

“No,” said the other. “I wouldn’t like to, because I don’t like you. I don’t want you near me and I don’t believe what you say. You’ll just go back and talk about me to the Earth-humans and that horrible Sommaradvan in your department. Everybody in this place says things they don’t mean and they don’t have the fur to show what they truly feel. I don’t trust any of you because the only people I can trust are other Kelgians. For your information there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I don’t have a personal or ethical or any other kind of problem. Just go away.

After that tirade, Lioren thought sadly, there was nothing else to do.

And in another part of the hospital Cha Thrat, recently described as the department’s horrible Sommaradvan, was beginning tactfully to probe the suspected emotional difficulties of an Earthhuman trainee nurse. Her great size and disposition of limbs made it necessary for her to interview the subject through the other’s open door.

“I’m sorry for calling during an off-duty period, Nurse Patel? said Cha Thrat, “but Senior Tutor Cresk-Sar is becoming increasingly concerned about your recent inattention and general behavior during lectures. Since you joined the hospital it tells me that your multi-species anatomical studies and general practical work on the wards has been exemplary, but recently there has been a marked deterioration both in the quality of your work and in your professional contacts with other-species colleagues and patients. So far none of this is serious enough for the Psychology Department to take official notice of it, which means that it hasn’t gone into your psych file, but I was asked to have an unofficial word with you about it and, perhaps, give you a word of advice. Cresk-Sar wonders if the cause lies outside the training program. Is there anything that you would like to tell me, Nurse?”

The other’s already dark facial skin coloration darkened some more. In Earth-humans, Cha Thrat had learned, this was an indication of the presence of a strongly felt emotion such as anger or embarrassment.

“Yes? said the nurse loudly, “I would like to tell you that CreskSar is a nosy, small-minded, flea-bitten runt . . .” She twitched her shoulders. “. . . who gives me the creeps every time it comes near me. And you’re as bad as it is, only bigger.”

As a Nidian, the senior tutor possessed just over half the body mass of the Earth-human female, but Cha Thrat doubted that its tight, curly body fur harbored insect parasites. Plainly it was the other’s emotions rather than its reason that was talking. Like the warrior-surgeon she had been and the trainee ruler-wizard she had become, she tried to bury her own emotional response under a deep layer of reason and, above all, control her usually short temper.

“I have need of information about you, Nurse Patel,” said Cha Thrat, “not Senior Tutor Cresk-Sar.”

“Then you still need it,” the other replied, speaking too loudly considering the short distance separating them. “Why should I tell you anything about me, you outsized pervert? We know all about you, how your own people got you sent here by pulling political strings, and how you cut off one of your own arms during an op and, and . . . A warrior-surgeon, indeed. You’re a bloody swordswinging, Sommaradvan savage. Go away.

Cha Thrat forced herself to speak in a quiet, reasonable voice as she said, “I am not a warrior, a wielder of weapons, or, as it is in these civilized times, a user of dangerous technology. The term signifies my medical rank only. At the bottom are the menialphysicians, who deal out potions and poultices to the workers; then there are the warrior-surgeons like myself who used to treat the wounds of those hurt in battle before warfare was outlawed; and then, the most important, are the wizards, the healers of the mind, that is, whose duty it is to keep the mentalities of the rulers and subrulers in stable good health. Naturally, if a menial were to sustain a serious injury or a mental dysfunction, the nearest warrior-surgeon or ruler-wizard would attend

Cha Thrat stopped speaking when Nurse Patel’s door hissed shut in her face. After a moment’s pause for thought, she moved quickly to the nearest communicator and keyed for staff information.

“I require the present location of Administrator O’Mara,” she said briskly, “and, if it is in a meeting or on rest period, use the Code Orange One priority break-in.”

Just over three standard minutes passed before the screen lit with the image of O’Mara. It was out of uniform, wearing a soft, loose garment over the visible portion of its body and rubbing at the fleshy flaps that covered its Earth-human eyes.

“Dammit, Cha Thrat? it said angrily when she had finished talking, “why is a psychiatrist reporting the suspected presence of a contagious disease to me, another bloody psychiatrist? Since you joined the department you no longer practice medicine, but if you re moonlighting and have found something then tell your suspicions to one of the medics and hope that you’ve something to back them up. It’s the middle of my night and I shall have harsh things to say to you in the morning. Off.”

“Wait, sir? said Cha Thrat quickly. “I believe that we are faced with the presence of an unsuspected contagion, how limited or widespread it is I don’t know, because up until a few minutes ago it would have been based only on hearsay and staff gossip. But now I think there is a solid basis to the rumors.

“Then tell me why you think that? said O’Mara in a quieter voice. “And, Cha Thrat, this had better be good?

“I’m not sure what is going on, sir? she said, “because what I’m thinking isn’t possible. Normally a mental or emotional dysfunction, however serious, cannot be transmitted to the mind of another person unless there has been protracted association with the troubled personality and the other mind is extremely weak-willed and open to suggestion. I’ve ali~eady studied the psych files of the people mentioned in the rumors as well as that of my last interviewee and none of them, or for that matter any other member of the staff, would be allowed to work here if they had minds like that. I believe it to be a purely psychological xenophobic contagion, sir, and a nonmedical Code Orange One was the closest I could come to describing it. Did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t,” said O’Mara. Its eyes were no longer partially covered by their lids and Cha Thrat could hear the sound of its fingers tapping as if it was impatient to use the call keys. “Return to the department at once. Discuss your suspicions with Padre Lioren and Lieutenant Braithwaite and pool your information until I arrive. Off.”

When the Sommaradvan’s image flicked off his screen, O’Mara asked for the location and duty roster of Senior Physician Prilicla and found that the Cinrusskin was awake and about to begin its day. When faced with the possibility of a nonmedical illness, an empathic doctor should know best.

It was three hours later. For various nonmedical reasons, like the pressures of his new administrative job spilling over into his free time, O’Mara had already missed two nights’ sleep. His mind ached from chasing itself in circles and he would have given a good chunk of his month’s salary if he could have allowed himself the luxury of a large, jaw-dislocating yawn. Instead he held up one hand for silence and looked slowly from Braithwaite to Cha Thrat to Lioren and finally at Prilicla, the only person there who knew exactly how tired he felt, and tried to speak like an administrator rather than the chief psychologist three of them thought they knew and loathed.

“My compliments on the psychological detective work all of you have performed,” he said, “and on the evidence you have gathered, which seems to point to an impossible conclusion. But now we have to stop reminding each other endlessly of how impossible it is and do something about the situation.

“Item,” he went on. “We have three members of the medical staff and another who is currently being assessed for my job and who may or may not become a staff member. Without prior behavioral indications, it and several other members of the staff have suddenly exhibited xenophobia of a degree which cannot be tolerated in this hospital and must, if left untreated, lead to their dismissal. About twenty other members of the staff, whom I am ignoring for the moment, are displaying similar symptoms at a lower intensity. So we are faced with evidence that some form of mental contagion is present in the hospital which, by its very nature, is impossible.

“But if two inexplicable events occur at the same time? he said, “there is a strong possibility that they have a common cause. And when four or more of them occur within a few days of each other, that possibility becomes a probability amounting to virtual certainty. So let us consider how this impossible, nonmedical, mental disorder entered the hospital and how it is being propagated. Well?”

Braithwaite looked toward Prilicla, giving the senior physician the chance to speak first, but plainly the empath was feeling his impatience. It waved a delicate insectile hand for him to go on.

“Sir? said Braithwaite, “if it is a contagious disease, whether medical or mental, then we must assume the presence of a carrier who was originally infected and is transmitting the disease to everyone it contacts. But this disease isn’t behaving like that, because so far the evidence points to a single source with the victims exhibiting diminishing degrees of infection depending on the time they spent, or are presently spending, in contact with the source, whom-I believe-we can now identify?”

Cha Thrat dipped its head in agreement, Lioren made a gesture with its medial hands that meant the same thing, and Prilicla, who usually tried to agree with everyone so as to keep the ambient emotional radiation pleasant, did nothing.

“Go on? said O’Mara impatiently.

“The source? Braithwaite continued, “has to be the recently arrived VBGM classification, patient Tunneckis from Kerm, who is recuperating from brain surgery and postoperative emotional complications, which Dr. Cerdal asked for and was given my permission to treat. The Kermi are a telepathic species and this, in my opinion, is the crucial datum.

“Dr. Cerdal? he went on, “has spent several hours every day, the longest time that anyone has spent in its company, interviewing the patient, so far without any success in solving its problems. But Cerdal, without any previous history of mental disorder, is displaying symptoms of xenophobia so severe that it has been confined to its quarters. Less seriously affected are the Illensan PVSJ charge nurse Valleschni, who has ward responsibility for Tunneckis’s aftercare and who checks on its condition at frequent intervals, and the Earth-human DBDG trainee nurse, Patel, who was also in regular attendance checking the wound dressings, serving meals, and such. These three have been withdrawn from duty and confined to their quarters, as have the people who were fighting in the dining hail. Their symptoms were not as marked as the others, but they had no close contact with the patient and were simply on duty nearby. Would you all agree that this suggests that the mental infection or whatever it is has a single radiant source and that its effects are time-cumulative? Not only that, the sudden worsening of the observed symptoms in everyone concerned suggests that the source is strengthening and increasing its effective range. But how do we isolate a nonmaterial infection?

“Doctor? Braithwaite said, turning suddenly to face Priicia, “is there anything in the emotional radiation of the peripheral victims you observed which suggests otherwise?”

“No, friend Braithwaite,” said Prilicia, “it is as you say. There is a coarsening, a lack in the more subtle shading and structuring of their emotions, as if the finer and, for want of a better word to describe it to a non-empath, more civilized feelings are being stripped away. However, removal from the source seems to have halted the process, which may be reversible. The mind as well as the body has ways of rebuilding itself, but perhaps I am erring on the side of optimism.”

It looked at O’Mara for a moment, then went on, “This is a nice piece of observation and deduction on the Lieutenant’s part, friend O’Mara, and I hope it will be rewarded accordingly. Now I know why you would not allow me to approach Tunneckis for an emotional reading even though the results might have been helpful. You were afraid I might catch it, whatever it is.”

“That was the Lieutenant’s idea, too,” said O’Mara, scowling and refusing to join in complimenting his subordinate, “and I’m still thinking about how best to give him his just deserts while making sure he doesn’t enjoy them.”

O’Mara knew that Prilicla was fully aware of his feeling of admiration for the quality of Braithwaite’s work but he had, after all, a reputation for nastiness to maintain. The empath returned its attention to the Lieutenant. A faint tremor began to move along its limbs and wings.

“I feel your suspicions, friend Braithwaite? it said. “What is troubling you?

“What troubles me,” Braithwaite said, “is that, apart from viewing its operation and being asked to provide psychiatric postoperative support, we know nothing about Patient Tunneckis. Why was the patient isolated in the first place? Was someone already suspicious about what might happen and taking precautions? Doctor Priiicla, it is impossible to hide emotional radiation from you. As an empath, have you been able to pick up any feelings from anyone regarding this case, feelings that may have a bearing on the problem and that you are at liberty to disclose? Or better still, do you yourself know anything at all about the patient’s emotional background?”

The tremor in Prilicla’s wings and legs spread to its fragile, egg-shell body.

“Your feeling of suspicion is unjustified, friend Braithwaite? it said. “The isolation of the patient was intended to minimize the level of telepathic noise generated by its medical staff, noise that it may no longer be able to hear. But I can tell you a little more about the case.

CHAPTER 31

By the time Priicla had finished telling them everything it knew and they had devised a plan, not for solving the problem but for finding a method of containing it in the hope that an answer might somehow be found, O’Mara was feeling more than usually irascible through lack of sleep. As it was, the partial solution was going to turn a large number of the hospital’s medical, maintenance, and security staff on their collective ear and even the new, self-assured Braithwaite could not be expected to order so many senior staff around without someone telling him exactly where to put his instructions. That was why O’Mara kept the Lieutenant at his side while he made noises like a hospital administrator to the person primarily responsible for the mess.

It was strange, he thought as the long-familiar Earth-human face appeared on his viewscreen, how many of the hospital’s past emergencies had begun by this man either trying to do or often doing the medically impossible.

“Conway,” O’Mara said sourly, “you and your telepathic patient have really landed us in it this time. Arrangements are being made as we speak to isolate Tunneckis from all contact with the medical and maintenance staff. Except for the few minutes spent with it by the bare minimum personnel needed to make its isolation as comfortable as possible, it is not to be approached by any living person. Remote-controlled monitoring and medical-treatment servos and a mobile food dispenser will be provided. Fortunately it has recovered sufficiently to use its own toilet facilities. If you have any other patients on Levels One-Ninety-Nine through Two-ZeroThree, they aren’t there anymore and you’ll probably find them on Two-Eighty-Five. But first I have orders for you which must be obeyed without argument or delay if—”

“Wait? Conway broke in. “You can’t do that. I have three patients in that area and one of them is tricky . . . Dammit, this isn’t a convenient time for holding a stupid evacuation drill. You should have consulted me first. So forget your bloody orders, O’Mara, and tell me what the hell is going on!”

Listening to such an angry exchange between two of the hospital’s top people was a brand-new experience for Braithwaite, and he was looking very uncomfortable. Before O’Mara could reply, the Lieutenant leaned forward so as to bring his face into visual range of O’Mara’s communicator and tried to pour a little diplomatic oil over a manner that his chief’s fatigue was making more abrasive than usual.

“Sir? he said quietly, with an apologetic glance at O’Mara beside him, “a dangerous situation has arisen which, among other things, has caused us to lose a lot of sleep and caused tempers to fray while we tracked it to its source. Rather than waste time trying to tell you about it in detail, I suggest you speak with Dr. Prilicla, who is now fully informed and who will be able to describe the emergency much better than we can. There is nothing to stop you attending your other patients once their new locations are known, and Administrator O’Mara doesn’t wish to give offense .

“Hah!” said Conway.

. . . but? Braithwaite continued firmly, “he must still forbid Diagnostician Thornnastor, Senior Physician Prilicla, and yourself physical contact with patient Tunneckis. Security has orders to forbid access to this patient by any sapient life-forms or any approach to within one hundred meters in any direction of its present location, although we expect this distance limit to be reviewed and extended in the light of further reports on the progress of the infection. With respect, sir, you, too, must be bound by these orders.”

“With respect, Lieutenant,” said Conway, “what bloody infection? Tunneckis isn’t infected with anything. I suppose you could best describe the case as a road traffic accident, or maybe as an act of its planetary God. It was just driving home when its ground vehicle was struck by lightning. Tunneckis wasn’t even sick.”

“It is now,” said Braithwaite very seriously. “We have incontrovertible evidence that a form of mental contagion is radiating from Tunneckis’s present location and that, according to Dr. Prilicla, who is charting the rate of expansion for us, it is spreading at an accelerating rate into the adjacent levels of the hospital and beyond. In effect, it seems to strip away the more sensitive layers of consciousness, those which we use to make friends, or to trust rather than fear strangers, and, in short, enable us to behave like civilized individuals. I mentioned earlier to you that Tunneckis might not be telepathically dumb. Now we know that it is producing a loud, incoherent, telepathic shout that is slowly destroying the minds within its increasing range. We don’t know what the final stage will be, almost certainly a condition of rampant xenophobia with possibly a descent into pre-sapience. That is why we cannot allow the hospital’s best medical minds to be affected, because we will need them to find a solution.

“If they can? he added.

“Ignore the Lieutenant’s clumsy attempt at flattery, Conway,” O’Mara joined in suddenly. “According to Prilicla, it was you agreeing to accept and treat the hospital’s first Kerma patient that got us into this mess, so you can use your fine mind to help us get out of it. Right?”

Conway frowned, then nodded.”But it isn’t a medical condition? he said. “It’s a, a state of mind in an emotionally disturbed patient who happens to be a telepath. What is Psychology Department doing about it?”

“All we can? O’Mara replied.

“Of course you are? said Conway. “I’ll talk to Prilicla at once. And Thornnastor, who’s also involved. But if this mental infection is radiating and strengthening as you say, how long before we start transferring patients to another hospital?”

“Or move Tunneckis out of this one?” said O’Mara. “But if its present condition continues to worsen, I doubt whether the Kermi or anyone else will want it. You have to find the answer to this one, Doctor, or you’ll be faced with an interesting and very urgent ethical dilemma.”

Braithwaite cleared his throat and looked back to O’Mara. “It might not be all that urgent, sir? he said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to get your approval, but I used your name freely with the engineering and medical-technology people to put them to work on a temporary solution. They are currently modifying a four-person survival pod I-I mean we-commandeered from one of the Orligian supply ships and are installing Kerma life-support, medical monitoring, and the equipment that will enable the pod to be supplied and serviced by remote-control devices sensitive enough for patient care. That will take them at least three days. They might trim a few hours off that estimate, sir, if you were to speak sternly to them in person.

O’Mara’s immediate reaction should have been to lift the skin off the Lieutenant’s back with a tongue-lashing for using his superior’s name and rank without permission. But it was a good idea that he might have thought of himself given time, and his feelings were too desensitized with fatigue to be hurt.

Instead he just nodded and said, “I’ll do that.”

“With Tunneckis in the pod outside the hospital? Braithwaite went on, turning back to Conway on the screen, “You can maintain the medical treatment necessary at long range while the department tries to provide psychotherapy over the communicator. Dr. Prilicla will tell us if and when the patient has to be moved farther out.”

Conway shook his head, in puzzlement rather than negation, and said, “Well done, Lieutenant; at least that will give us time to think. But how can a case that began as a simple vehicular casualty with suspected brain injuries turn suddenly into something that, without the patient being aware of what it’s doing, is sucking out the higher levels of intelligence and sensitivity from the people around it like some kind of mental black hole? This doesn’t make sense ~

“With respect, sir,” said Braithwaite, “what was the exact nature of its injuries?”

“Apart from minor scorching of the body surface, which was healing well before it was admitted,” said Conway, apparently taking no offense at a mere lieutenant daring to question a senior diagnostician, “I couldn’t find anything serious enough to treat. The problem was an impairment of its telepathic faculty, which we couldn’t cure, accompanied by a major psychological component to the case which we passed to Psychology to see if you people could help.”

“Then the condition may have been present before Tunneckis arrived here,” said Braithwaite, still saying all the things O’Mara was too tired to say, “and you just inherited the problem without knowing it was there.”

“A comforting thought? said Conway, dividing his attention between them, “but as the physician-in-charge I’m looking for answers, not excuses for my negative behavior. First I’m going to contact the Monitor base on Kerm for more details on Tunneckis’s accident, and to find out if anything like this has ever happened there in the past and what, if anything, the Kermi were able to do about it. Even with a triple-A medical-emergency coding, that will take several hours. In the meantime I’ll talk to Priicla and the medical and engineering teams to get a detailed assessment of the extent of this nonmedical contagion and its rate of progression, then call a meeting with the senior staff concerned for this time tomorrow in the administrator’s conference room. That will impress them with the importance we’re placing on this job. Sorry for making free with your offices, sir, but as you know, in an emergency of this kind it is the medic in charge who has the rank?

He smiled faintly and went on, “I wouldn’t presume to give you an order, Administrator O’Mara, but my present medical advice is to stop working and even thinking and catch up on your sleep while you can. For the next few days we’re going to need your fresh, rested, devious, and nasty mind. Yours, too, Lieutenant. Off.”

In the event, O’Mara thought, his stale, partially rested, devious, and nasty mind had very little to contribute during the first two hectic hours of that meeting, and Braithwaite, who always looked fresh and rested, did nothing but listen attentively to the sometimes heated exchanges between the senior engineering and medical staff.

Major Okambi of Engineering reported good progress with the installation of the Kerma VBGM’s life-support and medical monitoring because it was a simple, warm-blooded oxygenbreather, but its small body mass meant that the long-stay furnishings, communicator, and facilities had to be modified to fit its tiny digits, and the fact that it could be approached only by a variety of remotely controlled devices meant that the pod’s entry lock had to be completely rebuilt. Okambi said that his people were doing their best, but the original three-day estimate had been a trifle optimistic and the pod would not be operational for at least five days.

Prilicla, its limbs trembling with the effort of saying something that would cause unpleasant emotional radiation, said, “At its present rate of propagation, friend Okambi, in five days we will have to evacuate eight levels above and below friend Tunneckis’s present location. The inconvenience to patients and staff during the transfer of treatment and catering facilities will be immense, because the levels to be vacated will also include the main dining hall. If the hospital personnel are not to risk their minds as well as their digestive processes, the food-service operation will have to be made from the ward kitchens or to the staff living quarters. Should your estimate overrun by a single day, the hospital’s entire kitchen and food-storage level would have to be evacuated as well. That would add considerably to the already serious disruption.”

The empath’s trembling increased as its words caused an upsurge of unpleasant emotional radiation in the room. Most of it, O’Mara thought as he looked at the faces whose expressions he could read, must be the dark negation of barely controlled fear for the personal safety of themselves and the thousands of beings who were their direct responsibility. It was Okambi who spoke first.

“I know we’re supposed to care for our patients, Doctor.” he said angrily, “but this one is causing trouble out of all proportion to its individual importance. Why don’t you just chalk it up as one of the few failures and send it home?”

“Sir,” said Braithwaite before the other could reply, “you’re forgetting the nature of the patient’s disease. By the time the ship got back to Kerm, the crew might not have enough of their minds left to land it. And if they did, we would be returning a being that is capable of destroying Kerma minds over a presently unknown but large radius, perhaps even their entire civilization.” Turning to Prilida, he said, “Doctor, is there any possible way to contain this nonmaterial contagion other than by sheer distance? By enclosing it in a modified hush field, perhaps, that deadens mental rather than sound radiation?”

“That was the first thing we tried, Lieutenant,” said Okambi impatiently. “Telepathy uses a delicate, organic transmitter and receiver whose radiation cannot so far be reproduced, much less shielded.” He looked at O’Mara. “You’ve had several sessions by communicator with Dr. Cerdal, the first and so far worst-affected victim, as well as Tunneckis itself. Is there any possibility of a psychiatric solution?”

O’Mara shook his head. “Unfortunately, Dr. Cerdal is a clear case of mind being ruled by emotion rather than reason, and the emotions are those of a frightened child being plagued by the most horrible nightmares, the other-species nightmares all around it who are trying to help. Its xenophobia is extreme. My staff talked to the others who had shorter exposure to Tunneckis. They exhibit the same symptoms in lesser degree depending on their distance and total time of exposure, which appears to be cumulative. Tunneckis itself is emotionally disturbed, completely and utterly despairing as a result of the accident that left it telepathically deaf and dumb. For several minutes at a time it is coherent and communicative, but is so far unresponsive to my attempts at providing therapy. It is totally unaware of the mental havoc it is causing. Unless I can think of a strong therapeutic reason for telling it, I intend not to do so because, well, it feels bad enough already.”

For a moment the personality, feelings, and memories of Marrasarah surged into the forefront of his mind. The loss of fur mobility was the worst thing short of death that could happen to a once-beautiful Kelgian, but Tunneckis’s situation was much worse. He found himself blinking a couple of times to clear a sudden fogginess in his vision, but he tried to conceal the pain and anger in his voice with a thick layer of sarcasm when he spoke.

“It would be a nice change if my psychologists instead of you wonder-working doctors could produce a medical miracle.” he said, dividing his attention between Conway, Thornnastor, and Prilicla, “but the very best we can do is salvage what we can from a mind damaged as a result of the original accident, or by your subsequent surgical intervention, or both. Even if it is successful, the psychotherapy would be palliative, an attempt to help the patient make the best of its sensory impairment, and not curative. Its present condition was the result of physical trauma, the shock of a lightning strike, and the effect that had on its brain or nervous system. So the problem is basically a medical one and the primary responsibility for solving it is yours.

Thornnastor began stamping angrily with its medial feet, while Prilicla’s trembling increased. Conway jumped to his feet, then sat down again and said quietly, “Sir, we’re not trying to shift responsibility here. It is ours and we accept it, but that doesn’t help solve the problem. As the chief psychologist as well as the administrator, what do you suggest we do?”

Of course you’re not trying to shift the responsibility, O’Mara thought wryly, except to make me responsible for finding the answer. Aloud, he said, “The serious postoperative developments in this case may be blinding you to some of the factors of the original causation. Patient Tunneckis’s condition is rare, perhaps unique, and certain)ynothinglike it has occurred in recent Kerma history Why is this? What is there different about the physical circumstances or the surroundings or some other undiscovered factor of Tunneckis’s accident that did not happen, or perhaps could not have happened, in the past?

“Are you sure you have all the facts, Doctors?”

Thornnastor stopped vibrating the floor with its feet. Prilicla’s trembling diminished. Conway was frowning and looking as though he was thinking hard. But O’Mara wasn’t finished with them yet.

“As chief psychologist I’ve probably known what you have been thinking before you knew it yourselves,” he said, looking at each of them in turn, “but as your hospital administrator I’m obliged to make the position and the decisions required of you as clear and unequivocal as possible. Sector General may be faced with the greatest threat in its history, not to its structure but to its personnel and continued existence as the greatest multi-species hospital in the Federation. The duration of this threat is presently unknown and totally dependent on the life expectancy of patient Tunneckis, which is likely to be short and mentally unpleasant if it is condemned to solitary confinement inside a vast, deserted hospital with only robot devices to feed and care for it until they malfunction beyond their ability to self-repair. So we may well be absent from the hospital for only a few months or years.

“We must therefore ask ourselves” he went on, “whether the indeterminate lifetime of one patient is worth the financial and emotional cost and the physical disruption it is causing to the establishment, the staff, and the other patients, some of whom, particularly the water-breathing Chalders and ultra-low-temperature crystalline life-forms, may not survive the necessarily hasty evacuation. There is a very simple, completely sensible option if the answer to this problem isn’t found. It is the easiest answer to our problem, although ethically it is a little tricky, but all of you must have considered it or are considering it now.”

O’Mara paused for a moment, then ended grimly, “Should we assist patient Tunnekis to terminate painlessly without further waste of time?”

Prilicla’s body was shaking in the emotional gale that was sweeping the room. O’Mara looked at it apologetically, knowing that it would know exactly how he was feeling, too. But strangely, the emotional radiation was causing the empath’s quivering body gradually to grow still.

“Friend O’Mara,” it said finally, “there is nobody here or, I believe, anywhere else in the hospital, who will accept that option.”

CHAPTER 32

Patient Tunneckis was transferred from the otherwise empty recovery ward and through the silent and deserted adjoining levels to the original OR on a remotely controlled litter and immobilized on the operating table. Sensor pads were attached to its oval, sluglike body and it was prepped for the operation, all without being touched by human or any other hands. It was totally relaxed by the local anesthetic but it was and would remain fully conscious.

Watching it intently on a large lecture screen ten levels away were Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor, Senior Physician Prilicla, Lieutenant Braithwaite, and O’Mara himself. It was O’Mara who spoke first, and solely to the patient.

“Tunneckis.” he said with gentle reassurance, “we are trying to cure you. Even though you may think that you are telepathically deaf and dumb you are not, at least not completely. Since shortly after you arrived here you have been unknowingly transmitting a continuous, sense-free telepathic shout, a sound so loud, so intensely unpleasant and far-reaching that our medical staff and patients have had to be moved beyond its range. That is why remotely controlled devices instead of people have been taking care of you.”

Beside him he heard Conway give a quiet, incredulous grunt at his massive understatement of the situation. O’Mara ignored him and went on, “But if you can still use your telepathic faculty to shout then it is not completely lost. That is promising because it may be only a short step from being able to shout to being able to speak, and listen, normally. That is why the hospital’s two best doctors are going into your brain to try to rectify the fault. You will be fully conscious during the operation, but as the brain interior has no pain receptors you should feel no physical discomfort. You may, however, feel sensory changes while the doctors are working there. It would be helpful if you told us what they are or how they are affecting your mind. Tenneckis, do you agree to us performing this operation and will you help us during it?”

He knew that they were going to do the operation anyway, with or without the patient’s cooperation, but it would be kinder to let it think that it still had a say in the matter.

“I’m, I’m afraid” the distant Tunneckis replied. It made a low, hissing sound that did not translate, then went on, “I’m afraid of this place, and your cold, shiny, clicking machines that do things to me, and of all the horrible people in the hospital including you. Mostly I’m afraid of going on living this way. Please, I just want this black, awful, continual fear of everybody and everything to stop.”

O’Mara thought of Dr. Cerdal as he had seen it last, heavily sedated but still babbling and crying and completely out of control, and of the others, who had had less protracted contact with Tunneckis and who were in proportionately better shape. He could have said that he understood because others were feeling the same intense and unreasoning fear of all those around them that manifested itself as manic xenophobia, but that would have been adding guilt to the patient’s already crushing mental load.

Instead he said gently, “We want to cure you, Tunneckis, and remove the cause of that fear. Will you help us?”

The silence seemed to last much longer than the few seconds shown on the room’s chronometer, but finally the answer came.

“Yes.”

O’Mara gave an almost explosive sigh of relief and looked away from the screen. Braithwaite was looking quietly pleased, Thornnastor was stamping a forefoot against the floor in agitation, the emotional radiation from some person or persons in the room was giving Prilicla the shakes again, and Conway was frowning and chewing at his lower lip. O’Mara sighed again more quietly.

“Conway,” he said dryly, “I know the signs. You are thinking about doing something stupid. Well?”

“I’ve been too busy to thank you properly or bring you up to date on the later developments” said Conway quickly. “That was a really good steer you gave us about reinvestigating Tunneckis’s accident. The Orligian medical officer on Kerm base was once a forensic scientist, and it took the scene of the crime-I mean the accident-and related circumstances apart and used a microscopic sieve on the evidence. It sent us detailed analyses of the metal structure-the padding, and even the body paintwork of Tunneckis’s groundcar following the lightning strike, and of an undamaged vehicle of the same type. There were also the results of a complete physical examination on a normally healthy Kerm volunteer to serve as an organic benchmark. But it was you who pointed us in the right direction in the first place and . . .

“Flattery doesn’t work on me,” O’Mara broke in sharply, “so get to the point.”

“The point” said Conway, beginning to sound excited, “is that nothing like the Tunneckis accident had ever happened before because their technology isn’t advanced and ground vehicles are a recent development. The brief, ultra-high temperature and exposure to the electrical discharge of the lightning strike vaporized sections of the internal padding so that toxic material was inhaled and eventually circulated to the brain. Mistakenly I thought that the minor scorching of Tunneckis’s body surface was the only symptom. But now I know differently, and Thornnastor has come up with a specific that will detoxify the brain area involved. I’m confident-well, let’s say I’m guardedly optimistic-of effecting a cure.

O’Mara looked at him steadily for a moment, then said, “You are about to say ‘but.’”

“But it will be very delicate work” said Conway, “work I would rather not do at a distance with remotely controlled instruments. It will have to be a hands-on job. I fully realize the risks of a lengthy exposure to Tunneckis’s mental contagion, but I don’t foresee it being a long operation. Sir, I’ll have to be there.”

“And I” said Thornnastor and Prilicla, practically making it a duet.

O’Mara was silent for a moment. He was wondering how it would feel at first hand, rather than listening to Cerdal or the others trying to describe it, when the higher levels of one’s mind began to dissolve away and one became more and more suspicious and afraid of all the other-species staff in the hospital, people he had known and respected and liked for a great many years. He took a firm grip on the mind he still had and spoke.

“And I,” he said gruffly. “Somebody will be needed there with enough sense to pull the plug if we look like we’re running out of time.” He turned to Prilicla. “But not you, little friend. You will stay well clear and only fly in for a few seconds at fifteen-minute intervals to monitor and report on our emotional radiation. You will be aware of trouble developing long before we are. And if you detect the slightest sign of a coarsening of the intellect, or insensitive or illmannered or antisocial behavior, no matter what we say to you or how we excuse it, you tell the security team to pull us out at once. Is that understood?”

“Yes, friend O’Mara” said the empath.

Thornnastor stamped three of its feet in rapid succession and turned one of its eyes toward Conway. Aged Tralthans were notoriously hard of hearing and assumed other species to be the same, with the result that its whisper was loud and penetrating.

“Insensitive and rn-mannered behavior,” it said. “With O’Mara, how will we know the difference?”

OR One-Twelve was in all respects ready and waiting for them as Conway, Thornnastor, and O’Mara entered and moved quickly to their positions. The microsurgery instruments, high-magnification scanner, the recorder, and Pathology’s modified crystalline suspension had been checked and double-checked at a distance so that all they had to do was go to work.

Without wasting time.

“Try to relax, Tunneckis,” said O’Mara reassuringly. “This time we know where we’re going because we’ve been there before. The entry-wound area will be anesthetized and there will be no physical sensation from inside your brain. Talk to me whenever you feel like it, and don’t worry. Ready?”

“Yes,” said Tunneckis, “I think.”

Once again the big operating screen showed the tremendously magnified view from the internal vision pickup as Conway’s instruments negotiated the cavernous inner ear, pierced the membrane, and opened a path into the area of the telepathic faculty. Sweating with the effort of making his hands move even more slowly inside the reduction gauntlets, Conway went into the series of liquid-filled, interconnected tunnels with the slender-stemmed clusters of crystalline flowers growing from their mottled pinkand-yellow walls and stirring in the microscopic turbulence caused by the invading instruments.

Even to O’Mara’s untutored eye they didn’t look healthy.

“This is a mess,” said Conway in unknowing confirmation. “The mistake we made during the first op was in analyzing, reproducing, and replacing the ambient fluid and crystal structures without realizing that they were contaminated by a higher than normal concentration of toxic material, the complex of vaporized metal and plastic inhaled by the patient following the lightning strike to its vehicle, that was carried by the blood supply from the lungs to the brain. Thornnastor has injected a specific which has neutralized the toxicity and no more will be arriving. But we can’t simply suck out the contaminated fluid and replace it with the new material in case emptying the area collapses or otherwise damages the brain structure. So we’ll have to do both at the same time and gradually dilute and replace the old, contaminated fluid with the proper mix of minerals and trace elements which will enable the crystals to regrow in their correct but inevitably still slightly toxic medium.

“AS you can see, there are two distinct types of crystals present . . .

One type was a small, stunted, almost colorless crystalline flower that barely filled the cuplike receptor on the top of its stalk, O’Mara saw. The other was large and dark red and overhung its cup-shaped attachment point like a misshapen black cabbage. He was pretty sure of which one was responsible for the mental contagion spreading throughout the hospital, and again Conway was agreeing with him.

. . . My guess is that the smaller, less developed type are the telepathic receptors” Conway went on, “and the larger, which have been growing out of control in the contaminated fluid since we were last in here, are the transmitters that are radiating the continuous telepathic shouting that is causing our other problems. We’ll have to remove them from their stalks, very carefully, and withdraw them with the contaminated fluid. Dammit, there are a lot of them. How are we for time? And how is the patient?”

“You have been working for half an hour,” said Prilicla, who had flown silently into the room. “During my last visit you were all too busy to notice me so I left without speaking when I found that the emotional-radiation levels were optimum.”

“Half an hour?” said Conway, incredulously. “It shows how fast time passes when you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “That was a particularly insensitive remark to make in the presence of a conscious patient, especially one who might not understand Earth-human sarcasm.

“Insensitive?” said Conway, looking suddenly worried. “Am I being . . . affected?”

“I don’t think so, friend Conway” Priicla broke in. “Your emotional radiation, like that of everyone else here, is being distorted by fear, but it is diffuse and may be based on your general fear for the patient’s well-being. Friend Tunneckis is also feeling intense fear, but that is normal for the circumstance and it is trying hard to keep it under control.”

“And I do understand sarcasm,” Tunneckis added, “wherever it originates, so an apology is unnecessary.”

Conway gave a short, relieved laugh and was back at work before it ended.

The procedure was slow, painstaking, and seemingly endless. As Conway used his microinstruments carefully to crush and detach the large crystals from their stalks, large only because of the ultra-high magnification, and withdraw them through a tiny suction tube, O’Mara thought that it was like watching a particularly inefficient underwater vacuum cleaner at work. But with the crystalline debris was going a measured quantity of the toxin-filled liquid that Thornnastor was replacing with the uncontaminated fluid in which, they were hoping, the new, healthy crystals would grow. Slowly and steadily the proportion of toxic material was diminishing, and it seemed that a few of the crystalline flowers of both kinds were attaching themselves to empty stalks. Conway was sweating in concentration and all four of Thornnastor’s eyes were directed at its instruments. Prilicla paid four more visits but came and went without comment. It was not until the seventh visit that it spoke.

“The security detail is standing by at a safe distance” it said, maintaining a stable hover just inside the entrance, “but they can be here within three minutes. I must remind you that you have been in close proximity to your patient for nearly two hours and—”

“No, dammit!” Conway broke in. “We could be nearly there. I’m not stopping now.”

“Nor I” rumbled Thornnastor.

“The ambient emotional radiation here is—” Prilicla began, when Conway broke in again.

“Thornnastor,” he said urgently, “if our empathic friend calls in the security heavies, will you block the door with your body? They won’t dare do anything too violent to the hospital’s senior diagnostician even if our administrator tells them otherwise. Right?”

“Right” said Thornnastor.

“Your administrator,” said O’Mara firmly, “will order them to keep their distance.”

Conway’s expression was puzzled but very pleased as he looked up briefly at O’Mara and then at Prilicla before going on, “Please listen to me. I’m not afraid of anybody here, or anywhere else for that matter. There’s no xenophobia that I’m aware of . . .” For a moment his voice was tinged with doubt. “. . . unless losing my temper like this with a good friend is an early symptom. But I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with my mind. How is the patient feeling?”

“I know exactly what and how you feel, friend Conway” said Prilicla, “and friend Tunneckis is feeling frightened, disoriented, and badly confused.”

“Tunneckis” said Conway urgently, “what’s happening?”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” the other replied angrily. “My mind is flashing pictures and sounds. They are disconnected, unrelated, and, and nonverbal. What, what did you just do to me?”

“It would take too long to explain right now,” Conway replied, “but I intend doing it again for as long as I can.” Keeping his hands inside the stepdown gauntlets and his eyes fixed on the operating screen, he said excitedly, “The patient’s reaction proves it. We’re beginning to get results.”

“Friend Conway, I don’t know what’s happening, either” said Prilicla. “Based on the staff distance and exposure tables we worked out for friend Tunneckis’s telepathic, ah, shouting, all of you should be showing marked changes in emotional radiation and behavior by now. Instead your symptoms, with one exception, are minimal. I can only attribute this to the presence of several tape-donor entities within your minds. These tapes, which are the recordings of the past donors’ knowledge and memories, are not subject to modification by a mental influence of the present, so they may be serving as a mental anchor for the minds concerned. As diagnosticians in possession of many mind partners, you are being kept stable by the thoughts and feelings of your taped entities. But this is buying you only a little time, how much exactly I can’t say, because I can already feel your minds being affected. You will need to leave soon.”

“And one of us,” said Conway, with his eyes still fixed on the operating screen, “is not a diagnostician. Administrator, for your own mental safety you must leave at once. You can talk to the patient by communicator, and keep Security off our backs, when you’re at a safe distance.”

“No,” said O’Mara.

Prilicla was the only person in the hospital who knew that O’Mara had a mind partner, one single mental anchor called Marrasarah that might or might not save his sanity, but the empath was sworn to silence on that subject. One strong-willed, Kelgian anchor, he told himself, should be enough. He knew that Prilicla was feeling his doubts, but it left without mentioning them.

It was insidious.

He was watching Conway and Thornnastor at work and trying with little success to find reassuring words to say to Tunneckis, whose confusion and fear and despair hung around it like an unseen, smothering, and terrifying cloud that was almost palpable. He felt a growing urge to leave the room, if only to get the chance to breathe some clean air. More and more he found himself wondering if they were wasting their time, and he was gradually coming to the decision that they were. This Tunneckis creature was suffering because it had been the victim of a fluke accident that none of its own people could do anything about, and it was wrecking the sanity of the hospital staff who were trying to cure it. One had to keep a sense of proportion in these things. And an overgrown, sluglike, loathsome thing was all that Tunneckis was, a telepath who was eating away at his mind, a foul thing that could never go home and must not be allowed to stay here. The solution was obvious, the decision simple, and he had the rank to see that it was carried out. He would tell this self-opinionated young upstart Conway and the stupid elephant assisting him that the Kerma slug was expendable and to abort the procedure forthwith.

But suddenly O’Mara felt afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his entire life. The fear was formless, unfocused but intense, and reinforced with a feeling of utter despair. He didn’t want to make a decision or give orders because he was sure Conway, who had always managed to do things his own way, would refuse to obey them; and Thornnastor would grip him in its long, warty tentacles and stamp him to a pulp under its elephant’s feet. He just wanted to run away and hide, from everything and every horrible, frightening, and alien person in this terrible place. Even Prilicla, so soft and fragile and so outwardly friendly, was forever crawling into his mind with its empathic faculty and uncovering the deepest, most shameful feelings that nobody should ever know while it waited its chance to tell everybody the truth about him. He was no good, O’Mara told himself bitterly, despairingly and fearfully, and useless to himself and everybody else. He was nothing.

O’Mara gripped the edge of the operating table so tightly that his fingers and hands turned white. He wasn’t aware that when he spoke it was closer to being a shout of anguish.

“Marrasarah, please help me!”

Conway looked up, his expression furious. “You bloody fool, O’Mara! Don’t make sudden loud noises like that, this is a delicate operation. Who the hell is Marrasarah? Never mind, just stand there and keep quiet.”

A tiny, cool, and aloof group of brain cells that were unaffected by the storm of fear and despair sweeping his tortured mind noted the disrespectful words and manner and decided that this was totally uncharacteristic of Conway, and that the Tunneckis contagion was getting to him, too. Suddenly the other shouted even louder than had O’Mara.

“Dammit, my head!”

Conway’s teeth were clenched and his face contorted with pain, but he had not taken his hands out of the operating gauntlets. Then slowly he relaxed.

For some reason the intensity of O’Mara’s fear and despair was beginning to ease. Concerned, he said, “What’s wrong with your head?”

“A deep, unlocalized itching between the ears that felt as if somebody was working in my brain with a wire brush,” Conway replied. Suddenly recovering his respectful manners, he went on excitedly, “Sir, I’ve felt that itching sensation before. It was Tunneckis trying to communicate telepathically with nontelepaths. It lasted only for an instant. Didn’t you feel it, too? And hear the message?”

“No,” said O’Mara.

“I felt the cranial itching,” said Thornnastor, being ponderously clinical, “but not from between my ears, which are, as you must know, differently situated in my species. It was accompanied by a confusion of mental noise but no message. What did it say?”

Conway had returned all of his attention to the operating screen and was speaking quickly as he worked.

“It said an awful lot in such a short time,” he said, “and I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now we need about twenty minutes to complete this procedure and withdraw, but we could stay here all day if need be without suffering any mental ill effects. For a while there I was off the mental rails, feeling useless and afraid and suspicious of everybody. I apologize for anything I said. You two must have been having similar feelings. But now we’re all back to normal and our troubles, all of our troubles, are over. We can begin repopulating the evacuated levels. Tunneckis is no longer telepathically deaf and dumb and is feeling fine.”

“Much as I dislike having to disagree with a colleague, friend Conway,” said Prilicla as it flew into the room to hover above the operating table, “I must say that you are guilty of a gross understatement. Friend Tunneckis is radiating feelings of relief, gratitude, and intense happiness.”

CHAPTER 33

They met early on the following day in his old office because that was where he felt most comfortable and that was where he wanted to begin saying his good-byes. Conway, Thornnastor, Prilicla, and all the members of the Psychology Department staff were distributed over the available furniture and making the place look crowded and more untidy than usual. Conway was standing beside the big diagnostic screen and summing up his report on the Tunneckis operation.

“. . . During the first procedure,” he was saying, “we assumed that analyzing the mineral and crystal content of the brain fluid in the area and reintroducing it in concentrated form would encourage the natural healing process but, unknowingly at the time, we were simply replacing it with more contaminated material in a much higher concentration. The result was that the growth of the clusters of pale crystals, which we now know were the telepathic receivers, became increasingly stunted while the darker ones, the transmitters, became grossly enlarged, structurally deformed, and grew out of control. In that state they were increasingly amplifying their telepathic output, but they could not transmit thoughts, only feelings. At the time Tunneckis was in bad mental shape, fearful of its surroundings, of its unthinkable future as a telepathic mute, and was suffering from a deep, clinical depression that seemingly would continue for the rest of its life. It would be difficult for normal people like us to imagine such depths of despair, but we don’t have to imagine it because for a while we, and a number of others beginning with the patient’s medical attendants, shared it.

“Tunneckis felt really bad, and so did we.

“But now the patient is recuperating and feeling well, he went

on. During the few seconds when my atrophied Earth-human telepathic faculty was kicked into life, we learned a lot about each other, and especially that it is impossible for a telepath to lie with the mind. The mental contagion of senseless fear and utter despair that it was broadcasting with increasing intensity over the past days ceased with its cure and, without the continual reinforcement of that signal, the effects will gradually disappear. Knowing and agreeing with my idea for keeping it here for a period of clinical observation and recuperation, it also said that bringing the most severe cases into close proximity with it for a few hours at a time would actively advance the curative process. I was thinking, sir, that as Cerdal is the worst-affected being in the hospital as well as a contender for your job, you should give it the first chance with the Tunneckis treatment.”

“That will be done,” said O’Mara, and added silently, But not by me.

Conway moved away from the screen to sit on the edge of a Melfan relaxer before he went on, “The base commander on Kerm has asked me to spend a few months there. It says that my glimpse into Tunneckis’s mind will reduce their cultural contact problems as well as giving me the chance to gather information on native Kerma medicine in case another one turns up in Sector General, hopefully with something less disrupting. Maybe by the time I get back you’ll have made your choice and I might be calling Dr. Cerdal ‘sir.’”

“You won’t,” said O’Mara, “for two reasons. Dr. Cerdal wishes to remain in Sector General but has withdrawn its application for the administrator’s position, and I’ve already made my choice. Having done so I shall, of course, be leaving the hospital as soon as suitable transport can be arranged.”

Conway was so surprised that he nearly fell through the Melfan chair. Thornnastor made a sound like an interrogatory foghorn; Prilicla began trembling faintly as the Psychology Department staff showed surprise in their various fashions. O’Mara cleared his throat.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” he said, looking at Padre Lioren and Cha Thrat, “but I should have realized that it was inevitable from the beginning. This is the first and probably the only time that I will say nice things to you people, because politeness doesn’t come easily to me. But I must say that I have, I mean had, an exceptionally fine staff. You are hardworking, dedicated, caring, adaptable, and imaginative . . .” His eyes rested for a moment on Braithwaite. “. . . and one of you has recently displayed these qualities more strongly than the others. All three of you have the medical qualifications that are now required and, without exception, you are all capable of doing the job. But as is sometimes the case with truly committed people who have found their purpose in life and are content, those who could do the job don’t want it. This applies especially to my successor, who will consider my choice an honor but not an act of kindness. Tough. But in his case I must insist.

“My congratulations, Administrator Braithwaite.”

Cha Thrat and the padre made their species’ equivalent gestures of approval, Prilicla trilled, Conway applauded, and Thornnastor stamped all its feet in turn, softly for a Tralthan. Conway stood up suddenly and leaned toward Braithwaite with his hand outstretched.

“Nice going, Administrator, he said. “After the way you uncovered the Tunneckis problem, you really deserve this.” He laughed. “But a well-mannered chief psychologist that nobody dislikes will take a bit of getting used to.”

Speaking for the first time, Padre Lioren turned all its eyes on O’Mara and said, “Sir, you said that you wanted to leave without delay. The hospital has been your life for longer than most of us can remember. I, we that is, wonder what you intend to do with the rest of that life?”

“I have plans,” he replied seriously. “They include continuing my professional work and living happily ever after.”

“But, sir,” Conway said, “surely you’re not obliged to leave right away? Braithwaite will need a settling-in period of a few weeks or more likely months, and you should allow your mind to get used to the idea of doing nothing. Or maybe you won’t be allowed to sever all connections with Sector General. We run into nonmedical problems from time to time and may need you to come back for a while on a consultancy basis. And stop shaking your head, sir. At the very least we need time to juggle with the staffing schedules so we can throw a proper farewell party.”

“No,” said O’Mara firmly. “No settling-in period, because the best way of doing the job is to be dropped in at the deep end. No temporary detachments, no consultancies, and most of all, no long and embarrassing farewells for someone nobody likes. Prilicla knows my feelings about this. I insist. Thank you, but no.”

Braithwaite cleared his throat. It was a polite but authoritative sound. He said, “I’m not an empath like Dr. Prilicla, sir, but I know the feelings of every person in the hospital toward you. This time it is I who must insist. Your departure will be delayed by a few days because none of the outgoing ships can take you without first clearing it with me, so there will be time to organize a farewell party that all of us will remember.

“As the newly appointed hospital administrator,” Braithwaite added, “I am making that my first executive order.”

CHAPTER 34

Eventually he was allowed to board the Monitor Corps supply ship Cranthor, a regular and frequest visitor to the hospital. It had an all-Tralthan crew and one passenger cabin that was environmentally suited to Earth-human DBDGs. Those members of the crew who had not met him knew who he was and what he had been, and they were so eager to please him that they offered to start another farewell party on board. He told them that he just wanted to rest without company or conversation or entertainment tapes while he tried to recover from the first one. But the truth was that he wanted to watch the vast, dazzling spectacle of the hospital complex as it shrank to become a tiny, multicolored jewel in the aft viewscreen, while reminding himself that he was seeing it for the last time and remembering back to the time when he had been in a construction gang working on the empty structure, and the strange, weird, and exciting events and people he had met on his way up to his recent and brief appointment and sendoff as its retiring administrator.

The party had taken three days and two nights, because all the people who wanted to say good-bye to him had not been offduty at the same time. He could not understand the reason for all the fuss, because he knew that he was an intensely unlikable person even if he had been good at his job, but some of the things the senior and very junior staff of many species had said to him had almost wrecked his emotional self-control. He had been respected much more than he had ever imagined and, while nobody would admit to liking much less loving him, the intensity of that dislike had manifested itself in some strange and often touching ways.

Love, he thought, was supposed to be akin to hate. In their own particular fashion they must have hated him very much.

He stayed with Cranthor while it refilled its holds on Traltha, Orligia, and Nidia, but left it there because its next destination would be a return trip to Sector General. Over the years he had become an expert at hopping from ship to ship and, although he was still able to travel as a retired space officer and Sector General administrator, he had accrued enough back salary over the years to be able to pay his way if he wanted to keep a low profile. This time it wasn’t necessary, because Korallan, a tour ship larger and better appointed and, presumably, less likely to have operational mishaps than the old Kreskhallar, was berthed at Nidia’s Retlin spaceport while its passengers saw the sights, and was due to depart for O’Mara’s final destination in three days’ time. He was already familiar with Retlin from earlier stopovers, but used the time to reaccustom himself since his last leave to shopping and staying in low-ceilinged buildings where he had to bend almost double, and to public-transport vehicles in which he had to either kneel or squat.

On the first night out he discovered that the multi-species dining room contained seven other Earth-human passengers, three females and four males, all of them young. He was given a seat at the end of their table but deliberately avoided joining in their conversation. Unlike the situation in Kreskhallar’s dining room, this time he wasn’t the only male show in town and he had no intention of engaging in a shipboard romance. His life was complicated enough as it was.

He left the ship when it was disembarking at Kelgia’s main spaceport and took a private groundcar into its capital city. The driver was used to Earth-human and many other strange shapes squeezing themselves into its vehicle and politely, for a Kelgian, described items of scenic or architectural interest, not realizing that O’Mara had traveled this way many times and was already familiar with them. Even so, he could not help watching as the sprawling expanse of Kelgia’s largest multi-species hospital complex, looking like an open, beautifully landscaped, and aseptically clean white township, moved slowly past.

Even though he had never actually visited the place, every stretch of parkland, garden, and tree-shaded walkway, as well as the layout of the wards, operating theaters, and staff accommodation in every building, was known to him through the memories of his mind partner, who had trained and served there.

Kledenth, its fur rippling in a combination of impatience and pleasure, was already waiting for him at the entrance to its house when he paid off his driver and began stretching to ease his stiffened leg and back muscles. The Kelgian indicated its own larger and more comfortable vehicle parked a few meters away.

It said, “I had to pull, as you Earth-humans say, a few strings, but I got it. All the equipment you wanted is loaded on board. Now, I suppose you’re in a hurry to use it?”

“Eager to use it, Kledenth,” O’Mara replied, “but not in a tearing hurry. This time I’m not on leave and don’t have to return to Sector General, so hopefully I’m on this world to stay. There is time now, and there will be more later, to talk to you and your family and to thank you yet again for everything you’ve done for us over the years. The debt for saving your fur after that accident on Kreskhallar is more than repaid.”

“Look at the way my fur moves, said Kledenth. “In spite of my age is it not beautiful? It could so easily have been otherwise. My life and successful career subsequent to that accident, my loving lifemate and children, I owe to your specialist knowledge and gross insubordination toward that ship’s captain, and to the skill of the Earth-human female. That debt will never be repaid. But I think you are making one of your stupid and unnecessary Earth-human pretenses, so get into my groundcar and stop wasting time being polite to someone who doesn’t understand the concept.”

Their vehicle was picking up speed and Kledenth’s home was shrinking behind them when it said, “How fares the Joan entity?”

“She congratulates you on the birth of your latest grandchild,” O’Mara replied, “and she says she is well. Reading between the lines I could detect no evidence of serious emotional upsets between her life-mate and herself or their two matured offspring. Her last few letters, as you would put it, were showing happy fur.”

They had traveled more than a mile before Kledenth spoke again.

“Myself I thought it visually quite repulsive,” it said, “but when I showed the shipboard photographs I had taken to an Earthhuman business acquaintance, it said that she was a dish and that you had been a very fortunate man. O’Mara, why didn’t you continue and develop the relationship instead of . . .

“You know why,” said O’Mara.

“I know,” said the other, “but I think you’re mad.”

O’Mara smiled. “I’m a psychologist.”

“And a very good one,” said Kledenth. “I know that, too. But we’ve arrived. I won’t go in with you because the place makes me feel very uncomfortable. It reminds me of how I might have been.”

The Retreat was a large establishment surrounded by lawns and gardens whose occupants were hidden by a thick screen of aromatic foliage from the view of chance passersby who would otherwise have been seriously distressed by seeing them. O’Mara used his key to open the high, opaque gate and, carrying his luggage in one hand and the equipment container in the other, walked slowly toward the house. He recognized some of the people who were lying curled up on the grass like furry question marks or undulating between the flower beds, because he had long since learned how to tell Kelgians apart. He spoke to them in passing and some of them were feeling well enough to speak back.

Inside the building he climbed the tiny steps of the Kelgian staircase. His room was exactly as he had left it a year earlier except that it was tidy and she had attached sprigs of festive aromatic vegetation to his favorite pictures. The tidiness, they both knew, would be a temporary condition. He dumped his bag on the tiny, lowceilinged room’s single, narrow bed, but held on to the equipment container while he went back downstairs to her office.

There was only one person in the establishment whose feet made a sound like his, so he wasn’t surprised that she was already watching him as he came through the doorway. He placed the container on a side table and, with one hand still resting on it, turned to look back at her. The silence lengthened. Another person might have said hello, or asked if he’d had a good trip or verbally eased the situation in some other fashion, but Kelgians didn’t go in for small talk.

“It will take a few minutes to unpack and assemble,” he said, “after which it will be ready for use. Will you allow me to use it?”

“I don’t know,” said Marrasarah. The small areas of her fur that still retained mobility were spiking in indecision.

“You’ve had a year since my last visit to think about it,” said O’Mara quietly, “and now that I’ve severed all professional contact with Sector General and I plan to stay on Kelgia for the rest of our lives, you can take a little more time to think about it. What’s the problem? Remember, I know your mind as well as you do yourself.”

“You knew my mind,” said Marrasarah, “at the time I donated the Educator tape. In the intervening time that mind has changed, for the better. This was due entirely to your curative therapy and never-ending patience with me. But I, apart from the thoughts and feelings that I have been able to deduce from your words and actions, know nothing of your mind. But that may be enough for me.”

“But it isn’t enough for me,” said O’Mara, gesturing toward the container. “At the hospital I used my influence with Prilicla, who is the only other being who knows about us, to have a tape made of my mind. I have it with me. I can talk to you and try to describe them in words, but I don’t have the fur to show you the true depth of my feelings for you and why I’ve held them over these many years. In a few minutes you could know everything.”

“I am afraid,” she replied, “to know everything?

As he waited for her to go on, even the dead areas of fur seemed to be twitching in her agitation. With one of his own kind he would have moved closer and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but that would not happen here.

During the thirty-odd years that she had been his patient and more than friend there had been no physical contact between them.

“You know everything about me because you carry my donor tape within your mind, she said finally, “but you are forgetting that it is no longer the same mind and you, O’Mara, have changed it. For reasons which you described to me in words and which still don’t make sense to me, you took on my case. It was not through pity for my deformity, you insisted, but because I represent a problem which, because of your growing affection for the personality I had been, you wanted to spend all of your leaves of absence from the hospital, except for the first one when you and the Earthhuman female Joan saved Kledenth’s fur, trying to solve . . .”

“It was, is, much more than affection,” said O’Mara.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she continued. “I cannot tell a lie, but the truth is complicated and difficult for me to speak. You solved my problem, not by performing a medically impossible miracle on a grossly deformed body but by repairing the wreckage of the mind within. And by working patiently you gave it, and many other minds here, a reason to go on living instead of existing in pain and self-loathing and cut off from friends and families until a usually self-inflicted death ended it.

“With me,” she went on, the undamaged parts of her fur writhing at the memories, “you began by morally blackmailing Kledenth into tracing the whereabouts of this Retreat through my old hospital. Then you talked. And talked. It was cruel at first, but you reminded me of the great medical future that had streched in front of me before the accident ended it, except that you insisted that the mind inside my deformed body had a future, too, one that did not depend on visual contact and social interaction with my undamaged colleagues. Then over the years, without allowing anyone outside to know of your presence here or what you were doing for us, you reorganized this place of the living dead and, instead of it being a trash can filled with social outcasts that our people preferred not to think about, you gradually changed it into a consultancy that uses the newly healed and multidisciplined minds of its occupants to perform services that are increasingly in demand. The outgoing vision channels are switched off, naturally, so that nobody has to look at the experts they are consulting, but our clients are used to that now. I don’t know what type of mind-changing therapy you used on the others, because their former specialties aren’t medicine and they won’t talk about it, but with me you talked about nothing but Sector General.

“You told me about the wonderful and often dangerous events that took place there,” Marrasarah went on, “and the strange beings who work there, and the even stranger entities and conditions that they are called on to treat, and the challenging problems and ingenious solutions that were and are a daily routine. The staff and patients you described with the feeling of a great and dedicated psychiatrist while the events were related with the medical insight and purely Kelgian viewpoint possible only to one who shares my mind. In the beginning I, too, wanted an excuse to die and leave this deformed body. Instead I began counting the days until your next leave so as to hear more of your life. And now you want me to share that life by copying all of your memories into my mind, including this strange attraction you feel for me. I am greatly honored that you should offer this, but I don’t think I want to share all the knowledge and innermost secrets and the true, unspoken thoughts of the psychologist O’Mara’s mind.

“I am afraid.”

O’Mara tried not to look at the pitifully few mobile patches of fur that were reflecting her fear. Even though it would not alter their future together or his feelings for her, he was becoming afraid, too, of her rejecting a gift that would lead to her full understanding of the rough, untutored, and complex person that was himself.

“Of what?” he said gently.

“I know you through your words and actions” she replied. “They were healing words and kindly actions spread out over many years. But now you are giving me the chance to know the true thinking and reasons behind those words and actions, and of that I am afraid. I am afraid of discovering a small selfishness or imperfection in a being I have long regarded with respect, admiration, and deep affection, or of discovering in you a strange, psychological abnormality that your Earth-human words have unwittingly concealed from me. I-I am afraid of being disappointed.”

O’Mara smiled, knowing that over the years she had learned to understand the meaning behind that Earth-human grimace, and ordered his thoughts for a moment before speaking. He had been looking forward to this moment ever since he had illegally impressed himself with the Marrasarah mind tape to aid the therapy oh the then-young trainee, Thornnastor, and he was afraid, too, but of the disappointment of rejection.

He said, “My words and actions toward you have been those of a therapist with one physically impaired, emotionally disturbed, and professionally challenging patient who, for many years, has ceased to require therapy or be a patient. So I admit that I am selfish and imperfect and not admirable or worthy of respect, and there isn’t a psychologist in the Federation who would not consider me as anything but abnormal because I do need your affection, and more than that.

“Within the first few hours of taking your mind tape” he went on, ‘I formed a strong, emotional attachment to you. It was love at first meeting, but it was a nonphysical love that had nothing to do with sexual attraction because, if it had, that really would have been abnormal. I loved, and love, the Marrasarah personality who had worked and studied hard to rise to the top of a profession which, even on enlightened Kelgia, is predominantly male. I loved the unselfish way you helped your fellow students, your most difficult patients, and eventually your colleagues who had professional or personal problems, and the larger the problems the more you strove to solve them. In spite of your youth when you donated the mind tape, you were widely respected and loved because you couldn’t help being a counselor and friend and at times a mother to everyone who needed help. If I had met an Earth-human who was like you, my early life would have been different and certainly happier. But instead you became my mind partner. Everything about you became part of me and I was more contented and happy than I could have believed possible.

“Since that time,” he continued when she seemed about to interrupt, “your experience has helped me in my work, given me a greater understanding in my professional dealings with otherspecies patients, and generally kept me emotionally stable under stress, especially during my last job with Tunneckis, which as yet you don’t know about.

“But long before I realized how much you were helping me, he continued, “I was angry at the way that cruel accident to your fur had ended an extremely promising career. So I decided to attempt something that the psychiatric source material in our library computer insisted was impossible. I tried to rebuild the otherwise brilliant mind of a fur-damaged Kelgian from the inside, and over half our lifetimes that is what we did. I say ‘we’ because you helped me by controlling the anger and fighting the bitter despair that was pulling you toward the inevitable ending of your own life.

“I owe you for that, too, because I could not have borne losing you as person even though your mind will be in mine as long asllive.

“Many times when I was telling you about Sector General,” he went on, “I tried to tell you everything about me in poor, limping, inadequate words. But now, if you will agree to take my mind tape, you can discover the complete truth about me. I have had faults, bad habits, no social skills, secret fears, and phobias since a very early age, and now you can learn about them all. The result may be uncomfortable, frightening, even mentally repugnant to you. If you find it so, the mind tape can be erased again in a few minutes. But be warned. The result will be much deeper and more intimate than the lying together of two people during the act of physical mating, because it will be a true marriage of minds. I have known and will always know you in that way, Marrasarah, and I want you to know me. Please say yes. Or do you need more time to consider?”

“No.” she said.

Without hesitation she moved to the relaxer beside the table holding his equipment container. He didn’t trust himself to speak while he assembled and double-checked and calibrated the equipment for an Earth-human to Kelgian mind transfer. Still without speaking, he fitted the helmet comfortably onto her delicate, coneshaped head and switched on. A few minutes later he removed the helmet again, thinking that this had been the first and hopefully the only physical contact he would have with her. If there was a second contact it would be because she wanted the contents of his mind to be erased from hers. But all she did was look up at him while the small patches of still-mobile fur rippled in slow, even waves. He let the silence run for as long as he could.

“Is there a problem?” he blurted out finally. “Are you all right? Do you want an erasure?”

“No, yes, and no,” she replied. “I know you now, O’Mara, and everything you have ever experienced and thought about yourself, the others in your life, and especially about me. Your mind lies close and comfortably with mine, and I want it to do so until the day I die. But there is something about you that I will never understand.”

“What?” he said, feeling the wave of happiness that her earlier words had sent sweeping through him check itself suddenly as if it might be about to collapse and ebb away. “You know and should understand everything. What don’t you understand about me?”

“I don’t understand, mind partner O’Mara” she replied, “how you are able to balance yourself on just two feet.”

Sector General 12—Double Contact

James White

CHAPTER 1

The late afternoon sun, its outlines shredded by ground-heat distortion and the continuous toxic gales that swept the planet, wavered in and out of visibility in the brown sky like a dull red and ragged-edged flag. When it set in a few hours’ time there would be total darkness. The moon was too dim to be seen through the turbulent and nearly opaque atmosphere, and the stars had not been visible from the surface for close on three centuries.

The world that was Trolann raged and stormed and stank all around them as they paused for a moment outside the first of the series of detoxification chambers that gave access to their underground home, because they wanted to look at the familiar and abhorrent scenery for what would be the last time.

Their lifesuit sensors told of a film of insects and windblown spores that were trying vainly to penetrate the superfine joints in the mechanisms that provided ground mobility, and kept their visors clean so that they could see virtually nothing with more clarity.

“Not a druul in sight,” said Jasam. “It’s safe to go in.”

He pressed the activator on the first entry seal with the suit’s forward manipulator, then swept it around to indicate the dull, wavering sun, the driving, poisonous fog and the blurred outlines of the surface extensions of their neighbors’ homes. He looked at Keet and sighed.

“We had a good life together here,” he said, “and for the next few days” -he made an attempt to lighten their mood as he went on"this hi-tech hole in the ground will be a very happy home.”

“Until we find a new one,” said Keet, impatient as always when he stated the obvious. “I’m hungry and I want us out of these things.”

“Me, too,” said Jasam with enthusiasm; then, in a more reasonable voice he went on. “But there’s no need to be hungry. The suit food is no worse than the stuff in the larder. Since our final selection it’s been the best available. So go ahead and eat; that’s as good a way as any of passing the decontamination time.”

“No,” said Keet firmly. “I want us to eat together, every chance we get while we still can, and not separately like a couple of working colleagues. Sometimes, Jasam, you display the romantic sensitivity of, of a druul in heat.”

He did not have to answer this grossest of all personal insults because they both knew that she was joking, and that people only joked about that particular form of hellish Trolanni life in an attempt to hide their utter fear and loathing for it. Besides, his answer would come later in actions rather than words.

Neither of them made use of their built-in food supply while their suits went through the slow, tedious, but absolutely necessary stages of surface cleansing with disinfectant sprays, surface irradiation, and flash heating. Many of the microorganic and insect life-forms that had recently evolved on the surface, when given the chance to penetrate the defenses of a Trolanni household, had proved themselves capable of wiping out the occupants in a few minutes. But when they both finally emerged into the core living quarters, they were as sure as it was possible to be that they were free of unwanted organic company.

Jasam stood for a moment looking at Keet, or rather at the delicately contoured head, shapely body, and short, tapering limbs of her lifesuit, while she stared back at the taller, more ruggedly handsome, and well-muscled shape that he wore. Protective suits were invariably as well-formed and lifelike as their owners could afford. While still young adults, Keet and himself had progressed to a level of excellence in their field where they could afford the best. But the people inside those realistic lifesuits were much smaller, more sickly, and, regrettably, not nearly as beautiful as their handsome body coverings.

Outside them, however, they could touch each other without a cybernetic interface diluting or crudely enhancing every tactile sensation.

With intense but controlled impatience he detached himself from the suit’s visual, aural, and tactile relays, its food and water spigots, and, even more cautiously, from the deeply implanted waste-elimination systems. He had extricated himself before she did, and watched her lovingly as she opened the long, abdominal seal and struggled free like an adult newborn climbing slowly out of its mother’s womb.

Her body, as did his own, showed the areas of rash, the skin discoloration, the pocking and scars of past skin eruptions that were the visible inheritance of living in an environment that no longer supported their kind of life. But she looked little different from the time he had seen her like this on their first night of mating, and she was beautiful. When she freed herself, their beautiful and handsomely proportioned lifesuits were left lying lifelessly on the floor as they crawled eagerly towards each other.

When they had to pause for a necessary rest, they ate a meal to which Keet had added various decorative and olfactory touches to disguise the taste of their standard, aseptic, and machine-processed food. But the searchsuit project chief had told them that their unsuited time together would be limited to the next three days, and eating and resting was not what they most wanted to do together. They tried not to talk about the project, but there were times when their physical and emotional resistance was so low that the subject sneaked up on them.

“I’m not complaining, mind,” said Keet, “but after three days of this we won’t be at our best for the surgeons. We’ll be, well, very tired.”

“They won’t mind that,” Jasam replied reassuringly. “You weren’t listening between the lines during our last interview. Suit-insertion surgery, especially into an experimental one of this complexity, will be a lengthy, unpleasant procedure that requires conscious, cooperative, and relaxed subjects. Don’t worry, about it. At least we’ll be in a physically relaxed condition before they go to work on us.”

Even though they were already pressed together so tightly that such a thing was physically impossible, Keet tried to snuggle even closer. She said softly, “This is how babies are made.”

“Not for us,” he replied sharply, and tried without much success for a gentler tone as he went on. “If that had been possible, if either of us had been healthy enough and fertile, we would never have been allowed to volunteer, much less be accepted for Searchsuit Three. Instead we would have been buried more deeply and protected behind even more detoxification chambers than we have here, and given every comfort a mortal Trolanni could desire while teams of doctors tried to provide the medical and psychological support that might enable the sickly members of our poisoned species to procreate and our civilization to survive beyond the next few generations. The emotional feelings or otherwise of the couples concerned for each other would not have been the prime consideration. Survival would have been a necessity, an artificially-supported evolutionary imperative rather than a pleasure.”

Once again Keet’s expression was reflecting her impatience at being reminded of things she had not forgotten, and he was anxious not to spoil even a moment of their remaining touching time together.

“We would be even more debilitated than we are now,” he added quickly, “but without having as much fun.”

Even though the honor of being chosen to wear a searchsuit was greater than that previously accorded to any two members of their race, the pride they both felt was intense, so much so that there was little room in their minds for personal fear. But they did not speak of the project again, and neither did they look at the container that housed the tiny, hermetically-sealed, and triple-protected sphere with its short-duration life support into which they would climb when the project engineers signaled that they were ready for the crew insertion. The few hours spent in that sphere, while it was being transported under maximum protection from their home to the project surgery, would be the last they could ever spend in physical contact with each other.

The first searchsuit had been intercepted and destroyed by the druul while it was still in atmosphere, and the second, if it had succeeded in finding anything, had not returned to report. Searchsuit Three was the most advanced and technologically sophisticated fabrication to be produced by Trolanni science and, considering their planet’s deteriorating environment and diminished resources, it would almost certainly be the last. On its success rested the hopes of their species.

It was a suit built for the two of them and designed to cater to their physical needs for a period far beyond their most optimistic projected lifetimes on Trolanni. In it they would be in constant communication for as long as they lived. But the suit was huge—bigger by far, and with more complex and wide-ranging control and sensory systems, than either of its predecessors. So large was it that when they wore it, they would never in their remaining lifetimes be able to touch each other again. In spite of the greatly increased anti-druul defenses and the supporting treatments provided by the project’s engineers and psychologists, he wondered if the dangers facing them would be mental rather than physical.

“At least,” said Keet, as if reading her mind, “we’ll be able to play with our dolls.”

CHAPTER 2

The inner office of Sector General’s new administrator and chief psychologist resembled a medieval torture chamber from the history of Earth, according to the memories of the current DBDG mind donor he was carrying. But the resemblance was not close—partly because a collection of tastefully-chosen views of non-terrestrial land and seascapes hung on the walls, and partly because the torture devices were actually weirdly shaped and deeply upholstered furniture. On these, the other-species staff that had business with Administrator Braithwaite could sit, squat, hang, or otherwise take their ease—assuming that whatever they had been doing had not warranted the criticism of the most powerful being in the hospital.

On this occasion Prilicla’s own conscience was clear, and as an empath he knew that the same condition applied to his smartly uniformed companion, Captain Fletcher, who was standing before the big desk beside him. The emotional radiation emanating from the similarly Earth-human Administrator Braithwaite, composed as it was of a strange combination of concern with a strong undercurrent of urgency, was such that Prilicla knew they would not be invited to make use of the office furniture. Even so, the other was for some reason feeling hesitant about speaking.

“Sir,” said the captain, glancing at Prilicla, who was hovering close to its shoulder and stirring a few strands of its brown head-fur, “I was told that you wanted to see me urgently. I met Senior Physician Prilicla on the way here, and it had received the same message. We only work together on ambulance-ship rescue missions, so presumably you have another job for Rhabwar?”

Braithwaite inclined its head without speaking. Before its recent promotion to administrator it had been a Monitor Corps officer like Fletcher, the principal assistant to the then-Chief Psychologist O’Mara, and an outwardly imperturbable individual who wore its uniform as if it had been born with it as a well-fitting and wrinkle-free second skin. Now that it had resigned its commission, its impeccably-tailored civilian clothing still gave the impression that it was completely in control of itself and, in all physical and mental respects, ready for inspection.

“Possibly,” it said finally.

Prilicla was beginning to share the captain’s growing feeling of puzzlement. He said, “The administrator feels hesitancy, friend Fletcher. I can read emotions but not thoughts, as you know, but I feel sure that friend Braithwaite would prefer that we volunteered for this particular mission.”

“I understand,” said Fletcher. Still looking at the administrator, he went on. “We appreciate the politeness, sir, but you must be pretty sure what our response will be, so you would save time by simply telling us to volunteer. Rhabwar is maintained in constant flight-readiness, as you well know. The technical and medical crew haven’t had any exercise with her for close on six months, and if the mission is urgent . . . well, we can’t hurry in hyperspace, so the only response time we can save will be between this office and the dock and, of course, our ship’s speed in getting us out to jump distance.” It hesitated and glanced quickly towards Prilicla, radiating a degree of uncertainty so mild that it was highly complimentary before it went on. “We volunteer.”

Prilicla, who was far from being physically robust, belonged to a species which considered cowardice, moral or otherwise, to be its prime survival characteristic. The possession of a highly developed empathic faculty forced him to be agreeable to everyone in order to keep the emotional radiation in his immediate surroundings as pleasant as possible. He spoke with greater hesitation.

“Friend Braithwaite,” he said cautiously, “what precisely are we volunteering for?”

“Thank you both,” said the administrator, radiating relief. It pressed a key on its desk console and went on. “I’ve transferred all the available information to your ship’s computer for later study. It isn’t much, and all we know for sure is that three distress beacons have been detonated within a standard day of each other from the same location in Sector Eighteen. As we would expect from one of the incompletely explored areas, the first two bore radiation signatures that were new to us as well as being significantly different from each other in signal strength and duration. The third was a Federation standard-issue beacon belonging, we presume, to the Monitor Corps survey cruiser Terragar, which was engaged in mapping that sector, and which must have responded to the earlier two distress beacons. Our communications people don’t know what to make of those first two beacons, if they were in fact distress beacons. That’s why I hesitated about ordering Rhabwar to take this one.”

Captain Fletcher’s voice and emotional radiation still reflected the puzzlement they were both feeling, but Prilicla remained silent because he could feel that the other was about to ask the questions he himself wanted answered.

“Sir,” Fletcher said respectfully, “your background is in other-species psychology, so you may not be aware of the tech-v nical background. But if this potted lecture is unnecessary, please tell me to shut up.

“Just as we know of only one method of traveling in hy-perspace,” it went on, “there is only one way of sending a distress signal if a major malfunction occurs and a vessel is stranded in normal space between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio is not a dependable means of interstellar communication from a ship, subject as it is to interference and distortion from intervening stellar bodies as well as requiring inordinate amounts of power to send, power which a distressed ship is unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon doesn’t have to carry intelligence. It is simply a nuclear-powered single-use device which broadcasts a location signal. It is a subspace cry for help which, in a matter of a few minutes or hours, burns itself out.

“Answering such calls for help from regions where the distressed vessel is almost certain to belong to a new, star-traveling species,” it concluded, “is the reason why Rhabwar was built. I don’t understand why you are hesitating, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said the administrator, showing its teeth briefly in the peculiarly Earth-human snarl that denoted amusement. “Your explanation was clear, concise, and unnecessary. My hesitancy is due to the fact that three seperate distress beacons, two of them with radiation signatures that reveal a low order of design sophistication, were released in the same area. There may be three different and closely positioned ships out there, two of them belonging to a new intelligent species and all of them in trouble. But my communications specialists tell me that the first two appear to be crude devices which might not be distress beacons at all. Instead the signals may have been the radiation byproduct of a hyperspatial weapon of some kind. In short, they may not be cries for help, but shouts of anger. You could find yourselves rescuing other-species casualties who have been involved in an armed conflict. So be careful, with our special ambulance ship as well as your own lives. That is presupposing that Prilicla still intends to take part.”

Its two recessed, Earth-human eyes were fixed on Prilicla and it was radiating feelings characteristic of a mind that is concealing something as it continued. “More important matters may require your attention here. The chief medical officer’s position on Rhabwar is one for which you are overqualified. This would be a good time to nominate a replacement.”

Prilicla had been given a legitimate, face-saving excuse for refusing a potentially very dangerous mission, for which he was grateful; but he had also been asked a question which, in an emergency situation like this one, required an immediate answer.

He said, “My principal assistant, Pathologist Murchison, has much prior experience in ship rescue operations and is entirely capable of replacing me—but, if you will pardon me discussing your present emotional radiation in front of friend Fletcher here, you are feeling unusually high levels of concern over this mission. That being the case, I think that you would prefer me to accept it, which I do . . . Ah, I feel your relief, friend Braithwaite.”

The administrator exhaled slowly, showed its teeth again, pressed a stud on the desk’s communicator, and said briskly, “Thank you. Rhabwars crew members have now been alerted and are on their way to the ship, so I need detain you no longer. Good luck, gentlemen.”

Prilicla wasn’t sure that he liked being called a gentleman when he wasn’t even an Earth-human, but he knew that the term was intended as a courtesy and that friend Braithwaite’s feelings of concern for him were strong and sincere. He executed a steep, banking turn and flew rapidly towards the office entrance, knowing from long experience that no matter how fast he flew it would open in time to let him through.

He knew that the captain would not take offense at him using his natural advantages while traversing the six levels and intervening corridor network to reach the ambulance ship’s dock before it did, because by now all of Rhabwar’s personnel were engaged on a similar race against time rather than against each other. Fletcher had to use his large but nimble Earth-human feet and occasionally his voice and elbows to negotiate the crowded corridors, while Prilicla either flew above everyone’s head or scampered along the ceilings on his six sucker-tipped legs as he met, overtook, and passed above a constant succession of creatures who looked visually horrendous, beautiful, repugnant, or terrifying in their obvious physical strength and frightening variety of natural weapons which, being civilized members of the medical fraternity, they were rarely called on to use. Besides, all of them were his colleagues and, in most cases, his friends.

Not for the first time Prilicla asked himself why a fragile, delicately structured, insectile Cinrusskin empath had decided to spend his professional life in Sector General, surely one of the most dangerous working environments in the Galaxy for one of the GLNO classification, but the answer was always the same.

Despite the fact that his every waking moment was spent in a condition of perpetual vigilance verging on terror that would have driven the majority of his species mad, he had discovered that this was the only place and type of work that he wanted to be and do. Doubtless a Healer of the Mind would have talked learnedly about deeply buried death wishes, professional masochism, and the pathological need for constant danger, and would have pronounced him psychologically abnormal if not downright insane. But then, that diagnosis would have applied to the majority of beings who had aspired to permanent positions in the multispecies medical menagerie that was SectorTwelveGeneralHospital.

Considering his ability to fly unobstructed above everyone else’s heads, it was no surprise that he was the first to board Rhabwar, where he logged his presence before moving quickly to his tiny, deeply upholstered quarters, checking that both backup sets of his gravity nullifiers were in operation. His cabin closely resembled the cocoonlike living quarters of his home world, and its artificial gravity was already set to Cinruss normal, which was slightly less than one-quarter of a standard Earth G. He stretched his wings and limbs to full extension, then distributed them into their most comfortable position for sleeping. Cinrusskins, fragile but physically active, needed a lot of sleep; and he knew that nothing important would be said or done until they were many hours into hyperspace.

A few minutes later he heard the captain coming along the

boarding-tube and climbing the central well to the control deck, closely followed by the other three Monitor Corps officers and the members of the medical team who collected on the casualty deck. They were complaining loudly and bitterly at the sudden interruption to their work or recreation, but all of the emotional radiation they emitted was of controlled excitement rather than bitterness.

For a few moments he eavesdropped on the emotional radiation filtering through to him from the casualty and control decks. They all knew that he couldn’t help doing that because it was impossible to switch off his empathic faculty, so their emotional radiation was subdued, well-controlled, and, at this range, restful. They knew better than to radiate unpleasant feelings when their boss was trying to sleep.

CHAPTER 3

The briefing tape provided by Administrator Braithwaite had been played but not yet discussed, and their feelings of curiosity, caution, and growing impatience filled the casualty deck around him like a thick, emotional fog.

Captain Fletcher was sitting on a padded Kelgian treatment frame, flanked by Lieutenants Dodds and Chen, the communications and engineering officers respectively, while the astrogator and current watch-keeping officer, Lieutenant Haslam, viewed the proceedings through the control deck’s vision link. Pathologist Murchison occupied the swivel seat of the diagnostic console with its back turned to the screen; Charge Nurse Naydrad had curled itself into a furry question mark on the nearest bed; and the polymorphic Dr. Danalta sat in the middle of the deck like a small green haystack from which it had extruded an ear and a single stalked eye. In order to avoid even the slightest risk of injury from sudden, unthinking movements of the others’ limbs, Prilicla maintained a stable hover close to the ceiling while they all stared at the wall screen below him.

“As we have just seen,” Prilicla said, “we will be entering what may be a unique situation for us, and we will have to be very careful . . .”

We’re always careful,” Naydrad broke in, its mobile fur

rippling into waves of impatience and anxiety. “How careful is Very'?”

Kelgians always said exactly what they felt—because their mobile fur made their feelings plain, at least to another member of their species—or they said nothing at all. He was aware of all of Naydrad’s feelings, spoken and otherwise, and ignored the question because he intended to answer it anyway.

He went on. “The information available is sparse and speculative. We will be faced with the possible recovery of survivors from two distressed ships. One should be a normal, straightforward rescue and should pose no problems because it is the Corps’ survey vessel Terragar, whose crew are Earth-human DBDGs. The second vessel has a crew whose physiological classification is as yet unknown. With survivors of two different species involved, one of which is . . .”

“We assess the position at the disaster site and rescue the casualties, of whichever species, who are in the most urgent need of attention first,” Pathologist Murchison broke in quietly, its mind radiating the emotions of expectation, curiosity, and confidence characteristic of one who is accustomed to meeting professional challenges. “I don’t see the problem, sir. This is what we do.”

“. . . is possibly responsible for causing the casualties on the first ship,” Prilicla went on firmly. “Or perhaps another, undistressed vessel or vessels in the area have caused both sets of casualties. We must prepare and organize now for that eventuality, beginning with a clarification of the chain of command.”

For several minutes nobody spoke. The level of their emotional radiation increased in strength and complexity, but not to a stage where it was affecting him physically. The three Monitor Corps officers were reacting with controlled restraint in the face of possible danger, the feelings characteristic of the military mind. Murchison’s radiation was complex and negative, as was Naydrad’s, but neither of them were feeling strongly enough to vocalize their objections. Unlike the others who were feeling minor non-specific anxiety and uncertainty, Danalta projected the calm self-assurance of a shape-changer who felt itself to be impervious to all forms of physical injury.

“Normally,” Prilicla went on, “friend Fletcher here is in operational command of Rhabwar until it arrives at a disaster site, after which it is the senior medical officer, myself, who has the rank. But on this mission it may well be that, initially at least, military tactics will be of more benefit to us than medical expertise. I feel your agreement, friend Fletcher, and also that you are wanting to speak. Please do so.”

—The captain nodded. “Have you and the other medics considered the full implications of what you are saying? I realize that at present all this is pure speculation, but in the event of our being faced with a situation of armed conflict, difficult—and to all you medics, disagreeable decisions will have to be taken, and orders issued by myself. If I am called on to make those decisions, my orders will have to be obeyed without question or argument, no matter how objectionable they will seem. This must be fully understood and accepted by everyone right now—before, and not during or after, the event. Is it?”

“At any space accident or surface disaster scene, that is how we obey Dr. Prilicla,” Naydrad said, its fur and feelings projecting puzzlement. “This is normal procedure for us. Why are you stressing the obvious? Or am I missing something?”

“You are,” said the captain, its emotional radiation as well as its voice quiet and under control, as it spoke words it was feeling an intense reluctance to say. “This ship is unarmed, but not without weapons of defense and offense. Lieutenant Chen.”

The engineering officer cleared its breathing passages noisily and said, “For a limited duration, no more than a few hours, our meteorite shield can be stiffened sufficiently to give protection against shrapnel from missiles tipped with chemical-explosive warheads. But if one was tipped with a nuclear device, we wouldn’t have a prayer.”

Lieutenant Haslam, whose astrogation speciality included long- and short-range ship handling, joined in without being asked. It said, “My tractor-pressor beam array, which is normally used on wide focus for docking or pulling in space wreckage for closer examination, can be modified to serve as a weapon, although not a very destructive one. Providing we can control the distance of the object and precisely match its speed, the pressor focus can be narrowed to within a diameter of a few feet to punch a hole in the opposition’s hull plating. The catch is that it would increase the already heavy meteorite-shield drain on our power reserves, the shields would go down, and we’d be defenseless against whatever form of nastiness the opposition wanted to throw at us.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said the captain. To the others it went on, “So you can see that we are poorly equipped for a military operation. The point I am making is that, should we encounter a situation of armed conflict or its aftermath, I shall assess the tactical picture and the decisions thereafter will be mine. These will include an immediate withdrawal to the safety of hyperspace if the action is still in progress. If not, and if there are damaged vessels in the area which I consider incapable of threatening our ship, I shall take, but not necessarily follow, the advice of the senior medical officer regarding the choice of which set of survivors, if any, is to be recovered first. These should be the Monitor Corps Earth-humans rather than the new, other-species casualties because—”

“Captain Fletcher!” Murchison broke in, its words accompanied by an explosion of shock and outrage that made Prilicla feel as if he had flown into a solid wall, an effect reinforced by the emotional reactions of the other medics. “That is not what we do here!”

The captain paused for a moment to order its own thoughts and feelings, which closely resembled those of its listeners, then continued quietly. “Normally, it is not, ma’am. I was about to say that there are sound tactical and psychological reasons for rescuing our own people first. They at least know who and what we represent and can furnish us with current intelligence regarding the situation, while the other people will be confused, frightened, and probably injured aliens who will take one look at us—” he glanced quickly at the medical menagerie around him—

“and feel sure that we mean them harm. You must agree that it would be better to know something about the strangers, however little, before attempting to rescue and treat them.

“In the event,” it went on, looking up at the hovering Prilicla, “the decision and choice may not be necessary. But if it is, the med team must be prepared to treat the casualties in the order I designate. Is this clearly understood?”

It was, Prilicla knew, because there were no strong feelings of negation coming from anyone, and the surrounding emotional radiation was settling down to a level which enabled him to maintain a stable hover. It was Naydrad, their specialist in heavy rescue, who broke the lengthening silence.

“If nobody has anything else to add,” it said with an impatient ripple of its fur, “I for one want to review the medical log and space-rescue techniques. After six months in the hospital where all the patients are neatly stretched out in beds or whatever, one gets a little rusty.”

Without saying anything else, the captain left the casualty deck, closely followed by the two junior officers. Naydrad began running a visual summary of Rhabwar’s early missions and the often unorthodox rescue techniques involved while recovering casualties. Murchison and Danalta joined it before the screen, probably because it was the only thing that was moving, apart from Prilicla’s wings. Their emotional radiation was complex but firmly controlled as if they might be holding back the urge to say something. Prilicla excused himself and flew up the central well to his quarters so as to have the opportunity of thinking without the close proximity of outside emotional interference—and, of course, to give them the chance to relieve their feelings verbally. This is not what we do here,” Murchison had said.

He did not need Naydrad’s viewscreen to remind him of all the things they had done on Rhabwar, including the rules they had broken or seriously deformed, because the memories were returning as sharp, clear, and almost tactile overlays on the flickering grey blur of hyperspace outside his cabin’s viewport. Prilicla had an outstandingly good memory.

He began with the briefing on operational philosophy before the first and supposedly routine shakedown cruise. It had been explained that over the past century the Monitor Corps, as the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, had been charged with the maintenance of the Pax Galactica, but because the peace they guarded required minimum maintenance, they had been given additional responsibilities and an obscenely large budget for stellar survey and exploration. In the very rare event that they turned up a planet with intelligent life, they were also given responsibility for the delicate, complex, and lengthy first-contact procedures. Since its formation, the Corps’ other-species communications and cultural-contact specialists had found three such worlds and established successful relations with them, to the point where they had become member species of the Federation.

But there is a tendency for travelers to meet other travelers, often in distress and far from home. The advantage of meetings with other space travelers was that both species were already open to the idea that intelligent and possibly visually horrendous beings inhabited the stars—as opposed to contacting less advanced, planetbound cultures, who would be much more suspicious and fearful of the terrifying strangers who had dropped from their skies.

The trouble where the travelers were concerned was that there was only one known system for traveling in hyperspace, and one method—the nuclear-powered distress beacon—of calling for help if a catastrophe occurred that marooned the distressed ship between the stars. The result had been that many other highly intelligent and technologically advanced species had been discovered with whom they could not make contact because

they were nothing but dead or dying organic debris lying tangled inside the wreckage of their starships. With the rescue ships’ medical officers unable to provide the required assistance to completely alien life-forms, the casualties had been rushed to Sector General, where a few of them had been successfully treated, while the rest ended up in the pathology department as specimens whose worlds of origin were unknown.

That was the reason why the special ambulance ship Rhabwar had been constructed. Not only was it commanded by an officer skilled in unraveling the puzzles presented by unique alien technology, its crew included a medical team specialized both in ship-rescue techniques and multi-species alien physiology. The result had been that since their ship had been commissioned, seven new species had been contacted, and subsequently became members of the Federation.

In every case this had been accomplished—not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by demonstrating the Federation’s goodwill towards newly discovered species by rescuing and giving medical or other assistance to ailing, injured, or space-wrecked aliens.

The memories and images were returning, sharp and clear. In many of them, unlike this time, he had not borne the clinical responsibility for rescue and treatment because the then-Senior Physician Conway had been in charge of the medical team, with himself assisting as a kind of empathic bloodhound whose job was to smell out and separate the dead from the barely living casualties. There had been the recovery of the utterly savage and non-sapient Protectors of the Unborn whose wombs contained their telepathic and highly intelligent offspring; and the Blind Ones, whose hearing and touch had been so sensitive that they had learned to build devices that enables them to feel the radiation that filtered down to their world from the stars they would never see, even though they had traveled between them; and there had been the Duwetti, the Dwerlans, the Gogleskans, and the others. All had presented their particular clinical problems and associated physical dangers, especially to a fragile life-form like himself who could literally be blown away by a strong wind.

He wondered how the present-day Diagnostician Conway would have handled the current situation, where its beloved special ambulance was in danger of becoming a ship of war. Certainly not by flying away to hide in its room.

CHAPTER 4

It was four days later. Beyond the direct-vision panel and on the main screen that was relaying the control deck image, the flickering grey motion of hyperspace gave a final, eye-twisting heave before dissolving into a view of normal space. Within a few moments the relayed voice of Lieutenant Dodds on the

sensors was telling them and the ship’s mission recorders what they were already seeing.

“We have emerged close to a planet, Captain,” it reported crisply. “The coloration and cloud cover suggests an atmosphere capable of sustaining warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life and the vegetation to support it. Two ships are in close orbit around the planet within fifty miles of each other. One is Terragar; the other has a configuration that is new to us. Neither is showing serious structural damage.”

“Split the screen,” said the captain. “Give me maximum magnification on both. Haslam, contact Terragar.”

The casualty-deck screen blurred suddenly, then showed images of the two ships that expanded rapidly until they touched the edges of their display areas.

“Terragar is not obviously damaged,” said Dodds, contin-umg to describe what they were seeing. “But it is tumbling slowly a pronounced lateral spin, and there is no light from the

flight-deck canopy or the viewports. Sir, it looks like they have no power, certainly not for attitude control—”

“Or communication,” Haslam broke in. “They aren’t responding to our signal.”

“The other ship also appears to be unlit,” Dodds continued, straying, “although that could be explained by visual hypersen-sitivity on the part of the crew. The outer hull is intact apart from two areas amidships about three and four meters in diameter. They are deeply cratered, which suggests the recent presence of intense heat accompanied by explosions. There is no evidence of the fogging that would indicate escaping air or whatever it is that they breathe. Either their safety bulkhead seals worked very fast, or the hits they sustained were lethal and the ship is airless and probably lifeless.

“The outer hull,” it added, “shows no evidence of anything recognizable as external weapons launchers, or of the protective covers that would conceal such weapons. First indications, sir, are that this vessel was a victim rather than an attacker.”

Even though half the length of Rhabwar stretched between them and the emotional radiation was attenuated, Prilicla could feel the captain coming to a decision.

“Very well,” it said. “Move in. Continue trying to raise Ter-ragar. I want to know what happened here . . . Power room; Chen, we’re now too close to the planet to jump, so stand by for maximum thrust on the main drive. Haslam, be ready to pull out at the first sign of anything resembling a hostile action. I’ll need the fastest possible reaction time on this.”

“Understood,” said Haslam.

Around them the casualty deck gave an almost imperceptible lurch as the artificial-gravity system compensated for the sudden application of thrust. The repeater screen returned to showing a single, unmagnified picture of the two ships as they grew larger with diminishing distance.

Prilicla dropped lightly to the deck, where he folded his wings and legs tightly before pulling on his spacesuit. Murchison,

Naydrad, and Danalta were already climbing into theirs, all radiating minor levels of excitement, expectation, and caution. When he had checked his own air supply, antigravity system, and suit thrusters, he looked around at the others in turn.

“The medical team and powered litters are standing by, friend Fletcher,” he reported.

“Thank you, Doctor,” the other replied. “We are closing with Terragar now.”

Prilicla began to worry. Although it was completely without weaponry, in overall structure Rhabwar had been modeled on the Monitor Corps’ heavy cruiser, a class of vessel whose broad delta-wing configuration enabled it to be aerodynamically maneuvered within a planetary atmosphere. But he was afraid that it was much too massive for it to be capable of the small and precise movements in three dimensions that were needed to bring it to within two hundred meters of the distressed ship. Bearing in mind its tremendous mass and inertia, if Rhabwar were to collide with Terragar it would sustain only superficial damage, while the other vessel would have its hull caved in, with consequent disastrous injuries to its crew.

An ambulance wasn’t supposed to make medical work for itself.

But there was no sign of worry or even uncertainty in the emotional radiation that was filtering down from the control deck, so he moved to the direct-vision panel to watch the approaching planet and the two orbiting ships that were being lit by the bright, tattered carpet of clouds, consoling himself with the thought that his specialty was other-species medicine and not ship-handling, and wondering what new physiological challenges awaited them.

“Still no sign of life or movement from the alien,” Haslam reported. Its voice was calm and unemotional but it and everyone else on the control deck was radiating intense relief. “The sensors indicate low levels of residual power from two areas amidships, but in my opinion, not nearly enough for a weapons power-up, and the ship appears to have been radiating its internal heat into space for several days without any attempt to maintain living temperature levels, whatever they are for these people. I’d say that the alien ship is a problem that can wait, sir.”

“I agree,” said the captain, “but keep your eyes on it, just in case. Casualty deck?”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla.

“We will be at one hundred meters and motionless with respect to Terragars position in eleven minutes,” said the captain. “I realize that we will be at extreme range for your empathic faculty, but please do your best to detect the crew’s emotional radiation, if there is any.”

“Of course, friend Fletcher.”

The quality of the captain’s own emotional radiation belied the calmness in its voice, otherwise it would not have wasted time and breath asking him to do the job that he was here expressly to perform. But the crew of the distressed ship were all Earth-human DBDGs. Perhaps it had friends among them.

He watched with the other members of the team at the direct-vision panel as their ship closed with the Monitor Corps survey vessel. Terragar was rolling, as well as slowly pitching end over end. The canopy of the unlit control deck was moving past them at an awkward angle which did not allow a clear view of the interior. But for one brief moment the angle was right, and Prilicla was able to see movement.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said urgently. “I think I detected motion behind the control canopy. Nobody else down here saw anything or they would be emoting about it by now. It was just a glimpse, effaces, hands, and upper bodies of at least three Earth-humans. They are alive, but the distance is extreme for an empathic reading.”

“We didn’t see anything, either,” the captain replied, “but compared with your GLNO sensorium, ours makes us feel as if we’re wearing mittens and blindfolds. Haslam, deploy the tractor beams and kill the spin on that ship. Position it for a clear view into the control canopy. Then push across a cable with a communicator fitted with a two-way sound-conduction pad. Land it, but gently, on the canopy. We badly need information on this situation, and, of course, to know if anyone needs medical attention.”

The misty-blue light of two of Rhabwar’s tractor beams flickered out to focus on the bows and stern of the Monitor ship, gradually reducing its spin. A moment later a thinner beam lifted out the communicator, but held it midway between the two ships to wait for its target to come to rest. Prilicla had a slightly longer and clearer view of the people inside the canopy before they rolled out of sight.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said urgently, responding to feelings that she felt sure were not all his own. “I saw four officers, that’s the entire complement of a survey vessel. They were waving at us, shaking their heads vigorously in your DBDG non-verbal signal of negation, and showing the palms of their hands. One was pointing repeatedly in the direction of the alien ship and our communicator. The empathic range is extreme but they are radiating high levels of agitation.”

“I saw them, too,” said the captain. “They don’t appear to be seriously injured; they’re about to be rescued and have little to feel agitated about. Still . . . Haslam, is the alien ship doing anything to worry us?”

“No, sir,” the lieutenant replied. “It’s still dead in the water, so to speak.”

Prilicla paused for a moment, nerving himself for the effort of saying something argumentative if not disagreeable to another person whose irritated or angry reaction would bounce back and hit him hard.

“It was their feelings I read,” he said carefully. “Because of the interference from the emotional radiation around me, theirs were difficult to define. There was agitation, however, and it had to be intense to reach me at this distance.

May I make a suggestion and ask a favor?”

The captain was feeling the irritation characteristic of an entity whose ideas and authority were being questioned, but it was quickly brought under control. It said, “Go ahead, Doctor.”

“Thank you,” he said, looking around the casualty deck to indicate that his words were for them as well. “It is this. Would you please instruct your officers, as much as they are able, to relax mentally and avoid intensive thinking or associated feelings? I would like to get a clearer idea of what is bothering the Terragar crew. I am having a bad feeling about this situation, friend Fletcher.”

“And since when,” said Murchison in a quiet voice that was just loud enough for the captain to overhear it, “has a feeling of Prilicla’s been wrong?”

“Do as the Doctor says, gentlemen,” the captain replied promptly, pretending that it hadn’t heard. “All of you make your minds blank"—it gave a soft Earth-human bark—"or at least blanker than usual.”

All over the ship, from the control deck forward and the power room aft and from the medical team around him, they were staring at blank walls and deck surfaces or the backs of closed eyelids, those who had them, or were using whatever other means they had of reducing cerebration and feeling. Nobody knew better than himself how difficult it was to switch the mind to low alert and think of absolutely nothing, but they were all trying.

Terragar’s control canopy had rolled out of sight, but that had no effect on the crew’s emotional radiation, which was still tenuous, confused, and at a strength that was barely readable. But without the local empathic interference the individual feelings were gradually becoming clearer and easier to define, and they were anything but pleasant.

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla urgently, “I feel fear and, intense negation. For me to be able to detect them at this range, those feelings must be extreme. The fear seems to be both personal and impersonal, the latter emotion characteristic of a being who fears a threat to others besides itself. I’m an empath, not a telepath, but I’d say . . . Look, they’re coming into sight again—”

He could see no details of the four faces other than that

their mouths were opening and closing. Their hands were gesticulating wildly, sometimes pointing at the alien ship but more often towards Rhabwar and the communicator floating at the end of its sensor cable midway between their two vessels. Their pale, Earth-human palms were showing as they pressed them repeatedly against the inside of the canopy.

What were they trying to say?

“. . . They’re pointing at the alien ship and at us,” he went on quickly, “but mostly at the communicator you’re sending over. And they’re making pushing movements with their hands. Their fear and agitation is increasing. I feel sure they want us to go away.”

“But why, dammit?” said the captain. “Have they lost their senses? I’m just trying to stabilize their ship and establish a communicator link.”

“Whatever you’re doing,” said Prilicla firmly, “it is making them fearful and they badly want you to stop doing it.”

One of the four gesticulating crew members had moved quickly out of sight. Before he could mention it to the captain, Fletcher spoke again. Its voice and the feelings that accompanied it were calm and confident with the habit of command.

“With respect, Doctor,” it said, “the feelings you read from them make no sense, and won’t until we talk to them and they explain themselves and this whole damn situation. We need that “formation before we can risk boarding the alien ship. Haslam, love the communicator close and be ready to attach it when you’ve killed the spin.”

Please wait,” said Prilicla urgently, “and consider. The other crew aren’t injured, they emote no feelings of pain or phys-cal distress, only agitation at our close approach. So the matter clinically urgent. It will do no harm if you move back a short

distance, temporarily, just to reassure them if nothing else. Friend Fletcher, I have a very bad feeling about this.”

He felt the captain’s continuing intransigence as well as the beginnings of hesitation as it spoke.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” it said firmly. “My first requirement is to talk to them as soon as—”

“Sir!” Haslam broke in. “They’re pulling free of our tractor beam, on their main thrusters, for God’s sake, at over three Gs. They’ve no attitude control—otherwise they’d have checked their own spin by now. That’s stupid, suicidal! They’re diving into atmosphere, and when they move farther ahead and their ion stream hits us, we’ll be toasted like a . . .”

It broke off as the hot, blue spear streaming from the other ship’s main drive flickered and died, immediately reducing the fear feelings coming from Rhabwar’s control deck.

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla gently, “I told you that they didn’t want us to close with them, but neither do they want to kill us.”

The captain used an Earth-human expression that his translator refused to accept.

“You were right, Doctor,” it went on, “but we’ll need to get very close to them indeed, unless we want to watch them burn up in atmosphere.”

CHAPTER 5

Terragar belonged to a class of vessel that had been designed to operate in the weightless and airless conditions of space, and to dock only with other ships or orbiting supply and maintenance facilities. It was not an aerodynamically clean object and the structural projections supporting its complex of long-range sensors and mapping cameras made it resemble a cross between a falling brick and a stick insect. The congenitally tactless Nay-drad observed that physically it bore a close resemblance to their chief.

Even though he knew that his Cinrusskin body was unusually well-formed and beautiful, Prilicla had neither responded nor taken offense. Kelgians always said exactly what they felt; telling a lie was for them a complete waste of time. It was the strong, unspoken emotions of Naydrad and the others, the feelings of loyalty, admiration, concern, and deep personal regard, that were important. Besides, the crucial words and feelings were coming from the people on the control deck.

Catch up to them and kill that spin,” the captain was saying urgently. “There’s no need to be so gentle, dammit! Check all motion, refocus to full strength, and drag them back. We have the power.”

Yes, but no, sir,” Haslam replied, its voice hurried but respectful. “The tractor acts on the nearest surface. If we drag them back too suddenly we’ll peel off most of their outer skin and external hull structures. I have to be gentle to avoid pulling the whole ship apart.”

“Very well,” said the captain. “Be gentle, then, but faster.” “We’re picking up atmospheric heating,” Dodd’s voice reported; “so are they.”

In the direct-vision panel Prilicla could see the ponderously spinning shape of Terragar as the tractor beam enclosed it in a pale blue mist and drew it closer. The tumbling action was gradually slowing to a stop, but both ships were entering the upper atmosphere much too quickly for the safety of the vessel ahead. Through the confusion of emotional radiation coming from Rhabwar he could still feel the intense fear mixed with dogged determination emanating from the other crew. His empathic reading just did not make sense. Not for the first time, he wished he could know what others were thinking instead of feeling.

“You’re getting there,” said the captain. “Once you kill the rest of that spin, try to position them so they’ll go in tail-first. The stern structure is stronger than the forward section and will burn away slower than the control canopy. Can’t you slow them down faster than that?”

“In order,” said Haslam. “Yes, sir. No, sir. I’m trying, sir.” The other ship was stable and directly ahead of them, with its control canopy continuously in view. The crew had donned heavy-duty spacesuits with the helmets thrown back. Their mouths were opening and closing widely as if they were shouting, and they were still making pushing motions with their hands. From his present viewpoint Prilicla could not see the heating of the ship’s stern, but the peripheral sensor arrays and their spidery support structures were turning bright red and being bent backwards by the tenuous gale of near-vacuum that was blowing past them. Suddenly one of them tore free and there was a loud, metallic clang as it glanced harmlessly off Rhabwar’s superstructure.

“Why don’t they use their main thrusters again?” said Dodds, radiating anger and impatience. “That would help us to slow them down.”

“I don’t know,” said the captain. A moment later it went

on. “Doctor, do you have any answers?”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “In spite of their fear and certainty of imminent termination, they won’t help you because they don’t want us to come near them. I don’t know why they are doing this, either, but their reasons must be very strong.”

For a moment he felt the emotional gale raging on the control deck, with the captain’s mind its storm center, then it became still with the calmness characteristic of a decision taken and a

mind made up.

“I don’t know why they seem intent on suicide, Doctor,” it said quietly, “but the fact that they’ve put on their spacesuits suggests that they still retain some of their will to survive. Whether they want to or not, I’m going to do my damnedest to save them. Or are you suggesting otherwise?”

“I was not suggesting otherwise, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “just warning you about the way they are feeling. No rational person fully understands why another intelligent being wants to commit suicide, but in every civilized culture we have ever found, it is considered a person’s bounden duty, regardless of personal risk, to stop it from doing so.”

The captain did not reply, but he felt its gratitude as it said, “Haslam, slow them down. Be less gentle.”

From the ambulance ship’s position slightly above and behind the distressed ship. Prilicla could see Terragar s stern section changing gradually from metallic grey through dull red to glowing orange. The lattice support structure carrying the mapping sensors were like bright yellow spiders’ webs that sagged, melted, and were blown away by the slipstream. With a dreadful certainty, Prilicla waited for Terragar to explode into a disintegrating fireball. But incredibly, someone in Control was radiating feelings of optimism.

“Sir,” said Haslam, “I think we may have done it. In a few more seconds their speed will be slowed to the point where there will be no more atmospheric heating beyond what they’ve already picked up. But they’re not out of trouble yet . . .”

The red-hot particles of metallic fog were no longer streaming back from the other ship’s superheated stern, but to Prilicla, nothing else seemed to have changed.

“. . . Because,” the lieutenant went on, “I estimate that in about twenty minutes the heat from their stern will be conducted along the structure until it is evenly distributed throughout the ship. By then the survivors will be in a bad way.”

“Then lift us out of atmosphere,” said the captain. “Let the heat dissipate into space. You’re able to do that now without causing their hull to break up?”

The voices in Control were calm but the feelings behind them, as were those of the medical team around him, were not. The emotional radiation coming from the people on the other ship was even worse.

“Yes, sir,” Haslam replied. “But it will take an hour or more for all that heat to radiate into space and until then it would be too hot, as well as too late, for the rescue team to go in for them. By then they would be cooked in their own juices if they aren’t that way already.”

“Please ignore the lieutenant, Doctor,” said the captain quickly. “Sometimes he has about as much tact as a drunken Kelgian. How are the survivors?”

For a moment Prilicla was silent as he watched the hot, red stain that was creeping inexorably forwards along Terragar’s hull, its progress clearly visible in spite of the bright carpet of clouds and sunlit ocean unrolling rapidly below it. Suddenly the despair he was feeling began to be diluted by excitement and hope.

“They are alive,” he said, “but the emotional radiation is characteristic of beings who are fearful and in intense discomfort. I am not a ship handler, friend Fletcher, but may I make a suggestion?”

“You want to try to recover them anyway,” said the captain incredulously, “from a ship that is nearly red-hot? You and your team would die in the attempt. The answer is no.”

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “I am not emotionally capable of doing, or even of thinking of doing, such a brave and stupid thing. Instead, I was about to ask you to take both ships to the planetary surface as quickly as possible. Our altitude is less than fifty miles above an equatorial ocean and there are many islands, one with what looks like a sandy coastline coming over the horizon. If we had enough time we might cool Terragar by immersion.”

Lieutenant Haslam swore out loud, something Prilicla had rarely heard it do in the presence of its captain and never while the recorders were running, and said, “My God, it wants us to dunk them in the ocean!”

“Can we do that, Lieutenant?” said Fletcher. “Is there time?”

“There might be,” Haslam replied, “but it will be close.”

“Then do it,” said the captain. “We’ll need to reduce our rate of descent to zero by the time we reach the surface, but to save time, hold off the deceleration until we’re a few miles above sea level. The sudden braking will put a strain on the tractor beam, not to mention the other ship. Use your judgment, and try not to pull it apart at this late stage. Nice idea, Doctor. Thank you. How are the casualties?”

Friend Fletcher’s gratitude, hope, and excitement were clear for Prilicla to feel, so there had been no need for the other to express them verbally. But when their ship was involved in a situation where anything might happen and every incident, instrument reading, and word were being recorded in case of an unforeseen calamity, he knew that the captain’s tidy mind would want the credit for the idea and its gratitude to go on record.

“Still alive, friend Fletcher,” he replied formally: “Their emotional radiation indicates deep personal fear and despair but panic, and increasing physical discomfort. They are not visible to me, but the indications are that three of them are positioned closely together on the control deck, which is probably the coolest place in the ship, and a fourth one is farther aft. The rescue team is ready to go, on your signal.”

Around him he could feel a combination of anxiety, impatience, and excitement as his team checked equipment that had already been checked many times. He remained silent because there was nothing useful he could say, and kept his eyes on Ter-ragar and the dull red tide of color that was creeping slowly towards its bow. He was startled when it disappeared suddenly as both ships plunged through the dark interior of a tropical storm. A few moments later it reappeared with a brief, overall puff of steam as the rainwater boiled off its overheated hull. Ahead of and below them, the smooth expanse of sunlit water was expanding and showing the first wrinkling of the larger waves. There was no feeling of deceleration because Rhabwar’s artificial gravity system was maintaining the customary one-G, but Terragar was feeling it. Two small areas of the other ship’s hull plating bulged outwards suddenly under the double pull of deceleration and the tractor beam, but they didn’t peel away. By now their speed was being measured in tens rather than hundreds of miles per hour.

“This hasn’t been what I’d call a covert approach to a newly discovered planet,” said the captain, radiating sudden anxiety, “but we had no other choice. Did you scan for intelligent-life signs?”

“Briefly, sir, on the way down,” said Haslam, “but the sensors are on record for later study. They report zero atmospheric industrial pollutants, no traffic on the audio or visual radio frequencies, and no indications of intelligent life. Altitude, five hundred meters and descending. The coastline of the island ahead is coming up.”

“Right,” said the captain. “Check forward velocity to put us down no more than three hundred meters offshore, and it will save a few minutes if there’s a nice, even seabed under us.”

“There is,” said Haslam. “The sensors indicate hard-packed sand with no reefs or rock outcroppings.”

“Good,” said Fletcher. “Power room, in five minutes we’ll be supporting two ships. I’ll need maximum power for the stilts.”

“You’ll have it,” said Lieutenant Chen.

Their forward motion ceased as they dropped slowly to within five hundred meters of the waves, which were high and smooth and rounded so that each one seemed to throw back reflections of the sun. Against that continually moving dazzle, the red coloration of Terragar s hull had darkened almost to a normal, metallic grey, but the emotional radiation from its officers belied the appearance of normality.

The medical team, already suited-up and sealed, were watching him and the tremor that was shaking his limbs. He felt Pathologist Murchison’s sympathy. It was wanting to talk and to help him—probably by trying to take his mind off the casualties by giving it something more cerebral to think about—but when it spoke, the subject remained the same.

“Sir,” Murchison said, “earlier you said that their emotional radiation indicated that they were physically unharmed. Was there evidence of any psychological abnormality present? Why would they try deliberately to commit suicide rather than let us near them? By now they will have sustained overall burns or, if they kept their suits sealed and their cooling units at maximum, massive dehydration and heat prostration. But with respect, sir, there has to be something more wrong with them. What else can we expect?”

“I don’t know, friend Murchison,” Prilicla replied. “Remember, there was no suicidal intent, just extreme determination not to let us approach their ship. They tried very hard to get away from us, but it was the attitude of their ship which took them into atmosphere, and that was accidental.”

It was a guess rather than anything as definite as a feeling, out he was wondering if there might be something, or perhaps someone, on their ship who was no longer living, that they had not wanted Rhabwar’s crew to go near. He kept that thought to himself, and the pathologist rejoined the general silence until it was broken by the captain.

“Deploy the stilts,” it said. “Drop them in, but gently. Immerse them for five minutes.”

Rhabwar was now positioned directly above the other ship and holding it horizontally above the ocean with a single tractor beam. Suddenly four more speared out in pressor mode, widely angled so that the ship was supported by a pyramid of misty-blue stilts that penetrated and pushed aside the water to rest solidly on the seabed. Terragar dropped gently towards the waves.

There was a tremendous explosion of steam and outflowing streamers of boiling water as it touched and then slipped below the surface. Everything was obliterated by a dazzling white fog for the few minutes it took for the strong, onshore breeze to blow it clear. But there was nothing to see except a large circle of boiling and bubbling ocean.

“Pull them up,” said the captain.

The ship that rose into view was barely recognizable as Terragar. Steam and furiously boiling water were streaming out of the large gaps in the hull plating and where the entire control canopy had burst open. It looked as if the tractor beam was holding the ship not only up, but in one piece. Prilicla answered the question before the captain could ask it.

“They are still inside, friend Fletcher,” he said, “but deeply unconscious and close to termination. We need to get to them, now.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” said the captain, “but not right now. Our sensors say that their hull interior is still too hot for your people to survive it, much less recover casualties. Haslam, submerge them again, this time for ten minutes.”

Once again the other ship was immersed, but this time it seemed the sea above it was steaming rather than boiling. The emotional radiation of the casualties remained unchanged. When

Terragar reappeared this time, the water running down its sides and pouring from the gaps in its hull was, according to the sensors, very warm rather than hot, and no longer a threat to the rescue team.

“Instructions, Doctor?” said the captain.

Plainly the other was feeling that their situation no longer contained a military threat and was immediately passing the operational responsibility back to the senior medical officer on site.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said briskly, “please move the wreck towards the beach and place it in the shallows at a depth that will not inconvenience us but where the wave action will continue to cool it. We’ll board with four antigravity litters while friend Murchison remains with you to supervise the transfer and erection of our field dressing station and the special equipment we may need. The casualty deck will be reserved for the recovery of the possible other-species survivors in orbit. As quickly as possible, use your tractor beam to position the unit’s structures, friend Murchison, and its equipment onshore within one hundred meters of the wreck. Land Rhabwar farther inland at a minimum distance of three hundred meters. Should you need to take off or change position for operational reasons, you must not approach the medical station or the wreck any closer than that from any direction until instructed otherwise.”

The captain was radiating puzzlement, feelings shared by everyone else on the ship, as it said, “This is ridiculous, Doctor. Surely you are being unnecessarily cautious about an unpowered and helpless wreck.”

Prilicla paused for a moment. When he spoke, he tried to sound resolute and inflexible, which was very difficult for a Cin-nisskin empath even when he was carrying mind-partners of a more heavyweight and psychologically positive species.

When we approached it in orbit,” he said, “Terragar used its last reserves of power to move away from us. Its crew were willing to die rather than allow our ship, or perhaps our crew members, to make physical contact with them. The rescue team will shortly be making physical contact with them, with extreme caution, naturally. But until we discover the medical, psychological, or other reasons behind their apparently suicidal or self-sacrificing action, I am expressly forbidding Rhabwar to do so.”

CHAPTER 6

Sunlight shone through the ragged-edged hole where the control-room canopy had been. The heat-discolored instrumentation that the water had not already swept into tangled heaps on the deck showed dead, blank readouts. The remains of the four control couches were empty, with faintly steaming water flowing slowly between their support struts as it ran away through cracks in the ruptured deck. But life was present, and even though it was difficult to detect through the welter of emotional radiation coming from the rest of the team, he knew that it was close by.

“Naydrad, Danalta,” he said urgently, “please subdue your feelings. You’re muddying the emotional waters.”

A moment later he pointed towards a group of four tall cabinets set into the aft bulkhead. Heat deformation had twisted one of the doors slightly open while the others looked as if they had been fused shut. They were the standard ship furniture that contained the crew’s spacesuits Now they contained the crew as well, because their structures had given an extra layer of protection against the heat.

For some reason these people had been willing to die, Prilicla reminded himself again, but they had also wanted badly to live.

Quickly, Naydrad sliced off the four doors with its cutting torch. Only three of the cabinets were occupied, because earlier one of the officers had gone aft to start the main thrusters manually when the ship had made its desperate attempt to pull away from Rhabwar. But there was too much local emotional radiation for him to be able to detect accurately the fourth man’s distance or position. He could feel, although the source was so faint that it might have been a hope rather than a feeling, that the fourth officer was still alive. But there was no time to go looking for it now because the other three needed immediate attention. Naydrad and Danalta were already removing them from the cabinets. He tried to look at their faces, but the inside of the visors were steamed up and the suits were hot to the touch.

“Finish transferring them to the litters,” he said, moving closer to lay his hand gently on each of them in turn, “then remove the spacesuits and all body coverings. Friend Murchison, the vision pickups are running. Are you seeing this, and are you ready to receive casualties?”

“Yes, sir,” it replied. “Rhabwar has lifted over the prefabricated med station, myself, and the Earth-human burn medication onto the beach above the high-water mark. Until now I was too busy even to notice if this world had a moon and tides. It does. I’ll be ready to take the casualties in fifteen minutes. Have you a preliminary assessment for me, sir?”

Prilicla flew slowly over the three Earth-humans. Rapidly but very gently, their suits and underlying garments, apart from the small areas of scorched clothing still adhering to the bodies, were being cut away by Naydrad and Danalta. The Earth-humans were too deeply unconscious for their emotional radiation to trouble him, but the mere thought of what they must have suffered before they had reached that state was enough to make his hovering flight less than stable. In the hospital he had seen Chief Dietitian Gurronsevas produce synthetic meat dishes that were less well-cooked.

“All three casualties are suffering from advanced heat prostration and massive dehydration,” Prilicla replied in a clinical voice that belied his underlying feelings. “Undoubtedly this followed the overload and apparent recent failure—very recent, otherwise the casualties would have terminated by now—of their suits’ cooling systems. There is localized surface and subdermal burning, with escharring in several areas to a depth of two centimeters, where the internal metal stiffening of the suits made contact through the clothing, or the wearer lost consciousness and allowed the front or side of its cranium to fall against the heated interior of the helmets. There are third-degree burns to the hands, feet, and crania, plus a narrow band encircling the waist, with an estimated total body area of ten to fifteen percent. “Interim treatment will be to place the casualties into individual litters,” he went on, giving the information friend Murchison needed while at the same time issuing polite instructions to the two team members working beside him, “with the canopies sealed and the refrigeration units reducing the ambient temperature. Rehydration is a matter of urgency but must wait until your facilities are available. Friend Naydrad will convey the three litters to you and assist while I . . .”

“Then the fourth officer terminated?” it broke in softly. “Perhaps not,” he replied. “I have a feeling, very tenuous and more likely only a wish, that it is still alive somewhere aft. Friend Danalta will remain here to help me find it.”

Even at one hundred meters distance he could feel Mur-chison’s sudden burst of negativity and deep concern.

Sir,” it said, “the captain has just informed me that the continuous strain on the fabric of that ship caused by the braking action of the tractor beam, together with the atmospheric buffeting during reentry, will have converted the interior into a heap of wreckage that could collapse at any time. As well, the hull temperature at the stern is still unacceptably high for would-be rescuers. You will be at serious risk and may wish to reconsider your recent decision. I suggest you send Naydrad with Danalta to recover the missing casualty . . .”

Well,” said the Kelgian, its fur rippling under the protective garment, “isn’t it nice to be considered expendable?”

“. . . while you bring in the other litters,” it went on. “From the condition of the first three, it looks as though your surgical experience will be urgently required here.”

“I agree, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla. “But if Danalta or Naydrad found the fourth crew member, neither of them would be able to know whether they were recovering an unconscious or dead casualty without removing its suit, which would be contraindicated in the high temperature levels aft. You know very well that only I can feel and specify at a distance whether it is a casualty requiring urgent attention, or a cadaver that can await recovery at more convenient time.”

He moved to the fourth litter and climbed inside, sealing the pressure canopy behind him for maximum protection before signaling with a forward manipulator for Danalta to proceed aft.

“Please refrain from going into maternal mode, friend Murchison,” he added. “I promise to be very careful.”

The situation aft was much worse than he had expected with an almost solid plug of wreckage barring their way. Atmospheric heating and the tractor-beam stresses had caused the interior hull plating to buckle and open up so that ragged, metal edges projected into their path and opened wide cracks that allowed long, uneven triangles of daylight to show through. He could feel the buildup of heat even through the litter canopy and his own suit’s laboring cooling system. But Danalta, as it had done on many previous rescue operations, was proving once again that its polymorphic species was the closest thing to a general-purpose organic tool in the known universe.

His limbs were showing a faint tremor which his polymorphic friend had noticed, but was forbearing to mention, because the emotional radiation causing it was due to Prilicla’s own cowardice.

It was a terrible psychological burden to be afraid all the time, of everything and everybody, and of the harm that might be done him by accident or intention. But there were compensations. A life-form with hostile intent could not hide its feelings towards him, so he could either take evasive action or, if it was intelligent, try to change the other’s hostility to feelings of disinterest or even friendship towards him. As a matter of pure survival as well as to secure a pleasant emotional environment for himself, he had made many good and protective friends. But there was nothing he could do about stupid pieces of sharp-edged, inanimate matter except try to avoid them.

There was another ship’s officer to find, if it was still alive and emoting. Prilicla tried to allay his own fear and widen his empathic range while he followed and coordinated his litter’s movements with those of the shape-changer.

Danalta was always a minimal source of emotional interference because it rarely encountered situations that caused it to have unpleasant feelings, and it was never afraid because nothing—short of a major explosion, or being crushed between two closing faces of massive colliding objects—could harm it. Now it was opening a path through the hot, steaming devastation by extruding appendages of the length, shape, and strength necessary to move obstacles aside or, with the whole of its body, taking shapes that it was better not to think about as it used itself as an organic pit prop that lifted masses of tumbled wreckage in order to enable the litter to go through.

Fotawn, the planet where Danalta’s species had evolved, had been one of the least hospitable worlds to be discovered by the Galactic Federation. It had a highly eccentric orbit and consequent climatic variations so severe that an incredible degree of physical adaptability had been necessary for its flora and fauna to survive on a world of animal and vegetable shape-changers. Danalta’s people, its dominant life-form, were of physiologyical classification TOBS. They had developed intelligence and an advanced civilization based on the philosophical rather than the Physical sciences, not by competing in the matter of natural weapons but by refining and perfecting their adaptive capabilities. In prehistoric times, when members of the species were faced with stronger natural enemies, their defensive options in order of preference had been protective mimicry, flight, or the adoption of a shape frightening to the attacker. The speed and accuracy of the mimicry suggested the possession of a high degree of receptive empathy of which the species was not consciously aware.

With such effective means of physical adaptability and self-protection available, the species was impervious to disease and normal levels of physical injury, so that the concepts of curative medicine and surgery had been completely incomprehensible to its people. In spite of this, Danalta had applied for and been accepted at Sector General for medical training.

Danalta’s purpose in coming to the hospital, it had insisted, had been selfish rather than idealistic. The sixty-odd different life-forms who worked there were a unique and continuing challenge to its powers of mimicry. Admittedly, it was being forced into using all of its polymorphic abilities—to reassure beings who might be suffering from serious physical or psychological malfunctions, by mimicking their shape and vocal output if there were no members of their own species present to give reassurance; or, in an accident situation with associated toxic pollution, it could adapt its shape and tegument quickly so that urgently required treatment would not be delayed because of time wasted in donning protective garments; or during surgery it could extrude limbs and digits of the indicated shape and function which were capable of quickly repairing damage to otherwise inaccessible areas where organic damage or dysfunction had occurred. But it was simply reacting to a challenge that no shape-changer of its race had ever faced before and, while it was deriving much pleasure from the experience, it was not and should not be called a doctor.

In turn, the hospital authorities had insisted, gently but very firmly, that if it planned to continue doing that kind of work at Sector General, there was nothing else they could call it.

“Sir,” said Danalta suddenly, bringing his mind back to present time and space, “we’ve reached the power room. The ambient temperature is unacceptably high for an unprotected Earth-human DBDG, but the structure here is robust and less likely to collapse on us. You may safely leave the litter. I’m trying reduce my emotional radiation. Can you feel the casualty?”

“No,” said Prilicla; then immediately contradicted himself.

“Yes.”

It was a feeling almost without feeling, a mere expression of individuality and existence that was characteristic of an entity very close to termination. It was tenuous with extreme weakness or distance or both. Before signaling to move farther aft, he looked quickly around the room. It, too, had been cracked open, but compared with the wreckage-strewn compartments they had already passed through, this one was almost neat except for an untidy heap of tools that looked as if they had been thrown haphazardly onto the deck in front of a low, closed metal cabinet. Perhaps someone had been urgently in need of shelter.

“In there,” he said, pointing and moving quickly towards it. As they forced open the cabinet there was a sudden explosion of black, oily vapor from the sponge plastic lining that had been melted by the heat, but the casualty’s suit was still intact so it had not breathed any of the highly toxic gas. Inside they found the fourth officer on its knees and bent almost double. Without trying to straighten the body they quickly lifted the spacesuited figure onto the litter and laid it on its side. Apart from the deep red coloration, the details of the face were blurred by internal condensation. The emotional radiation suggested a life expec-tancy that could be measured in minutes rather than hours.

Friend Danalta,” he said, glancing back at the way they had come, this casualty is close to termination and the temperature here means that we can’t afford the time or the risk of opening its suit. Please look for a faster way out of here. Try to find an opening in the hull large enough to allow the litter through so we can . . .”

“Doctor,” the voice of the captain broke in, “we can make that opening for you, as large as you need. I’ve been monitoring your progress, I’m familiar with the ship’s layout, and I know exactly where you are. Please move clear of the hull on the landward side and hold on to something solid.

“Haslam,” he continued quickly, “tractor beam, narrow-focus rapid push-pull to the aft hull plating, just there.”

The whole power room began to vibrate in sympathy around them as a sudden, metallic screeching sound came from a small area of the hull interior. The existing cracks in the structure opened up as a large section of plating and internal trim was pulled outwards and pressed inwards at a rate of once a second. For a moment the plating fluttered like a metal flag in a high wind before it was whipped out of sight. Sunlight poured into the compartment and with it, a clear, close view of the beach and medical station.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said. “Friend Murchison, to save time I’m sending friend Danalta with the fourth litter. The canopy will be sealed and the cooling system set to maximum in the hope that the reduction in external temperature will be conducted to the occupant. The casualty is still inside its suit which should be removed as quickly as possible in a less hostile environment. I will follow at once to assist you.”

“Maybe not at once, Doctor,” said Danalta. Its voice was coming from what seemed to be a small storage compartment farther aft.

He had been aware of a sudden burst of emotion an instant before the shape-changer had spoken. Its feelings were complex, a mixture composed predominantly of intense surprise and curiosity. Before Prilicla could ask the natural question, Danalta gave the answer.

“Doctor,” it said, “there is another casualty here. The physiological classification is strange to me but, but I think I’ve found a stowaway.”

CHAPTER 7

The creature appeared to be wearing a spacesuit so close-fitting that it seemed

highly probable that its general body configuration was identical in size and shape to its protective garment. Physically the creature was a flattened ovoid with six appendages growing at equal intervals from the perimeter, each terminating in long, flexible digits encased in gauntlets that fitted like a coat of metallic paint. There was a variety of what looked like specialized tools on the fingertips of each of the thin, metal gauntlets. The rounded projection on what was presumably the forebody, was almost certainly the cranium, but it was covered by sensors rather than a transparent visor so that he was unable to obtain a direct view of the facial tegument and features. There was a large area of scorching covering the upper surface, or possibly the underside, of the body. He couldn’t be sure without removing the suit.'What is it, Doctor?” said Danalta. “Is it alive?” I m not sure,” he replied, and indicated the fourth litter. “Move the Earth-human casualty ashore, quickly, and assist Murchison and Naydrad with it until I join you or send for an-other litter. I’ll need this area to be clear of all other sources of emotional radiation if I’m to be absolutely sure whether or not is present.”

The emoting of Danalta and the Earth-human casualty diminished with distance to merge with the faint, background feelings of the medical team and the rest of the casualties. Without false modesty Prilicla knew that out of the entire Cinrusskin race he possessed one of the most sensitive and analytical empathic faculties his planetary history had ever recorded. For several long minutes he concentrated on using it.

And found nothing.

His disappointment was severe enough to make his limbs tremble. He knew that he was capable of detecting the emotional radiation of every species known to the Federation, right down to the tiny, savage feelings of non-sapient insects, but this was a thinking member of a new star-traveling species. Perhaps he had finally encountered one that thought and felt on a sensory level that was beyond his detection range. He was having feelings of personal doubt and inadequacy as well as disappointment.

Sometime and somewhere, he told himself as he lifted the scanner and keyed for the metal penetration setting, everything has to happen for the first time.

Prilicla moved closer until his head was only a few inches. from the bulbous swelling in the protective garment which, in the majority of life-forms, was the location of the cranium and the nerve center of the sensory equipment. Slowly and carefully he passed the scanner over the area, continuing for several minutes to scan with his feelings at ultra-short range while at the same time searching with the instrument for clinical signs of life in any underlying organic material. He could not believe it when he found neither. He even had trouble finding his voice.

“Friend Murchison,” he said finally, “I have a casualty here which requires further examination. Do you need me there?”

“We do, but not urgently,” the pathologist replied. It emitted a sudden burst of concern before it brought the feeling under control. “You have been with that one for over half an hour. The situation here is that all four casualties have been cut free of their suits but there are a few small areas where pieces of burned cloth-

ing and charred body tissue are adhering, which will require surgical separation. The escharred areas and deeper burn locations where obvious necrosis has taken place will need to be trimmed away and the sites covered with surrogate skin until proper replacement surgery is available at the hospital. Meanwhile, IV nutrients, rehydration, and replacement of lost protein is currently under way while the casualties are being supported on cushions of cool, sterile air. Their present condition is critical but stable, and one of them, the last one you sent to us, is barely on the plus side of terminal. We may lose that one. Earth-human vital organs don’t take kindly to being casseroled in their own juices. But you sound as if you might have another casualty for us. Is it a new boy on the block?”

Prilicla hesitated, then said, “I’m not yet certain whether it is a casualty for treatment or a new specimen for postmortem investigation. Certainly I’ve never encountered a life-form like this one before, or seen references to anything like it in the literature.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Murchison, its matter-of-fact tone belying the mounting curiosity it was feeling. “When can we see it? Shall I send Naydrad with a litter to—”

“No,” Prilicla broke in. He could feel the other’s surprise because normally he would never have spoken so sharply to a subordinate. In a gentler voice he went on. “I have the feeling that you have the clinical situation under control over there. Continue as you are doing, but do nothing else until or unless I tell YOU otherwise.”

“Sir,” it said, emoting intense puzzlement. The feeling was being shared and reinforced by Naydrad, Danalta, and the officers on Rhabwar who were monitoring the images and conversations coming from Terragar. But Prilicla needed answers himself before he could try to give them to others, and he had 0 pause for a moment to steady his shaking limbs before he could return to the scanner examination.

Since he was the only empath present, there was of course nobody to know of or feel his fear. The minds of the medical team were engaged exclusively with their own clinical concerns, but the people on the ambulance ship had little more to do than to monitor and observe his actions, and those observations would have included the minor and continuing tremor in his limbs. Very soon friend Fletcher would deduce the reason for his terror, if it and the others hadn’t done so already.

They knew as well as he did that the crew of Terragar had sought desperately to avoid all contact with their fellow officers and would-be rescuers, and that it was a virtual certainty that the entity he was trying to examine was the reason. It came as no surprise when the long period of silence was broken hesitantly by the captain.

“Doctor,” it said. “Possibly this is none of my clinical business, and I’ll understand if you tell me to shut up in your usual polite fashion, but your examination of the alien casualty puzzles me. I’ve been watching you for the past half an hour and have observed that while you began by closely approaching but not touching the creature, for reasons that I think we both understand, you are now making continuous contact with it. In what way has the situation changed? Is the creature no longer a threat to you, and, if so, why is your body language suggesting otherwise? And why are you examining every square inch of the body surface, including its hands and individual digits which, in my layperson’s opinion, are not usually the site of life-threatening injuries?”

Prilicla was silent for a moment while he tried to organize the results of his examination in a form that would not embarrass him when the recording was played back, as it would be many times, by the cultural-contact people.

“I began by assuming that the air inside its suit was one of the oxygen-and-inert combinations used by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, and identified the species tentatively as physiological classification CHLI. Sub-surface scanner investigation of the suit, and a deeper, detailed examination of its content, revealed the presence of unique technology of a level of complexity that I am not qualified to assess. The subsequent forensic investigation suggests that the position and sharply defined area of heat damage to the suit—the head section, forward pair of limbs, and particularly the attached digits which are literally fused together—was sustained before, rather than after, the subject was taken on board Terragar. The later atmospheric heating effects suffered by the ship had no effect on the occupant. No doubt, friend Fletcher, you will wish me to help you to make a more thorough investigation at a more convenient time.

“To summarize,” he ended, “life—as we understand the term—is no longer present. I very much doubt that it ever was.” He felt the sudden burst of surprise and curiosity from the medical team, but it was on a low level because their attention was being concentrated on their Earth-human casualties. The captain’s emotional radiation was accompanied by words.

“Wait, Doctor,” it said. “Do I understand you correctly? Are you saying that the subject is a robot of unique and advanced design, and, and that it may be a casualty of war?”

“I’m unwilling to speculate on the available evidence, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied, “but judging by the sophistication of design and construction

in this mechanism, it may even be possible that we have discovered a non-organic form of intelligent life. But I advise extreme caution during any subsequent examination, because the actions of this creature or others like it may be the reason why Terragar was trying so hard to avoid contact with us. We won’t know more until or unless the ship’s officers are able to talk to us.

“Friend Murchison,” he added, “I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

“The sooner the better,” he heard Naydrad say. In spite of Murchison’s earlier, reassuring situation report, he could feel that it was speaking for all of them.

The field medical station was a prefabricated, modular structure designed for use at the scene of space construction accidents or planetary disaster-relief operations. It comprised a self-contained, multiple-species operating room to which recovery wards, medical-staff accommodation, and ancillary equipment could be added as required. The OR was already in use and Rhab-war’s pressor beams had lifted in the less urgently required sections together with a couple of general-purpose robots that were busily attaching them as he approached.

As if it were an unconscious emotional preparation for the serious clinical problems ahead, a childhood memory of his home world, like a waking dream, came flooding back to calm his mind. In those days it had been himself who had been assembling brightly-colored structures out of building-blocks on the sand, and peopling them with legendary creatures out of his imagination who had strange and varied capabilities for performing great deeds of good or evil on those in their power—short of ending their lives, that was, because violent death was something that even an adult Cinrusskin did not willingly think about. This stretch of golden beach could have been the same, as was the green fringe of vegetation inland that was too indistinct to appear alien and therefore different. But there all similarity ended.

The steep, low-gravity waves of Cinruss had been replaced by the low, smooth rollers that peaked and foamed only as they broke in the shallows; and here the people inhabiting the bright building blocks were more varied and wonderful than anything he could ever have imagined as a child, and death was something that they thought about, faced, and, in the majority of their cases, conquered every day of their lives.

But not today.

From Murchison and the other team members he felt the sudden burst of sorrow, self-criticism, and near anger characteristic of healers who had just lost a patient.

CHAPTER 8

When he joined them a few minutes later, Naydrad was moving the deceased casualty to an adjoining compartment on a litter with a closed, opaque cover. The features of Captain Fletcher looked silently down from the wall communicator screen, the fleshy edges of its mouth pressed tightly together and its strong feelings tenuous with distance. Two other casualties had been given preliminary treatment and were floating above an enclosed, air-cushioned bed while Murchison and Dan-alta were working on the remaining one. They were concentrating all of their attention on excising the areas of charred tissue while covering the less severely affected sections of the body surface with the thick, creamlike, clinging medication that had been developed for the treatment of DBDG burn cases. It would aid tissue regeneration, deaden pain on the patient’s return to consciousness, and protect against same-species airborne infection. The latter was the reason why it was the pathologist alone who was dressed for a full aseptic operational procedure.

Microorganisms that had originated on one planet could not cross the species barrier to affect or infect life-forms who had evolved on another. Naydrad felt the downdraft from Prilicla’s on its uncovered fur and looked up. I’m beginning to feel like a redundant limb here,” it said,

looking at the newly arrived casualty with feelings of concern and impatience ruffling its mind and its fur. “Will I help you to cut off its suit?”

As a specialist in heavy rescue, Naydrad was the hospital’s acknowledged expert at cutting all shapes and sizes of injured space casualties out of their environmental protection and underlying body coverings, if the species concerned wore them, without inflicting further damage to the living contents. It made no effort to salvage any part of the suit, but instead used its highspeed cutter to section the entire surface, leaving it with so many connected incisions that the pieces could be peeled away and discarded like the shell of a multiply cracked egg. Except in the places where the material and underlying skin had fused together into a single, charred mass, the uniform went the same way. While it was dealing with those areas, Naydrad positioned the patient for him on its frictionless bed of cooling air and began the rehydration process. Murchison and Danalta joined them without comment and smoothly took over the procedure while he withdrew to hover above the patient.

“How is it, sir?” said Murchison. They both knew that it wasn’t asking about the patient’s physical condition, which was clear to see, but the unseen emotional radiation that only he could detect. “Can it withstand major surgery?”

“It is better than I would have expected, and yes,” Prilicla replied. “It has suffered major trauma and as a result is deeply unconscious, but the emotional radiation is characteristic of a being who, unconsciously, is still fighting to survive. That situation could change for the worse if we don’t operate quickly.

“This patient,” he went on for the benefit of the recorders, “took shelter in a heavy metal equipment cabinet. It was found in the kneeling position with its body folded forward at the waist and steadied by one hand. That hand and its lower limbs were in lengthy contact with metal whose heat was conducted through the suit fabric to the feet and knees so that these areas have sustained deep charring that involves the underlying circulatory system, muscles, and associated nerve networks. The other two casualties have already lost their feet and lower limbs. We may be able to save the hand on this one, which seems to have been holding a non-conducting tool to keep it from direct contact with the hot metal. Your feelings, friend Murchison, and those of the rest of you, indicate that you have come to a decision, but I must ask the question verbally.

“Is there general agreement,” he ended, “that the lower legs should be removed without delay?”

He was aware of their feelings, so there was no real need for them to speak, but Murchison, who had its own, peculiarly Earth-human form of empathy, was feeling Prilicla’s need for support and reassurance.

“Yes,” it said firmly.

Before anyone else could reply, there was an interruption in the form of the captain clearing its breathing passages. It said, “Much as I dislike watching major operative procedures, especially on fellow officers of my own species who are personally known to me, I’ve been forcing myself to do so. The reason is that, to my medically untutored mind, and considering the literal hell they went through on that ship, it seems to me that there is a strong possibility that none of these casualties will survive.”

It hesitated for a moment, and he was able to detect distant feelings of embarrassment mixed with determination as it went on. “To me the most urgent priority here is the gathering of information, knowledge that could be of vital importance to a great many beings throughout the Federation. After all, your patients were intent on killing themselves, so restoring one of them to a condition in which he can tell us why is . . .”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla broke in gently, “your words are giving rise to intense feelings of disagreement and anger which the medical team is trying hard not to verbalize, and in the present circumstances those words are an unwanted distraction. The clinical condition of the three casualties is critical but stable, and it is possible that they may not survive, much less regain consciousness.”

“In that case,” the captain said, “why not bring one of them round in case they die before they can give us the information we need? It will be tough on the person concerned, but they are Monitor Corps, after all, and would be the first to understand the priorities in this situation.”

For a long moment Prilicla tried hard to reduce the tremor that the other’s suggestion had caused in his limbs, but succeeded only in keeping his operating hands steady. Finally he spoke.

“We will discuss this matter at a more convenient time,” he said, without his customary politeness. “You may continue to observe, but you will refrain from making any further suggestions until the procedure has been completed.”

The captain remained silent but watchful during the remainder of the operation, and the additional surgery needed on the other two casualties. Prilicla assumed that the other was breathing through its nasal openings because never before had he seen Earth-human lips pressed so tightly and continuously together. But when it was obvious to the layest of laypersons, which the captain was not, that the procedures on all three patients was completed, it spoke again.

Dr. Prilicla,” said the captain, “we must have a serious talk as soon as possible after—”

“Captain Fletcher!” Murchison broke in, its words calm and cold and quiet, although the feelings that accompanied them shared none of those qualities. “Dr. Prilicla has been operating here for nearly two hours, to which must be added its rescue time on Terragar. By now a space officer in your position must be aware of the physical limitations of the GLNO life-form, including its lack of stamina which requires that it rest frequently and often. We’re all tired right now, and not just the boss . . .”

It broke off as the captain raised a hand for silence and said sharply, “I’m well aware of my senior medical officer’s requirements, and I had been about to say that we must talk very seriously as soon as possible after it has rested. It may well be that the situation we have here transcends any considerations of medical ethics. Sleep well, Doctor.”

After a final check of the patients’ monitors, Murchison, Naydrad, and himself retired, leaving Danalta on watch. In the shape-changer’s utterly savage home-planet environment, all life-forms who required regular periods of unconsciousness to recharge their organic batteries had not survived their unsleeping natural enemies to develop intelligence, so remaining awake was no hardship for it. In the present situation it extruded an eye and a large, sensitive ear which it kept trained on the patient monitors. There were times when Prilicla almost envied the unsleeping Danalta, but not often, because normally he needed and welcomed those periods of non-thinking and non-feeling when he did not have to empathize with anything or anybody.

When Cinrusskins slept, there was an external sensory shutdown. Neither loud noises nor bright lights nor the most acrid of smells would awaken them. Only a sharp, physical stimulus or the close presence of a source of danger, a legacy of his own prehistoric past, could do that. Even Cinrusskin dreams were brief, being nothing more than a few subjective seconds of bright, confused imagery from the recently experienced past or, as some of the more unorthodox Healers of the Mind argued, from possible futures. They were nothing more than the steeply shelving shallows at each end of a journey across the ocean of sleep.

In the fleeting dream before awakening he had been examining the non-organic casualty on Terragar again, but this time he was working in a thick, unseen cloud of anxiety and there was a pair of Earth-human hands assisting him. He dismissed the dream as another meaningless and random discharge of un—onscious brain activity, chose a favorite breakfast from his food ispenser, then spent a few moments on the improvement of his Appearance. He used an aromatic sponge to oil and polish his head, thorax, exoskeleton, and limbs, even though he knew that nobody on the ship would notice any difference, before he contacted the casualty deck. Danalta reported that all three patients were in a stable and clinically satisfactory condition, and that they remained deeply unconscious with the monitors registering a slight but continuing improvement in life signs. Prilicla’s empathic readings gave confirmation. Murchison and Naydrad were still in their quarters and emitting the emotional radiation characteristic of deep and undisturbed sleep. He decided to leave them in that condition, and face the coming confrontation with the captain without their moral support—always bearing in mind, he reminded himself dryly as he pressed the communicator stud, that for a Cinrusskin a very gentle and flattering attack was the best form of defense.

“Friend Fletcher,” he began as the other’s face appeared on his screen, “you displayed great sensitivity, understanding and kindness in allowing me to rest my fragile body and mind before discussing your own urgent concerns. But before we do so, you will be pleased to know that the clinical condition of the three injured officers is stable and their prognoses give grounds for guarded optimism. At present they are deeply unconscious and are likely to remain in that condition for many hours, perhaps up to few days. Following massive trauma that stops short of termination, you Earth-human DBDGs have a great capacity for physical and psychological recuperation, and in the present situation it is the mental aspect which must be given consideration if useful information is to be obtained from them.

“However,” he continued quickly, “should an attempt be made to revive one of them prematurely, the consequent withdrawal of their anesthetic medication would have two effects. The sudden return to high levels of pain, combined with the medication-induced mental confusion, would render the necessarily short conversation with them, especially any specific, technical information they might try to give you during questioning, of doubtful value. As well, the general shock to their systems might cause them to terminate before they were able to produce sense-bearing sounds.

“Other than the clinical condition of my patients, friend Fletcher,” he ended, “was there anything else you wanted to discuss with me?”

The captain remained silent for a long moment, then he heard it give a long sigh. Even though the emotional range was extreme, he could almost feel the disappointment that accompanied it.

“Dr. Prilicla,” it said finally, “my primary need is for information regarding the reasons for the earlier abnormal behavior of your patients. You’ve effectively closed the first and most obvious source by pulling medical rank on me, for which we are all relieved. But I still need that information, urgently. Can you suggest another source?”

This time it was Prilicla’s turn to be silent.

“Perhaps you are not yet mentally awake, Doctor,” it went on. “Let me remind you that we’re here in answer to three distress calls. Two of them may or may not have been due to the discharge of weapons by or at the alien ship, and the third was a standard subspace distress beacon released by Terragar which was later augmented by what seemed to be hand-signaled warnings to stay clear of the alien vessel. As the ambulance ship in attendance, Rhabwar is expected to report on the disaster and the action being taken to deal with it, or to request and specify the help needed if we are incapable of handling the problem ourselves. For technical reasons, that report will be necessarily brief, even terse, but it must contain the essential information . . .”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla broke in gently, “I am fully aware the problems and shortcomings inherent in subspace radio communication and, considering my long service as Rhabwar ’s -nior medical officer, it is impolite of you to suggest otherwise. But if you are truly feeling concerned, I can assure you that I am Physically rested and mentally alert.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” said the captain, “I was being sarcastic. The point I’m making is that twenty-one standard hours have passed since we arrived and no situation report signal has gone off because, frankly, I have nothing to say about it that makes sense even to me. But I have to say something or they will send another ship, or, more likely, warships, to find out what happened to us, and that ship or ships might also suffer the same fate as Terragar. That damage by beings unknown could be construed as a hostile act and we might have the beginnings of a war—pardon me, police operation—against the same persons unknown.”

It took a deep breath and in a calmer voice went on. “I still need solid information, no matter how sparse, if for no other reason than to support my intended action of placing all three of the ships involved in indefinite quarantine. The reasons must be credible; otherwise our authorities might think that we have been so affected by the situation that we must be considered psychologically suspect, in which case they will send another ship anyway. But other than telling them to stay away from us, what can I say? Have you a suggestion, Doctor? I hope.”

“I have, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied, thinking how good it felt to be in possession of a clear mind in a rested body. “But it may involve a small personal risk for you.”

“If the risk is warranted,” said the captain impatiently, “the size is unimportant. Go on.”

Prilicla went on. “Until I know the exact nature of the threat, infection, or whatever that seems to have been picked up by Terragar, I have asked that Rhabwar remain separated from the medical team. That stricture still holds, but I may have been a little overcautious because none of the team suffered any detectable ill effects as a result of our brief visit to the ship, nor myself from my examination of the damaged life-form found on board. I feel sure that, provided the normal safety precautions are taken and we subject ourselves to external sterilization procedures before and after the visit, we could conduct a forensic examination of the wreck in safety. Whatever the damage inflicted by the alien

hip, or by that life-form found on board, it must have left some evidence of the kind of weapon used—enough, perhaps, to complete your report. And the quality of the information could well be better than that supplied by a semiconscious casualty in intense pain. Do you have any comments, friend Fletcher?”

The captain nodded and showed its teeth. “Three of them,” it said. “The first is that you should rest and clear your body and mind more often. The second and third are, how soon can we meet, and where?”

Less than an hour later Prilicla was watching the captain’s Earth-human hands beside his as they began the reexamination of the strange life-form, and suddenly he remembered his odd waking dream. He was about to mention it, then had second thoughts. The captain was not the sort of person with whom one discussed one’s dreams.

CHAPTER 9

Murchison reported that the condition of the three casualties remained stable, and asked permission to go along to assist with the forensic examination. It had insisted that as an other-species pathologist its field covered all forms of intelligent life, and not just the organic variety. Prilicla had heard few lamer excuses for satisfying professional curiosity, which in Murchi-son’s case was every bit as intense as that of the captain and himself, but he had agreed. Murchison was his principal assistant and the person most likely to inherit the

senior medical officer’s position on Rhabwar—and besides, he was curious to see how it dealt with a totally new situation.

That was why most of the talking was being done into the recorder by Captain Fletcher, with Murchison making an occasional interjection, while Prilicla spent long periods saying nothing at all. Following a meticulous examination with the special scanner provided by Lieutenant Chen—a scanner normally used to detect obscure symptoms deep inside ailing machinery—the captain straightened up, placed the instrument gently on the deck, and spoke with feelings of excitement and enthusiasm.

“This creature, entity, artifact, or whatever,” it said, “displays a degree of design and structural sophistication well beyond

the Federation’s present capabilities—if it was, in fact, built by anyone or anything but itself. The internal circuitry and actuator mechanisms are so incredibly fine and intricate that at first I couldn’t recognize them for what they are. This thing wasn’t just put together by watchmakers but by the mechanical equivalent of a microsurgery team. I’ve traced several of the peripheral nerve networks to a processing area in the central body which seems to house the brain and heart equivalents. I can’t be sure of this because that location has been damaged and the contents fused by the heat and radiation discharge that destroyed the creature. The sensory circuits underlying the surface in the same area have also been burned out, probably by the same agency, which may or may not have been a wide-focus heat weapon of some kind. “But there is clear evidence throughout the whole body,” it went on, “of a highly developed self-repair capability of apparently indefinite duration. Until it sustained that blast injury, this thing would have been capable of regeneration and growth. Any organism that can do that is technically alive.”

Prilicla had a question but Murchison asked it for him. Quickly it said, “Are you sure that your subject isn’t alive now?” “Don’t worry, ma’am,” the captain replied. “How sure would you be if your subject’s brain and heart had been burned to a crisp? Besides, its muscles—I mean its actuator linkages— are designed for light, precise work and are not all that robust. Physically it would not represent a serious threat"—it smiled— “except possibly to Dr. Prilicla.”

Murchison returned the other’s smile, because practically everything larger than an Earth kitten was a serious threat to Prilicla.

Something else is worrying me,” Murchison said, “I watched your internal scanner examination, Captain, and saw that the subject’s body is solidly packed with circuitry, metal musculature, and sensory receptors. But why is it that particular shape?”

Fletcher remained silent, radiating the confusion and impatience characteristic of a mind that had been expecting a different question.

“Robotics isn’t my specialty,” Murchison went on, “but isn’t it usual for one to be mechanically more functional? I mean, shouldn’t it basically be a box with locomotor appendages simpler and more versatile than the six limbs we are seeing here; with a variety of specialized manipulators sprouting out of the body without regard to aesthetic balance; and with all-around visual sensors instead of just two in the head section? If this thing had been normally organic we would classify it as a CHLI. Rather than adopting a functional robotic shape, it seems clear that this body configuration is decidedly organimorphic. My question is, why would a non-organic intelligence copy itself on a CHLI?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” the captain replied, looking and feeling apologetic. “I have no answers, just a wild guess.”

Murchison nodded and said, “Which is?”

The captain hesitated, then said, “This isn’t my field, either. But think about the evolution of an organic life-form as opposed to that of an intelligent machine. Ignoring the religious perspective, the first begins as an accidental grouping of simple, cellular forms which takes several millions of years of environmental adaptation with other competing species to become the dominant intelligence. The second doesn’t do anything like that because, no matter how long it is given, a simple tool like a monkey wrench can never evolve through the intermediate stage of a lawn mower to become a superintelligent computer, at least, not without outside help. That simple tool has to be created by someone in the first place, and at some later stage the creator has to provide the machine with self-awareness and intelligence. Only then would there be the possibility of further self-evolution.

“I’m speculating, of course,” the captain went on, “but a further possibility is that the beings who first bestowed on their machines the gift of self-aware, intelligent life are a permanent part of their racial memory—or inherited design—and that they made, or in gratitude made the choice to remain, in their CHLI creators’ image.”

“In your opinion, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla asked, “would this entity have been capable of disabling a starship?”

“No, Doctor,” the captain replied firmly. “At least, not directly. Although composed of metal with plastic-insulated circuitry, the appendages were designed for precise and delicate work rather than hard labor or fighting, although there would have been nothing to stop it using those digits, as we DBDGs have been known to do, to operate a variety of destructive weapons. I’ll be looking for anything like that when I’m searching the ship. All the evidence points to our robot friend being dead on arrival, and the type of heat and blast injuries it sustained were too unfocused to be caused by a Corps hand-weapon.

“And now,” it went on, looking at the opened seams in the hull plating of the ship all around them, “I have to examine the body of a larger, metal cadaver, one that is more familiar to me.”

Prilicla used his antigravity belt to move outside and fly forward to the control deck while Murchison stayed with the captain, both to satisfy its curiosity and to help move aside troublesome debris. There was minimal risk because both of them were experienced in negotiating ship wreckage, and he was pleased that neither their voices in his headset nor their feelings indicated that they were taking risks.

When they rejoined him, the two crescents of facial fur oove the captain’s eyes, and its emotional radiation, were indicating extreme puzzlement. / '

I don’t understand this,” it said, gesturing aft. “Discounting the effects of atmospheric heating and buffeting on the hull the way down, the ship’s systems and linkages—power, guidance life support—are all in pretty good mechanical order. Why should one of the officers have had to go aft to operate the main thrusters on manual? But that is what he did, and the answer has to be here somewhere in control.”

“Including, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “the reason why the casualties wanted us to stay away from their ship?”

“That, too, Doctor,” it replied. “And thank you for the reminder and gentle warning, which I’m pretty sure is unnecessary. Pathologist Murchison reported earlier that, apart from their severe burn trauma, there is nothing clinically

abnormal about the patients’ condition. On the way here she also told me that the only microbes present were the usual harmless, Earth-human bugs that came on board with them and were trapped in the air-circulation system, plus a few airborne varieties native to this world which cannot cross the planetary species barrier and so need not concern us.

“I agree with everyone exercising a high degree of caution,” it went on, its feelings if not its voice registering impatience, “but surely it is no longer necessary to wear sealed suits, or for your team to continue working in an isolated, prefabricated unit with limited facilities rather than on Rhabwar’s casualty deck. There is nothing to threaten us here.”

“It must be nice,” said Murchison, radiating sarcasm, “to feel so sure of yourself.”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said quickly, in an attempt to reduce its growing irritation and head off a possible exchange of verbal violence, “no doubt you are quite right in everything you’ve said, but I, for physiological reasons that have made my people a species of arrant cowards, am extremely cautious. Please humor me.”

The captain nodded and its feelings once again became calmly analytical as it began its examination of the damaged control consoles around them. It trained the vision pickup on each and every item and discussed its observations for the recorders. Apart from a few minutes checking with Naydrad on the condition of the casualties, they watched in silence the progress of a technically-oriented postmortem as painstakingly thorough as any the pathologist had performed on organic cadavers. Prilicla had always derived pleasure from watching an expert at work, and he knew that his feelings of appreciation and admiration ere being shared by Murchison. But finally the work was done and the captain was staring at them with an expression and emotions that could only be described as a large and perplexed question mark.

“This doesn’t make sense,” it said. “The main and secondary computer systems are down. That shouldn’t happen. They are strongly encased, protected physically and electronically in case of damage during a major malfunction or collision. They perform the function of the black boxes in atmosphere craft so that, in the event of an accident, the investigators have some idea of what went wrong. But there was nothing structurally wrong with Ter-ragar except that all its computers are dead, or as good as. This is ridiculous. With all our fail-safe systems and protective devices,

that should not have happened—”

It broke off for a moment, then with a sudden burst of emotion intense enough to make Prilicla tremble it said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“We’re not telepaths, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla gently. “You’ll have to tell us what you’re thinking.”

“I’d rather not tell you anything just yet,” said the captain, 'in case I’d be making a complete fool of myself.” It reached into its equipment satchel and indicated one of the consoles whose plastic trim was only slightly heat-discolored. “There may still be some life left in that one. Instead of talking to you, maybe I’ll be able to demonstrate my idea with this tester. The instrument has a small screen so you’ll have to move closer. But don’t touch it, or allow any of your equipment to make contact with it. That is very important. Do you understood?”

“We understand, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “We think,” Murchison added.

With the pathologist’s feeling of bewilderment matching his own they watched in silence as the captain expertly removed the console cover to lay bare the underlying circuitry. Then with a magnetic clamp it attached the tester to a convenient bulkhead, activated the display screen, unreeled one of the device’s many probes, and went slowly and carefully to work. If it had been a sick patient rather than a malfunctioning machine, Prilicla thought, the other’s movements could not have been more delicate or precise.

Many minutes passed while the display screen remained lit but blank, then suddenly it flickered and a schematic diagram appeared. The captain bent closer, excitement diluting its intense concentration.

“I’m into the ship’s main computer now,” it said, “and there’s something there. But I don’t recognize the . . . What the hell!”

The image was breaking up and generating random, geometrical lines and shapes that were drifting off the four edges of the screen until all that remained was an expanse of sparkling white noise. The captain swore and jabbed at several of its control studs without result. Even the green POWER ON light was dead.

The type and intensity of the captain’s emotional radiation was beginning to worry Prilicla. He said, “Something has happened, friend Fletcher. What is troubling you?”

“My tester just died,” said the captain. Suddenly it grabbed the instrument in both hands, raised it high above its head and slammed it downwards with all of its strength against the deck before adding, “And I was expecting it to happen, dammit!”

“Temper, Captain,” said Murchison, radiating irritation and surprise as it bent down to pick up the remains of the device.

“No!” said Fletcher urgently. “Stay away from it. Probably there’s no physical danger to yourselves because it’s dead, defunct. But don’t touch it until we know the technical reason for what happened here.”

“Which was what?” said Prilicla.

He spoke very gently because the other’s feelings were confused, fearful, excited, and radiating all over the emotional spectrum. It was an unprecedented mental condition for the usually calm and imperturbable captain to display. Murchison’s feeling irritation at the other’s brusque manner was being replaced by the. clinical calm of a physician towards someone who might shortly become a patient. But before the captain could reply, there was an interruption from Naydrad speaking on their headsets.

“Dr. Prilicla,” it said. “One of the casualties, the last one you brought in, has returned to partial consciousness. Judging by its manner, it was the ship’s commanding officer. It is greatly agitated, its speech is slurred and unintelligible, and, in spite of being immobilized, it is fighting all attempts at administering further sedative shots. The self-inflicted additional trauma is causing a marked deterioration in its clinical condition. If we patch you through, will you speak to it? Or better still, come back here and try your projective empathy on its mind?”

While the charge nurse was speaking, Prilicla had been trying not to tremble at the thought of what the severely burned and prematurely conscious patient was doing to itself. He said, “Of course, friend Naydrad. I’ll talk to it now and while I’m flying back to join you. If it is Terragar’s captain, then Rhabwar will have its family and personal names on file. Quickly, please, find out what they are. Using them in conversation will help reassure it, but I’ll speak to it now.”

“No,” said Fletcher. “I know his name. Let me talk to him.”

He felt Murchison’s earlier calm disappear in an uncharacteristic flare of anger as it said, “What the hell’s got into you, Captain? This is a clinical matter. It is definitely not in your area of expertise.”

Both of their faces were showing the reddening of temporarily elevated blood pressure, but the anger of the captain was being overlaid by feelings of increasing certainty as it said, “Sorry, ma’am. In this case it is, because right now I’m the only one here who knows what happened.”

CHAPTER 10

The captain was not allowing the intense sympathy and concern it was feeling to affect the calm, unemotional tone of its voice as it spoke via the communicator screen to the patient, but considering the urgency of the situation, Prilicla thought that friend Fletcher’s long-range bedside manner was very good.

“Captain Davidson, George,” it began. “This is Don Fletcher, Rhabwar. We were able to land your ship, cool it in the sea, and recover your crew. Apart from the burn injuries, which ire severe, you are in no immediate danger, and—please believe me—neither are we . . .”

No sentient creature, Prilicla thought as an uncontrollable tremor shook his body, should ever have to suffer such an intensity of pain, much less have to fight through it in an attempt to produce coherent words. The captain’s voice remained steady but its normally pink, Earth-human face had paled to a bloodless yellow-grey.

“George,” it went on, “please stop threshing about in that litter and trying to fight your medication, and most of all, stop trying to talk. Believe me, we know what is troubling you and what you’re trying to warn us about, and we appreciate the effort. But right now you must relax and just listen to me . . .”

Captain Davidson was still trying desperately to talk rather, listen, but its words lacked coherency even to the listeners of its own species who did not need translators. The high levels of pain and fear and urgency it was feeling had not diminished.

“. . . We received and understood the hand signals and emotional radiation from your control canopy,” the captain went on, with a nod towards Prilicla, “and at no time was direct physical contact made by Rhabwar either with Terragar or the alien ship, and that situation will continue until the threat is fully understood. In the meantime Rhabwar has been positioned at a safe distance along the beach from this medical station that we have deployed to treat your survivors, and the remains of your ship are also at a safe distance from both. Following the recovery of your casualties, Terragar was boarded again and your ship interior and the remains of the alien robot we found on board were thoroughly investigated. As a result we know the reason for your desperate and apparently suicidal attempts to avoid contact with our own ship. We deeply appreciate what you were trying to do and tell us, but now we have received the message and probably know more about the threat from that alien ship than you do.”

Prilicla detected the change in emotional radiation several seconds before Danalta spoke.

“The patient’s struggles have diminished slightly,” the shape-changer reported quietly without looking up from the patient. “It is no longer trying to speak, but the monitor indicates continued muscular tension and elevated blood pressure. You are getting through to it, Captain. I don’t understand one word of your explanation, but for the patient’s sake, keep on talking.” From the evidence so far uncovered,” Fletcher went on, ignoring the compliment and at the same time trying to reduce Danalta’s level of ignorance, “I would say that the robot was floating free outside the other ship’s hull and you recovered it hoping that it might be a survivor or, if not, that it would at least give you some idea of the form of life you were trying to rescue. When they didn’t respond to your radio signals, you sent across contact-sensor plate and connecting cable which you attached magnetically to the hull, hoping that it would be able to detect life signs or movements that your computer would be able to process to give the exact locations. But it was the direct cable connection between the sensor plate and your computer that wrecked Terragar, In short, George, that alien vessel doesn’t affect or infect living people, it kills ships. It also infects, disables, or kills any lesser form of computer-controlled device that comes into contact with it.

“You turned up an alien hot potato this time, George,” the captain ended softly, “but now it’s our problem. So just relax, go back to sleep, and let us worry about it.”

Several minutes passed without anyone speaking. From the medical team Prilicla detected feelings of surprise, curiosity, and excitement caused by Fletcher’s explanation, while Captain Davidson’s emotional radiation was that of a mind that was slipping back into unconsciousness.

“The patient is again responding to the sedative medication,” he said, “and its life signs are stabilizing. Thank you, friend Fletcher.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Murchison, radiating relief and gratitude. “That was very well done, Captain.” It looked at the broken test device lying on the deck and added, “Now we know why you lost your temper and trashed that thing. I’d probably have done the same.”

Prilicla was feeling friend Fletcher’s gratitude and pleasure at the compliments, as well as its increasing embarrassment. He said, “Have you enough information now to send your subspace signal?”

“On the Terragar situation, yes,” the captain replied. “But I’d like to make the report as informative as possible. We have to go into space to send it, so I want to take a closer look at that alien ship before I do. Don’t worry, I won’t make direct contact or do anything stupid like deploying another sensor connection cable. Rhabwar will be back in three to four hours. And Doctor,

'“I’ll be visiting a hunk of sick machinery so there will be no need for a medical presence.”

“There is, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla gently. “You are visiting a ship disaster situation and, regardless of the type or condition of the casualties, as the senior medical officer I should be there. About this I must insist.”

Before any of his team could voice their objections, which were based principally on concern for his safety, he went on. “Don’t worry, I shall take no unnecessary risks nor allow friend Fletcher to do so. Are there any decontamination procedures you can suggest before I transfer to Rhabwart”

Murchison and Fletcher looked at each other for a moment while their feelings changed from concern to a grudging acceptance of the inevitable.

“The usual organic decontamination drill at the airlock,” said the captain, “which is almost certainly unnecessary, but I don’t believe in taking chances, either . . .” It gestured towards the tester lying on the deck. “. . . And, of course, don’t bring any computer viruses on board.”

Even though the alien vessel was clean, bright, shining, and highly streamlined—a clear indication that it had taken off from a planetary surface rather than being assembled in space—among themselves, Rhabwar' s officers were calling it the Plague Ship. As a vessel crewed by robots it was probably as clean inside as it was out, Prilicla thought as he watched the image enlarge beyond the edges of his viewscreen, but then they were not talking about that sort of plague.

They moved in to a distance of two hundred meters and began a series of slow circles around its longitudinal axis. At close range, the only blemishes visible on the sleek hull were the two small craters with the heat discoloration around them and an open access hatch cover with heat-damaged equipment of some kind Projecting from it.

“There’s something odd about that hull damage,” said the captain. “I would like a closer look at it, or better still, a hands-on examination. I’m thinking aloud, you understand, but what if I was to go over there in a lightweight suit, and didn’t touch it with any computerized test equipment, and even retracted the suit antenna to reduce the risk of making metal-to-metal contact with the hull? It would also mean not carrying a weapon, but that is normal practice in a first-contact situation. At this short range I wouldn’t need the antenna, and as an added precaution I could wear non-conducting gauntlets, and insulated covers for the boots, during the . . .”

“Pardon the interruption, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla quietly, “but I feel you radiating intense curiosity. I have similar feelings and would like a closer look, too. Admittedly the contamination we would be investigating is non-organic, but the presence of a medical advisor could be an advantage.”

The other radiated indecision for a moment, then it made the soft, barking sound that Earth-humans called laughter and said, “Right. But I have the feeling that if Pathologist Murchison had been here she would give you an argument about that, as well as subjecting me to a great deal of verbal abuse for allowing you to take the risk. Chen?”

“Sir,” replied the engineering officer. “We intend closing to a distance of twenty meters, very slowly,” Fletcher went on. “Be ready to pull us out again faster than that.”

By the time Fletcher and himself had suited-up and flown clear of Rhabwar’s personnel lock, Prilicla had had time for many second thoughts and had foolishly discarded all of them. It was not always an advantage to carry Educator tapes whose donors were less cowardly than himself, especially when he allowed them to influence his own thinking. The alien vessel was now rolling ponderously at a distance of about thirty meters, but no attempt had been made to kill its spin because the tractor beam might have furnished an avenue for electronic infection. As they compensated for its movement with their suit thrusters, it felt as if they were tiny insects sandwiched between the vast white wall that was the ambulance ship’s hull and the silvery surface of the alien vessel, with a broad, circular band that was divided into star-sprinkled space above and the mottled carpet of the planetary cloud blanket below them.

They used their suit thrusters to bring themselves to a halt within three meters of the open hatch cover. After a moment’s hesitation, Fletcher edged closer and one of its hands made fleeting contact with the metal projection, then gripped it firmly in both.

“No harmful effects noted,” it said for the benefit of the recorders.

“The mechanism projecting from the small compartment behind the hatch cover,” it went on, “appears to be a simple, extendible metal arm with a hinged outer section that is capable of rotation horizontally and vertically through one hundred and eighty degrees, and there is a gripping mechanism at its extremity. It has the appearance of being an unsophisticated device used for placing in position on, or removing objects from, the external hull. There is evidence of scorch damage . . .”

While the captain continued to describe in meticulous detail everything it was seeing and thinking, Prilicla waited until the slow, rolling motion of the vessel caused them to move close to the cratered area. With small, precisely timed bursts of thruster power he maintained position about two meters above them. He was not a forensics expert, but his visual acuity was exceptionally good and the type of damage he was seeing, although probably caused by the same agency, displayed a major inconsistency in its effect.

The first crater showed a normal, circular depression whose depth was approximately half of its diameter and with the interior and lip edges compressed and fused by the explosive pressure of a high-temperature blast of some kind, but the second one was entirely different. It had a shallower, ringlike formation with an area at its center that showed pressure but minimal heat damage. Deep scratches covering the area with what looked like small traces of silvery metal were adhering to some of them. Even though he was trusting to visual observation alone, Prilicla was sure that the metals of the hull and of that adhering to the scratches were markedly dissimilar. He edged closer to make absolutely sure before he spoke. “Friend Fletcher,” he said, “there is something very odd here that I would like you to see.” “The compartment behind this access hatch looks very odd, too,” said the captain. It moved to join him and looked in the direction of his pointing digit for a moment before it added, “But you first, Doctor. What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“The difference in the extent and depth of the damage at this and the other crater,” he said. “You can see that this crater is shallower than the first one and, while the perimeter of this one has been fused by intense heat, the central area has been depressed but is not as badly burned. There is deep scratching that contains small traces of a brighter metal that is foreign to the surrounding hull. It looks as if a large, fairly smooth metal object made heavy contact at this spot. Friend Fletcher, the size and outline of the unburned area are suggestive.”

“You’ve got organic microscopes there instead of eyes, Doctor,” it said. “But suggestive of what? I’m seeing what you’re seeing, with great difficulty, but what should I be thinking about it?”

“Your pardon, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “I cannot be absolutely certain without analyzing a specimen for purposes of comparison, but the traces of foreign metal you see suggests that this is where the alien robot we found on Terragar sustained its injuries or—since it was not an organic life-form—damage. The weapon or other agency which blew a crater in the front of its body, also blasted it backwards against the hull with the results you can see. Perhaps it was trying to protect its ship from something, or someone. If the crew were defenders rather than attackers their lethal assault on Terragar’s computer systems may have been due to a panic reaction following an earlier attack as ell as a simple, first-contact misunderstanding.”

“You could be right,” said the captain, “but I think you’re giving them the benefit of a very large doubt—” It reached towards the equipment satchel at its waist. “Grab my backpack and use your thrusters to hold me steady while I scrape off a specimen.”

“Friend Fletcher . . . !”

“Don’t worry, Doctor,” said the other, radiating reassurance as it produced a short, broad-bladed screwdriver. “This thing is too simple and stupid to be infected by a computer virus . . . Oops. That’s strange.”

While it had been scraping hard to remove the largest of the specimens, the tool’s sharp blade had penetrated the hull and torn out a narrow triangle of metal. It was surprisingly thin, structurally weak, and its underside was covered by the fine, geometrical shapes of integral circuitry. When it had bagged the original specimen, Fletcher removed the hull sample and placed it in an insulated box as a precaution against possible electronic infection. The captain’s accompanying feelings of impatience and barely controlled excitement suggested that it would rather be doing something else.

“I feel that you, too, have found something interesting, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “What is it?”

'I don’t know,” the other replied. It secured the two specimens in its sample box before going on. “I had time for a quick look into what seems to be a long, thin and apparently empty compartment or corridor behind the access hatch. It would be easier to show you, Doctor. There’s enough room for both of us, and your extra helmet light will help us see whatever is in there, and, if necessary, make a fast retreat.”

CHAPTER 11

Their lights showed a length of corridor leading inboard whose walls, except for a large cylindrical structure on one side that was enclosed by seamless metal plating that was warped and heat-discolored, were composed of a lightly-built, boxlike framework that appeared to be non-metallic. Continuous lengths of open-mesh netting were secured to and stretched tightly along all four inner surfaces of the framework and, about thirty meters inboard, a similar netted passageway intersected theirs at right angles. When the captain’s foot caught accidentally in the netting, the whole corridor vibrated for a moment before returning to stillness.

“That wall netting tells us one important fact about their level of technology,” said Fletcher, for the benefit of the recorder as well as Prilicla. “They don’t have artificial gravity. And look at the internal supporting structure of the hull. It reminds me of the interior of one of Earth’s old-time zeppelins—it’s just a light framework on which to hang a streamlined skin that will aid passage through a planetary atmosphere.”

“A skin,” Prilicla reminded it gently, “that your second specimen suggests could be one single, overall, multipurpose sensor.

“Yes, indeed,” Fletcher said. It pointed at the warped metal Under near them and went on. “I want to take a closer look at that later. From its size and shape I’d say that it houses one of a air of matched hyperdrive generators which malfunctioned, either by accident or through malicious intent, and caused them to detonate a distress beacon.”

Fletcher moved its vision pickup carefully so as to sight it inboard between the open mesh of the net. Prilicla pointed his helmet light in the same direction.

“Several more enclosed structures are visible,” it resumed. “All are solidly-built, some with complicated shapes and many projections which badly needed that streamlined outer hull. They appear to be joined to each other by a latticework of structural-support members. All of the ones we can see are linked together externally by short stretches of open-weave corridors like this one. But our point of entry, which may not be the only one, was by a simple, close-fitting, hinged cover that appears to allow access deep into the entire ship. It was not a pressurized seal, and nowhere can we see anything like an airlock.

“But then,” the captain added, allowing itself a small bark, 'a crew of intelligent robots wouldn’t need air.

“There is no obvious threat here at present,” it went on, “so I shall continue the investigation deeper inside the ship. In case of unforeseen developments, Doctor, would you like to remain here so that you can make a fast getaway?”

Prilicla was silent for a moment while common sense and 18 evolutionary imperative of survival through cowardice warred with the intensity of his curiosity, and lost.

“I would like to remain here,” he said, “but I won’t. Lead the way.”

The captain didn’t reply but its feelings regarding such stu-P«i behavior were very plain.

Slowly and carefully and with many pauses while Fletcher directed its vision pickup at objects that might or might not be of importance, they continued to move inboard while Fletcher described everything it saw and deduced in its flat, unemotional, observer’s voice.

Their helmet lights showed many cable looms running along the members that joined the large and small structures and mechanisms that were coming into view. Some of the cable runs were attached to the outer framework of the passages they were traversing, and clearly visible. The individual lengths were color-coded, their graduation in coloration and shading suggesting that the visual sensitivity of the ship’s crew was slightly higher than that of Prilicla’s Earth-human companion, but lower than his own. When they drew level with a large, blocky mechanism of indeterminate purpose with what was obviously a control panel and two access hatches on it, the captain’s curiosity became so intense that Prilicla felt obliged to issue a warning.

“No, friend Fletcher,” he said. “Look but don’t touch.”

“I know, I know,” it replied with a flash of irritation. “But how else can I find out what it is and does? I can’t believe that these people—robots or whatever—would plant a virus to booby-trap every internal control panel and hatch. That wouldn’t make sense. It would lead to a lot of unnecessary accidents among the crew.”

“The robot crew,” said Prilicla, “should be resistant to their ship’s computer viruses.”

“Good point,” said the captain. “But so far there has been no sign of them. Are they in their quarters? If so, what would the accommodations for a crew of robots look like?”

It didn’t speak again until they came to the next intersection, a T-junction leading into a passageway that led fore and aft to the limit of visibility provided by their helmet lights. The support frames carried what seemed like hundreds of differently-coded cable runs and the new passageway was obviously a main trunk route for crew members, but it was no wider or deeper then any of the others they had encountered.

That suggested infrequent traffic, Prilicla thought, or a small crew.

“We have to find out what this ship can do,” said the captain suddenly, “apart from simply killing other ships. For our own defense we must learn and understand its weapons capability and, if possible, that of its attacker. Next time I’ll bring something more intelligent than a screwdriver. A radiation sensor, perhaps, that will work without being in direct contact with the target object—”

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla broke in, “would you please be silent and absolutely still?”

The captain opened its mouth and shut it again without speaking. As it waited motionless, the curiosity, puzzlement, and increasing anxiety it was radiating hung about it like a thick fog.

“You may relax, friend Fletcher, at least for a few minutes,” said Prilicla finally, directing his helmet light forward. “I thought I detected vibration in the corridor netting that was not being made by us, and I was right. Something is moving aft towards us. It is not yet visible. Shall we withdraw, I hope?”

“I want a look at it first,” said the captain. “But stay behind me in case hostilities break out. Better still, you head back to Rhabwar, now.”

The calm, controlled expectancy with a minimum of fear that was being radiated by the other compared very favorably with Prilicla’s own cowardly feelings. He moved a few meters behind the captain but no farther.

In the netting around them the vibration increased, and suddenly it was within range of their helmet lights, a flattened, ovoid shape that moved like an enormous blob of animated quicksilver. The digits of the six short appendages spaced equally around its body were grasping the netting expertly and using it to pull the creature rapidly towards them, but at a distance of ten meters or so it slowed to a stop. Obviously it was watching them.

“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said anxiously, “don’t open your satchel—a tool could be mistaken for a weapon—or make any movements that might seem threatening.”

“I know the first-contact procedures, Doctor,” said the captain irritably. Slowly it released its hold on the netting and extended its two empty hands palms-outward.

A subjective eternity passed that must have lasted all of ten seconds without a response from the alien. Then its body rotated slowly through ninety degrees until the back or underside was directly facing them. Its six tiny hands were tightly gripping the netting all around it.

“It doesn’t seem to be armed and its action isn’t overtly hostile,” said the captain, glancing backwards over its shoulder, “and plainly it doesn’t want us to go any farther. But what can the rest of the crew be doing? Moving to cut off our retreat?”

“No, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla in gentle disagreement. “I have a feeling that . . .”

“Doctor,” the other broke in incredulously, “are you saying that you’re detecting feelings from this, this robot?”

“Again, no,” he replied, less gently. “It is what you would call a hunch, or a guess, based on observation. I have the feeling that we are meeting half of the ship’s crew and that we met the damaged other half on Terragar. There are small differences in size and body configuration which lead me to think that the damaged specimen was the male and this one is the female equivalent . . .”

“Wait, wait,” the captain broke in again, its emotional radiation a confusion of surprise and disbelief with a flash of the unsubtle humor associated with the cruder aspects of reproduction. It went on: “Are you saying that the design of these robots is so sophisticated that they have the means to reproduce sexually? That would imply the implantation of a metallic sperm equivalent and an exchange of non-organic DNA and . . . It’s ridiculous! I just can’t believe that robots, even highly intelligent robots, would need a sexual act to reproduce their kind, and I didn’t see anything resembling sex organs on either of them.”

“Nor did I,” said Prilicla. “As I’ve already told you, it was a simple matter of differences in body mass and configuration. This one appears to be slimmer and more graceful. But now I would like you to do something for me, friend Fletcher. Several things, in fact.”

The other’s emotional radiation was settling down but it didn’t speak.

“First,” Prilicla went on, “I want you to move forward, slowly, until you’ve closed to half the present distance from the robot, and observe its reaction.”

The captain did so, then said, “It hasn’t moved and I think its hands are gripping the net even more tightly. Obviously it doesn’t want us to pass. What’s the next thing?”

“Move around behind me,” said Prilicla. “It may consider you to be a threat even though you’ve taken no hostile action. Your body mass is over twice that of the robot, your limbs are long and thick and strange to it. My body is also strange but I don’t believe anyone or anything would consider me a threat or, hopefully, wish to harm me physically.

“Then I want you to return to Rhabwar,” he went on before the other could respond. “Move the ship away, a distance of half a mile should be enough, and come back for me when I signal. You will not have a long wait because fairly soon I will be close to the limit of my physical endurance.”

The other was radiating such a combination of surprise, bewilderment, and intense concern for his safely, that it was mak-mg his limbs tremble.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said firmly, “I need the area of this ship to be totally clear of all extraneous emotional interference, especially yours.”

The captain exhaled so deeply that the sound in his headset like a rushing wind, then it said, “You mean you want to be left alone and unprotected in an alien ship while you try to pick up emotional radiation from a machine? With respect, Doctor, I think you’re mad. If I allowed you to do that, Pathologist Mur-chison would have my guts for garters.”

It was a colorful and physiologically-inaccurate Earth-human expression Prilicla had encountered before, and knew its meaning. He said firmly, “But you will allow it and do exactly as I say, friend Fletcher, because this is a disaster site and I have the rank.”

Gradually the principal source of emotional interference that was Fletcher diminished with distance as the captain retraced its path to their entry point and jetted towards Rhabwar, and a few minutes later the faint background of emotional noise from the ambulance ship’s crew was gone as well. Very slowly and cautiously Prilicla extended one long, fragile arm and moved dose to the robot.

“I think I’m mad, too,” he said softly to himself.

Lightly he touched the robot in the center of what he assumed was the cranial swelling on its forebody. His gloves were nsulated but very thin and he was expecting anything from a faint, tingling sensation to a lethal bolt of lightning, but nothing happened at all.

He concentrated his entire mind on his empathic faculty to force it into maximum sensitivity. As well as receiving the emo-ional radiation of patients, injured casualties, and accident sur-ivors, he possessed a projective empathic ability which, if the receiving entity was not too distressed by fear or pain, could be used to pacify and reassure. It was the reason why most people felt good around him and why he had so many friends. As an id to focusing the effect rather than in an effort to communicate, he began to speak.

“I mean you no harm,” he said. “If you are in trouble, sick, injured, or malfunctioning, I want to help you. Disregard my liter shape and that of the other person who was with me, and the others you may meet. We must look strange and frightening to you, but we all mean you well . . .”

He repeated the message while continuing to project reassurance, sympathy, and friendship at maximum intensity and, while doing so, he moved his hand to the middle of the robot’s body and changed his touch into a soft, gentle push.

Abruptly it released its grip on the netting with four of its hands and used the other two to pull itself rapidly away from him. It was about to disappear forward beyond the range of his light when it paused and began to move back towards him again. When it was about five meters distant it stopped, then began to move away more slowly.

Plainly it wanted him to follow it, which, after a moment of fearful hesitation, he did.

The passageway was leading directly towards a complex structure that seemed to fill the interior of the vessel’s bow section. The bracing members radiating from it and the framework of the passageway he was following were festooned with cable looms, many showing the distinctive color-coding of the outer hull’s sensor network.

He was beginning to feel something.

“Are you doing this,” he called ahead to the to the robot he was following, “or is it your superintelligent captain robot?”

It continued moving forward without replying. There was nothing on its silvery body surface that resembled a mouth, so probably it couldn’t.

The feeling that came to him was so tenuous that it verged on the insubstantial, but it was increasing slowly in strength. At first he was unsure whether it was originating from one mind or a group of them; then he decided that it was coming from two separate thinking and feeling beings. Both of them felt distressed and frightened, and, as well, one was puzzled and intensely curious while the other was radiating the claustrophobic panic characteristic of close confinement and sensory deprivation.

So far as he could feel, neither of them were in any pain nor were they exhibiting the fear characteristic of imminent termination, but then, he thought, thinking robots might not have such feelings. For a more accurate emotional reading he needed to get much closer to them, but that was triply impossible.

He was at the end of the passage and facing the solid wall of the structure that probably housed them. Although there was a convenient panel filled with colored buttons and switches, he had no idea of the operating principles of the actuator mechanism that would allow entry or the damage he might do—not least to himself—if he tried and failed. And most important of all, he was fast running out of conscious time.

Prilicla was still frightened but for some odd reason he no longer felt threatened by his situation. Still, it would be considered an act of utter stupidity and carelessness if he were to fall asleep in the middle of an alien starship.

CHAPTER 12

When Prilicla wakened he felt rested and clearheaded but he was also feeling, in spite of the source being half the ship’s length away, the angry impatience of the captain. He had been semicomatose from fatigue when he had returned from the alien vessel, and had not been able to make a coherent report, and now friend Fletcher was waiting to talk to him. The trouble was that he was still feeling so confused by his discoveries inside the ship that the report would sound incoherent. He needed more time to think.

Cowardice—both physical and moral—and procrastination were second nature to him. He flew down the central well to the casualty deck and used its communicator to contact Pathologist Murchison for a detailed report on the condition of Terragar’s casualties.

It told him that Captain Davidson and the two surviving officers were stable, responding to the limited treatment available in a temporary medical facility, and being maintained on a regimen of IV feeding and heavy sedation. Personally, it felt that the quarantine arrangements between the patients and the ambulance ship were totally unnecessary, and a rapid casualty transfer to Rhabwar and a fast return to Sector General for more aggressive treatment were indicated. It ended by saying that the investigation and first-contact situation with a bunch of intelligent robots was a technical matter and none of their medical business Prilicla was unable to detect the pathologist’s emotional radiation from orbit, naturally, but he could imagine the intense irritation and concern it and the rest of the team were feeling for their patients. He also knew that friend Fletcher would be routinely monitoring all radio traffic between the ship and the surface so that what he was about to say would mean that he could not delay speaking to the captain any longer.

“Friend Murchison,” he said gently, “I don’t foresee an immediate return to Sector General because the situation here is becoming more complicated. There are two other-species casualties on the alien vessel who may also require attention . . .”

“Other-species casualties!” it broke in. “Sir, with respect, we’re not running a bloody robot-repair shop down here.”

“You are assuming that the alien casualties are non-organic life forms,” he replied. “That may not be so. But I have no wish to answer the same questions twice, so keep your communications channel open and listen in while I talk to the captain. I can feel friend Fletcher very badly wanting to talk to me.”

“You’re right, Doctor,” said the captain as he flew onto the control deck a few minutes later. It gestured towards the communicator whose monitor light was showing and went on, “What was that all about? Other-species casualties? What did you find after I left you alone back there?”

Prilicla hesitated, but not for long because the other’s impatience was so intense that it was making him tremble. He said, “I’m not sure what it was that I found, and even less sure of what it means . . .”

Briefly he described the events following the captain’s departure for Rhabwar, the silent but obvious efforts of the robot crew member to entice him to follow it forward to the end of the central passageway where he could go no farther, and all that he had seen, thought, and felt there.

“. . . On the way back,” he continued, “I decided that I had enough time to spare before I fell asleep to explore the ship’s stern, and followed the passageway all the way aft. The inside of of that ship is like a three-dimensional spider’s web, with thin supporting and bracing members, open-netting passageways, and most of all, cable runs linking the major internal structures. Considering the color-coding on the majority of the cable looms I saw—especially those linking the microcircuitry underlying the ship’s outer hull to what is presumably the control center forward—there are close similarities in the overall structure to the layout of major organs, musculature, and central nervous system of an organic life-form. The skin is highly sensitive and we know how it can react to an attack, or what it thinks is an attack, by an outside agency.

“We were safe,” he went on quickly, “because we entered through the damaged hatch, which is analogous to a traumatized and desensitized surface wound. The forward structure obviously houses the brain and . . .”

“Wait, wait,” said the captain, holding up one hand. “Are you telling me that the whole ship is alive? That it’s an intelligent, self-willed star-traveling

machine like its robot crew members, only bigger? And that all that stopped you getting into its computer superbrain—or, from what we overheard you tell Pathologist Murchison, its two superbrains—was a simple, structural impediment and your lack of physical endurance?”

“Not exactly,” Prilicla replied. “There has to be a non-organic interface, but I’m beginning to suspect that the two controlling brains belong to organic life-forms, with feelings. I won’t be able to prove that until you find a way of getting me into the brain housing.

I need to go back inside that ship,” he ended, “for an extended stay.”

The captain and everyone else on the control deck were staring at him, their emotional radiation too complex for indi-ual feelings to be isolated. It was Murchison on the communicator who broke the silence.

“Sir,” it said, “I strongly advise against this. We’re not dealing with ordinary casualties here . . .”

“Define an ‘ordinary casualty,’” said Prilicla quietly.

“. . . being recovered from the usual run of space wreckage,” it went on, ignoring the interruption. “This could be—in fact it was, so far as Terragar was concerned—an actively hostile vessel. Its hyperdrive is out, but otherwise there appears to be only superficial hull damage. In spite of your theory that its sensors are only skin-deep, there may be internal booby-traps that could injure or kill you because you don’t understand the technology behind them. Captain Fletcher is the specialist in other-species technology. At least let him open up this metal cranium before you go in.”

While Murchison had been speaking, the captain had been nodding its head and radiating agreement.

“I agree with both of you,” Prilicla said. “The trouble is that while the captain is a topflight solver of alien puzzles, it is not an empath. The moment-to-moment feelings of the beings we are trying to recover could be a very important guide to whether or not we are doing the rescue work properly. The captain and myself will do it together.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, gently changing the subject, “is the information you have now enough to send that hyperspace message?”

“Enough for a preliminary report,” the captain replied, radiating anxiety. “My problem will be making it short enough not to drain our power reserves.”

Prilicla was well aware of the problem. Unlike the detonation of a hyperspace distress beacon, which was simply a location signal and an incoherent cry for help, this message had to carry intelligence. It had to carry it in spite of all the intervening sun-spot activity, charged gas clouds, and other forms of stellar interference that would be tearing it into incoherent shreds. The only solution that had been found was to make the message brief and concise and to repeat it as many times as the transmitting station’s available power would allow so that a receiver could process it filter out the interstellar mush, and piece the remaining fragments together to obtain something like the original signal. A surface station with virtually unlimited power reserves, a major space installation like Sector General, or even one of the Monitor Corps’ enormous capital ships could send messages lengthy enough for later processing with clarity. Smaller vessels like Rhab-war had to reduce the possibility of additional local interference from a planet’s gravity field by transmitting their signals from space, and even then they had to trust to the experience and intuition of the person manning the receiver.

But the captain was radiating a level of anxiety greater than that warranted by simple concern over the wording of a condensed situation report.

“Is the necessarily compressed wording of the signal your only problem,” Prilicla asked, “or are the two new aliens a complication?”

“Yes, and no,” the captain replied. “There will be too few words available for me to include either complicated arguments or reasons for what I want done. Are you quite sure that the two new ones you found are organic rather than robotic life-forms? And would you object if the signal expressed doubt on that point?”

“No, and no,” said Prilicla. “The emotional contact was tenuous. Perhaps it is possible for a really advanced computer to have feelings, but there is doubt in my mind. Something else is worrying you, friend Fletcher. What is it?”

The captain sighed, and embarrassment diluted its feelings of anxiety as it said, “This whole situation is potentially very dangerous and, if it isn’t handled correctly, it could develop into a greater threat to the Pax Galactica than the Etlan War . . . I mean, police action. I want to order this solar system to be placed quarantine, interdicted to all service and commercial traffic and contact forbidden to all personnel other than those presently on-site. That includes medical assistance, first-contact specialists or technical investigators, and there must be no exceptions.

“My worry,” it ended quietly, “is whether or not my superiors will obey that order.”

In spite of its efforts at emotional control, the captain was radiating a level of concern that verged on outright fear. Fletcher, as Prilicla knew from long experience of working with it, rarely felt fear even in situations where it would have been warranted. Perhaps, considering their initial contact with the outwardly undamaged but utterly devastated Terragar, the other was frightening itself needlessly. Or, more likely, it understood the nature of this technological threat better than could a medic like himself. Either way, it was a time to offer reassurance.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “please remember who and what you are. You are the Corps’ most experienced and respected specialist in the investigation of unique other-species technology, otherwise you would not have been given operational command of this, the greatest and most non-specialized recovery vessel ever built. When your superiors consider this fact, I have no doubt that your orders will be obeyed.

“I’m assuming,” Prilicla went on, “that the medical team will remain here with Rhabwar since we are best-suited to solving a unique problem that is both technological and medical. However, allowances must be made for the natural curiosity of your higher-ranking colleagues. They will probably send at least one fast courier vessel for information-gathering purposes, in addition to the ship we need to transfer the Terragar casualties to Sector General . . .”

“My point exactly!” Fletcher broke in, a burst of anger briefly overshadowing its anxiety. “A quarantine is either in force or it isn’t, but for what may or may not prove to be good, medical reasons, even you are willing to break it. Everyone must be made to realize that we are faced with the technological equivalent of a plague. You and your team know this, you’ve seen what it can, for yourselves, and still you are willing to compromise by . . .” It raised its hands briefly and radiated helplessness. “If I can’t convince you, what chance is there of a mere captain and glorified ambulance driver telling fleet commanders and and higher what to do and making it stick? I don’t have enough bloody rank.”

“Together, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “we might have enough. I suggest you draft the signal you wish to send, and if you wouldn’t mind, let me see it and perhaps suggest amendments before transmission with a view to increasing its effectiveness—

“I’d do that anyway,” the captain broke in angrily, “as a matter of professional courtesy. But I won’t promise to insert your changes. Considering the power requirements, that signal must be clear, concise, and contain absolutely no excess verbiage.”

“. . . While you’re doing that,” Prilicla went on gently, as if the interruption was a figment of everyone’s imagination, “I’ll check on the condition of the Earth-human casualties before trying to get close enough to identify the two on the alien ship.”

The captain was radiating feelings of disbelief. “You mean you want to go back

in there?”

“As soon as possible,” he replied.

Within the first few minutes it became clear that he was not urgently required in the medical station. Terragar’s casualties were stable, responding well to treatment, and showing signs of significant improvement although the grafting, reconstructive surgery and lower-limb replacements should be done as soon as Practicable at the hospital. But if he was reading correctly be-tween the lines of dialogue, there was a problem. Unlike his em-Phatic faculty, intuition was not affected by distance.

I think there is something other than the patients’ clinical condition worrying you, friend Murchison,” he said. “What is the Problem, and does it require my presence?”

No, sir,” the other replied quickly. “I’m ashamed to say, the problem is sheer boredom. We’re all cooped up in this bunch of high-tech medical shoeboxes with virtually nothing to fill our time except watch the patients getting better while outside the sun is shining, the sea is blue, and the sand is warm. It’s as environmentally perfect as the hospital’s recreation deck except that it’s bigger and it’s real. Sir, it feels as if we’re on vacation but confined to our hotel bedrooms.

“Subject to the usual safety checks,” it went on, “we’d like permission to take turns exercising and relaxing outside. This really is a lovely place. The casualties would benefit from the fresh air and sunshine as well, especially if our stay here is likely to be extended. Is it?”

“It is,” said Prilicla. “Rhabwar will have to remain in orbit to investigate the alien vessel and its crew, who may themselves be with you soon as casualties. Permission granted, friend Mur-chison. But remember that this is a completely strange as well as a pleasant world, so be very careful.”

“You, too, sir,” she replied.

He ended the transmission as the captain pointed at its own screen and spoke.

“You wanted to see this before I send it off,” it said. “Well, what do you think?”

Prilicla hovered above the screen for a moment, studying it, then he said, “With respect, friend Fletcher, I think it is too polite, too subservient, and too long. You should tell your superiors what you want done, as I will also do, without regard to the high rank of those concerned. Because of our knowledge of the situation here, limited as it is, we have the rank. May I?”

He felt Fletcher’s agreement before it could reply, and dropped his feather-light digits onto the keyboard. The original draft, scaled down, moved to the corner of the screen and the new one appeared. It read:

TO: GALACTIC FEDERATION EXECUTIVE; COPIES FEDERATION MEDICAL COUNCIL; SECTOR TWELVE GENERAL HOSPITAL; MONITOR CORPS HIGH COMMAND; SECTOR MARSHAL DERMOD,

FLEET COMMANDERS, ALL SHIP CAPTAINS, AND OFFICERS OF SUBORDINATE RANK.

WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT THIS SOLAR SYSTEM IS TO BE PLACED IN QUARANTINE.

REASONS: UNIQUE TECHNOLOGICAL AND/OR MEDICAL THREAT BY DISTRESSED ALIEN SHIP MOUNTING UNIQUE WEAPONRY CAPABLE OF DESTROYING ALL SPACE VESSELS REGARDLESS OF SIZE OR POWER RESOURCES. DISTANCE IS ONLY KNOWN SAFEGUARD.

THREE TERRAGAR SURVIVORS RECOVERED. RHABWAR INVESTIGATING ALIEN SHIP AND TRYING TO CONTACT CREW.

REQUEST TWO COMMUNICATIONS VESSELS TO BE STATIONED MINIMUM OF FIVE MILLION MILES DISTANCE TO RELAY LATER INFORMATION AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE. ALL OTHER VESSELS AND PERSONNEL REGARDLESS OF SPECIALITY OR RANK ARE EXPRESSLY ORDERED TO STAY CLEAR.

NO REPEAT NO EXCEPTIONS. FLETCHER, COMMANDING RHABWAR

PRILICLA SENIOR PHYSICIAN, SECTOR GENERAL

For a long moment the captain stared at the screen while it regained control of its feelings, then it said reluctantly, “It’s shorter and . . . well, better. But Sector Marshal Dermod doesn’t usually receive messages like this from subordinates. He and his staff will probably have a collective fit. I didn’t realize, Doctor, that you could be so, so . . .”

“Nasty?” said Prilicla. “You’re forgetting, friend Fletcher, that your sector marshal is halfway across the Galaxy, and I am unable to detect its emotional radiation over interstellar distances.”

CHAPTER 13

It was a rule of interspecies medicine to which no exception had ever been found that pathogens which had evolved on one world could not affect or infect any creature belonging to another. There was nothing in this world’s microbiology, therefore, that could threaten her. But that did not stop Danalta, in the respectful manner befitting a subordinate, from insisting that Murchison take no chances with the life-forms that were large enough to see.

The shape-changer had already scouted the beach, shallows, and the trees and undergrowth inland to a distance of five hundred meters, for evidence of large and possibly harmful life-forms. A few varieties of water-breathing and amphibious creatures inhabited the shallows, tiny animals and insects crawled or flew among the tree roots and branches, but none of them were large enough to constitute a physical threat. This did not mean that they could be completely ignored. Pathogens could not jump the off-world species barrier, Danalta reminded her unnecessarily, but insects secreting organic toxins in poison sacs were capable of delivering painful if not lethal stings, the crablike sea-dwellers could nip, and all of them, should they feel threatened or hungry enough, could bite.

That was why she was walking along a golden beach without the gentle abrasion of hot sand between her toes while, “from her uncovered face and the backs of her bare hands, much of the sun’s heat was being reflected away by her white rails In this situation she would have preferred to wear much and the other members of the team would neither have cared or noticed if she had worn nothing at all because Earth-humans were one of the few intelligent species with a nudity taboo. The others covered themselves only when their working environment required the wearing of body protection. In spite of her advancing years, Peter kept telling her with maximum ardor and minimum poetry—and when his brain was not so busy with other-species mind partners that he was unsure of who and what he was and why they were lying together—that she was in very good shape.

She wished he were with her now, under this real sky rather than the artificial one on the hospital’s crowded recreation deck, with his mind his own, its professional concerns forgotten, and his attention concentrated entirely on her. But, she supposed, being the life-mate of the renowned Conway, Sector General’s Diagnostician-in-Charge of Other-Species Surgery, had to have a few disadvantages. He couldn’t take a vacation of opportunity like this just because she wanted to and he probably needed it. She sighed and continued walking.

Beside her Danalta rolled silently over the sand. In keeping with the occasion, and because it liked to give gratuitous exhibitions of its shape-changing prowess, it had adopted the form a recreational plaything much-favored by Earth-humans, a large beach ball. It was covered overall by triangles of garish red, yellow and blue; the eye, ear, and mouth were inconspicuous -. the visual effect was quite realistic, but the track that it made in the sand was too deep to have been made by an air-filled ball. Danalta regardless of the shape it took, was unable to reduce its considerable body-weight. The pretty ball would never bounce. Would you like to move inland?” said Danalta, stopping suddenly and extruding a bright green, Earth-human hand and index finger to point. “That hill is only a mile away and seems to be the highest point on the island. From there we might be able to see features of special interest to explore later, and possibly the nearer islands.”

As well as being a show-off, the polymorph was intensely curious about everything regardless of shape or size, and the harder it was to mimic, the better it liked it.

“Fine,” said Murchison. “But in case we’re needed urgently I want to stay as close as possible to our patients. There’s a stream that runs past the med station into the sea. We’ll go back and follow it inland to its source, which should be on high ground. Do you agree?”

It was a rhetorical question, and even though she wasn’t in the habit of pushing her rank, they both knew it. For the first hundred meters or so, the nearby environment could have been that found on any sun-drenched, tropical island on her home world. The stream was less than two meters wide but fast-flowing so that the stones on its bed were washed clean and showed many different colors and patterns of veining. It was only when her walk, and Danalta’s roll, took them inland and under the trees that the differences began to show. The chlorophyll-green of the leaves looked the same but the shapes were subtly different as was the soft carpet which was not of grass that grew along the banks of the stream from damp earth that was not of Earth. A little shiver of pure wonder made her twitch her shoulders, as it always did when she encountered a completely alien planet that looked and felt so entirely familiar. Then as they moved deeper under the trees, the amount of vegetation bearing large, sunflower-like blooms increased. The petals on many of them had dropped away to reveal clusters of pale green fruit buds. There would be no problem with cross-pollination here, she thought as the insects began to swarm.

Very definitely they were like nothing on Earth. They ranged in size from the virtually invisible to several stick-insect varieties whose bodies were nearly six inches long. A few of them were rounded, black and shiny, with wings that beat so rapidly that they seemed to be surrounded by a grey fog, but majority were brightly colored in concentric circles of yellow and red with multiple sets of wide, slower-beating gossamer wings that threw back constantly changing, iridescent highlights.

They were gorgeous, she thought, and some of them made even Prilicla look dowdy.

Most of them were heading towards Danalta, obviously attracted by the garishly colored beach-ball body it had adopted.

“They seem to be curious rather than hungry,” said the shape-changer. “None of them has tried to bite me.”

“That’s sensible of them,” said Murchison nervously as they lost interest in Danalta and began moving towards her. “Maybe they’ve realized that you’re indigestible.”

“Or I have the wrong smell,” it replied. “I’ve just now extruded an olfactory sensor pad. There are a lot of strange smells in this area.”

Smells, Murchison thought, was not the word she would have used to describe them. The subtle combination of scents being given off by the aromatic vegetation around them was something that the fashion perfume houses on Earth would have sold their souls for. But the insects were now homing in on her.

Instinctively she wanted to swat them aside, but knew that might make them excited and hostile. Instead she raised one hand very slowly to her opened helmet visor so that she could snap it dosed at the first sign of an attack. Her hand remained there, tense and motionless, for several minutes while the insects large and small swarmed around her head without actually touching her race, until they lost interest and returned to their own concerns.

Relieved, she lowered her hand and said, “Apparently they’re non-hostile, They don’t want to bite Earth-human DBDGs, either.”

Which meant that, should their stay on this island paradise be delayed for any reason, the Terragar casualties could be moved outside for a few hours every day. She had always been a believer in the efficacy of natural fresh air and sunshine in the post-on treatment of casualties, a form of treatment not available in Sector General.

Puzzled, she said, “No animal or insect species, regardless of its size, can be universally friendly and hope to survive. These seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Let’s move on.”

The ground began to rise gently, the trees opened out into a large clearing and the stream became a wide, shallow pool whose bottom was covered by broad-leafed plants, each of which floated a single, radiant bloom on the surface, and they saw their first non-insect life-form.

Three fat, piglike animals with mottled yellow-and-brown skin, narrow, conical heads, and sticklike legs were wading in the shallows, nibbling at the flowers or pulling up the subsurface greenery. When Murchison’s shadow fell across them they made bleating noises and ran splashing up the bank to disappear into the long vegetation that was not grass. From all over the clearing and under the surrounding trees came the sound of more bleating, and a much larger version of the same animal pushed through the greenery to stand and look at them for a moment before apparently losing interest and moving away.

“That must have been Mama or Papa,” said Murchison. “But have you noticed, even the adult life-form is placid and unafraid and without aggressive tendencies or obvious natural weapons, and so far we’ve seen no sign of any predators or prey. Prilicla would just love this place. Have you seen any signs of bird life?”

Murchison went down on one knee and shaded her eyes with both hands in an attempt to reduce sky reflection while she studied the subsurface features more closely. A few minutes later she stood up again.

“None,” said Danalta, “but one must expect strangeness on a strange planet. Are you ready to move on?”

The ground ahead began to slope more sharply, and a few minutes later they found the natural spring that was the source of the stream bubbling out of a crevice in the ground that was showing several flat outcroppings of rock. The trunks and branches of the trees competing for the green areas between them were stunted and carried fewer blossoms and buds so that the insect population was proportionately diminished. But it was still a beautiful and relaxing place, especially with the breeze off the ocean finding its way through the thinning vegetation and cooling her face. Murchison took a deep breath of fresh, scented air and let it out again in a sound that was a combination of a laugh and a sigh of sheer pleasure.

Danalta, who found no pleasure in fresh air, smells, or environmental beauty, extruded a pointing hand and said impatiently. “We’re within fifty meters of the highest point of the island.”

The rounded summit was covered sparsely by trees, but not enough of them to obstruct their all-around view over the island. Through the gaps in the intervening foliage, Murchison could make out tiny areas of ocean, beach, and a section of the white medical-station buildings. A scuffling sound on the ground made her swing around to look at Danalta.

Its beach-ball configuration was collapsing, flattening out and spreading across the ground like a mottled red, yellow, and green pancake. Suddenly it rolled itself up into a long, cylindrical, caterpillar shape with a great many legs, before heading for the highest tree. She watched as it wound itself around the lower trunk corkscrew-fashion and began to climb rapidly. The view from up there will be much better,” it said.

Murchison laughed and moved to follow it. Silently she was calling herself all kinds of a fool because if she were to become -Casualty through falling out of a tree she would never live it down. But she was feeling like a child again, when tree-climbing had figured high among her accomplishments, and the sun was shining and all was right with this world and she just didn’t care.

“Earth-human DBDGs can climb trees, too,” she said. “Our prehistoric ancestors did it all the time.”

A few minutes later she was as close to the top as it was safe to go, with one arm wrapped around the trunk and a branch that looked strong enough to bear her weight gripped tightly between her knees. Danalta, whose latest body-shape enabled it to distribute its weight more evenly than her own, was clinging to the thinner branches a few meters above her. The view over the island and beyond was perfect.

In all directions they could see across the dark green, uneven carpet of treetops and clearings to the ragged edges where it met the beach. The medical station looked like a collection of white building-blocks standing in the dark, lengthening shadows of approaching evening, and the ocean was empty except for a tight group of pale blue swellings that were probably the mountaintops of a large island that was below the horizon. Danalta extruded an appendage to point slightly to one side of the distant mountains.

“Look,” it said. “I can see a bird. Do you?”

Murchison stared hard in the indicated direction. She thought she saw a tiny, fuzzy speck almost touching the horizon, but it could just as easily have been her imagination.

“I can’t be sure. . .” she began, and broke off to stare at the thick cylindrical member that was growing out of the top of Danalta’s head. “Now what are you doing?”

“I’m maximizing my visual acuity,” it replied, “by positioning a lens of long focal length the required distance from my retina and making small focusing adjustments. Since the material is organic and the viewing base is moving perceptibly in the wind, some distortion is to be expected, but I’m sure that I can resolve the image to show . . .”

“You mean you’re growing a telescope?” she broke in. “Dr. Danalta, you never cease to surprise me.”

“Definitely some kind of bird,” it said—obviously pleased at the compliment—and went on, “with a small body, wide, narrow wings and a triangular tail whose outer edges are uneven. At this distance the size is uncertain. It appears to be dark brown or grey in color and non-reflective. It has a short, thick neck but I cannot resolve any details of the head and there are no other body projections, so presumably its legs are folded for aerodynamic reasons. The wings do not appear to be beating and it seems to be soaring on the air currents. It is close to the horizon and shows no sign of dropping below it.

“Birds did not evolve on my home planet,” it went on, “but I have studied the various species with a view to possible mimicry. So far, the general appearance and behavior of this one resembles that of a carrion-eater found on your own planet. At this range anything else I could tell you would be mostly guesswork.”

“Let’s go back to the station,” said Murchison quietly. “I want to be there before sunset.”

Danalta had spotted the planet’s first bird, she thought, as she climbed to the ground, and it seemed to be the equivalent of an outsized vulture, with all that that implied. It was silly to feel so disappointed just because this perfect-seeming world had shown its first imperfection.

CHAPTER 14

Captain Fletcher and Lieutenant Dodds were being extremely careful, Prilicla noted with approval, and displaying a level of vigilance that elevated caution to the status of a major art form. Phis time they were using Rhabwar’s pinnace, a vehicle normally used for evacuating space-wreck casualties whose condition was lot serious enough to require litters, to move a variety of specially insulated test equipment to a more convenient distance from the investigation site. All of the analyzers had one or more backups, in case they probed a sensitive area and the alien ship killed the instrument stone-dead as it had done to Terragars sensors.

Not for the first time the captain was reminding them that he test instruments and even the pinnace were expendable, but lot the people using them, which was the reason why they were wearing insulated, self-powered spacesuits.

Rhabwar maintained its distance with a communications channel open while they edged to a stop a few meters above the damaged area of the alien’s hull, then tethered their vehicle loosely to it with a simple magnetic pad attached to a non-onducting cable.

“Sir,” the lieutenant said as they were exiting the vehicle, ;Dr. Prilicla says that this damaged area of hull—what it calls he surface wound—has apparently become desensitized to outside stimuli and we can safely make contact there. But shouldn’t we check to make sure that other areas haven’t been affected due to a power leakage or other deterioration in its sensor circuitry? I suggest making a few random tests. It might be that this metal carcass is dead by now and our precautions are wasting time.”

“If it can be done without you killing yourself, Lieutenant,” said the captain, “then do it. You agree, Doctor?”

“Yes,” said Prilicla. “That information would be helpful, friend Dodds. Especially if you can find another access hatch that is closer to the ship’s brain section. From here we’ll have to travel the internal walkways for more than half the length of the ship. But be very careful.”

“Of course,” said Dodds. “This might be the only life I’ve got.”

They watched as it positioned its powered suit a few meters from the hull and began the first slow, lateral circuit of the ship that became a spiral leading forward. Several times the lieutenant disappeared from view and Prilicla felt the captain’s controlled worrying, but Dodds was in sight when it made its find.

“Sir,” it said excitedly, “I’ve found what could be a cargo loading hatch. It’s about ten meters in diameter, flush-fitting, and the joins are so fine I almost missed them. Inset is a two-foot rectangle, that looks as if it might give access to the actuator controls. Along one side there is a group of three recessed buttons, but I won’t touch them until I have some idea of what they do and, in case they’re booby-trapped in some way, the order in which they should be pressed. I’m moving closer with the sensor now. The magnetic pads are holding it to the hull. I’ve switched on- So far, no response from the ship.”

The captain’s level of worrying peaked then began to sub-side. It didn’t speak.

“I’m using minimum power on the sensor,” the lieutenant went on, “so the image I’m getting is by induction rather than direct contact with the underlying circuitry, and pretty vague.

The wiring is complex, and active. To trace the leads to the three actuator buttons, I’ll need to clarify the picture by using a little more power . . . Bloody hell, the ship just did a Terragar on it! I’m sorry, sir, we need another K-Three-thirty sensor. This one just died.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Fletcher. “It’s expendable You’re not. Continue your search aft, report anything you find and then get back here and follow us inside. We’ll have to go in the long way.”

To Prilicla it went on. “This vessel’s weapons system baffles me. So far there has been no sign of missile launchers, focused radiation projectors, or anything that might be an other-species equivalent. They could still be there and I just didn’t recognize them, but . . . I’m reminded of a porcupine.”

Prilicla didn’t ask the obvious question because he knew it would be answered when the other’s thoughts stopped moving too fast for any possible verbal communication. They were inside the ship at the first junction of the netting walkways and turning in the direction of the control section before the other spoke.

“It is a small, non-sapient Earth life-form,” the captain went on, “with a soft body that has no natural weapons of attack, but it possesses an overall covering of body-spines that are long and sharp enough to discourage predators. If that was the situation here, then killing Terragar’s operating systems could have been a mistaken act of self-defense because the aliens didn’t know our ship was simply trying to give assistance.”

“A not entirely comforting theory, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “It infers that there are other species, or perhaps other members of their own species, who wanted to attack it. Why? Do they consider it a threat of some kind, or their prey? Either way, they were able to inflict heat and blast damage. Remember, offensive weapons were used against this vessel.”

“I know,” said the captain. It continued pulling itself along the netting for a moment before it added, “But I’m beginning to wonder about that, too.”

It did not elaborate although its emotional radiation was characteristic of a mind engaged in intense cerebration. Dodds reported finding another large hatch, presumably used for load-ing fuel or cargo, close to the stern thrusters, then it rejoined them while they were still halfway along the central walkway and heading forward. There it was that a robot crew member—perhaps the same one, Prilicla suggested quietly, or maybe it was the only one—emerged from a side walkway and began pulling itself rapidly along the netting to meet them. It stopped about five meters from the captain, who was in the lead, and spread itself out starfish-fashion with its six hands gripping strands of the netting and barring their path towards the control section.

“The last time this happened, Doctor,” Fletcher said, “you were alone, you gave it a gentle push, and it moved back. Presumably the action was not meant as an obstruction so much as a warning to move carefully. Do you agree? I’ll try a very gentle push, with my feet. In case it tries to shock me, my boots have thicker insulation.”

The captain moved close, spread out its hands to grasp the netting on both sides to stabilize itself, then very slowly and carefully brought its feet forward to

stop a few inches from the center of the robot’s body. Its push was gentle to the point of imperceptibility.

There was no response. It pushed a little harder, then with steadily increasing pressure, but the robot only clung more tightly to the netting without moving back an inch.

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “move back a little and let me past.”

Without speaking but radiating puzzlement and impatience, the other did so and flattened itself against the netting while Prilicla' s pressure globe squeezed past. A few seconds later he touched the robot’s body gently. Immediately it released its grip on the netting and moved back slowly towards Control. Prilicla likewise, but as soon as Fletcher and Dodds began to follow him it barred the way again. The meaning of its action was plain.

“Why will it allow you past and not us?” said the captain “Does it think Earth-humans are stronger and more of a physical threat to it than a Cinrusskin? It’s right, of course. But I’ve made no threatening moves towards it or . . . I don’t understand this.” “Maybe it doesn’t like you, sir,” said Dodds, laughing nervously, “because your feet’s too big.”

Fletcher ignored its lieutenant’s insubordination as well as the anxiety that had caused it, and said, “With respect, I don’t intend to wait here doing nothing while you and your robot friend socialize. Dodds and I will follow you to the next intersection, then we’ll try to find other walkways that will take us around to the control section. Earlier you suggested that our metal friend might be the only surviving crew member. If you’re right, then it can’t bar our movements and stay with you at the same time. Keep your communicator channel open at all times, Doctor, and have fun.”

The robot hesitated in obvious indecision when the two officers turned into a side walkway, although Prilicla could not detect the emotional radiation that should have accompanied it at such short range. But its movements were communicating feelings—someone or something else’s feelings—in a subtle form of body language that he could read. There was a tenuous wisp of emotional radiation in the area, much too faint to be readable, and he was now quite sure that this robot was a highly sophisticated construct of limited intelligence which was little more than the hands and eyes of an entity who, for reasons still to be discovered, could not move.

But if he was being seen or his presence sensed in some other fashion through this robot, it or they might have their own reasons other than sheer physical size why they preferred the close approach of a Cinrusskin to that of Earth-humans. In which case it might even be possible, considering the robot crew member’s lack of hostility, that they wanted to make contact with him.

That was why, when he reached the point of his previous closest approach to the control section when fatigue had forced turn to Rhabwar, he stopped to hang motionless with one f\ holding lightly onto the netting. The robot did the same. For a moment he looked at the small, recessed panel with three colored buttons, which was plainly the actuator for “nearby door, then with his free hand he reached forward slowly to bring a digit to a stop one inch above each but-n in turn, then he withdrew the hand and used the same finger to point at the robot. He repeated the process several times before the crew member reacted. It moved back quickly the way they had come, to stop at and block the nearest walkway intersection.

Bitterly disappointed, he thought, Now it doesn’t want me here for some reason. Or did it? The background emotional radiation was still too tenuous for clear definition, but he could not feel anything that resembled strong rejection.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said into the communicator, “I have a feeling that I may be about to make progress. But the robot, or the agency presently directing it, is uneasy and has placed it on guard at the entrance to the walkway you and friend Dodds are using. Our radio traffic must be detectable so they know that I’m talking to you although they won’t know what I’m saying. That will have to wait until we’re able to program our translation computer for their language, which will be a separate problem. But right now I want to reassure these people by appearing to give you orders which you will plainly be obeying without delay or question. Will you comply, friend Fletcher?”

What orders?” said the captain in a guarded voice. To vacate the forward section of the ship,” said Prilicla, and move back to the place where we came on board. We must it plain that you are no longer investigating the control Please do that immediately.”

But temporarily,” said the captain firmly. “This ship is crammed with unique technology which includes a weapon that threaten the peace and stability of the Federation. It has to be investigated.”

“Of course, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “but not now.

“Very well,” the other replied, radiating equal levels of ir-ritation, disappointment, and impatience. “I won’t promise not to look around back there, especially at the circuitry of the hull sensors. But don’t worry, we won’t do anything to worry your robot friend. And if you should get into trouble, Doctor, there’s something you should know.

“From where we are now,” it went on before he could respond, “we have a clear view through the netting of a strongly supported, square-sectioned metal-walled passageway leading from the big forward hatch that Dodds found to Control. I’d say it was used to load bulk consumables or heavy equipment. Internally, the structure shows no sign of the circuitry that underlies the hull. So if you should need help quickly, we can cut a way into the passageway and get into Control by the back door. I don’t think a computer virus could travel up the flame of my cutting torch.

“Keep this channel open, your recorders on at all times, and be careful,” the captain ended, its feeling of concern for him making it give unnecessary

warnings. “We’re moving back now.”

Prilicla watched as they withdrew towards the stern. When it was clear that they were not intending to double-back to Control, the robot moved back quickly to Prilicla and the actuator panel. This time he could sense no hesitancy in its body language, or that of its controller, as it began tapping keys. He was noting the colors and sequence for future reference when the forward wall became a large door that began sliding into a recess.

When it was fully open, bright orange lighting units placed at two-meter intervals and recessed into what was presumably the ceiling came to life along the length of another passageway that stretched ahead for close on thirty meters to another intersection. All four surfaces were opaque, made either from metal or hardened plastic, and covered with netting where it was not interrupted by transparent access hatches. Deliberately he moved them slowly so as to give his vision pickup and himself a past then to see what lay on the other side. Through one he had a Shortened view of the passageway leading from control to the hull that Fletcher had mentioned earlier, but mostly there were only regimented tangles of color-coded wiring. He was sensing faint but definite feelings of uncertainty and impatience from somewhere . . .

As he reached the intersection the robot remained clinging to the netting of the surface facing him. It made no move to guide him or block his way, so it seemed that the choice of direction was being left to him. Prilicla was aware of two distinct sources of emotional radiation, both of them organic. The robot followed him as he moved into the side passage on his right and towards the stronger of the two. The passage ended at another door and actuator panel.

The source of emotional radiation strengthened almost to the level of readability.

CHAPTER 15

Again he positioned his hand a few inches from the panel and, without actually touching the buttons, moved his index finger from one to the other in the same sequence the robot had used while opening the first door, then waited. Hopefully he was displaying intelligence and memory as well as asking permission to proceed.

If the combination on this door was different, and it was booby-trapped and he was being allowed to make a mistake, then he might not survive the experience. The robot moved closer to him but it did not interfere. He pressed the buttons, the door slid open, and he moved slowly into the middle of another shorter, brightly lit passageway, then stopped.

His emotional radiation was so confused that for a long moment he could scarcely analyze it himself.

“Are you getting this?” he said finally.

“Yes, Doctor,” Haslam’s voice replied from Rhabwar. It sounded excited. “But remember to—”

“Getting what?” the captain’s voice broke in impatiently.

“I don’t know, sir,” Haslam replied. “You’d have to see it for yourself. And Dr. Prilicla, please remember to move your head and your helmet vision pickup very slowly, and hold it steady on each area you are describing. In case of, well, accidents. it’s very important if we’re to have sharp images for later”

Prilicla was well aware of that fact, but perhaps the other was trying to reassure both itself and himself that he wouldn’t be speaking for posterity.

He ignored the remark and went on. “As you can see, the surfaces of the walls, floor, and ceiling of this stretch contain more transparent hatches than there are opaque surfaces, and there is a major change in the configuration of the netting. It is no longer attached to the wall surfaces and has instead been replaced by what appears to be a light, open-lattice metal cylinder. It runs along the center of the passageway, is strongly supported at each end and, I would say, forms a convenient working position for crew members needing access to the systems behind the transparent hatches. Between the cylindrical net and the transparent hatches there isn’t much room for maneuvering . . .”

But then, I don’t need much, he added silently.

He moved forward along the cylindrical net in a slow spiral so as to cover all the inner surfaces of the passageway, speaking as he went. At one particularly large transparent panel he moved a hand close to its actuator buttons without touching them. Immediately the robot moved closer to nudge the hand away. He braced himself against the net and pressed his helmet and vision sensor firmly against the transparency. The robot did not react. Plainly this is a case of 'Look but don’t touch,' he went on.

“The wiring behind this panel is similar to that in the damaged robot crew member we found on Terragar. I’m holding the vision pickup motionless against the panel so that you’ll be able to use high magnification on the image . . .”

I am,” said Haslam with enthusiasm. “That looks good, Doctor, whatever it is.”—there was an impatient sound of an Earth-human throat—cleared and the captain said irritably, “Dammit, will I have to go back to Rhabwar to find out what you’re doing here?” Prilicla didn’t reply at once because he had moved to another panel. Even though the view revealed mechanisms and con nections much cruder in design and fabrication than the previous one, once again his hand was pushed away from the actuator mechanism.

He continued to describe clearly everything he was seeing and thinking, but not what he was feeling. The emotional radiation in the area was strengthening as he moved towards the other end of the passageway, but it was not yet clear enough to describe even to himself.

“. . . This area appears to be dedicated to complex plumbing,” he continued. “There are single and grouped pipes, from half an inch to two inches in diameter and distinctively color-coded. The fact that I was gently discouraged from opening the access hatch is a measure of their importance. I can’t remember seeing piping with these codings on the way here. This makes me suspect that they are a local phenomenon, and probably the conduits and metering devices for the crew’s air supply, water, or whatever other working fluid they use, and their food. Now I’m moving closer to another large door and actuator panel at the other end of the passageway and will try to open it . . . No, I won’t.”

While he had been speaking the robot had swarmed along to the opposite side of the cylindrical net and interposed its body between Prilicla and the actuator panel. Gently he slowly extended a hand and tried to move it aside.

It resisted strongly but took no other action.

“Interesting,” he said. “Apparently it trusts me, but not enough to let me go all the way in.” To the captain he went on, “Friend Fletcher, earlier you mentioned returning to Rhabwar to see what I am doing. Are you and the lieutenant engaged on anything of vital importance at the moment?”

“We’re investigating the interior hull circuitry and the leads to the power source aft. But the short answer is no, so stop wasting time being polite. What do you want me to do?”

“I want both of you to go back to Rhabwar,” said Prilicla, “and await further instructions . . .”

“That means leaving you alone here,” the captain broke in. “I don’t feel happy about that.”

“Depending on how well things go here,” Prilicla continued, ignoring the interruption, “I want you to send friend Dodds back with the portable holo projector and the standard first-contact tapes. I detect no strong feelings of personal animosity here, but if it will make you feel better, then the lieutenant may remain here. But it must stay well away from the control section. For some reason the Earth-humans, or maybe just the DBDG body configuration, make these people very much afraid.”

“Not all humanoids are good guys,” said Lieutenant Dodds. “Maybe they ran into some hostile elements during the Etlan War . . .”

“The Etlan police action,” Fletcher corrected automatically, and went on. “They could have had a bad experience with Earth-human look-alikes during the hostilities, or have entirely different reasons that we don’t yet understand. But Doctor, are you saying that you’re ready to open communications with them?”

“I’m ready to try,” said Prilicla.

He moved his helmet as close to the door as the robot would allow, then closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind of all distractive thoughts and feelings except for the tenuous fog of emotional radiation that he was trying to isolate and identify.

As he had expected from a survivor of a wrecked ship, the strongest emotions were negative. There was fear that was being controlled with difficulty, and a deep, corroding despair and concern that might or might not be personal, and pain. The pain was not the acute form characteristic of trauma, although there as a little of that present, too. It seemed to be more emotional than physical, and associated with a feeling of imminent loss. But within that dark fog there was a pale glimmer of curiosity, and wonder, trying to shine through.

It was time Prilicla shone a little light of his own. Literally Describing aloud what he was doing and thinking, he began switching on and off his helmet spotlight, low enough to be barely perceptible by his own eyes at first, then gradually increasing the intensity. He didn’t want the alien survivor to mistake the light for a weapon, but he also wanted to know if he was being seen through the robot’s eyes or if there were other visual sensors in operation. When he began to detect feelings of physical discomfort that were characteristic of sensory overload, presumably a reaction to a light that was now dazzling it, he reduced the brightness until its feeling of discomfort went away. Next he began flashing his light in an attempt to transmit intelligence in a form that he hoped the other should understand—simple arithmetic.

One flash of light followed two seconds later by another, then two flashes in rapid succession. He repeated the process with three, four, and five flashes as he tried to demonstrate simple addition as well as his own possession of intelligence. A change in the other’s emotional radiation, a sudden feeling of interest, an understanding combining with the background curiosity, told him that he had succeeded.

It was an immediate and present response to his first attempt at communication, but now he needed to know if he could continue the process at long range.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “you’ve seen and know what I’ve been doing. I’m going to stop using my helmet light. Instead I want you to duplicate the sequence and timing, but using your ship’s external hull lighting. I won’t be able to see Rhabwar from here, so please tell me as soon as you begin.”

“Right, Doctor,” said the captain. “I’ll need a moment to . . . You’ve got it.”

He didn’t need the other’s words because the survivor was reacting exactly as it had done to his helmet light, although the curiosity it was radiating was becoming tinged with impatience.

Plainly it was wondering what he was going to do next. That made two of them.

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” he said. “You can stop signaling now.”

He had expected but was still relieved at the confirmation that the visual communication could be continued from the ambulance ship, either by himself or—if he was undergoing one of his frequent periods of regenerative unconsciousness—by one of the others. But abruptly his relief was obliterated by a sudden explosion of fear from the survivor. Even the movements of its robot had become agitated.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said sharply into his communicator. “What’s happening out there?”

“Nothing much,” the captain replied promptly. “In order to save time loading and off-loading it from the pinnace, Dodds is using his suit thrusters to bring the holo projector to you. It’s an awkward piece of equipment but he can manage; in fact he’s about to land on the hull as we speak. . .”

“Dodds,” said Prilicla urgently, “don’t move! The alien survivor is terrified. Turn back until I can find out why.”

But he already knew why. The holo projector was a large, intricate, and completely harmless piece of equipment, but the survivor didn’t know that. While its attention was being directed at Rhabwar’s lights, it had seen Dodds, one of the DBDG lifeforrns which for some reason frightened it, about to land on its ship with what it must have thought was a weapon. Except in the areas where the hull was damaged the ship had external defenses. Terragar had learned that, to its cost. But now it seemed there were no comparable internal defenses.

A porcupine didn’t need spines on the inside.

As well as being sensitive to others’ emotions, Prilicla knew he was a good projective empath. But he also knew that there was no way to make a being who was in the grip of intense fear feel good, or at least a little better, without first removing the source. That was why he concentrated all of his considerable empathic ability into the projection of reassurance, sympathy and trust at a level of intensity that he could not maintain for more than a few minutes. He also gesticulated on the off-chance that the survivor could understand the gestures he was making while he spoke into his communicator.

“I’m pointing back the way I came,” he said, “then making pushing motions with my hands to give the impression that I’m barring entry to anyone else. By now the survivor should have seen friend Dodds turning back. I think it’s working. The fear is diminishing . . .”

Prilicla continued to emote feelings of reassurance and sympathy until he was forced to stop and rest his brain for a moment, but by then the survivor’s feelings had returned to normal, or at least to the level they had been before the approach of Dodds. But there was still concern in the other’s mind which was not for itself.

The robot followed close behind him as he turned and moved out of the passageway, past the T-junction to the door opposite. It made no attempt to

interfere when he pressed the actuator buttons on the opposite door. As well as being its sole protector, he was beginning to think that it was the only source of vision that the first survivor had.

The door opened into another passageway that was identical in size and layout to the one he had just left, but there the resemblance ended. Only two of the lighting units came on as the door opened so that he had to use his helmet light to see through the transparent access hatches.

“Are you seeing this?” he said again, unnecessarily. “The plumbing and circuitry in this area has sustained damage.”

“We see it, Doctor,” replied the captain, who must have joined Haslam in control. “And there are signs that someone has been trying to effect repairs.”

Two of the pipe junctions had been wrapped in some form of metalized, adhesive tape, but not tightly enough to prevent a rush of air or vaporized fluid from fogging the joints. Behind the hatches he could see that many of the visible cable looms showing patches of heat discoloration, and several had been ruptured. One group, which bore the color-coding indicating that it led from the hull sensors, had been pulled apart, opened and the fine, hair-thin individual strands of wiring fanned outwards in preparation for splicing.

The repair work was nowhere near completion. Prilicla indicated the areas of damage in turn, pointing at the robot each time, then he pointed several times towards the damage and to himself. He was trying to ask two questions— whether the robot was responsible for the attempted repairs, and if Prilicla would be allowed to help complete the work. If the robot or its director understood him, there was no way as yet that they could answer. He moved to the inner door.

It was no surprise that the robot was there first, its body covering the actuator buttons to bar his entrance. But for now he would be content to touch the mind rather than the body on the other side of the door.

The general emotional texture was the same as he had detected from the other survivor, but the content was shockingly different. This time there was physical as well as emotional trauma. He couldn’t even guess at what was causing the physical discomfort, but there was a feeling of constriction, possibly of suffocation, that was overlaid by fear, despair, and the dreadful, negative emotion characteristic of utter isolation. He edged a little closer to the door and, as he had done earlier, concentrated on rejecting reassurance, friendship, and sympathy.

It took longer this time, possibly because he was tiring again, but finally there was a reaction. Faintly, through the cloud of Nativity he detected surprise, curiosity, and a feeling of hope. He began using his helmet light, but there was no change in the other’s emotional radiation. He asked the captain to duplicate sequence with the ship’s lighting. Still there was no response. Friend Fletcher,” he said, hiding his feelings with unemotional words, “I have detected the presence of a second all survivor. Its emotional radiation suggests that they are not i contact or presently aware of each other. The first one is distressed but not seriously injured. The second one, whose sensory and life-support systems are compromised as a result, I feel sure of it being closer to the damaged side of their ship, is injured and short of food, air, and water. It is also deaf, dumb, and blind.

“Full communications with and between the two aliens must be established as soon as possible,” he ended, “and both survivors must be extricated and treated without delay.”

“Doctor,” said the captain, “just how will we manage that?” “Thankfully I am not the specialist in other-species technology, friend Fletcher,” he replied. “I’m

returning to my quarters now to rest. Perhaps the solution will come to me in my sleep.

CHAPTER 16

The Terragar casualties were progressing well enough to have their litters moved outside for a few hours each day so that the psychological therapy of fresh air and sunshine could reinforce the effects of her medication. The sun would warm and relax and tan the pallor of long service in space from their bodies and, because this world’s ionization layer was intact, there would be no harmful aftereffects. But she could not spend all of her free time in ministering-angel mode and saying reassuring things to her patients even though, because of them being officers and presumably gentlemen, they did not object to her company or comment on her abbreviated dress. Now that their burns were healing to the point where there was no longer the risk of her Earth-human pathogens getting to them, she was not wearing her breathing mask and white coveralls.

Murchison’s intention was to walk completely around the island over the firm sand by the water’s edge. From their first hilltop observations three days earlier, she had estimated that the trip would take just under two hours and, while nobody had ever accused her of being antisocial, she would have preferred to walk alone and avoid having to tell therapeutic half-truths to a colleague. The casualties had progressed to the stage where they were becoming restive and worrying less about whether or not the would survive than how soon the transfer to Sector General for their reconstructive surgery would take place. Danalta and Nay drad were asking the same questions, which were valid and deserving of straight answers, but she had no hard information to give them because she hadn’t been given any herself.

When asked, during her daily report to Rhabwar, the captain had stated that it was a medical matter and referred her to her boss. Prilicla, in its gentle, inoffensive, but totally immovable fashion, said that the timing was uncertain because they were trying to communicate with and extricate two other-species casualties from the alien vessel, that there were complications and the answer was “not soon.”

She had passed this information on to Naydrad and Danalta but not to the patients. They might be disturbed by the thought that very soon the two beings who had been responsible for destroying their ship might be lying in the beds beside theirs.

Obviously Danalta had grown tired of being a multicolored beach-ball shape and had changed itself into a more challenging shape, that of a Drambon Roller.

Outwardly it was a perfect replica of the CLHG physiological classification native to the planet Drambo, although she doubted that even Danalta could mimic the complex movements of the original creature’s internal organs which enabled it to roll continuously from the moment of partuition until the end of its life.

Physically, a water-breathing Roller resembled an animated donut that rotated vertically on its outer edge, with a fringe of short, manipulatory tentacles sprouting from the inner circumference and curving outwards on both sides to give balance at slow speeds. Between the roots of the tentacles she could see that the shape-changer had perfectly reproduced the series of gills as well as the visual equipment which operated coeleostat fashion to compensate for its constantly rotating field of vision. The original life-form had used a gravity feed system for circulation rather than a muscular pump, which was why they died quickly when weakness, accident, or an attacking predator caused them to fall on their sides and stop rotating. Her first experience of giving CPR. to a stopped Drambon had been like rolling a floppy, half-inflated ground car’s inner tube around underwater. She laughed suddenly.

“That’s very good, Doctor,” she said. “If there were another Drambon on the island, it would find you irresistible.”

Ahead of her, the donut shape made a right-angle turn, stopped, and bent almost double in a bow of appreciation at the compliment. Then it melted and slumped into a shapeless mound of green jelly which sprouted vertically into a tall, erect, yellowish-pink shape which oozed and melted into a near-perfect, two-thirds-scale replica of Murchison herself.

It was smaller than she was because Danalta was constrained by the limits of its own body mass and, although the detail in the eyes, ears, and fingernails was very good, the edges of her white swimsuit, hair, and eyebrows merged into the adjacent skin coloration like the uniform and features painted on a toy soldier. She gave an involuntary shudder.

Murchison had seen Danalta take some weird and often repulsive shapes with a minimum of inner distress, but for some reason this one was making her feel really uncomfortable.

Why don’t you go for a walk up to the hill?” Murchison said, more sharply that she had intended. “I’m safe enough here on the beach. No insects, no crabs, no fish or amphibians in the water to crawl out and attack me. You might find something more interesting to mimic inland.”

No danger large enough to see,” said the smaller Murchi-son, “but we’re on an alien planet, remember?”

Being reminded of the obvious had always irritated her, especially-y when, as now, she needed the reminder. Even so, it was very difficult to believe that this wonderful place was not on Earth ; She didn’t reply

“So far we’ve seen only one species of animal,” said Danalta, unless the others are hiding from us, and that one is boring to mimic. But I sense your annoyance. I’m sorry. Pathologist, is this body configuration not to your liking?”

The half-sized Murchison, with the exception of its communications-and-translator pack, began to subside like melt ing wax into a pink, sluglike shape with a tiny mouth and a large single eye. The real Murchison concentrated on looking out to sea.

Apologetically, it went on. “If you would rather walk alone without distractions, I can take on an aquatic form and keep pace with you without holding conversation. Or if you would like to immerse yourself for a while, I can serve as a protective escort, should one be necessary, although there is no evidence of any threat here, from the land, sea, or air.”

“Thank you,” she said.

That was what she had most wanted to do since the beginning of today’s walk, although, perversely, she didn’t want to appear too eager. As she continued walking, her peripheral vision showed her Danalta entering the water and spreading out into a fiat, carpet shape resembling an Earthly stingray with the addition of a high, dorsal fin which had an eye at its tip to give both lateral stability and all-around visibility.

She laughed suddenly and thought, The people I have to work with!

Gradually her path curved until the waves were breaking over and cooling her feet, then her calves and around her knees. Her back was to the beach as she suddenly broke into a long, high-stepping, splashing run, dived in, and began to swim.

The water was cold, pleasantly so, and so clear that if there had been anything on the sandy bottom larger than her thumbnail she would have seen it. After a few minutes of fast swimming, most of it underwater, she rolled onto her back and floated with only her face above the surface, comfortable in the embrace of an alien ocean which, on this world as well as on Earth, had been the mother of all life. She was looking up at the deep-blue sky and thinking that the casualties were well enough to profit from therapeutic, closely supervised immersion, when she saw the

There were two of them, not quite overhead and circling, dipping and banking slowly to take advantage of rising air currents They were so high, a few thousand feet at least, that they almost hidden by the glare from the sun, and at that altitude they could scarcely be considered a threat. Nevertheless, feeling guilty rather than anxious over the way she had been enjoying herself, Murchison raised an arm to wave at Danalta, pointed up at them and then towards the beach.

It was time they returned to their patients.

And even higher above the birds, in the orbiting Rhabwar, a similar thought was going through the mind of Prilicla regarding a different set of patients. There was very little that he could do for them until they had learned to trust not just their physician, himself, but the DBDGs and their portable equipment of which, for some reason, they were so afraid, because the specialized knowledge and experience of the Earth-humans were vital if the treatment that one of them so urgently needed was to have any hope of success.

“In my cubicle I’ve been thinking as well as sleeping, friend Fletcher,” he said. “Our first problem here is one of communication and, more importantly, of reeducation, but without the use of the portable audio-visual devices that are usual in first-contact situations. Any such equipment—especially, it seems, when it is carried by Earth-human DBDGs—is considered a meat. It also appears that suit ancillary equipment such as helmet lights, thrusters, and even our vision pickups which they may consider too low-powered to be dangerous, is allowable. That is why I want you to—”

“We are agreed,” the captain broke in, “that they feel comfortable with you and are afraid of us. It must be that physically our smaller size, physical weakness, and obvious lack of natural make you much less of a threat to them. Doctor, against my advice you insist on going back alone into that ship. not take the first-contact equipment with you?”

“Because,” said Prilicla gently, “I’m not sure whether it iss certain types of equipment, you DBDGs, or both that they are afraid of. So far, my close presence has been acceptable to them. Carrying the equipment with me might not be acceptable and I might destroy their feeling of trust in me. I don’t want to risk losing that.”

The captain nodded. “We know you can detect their emotional radiation and to a lesser extent project your own feelings of friendship towards them. That is communication of a sort, but it isn’t the same as exchanging the words and concepts necessary for them to trust the rest of us as well. You have a problem, Doctor. Do you also have a solution?”

“I may have,” said Prilicla. “We already know from our simple light signals that they have visual sensors on the undamaged area of their hull. The solution will involve my presence inside the control section, where I will be able to monitor their emotional responses, while you execute the first-contact visuals, highly magnified and edited to fit our situation, outside the ship. Is this technically feasible?”

The captain was silent for a moment, radiating concern for his safety as well as the anticipation of overcoming a technical challenge; then it said, “So you want me to project tri-di images into the space between our ships. How big do they have to be?

“At least twice as large as the other ship, friend Fletcher, he replied. “As yet we don’t know the degrees of resolution of their external visual equipment, so I want every detail of your display to be clearly visible to all the sensors on that side of their ship. Can do?”

The captain nodded again and said, “Modifying the portable equipment to project externally will take time, Doctor. More than enough time for you to sleep and think again on the problem, and maybe find a solution that involves a lesser element of personal risk for yourself.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher"—ignoring the implied criti-"I enjoy resting, even, and especially, when it isn’t strictly necessary and other people are doing the real work. But first I must discuss with you the exact content and presentation of the election we will use, and, second, I need to pick your brains.” The captain radiated a silent mixture of curiosity and caution as if it were expecting another surprise. It wasn’t disappointed.

“In simple, non-technical terms,” he went on, “I would like guidance on how and what to do in the damaged control section, as if you yourself were doing it. Naturally this will mean us studying the visual records together.”

“It took many years of training in other-species technology to fill the brain you wish to pick, Doctor,” said the captain, sarcasm thick in its voice and its emotional radiation. “Is that all?” “Not quite,” said Prilicla. “I’ll have to remember to check on the condition of my less urgent, Earth-human patients. But that will not involve extra work for you.”

By the time the captain and himself had completed their discussion, to the satisfaction of neither of them, Prilicla got very little additional rest. Before releasing his consciousness for sleep he called Murchison. The pathologist reported seeing two highflying birds and, following its brief swim with Danalta, that the sea was safe for short-term Earth-human occupancy. It said that as Naydrad hated getting its fur wet and Danalta would be posted to seaward as a probably unnecessary guard, it suggested that their patients, although not yet ambulatory, would benefit both Physically and psychologically from a brief daily immersion in the sea followed by a lengthier exposure to what was for Earth-human DBDGs fresh air and sunshine. Understanding as he did from long experience of working among them the emotional attraction that existed between Earth-human males and females, he knew that the casualties would derive much pleasure from being bathed by an entity of the opposite sex, and so would his assistant. He acquiesced.

He was dreaming of sunshine and sand and the soft crashing of the high, low-gravity waves of his native Cinruss when the idyllic scene was dissolved by the insistent sound of his com communicator and the voice of the captain.

“Doctor Prilicla,” said the captain. “Wake up, it’s show time.”

CHAPTER 17

This time Prilicla made the trip alone, with the pinnace being guided by Haslam to the entry point on remote control. If the robot crew member or, through its sensors, its superior noticed the miniature, eye-level repeater screen that had been added to the interior of Prilicla’s helmet, it was not considered a threat because nothing was done to impede his trip back to the control section. It wasn’t absolutely necessary that he have a picture of what would shortly be going on outside since Fletcher could have told him about it via his communicator, but words took time and good pictures were always faster, clearer, and less susceptible to misinterpretation.

When he was deep inside the control section he drifted as close as possible to the inner door that would give access to the least injured of the ship’s two organic survivors, a position where he could monitor the other’s emotional responses with optimum accuracy. The robot drifted passively less than a meter away. He knew that the tiny metal digits encircling its body were capable of ripping open his spacesuit in a matter of seconds, but he also knew or rather he felt fairly sure—that it would remain passive unless he tried to open the inner door. “Ready when you are, friend Fletcher,” he said.

A few seconds later an immediate change in the alien’s emotional radiation as well as the image on his helmet screen told him that, in the space between Rhabwar and the distressed alien ship, the show had begun.

“It sees the external image,” Prilicla reported excitedly “There are feelings of awareness, curiosity, and puzzlement.”

The captain didn’t reply but one of the other officers laughed softly and said

in a voice not meant to be overheard, “I would feel puzzled, too, if somebody projected the image of a star field onto another star field.”

The projected star field remained unaltered for a few seconds, then slowly it began to shrink and condense so that more and more stars moved in from the edges of the three-dimensional projection until it took on the glittering, unmistakable, spiral shape of the Galaxy itself.

The survivor’s concentration was now total.

Gradually the fine detail of the image coarsened, the wisps and streamers of interstellar gas were erased, and the number of stars was reduced to a few hundred which became large enough to have been counted individually. One of them was highlighted inside a circle of bright green and the circle increased rapidly in size until a stylized representation of the star and its system of planets filled the projection volume for a few seconds before the image changed again.

The viewpoint zoomed in on that solar system’s inhabited planet, showing the swirling, tattered cloud formations that could not quite hide the continental outlines. As it swooped closer and lower it slowed until the viewpoint was giving panoramic views of the planetary surface, seascapes, ice fields, mountains, tropical greenery, and great, sprawling cities with their interconnecting road systems. Then the image was reduced suddenly in size and moved to one side so that it filled only half of the projection.

The other half displayed an equally detailed representation of the world’s dominant intelligent life-form.

It was the picture of an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect with a tubular, exoskeletal body that supported six sucker tipped pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned and precise manipulators, and two sets of wide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings. The head was a convoluted eggshell so finely structured that the sensory organs, particularly the two large, lowing eyes projecting from it, seemed ready to fall off at the first sudden movement. The head, manipulators—some of them holding tools—and legs were bent or rotated to demonstrate their limits of movement while the wings wafted slowly up and down as they broke up and reflected iridescent highlights like mobile rainbows. It was the picture of a Cinrusskin, one of the race generally held to be the most beautiful and delicate life-forms known to the explored reaches of the galaxy.

Then the limb motions ceased, the wings folded away, and the body was suddenly encased in a spacesuit identical to the one Prilicla wore.

“As well as the background discomfort, I detect feelings of surprise and growing curiosity,” Prilicla reported. “Go to the next stage.”

They had shown a picture of Prilicla’s race first because he had already been seen by the alien casualty and seemed to be trusted by it. But now its education and, hopefully, its ability to trust had to be widened.

Next was shown the solar system, planet, meteorology, rural and city environments of Kelgia, accompanied by a picture of a single member of its dominant species. The undulating, multi-Pedal, caterpillar-like body with its silver, continually mobile fur, the narrow cone of a head, and the tiny forward manipulators, aroused no feelings of antipathy in the casualty, nor did the similar Material on the crablike Melfan or the six-legged, elephantine Tralthan life-forms that followed it. But when the Hudlar planet species were shown, there was a subtle change. Hudla was a heavy-gravity world pulling four Earth Gs whose nearly opaque atmosphere resembled a thick, dense soup, it was rich in the suspended animal and vegetable nutrients on which the Hudlars lived. It was a world of constant storms that had forced its natives to build underground. Only a Hudlar could love it, Prilicla thought, and then, not very much.

He said, “Now there are feelings suggestive of fear and familiarity. It is as if the casualty is recognizing a habitual enemy To most people, Melfans and Tralthans are visually more horrendous than the smooth-bodied Hudlars, so it may well be that it is the planet Hudla itself rather that its native life-forms that is causing this reaction.”

“Is this a guess, Doctor,” said the captain, “or one of your feelings?”

“A strong feeling,” he replied.

“I see,” said the other. It cleared its throat and added, “If your casualty considers Hudla as something like home, I can feel a certain sympathy for it in spite of what it did to Terragar. Shall I proceed?”

“Please,” said Prilicla, and the lesson continued.

Showing the planets and living environments of the sixty-seven intelligent species that comprised the Galactic Federation had never been their intention because the process would have been unnecessarily long and this was, after all, a primary lesson. The widely different types like the storklike, tripedal Nallajims, the multicolored, animated Gogleskan haystacks, the slimy, chlorine-breathing Illensans, and the radiation-eating Telfi, among others, were included, but so also were the DBDG classifications from Earth, Nidia, and Orligia. Those three were there deliberately because the prime purpose of the lesson was to instill in the alien casualties a feeling of trust for their Earth-human rescuers.

“It isn’t working,” said Prilicla, disappointed. “Every time you showed a DBDG, regardless of its size or whether it was a large, hairy Orligian, an Earth-human, or a half-sized, red-furred Nidian, the reaction was the same—one of intense fear and hatred. It will be extremely difficult to make these people trust you.

“What on Earth,” said the captain, “could we ever have done to make them feel that way?”

“It was not done on Earth, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “Rut the show isn’t over yet. Please continue.”

The format changed again. Instead of showing individual planets and subjects, two- and three-member groups comprising different species were shown meeting and talking, sometimes with their children present, or working together on various technical projects. In some of them they were encased in spacesuits while they rescued other-species casualties from damaged ships. The pictures’ application to the present situation, he hoped, was plain. Then the scene changed again to show all of the subjects, forming the rim of wheel and shown in scale, from the diminutive Nallajims and Cinrusskins, up to the massive Tralthans and Hudlars of more than ten times that body-weight. At the hub of the circle was shown a tiny, glittering representation of the galaxy, from which radiated misty spokes joining it to the individual species on the rim. Then the individual species were pictured again, this time with all of them displayed as being the same size, in order, it was again hoped, to illustrate equality of importance. Several seconds passed. At this extreme range Prilicla could not feel, but he could imagine the captain’s anxiety as it spoke. “Well, Doctor,” it said urgently, “was there a response?” “There was, friend Fletcher,” he replied, “but I’m still trying for an exact analysis of the emotional radiation. In conjunction with the background feelings of anxiety, which may be caused by worry over its companion who it can no longer contact, there are strong feelings of excitement, wonder, and, I feel sure, comprehension. I’d say that it understood our lesson.”

When he didn’t go on, the captain broke the silence. It said, “I’ve the feeling that you’re going to say ‘but.’”

But,” Prilicla went on obligingly, “every time you showed DBDG, the casualty also radiated deep suspicion and distrust.These feelings are better than the earlier ones of intense fear and

blind hatred, but only fractionally. I feel certain that the casualty still doesn’t want you DBDGs anywhere near it.”

For the first time in Prilicla’s long experience on ambulanceship operations, the captain used words that his translator had not been programmed to accept, and went on. “Then what the hell am I expected to do to change that?”

Before replying, Prilicla looked slowly around the compart ment, pointed at one of the transparent inspection covers, then moved close and began opening it. The robot drifted nearby but made no attempt to interfere, even when he reached inside and after hesitating and looking back as if to ask permission for what he was about to do, he gently touched one of the cable looms. When he replied, he knew that his vision pickup was showing the captain everything he had been doing.

“In very simple pictorial terms, we’ve been talking big,” he said, “by telling it about a few of the Federation’s species and the cooperation that exists between their worlds and in space, like assisting distressed ships and—”

“If you remember my advice,” the other broke in, stressing the last word, “it was to follow through on the ship-rescue sequence and show the casualties receiving medical treatment. That, Doctor, would have clearly demonstrated our good intentions.”

“And I did not take your advice,” Prilicla replied gently, “because of the possibility of a misunderstanding. In the present climate of fear and distrust, the emotional reaction of an alien— who would have been witnessing a multispecies medical team, which would certainly have included at least one DBDG, carrying out a surgical procedure on a casually—could not have been taken for granted. We know nothing about the alien’s physiology, environment, or medical practices, if it has any. It may have decided that we were simply torturing captured casualties.

“You, friend Fletcher,” he said, when the other remained silent, “can do nothing right now, apart from furnishing me with technical advice when needed. I’ve already mentioned this idea to you, and your lack of enthusiasm for it was understandable-But the time for showing pictures is over. As my Earth-human gambling friends keep telling me, I must put my money where my mouth is.

“So now,” he ended, “we — or rather, I — must try to reinforce those pictorial lessons with deeds.”

He withdrew his hand slowly, closed the transparent cover and pointed along the linking passageway in the direction of the identical compartment on the damaged side of the ship. Had the robot crew member been an organic life-form, he thought, it would have been breathing down his neck. But it made no move to hinder him.

In the darkened compartment he used his helmet light to open inspection panels and look and, if it didn’t look dangerous, to touch the scorched or ruptured cable looms and plumbing inside all of them in turn. Still there was no interference from the robot. He was beginning to feel less sure of himself and his ability to do this job when the captain, demonstrating the strange mixture of empathy and understanding possessed by Earth-humans, answered his question before it could be asked.

“You should start with an easy one,” said the captain. “High on the upper side of the first inspection compartment you opened there are two fairly thick wires — one has what seems to be pale blue insulation, and the other red. If you look carefully you can see where they make a right-angle turn and disappear through a grommet into what is presumably the ceiling of your corridor. The force of the explosion caused a wiring break in one If them at the angle bend. Do you see the ends of the bare wire Projecting from the torn insulation? Try to splice it, but be careful to touch any metal in the area while you’re working. Your gauntlets are thin and we don’t know how much current that they will be carrying. You’ll need insulating tape to hold the splice together.”

“My med satchel has surgical tape,” said Prilicla. “Will that do?”

“Yes, Doctor, but be careful.”

A few minutes later the splicing operation was complete, the join was insulated, and all the lighting fixtures in the corridor were on. The robot crew member was moving from one to the other and, Prilicla hoped, reporting on the completion of one small repair to the conscious survivor who was its chief. It wasn’t much, but he had done something.

“What next?” said Prilicla.

“Now comes the difficult part,” said the captain, “so don’t get cocky. The other wiring affected is finer and with more subtle color-codings. Some of the ruptured strands show heat discoloration, and you must trace these back to an unaffected area so as to positively identify each end before joining them. The complexity of the wiring makes me pretty sure that most of these breaks are in the hull-sensor and internal-communications networks, and if a join were to be mismatched, we could cause all kinds of trouble. It would be like short-circuiting your hearing sensors to your eyes. We’re in the strange position of making repairs to systems whose purposes are totally unknown to us. I wish I was there with the proper equipment to help you. This is going to be delicate, precise, painstaking, and exhausting work. Are you up to it, Doctor?”

Don’t worry,” said Prilicla, “it’s a little like brain surgery.”

CHAPTER 18

Even though the captain was giving him the benefit of its wide-ranging technical expertise and guiding his hands at every stage, the work went very slowly. An early splicing problem was that some of the damaged fine-gauge wiring had burned away along several inches of its length and the missing pieces had to be replaced. There was suitable replacement material on Rhab-war and the captain offered to bring it himself, in the hope that he would be allowed to assist Prilicla directly and so speed up the process.

“Bring some food as well, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. I ve decided that it will also save time if I don’t have to return to the ship for meals. Or sleep.”

Prilicla waited politely until the expected objections were becoming repetitious, then said, “There are risks, of course, but I’m being neither foolish nor foolhardy. My spacesuit makes provision for the short-term elimination of body wastes, it has a small airlock attachment for the introduction of food, and in the weightless condition, padded rest furnishings are unnecessary for comfort. My thinking is that if we want the survivor to trust us,we must show that we trust it.”

I agree, reluctantly,” the other replied after a long pause.

“But if I can make it plain that I’m helping you help it, maybe it will begin to trust me, too.”

“That is the general idea, friend Fletcher,” he replied. “But at this delicate stage in the contact procedure we shouldn’t rush things.”

“Right,” said the captain. “I’ll bring the food, replacement wiring, and some simple, non-powered tools that I think will help in your work. They will be inside a transparent container so that the survivor and/or its robot will be able to see exactly what it is getting. I’m coming now.”

But when it was approaching the alien ship, the emotional radiation of the survivor became apprehensive and its robot left the compartment quickly on what was obviously an interception course. Prilicla followed it and, when it was plain that the captain was not to be allowed to enter the ship, he relieved the other of its package.

“Sorry, friend Fletcher,” he said as he did so, “I’m afraid that you’re still unwelcome here. But I’ve been thinking about a possible explanation for that, and for the high sensitivity these people have towards external physical contact, allied to the strange fact that, in both the ship and its crew robots, their defenses are ultra-short range. Surely that is a strange type of weapon to use in space.”

“The weapon used against them was not short-range,” said the captain. “It blew a large hole in their hull and, to a lesser degree, in the defunct crew robot we examined. But go on.”

“During your show,” Prilicla resumed, “I received the feeling that the survivor was being given information for the first time. There was excitement, wonder, but a strangely reduced level of surprise. It was almost as if the survivor was expecting, or maybe just hoping, to meet other life-forms in space. If I’m right, that would mean that interstellar travel was new to it, or that this was its first time out and it was exploring, perhaps even searching for the planet it has found. But when you showed the Hudla sequence, there I detected subtle changes in its emotions. There was an odd combination of fear, dread, hatred, and, strangely, familiarity. Hudla is not a pleasant world to people who are not Hudlars and, I would guess, neither is the survivor’s. I realize this is speculation but I have the feeling that it went out looking for another and better world. The presence of its ship in close orbit could mean that it found it.”

The other made a gesture of impatience. “An interesting theory, but it doesn’t take into account the fact that an as-yet unknown agency used an offensive weapon against it.”

Prilicla hated telling the captain that he thought it was wrong, especially at this short range because he would feel the other’s annoyance at full intensity. He said gently, “Are we quite sure about that? Consider the type of blast damage to the ship and the robot taken aboard Terragar, and that this species may be new to interstellar and hyperspatial flight and the distress beacons associated with it. Let’s suppose that they found an uninhabited planet, green and pleasant and without the violent meteorology of home and that they signaled its position by detonating—not a distress beacon because if they were new to space they would not expect rescue—but a similar device that would give an accurate position fix. The signaling device was untried and it blew up in their faces. That’s the one we suspected might be a weapons discharge. Terragar responded before we could and needed to detonate its own distress beacon. But the point I’m making is that the damage to the alien ship might have been accidental and self-inflicted.”

“I think you’re wishing rather than theorizing, Doctor,” said the captain; then, after a moment’s thought, “But it’s a nice theory. However, it doesn’t explain why their robots as well as their ship have such prickly hides. Plainly they were expecting someone or something to attack them. And if you still think I’m wrong, don’t waste time being polite about it.”

“Their defenses may be automatic,” said Prilicla. The captain did not reply. It was beginning to have doubts which meant that the reflected annoyance caused by Prilicla':

words would be reduced. He went on. “Consider the surface design of the ship’s outer hull as well as that of the robot’s skin. Those surfaces can be touched without harm by organic digits or simple, unsophisticated, non-powered tools. If we postulate a dense or highly disturbed atmosphere on their home world, a thick, protective, and streamlined covering would be necessary for survival, as it is on the Hudlars’ planet. But suppose they have an implacable natural enemy, perhaps an intelligent and technically advanced one, and the ship’s defensive weapons are needed only on their environmentally-hostile home planet during the periods of construction, takeoff, and landing.

“And if their implacable enemy bears a physical resemblance to you DBDGs,” he ended, “that would explain much.”

The captain made an untranslatable sound. “I suppose we’re lucky that they don’t have a phobia about outsized crabs or caterpillars, or six-legged elephants or even large flying insects,” it said, then went on briskly. “About this repair job, Doctor. There will be considerable physical and mental stress involved. The quality of any work suffers with the onset of fatigue, whatever the profession. While your mind is clear, can you estimate how long you will be able to function effectively before I should remind you to stop for rest?”

Prilicla gave an estimate that was on the generous side, knowing that the other would be sure to reduce it. Nothing more was said until he had returned to the alien’s control center, after which the captain rarely stopped talking, but the words and tone were continually reassuring.

“. . . Before its insulated cover was pulled apart by the accident,” Fletcher was saying, “the cable loom you are working on enclosed ten individual lines. The magnifier here tells me that they are too fine to carry a dangerous level of current. But their color-coding is the same as the heavier cables that run to and spread across the outer hull, so we may assume that they perform a similar communications and/or sensory function . . . Dammit,

I wish I could get in there with the proper tools. Don’t take that as a criticism, Doctor, you’re doing fine.”

Prilicla remained silent because the other had repeated its non-criticism and apology several times in the last hour, and he was feeling excited and hopeful rather than irritated. An internal, light-duty sensor and communications circuit was what he had been looking for because it might mean that he had found the broken connection between the comparatively uninjured and strongly emoting crew member and its partner. Putting them in touch with each other again should go a long way to proving their rescuers’ good intentions. Carefully and with the delicacy of touch possible only to one of his fragile race, he separated, stripped, and began to splice the severed ends of a wire that was almost hair-thin.

Suddenly he jerked his hands away as a burst of emotion exploded from the crew member at the other side of the control center. In spite of the distance it was strong, sharp, intensely uncomfortable, but brief. It faded within a few seconds and so, thankfully, did the accompanying feelings of anger.

“What happened?” said Fletcher sharply. “You jerked your hands away. Are you hurt?”

“No,” Prilicla replied; then after a moment’s thought he went on, “I must have joined two of the wrong wires. It made the survivor, maybe both of them, very uncomfortable for an instant. The emotional radiation was characteristic of a sharp, unpleasant sensation, as if someone was to cross our optic nerve with our aural input then make a loud noise. Sorry, I’ll have to be more careful.”

The captain exhaled loudly and said, “Yes. But it was a natural mistake because all the wiring in that loom has the same color-coding with subtle variations in shade. The magnifier’s enhanced imaging barely picks them up but your unassisted vision can’t, good as it is. Next time hold the wire ends to be joined where I can see them clearly for my okay, then, if it doesn’t cause

an adverse reaction, shield the other wires from it while you spray on the insulation. That way you won’t risk a bared, spliced length making contact or short-circuiting against an adjoining bare wire. Tell me if you’ve any doubts or problems about anything you intend doing, Doctor, otherwise carry on. I think you’re getting there.”

Prilicla carried on while the captain furnished technical and moral assistance. There were no more accidents, but there was an increasing level of emotional radiation emanating from the survivor on the undamaged section of the control center. It was not the sharp reaction characteristic of sudden discomfort, but a mixture of fear and hope so intense that his empathic faculty received it almost as a physical pain. Then suddenly there was a double explosion of feeling that made him pull back because his whole body, as well as his hands were trembling. Slowly he moved to the the inner door that he had not been allowed to enter and placed his stethoscope against the bare metal.

“Doctor, you’ve got the shakes,” said the captain urgently. “Is there anything

wrong with you? What’s happening?”

“Nothing is wrong with me,” said Prilicla unsteadily as he sought for his customary clinical calm. “To the contrary, friend Fletcher. The two survivors are now communicating with each other, presumably via the repaired circuitry. I’m trying to pick up their language sounds, with a view to programming it into our translation computer, but I can’t hear anything. Possibly there is not enough air to conduct sound or their speaking and hearing organs are enclosed in some kind of helmet.”

“Almost certainly that is due to their control sections losing internal pressure,” the other said excitedly. “How are they feeling now?”

“At present their emotional radiation is complex and confused although it is beginning to clear,” Prilicla replied as he tried to describe feelings that could not be adequately conveyed in mere words. “There is a combination of relief, excitement, and concern that is due, I feel sure, to the reestablishment of interpersonal communication and the up-to-the-minute exchange of information. That information would include the first survivor’s reaction to the things we have been doing for it as well as a description of the physical condition of the second survivor which, my empathy tells me, is not good. Something will have to be done for the second one as a matter of clinical urgency. Underlying the emotional radiation from both sources, but still strong enough to be unmistakable, there are feelings of gratitude.”

“Good!” said the captain. “If they’re feeling grateful then they must know that you’re trying to help them. But do you think they’re ready to to trust us, all of us, after your good deed?”

Prilicla was silent for a moment as he concentrated on the two sources of

emotional radiation, one of them attenuated with distance and the closer one faint because of physical weakness and distress, then he said, “There is still a persistent background fear in both entities that is due, I feel sure, to the fact that both of them are now aware of the presence of their feared and hated DBDG bogeyman. I may be wrong because I’m am empath, rather than a telepath, but I feel that they aren’t yet ready to make friends with their worst nightmare. Something more must be done to help gain their trust, and my good deed has yet to be completed.”

The captain did not ask the obvious question because it knew that the answer was forthcoming. Prilicla went on. “My close-range analysis of the second survivor’s emotional radiation indicates that its body is so debilitated that it barely retains the ability to think coherently. There is increasing physical discomfort, combined with a feeling of urgency and intense, personal fear that is characteristic of a being who is close to terminal suffocation, or dehydration, or both. To complete our good deed more repairs are needed, to restore their air and working fluid supply.”

“So now you’ve delusions of being a plumber as well as a electrician,” said the captain, and laughed. “Right, Doctor, what exactly will you need?”

“As before, friend Fletcher, I need directions,” Prilicla replied, “because I have no idea how to proceed. But first I want to show the robot, who is the eyes for at least one of the survivors the sections of damaged piping that I’ll be trying to repair or replace. While I’m doing that, you can assess the situation and tell me what needs to be done and how to go about doing it using replacement material and basic, non-powered tools from Rhabwar.

“Also,” he went on, “I’ve noticed traces of vapor around some of the fractured piping in here, indicating the escape of residual atmosphere or moisture although it could, I suppose, be the remains of a toxic fluid used in a hydraulic actuator. While you’re assessing the repair requirements with me, I’ll bag samples and use my medical analyzer on it. If it is air or water rather than something toxic, please reproduce it in bulk and send it over in transparent containers. If the containers are marked with the same color-codings as that of the supply pipes we’re going to replace, that might further reassure the survivors. Leave everything loosely tethered to the hull where I came on board for me to pick up.

“We’ve fixed it so that they can talk to each other,” he ended, “but the conversation will be short if one of them stops breathing.”

The next two hours he passed surveying the repair job, identifying the color-codings, and isolating the fractured piping to be joined. He knew that the work would be less delicate than splicing the damaged wiring, but the captain had grave doubts about his ability to perform it.

“This isn’t anything like brain surgery, Doctor,” it said. “What you’ll need is brute force rather than delicacy of touch. Your digits were never made to handle manually-operated metal-cutters, the only kind these people will allow near them, and heavy spanners. And your body is far too fragile to exert the leverage that may be required. A pair of Earth-human hands with muscular backup are needed for this job. I should be in there helping you.”

Prilicla did not reply, and the captain went on quickly, “I’ll run another external visual for them, the one showing ship repairs being carried out simultaneously by several different species including Earth-humans. After what you’ve already done for them, they might be more inclined to forget their DBDG phobia enough to trust me a little. I’ll wear a lightweight suit, with no powered instruments other than the radio and a small cutting torch, and carry the piping and tools in transparent containers as you suggested. Working together the repairs will take a fraction of the time you’d need otherwise, and if one of them is running out of air . . .”

“I’m sorry, that will not be possible right now . . .” he began.

“At least let me try, Doctor,” the other broke in. “I can be over there with all we’ll need in less than an hour.”

“. . . Because, friend Fletcher,” he ended, “in less than ten minutes’ time, as soon as I finish analyzing these air and fluid samples, I’ll be asleep.”

CHAPTER 19

As Prilicla had expected, the robot crew member’s actions showed great agitation on the part of its organic controller when the captain met him outside the hull and tried to enter the ship. He had to point several times at the lengths of piping the other was carrying and demonstrate, both by slicing one of the lengths of piping into pieces with the tiny flame of the cutter and then by turning on the cylinder taps briefly and releasing a small quantity of their contents into space to show that they contained only gas, before the captain was allowed to come on board. By the time they were in the damaged control section it was clear from the emotional radiation of both survivors that the DBDG was feared as much as it was trusted, and that the emotional balance could swing either way.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “do not make any sudden movements that might be mistaken for a threat. In fact, until they become accustomed to your presence it would be better if you did nothing except pass tools and parts to me, and generally give the impression that I am your superior until I indicate—”

“As you are fond of reminding me, Doctor,” it said dryly, “on the disaster site you have the rank.”

The words were sarcastic but the emotional radiation that accompanied them was free of rancor. Prilicla went on. “. . . until

I indicate to the survivors by acting out the requirement several times that I need your physical assistance. We’re lucky that their emotional radiation will tell me whether or not they understand what I’m trying to do.”

It wasn’t very long before he ran into trouble. One of the piping conduits had been twisted out of true so that the joints and lock-nuts were jammed. They were too tight, or at least too tight for Prilicla to move.

Several times he went through the motions of trying to loosen it, then he pointed at the captain’s larger and stronger hands, withdrew, and indicated that the other should take over. The robot edged closer, its damaged metal surfaces somehow reflecting the fear and concern that its masters were feeling.

“You take over, friend Fletcher,” he said. “But move slowly, they’re still terrified of you.”

The captain had to move slowly because it required several minutes of maximum effort, and the cooling element in its suit was just barely keeping the perspiration from fogging its visor, before the sticking lock-nut was loosened, removed, and fitted with a joint that would take the replacement piping. It chose a length that was already fitted with a T-junction and valve, and it took much less time for it to cut the pipe to size and make the join. Prilicla passed in the length of hose from the two air tanks, which was attached to the junction. Several times the captain indicated the color-coding on the old and new piping and the tanks. The robot had moved into the inspection compartment and was crowding the captain but not hampering its hands.

“I’m detecting great anxiety,” said Prilicla; then, reassuringly, “but there is also a feeling of comprehension. I think they understand what we’re trying to do for them. I’m turning on the air now.”

The earlier analyses had shown that the survivor’s atmosphere was similar to that used by the majority of the warmblooded, oxygen-breathing species. No attempt had been made to include the trace quantities of other gases so that the mixture going in was in the usual proportion of oxygen to nitrogen. For several minutes there was no emotional reaction either from the distressed survivor or the other who was in contact with it; then, suddenly, a slow trembling shook Prilicla’s whole body.

“What’s wrong?” said the captain.

“Nothing,” he replied. “The breathing distress of the second survivor is being treated although it is still suffering, possibly from hunger, thirst, or injuries, and both of them are now radiating intense, positive feelings of relief and gratitude which are giving me emotional pleasure. They are still afraid of you, but their hatred and distrust are diminishing. Well done, friend Fletcher.”

“Well done yourself,” said the captain, radiating embarrassment at the compliment. “Now that we’ve helped it to breathe, let’s see if we can give it something to drink and eat as well. There is staining around the broken end of one of these pipes that looks like it might be dried-out liquid food. If your analyzer confirms that, we could—”

“No, friend Fletcher,” he broke in, “there might not be time for that. Psychologically the second survivor’s condition has improved but I feel the presence of increasingly severe debilitation associated with physical trauma. From now on we have to know exactly what we’re doing, or be told exactly what to do, and do it fast. You brought spare air tanks, more than was needed for the recent first-aid operation. If we empty them, would there be enough atmospheric pressure to enable us to breathe and allow the transmission of sound?”

He felt the other’s initial puzzlement dissolve into comprehension as it said, “So you’re going to try talking to them and asking for directions. If we knew anything about their communications setup, especially how they convert radio into audio frequency, we could simply talk on our own radios. As it is, we aren’t sure yet whether or not they have ears.”

It shook its head and went on. “The answer to your question is, I don’t know. This section was close to the area of hull damage and might leak like a sieve. We could try.”

Prilicla said, “Yes, but not here. We’ll move back to the undamaged section with the first survivor. All of the access panels in that compartment are a tight fit, probably an airtight fit, as is the entrance door and the one into the area containing the survivor. This is probably a crew safety measure and part of the ship design philosophy. To increase the effect I’ll spray on some of my plastic sealant. It won’t stop the doors from being opened later, but it will ensure minimum leakage. While I’m doing that, you will want to make arrangements with Rhabwar.”

“That I will,” said the captain. It withdrew from the tiny inspection chamber, closed the access hatch tightly, and began talking rapidly into its suit radio as it followed him to the other control section. By the time it had finished talking, Prilicla had the compartment sealed and compressed air was hissing visibly and then audibly from the fully opened tank valves.

“We don’t seem to be losing any air,” said the captain after a few minutes, “and the pressure is high enough to carry sound, or even to open our helmets, supposing we were mad enough to do that.”

“I believe we are mad enough, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “Folding back our helmets will be a further sign that we trust them and wish to be friends, as well as removing the small additional voice distortion caused by our external speakers. I hope our robot friend can hear and speak as well as see. Is Rhabwar ready?”

“Projector and translation computer standing by,” the captain replied, unsealing its helmet. “You speak first, Doctor. A privilege of rank.”

With the words there was a complex, background feeling of excitement, expectation, and minor relief characteristic of a personally embarrassing situation to be avoided should the attempt fail. Prilicla’s own feeling was that it wouldn’t.

He bent a forelimb almost double and pointed at himself. Slowly and distinctly he said, “Prilicla, Prilicla, Prilicla. I am Prilicla.” Then he pointed behind towards the inner door, and waited. When there was no response he indicated the captain and nodded for it to try. The rapid, musical clicking of untranslated Cinrusskin speech was difficult for other species to follow.

“Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher,” said the captain, indicating itself before pointing in the same direction as Prilicla.

The robot made a short, sharp sound like the squeaking of a rusty hinge.

“Was that a word, dammit,” said the captain in an angry undertone, “or a malfunctioning robot?”

“A word, maybe more than one,” Prilicla replied. “It heard us, and I felt a flash of understanding and urgency. Maybe its words are rapid, compressed, as in Nallajim. Let’s try again, and speak very slowly. Maybe it will do the same.

“Pril-ic-la,” he said slowly three times, repeating the earlier motions. The captain said and did the same.

“Keet,” said the robot. A moment later it added, “Pil-ik-la, Flet-cha.”

Prilicla gestured towards the sealed door in front of them and said, “Keet,” then pointed back at the compartment they had just left.

“Jas-am,” came the reply.

“We’re talking!” For a moment the captain’s relief and pleasure at the breakthrough swamped most of the survivor’s emotional radiation, but not the urgency.

“Not yet,” Prilicla said. “We’re exchanging personal-name sounds, but it’s only a start.”

“Rhabwar here,” the voice of Haslam sounding in their earpieces said. “I’m afraid the Doctor is right, Captain. The computer needs more for an accurate translation: verbs, accompanying actions, explanations, and a bigger vocabulary to link the words together.”

“Friend Haslam,” he said, “Show the pictures of planets and native species again, please, but just those for Earth and Cinruss. Then patch in one of the survivor life-forms and a world with no geographical features.”

Prilicla watched the tiny repeater screen in his suit as this was done. He said, “Fletcher is from Earth, Prilicla is from Cinruss, Keet is from . . .” and waited.

Without hesitation the voice from the robot said, “Flet-cha, Ert; Pil-ik-la, Cin-russ; Keet, Tro-lan.”

“We’re getting there, Doctor,” Haslam said excitedly; then, in a tone almost of apology it went on. “Names and places of origin help, but they aren’t enough for the computer to begin structuring the language. We still need verbs and related actions.”

Unlike its outsize parent in Sector General, Rhabwar’s translation computer did not carry a record of all of the intelligence-bearing clicks, moans, hisses, and chirps that were used as speech by the members of the Galactic Federation, a vast store of data which enabled it to compare the input of the new languages that were discovered from time to time and produce a translation. But the ambulance ship had proved on several previous occasions that it could do the same job, with a little on-site help.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, pointing at the material in the other’s transparent satchel, “I need a short piece of fine cable that can be pulled apart easily, and a short length of piping. Do you have one that is thin-walled and breaks without shattering into pieces?”

He felt the captain’s puzzlement dissolve in a flood of comprehension. It produced the cable, wrapped it around his hand and pulled it apart, then he produced—not a pipe, but a length of thin sleeving—and snapped it in two before handing the four pieces to him. It said, “Yes and no, Doctor. This breaks without splintering, but it needs an Earth-human’s muscles to do it.”

Prilicla indicated a section of undamaged piping through one of the transparent access hatches, then pointed back the way they had come towards the other survivor’s position. Holding a piece of the broken pipe in each hand, he brought

them slowly together at the faces of the original fracture and did the same with the severed wiring. He repeated the movements several time before speaking.

“Wire, pipes,” he said, pointing at the captain and himself. “We join wires and pipes. We fix wires and pipes. We repair"— he made a wide gesture that included the ship all around them— “everything.”

Through its robot crew member’s sensors, the first survivor already knew that they repaired things, although it had not known the word for what they had been doing. He waited, straining to detect the first feelings of comprehension that would tell him that it understood the other, more important message that he was trying to send. And when the crew robot spoke again, he knew that it did.

“Pil-ik-la, Flet-cha,” it said. “Fix Jasam.”

The captain gave a loud, barking laugh of sheer relief, which it cut short abruptly in case it might have been mistaken for a threatening sound by the survivor. On Rhabwar, Haslam sounded equally pleased.

“That’s it!” said the lieutenant. “We have a translation. Just talk to it naturally and mime only if you think it might not understand a new action. The conversation will be a bit stilted until you build up a vocabulary, but the computer is happy. I’m relaying the translation through your headsets. Nice work. Any other instructions?”

Prilicla’s body was shaking with a slow, even tremor of pleasure and relief that was tempered slightly by the remembered emotional radiation from the second survivor, Jasam, which indicated that clinically it was in very bad shape.

“Stand by, friend Haslam,” he said. “I need you to project more pictures. Edit the previous run to show only the recovery of space-wreck casualties, then add something on their transfer to and treatment on Rhabwar. Be brief regarding the treatment, too much detail on surgical procedures might give the impression that we go in for physical torture. Concentrate on the before-and-after aspects, the badly injured casualties, and then showing them cured. Run them as soon as you can.”

Turning towards the inner door and the robot hovering in front of it, he brought the two pieces of pipe together slowly and said, “I fix slowly,” and repeated the action and words several times; then he moved them quickly into contact and said, “I fix quickly.” Then he pointed back the way they had come and added, “I fix Jasam quickly,” emphasizing the last word.

He felt understanding and agreement coloring the ever-present deep concern, and said, “Keet, the word for that is 'yes.''

He pointed in the direction of Jasam and used the broken pipe to indicate, he hoped, that they were both broken. Then he raised a hand to his eyes before pointing first at an undamaged section of piping and then at the inner door of Keet’s compartment.

“To fix the broken Jasam,” he mimed as he said the words, “I must see the unbroken Keet.”

Again there was understanding, but with it there was a sudden return of the earlier fear and hatred.

“Keep that accursed druul away from us!” it said, so loudly that it must have been its equivalent of a shout. “I don’t trust it! We are both weakened and helpless and it will eat us. We thought that interstellar space, at least, would be clear of such vermin!”

Prilicla tried to ignore the captain’s scandalized emotional radiation, and said reassuringly, “Don’t be afraid, Fletcher won’t touch you. Fletcher fixes machines. Prilicla fixes people.”

The captain’s low-voiced comment was lost in the sound of the inner door hissing open.

It revealed a small compartment whose interior was an almost-solid mass of support brackets, piping, and cable runs leading into a flattened oval dish at its center. The upper half of the receptacle had a sealed, transparent cover that gave a clear view of the co-captain of the ship. Physically Keet was classification CHLI and closely resembled its robot crew member in size and shape except that instead of the silvery metal skin there was the veined brownish-pink of organic tissue. A continuous control-and-sensor-input panel laterally encircled the inner surface of the body container, and the operating keys were within easy reach of the creature’s short digits. Its food, water-supply, and waste-extraction systems had been surgically implanted into the relevant organs.

Prilicla’s body shook briefly with a feeling composed of pity, revulsion, and the claustrophobic fear known only to free-flying beings like himself when he realized that the ship’s organic crew had been confined to their control and life-support pods with no freedom to move, not even around their own ship.

They had been installed with the rest of the ship’s equipment.

From his medical satchel he took his scanner, reversed it so that Keet could see the viewplate, and demonstrated its function by touching it against parts of his own body, before moving it close to the other’s pod.

“This will not hurt you,” he said. “It will enable me to see inside your body so that I can understand and fix anything that is wrong.”

“Will you be able to fix Jasam, too?”

Its speech was going and coming through his translator now, clearly and with the possibility for misunderstanding being reduced with every word. The prime rule during a first-contact situation was to find out as much a possible about the other life-form so as to further reduce that risk, and to tell the truth at all times.

But it was also sound medical practice to encourage a patient to talk about itself, or any other pleasant subject in which it was interested, so as to take its mind off a frightening or possibly embarrassing examination.

“I will try to fix Jasam,” he said. “But to do that, I must first discover everything I can about you and your people. For the best results I would like to have full knowledge, even though there is no way of knowing which pieces of information will be helpful during the repairs, so just tell me about your partner, your lives, your customs, the food you eat, and the things you like to do. In the event of an unsuccessful repair, which is a faint possibility, who and where are your next of kin? You are a completely new and scientifically advanced life-form and everything you say will be interesting and useful.

“Tell me about yourself, and your world.”

CHAPTER 20

A few minutes into the examination there was an interruption. The two courier ships had arrived and, although they were keeping station at the requested distance, their impatience for a full report on the situation could almost be felt. The courier captains’ voices were being relayed through Rhabwar to the alien ship so that Prilicla and Fletcher, but not the alien casualties, could hear them.

“This is not a good time to stop and make reports, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla without looking up from the scanner. “Just tell them that . . .”

“I know what to tell them,” said the other, and went on briskly. “A very delicate first-contact situation is proceeding as we speak. The alien vessel has a crew of two, both physiological classification CHLI; one is seriously injured and the other less so. The medical examination and the contact procedure are being conducted by Dr. Prilicla and are complicated by the fact that the casualties have a rabid fear of all DBDG life-forms regardless of size, apparently because of our close resemblance to a natural enemy on their home planet. All of the proceedings so far have been recorded in case of accidents, but I ask that you wait to avoid taking back an incomplete report that could be updated from hour to hour.”

“Understood, sir,” came the reply. “Over and listening out.”

At first the casualty seemed anxious to talk about the druul, and how much its race hated and feared them, rather than about its world or itself. The proximity of Fletcher was doubtless responsible for that. Prilicla continued to speak and to radiate verbal and emotional reassurance while he plied his scanner and the captain kept its distance. Gradually the subject widened but it always veered back to the hated druul. Keet’s species called themselves the Trolanni, and their world Trolann, and over the past few centuries it had become a savage, frightful place of unending war for its diminishing resources against the druul

and the other organic and inorganic pollutants that were fast making the once-populous world uninhabitable for both of its intelligent species, as well as for most other forms of life above the insect level.

Many attempts had been made to check the self-poisoning of their overcrowded world and to impose strict controls on the high degree of industrialization needed to support it if irreversible chemical changes were not to increase the level of toxicity to the point where the planetary biosphere would no longer be able to support life. But preventative and curative measures on that scale required personal sacrifices, self-control, and the cooperation of everyone concerned. A large minority of the Trolanni, and all of the druul, refused to give it.

Possibly there were individuals who thought differently, but as a population the druul decided that the problem would be solved if the Trolanni and their food supply were considered a natural resource and used exclusively for the benefit and continued survival of the druul.

As a species the druul were small, bipedal, vicious, fast-breeding, and utterly implacable where enemies, sapient or otherwise, were concerned. From the dawn of history their rate of scientific and technological achievement had been equal to the Trolanni, so that the wars they had fought had been forced to a stop rather than being won. In spite of many peace overtures by the Trolanni, the two species had lived in a state of unfriendly coexistence until a war that was no longer stoppable was being fought for the diminishing resources of the stinking, polluted, near-corpse that was their planet. For many generations the druul had practiced cannibalism, eating even the sickly young or the elderly or otherwise unproductive people of their own race. They could not be defeated because there were always more of them hungry and ready to fight. Apart from a few pockets of weakening resistance and the latest Trolanni technology which defended them, the planet belonged to the druul.

The only solution was for the Trolanni to find a new, unpolluted and peaceful home.

“You found a new home here,” said Prilicla gently. “What went wrong?”

“A technical failure of some kind,” said Keet, radiating feelings of minor embarrassment and apology. “I’m not the propulsion specialist. After finding an ideal world it seemed as if we couldn’t return home with the news. But we had signaling devices, two of them, untried because none of the searchsuits had used them before then. The first one malfunctioned and seriously damaged the hull. The second one was modified, but it destroyed the doll who released it. Then the ship with the druuls in it arrived.”

“They weren’t druuls,” said Prilicla. “It was a rescue ship that came to help you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Keet. “I know that, now.”

Prilicla withdrew the scanner and moved back. He had all the physiological data he needed for a preliminary assessment of the other casualty’s condition, but a lot more non-medical information was needed. He said, “I’ll stay in contact with you, but we’re moving over to look at Jasam now. Tell it not to be afraid; neither friend Fletcher nor myself mean it any harm. Why did you attack the first rescue ship?”

“We didn’t,” it replied quickly. “It attacked our protective suit . . .”

For the few minutes it took them to transfer to the other control module, Prilicla listened to Keet’s reassuring words to its life-mate and felt the growing trust in Fletcher and himself that accompanied them even though they were feelings that Jasam had yet to share.

“. . . That is what the druul have been doing to us for hundreds of years,” it continued, “and many of our scientists think that they no longer know why they do it. As individuals they are predominantly machines designed to attack and penetrate our protective suits, as a nut is cracked to uncover its edible kernel, although all too often the kernel itself is destroyed by the ferocity of the onslaught so that there is no reward for the tiny, organic fraction that controls the machines they have become. We Trolanni, at least, are whole, sapient, and civilized, if very sickly, people inside our protective suits, although with this two-body searchsuit with its vastly greater proportion of machine-to-or-ganic life, we were forced to become more like the druul . . .”

So they thought of their ship as a searchsuit, a bigger, more complex and specialized version of the individual protective garment than those that the planet-based druul forced them to wear. Interesting. Prilicla could feel the captain’s mounting excitement as Keet continued speaking, but he knew that friend Fletcher would not interrupt the flow of information with a question that would shortly be answered.

“. . . In this instance,” it went on, “our hull protection was designed to safeguard us for the short time we were in atmosphere before we entered space, where so far the druul have been unable to go. The protection operates continuously in a state of high alert, and instantly disrupts the computer-operated control and life-support systems of any attacking machine-encased druul. But we never expected to find them, or beings just like them, between the stars. That was terrifying for us and there was nothing we could do.”

“It would help us to help Jasam and yourself,” Prilicla said gently, “if your protective device could be switched off. Can it?”

“No,” said Keet, “at least not by us. To do that, specialist knowledge and devices are needed and these are available only on our home world. It must not be switched off because its protection is needed during our second trip through atmosphere, hopefully on our way home to report success in finding a new world. But instead . . . Please, will Jasam live?”

Sometimes, Prilicla thought, as he noted the damage to its life-mate as well as the traces of dried body fluid that were staining the joins where the metal and organic interface was visible, it was not always advisable to tell the truth even in a first-contact situation.

“There is a strong possibility that we’ll be able to save its life,” he said.

“But not in here,” said the captain on their personal frequency that did not go through the translator. Quickly and concisely it went on to explain why while Prilicla tried to provide a more optimistic translation for the two Trolanni, continuing his scanner examination of the second casualty as he spoke.

Jasam’s injuries had been due to the structural damage to its side of the searchsuit, caused by the explosive failure of the first beacon they had released, which in turn had caused multiple fracturing and dislocation of the life-support plumbing that had been surgically implanted into its body. Its resultant external and internal wounds were extensive and serious, he explained, but with the right treatment they would not be life-threatening. He personally had repaired organic damage that was much more severe and had returned the entity concerned to full health.

“But in this case,” he went on, “the right treatment would first involve removing Jasam and yourself from your vessel—”

“And leave us without a suit!” Keet broke in. “And, and life support? We’ve already lost our dolls—Jasam’s destroyed, and mine damaged beyond the ability to do sensitive repair work. No!”

They called their robot crew members “dolls,” Prilicla thought, and the accompanying emotional radiation was indicative of the feelings held for a friend and helper as well as for a pet or plaything. Curious—but satisfying that curiosity would have to wait until the more urgent problem of removing them from their ship-sized protective suit was settled.

“On Trolann,” he went on, projecting reassurance with every ounce of empathic

energy in his mind, “there must be doctors, healers, beings who cure or repair organic disease or damage. To perform this work effectively there must be easy access to the site of the trouble, so am I correct in thinking that they prefer the sick or injured patient to be unclothed?”

“Yes,” said Keet. “But that is on Trolann. Out here . . .”

“Out here,” said Prilicla gently, “you would be much safer. Rhabwar, the ship that you see nearby, was expressly designed for and contains all the equipment necessary to do such work, and it has done it many times. But the equipment is both bulky and highly sensitive. If it was to be moved to your vessel, a difficult job in itself, there would be a serious risk of the ship’s protective devices disabling its computer-operated circuitry, as it does with the druul machines. There isn’t much time left. Your life-support consumables, Jasam’s especially, have leaked away and are close to exhaustion.

“If both of you are to survive,” he ended, “You must agree and I must act, quickly.”

There was a moment’s silence while Keet radiated growing uncertainty, then it said, “Both of us? I, I thought one of us would stay in our searchsuit until the organic and mechanical repairs were done, then Jasam would be reinserted and . . . There is very little organic damage to myself.”

“I know,” said Prilicla. “But I will need your help and advice for the extraction process. You will be conscious and aware and will be able to tell us exactly what we have to do at every stage, and we will be able to use the experience more easily to detach your more seriously injured life-mate. We have already analyzed and reproduced your food, air, and working fluid, the last two of which are very similar to our own. My present plan is to put both of you into a covered litter that contains all your life-support requirements, and where you will be able to give close, emotional support to Jasam during the transfer to our ship and the organic-repair work afterwards.”

There was another silence, then Keet said, “Detaching Jasam is a difficult and specialized job that is done only in case of an onboard emergency by a doll. Jasam’s doll was killed in the first explosion and mine was damaged in the second. The control circuitry serving the forward cluster of fine, peripheral digits, the ones needed for a complete body extraction, was burned out. My doll is incapable of the delicate work that would be required. It is certain that we will both die.”

“That is not certain,” said Prilicla, “and is not even likely. Controlled by our own sensitive digits will be even finer and more delicate mechanisms that are capable of doing the work. We are widely experienced in the extraction of damaged organic casualties from the wreckage of starships, and friend Fletcher will make a very good doll.”

The captain made a noise that did not translate.

CHAPTER 21

When Lieutenant Dodds and the covered litter arrived it was met by Keet’s doll and quickly escorted forward to Prilicla and Fletcher in the control section. Guided by its mistress and in spite of the impaired movement of its finer digits, the doll was able to help and occasionally hinder Prilicla and the captain during the long and physically uncomfortable process of detaching and extricating Keet from the mass of control, communications, and life-support plumbing. It was a present and obvious subject of interest to both Fletcher and himself, and in an attempt to keep the Trolanni’s mind off the continuing discomfort they were inflicting as well as its deep concern for Jasam, whose communications line they had been forced to sever temporarily, Prilicla began to question it with gentle persistence about the dolls.

It was an interesting change of subject.

“I don’t know why you find them of such interest,” Keet protested, radiating minor embarrassment. “They are toys, playthings, used mainly by the very young, or some adults who feel the need to remind themselves of the kind of people that we used to be in the past, when we could move freely and swim and climb and play together and touch without being weighed down and smothered by heavy and uncomfortable protective suits. The dolls are lifelike, life-sized, and closely modeled after their owners, and while the children’s are simple both in mind and structure, those of the adults are highly sophisticated, and are capable of a wide range of supportive functions and recreational activities which their owners can enjoy vicariously and which in many cases answers a psychological need.

“Jasam and I,” Keet went on, “were to be enclosed permanently in a searchsuit where, for operational reasons, we would be close but unable to make physical contact for the rest of our lives. The project psychologists decided that a crew of two specialized dolls—in design and function the most versatile and intelligent to be built—would operate and maintain our search-suit and, it was thought, the fact that they were exact copies of ourselves would help reduce our feelings of loss and loneliness and so maintain our sanity.”

Prilicla reached into the restricted space the captain and the robot had cleared for him in the dense mass of plumbing, and put a tiny clamp on the fine tube that carried the liquefied food from the nearly empty reservoir through Keet’s abdominal wall. It was a little like brain surgery, he thought, involving as it did the manipulation of delicate organs in a very confined space. He concentrated on the work for several minutes until he was satisfied with it, then withdrew before speaking.

“Did they?” he said.

“They did,” it ended, “until we found this fresh, lovely, and untouched world and our position beacons blew up, and your rescue ship blundered onto the scene.” It paused, then added, “I don’t think you, or your druul-like helper, are blundering now.”

“Thank you,” said Prilicla, knowing that Keet’s feelings were backing up its words. “But now we have to transfer you to the litter and attend to some superficial wounding caused by the extraction. The treatment will be quick and simple, a few sutures and the application of a healing ointment suited to your metabolism. You won’t have an adverse reaction to it because it is identical to one of the medications carried in your doll’s medical kit which, you will remember, we analyzed and reproduced earlier. Ready everyone?”

It was like moving a limp, half-cooked pancake through a three-dimensional maze of barbed wire, the captain said on their private frequency. Prilicla had no idea what a pancake was, his only Earth-human food weakness being spaghetti, and had to take the other’s word for it. But finally they had Keet out of its control cocoon, its wounds treated, and resting comfortably in the litter.

“What now?” it said.

“Now,” Prilicla replied, “we seal the litter and move it into Jasam’s section, reconnect the communications line so you’ll be able to tell it what has been happening while friend Fletcher and I do the same for our own people who must make preparations to receive two new casualties. After that . . . My apologies, I need to sleep again.”

While they were moving the litter to the other section of the control center, Prilicla quickly explained the situation to Pathologist Murchison while transmitting visuals of the scene that were being relayed to the surface by Rhabwar. The ground facility was more spacious than the ambulance ship’s casualty deck, and all of his medical staff as well as the Terragar survivors were there. Keet and Jasam were talking together and the captain was about to begin his situation report, both of which were being recorded in case he needed to refer to them later, when he suddenly lost touch with reality.

Captain Fletcher looked at the sleeping Prilicla, lowered his voice, and, using a frequency that the two aliens could overhear, spoke briskly.

“Courier Vessel One,” he said. “We can now report that the distressed alien ship is non-hostile and that the damage inflicted on Terragar was due to a combination of ignorance and a close-range defense system of high lethality that instantly kills any ship’s computer-controlled systems, but not the living organic contents, that touches it. This defense system remains active and is an extreme danger to any investigating ship—regardless of size and armament—making a close approach. It is imperative that you remain at your present distance and that all other vessels be forbidden to enter this system until a countermeasure has been found.

“The ship’s planet of origin is Trolann,” it went on, “location as yet unknown, where the Trolanni are losing a war that has lasted for many centuries with another indigenous species, the druul, with whom it has been impossible to come to an accommodation. Physically the druul bear a close resemblance to the DBDG physiological classification, a fact which initially made the first-contact procedure very difficult because they looked on Rhabwars Earth-human personnel as natural enemies rather than rescuers. Now I believe that we have done enough to earn their trust . . .”

“Our limited trust,” Keet broke in. “I trust Prilicla, and to a lesser extent you, because you do as it asks and seem anxious to help us, but Jasam remains fearful and untrusting. About the other ones who look like dmuls, I, too, am uncertain.”

“But that,” said the captain, “is because you haven’t seen them helping you as Prilicla and I have been doing. Their work is in the background, but it is being done. They are not, never were, nor ever will be like the druul. May I continue with my report?

“The Trolanni are of physiological classification CHLI,” he went on when Keet did not reply, “warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, although there is very little breathable oxygen remaining on their heavily polluted planet. They describe themselves as an embattled minority of . . . Keet, what is the total number of Trolanni on your planet?”

“Just under one hundred thousand,” it replied promptly.

“As few as that?” said the captain, its face paling as it returned to its report and went on. “In that case, and bearing in mind the fact that the Trolanni have a limited space-travel capability, I strongly recommend that the Federation mount a disaster-relief and evacuation operation to move them from their virtually uninhabitable planet to another world, the world below us, in fact, which Keet and Jasam found for their people before their ship was damaged in an attempt to signal its location. I further recommend that provision be made to interdict all druul offensive operations until the Trolanni are evacuated safely, after which, if cultural reeducation is possible, we should determine the druul’s needs for continued survival and . . .”

Inside the litter canopy, Keet’s body was twitching in great agitation. It said, “Aren’t you going to kill them all, or at least let them die fighting among themselves? That’s what they’ll do if there’s nobody else to fight. Or maybe you can’t kill them. Maybe you’re favorably disposed towards them, more so than towards the Trolanni, because the druul look like you. I’m sorry, but I think we were right about you from the start. A helpful, apparently friendly druul is still a druul. You disappoint us, Fletcher.”

The captain shook his head. “Our physically similar appearance has nothing to do with it. On Earth there are creatures shaped like humans. In our prehistory, we developed intelligence and ultimately civilization, but they did not, and to this day remain non-sapient animals. They are not evil in themselves but are governed by animal instincts that sometimes make them a danger to humans, and for this reason they are confined, restricted, and cared for in their own areas where they cannot harm us. If the druul are thinking animals, implacable, vicious, unable to be taught civilized ways, or are incapable of governing their own instincts and behavior, that—if it is possible for us to do it—is what would happen to them. They would be isolated and Trolann would be interdicted by the Federation and no contact with any other species allowed.

“But we would not exterminate a species just because its long-term enemy thought it was warranted,” the captain ended. “The druul and you may not be able to view each other or your problem with objectivity. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to return to my report—”

The captain resumed his description of the situation on the alien ship and their plans for resolving it while at the same time, by implication, mentally preparing the Trolanni casualties for what was to come by describing the structural problems of casualty extraction before the medical problems could be solved. But Keet was finding it difficult to remain silent.

“Prilicla and you are all right, I suppose,” Keet said, “but are strangers of your kind going to be handling us? That would frighten Jasam and me very much. He might hurt himself even more trying to fight you off. We’d rather Prilicla did everything. We like it.”

“Everybody likes Prilicla,” said Fletcher, looking aside at the sleeping empath, “but physically it is too weak to do everything itself. That’s why it will need heavy cutting equipment and the help of Dodds and Chen, two other Earth-humans like myself, to clear a path to and enclose the area in a pressure envelope before Prilicla can begin treating Jasam’s injuries. But all of us, in my ship and on the surface are the same as Prilicla. We all want to help cure Jasam and yourself. While we’re doing that, you’ll come to know all of us, and trust us, and tell us how we can help your people.”

For a long time there was silence while the captain crawled about in the wreckage surrounding Jasam’s control pod, marking structural members that would have to be cut away, lengths of plumbing to be sealed off, and talking quietly. Everything he said formed part of his report including—although the Trolanni might not have realized it—the conversations with Keet and all the recorded material on the Terragar landing and casualties.

Everything went into a first-contact report.

“Jasam is very worried,” said Keet suddenly, “in case there are healers on the surface who look like you. If there are, he doesn’t want them to touch him. He says he’d rather die. Why don’t we go to the hospital you showed us, where there are many healers who don’t look like the druul?”

In a first-contact situation the rule was to tell the truth but

to keep it as simple as possible. The captain said, “My ship has been ordered to remain in this vicinity to warn off any other vessels who might want to investigate your searchsuit and suffer damage as a result. On Rhabwar there are four Earth-human ship’s officers including myself, and four healers. Prilicla, you already know, is in charge; then an Earth-human female called Murchison who looks, well, somewhat different than me; a Kel-gian who has twenty legs and is covered with mobile fur; and a shape-changer called Danalta who can look like anything or everything, even a Trolanni if it thought that shape would be reassuring to you or your life-mate. There are also three Earth-humans who are badly damaged. The medical team, with the exception of Prilicla, are down there in a special healing facility, taking care of them. None of them, not even the Terragar casualties, will want to harm you while you get to know us better. Besides, the repairing of physical damage isn’t everything. We think that it might make you feel better and assist your non-medical healing if you were to spend some time recuperating on the beautiful world Jasam and yourself have discovered for the Trolanni.”

There was no reply, and the short silence was broken by the quiet voice of Prilicla speaking on the captain’s private frequency.

“I’ve been awake for the past few minutes,” he said, “and I could not have handled the situation better if I’d done it myself. Thank you, friend Fletcher. Keet is feeling greatly comforted and Jasam, who is still anxious and barely conscious, shares its life-mate’s reassurance. This would be a good time to call in friends Dodds and Chen.”

During the next three hours, while the damaged area surrounding Jasam’s control pod was being isolated in a temporary pressure bubble and excised from its surrounding control actuators, plumbing, and wiring, the lines between technical and medical work were frequently blurred by the fact that Rhabwar’s officers were doing much more delicate work than that being Performed by Prilicla. Even though he was not due to sleep for another four hours, by the time they were finished and Jasam was sharing the other half of the pressure litter with Keet, he felt so tired that it was an effort for him not to lose consciousness prematurely. The captain, who had not slept for two Earth standard days and did not seem to be affected by fatigue, was concluding its report to the courier vessels.

“. . . Friendly relations have been established with the two Trolanni casualties who are ready for transfer to Rhabwar and immediate onward transportation to the surface medical station,” he said crisply. “According to Dr. Prilicla, the being Keet has superficial injuries and is in no danger, but the other one, Jasam, is giving cause for concern. Urgent surgery is required, and the prognosis is uncertain. You have everything you need to know, but I suggest that you both remain on station, stay well clear of the alien ship’s hull which is still active and a continuing danger, and wait a few hours for the latest good or bad news.

“From here on this is expected to be a routine medical matter,” it ended, “and we cannot foresee anything going wrong.”

CHAPTER 22

At the medical station the routines of the day had proceeded with a similar lack of drama, but the surroundings were beautiful, relaxing, and much too pleasant for boredom to be a consideration. The patients were in satisfactory medical and good psychological shape following their twice-daily immersion in the shallows and subsequent sun-drying, and had been moved indoors. The sun was within an hour of setting, with its close-to-horizontal light reflecting off the reddish-white breakers on a sea that was dark blue. It was the ideal time of day for another walk around the island.

Inevitably accompanied, Murchison thought irritably, by her shape-changing and by now totally redundant guardian angel.

There was no real reason, other than that she had never done so before and the team members and patients might worry, why she should be back inside the station before nightfall. But to reduce the unnecessary worrying all around, she decided not to break with tradition by jogging instead of walking the distance, and to stop only for a brief swim in her favorite beauty spot, a tiny, tree-fringed bay on the opposite side of the island.

She was nearing it, and the station was hidden by the curve of the shoreline behind her, when the sun began to set, although from experience she knew that there would be enough dusk left to see her way back. In the shallows Danalta was keeping pace with her, arrowing through the breaking surf and occasionally leaping into the air as it did its impression of a flying fish. She was running fast over the firm, damp sand with her eyes down so as to avoid the scattered white stones in her path when the shape-changer made a noise that did not translate, and flopped rapidly out of the water and onto the sand beside her. While it was still changing from an aquatic to a land mobile form, what had been one of its fins thickened into a hand and it pointed ahead.

This, Murchison thought as she slowed to a stop under the trees, is certainly an interesting change in the in the usual scenery.

It was a smooth, flattened mound covered with what looked like fibrous, greenish-brown vegetation, or possibly scales or a form of seaweed, that floated in the water with a narrow section of its forward edge projecting a few yards onto the sandy beach. It was large enough to fill a quarter of the tiny inlet and she was reminded of an outsize, beached whale.

“I’d say that this is one of the objects we saw from the high ground that first day,” she said, “and now we’re seeing it close-up. You have better vision than I have. Is it alive?”

Danalta, whose land shape was still indeterminate, enlarged an eye and said, “It has the general appearance of a large sea mammal, although the breathing orifices and fins are concealed from view or underwater. There is a slight overall body movement that is probably due to wave action rather than respiration. It may be alive and close to termination. But there is still a risk. Shall I investigate more closely?”

“We will investigate,” she said, stressing the first word, “after we’ve reported this in. But I’d say the risk is minimal.” She pointed to the sky above the beached creature and laughed quietly. “The vultures are gathering again and that’s always a strong contraindication for casualty survivability.”

The birds were circling stiff-winged as they rode the updrafts

from the sandy beach that was still radiating the day’s heat, and they were lower and closer than she had ever seen them before. Both bodies and their wide-spreading, leathery wings were the same color and seemed to have the same texture as that of the beached creature, and they looked mean. Instinctively she moved back under the concealment of thick, overhanging branches, hoping they hadn’t seen her.

Danalta remained motionless except for lengthening his eye-stalk and bending it up to look at them.

“They aren’t birds,” it said quietly, “they’re flying machines, unpowered gliders. Each one has a pilot.”

For a moment Murchison was too surprised to react, mentally or physically. This was supposed to be an uninhabited world. According to Rhabwar’s sensors it was completely lacking in the signatures of cultivation, roads, electromagnetic radiation, industrial smoke pollution, or any of the signs normally produced by intelligent life, and certainly by an indigenous intelligence capable of building flying machines. It came to her suddenly that the reason why the two gliders were flying so low might be that their pilots wanted the high ground at the center of the island to conceal the operation from the view of the medical station in case someone there decided to look inland.

Fumbling in her haste, Murchison pulled her communicator out of the equipment pouch at her waist and had it almost to her lips when something large and soft and with many hairy legs landed on her back and shoulders. Simultaneously another one of them gripped her legs tightly so that she tripped and fell forwards, dropping the communicator as she instinctively put out both hands to keep her face from hitting the ground.

She was trying to reach for the communicator again when another one landed on her arm before grabbing her by the wrists and pulling them to her sides with small, hard pincers. She was lifted a few feet from the ground and her body was rotated laterally, and she felt her legs being wrapped together tightly in what -1 like very fine rope. The turns continued up and past her hips, pinioning both hands and lower arms to her sides. She was able to get a close if intermittent look at her captor Spiders.

Two of them were holding and rolling her over while a third was producing from a body orifice the continuous, fine white strand that was wrapping her up. Three others were dropping lightly to the ground from overhanging branches on white strands that were almost too thin for her to to see, their brownish-green body coloration making them difficult to see against the vegetation until they landed. Each of them was holding a thick, stubbly crossbow with their bolts notched and bowstrings taut.

She had never had a fear of Earthly spiders, and there were many more visually abhorrent creatures among her friends and colleagues at Sector General, but that didn’t mean that she liked everything that walked on eight hairy legs, especially, as now, when they were placing her life at risk.

Struggling to break free did no good because the thin strands were very tough and she succeeded only in leaving deep indentations and a few shallow cuts on her legs and forearms. She opened her mouth wide and deliberately made loud, whooshing sounds while inflating and deflating her lungs, hoping to demonstrate the need to go on breathing which she would not be able to do if the strands around her chest were too tight.

Whether they understood her body language or that had been their original intention she didn’t know, but the white strands were exerting minimum compression on her rib cage. She could breathe comfortably but not too deeply unless she wanted to risk cutting herself. She could turn her head freely and even bend a little at the waist. One of them took an interest in her translator pack and tried to tug it free, but it and the medical pouch were an integral part of the equipment belt so the creature didn’t succeed. When it persisted she made a noise to indicate that it was hurting her and it desisted. Then they rolled her face-upwards onto a hammock made from woven plant fiber of some kind and four of them each lifted a corner and began carrying her towards the beach while the other two followed. One of them, the one who had tried to get her translator, picked up her communicator from the ground and began poking at it curiously. There was no sign of Danalta.

She didn’t know what the shape-changer could do, but it should be able to think of something. So, Murchison thought angrily, should she. For a moment she wondered if she was generating her anger just to keep her growing fear at bay.

The sun had set but there was still enough light to see the beach clearly, and the object she had thought was a sea mammal. The smooth, outer covering was opening up to become a series of low, triangular sails resembling those of an old-time Earth felucca, and their supporting masts and rigging were still being raised, and the two flyers had landed and were half carrying, half dragging their gliders towards it. But her party, being closer, would board first. Plainly the spiders were excited because they were making low, cheeping and chittering sounds to each other or calling more loudly to the glider pilots and others on the ship. Suddenly there was an interruption, a sound that had not come from any local throat.

“Speak, Pathologist Murchison,” said the loud, irritated voice of Charge Nurse Naydrad. “If you don’t want to say something, why are you using your communicator? I have work to do. Stop wasting my time.”

Her bearers stopped so quickly that she almost rolled out of the litter, and the spider with her communicator dropped it onto the sand and backed away, chittering shrilly in alarm. Murchison laughed in spite of her problems. It was obvious what had happened because she could see the two indicator lights glowing. The spider who had been fiddling with it had inadvertently turned the reception volume to full as well as switching on the device. But the communicator was active and, even though it was lying in the sand several meters away and at extreme distance for a handset, Naydrad was listening.

The spiders were used to her making loud noises at them, but only when she was communicating discomfort, and now she had to talk loudly to Naydrad. But there was the danger of arousing their suspicions by making noises without a reason, when none of them was touching or therefore hurting her. If they were to get the idea that a conversation was going on, that she was calling for help, then they would immediately silence her or the communicator. They were already trying to do the latter by standing well back from it and pelting it with stones from the beach rather than shooting their crossbow bolts at it. Luckily they had missed it so far, but communicators were not robust instruments.

In an undertone Murchison used language that was unladylike—her only unfeminine trait, according to her life-mate— and thought quickly. There was very little time to send a message, and none at all if one of those rocks connected. She took the deepest breath she could without cutting herself and spoke slowly and clearly while hoping that the excited chittering of the spiders all around her would keep them from noticing the strange noises she was making.

“Naydrad, Murchison here. Listen, don’t talk, and copy. We have been captured by indigenous intelligent life-forms, tentative classification GKSD . . .”

The spiders weren’t paying any attention to her and were concentrating on their stone-throwing, which wasn’t accurate because the communicator continued to survive and show its indicator lights.

“They appear to be sea raiders of some kind,” she went on more calmly. “They use large sailing ships, unpowered aircraft, crossbows, and there is no evidence of metal weapons. I’ve been tightly restrained but not hurt and am unable to see Danalta . . .”

She broke off, realizing that her last few words might have been a lie. It was hard to be sure in the dimming twilight, but it seemed that the sand on one side of the communicator was showing wind ripples. Then, suddenly, they were all around it as Danalta did its impression of a patch of sandy beach. A moment later the device and its indicator lights disappeared from sight.

The spiders threw a few more stones, their voices sounding surprised and uneasy rather than angry at this apparent display of magic, but with no target to aim at they were beginning to lose interest. But a few stones would not bother Danalta, whose hide, regardless of the shape it was covering, was impermeable to most classes of low-velocity missiles. The important part was that it had rescued and was protecting the communicator and, when the spiders left the scene, it would be able to contact the medical station which would relay its report to Rhabwar.

Murchison was still feeling anxious about her immediate future, but more hopeful than she had been a few minutes earlier, when a loud, authoritative, chittering sound coming from the spiders’ vessel drew her attention towards it.

Several of the triangular openings in the hull were open and emitting a dim yellow flickering glow which, Murchison felt sure, had to be coming from oil lamps or candles. High on the prow of the vessel and silhouetted against the darkening sky she could dimly see the spider who seemed to be making all the noise. It was holding a tapering black cone to its head that had to be a speaking trumpet. Beyond the beached vessel and perhaps half a mile out to sea there was another vessel, identical in size and shape and also showing a few patches of dim illumination. The view of it was cut off by the body of one of

the four spiders who raised her litter and resumed their journey towards the beached ship.

They had not reacted adversely while she had been speaking earlier, possibly because they had been too busy stoning and talk-mg among themselves to notice or

care, so she decided to pass on the latest information before they all moved too far from the capture point.

“Danalta,” she said, “the indications are that the GKSDs do not have electric power or radio communication. Another vessel of the same size and shape is entering the bay and a third is on the horizon . . .”

Murchison broke off as the escort halted. One of them chit-tered loudly at her and began inserting a claw between her body and the strands binding her, possibly checking on their tightness. It was making her very uncomfortable so she shut up.

She didn’t know if her words had been heard, but she hoped that the small patch of beach that was Danalta included a sandy ear.

CHAPTER 23

The captain’s face on the casualty deck’s viewscreen had the darkened pink color characteristic of strong emotion, strong enough to filter down the length of the ship from the control deck.

“Doctor,” it said, “I have an incoming message from the medical station which is being relayed from Danalta who is somewhere else on the island. This, this is ridiculous. It says that Pathologist Murchison has been captured by pirates of some kind. But that world down there shows no evidence of sapient life. Have your medics been using their medical supplies for recreational purposes? Would you talk to them, please, before I say something grossly impolite?”

For an instant Prilicla glanced towards the forms of the unconscious Jasam and the wide-awake Keet, wondering whether or not he should switch off the translator, then decided to leave it on. Secrecy in a first-contact situation was not a good thing.

“Of course, friend Fletcher,” he replied. “Patch them through.”

As Danalta’s report came in, with occasional interjections from Naydrad, Prilicla wondered if he had made the right decision about allowing Keet to overhear it. The Trolanni’s emotional radiation was becoming increasingly disturbed, but that of the captain had changed from irritation to deep concern. When the shape-changer’s report ended, Fletcher spoke before Prilicla could respond.

“Doctor,” it said urgently, “you will agree that this has become a predominantly tactical and military, rather than a medical, problem. That being so, with or without your permission, I must take charge.”

“It is both a medical and military problem, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “But the first priority, military or medical, must be to have friend Murchison returned to us safely and soon.”

“My thought exactly,” said the captain. “But the position is delicate. We are now faced with two first-contact situations that are running concurrently. The Trolanni one is going well, but these intelligent spiders . . . Imagine, a culture based on non-metal technology that possesses fighting ships, gliders, uses crossbows, and has no electric power generation or radio communication. They seem to have fire for lighting and perhaps cooking purposes but make no large-scale industrial use of it. No wonder the sensors found no signs of sapient life down there. An ambulance ship doesn’t carry weapons, naturally, but we’d have no trouble taking them on with our tractor beams and meteorite shield . . .”

He paused and added, “. . . if we were allowed.”

Prilicla knew as well as the captain how strict were the rules governing contact with any newly-discovered planet that held intelligent life. If the culture had a space-travel capability and the technology to support it, as well as the mind-set that had prepared them for the possibility of meeting other life-forms among the stars, then the contact procedure was straightforward. But if the indigenous race was primitive, then a careful and covert assessment had to be made regarding the long-term effects of making such a contact and a decision taken on whether or not it should proceed.

There was always the danger that strange beings dropping out of the sky in their thundering ships, even though the entities concerned wanted only to help, would give rise to an inferiority complex in an emerging culture, from which it might never recover. A starship, the wreck of Terragar, had already landed and no doubt been spotted by the reconnaissance gliders, so the Damage might already have been done. But taking hostile action against them, even thought it would be in response to Murchi-son’s abduction, would most definitely be contraregulation-

“The gliders will already have told their mother ships about the medical station,” the captain added, radiating worry. “$ the spiders decide to raid it from the land or sea, it has no defenses

“Regardless of the rules, friend Fletcher,” he said firmly' we must somehow defend our people and patients there without injuring any of the spiders. Agreed? As a tactician, have you a plan for doing that?”

“I’ll need to think about that for a while,” the captain replied. “But what about Pathologist Murchison? We aren’t trained or equipped to send in a rescue party, and getting her out any other way would mean tearing the fabric of that spider ship apart with tractor beams.”

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “you have a little til116 to think about defending the medical facility while we are moving Jasam and Keet there or, if necessary, moving the others b^ck on board Rhabwar. Regarding friend Murchison, I want to discuss the pathologist’s situation with friend Danalta, who is still standing by and is close to the ships. It is a resourceful and versatile guardian and intelligence-gatherer.”

“That it is,” said the captain. “I’ll relay my radio traffic to you so that you’ll know what I’m doing. Breaking contact-While he was speaking to the shape-changer, Prilicla could feel Keet’s puzzlement and impatience, but the Trolanni didn’t interrupt with questions even after he had finished talking- He knew that Danalta was concerned for friend Murchison’s safety, out he was worried because the shape-changer rarely worried about anything. He gave the other advice and careful instructions and, hoping for the best, he was flying across to speak to the increasingly impatient Keet when the captain’s voice sounded in the control-deck repeater.

“Courier One,” it was saying. “Regarding my situation report, I have an update for you. An indigenous intelligent species has been discovered on the planet below. They are physiological classification GKSD, possibly warlike, and possessing limited, non-metal technology. Pathologist Murchison has been captured by them but the latest information is that she is unhurt. Two separate first-contact operations are now in progress. The damaged Trolanni vessel and this solar system remain in quarantine. No other vessels are to approach. Leave with this new information at once. Courier Two, you will stand by and listen out for further developments. Off.”

“Prilicla,” Keet said before he could speak, “I have heard and understood every word spoken by you and the druul-like person, but the meaning of the words joined together confuses me. Are Jasam and I in danger, or the Murchison person? Personally I would not find the absence of this Murchison distressing, even though you have assured me that it is a very good healer in spite of looking like a druul. But you told me that this lovely world that Jasam and I have found was empty. Where did these warlike spiders come from? We were wearing the last and best searchsuit. Our people might never be able to build another. What is to happen to us now?”

Even though a large proportion of his feelings were engaged in worrying over

friend Murchison’s safety, Prilicla radiated as much sympathy and reassurance as he could while explaining the situation. He spoke truthfully, but because Jasam and Keet were patients, he laced the truth heavily with optimism.

“Both of you will be moved as quickly as possible to the surface,” he said, “where I and what remains of my medical team will be able to help Jasam, whose condition requires urgent surgical treatment. The spiders are hostile, for reasons we will not understand until we learn how to speak to them. We didn’t know of their existence until an hour ago, but we are strangers who landed on their world without permission and that can be a strong reason for hostility. Or perhaps, as beings completely strange to their experience, they were curious and simply wanted to investigate a new life-form. But they don’t pose a physical threat, except to friend Murchison, because our level of technology is far above theirs.

“However,” he went on, “regardless of their species’ level of intelligence or how technologically primitive they are, this is their home world. The Federation, our law-givers, would not allow the Trolanni to use your advanced technology to take it from them, or to settle on it without the expressed permission and agreement of the spiders—”

“If we did not do that,” the weak voice of Jasam broke in, “we would be no better than the druul.”

Tactfully ignoring the remark but pleased that it was joining in the conversation, Prilicla went on, “But there are many worlds known to the Galactic Federation which are without intelligent life. When both of you are fully recovered and able to return in one of our ships to Trolann, we will show your people pictures of these worlds, and analyses of their water, atmosphere, and surface plant and animal life. Then we will make arrangements to move the Trolanni to the world of your choice. . .”

“And will you exterminate the druul,” Keet interrupted, “so that we may leave safely?”

“None of these beings,” said Jasam, speaking weakly, but answering for him, “will exterminate anything or anyone, except possibly disease germs. How did they ever fight their way to the top of their evolutionary trees to became their planets’ dominant species?”

Jasam,” said Prilicla, “I’m very pleased that you are awake and taking an interest in the situation, but don’t overtire yourself. You ask a question that will take a long time to answer and you may be unconscious again, either from fatigue or boredom, before I finished answering it. Let me just say that in our precivilized times none of us, including my own species, were this well behaved. The medical monitors will signal any change in your condition, so would you like me to leave you alone for a while so that Keet and yourself can talk together about your future?”

He felt a sudden burst of fear and sorrow from Keet, and one of lesser intensity from Jasam. They both knew how close Jasam was to death just as they knew that he might be giving them the chance to speak to each other for the last time. Before either of them could respond, the captain’s voice sounded in the repeater.

“Doctor, I have an operational update for you,” it said briskly. “We are now leaving orbit on a descending path which will bring us down close to sea level about three hundred miles from the island on the side opposite to the position of the spider vessels. We estimate arrival in just under two hours. The same high ground that they used to hide their presence from the station will also conceal our approach. Naydrad and the two servos will be standing by to receive the casualties. There has been nothing from Danalta or Murchison. Our sensors report no land, sea, or air activity in the vicinity of the three spider ships, so hopefully they are sleeping. You must be pretty close to your own limits of endurance, Doctor, so you might like to do the same.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “that is good advice which I shall take at once.”

He had folded his wings and was tethering himself loosely to an equipment support when he felt a subtle change in Keet’s emotional radiation. Normally its feelings, regarding its mate, the druul, and their situation in general, were sharp and strong. It loved and hated with equal intensity. But now there was a strange blurring and softening of feeling as it spoke.

“I know that I cannot read another person’s emotions as well as you can,” it said slowly, “but from your words and actions here and on our searchsuit, I think—no, I believe—that you feel a deep concern for Jasam’s welfare, and mine. Is this so?”

“Yes,” he said, trying to keep himself awake.

“On Trolann this question would be considered an insult, it went on, “implying as it would a disgusting mental aberration and perversion. But I think . . . Are you feeling the same depth of concern for the safety of the druul-like healer Murchison, as you do for Jasam?”

“Yes,” said Prilicla again.

CHAPTER 24

The glider pilots carrying their folded aircraft were the first to mount the boarding ramp, followed by Murchison’s bearer party and with the watchful spiders who carried only weapons bringing up the rear.

The ramp, she saw, was wide, surprisingly long, and formed a gently sloping bridge over the wavelets and wet sand at the water’s edge. It stretched between the large opening in the ship’s bow and the dry area farther up the beach. It was an incredible idea, but she wondered if the spiders were sailors who didn’t like getting their feet wet.

Inside the ship she was moved along a corridor whose roof was so low that if she hadn’t been lying flat on her back in a hammock, she would have scraped her face against the rough, fibrous surface of the ceiling. Positioned at deck level about twenty meters apart were lamps that flickered and, she thought, sniffing analytically, smelled of some kind of vegetable rather than mineral oil. Each lamp floated in a large wooden pan of water and there were two larger containers, one filled with water and the other, sand, placed close by. She wondered if the spiders were afraid of fire as well as water, then remembered that in the wooden-sailing-ship days on Earth, fire had been a servant that had to be kept under tight control.

After what seemed an endless scrolling-down of dark, fibrous ceilings, her hammock was lowered to the deck in a com-oartment that was about six meters square and high enough to allow her to kneel upright if they untied her.

Plainly that was their intention, because three of them lifted and turned her face-downwards while the fourth opened its mouth and began to do something which softened and loosened the strands around her body. Then they rolled her over and over slowly while the fourth spider made delicate, slurping noises as the continuous strand was sucked back into its body.

When it was finished, the others left the room and it remained to wrap one of her ankles in a band of thick, soft material, which was obviously padding because around it was tied very tightly the end of another rope. It was thin, tough, and seemed to be woven from plant fiber rather than originating inside a spider. The captor’s grotesque, insectile head bent over her ankle and it spat something at the rope which hardened within a few seconds and covered the knot in a solid, transparent seal. Then it tied the other end, which was long enough to enable her to move anywhere inside the room and a little way beyond it, to a structural support by the doorway and sealed it in similar fashion. It turned to look at her for a moment before pointing with the nearest limb towards a corner of the room at what looked like two low handrails with a flat wooden lid set into the floor between them.

The spider moved across to it, raised and pushed aside the lid, and indicated the square hole beneath it before waving her forward and moving back itself.

The lighting in the room was too subdued to show deep inside the opening, but even before Murchison heard the regular, gurgling wave action of water at the bottom she knew what it was—the body-wastes disposal facility. To show that she understood, but without actually giving a full demonstration, she ; rasped the rails, one in each hand, and hunkered down for a moment before replacing the lid. Apparently satisfied, the spider was pointing at the contents of a shelf in the opposite corner of the compartment.

It held three wooden beakers, two tall and slim and the other one short and broad, all of them with lids; one small, cuplike receptacle; a small stack of flat, wooden platters; and a large open bowl that had neatly folded squares of soft fabric lying beside it. On hands and knees she moved across to them quickly and lifted down the narrow beakers in turn. She gave them a gentle shake before removing the lids, sniffed, and decided that they contained water. The thicker one was filled with round lumps of material that looked and felt like hairy potatoes.

Murchison straightened onto her knees, turned and waved her hand vigorously at the spider, then pointed down at her equipment pouch. She wasn’t simply trying to attract its attention, because it was already watching her closely, just trying to give it the impression that her next movement would be overt, innocent, and harmless.

Slowly she unfastened the flap and used one finger and thumb to lift out the narrow, white cylinder that was her analyzer, which she put in the corner of her mouth so that she had both hands free to to pour an inch of water into the drinking beaker. When she touched the sensor tip of the analyzer into it, the readout showed many trace elements but no toxicity, so she drank it down. From the solid-food container she chose a small piece and broke it. The center was pale green and spongy and gave off a faint odor that reminded her of cinnamon. She pushed the analyzer into it in several places, but none of the readings showed anything to worry her. She replaced the instrument and took a cautious nibble.

It wasn’t completely nauseating, she thought, but it would require a condition of near starvation to make it palatable. Murchison was reminded of her first promotion to the Sector General permanent staff, when her mixed-species former students had thrown a party for her. On a dare she had eaten a piece of Kelgian warlgan cake. This stuff tasted a little better.

She forced herself to swallow it and say, “Thank you.” The spider chittered briefly in reply and backed to the doorway, where it continued to watch her.

For several minutes Murchison sat on the hammock, which had been left on the floor, thinking about what she should do next and, more importantly, what her captors were expecting her to do next. Their technology was primitive, but in

its own way, civilized. Up until now they had shown no deliberate cruelty towards her, and they possessed a high level of intelligence and flexibility of mind, which was shown by their curiosity regarding her and their attempt to make her comfortable. It would be natural in the circumstances for her to demonstrate a similar degree of curiosity.

Using her feet with legs bent almost double and with one supporting hand keeping her from falling onto her back, Murchison began to tour the room. One wall was hung with coils of rope in various thicknesses and another had shelves of wooden implements, some of which looked like the pictures of marlin spikes she had seen in the history books. No metal tools, implements, or even support brackets were visible. Everything, even the deck, walls, and ceiling, seemed to be made of hard, dark green, tightlywoven plant fiber except for the regular lines of thin, pale grey that seemed to run through and reinforce all of them. She was pretty sure where the grey material had come from because she had seen a few strands of it binding the crossbows together, and as a supporting latticework on the wings and fuselage of their gliders. With a tiny shiver of wonder Murchison tried to comprehend a species whose advanced technology, its homes, sailing ships, and aircraft, and who knew what else, was in part woven out of their own bodies.

The third wall was bare, except at the two top corners where there was a large wooden ratchet arrangement that enabled it to be tipped outwards from the vertical and away from the edge of the ceiling. Between them there was a six-inch gap through which fresh air, cold now that the sun had set, was blowing. Plainly this was the room’s ventilation system. She moved to the fourth wall that contained the door—with her spider guard filling it—the lamp, and the fire-prevention arrangements. Intending to examine the workings of the lamp closely with a view to adjusting the setting of its floating wick to give more light, she reached fonwards.

Her fingers were more than a foot away from it when she cried out in pain and surprise as a sticklike forward limb cracked down across the back of her hand.

“Why the blazes did you do that?” she cried, pressing the hand between her other arm and side to deaden the pain.

The spider unlimbered its crossbow and sent a bolt thudding into the floor in front of the lamp, then it moved into the room, and with great difficulty loosened and pulled the crossbow bolt from the floor and replaced it in its quiver before returning to the doorway.

She had the answer to her question. Clearly the message was, Hands off the lamp.

Up until then the spider had not deliberately tried to hurt her and might not do so again unless, as now, she tried to break their rules. She wondered how she would have felt if their positions had been reversed. In this society a moment’s carelessness with a naked flame might well cause irreparable property damage in addition to personal injury.

Losing, for example, what was to them a complex, state-of-the-art aircraft would be devastating for the pilot, who had probably woven important parts of its support structure from its own body material. But the destruction of a large-scale, cooperative enterprise like this ship, which must be a continuous, floating fire hazard, would be a community disaster. Henceforth she would obey the rules and avoid having her wrist slapped, or, better still, try to communicate with and understand her captors so that such acts of minor physical chastisement would no longer be necessary.

The time to begin talking was now, but both her brain and her body were too tired to begin the long, complicated and no doubt initially frustrating process of sign language and word sounds that would be needed. She could, however, make a small start.

She moved back to the wall with the ventilator slit in it, pointed to the opening, and blew her breath out noisily for a few seconds, shivered elaborately, and returned to the floor area covered by the hammock. There she lay down lengthwise on her side along one half of it, and pulled the surplus material across her legs and body and tucking it under her chin. It was coarse-textured but warm. With the back of one hand—which was no longer hurting—supporting the side of her face, she looked along the deck at the now-horizontal picture of her guard.

“Good night,” she said quietly.

The spider made a low, chittering sound.

She had no idea of how much if anything of the recent pantomiming it had understood, but Murchison hoped that she had conveyed the message that she had rendered herself voluntarily immobile and there was no danger of her breaking any more rules for a while. She lay watching it while it watched her, feeling the hard surface of the deck through the hammock material and not expecting to sleep.

She awakened to find that the lamp was out, the ventilation slit had been opened wide so that sunlight as well as air was coming through it, and that during the night another large rectangle of hammock material had been spread over her sleeping body. She felt stiff and sore, but pleased, because it seemed that the process of communication had already begun. When she raised herself onto one elbow and cleared her throat quietly, her spider guard— she was pretty sure that it was the same one—opened its eyes.

When she had stretched a few times in the limited space available, and rubbed the stiffness out of her muscles, Murchison lifted the lid of the waste-disposal opening, stared at the spider for a moment. It backed out of the doorway and moved sideways out of sight.

It was strange, Murchison thought, that all of the civilized species known to the Federation had this aversion to eliminating body wastes in public, or to witnessing the activity in others. When she had washed and eaten—she was so hungry that the food tasted horrible but on the plus side of inedible—she dissolved a small amount of the food in the remains of the washing-water and with the corner of a cloth daubed two simple sketches on the sunlit wall. Then she put her head around the side of the doorway and beckoned for the spider to come back inside.

It was time to start talking.

But her guard had other ideas. It spat accurately onto the knot holding the other end of her restraining rope, dissolving the seal, then made it into a tight coil which it grasped in one claw. With the other one it indicated its crossbow and quiver before it began tugging on the rope.

Politely she was being told to follow it, or else.

In the event, she had no need to worry because it became clear that her guard was showing her over the ship while giving the hundred or more crew members a chance to look her over. They pointed, waved limbs, and chittered excitedly at her, their body language reflecting intense curiosity. But a quiet, clicking sound from her escort made them keep their distance. She guessed that her spider was a superior officer of some kind and that it was showing off a strange and interesting specimen that it wished to keep as comfortable, if not as happy, as possible. Murchison could live with that, especially as the technology of the ship itself was so strange and interesting.

In a first-contact situation, curiosity that was strong enough to overcome xenophobia in both parties was a very good sign.

The vessel looked even larger inside than out. Its smooth outer shell contained a structure that was like a complicated three-dimensional maze. She estimated it to be about eighty meters from prow to stern, sixty in the beam, and thirty to the highest point of its turtlelike upper works which, so far as she co^ld see, enclosed five or six levels of decking that were stepped back sharply so as to be covered by a segmented outer shell that could be opened in whatever area and number was required, to become sails and furnish highly directional wind propulsion. The overall structural material must have been very light because, in spite of its top-heavy appearance, the vessel rode very high in the water.

She wasn’t surprised to find that the two decks that were on and just above the water line had no sail openings, ventilation, or natural lighting. The compartments on those levels were large and filled with coils of rope, netting, and masses of eel-like creatures, some of which were still twitching, that smelled like fish. She was glad when her escort guided her back towards the fresh air and sunlight of the upper decks.

But there was a steadily diminishing supply of fresh air, she realized, and no sunlight at all. She was pushed gently against a bulkhead and signaled to stay out of the way because it appeared that the entire crew were moving about and working furiously to wind in all of the sail segments and seal their outer shell. Just before the section beside her closed to admit only a narrow band of light, she was able to see the probable cause of all the frantic activity.

The sun had been covered by the dark grey curtain of a rain squall that was running in from the sea.

On the way back to her compartment Murchison had a lot to think about. This and the other two vessels she had seen must be part of a fishing fleet that needed aerial reconnaissance to direct them towards the shoals they trawled. The sails they used for guidance and propulsion had to double as shelters in the event of a storm or even a rain shower because, perhaps like cats and Kelgians and certain other furred species in her experience, it was physiologically dangerous for them to get wet.

These ships were manned, for want of a better word, by very brave sailors indeed.

Back in her room the ventilator had been closed to admit a narrow band of light and none of the heavy rain that was rattling against the hull. The spider pointed to a formerly empty shelf. During their absence someone, probably acting on its instructions, had left them a small stack of wide, pale yellow dried leaves a thin, short-handled brush, and a small wooden container of what looked like ink.

Considering the spider-hostile weather outside, she thought again, this was a very good time to begin talking.

CHAPTER 25

Using its power-hungry tractor beams in reverse rather than the noisy thrusters, Rhabwar had come in low and quiet to transfer Prilicla and the Trolanni casualties to the station before returning as it had come, to orbit where the captain would be able to watch the spider ships without them seeing him, or if they did, they wouldn’t know that the new star in their sky was watching them.

“There are three vessels,” it reported simultaneously to the med station and the waiting courier vessel, “but all are stationary with their bows resting on the beach. Five gliders are flying around them at low altitude, too low for the med station to spot them. A number of ship’s personnel have been moving about on the beach and under the nearby trees, but too few, I feel sure, for them to be mounting an attack. In any case, the personnel concerned and the gliders went back on board their ships about ten minutes ago and just before a rain cloud blotted out the area.

“Doctor,” it added, “have you any medical or other developments that you want me to relay to Courier Two?”

“None, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied.

'None?” the other said. “What about your missing pathol-°gist? What’s the shape-changer doing about finding her? With

the increased number of casualties I should think her presence is desirable right now.”

“It is . . .” he began, when Naydrad, who had been assisting him with Keet’s treatment, answered for him in its usual tactless disregard for the fact that the listening patient was wearing a translator.

“It is not desirable, Captain,” it broke in; “it is necessary. Physiologically the Trolanni are an unusually complex life-form. This one will survive but its mate will almost certainly not, unless Murchison, who is a specialist in other-species pathology, returns to us soon. We are all concerned for her safety and the possible loss of her unrivaled expertise.”

Unlike the Kelgian, who could not help saying exactly what it was thinking at any time, the captain tried to be more circumspect.

“Your medical team is two members short,” it said gently, “and Danalta would be of more use to you there than remaining in the vicinity of the bay. What I’m trying to say is that Pathologist Murchison may not be returning to you. Isn’t that a strong possibility, Doctor?”

Prilicla felt a tremor shaking his limbs and body, the significance of which Naydrad, but not Keet, would understand. He controlled his emotions with difficulty and stilled his body before he was able to speak.

“It is a possibility, friend Fletcher,” he said, “but I hope that it is a remote one. Danalta lost contact with Pathologist Murchison shortly after its capture and while it was still on the ground rescuing the communicator. The shape-changer has since been trying to discover the ship to which friend Murchison was taken and where within that ship it is being held, so far unsuccessfully-

“I shall not call off this search,” he went on, “because I have known Pathologist Murchison for many years. I know its personality, its warmth, sympathy, humor, its sensitivity, and in particular the intensity of feeling it holds for its life-mate, and many other qualities that cannot be put into words. Of even more irnportance, I know its emotional-radiation signature almost as well as I know my own.

“The spider ships are at extreme range for my empathic faculty.” he concluded, “and while I cannot honestly say that I sense its presence at any given moment, if friend Murchison was to terminate, I feel sure that I would know of it at once.”

The captain broke contact without speaking.

Murchison began with the approach long-hallowed by tradition, even in the days before mankind had learned how to leave Earth, by drawing pictures of the people and things she wanted to name. They were small and simple; small for the reason that she didn’t know whether or not the supply of broad leaves was limited, and simple because the ink ran like water and she had botched the first two attempts by overloading the brush. She held the leaf horizontally sketch-upwards for the few seconds it took the ink to dry, then showed it to the spider.

Pointing at herself and the body outline in the sketch, she said, “Human.” She repeated the gestures and the word several times before pointing at the spider and its outline and deliberately said nothing.

The silent questioning seemed to work because one of her captor’s clawlike digits moved down to touch the spider outline. It made a low, clicking and cheeping noise that sounded like, “Kritkuk.”

Ignoring the sketches, Murchison pointed at herself and then the spider, and repeated, “Human. Kritkuk.”

“Hukmaki,” it replied; and, more loudly, “Kritickuk.”

The emphasis on the second word, she thought, might be due to irritation at her not pronouncing it correctly. But it wasn’t doing such a hot job of pronunciation on “human,” either. She led a different approach, knowing that it couldn’t understand any of the words yet, but hoping that it would get the message. “You are speaking too quickly for me,” she said in her normal speaking tempo, then went on slowly, “Please . . . speak . . . in . . . a . . . slow . . . and . . . distinct . . . voice.”

Plainly it had understood the message because this time, while the word didn’t seem to be that much slower, she was able to detect additional syllables in it.

She started to say it but the word choked off into a cough. Taking a deep, calming breath she tried again.

“Krititkukik,” she repeated.

“Krititkukik,” it agreed.

Pleased at her first linguistic success, but not wanting to waste time trying to teach it better Earth-human pronunciation, she knelt down on the folded hammock and, with a new leaf spread flat on the deck before her, she thought hard and began sketching again.

Drawing two circles to indicate their different planets in space might be too confusing at this stage although, being a sailor, her spider would certainly use the stars for navigation between its world’s many islands and might be well aware of the fact that its surface was round. Instead she drew a straight line to represent the horizon across the widest part of a new leaf, placed a small circle with wavy lines radiating from it to indicate that it was the sun and added the outline of the island. Around and below it she drew small, flat

crescent shapes to denote waves, and on one side of it she drew three flat domes to depict the spider’s ships and not to scale, a glider flying above them. She pointed to each of the symbols in turn.

“Sky,” she said. “Sun. Sea. Island. Ship. Glider.”

The spider supplied the equivalent word sounds, and a few of them she was even able to pronounce without being corrected, but the other began walking around her in a tight circle as if in agitation or impatience.

Suddenly it reached forward and took the brush from her hand and began slowly and carefully to add to her sketch. It drew three small, flat rectangles that had to be the buildings of the medical station on the other side of the island. It reversed the brush and used the dry end to point several times at the station.

She wasn’t giving away information that the spiders did not already know from their aerial reconnaissance and they would have been stupid if they did not already know that she had come from there, so she took another leaf and filled it with a drawing of the medical-station buildings in greater detail. She showed the sand below them sloping to the wavy lines of the sea and, on a clear area of sand, four stylized figures: herself; the cylindrical shape with many short legs along its base that was Naydrad; a featureless cone that was Danalta when it wasn’t being something else; and Prilicla. In outline the empath looked very much like Krititkukik except for the two sets of wings and the fact that it was a little distance above the ground. The spider remained motionless for the few seconds, either in surprise or because it was waiting for the ink to dry, then it pointed the brush first at Murchison herself, then used the end of its thin handle to touch her image in the sketch, followed by those of the others, and finally the station. It repeated the process, but this time when it touched each of the four figures it followed by touching the buildings, and ended by tapping repeatedly at the med station alone. Then it looked at her and made a chitter-ing, interrogative sound.

It was saying, she felt sure, that it knew all of them had come from the med station, but where had the med station come from?

One of the most important rules while opening first-contact proceedings with a less advanced species, was not to display a level of technology that would risk giving the other party a racial inferiority complex. Looking at this spider sea-captain, and considering the degree of bravery, resourcefulness, and all-around adaptability required for a profession that called for constant travel over a medium—water—that was an ever-present and probably deadly danger to them, she did not think that her spider would recognize an inferiority complex if it was to stand up and bite it in its hairy butt. This time she fetched the water container before selecting another, unmarked leaf. The horizon line she placed low down, with the island, three ships, and med station sketched in less detail. Then she poured a little water into her cupped hand, added a few drops of ink to darken it, and then filled in the sky with a transparent grey wash which, she hoped, would indicate that it was a night picture. When it was dry, instead of a sun she painted in a few large and small dots at irregular intervals. A sailor was bound to know what they were.

“Stars,” she said, pointing at each of the dots in turn.

“Preket,” said the spider.

She pointed to one of the domelike ships and carefully pronounced the spider word for it, “Krisit.” Then she drew another one of them, this time high in the night sky, pointed at it, then to herself and at the med station.

“Preket krisit,” she said.

The spider’s reaction was immediate. It backed away from her and began chittering loudly and continuously, but whether in surprise, excitement, fear, or some other emotion, she couldn’t say because it was speaking far too fast for her to understand any of the words even if she had already learned some of them. It came closer and jabbed a claw at the picture so suddenly that one edge of the leaf split apart. Again and again it pointed at its three ships and the island, at the starship and the medical station and then at the starship again. With the claw it pushed at the starship so violently that the leaf was torn in two.

Plainly the other was trying to tell her that the three ships and the island belonged to the spiders and that it wanted the strangers to go away. Thinking about the kind of people they were, armed fisherfolk with the capability for long-range reconnaissance, it was possible that they preyed on others of their kind as well as their ocean’s fish. The visiting starship, especially if they thought that it was manned by sea-raiders like themselves, had already established a base on their island. They would considerate it a threat that must be driven off, captured, or destroyed.

Somehow Murchison had to show them that neither the visiting ship nor the medical station were a threat and that they were in fact, the opposite. She held up both her hands, palms outwards, for silence.

When it came, she lifted the brush again and held it close to the other’s face, but this time she didn’t use it to sketch. Instead she snapped off a couple of inches of the handle, at the end opposite the hairs so that it remained usable, and held them apart for a few seconds. Waiting until it seemed that she had all of the spider’s attention, she brought the broken ends together and spat delicately on the join before handing both pieces back to the spider.

“Join it,” she said slowly. “Fix it. Mend it.”

While she was speaking, the other made sounds that seemed to have a questioning note, but immediately got the idea. Onto the join it spat a very small quantity of the sticky saliva it had used earlier to seal the knots of her restraining rope, and when it had hardened, handed the brush back to her. Apart from the small gob of hardened saliva where the repair had been made, the brush was a good as new. She began sketching with it again.

This time she didn’t bother showing the island, ships, or sun. At the left of the picture she drew instead a vertical line of four figures to represent herself, a spider, Naydrad, and Prilicla. Slightly to the right of them she placed a similar line of figures, except that her figure was divided by a narrow space at the waist and one of her legs was separated by a short distance from her body. The figure of the spider showed three limbs detached from its body, and similar radical dismemberment to the forms of the Kelgian and her Cinrusskin chief. A little farther to the right she drew a larger picture of the med-station buildings, followed by another vertical line of figures that were whole again. To make her meaning even clearer she drew four short arrows linking the damaged figures to the station, and another four pointing from it to the whole figures.

Again she indicated the join in the brush handle and said slowly, “We mend people.”

The spider didn’t appear to understand her at all because it pushed the sketch away before retying the rope around her ankle and sealing the knot. It left quickly without speaking.

Murchison threw the brush angrily at the discarded sketch. The rain had stopped and sunlight was shining through the narrow opening in the ventilation wall. She moved to it, hoping that more light would lighten her spirits, and wound down the ratchet until it was fully open.

Noise as well as light was pouring in, but the excited chit-tering of crew members and the creaking of wooden mechanisms could not drown out the single, loud clicking voice that was almost certainly that of the captain using a speaking trumpet. On the beach outside she could see spiders swarming over the other ships, opening their sail seals and raising the boarding ramps.

Something important was happening, Murchison thought, something that would almost certainly involve this armed fishing-fleet opening hostilities against the medical station. Angrily she returned to sit on the folded hammock, knowing that her lamentable recent attempt at communication was certainly responsible for it and that she deserved everything that was going to happen to her.

It was while she was glowering despondently at the empty doorway that she noticed something amiss. Beside it there had been an unlit lamp with single containers of water and sand on each side of it, and now there were three containers there. Feeling greatly relieved but completely undeserving of her sudden change in fortune, she spoke quietly.

“Stop showing off, Danalta,” she said, “which barrel of sand is you?” CHAPTER 26

Throughout the ship the sound of spider voices and the loud creaking and rumbling of wooden mechanisms being operated reached a climax. The level of light coming from the corridor increased and with it came a steady flow of warm air that could only be blowing off the beach as the sail shields were opened fully and deployed. A moment later the rocking action of the waves intensified as the ship pulled free of the sand. The fleet had set sail and she knew its objective.

“They’re going to attack the med station,” said Murchison urgently above the ship noises. “We have to get back there to warn them—”

“You already have warned them,” said Danalta. Its sand-container shape, which had grown an eye, ear, and mouth, moved sideways to reveal her communicator lying on the floor with its TRANSMIT and RECORD lights blinking. “I was here during your conversation with the spider, and Captain Fletcher, with the help of Dr. Prilicla, who uses a similar form of language, says that it has almost enough to program a translator for spider talk when we get back. Prilicla needs you there, it needs all of the med team, as quickly as possible. One of the Trolanni casualties is giving cause for serious concern.”

She picked up the active communicator and clipped it to

her equipment belt. Apologetically she said, “For a while I forgot what I do for a living. I must report to Prilicla at once.”

“It will waste less time,” said Danalta firmly, “if you report to it in person. Pathologist Murchison, we must return to the station, now.”

Rarely had words been spoken with which she was in more complete agreement, Murchison thought fervently as she looked around her low, cramped, and highly uncomfortable prison, but returning to the station was not going to be easy, especially for her. She pointed at the ventilator opening.

“Those ships are moving fast,” she said, “and we’re already two hundred meters from the beach. Even if we left now, by the time I swam ashore and ran all the way back, we might not get there until after the fleet arrived.”

The sand container slumped into a more organic shape and rolled up to her feet, growing a rudimentary jaw with very sharp teeth as it came.

“With my assistance we will both go by sea,” said Danalta as it bit through the rope securing her ankle. “Will I enlarge the ventilator opening for you?”

“No,” she replied sharply. “It will open widely enough to let me out. We don’t want to damage their ship unnecessarily. I was trying to make friends with them.”

“Then jump,” said Danalta.

Instead of jumping she made a long, shallow dive that took her about twenty meters from the ship’s side before she had to surface. She heard the splash of Danalta’s less graceful entry into the water, the excited chittering of spiders as more and more of them spotted her, followed by the hissing plop of crossbow bolts striking the water all around her. She took a deep breath and dived again, then wondered if a few feet of water would make any difference to the penetration power of the crossbow bolts when she could swim faster and maybe be more difficult to hit on the surface. But the next time she came up for breath and looked back, she was in time to hear the spider with the speaking trumpet call out a few loud, sharp syllables after which the shooting stopped.

Relieved and grateful, she continued swimming. Then she wondered if her spider captain didn’t want to hurt her, or if it believed that it would recapture her with the others at the station and simply wanted to save ammunition. A green, sharklike shape with a long, corrugated horn growing from the top of its head broke the surface beside her before she could make up her mind.

“Grasp the dorsal horn firmly in both hands,” said Danalta, “and hold on tight.”

She was glad of the extra grip afforded by the corrugations as the shape-changer picked up speed and its wide, triangular tail whipped rapidly from side to side, thrusting it faster and faster through the water. It was exhilarating and uncomfortable and a little like water-skiing without the skis. Danalta was cutting through rather than over the steep, breaking waves in the bay so that she had to twist her body and her head backwards every time she needed to breathe, but doing so showed that the distance between them and the pursuing ships was opening up. Laughing, she wondered what her spider captain would think about her moving so fast through the water that she was leaving a wake.

But she was beginning to feel very cold, and Danalta was moving even faster and the water was slapping and tugging and bursting in clouds of spray over her head, arms, and shoulders. In spite of the warm, morning sunshine reflecting off the waves and spray, her body temperature was dropping rapidly and the hands holding her to Danalta were losing feeling. She realized suddenly that while her equipment belt had stayed firmly in Place, the swimsuit hadn’t.

The spider ships were disappearing behind the curve of the coastline, and the wreck of Terragar and the medical station were corning into sight. Within a few minutes they were in the shallows m front of the buildings and the shape-changer was already turning its fins into legs.

Murchison stamped about on the sand and swung her arms briefly to return some heat to her body, then, still shivering, she sprinted for the largest prefab structure that housed the recovery ward. It was occupied by Naydrad and the three Earth-human casualties. With her teeth chattering, she said, “Charge Nurse, please throw me a set of my whites and . . .”

“You look fine the way you are, ma’am.” said one of the Terragar officers, smiling broadly.

“The way I am,” she said, beginning to pull on the tight, white coveralls, “is bad for your blood pressure. Naydrad, where’s Prilicla?”

“In the comm room,” said the Kelgian.

A faint tremor of pleasure and relief shook Prilicla as the pathologist joined him before the communicator screen where the face of the captain was staring out at them. He said, “Friend Murchison, I’m glad to have you back with us, and I feel that you are well but worried. Ease your mind. Friend Fletcher and Rhabwar will be with us several minutes before the spider fleet arrives, so that we are in no immediate danger from them.”

“But, Doctor,” said Murchison grimly, “they are in danger, deadly danger, from us.”

“No, ma’am,” the captain joined in. “I’ve never held with the adage that attack is the best form of defense. We will keep them away from the medical station until you people are ready to transfer to Rhabwar. Minimum force, if any, will be used.”

Prilicla could feel the growing concern and impatience behind the words as Murchison went on. “Please listen, Captain. Unknown to me at the time, Danalta was making a record of my attempt at communication, but it didn’t include the other things I saw the spiders do earlier, the way they have to live with and use their technology, or their behavior towards me and the, well, consideration one of them showed. They are intelligent, brave, and resourceful people, but terribly vulnerable.”

“I understand,” said the captain. “We’ll try not to hurt them, but we do have to defend the station, remember?”

“You don’t understand!” said Murchison. “The spiders use technology that is partially organic, something we’ve never met before. All of their fabricated structures large and small, their ships, gliders, tools, and, presumably, their living accommodations, are partly woven of web strands from their own bodies. I don’t know how much they value this material, or how difficult or easy it would be to replace, but damaging anything they’ve made might mean damaging them, or a least a valuable piece of their personal property. You’re on very sensitive ground here, Captain.”

Before the other could reply, it went on quickly, “They use fire, but so far as I could see, only for heavily protected lighting, and they seem to be so afraid of it that their bodies as well as their structures must be highly flammable. And in spite of being sailors, they also have an intense aversion to contact with water. Their ships are designed so that the sails can be reconfigured to enclose the entire upperworks so as to shelter them from rain and spray.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” it went on, and Prilicla could feel the apology backing up its words, “for adding these complications to whatever defensive strategy you’ve worked out. But if we are ever to establish friendly relations with these people, which from personal contact I consider to be a strong probability, you must not use any weapons against them that will generate heat. I’m thinking of signal flares, normally non-harmful pyrotechnics, or any form of radiant energy that would cause an electrical discharge. As well, you must not allow any of their sea or airborne Personnel to fall in the water.”

The captain was silent for a moment and, thankfully, still well beyond Prilicla’s empathic range. When it spoke, its features and voice were calm and reflected none of what it must have been feeling.

“Thank you for the additional information, Pathologist Murchison,” it said, glancing aside at another screen. “We should be closing with the spider fleet approximately one hundred and fifty meters off your beach in seventeen minutes. In that time I shall try to modify my defensive strategy accordingly. However, you will understand that operationally I do not do my best work with both hands tied behind my back. Off.”

Murchison shook its head at the blank screen and moved to the room’s big direct-vision panel. Prilicla followed to hover above its shoulder as they watched the three spider vessels that had rounded the curve of the island and were beginning to foreshorten as they turned in to approach the station. All six of their gliders had been launched and were making slow, tight circles in the sky above them. Distance had reduced the chittering of their crews to a low, insect buzzing. The pathologist’s emotional radiation, he noted with approval, reflected wariness, concern, growing excitement, but no fear.

“Friend Murchison,” he said gently, indicating the big diagnostic screen on the other side of the room, “this is a good opportunity for us to review the latest clinical material on the two Trolanni. Patient Keet’s condition was not life-threatening and its treatment is progressing satisfactorily, but not so Patient Jasam’s.”

The pathologist dipped its head in affirmation and moved to the screen which was already displaying enlargements of the two patients’ scanner images. For several minutes it studied them, magnifying and changing the viewpoint several times, while in the direct-vision panel the spider ships drew closer. But unlike Prilicla, it had no attention to spare for them.

Finally it said, “Danalta told me there was a problem with Patient Jasam, and it was right. But Patient Keet’s condition, while not giving cause for immediate concern, is not good. There is a general impairment of blood flow, and organic degeneration in several areas that is not, I think, due to any recent trauma, and the indications would support a diagnosis of sterility caused by a long-term dietary deficiency. But Patient Jasam is in serious trouble. I advocate immediate surgical intervention. Would you agree, sir?”

“Fully, friend Murchison,” he replied, gesturing towards the screen. “But there are three main areas of trauma, deep puncture-wounding whose effect on nearby organs is unknown. We should go in at once, certainly, but how, where and in what order? This is an entirely new life-form to my experience.”

The Earth-human’s feelings were predominantly those of concern, apology, and, strangely, an underlying but slowly growing feeling of certainty.

“There is nothing entirely new,” it said, “under this or any other sun. Our Trolanni friend’s CHLI physiology has a similarity very slight I must admit—in its lack of supporting skeletal structure and the fine network of blood vessels and nerve linkages supplying the peripheral limbs and visual and aural sensors, to those found in the Kelgian DBLF classification. There are also similarities in its two fast-beating hearts to those of the light-gravity, LSVO and MSVK life-forms. The digestive system is very strange, but the waste-elimination process could belong to a scaled-down Melfan. If you believe the risk to be acceptable, I think I know what is going on, or what should be going on in there, but . . .”

It held up its hands with the fingers loosely spread.

“. . . But I can’t do it with clumsy digits like these,” it went on. “It would need much more sensitive hands, yours, and the small, specialized members that the shape-changer can grow to get into and support the awkward corners. You and Danalta would perform the surgery. I could only assist and advise.”

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, wishing that the other could feel its gratitude and relief. “We will prepare at once.”

“Before we open Jasam up . . .” it began, and broke off because all around them the loose equipment in the room was vibrating to the increasing subsonic growl that indicated Rhabwar

was making its low-level approach. Irritably, and without even looking at the ships closing on the beach, it raised its voice.

“I would like to make a closer, hands-on examination of both patients,” it went on, “for purposes of comparison and to obtain physical confirmation of the scanner findings.”

“Of course,” said Prilicla. “But first give me a few minutes so that Naydrad can render them unconscious.”

“But why?” it asked. “We’re very short of time.”

“I’m sorry, friend Murchison,” he replied, “but unlike the Terragar officers, the Trolanni would take no pleasure in the sight of your body.”

CHAPTER 27

From the deeply upholstered comfort of his control couch, which felt about as soft as a wooden plank due to the body tension required to make him appear relaxed to his subordinates, Captain Fletcher watched the image of the ships and aircraft of the spider landing force as it expanded in his forward vision screen.

Rhabwar was not a large vessel by Monitor Corps standards, but it was a little longer and its delta wing configuration gave it more width than the big, flattened, turtlelike ships of the opposition. The approach he had originally planned would certainly have caused maximum non-offensive confusion, if not utter havoc and demoralization, to the opposition. But he had remembered the words of Pathologist Murchison as she had been telling him how he should do his job.

His idea had been to go in low and fast and drag a sonic Shockwave along the length of the beach. He didn’t think that the ships would suffer or—except psychologically—their crews, but the thought of what the air turbulence created by a supersonic fly-past would do to those ridiculously flimsy gliders made it a bad idea. It wouldn’t be like shooting ducks, he thought, but more like blasting butterflies out of the sky.

“Decelerate,” he said, “and bring us to a halt one hundred meters above the beach midway between the station and the water-line. Deploy three tractor beams in pressor mode at equal strength in stilt configuration and hold us there.”

“Sir,” said Haslam, “the slower approach is going to give them time to begin landing their people on the beach.”

The captain didn’t reply because he could see everything that was happening as well as the lieutenant could and had arrived at the same conclusion.

“Dodds,” he said. “The opposition’s ships are highly flammable. When we’re in position, swing around so that our tail flare will be directed inland. Then put out one forward tractor to discourage the spider advance. Focus it to about ten meters’ surface diameter and change the point of focus erratically for maximum turbulence as you play it back and forth along the beach across their path. The idea is to create a localized sandstorm down there.”

“Understood, sir,” said Dodds.

“Power room,” he went on briskly. “We’ll be supporting the ship’s mass on pressor beams with no assist from the thrusters for a while. How long can you give us? A rough estimate will do.”

“A moment, please,” said the engineering officer; then, “Approximately seventy-three minutes on full power drain, reducing by one-point-three percent per minute until exhaustion and an enforced grounding seventeen-point-three minutes later.”

“Thank you, Chen.” said Fletcher, smiling to himself. The power-room lieutenant was a man who disliked giving rough approximations. “I’m putting this operation on your repeater screen. Enjoy the, ah, battle.”

The misty-blue light given off by their three immaterial stilts as well as that of the forward tractor beam would be difficult for the spiders to see in the bright sunlight, so it would seem that the ship drifting to a stop above them was virtually weightless, or at least very lightly built like one of their own flying machines.

“A suggestion, sir,” said Chen suddenly. “If your intention

is to make a blatant demonstration of power that will discourage, and probably scare hell out of the enemy without inflicting actual physical injury, this is the way to do it___”

“The spiders aren’t our enemy, Lieutenant,” said Fletcher dryly, “they just act that way. But go on.”

“But if they don’t discourage easily,” the other continued, “we could be faced with a siege situation so that balancing ourselves up here on power-hungry stilts would be a short-term activity as well as running down our power reserves. My suggestion is that we land and modify the meteorite shield to provide hemispherical protection widely enough to cover the station and ourselves. That way we can maintain the shield for a much longer period. Once we’ve made the point, which we have, that we are large, dangerous, and, if necessary, can float motionless in the air, there’s no reason to continue doing so. With respect, sir, I think we should land sooner rather than later.”

Exactly the same thoughts had been going through Fletcher’s mind, but saying so to Lieutenant Chen would have made the captain sound petty-minded in the extreme. But a development that the other had not foreseen, at least not yet, was that if a spider aircraft should fly into one of the pressor beams supporting Rhabwar’s weight, it and its pilot would be smashed flat into the ground.

“Thank you, Chen,” he said instead. “Your suggestion is approved. Haslam, take us down. Dodds, kill the pressors but maintain the forward tractor to keep that sandstorm going. Chen, how soon will the meteorite-shield modification be ready?”

“It’s difficult to be precise,” said Chen. “Fairly soon.”

“Try to make it sooner than that,” he said.

The gliders had sheared off at Rhabwar’s approach but now they were circling back again, possibly thinking that the grounding of the ship was a sign of weakness. All three of the spider vessels had run their prows up onto the beach and the nearest one had its landing-ramp lowered. The first few spiders were already crawling ashore with crossbows held at the ready. Dodds took a moment to check the focus of his tractor beam. The landing party now numbered close on twenty, with more of them coming down the ramps at intervals of a few seconds.

Directly in front of them a carpet of sand twenty meters in diameter and about

three inches deep rose high into the air and exploded into a cloud as the tractor’s point of focus was vibrated erratically in and out. A thick curtain of fine, powdery sand dropped in front of and a little on top of the spiders.

For a moment they milled about uncertainly. Then Fletcher saw a spider with a large speaking trumpet climb onto the superstructure of it ship to chitter loudly at them. At once they split into two groups that crawled rapidly along the beach in opposite directions. The sandstorm, its effect only slightly diminished by the fact that the line of targets was lengthening, followed them.

The other two ships were also disgorging spiders while the gliders were flying in tight circles above Rhabwar and the station, although fortunately not low enough for them to hit the meteorite shield when it came on.

“Sir,” said Dodds worriedly, “the sand doesn’t appear to bother them very much, especially now that all three landing parties are strung out along the beach. It looks as though they are trying move out of sight and circle round behind us. Shall I increase the power and area of focus, sir, to stir up more sand, or maybe try to box them in by—”

“Deploying another tractor would help,” Haslam broke in. “I’m not doing anything else at the moment.”

“—By pulling in some water instead of sand,” Dodds continued, “and splashing it down in their path? That might stop them spreading out sideways. They’d be caught between the sea and a wet place.”

Pleased with the lieutenant because this was an idea Fletcher had not already thought of himself, he said, “We’re told that water has a very bad effect on them and we are, after all, trying to be friendly. Try it, but be very careful not to dowse them.”

A few minutes later Dodds said jubilantly, “They certainly are afraid of the water; they’ve stopped in their tracks. But now they’re pushing inland again.”

“Haslam,” said the captain, “man another tractor beam unit—Dodds will give you the settings—and help him out. While he concentrates on the two farther parties, you take the nearest one. Keep moving up and down the line of spiders trying to advance on the station. Leave the waterplashing, if necessary, to Dodds. You shower them with sand only. Try to spoil their ability to see where they’re going, and generally make them feel uncomfortable, but don’t hurt them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Haslam.

More and more spiders were crawling down their ships’ landing ramps, but not spreading out because of the threat from the containing splashes of water. If the positions were reversed, Fletcher thought, he would have been wondering why they were not being constantly drenched by water instead of dusted with harmless sand, but then, their minds might not share the same rules of logic.

Suddenly they were changing tactics.

“Look at this, sir,” Dodds said urgently. “They’re beginning to weave from side to side, then darting into the falling sand. And when I’m dealing with one flank the other one pushes forward and gains a meter or so of ground. I have to keep changing the point of focus, narrowing it or moving the tractor beam back to keep from hitting them. Chen, we’re going to need that meteorite shield, like now.”

“The same thing is happening here,” Haslam said. “We’d need to drop a ton of sand on this lot to discourage them. They take turns at running in, zig-zagging at random, and . . . Hell, I hit one of them!”

It must have been the briefest of touches on one side of the spider’s body, but the tractor beam lifted it two meters into the sand-filled air and flipped it onto it back. It lay with its six limbs waving. Haslam withdrew his beam without being told as a few of the others gathered round their injured companion to lift it back onto its feet. Through the air which was now free of sand, Fletcher had a clear view of the spiders further up and down the beach beginning to move purposefully towards the station again. Then high on the superstructure of the middle ship of the three, the spider with the speaking trumpet began chittering loudly at them. The advance hesitated and slowed to a dead stop. Within a few seconds all three spider landing parties had turned around and were hurrying back to their ships, the injured one being half carried by two of its companions. The gliders were already coming in to land close to their boarding ramps.

“I’m sorry about hitting that one, sir,” said Haslam, “and I don’t think it was badly hurt. But it looks as though we’ve taught them a lesson because they’ve decided to pull out.”

“Don’t bet on that, Lieutenant,” said Fletcher dryly. He was raising his hand to point at the scene in the forward viewscreen when the communicator chimed and its screen lit with the image of Dr. Prilicla.

“Friend Fletcher,” said the Cinrusskin. “The traces of emotional radiation emanating from your crew have been characteristic of excitement, tension and concern, all of which feelings have suddenly diminished in strength. A long and tricky surgical procedure is about to be attempted—once, that is, we solve an associated non-medical problem. Can you tell me whether or not we can proceed without outside emotional interruptions or distractions?”

“Doctor,” Fletcher said, laughing softly, “you will be free of distractions for the rest of the day. Judging by the look of that sky there is a heavy rainstorm, not just a squall, moving in. The spiders are returning to their ships as we speak.”

They watched the dark grey clouds on the horizon expanding to fill the sky and the paler curtain of heavy rain rushing closer. The spiders and their aircraft were safely on board and the sail shields of the three ships were closed tight before the deluge arrived, but they could hear it rattling and bouncing off the flattened dome-like hulls which, he realized suddenly, looked very much like umbrellas.

“This must be the first time,” Haslam said, “that a battle was called off because of rain.”

CHAPTER 28

The patient had been prepped for surgery, the operating team of Danalta, Naydrad, and himself had been standing by the table for more than twenty minutes, and friend Murchison was still trying to solve Prilicla’s associated non-medical problem. It was trying with such intensity to be patient and reasonable that its emotional radiation was making him tremble.

“Keet,” it was saying, “your life-mate Jasam is unconscious and will not feel pain, either during or while recovering from this procedure. You, however, are feeling the non-material pains of concern, uncertainty, and the continuing emotional trauma over what you think will be the loss of a loved one. To be brutally honest, we may lose Jasam, but we would have a better chance of saving it if you would cooperate by moving out of visual range. Untutored as you are in medical matters, not seeing every incision, resection, and repair as they take place would be easier on you, too. Besides, would Jasam want you to suffer needlessly like this?”

Keet lay watching the towel-draped form of its life-mate from its litter, which it had insisted be moved into the operating room. It made no reply.

“In all my nursing experience,” said Naydrad, its fur ruffling in disapproval, “never has the next of kin, or any other nonmedically-oriented relative, been allowed to witness a procedure of this complexity. On all the civilized worlds I know of, it is just not done. If this is the custom on Trolann, I think it is a misguided, unnecessarily painful, completely wrong, and barbaric custom.”

Prilicla was about to apologize for Naydrad’s forthright speech, but stopped himself because the reasons for the Kelgian species’ lack of tact had already been explained to it, but Keet didn’t give him a chance to talk.

“It is not the custom on Trolann,” it said, radiating anger at the insult. “But neither is it the custom to have a druul present in our operating theaters working on us. Ever.”

He could feel the pathologist beginning to lose its temper, but not completely, because the words it used were intended to achieve a precisely calculated effect.

Murchison said calmly, “The experiences you shared on your ship, your searchsuit as you call it, when Jasam was badly injured and you were unable to leave your control pod to help or comfort or even to be physically close to it, has made a deep impression on your mind. You don’t want to be separated from Jasam—especially, as now, when you think that there is the danger of never seeing it alive again. I can understand and sympathize with that feeling.

“Perhaps this natural concern for your life-mate,” it went on, “has temporarily clouded your intellect and memory, so I shall explain to you once again, that I, no matter how large or small my physical resemblance to one of them, am not a druul. Because of my greater knowledge in some areas I am here simply to advise on problems which may arise during this procedure. I shall not be working on Jasam directly or touching its body at any time. If you insist on being present during this operation, you have my permission to stay. However, seeing your life-mate under the knife will be distressing and psychologically damaging for you, so I suggest that you watch me closely rather than Jasam, just in case I should feel suddenly hungry and want to eat it.”

“And they tell me Kelgians are without tact,” said Danalta.

“Whatever that is,” said Naydrad, its fur spiking in shock. “But the words were inappropriate.”

Prilicla knew that Murchison was deliberately using shock tactics, and felt from Keet’s emotional radiation that they were beginning to work.

“From your observation of Prilicla’s work on your ship,” the pathologist went on, “you know that it is capable of the most delicate and precise healing. You also know that it is hypersensitive to the emotions of those around it, and you must already have realized that your intense feelings of fear, concern, and other emotions can adversely affect its ability to perform the high level of surgery that is required here. For that reason you must at all times keep a tight control of your feelings, natural though they are, so as to avoid distracting Prilicla. Do you understand and agree?”

The Trolanni did not reply, but Prilicla could feel the intensity of Keet’s emotional radiation begin to subside as it fought, successfully, to control its feelings and impose a measure of calm on itself. There was no need for it to speak to this frightful, druul-like creature because there was understanding and agreement and, he noted with pleasure, a feeling of apology.

“Thank you, friend Murchison,” Prilicla said. “We will begin . . .”

The high concentration of light around the patient, Prilicla thought, during the few times he glanced up to rest his eyes, when contrasted with the grey overcast outside the direct-vision panel, made it seem almost as if night had fallen, and the final time he looked up, the panel was black and it had. At intervals the quiet voice of the captain had been reporting no visible activity from the spider ships, and with the fall of darkness the infrared sensors were confirming its theory that the spiders were not nocturnal creatures.

“Or at least,” Naydrad added, much too loudly for the captain to miss hearing, “they don’t go out on rainy nights. Dr. Prilicla, I think you are in need of sleep.”

“And I feel sure that you are, Doctor,” said Murchison. “The patient’s condition is still critical, but stable enough for us to seal off the lower thoracic area and suspend operations for a few hours. After all, the damage to the lungs where the deep air lines were jerked out by the onboard explosion has been repaired, and it is breathing pure oxygen with no mechanical assistance, as well as being fed intravenously. Repairs to the lesions caused by the traumatic withdrawal of the external feeding and waste-extraction systems can surely wait a little longer for attention?”

“You are probably right, friend Murchison,” Prilicla replied, using the form of words that was the closest he could come to telling anyone they were wrong. “But there are still small traces of toxic material adhering to the ruptured bowel walls, and I would like to remedy that before any cessation. Friend Naydrad, stand by and apply suction where I indicate. Friend Danalta, be ready to follow me in and support the area under the first lesion while I am suturing. Friend Murchison, ease your mind. I promise not to fall asleep on the patient for at least an hour. Now, let us resume.”

Naydrad’s equipment made a low, derisive sound and its fur rippled in concern as it said, “This is the strangest stomach-and-bowel arrangement I’ve ever encountered. Dr. Prilicla, in coloration and structure, it resembles spaghetti, that Earth-human food you like to eat. Is it strange to you, Pathologist?”

“In the light of my earlier and non-serious remark about eating,” said Murchison sharply, radiating disapproval, “it is unseemly to mention food in the presence of the next of kin. And no, the Dwerlans use a similar gastrointestinal tract, although, I admit, not two of them working in tandem. There is nothing new in multispecies medicine, just new combinations of the old. But this one is particularly complex.”

Keet moved restively on its litter and said, “I don’t seriously believe that any of you would want to eat the offal of my life-mate. Even a druul would think twice about doing that. But I can’t see what is happening. Murchison, you’re blocking my view.”

“That was and remains my intention,” said Murchison. “It is kinder to tell you what is happening after it has happened.”

With Naydrad keeping the operative field clear of unwanted fluid, and Danalta extruding the fine digits that could insinuate themselves into the awkward crevices where no inflexible surgical instrument could go so as to hold open the site of the damage, Prilicla was able to see his way to perform the extremely delicate work of repair that was necessary, As the procedure continued, Keet radiated intense but—uncharacteristically for it—silent concern. Murchison was watchful but it did not have to speak at all, because the organic territory they were occupying was becoming increasingly familiar to them. But nearly half an hour later, it did speak.

“Keet,” Murchison said, radiating an increasing level of pleasure and relief that the Trolanni could not feel, “this is going well.”

“Thank you, Murchison,” said Keet.

“You’re welcome,” said the pathologist. “But please remain quiet so as to avoid distracting the team. There is more to do.”

Feeling happier than it had been since the start of the operation, Keet replied by not saying another word. But Murchison was radiating a growing level of concern that was being focused on Prilicla himself. Its words came as no surprise to him.

“You’re tired, sir,” it said, “and the way your legs are wobbling shows that you are badly in need of rest. The remaining work is simple tidying-up and can be completed by Danalta and Naydrad under my direction. But there is another complication which requires treatment. It isn’t urgent or life-threatening, at least so far as the life of the patient itself is concerned, and it can wait, but I suggest we do it while we are in the area so as to avoid having to open up the patient at a later date.”

“Do what, and why?” said Keet suddenly. “I don’t want you cutting Jasam without a very good reason.”

Murchison ignored the interruption but in its calm, lecturing voice managed to answer the questions anyway,

“The problem is principally medical and requires only minor surgery,” it said, using its pencil light as a pointer, “involving as it does infusions into the patient’s endocrine system, specifically the small gland in the area—just there—which is partially atrophied and inactive due to a build-up of toxic material that has been assimilated by the body over many years. With the removal from its toxic home environment and the introduction of the indicated specifics, the chances are that the gland in question can be restimulated to optimum activity in a very short time, and certainly within the period of the patient’s recuperation.”

“What are you talking about?” said Keet.

“. . . Considering the fact that Trolann’s population is dangerously close to the point of extinction,” Murchison continued, “it would be advantageous after they are transferred to their new world for as many Trolanni couples as possible to be capable of reproducing their kind. With Patient Jasam’s male reproductive system, the treatment is simple and straightforward with no complications foreseen. With Patient Keet, however, in common with the females of the other life-forms in my experience, the mechanism of reproduction and child-bearing is more complex. It would be better if you undertook that procedure yourself, after you have slept, of course. Do you agree?”

For a moment Prilicla was unable to speak. A sudden explosion of emotion from Keet, comprising as it did a mixture of excitement, relief, and pleasure that verged on the joyous, was sending a slow tremors along his body, wings and limbs. He was greatly pleased but not surprised at the way his assistant had handled the situation, and he knew for a fact that Murchison had made a Trolanni

friend for life.

As the gale of pleasurable emotion diminished, he withdrew from the table, stretched out his wings and limbs and refolded them tightly to his body before speaking.

“Well done, all of you,” he said. “Friend Murchison, both of your suggestions are approved. Proceed at once with the work on Jasam, and explain to Keet that her life-mate will be rendered unconscious for a period of continuous sedation that will assist its healing, and that there will be nothing more constructive for it to do during that time than to undergo the procedure you suggested.”

“Don’t worry, all that will be explained to Keet,” Murchison broke in. “But now, sir, will you please go to sleep?”

The figures of Murchison, Danalta, Naydrad, the two Trolanni, and the whole OR were beginning to fade around him.

Happily he murmured, “I am asleep.”

CHAPTER 29

The bad weather continued with unbroken wind and heavy rain for the next six days, during which there was, as expected, no resumption of the spider attack. Keet had successfully undergone its minor surgery at Prilicla’s hands and was waiting impatiently for Jasam to be released from its continuing sedation. In space, Courier One had returned with the latest news from the Federation, which consisted mainly of ranking Monitor Corps officers and senior administrators worrying aloud about what Rhabwars people were doing, or more accurately, what they were doing wrong regarding this unique double first contact situation. Courier Two was waiting impatiently to take back the latest situation report, and their excuses.

Captain Fletcher was trying to think of a few good ones, and asking for help.

“I’ve drafted a report on all this for the courier vessel,” it said, radiating a mixture of embarrassment and uncertainty as a jerky gesture of its hand indicated the human and Trolanni casualties visible through the transparent wall of the communications room, “but I wanted to consult with you, Dr. Prilicla, with all of you, in fact, before sending it off. For reasons you will understand, and of which I am not very proud, I didn’t want the discussion to be via communicator and be overheard by my officers. If this matter should come to an enquiry, or even a court martial, I’d prefer them not to know and so spare them the embarrassment of having to give evidence against me.”

The captain had walked the distance from Rhabwar in the pouring rain to say these things. Prilicla used his projective empathy in an attempt to reassure the captain, but it wasn’t working very well. Naydrad was the first to speak.

“I don’t understand your problem, Captain,” it said with a puzzled ruffle of fur. “With Kelgians this situation would not arise. We would either recount the facts accurately or, if we didn’t want to disclose the information, not speak at all. Earth-humans!”

“Unlike the charge nurse whose species doesn’t know how to lie,” Danalta joined in, “I have a capability for verbal misdirection, diplomacy, politeness or therapeutic lying. But it is usually less complicated in the long run to tell the truth.”

The captain radiated worry and impatience. It said, “But the truth is complicated, almost certainly too complicated for our superiors to believe. Courier One took back the news of the Trolanni first contact, which in the interim has gone fairly well, but the continued success of which may depend on whether or not they both survive the second contact with another intelligent species which includes Pathologist Murchison’s capture by pirates . . .”

“That had a happy ending,” Murchison broke in, glancing out at the three rain-shrouded vessels drawn up along the beach, and added, “so far.”

“. . . As a result of which,” it continued, “the planet’s indigenous species has virtually declared war on us. This is no way to conduct a first contact operation, and our temporal lords and masters will be gravely displeased with us, or with me, at least. Courier One’s captain said that there was serious talk about sending one of the dedicated first contact ships, probably Descartes, to take over our contact with the second species while advising us on how to conduct the first. He also said that unique-science investigation teams, which would, of course, take all the necessary precautions, were being assembled to unravel the Trolanni searchsuit technology and would be held back until an assessment could be made regarding the possibly harmful psychological effects of so much advanced space hardware appearing around the spiders’ planet. But when Courier Two takes back my latest report, including the news that—despite the fact that the spiders are nowhere near achieving space flight, they might not be given a terminal inferiority complex by seeing a few unexplained lights in their sky—within a week near-space is likely to be filled with Monitor Corps ships.”

The captain stopped and breathed heavily. That was due, Prilicla thought, to the fact that it had been exhaling air at a controlled rate while speaking for several minutes without inhaling. For Prilicla’s sake it was trying to control its emotional radiation, which was anything but pleasant.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said gently, “our areas of authority in this situation are overlapping, so it follows that the responsibility, or the blame for it going wrong, is also divided. However, it began as a medical problem with the transfer of the casualties from Terragar, and later the two injured Trolanni from their vessel to this station where, in order to protect both sets of patients, I had to force you into taking military action in their defense. This being so, the greater proportion of the blame must fall on me . . .”

The other’s worry tensions were beginning to ease a little, but Prilicla could also feel an argument coming on. Unlike the Earth-human physiological classification, he could respirate and speak at the same time so he left no time for an interruption.

“. . . My advice would be to tell the truth,” he went on, “but omit the incident of friend Murchison’s capture and escape until a later time. Learning about it now would worry the pathologist’s life-mate, and knowing Diagnostician Conway as I do, it would come out here and . . .”

“He certainly would,” said Murchison softly.

“. . . complicate matters,” he went on. “While Conway has more than enough rank to take one of the hospital’s vessels out here, my thought is that there will be enough ships in the area as it is without another worried life-mate joining us. Keet worrying about Jasam produces enough sex-based emotional drama to go on with. I feel your agreement, friend Murchison.

“As for the rest of the report,” he went on, “be complete and factual. No doubt you will renew your warning regarding the danger of making direct ship-to-ship contact with the Trolanni searchsuit. But also warn your superiors, politely if your service career is to progress as it deserves, of the danger of well-intentioned interference by people who will have much less knowledge and appreciation of the problem than we have.

“You should also relate in detail your concerns regarding the third and much more dangerous first-contact operation that is coming up,” he went on, “the one involving the druul. As well as the opposing species being physically separated and disarmed, which will require military intervention, the Trolanni must be evacuated as a disaster-relief emergency. At a later time a similar exercise will be required for the druul as well, who, because of the bad reputation they have with the Trolanni, must be assessed for possible reeducation as candidates for membership of the Federation. You could also suggest that the advice of patients Jasam and Keet on the Trolann situation would be invaluable, providing we are let alone to continue treating Jasam’s very serious injuries and building up their trust in us.”

“But the Trolanni-druul situation isn’t the immediate problem . . .” began the captain.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Prilicla. “But if you give the impression that it is—that you, personally, consider these future problems to be of more importance and difficulty than our present one—this should have a reassuring effect on your superiors. If you express deep concern for and an understanding of their future problems, they should feel that you are confident about solving this one and leave us alone to get on with it without interference. As well, if they try to help with our problem, I’m sure friend Keet will be able to furnish us with more information on the Trolann situation to worry them. They might decide that every time they try to help us with our troubles, you dump an even greater problem in their laps, and desist.”

“And what do I tell them about the spider assault on the med station?” asked the captain. “Just how do I make that sound like a minor problem?”

“You tell the truth,” Prilicla replied, “but not all of it. After an initial period of misunderstanding, tell them that the spider first contact is ongoing.”

“Ongoing it is,” said the captain, “but from bad to worse. Dr. Prilicla, for such a timid, inoffensive, and completely friendly entity, you have a nasty, devious, lying mind.”

“Why, thank you, friend Fletcher,” he replied, “for listing my most admirable personality characteristics.”

Murchison and Danalta made amused sounds which did not translate while Naydrad ruffled its fur in puzzlement, but before any of them could speak, the communicator chimed and its screen lit with the features of Haslam.

“Sir,” the lieutenant said briskly, “our weather sensors indicate that the present warm front will clear the island in five hours’ time—just before nightfall, that is—and it will be followed by an extensive high-pressure system that could remain for the ensuing twelve to fifteen days. As well, there is another spider fleet of three ships closing on us. Judging by their present heading and speed, I’d say that they intend to pass south of us before morning for a landing on the other side of the island. Would you like to return to the ship?”

The question was, of course, rhetorical because the captain was already halfway to the entrance.

It came as no surprise that the attack from inland did not develop until the afternoon of the following day. By then the hot, high sun had dried off the rain-soaked vegetation, and the moment-to-moment situation as it developed on Rhabwar’s tactical screens was being relayed to the med station’s communicator with a commentary by the captain.

Naydrad was with the Trolanni patients, talking to Keet. Jasam was still deeply sedated but giving no cause for concern while Danalta was doing tricks with itself in an attempt to amuse the Terragar casualties who were complaining because they were missing their daily dunk in the ocean. Only Murchison and himself were watching developments, and the pathologist was radiating a strange mixture of dissatisfaction and guilt.

The original three ships beached near them were showing a few ventilation openings but had not lowered their landing ramps. According to the captain this was an obvious attempt to lull them into a false sense of security while a surprise attack was made from the cover of the vegetation inland. The spider force could not know—because at their level of technology, the very idea of being able to see at a distance in darkness would not have occurred to them—that Rhabwar was fully aware of the arrival of the new fleet; or that a vessel that could detect life signs in space wreckage over thousands of miles’ distance would have no trouble picking up the movements and body heat of beings crawling under a thin covering of overhanging branches.

“I hate it,” said Murchison suddenly, “when I have to watch brave, intelligent, but undereducated people making fools of themselves like this. Are you feeling godlike, Captain Fletcher?”

They heard the captain inhale sharply and Prilicla felt the sudden surge of anger that was weakened only by distance. But its voice remained calm as it replied, “Yes, in a way. I see and know everything, and like a god I have to hide the truth from them for their own good. I’d rather we stopped them before they hit the meteorite shield. They’ve already seen us creating sand eddies and pulling water into their path, and gratuitous displays of superscience can have a bad effect on an emerging culture. Magic, apparent miracles, events which contravene natural law as they know it, can give rise to new religious or drastically change existing ones so that superstition can stultify scientific and technological progress. These people don’t need that.”

“Sorry, Captain,” said Murchison, “I spoke without thinking.”

The other nodded and went on. “The damage may already have been done. They’ve seen our ship fly, and the med-station buildings, and we checked their first attack by throwing sand at them and threatening to douse them with seawater, although neither stopped them trying to attack us because it was the rainstorm that did that. Maybe they think we were responsible for that, too. But allowing them to run into an invisible wall like the meteorite shield could be too much for a primitive species to take, brave and resourceful and adaptable though they are.

“The trouble is,” it went on, “that we can’t generate clouds of sand under the trees and neither can we drag water that far without it spilling on the way. We can use more power on the tractor to uproot trees and throw soil into the air, but not with enough accuracy to keep some of the spiders from getting squashed. Pathologist Murchison, didn’t you mention earlier that they had a fear of fire as well as water?”

“I did,” Murchison replied, “but I’d rather you didn’t use it because I’m not sure whether the on-board fire precautions I saw were due to the material of their ships being flammable, or their bodies.”

“My idea is to frighten them off without hurting them,” said the captain. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. But I’d like them to come close enough for Dr. Prilicla

to get an emotional reading from them. Specifically, why do they feel so strongly about us that they are willing to go up against a completely strange and obviously superior enemy?”

For nearly an hour they watched the enhanced images of the spider force as it moved slowly nearer, making use of all available cover and spreading out into line abreast formation as it came. The captain said complimentary things about the spider commander’s tactical know-how as the center of the line held back to enable the formation to form a crescent that would enclose the station and the grounded Rhabwar. They had closed to just under one hundred meters before the captain spoke directly to the station.

“Dr. Prilicla, are they close enough to give you an emotional reading?”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” he replied, “a strong but imprecise one. The strength as well as the lack of precision is due to the large number of sources sharing the same feelings. There is uncertainty and apprehension characteristic of fear that is under control, and a general feeling of antipathy towards the enemy . . .”

“Blind xenophobic hatred,” the captain broke in. “I was afraid of that.”

“As I’ve said, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “It is difficult to be precise, but my feeling is that they don’t hate us so much as what we are doing.”

“But we aren’t doing anything wrong,” the other protested, “at least that we know about. No matter, we have to stop them before they get any closer. Haslam, launch the chemical pyrotechnics. Spread them in front of their line at twenty-meter intervals. Dodds, use your tractor beam to pull off bunches of burning vegetation and drop them into any smoke-free gaps. I want our perimeter protected by a line of fire and smoke. Stand by to deploy the meteorite shield if that doesn’t work.”

Distress flares shot from Rhabwar’s launchers made low, fiery arcs in the sky before landing at the designated intervals among the trees.

“After three days’ heavy rain,” the captain added for Murchison’s benefit, “the vegetation is still too damp for there to be any danger of us starting a conflagration. We will be producing mostly light, steam, and smoke.”

The intense blue light and heat of the chemical flares, which had been designed to be seen across thousands of miles of space, caused the damp surrounding vegetation to fairly explode into flame. Dodds picked at the hottest spots with his tractor beam, moving clumps of burning branches into the intervening areas where the vegetation had been unaffected. A dense pall of steam and smoke rose into the sky so that the sun became a dark orange shape that wavered in and out of visibility. A few minutes later they could see through the dissipating smoke that the secondary fires were dying down, and those where the flares had landed were not looking too healthy, but they had done their work.

“A wind off the sea is blowing the smoke inland,” said the captain. “The spider force is withdrawing and heading back to their ships. So far as we can see, no injuries have been sustained.”

“Their emotional radiation confirms,” said Prilicla, “but they are badly frightened and their dislike of us has increased.”

“Sir,” Lieutenant Haslam reported before the captain could reply, “the ships on the other side of the island must have seen the smoke. A glider has been launched. It is slope-soaring over the high ground and heading this way, obviously to find out what has been happening. I think we won this one.”

“We won this battle, Lieutenant,” said the captain, “but not the war. If we win the war that means we lose, because the only way to win this war is to stop it before anyone gets hurt.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

CHAPTER 30

For the remainder of the day, between breaks for meals, checks on the patients, and a period of rest for himself, they watched the glider overhead because there was nothing else of interest happening. The spider aircraft was doing some very interesting things, like signaling to its mother ship on the other side of the island and the three vessels drawn up along the beach.

A large, circular panel close to one wing-root had opened and begun spinning in the slipstream about its two diametrically opposed attachment points. One face of the panel was bright yellow while the other matched the overall brownish-green color of the glider. The rotating disk was within easy reach of the pilot who used one of its forelimbs to check the spin at irregular intervals to show either the light or dark face to watchers below and on its more distant mother ship.

“Ingenious,” said the captain admiringly. “It’s using the visual equivalent of Earth’s old-time Morse code. The spiders might not have radio but they can communicate over short to medium distances. The rotating panel would have minimum effect on the glider’s flight characteristics, and any information being transmitted would be passed slowly, although if necessary the message could last for as long the glider remained aloft. Judging by the pauses in signaling, which last for anything up to

fifteen minutes, I’d say that there is a similar device on the mother ship and they are talking about us.”

“Sir,” said Haslam. “It’s not heading back to its ship. Why is it still climbing? I would have expected it to come down to take a closer look at us so that the pilot would have more to talk about.”

The captain exercised the prerogative of a senior officer who did not know the answer by maintaining a commanding silence.

The litters bearing all of the patients were moved into the afternoon sunshine of the beach although, as it had been in the recovery ward, the druul-like Earth-human casualties and those from the Trolanni searchsuit were separated from visual contact by portable screens. There were a few spiders moving about the beach, but they stayed close to their ships and it was plain that another attack was not imminent. To conserve power the meteorite shield had not been deployed so that the patients could benefit from the sea breeze as well as the sunshine. They, too, lay watching and talking about the slowly ascending glider. It was still climbing late in the afternoon when the patients were moved indoors and when the sun began to sink behind the high ground inland. When dusk fell at ground level it was still climbing, tiny with distance but clearly visible in the bright, orange light of the sun which for it had not yet gone down. It began circling widely and performing slow, intricate aerobatics.

“Doctor,” said the captain, “I’m beginning to worry about what our flyboy is doing up there. Its present altitude is close on five thousand meters and it must be cold up there. In the circumstances of the recent attack it doesn’t seem appropriate for it to be showing off and selfishly enjoying itself like this. It’s possible that it is performing some form of sunset religious ritual that the spiders, or maybe only their glider pilots, believe is important, but I don’t think so.”

“What do you think, friend Fletcher?” said Prilicla.

“The glider is far too high for its swiveling wing panel to be readable without a telescope,” the captain replied, “and I can’t imagine a species so afraid of fire as are the spiders being able to use it to process sand into glass and cast lenses. My theory is that the aerobatics are another form of signaling,”

It paused for a moment as if expecting an objection, then went on, “Of necessity the vocabulary would have to be restricted because there are only so many ways

that a glider can move in the air, so its report would have to be simplified, couched in stock phrases that would be much less detailed than the visual Morse, and yet it is trying to describe happenings unique in its species’ experience. But that high-flying aircraft and its message will be visible over a much greater distance than the shorter-range but more fluent swiveling wing-panel arrangement.”

“Is there any support for your theory, friend Fletcher?” asked Prilicla, feeling that he already knew the answer. “Are there any spider vessels within visual range of this hypothetical signal?”

“I’m afraid so, Doctor,” the captain replied. “Our radar isn’t too accurate because their aircraft and ships are made from organic rather than metallic, reflective material. But it showed a fleet of six vessels, five of which changed course towards us within half an hour of the glider rising above their horizon. The other vessel headed in the opposite direction towards another fleet that is still too distant for us to resolve the number of units. My guess is that the sixth ship will launch a high-flying glider at first light tomorrow to relay the signal.

“Very soon all of the spiders on the surrounding ocean or on the land adjoining it will know we’re here,” it added, “and a lot of them will come to do something about it.”

“But what will they do, friend Fletcher?” said Prilicla, the sudden intensity of his own anxiety overwhelming that of the captain. “We have not committed any hostile acts towards them, we did nothing wrong, and when they attacked us we did everything possible to avoid hurting them. If they would only stop and think about what we did and, more importantly, from our obvious position of strength what we did not do, this problem coul be solved by—”

“We did nothing wrong that we know of,” the other inte: rupted. “But don’t forget that they’re a new species. They me view our inaction as a sign of weakness or inability to hurt then or maybe they just hate us for being here.”

“If we could find a way of talking to them,” said Prilicla. “we could just tell them that we don’t want to be here, either, they might help.”

Fletcher shook its head. “Pathologist Murchison exchange a few words, nouns, personal names, or whatever with what sh called her spider captain, but not enough for the translation corr puter to do anything with them. And even if we were able to tal to them, that doesn’t mean they would believe us.

“I can’t help thinking about the bad old xenophobic da) on Earth,” it went on, “and how we would have reacted towarc an apparent invasion from the stars. We would certainly not have tried to talk, or even to think about talking. We would have gathered our forces, as these people seem to be doing, and have at the horrible alien invaders with everything we had.”

Prilicla thought for a moment, then said, “The Trolanni began by hating us, especially you druul-like DBDGs, but the got over their phobia after you projected the shortened Federation history lesson into space outside their searchsuit. Tonight why not do the same? The spider ships are sure to have watch keepers on duty during the night to rouse their crews if anything happens. Make something happen, friend Fletcher.”

The captain shook its head, in indecision rather than negation. It said, “The Trolanni had star travel and the advanced technology to support it and were half expecting to meet other star-traveling species. The spiders don’t and weren’t. They would not understand. We’d probably scare them even more, give then more cause to fear and hate us and, well, we could end up seriously damaging the future philosophical development of their whole culture. Unless you can get an emotional reading from them to the contrary, first-contact protocol forbids us doing anything like that.”

“They are too distant,” said Prilicla regretfully, “and there are too many of them emoting at once for that kind of reading. All I can feel from here is a flood of hatred and aversion. If we could entice one or even a few of them closer, their subtler feelings could be analyzed. They will continue to stay away from us until the next attack. During an attack they will not be emoting subtle feelings.

“The ideal solution would be to find a way to make them talk to us,” he ended, “and not fight.”

“Yes,” said the captain, and broke contact.

He joined the rest of the medical team as they were moving the patients’ litters onto the beach for their daily supportive medication of fresh air and sunshine. A few minutes he spent hovering above and exchanging a few words with them in turn, beginning with the Terragar DBDG amputees before moving to the Trolanni CHLIs to join the quiet conversation they were holding. Keet was well recovered and fully capable of moving around without a litter and meeting the others, but the knowledge that the druul-like healer and patients would not hurt either of them had not yet penetrated to the deeper, emotional levels of its mind, so that it preferred to stay on its litter behind the screens knowing that the other patients could not leave theirs. Jasam was no longer in danger, but it would not help its condition if it was forced into premature visual contact with the other DBDGs. In any case, talking to the patients was not his primary reason for coming outside.

The person who had already spoken with the spiders, he had decided, was the logical one to reopen the conversation.

An hour later, with Prilicla hovering at its shoulder, the pathologist was walking slowly in the direction of the sea and radiating feelings of mild disappointment because it was unable for reasons of personal security to immerse itself. It was carrying a small sheet of plastic that had been rolled, speaking-trumpet-fashion, into a cone because they had agreed that using a mike and Rhabwar’s thunderous external loudspeaker would have been unnecessary vocal overkill. He was towing a small float containing the translation-computer terminal.

“I know I exchanged words with that spider captain, if that is what it is,” said Murchison as they crossed the line of disturbed sand where the meteorite screen had briefly been switched on, “but only a few nouns and a verb, maybe two, and stopping the others from shooting crossbow bolts at me might not have been an act of friendship. It may not have wanted to waste ammunition in the sea because it was expecting to capture all of us later.”

For a moment it radiated minor embarrassment, associated no doubt with a minor infringement of its Earth-human nudity taboo, then went on, “When it saw me I was wearing the only swimsuit I had with me, and this underwear is, well, differently styled and colored. It might not recognize me again. I think you’re expecting too much of me, sir.”

“Perhaps,” he replied, “I’m expecting a miracle. When you are ready, friend Murchison.”

They walked and flew for about thirty meters beyond the mark in the sand left by the meteorite shield. If it had been switched on they would have moved freely through it, for it was designed to stop only incoming objects, but they would not have been able to go back again. A few spiders were moving about close to their ships, and two of them were moving back along a ramp they had built between the beach and the wreck of Terragar, although what people who knew nothing of metal would think of such a hard, nonorganic structure, was anyone’s guess. Prilicla could feel Murchison’s irritation at being ignored as it lifted the speaking trumpet to its mouth.

“Krisit,” it said, pointing at the nearest spider vessel, then turning to indicate Rhabwar. “Preket krisit.” It repeated the words several times before pointing at itself and saying several times, “Hukmaki.” Finally it pointed towards the spider vessel that had been first to arrive and so presumably contained her spider captain, and shouted, “Krititkukik.”

There was no visible reaction, but he could feel the cloud of hostility that was emoting from the ships being laced with eddies of interest and curiosity. On the upperworks of the nearest vessel a spider appeared and began chittering loudly and continuously through its speaking trumpet, which was not directed at them. A party of five spiders assembled around the end of the boarding ramp. Suddenly they came scurrying towards them, unlimbering their crossbows as they came.

“Krititkukik,” Murchison shouted again. “Humakik.”

“They aren’t coming to talk,” said Prilicla.

“I don’t have to be an empath to know that,” Murchison said, radiating the anger of disappointment. “Captain, the shield!”

“Right,” said Fletcher, “I’m powering it up for full repulsion in ten seconds from now. You’ve got that much time to get back across the line or you stay out there with your friends.”

Prilicla banked sharply and flew back the way he had come, weaving from side to side as the crossbow bolts whispered past his slowly beating wings. Then he thought that evasive action might not be such a good idea because the spiders were shooting while on the move, which meant that their accuracy would suffer and he might dodge into one of the bolts. He decided to do as Murchison was doing and move straight and fast while giving them a steady target at which to aim and hopefully miss.

They crossed the disturbed line of sand with a full two seconds to spare before the meteorite shield stopped any more bolts from reaching them. The pathologist halted, turned, and for a moment watched the bolts that were heading straight at them bouncing off the shield and falling harmlessly onto the sand. The intensity of the spiders’ emotional radiation was such that he was forced to land, shaking uncontrollably. The pathologist raised its speaking trumpet again.

“Don’t waste your breath, friend Murchison,” he said. “If you speak they will not listen. There are no calm, thinking minds among them. They feel only anger and disappointment, presumably at not being able to harm us, and an intensity of hatred and hostility so great that, that I haven’t felt anything like it since the Trolanni reaction when they thought friend Fletcher was a druul. Let’s return to our patients.”

On their way back Prilicla was walking rather than flying beside Murchison. He saw it looking at his trembling limbs and felt its concern for the empathic pain he was feeling.

“Oh, well,” it said, knowing that he knew its feelings and trying to move to a less painful subject, “at least we gave our bored, convalescent patients a little real-life drama to amuse them.”

Before he could reply, Fletcher’s voice sounded in their headsets.

“There’ll be no shortage of drama around here,” it said, in the calm voice it had been trained to use while reporting calamitous events. “The six spider vessels nearing the other side of the island will join the three already there within the next hour. An additional six units are hull-up on the horizon on this side, and there are two other three-unit fleets, which according to our wind-strength calculations, won’t reach us until early tomorrow. All the indications are that the spiders are mounting a combined land, sea, and air assault. Your patients will have ringside seats.”

CHAPTER 31

Neither the Earth-human DGDGs nor the Trolanni CHLIs were feeling worried by the impending attack because both species were star-travelers and were aware of the effectiveness of the meteorite shield. Terragars officers were feeling concern over the fact that the ongoing first contact with the spiders was not going well, but they were not deeply concerned because the ultimate responsibility for its mismanagement was not theirs and in the meantime they were willing to enjoy the spectacle. The feelings of Keet and Jasam were more selfish, radiating as they did intense relief that they were both alive and likely to remain that way, as well as general confusion at the strange things that were happening to and around them. Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad had their feelings under control. It was the captain, whose voice was being relayed from Rhabwars control deck, who vocalized its worries by telling them not to worry.

“There is no immediate cause for concern,” it said. “Our power pile will enable the life support and ship’s thrusters to be operated indefinitely; but not so, the tractor-beam units and meteorite protection. In a planetary atmosphere they drain five times the power required for operation in a vacuum, and this ship was designed for speedy casualty retrieval rather than a duration flight.”

“You mean,” said Naydrad with an impatient ruffling of its fur, “that nobody expected us to be fighting an interspecies war with an ambulance ship. How long have we got?”

“Forty-six hours of full shield deployment,” it replied, “after which we’ll have to lift out of here, or remain unprotected until someone rescues us. I shall explain the tactical situation as it unfolds . . .”

But they didn’t need the other’s continuous evaluation and commentary because they could see everything that was happening for themselves.

The three ships from the other side of the island came into sight, hugging the shoreline and beaching themselves in the spaces between the first three. All six vessels dropped their landing ramps and opened the upper sail-shields where, Prilicla knew from previous observations, the gliders would be launched. There was no other visible activity and very little intership conversation. This was probably due, the captain thought, to all of the battle orders having already being issued so that they were awaiting only the signal to begin. The nearest six-unit fleet, all its sail-shields deployed to catch the wind off the sea, was approaching fast in line-abreast formation. Just above the horizon beyond them, at about fifty degrees lateral separation, two more highflying gliders were performing signal aerobatics for three more fleets which totaled fifteen units. They were still below the horizon and would not, the captain estimated, arrive until early the next day.

The six latest arrivals found gaps in which to come aground and they, too, closed their sail-shields apart from a few ventilation openings, and lowered their landing ramps. The beach was becoming really crowded, Prilicla thought, so that Terragar had disappeared from sight behind a line of giant, greenish-brown molluscs. There came the sound of the senior spiders on each ship using their speaking trumpets, followed by a lengthening silence.

“I don’t think we’ll see any action today,” said the captain.

“Plainly they are waiting for the other fifteen ships to arrive before attacking us—Oops, I stand corrected.”

Spiders were crawling down the landing ramps of every ship to begin forming into lines on the dry sand above the water’s edge. All of them were armed with crossbows and, in addition, eight of them carried between them what looked like two heavy battering rams with sharply tapering points. Simultaneously gliders were being launched on the seaward side, two from each ship.

They climbed slowly and heavily into the wind off the sea, and only when they made slow, banking turns towards the beach to take advantage of the thermals rising from the hot sand was it possible to see that the gliders carried passengers as well as pilots and that both were armed with crossbows.

The aircraft continued to gain height slowly and steadily while the ground forces deployed three-deep into a crescent formation, with the battering rams placed front and center, before advancing on the med station and watching patients.

The captain’s voice returned, giving orders rather than a commentary.

“Dodds,” it said briskly, “shoot a couple of flares inland and drag them along the perimeter. The vegetation has dried out since last time so be careful not to start a major fire, just give me a line of burning bushes and smoke. There’s no sign of an attack developing from that quarter but I want to put them off the idea in case they burn themselves.”

“Sir,” said Haslam, “shall I whip up another sandstorm on the beach?”

“Negative,” it replied, “there’s no point in wasting the power. Last time we didn’t want them to hit the meteorite shield, but they found out about it when they were shooting at Murchison and Prilicla. But have your tractors ready just in case. Dr. Prilicla.”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” he said.

“There is no risk to your patients out there,” it went on, “because there is no way that the spiders can get through our shield, but I don’t know what they might do to themselves while they’re trying. It could be visually unpleasant, so I advise moving them indoors before . . .”

The captain’s next few words were drowned by a wail of protest and accompanying emotional radiation.

“Thank you for the suggestion, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “but I am receiving strong vocal and emotional objections from my patients and staff, all of whom would prefer to see the action at first hand.”

“Bloodthirsty savages,” said the captain dryly, “and I’m not talking about the spiders.”

There were twelve ships drawn up along the beach, each one carrying two gliders and a crew complement of anything up to two hundred. The bright yellow sand in front of the station was disappearing under the brownish-green bodies of over

two thousand advancing spiders and, if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that the meteorite shield made them invulnerable, it would have been a terrifying sight as the spiders halted about fifty meters from the shield and readied their crossbows. Apart from the faint whisper of glider slipstreams as they circled and climbed above the station, there was utter silence. Plainly, all the necessary orders had already been given and they were awaiting only the signal to attack.

“This is stupid,” said Murchison from her position among the medical team grouped around and below him. “They aren’t going to get anywhere with this attack so why don’t they just forget it and go home? After all, we haven’t hurt them in anyway and we’re trying hard not to, but if this foolishness goes on, someone is sure to come to grief.”

“We have hurt them, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla, “but not physically or in any other way we can understand at present. Maybe we are horrible creatures from the sky, the forerunners of more to come, who are invading their land. That is reason enough, but I have the feeling there is another one. A large number of their people are close enough to give me an emotional reading. For some reason they feel hatred, revulsion, and loathing for us. The feeling is intense and it is shared by all of them.”

“I can’t believe that, sir,” Murchison protested. “When I was taken onto that ship there was physical contact with the spider captain who treated me well, considering the situation. It showed intelligence and intense curiosity. Maybe it was a scientist of some kind with its feelings under strict control. I don’t have an empathic faculty like yours, but if it had been feeling hatred and revulsion as well as curiosity I’m sure I would have felt it. My feeling now is that since my escape, we may have done something to make them really hate us.”

Before he could reply, Naydrad curved its body into a flat L so that its narrow head was pointing vertically upwards and said, “Even at the beginning of a battle their pilots like to show off. Look at that.”

At an altitude of about three hundred meters the gliders that had been climbing singly or in small, random groups above the full width of the beach had come together into a wide, circular formation. For a few moments they circled nose-to-tail like the star performers in an aerial display, then they banked inwards in unison, tightening the circle until they were directly above the med-station buildings and the watchers. The captain’s voice returned.

“Nice coordination,” it said approvingly, “but I don’t think they’re showing off. The pilots and passengers are unlimbering their crossbows with the idea, I’d say, of shooting straight down at you. They probably figure that the bolts will have more penetration with the gravity assist of a three-hundred-meter fall. It’s a sensible idea but, not knowing how our shield works, completely wrong. . . Now what the hell are they doing?”

One of the gliders had rolled into a near-vertical bank, tightening its circle and descending, sideslipping off height as it came. It was followed quickly by another three and then suddenly all of the aircraft were spiralling down towards them.

“Oh, no!” said the captain, answering its own question. “Because their crossbow bolts were stopped at ground level, they think the shield is a wall surrounding us instead of a protective hemisphere. They’re going to crash into an invisible wall at full . . . Haslam, Dodds, deploy your tractors, wide focus and low power in pressor node. Try not to wreck their gliders, just fend them off before they hit it.”

“Sir,” Haslam protested, “I need a few seconds to focus on every target . . .”

“And there are too many targets,” Dodds joined in.

“Do what you can—” the captain had time to say before the first glider crashed into the curving invisible surface of the shield.

It looked as if the aircraft had broken up and collapsed into a loose ball of wreckage in midair without any apparent cause. Both occupants were entangled in the structure as it tumbled along the frictionless surface of the shield towards the ground. The second pilot, guessing that some strange weapon was being used against them, banked sharply in an attempt to climb up and away. But one wing struck the shield, crumpled, and its main spar penetrated the fuselage. The aircraft spun heavily into the frictionless surface and the passenger was thrown free before its pilot and the crippled glider began to slip groundwards at an accelerating rate.

“Haslam, Dodds, grab them,” said the captain sharply. “Ease them down gently. Right, Doctor?”

“You’re reading our minds, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla; then, “Friend Naydrad, instruct. . .”

The fall of the first glider was checked about five meters from the ground and eased down so gently that it barely disturbed the sand, but the second one was caught two meters up so that its speed and impact were only slightly diminished.

“. . . Instruct the robots to return all patients to recovery at once,” Prilicla went on. For a moment he stared at the semicircle of waiting spiders that had begun to edge closer while he tried to maintain stable hovering flight in spite of the almost physical

impact of their emotional hostility. He made a quick, mental calculation and spoke.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “will you please increase the . . .”

“The diameter of the meteorite shield by, I would estimate, ten metres,” the captain broke in. “Am I still reading your mind, Doctor?”

“You are, friend Fletcher,” he replied, looking up.

The perfect, circular formation of the attacking gliders had broken up in disorder and the individual aircraft were scattering wildly and trying to regain height, all except two which had collided over an unshielded area of beach. They had each locked one of their wings together so that they were rotating around their common center of gravity and descending in an uncontrolled flat spin. Their rate of descent was fairly slow so that the spiders under them had time to scurry clear of the point of impact. They would hit too far away and there would be too many uninjured and angry spiders in the area between for him to risk extending the shield farther to try for a medical rescue. He hoped their friends would be able to take care of them and relieve his team of the responsibility.

“Prepare for incoming casualties,” he said briskly. “Four patients, hostile and noncooperative requiring physical restraint. Physiological classification GKSD with no prior medical data on file. Impact trauma is expected with probable external and internal thoracic damage, extensive limb fracturing, and associated surface lesions. I will assess and assign the treatment priorities. Naydrad, send the antigravity litters and rescue equipment. The rest of you, let’s go.”

He flew towards the wreckage of the first glider but Murchison, sprinting across the sand on its long, shapely Earth-human legs, reached it seconds before he did. The litter with the rescue gear came a close third.

“Both casualties are deeply unconscious and pose no present danger,” he said, “or future danger, provided you get rid of those weapons. Do you need Danalta to assist?”

Murchison shook its head. He could feel its concern for the casualties, its excitement at being presented with a new professional challenge and a flash of anger as it pulled the two crossbows and quivers from the wreckage and threw them with unnecessary force through the one-way protective shield at the surrounding spiders. It said angrily, “For you two bloody idiots the war is over. Sorry, sir, my mind was wandering. These two are badly entangled in wreckage with several limbs trapped, and one thorax has been transfixed by a wing spar. Rather than cut them free here and transfer them to litters, I feel sure that there would be less trauma involved if we lifted them, wreckage and all, with a tractor beam and placed them close to the treatment-bay entrance. That way we’ll reduce the risk of compounding their injuries before treatment.”

“Your feeling is correct, friend Murchison,” he said, flying towards the second wreck. “Do that.”

Only the pilot in the second wreck was unconscious while its passenger was radiating anger, fear, and hatred. Suddenly it burst out of the wreckage and aimed its crossbow at him while scurrying rapidly towards the station entrance. Prilicla flew high and took vigorous evasive action while Danalta interposed its virtually indestructible body to protect him, then extruded the limbs necessary to give chase and disarm the fast-moving spider. But even a shape-changer of Danalta’s ability needed a few moments to change shape, and the spider was more than halfway to the open entrance of the treatment room where Murchison and Naydrad were attending to the casualties in the pile of wreckage that had been the first glider. Ignoring the DBDG and CHLI patients still waiting to be moved indoors, it was heading straight for the medical-team members, its crossbow cocked and aimed.

Suddenly it was rammed into the ground, skidding to a halt in the sand and lying motionless, as a tractor beam in pressor mode held it as if under a heavy glass plate to the ground.

“Sorry about that,” said Haslam, “I had to be fast rather than gentle. Let me know when you want me to release it.”

Murchison ran towards it and stopped just outside the pressor field and bent forward for a closer look as Danalta arrived.

“You damn near squashed it flat, Lieutenant,” it said a moment later. “Release it now. There are no limb fractures that I can see, but there is evidence of overall pressure trauma, asphyxiation, and it may already be unconscious . . .”

“It is,” said Prilicla as he flew closer, “but not deeply.”

“Right,” Murchison went on. “Danalta, lose its weapon and help me transfer it to a litter, under restraint. Naydrad, help me untangle the other two from this wreckage.”

A few minutes later Danalta and himself were back at the other wreck. The thoracic injuries caused by the penetration of the wing spar appeared to be life-threatening but its emotional radiation was not characteristic of an imminent termination. With very little help from Prilicla’s fragile limbs and pitifully weak muscles, the shape-changer extricated the pilot and transferred it, also under precautionary restraint, to the waiting litter. By that time all of the other patients had been moved indoors.

“. . . Based on the actions of your lone hero,” the captain was saying on the treatment-room communicator as they entered, “their attack strategy is plain. Deciding that they couldn’t get through what they thought was a protective wall, and knowing from previous reconnaissance flights that there weren’t many of us, they decided to go over the wall and land an airborne force to kill us before destroying the controls for the wall, except that it wasn’t a wall. Considering their incomplete information, it was a neat plan . . .”

“Our hero is regaining consciousness,” Murchison broke in. “Naydrad, hold its torso still so I can scan it.”

Prilicla flew nearer and tried hard to project feelings of comfort and reassurance at the returning consciousness. But it was so terrified and confused by its surroundings, and emoting the dread characteristic of an entity expecting the worst of all possible fates, that he could not reach it.

He glanced back through one of the room’s big windows at the spider horde beyond the shield, then up at the circling gliders as he felt the waves of hatred beating in on him. If those feelings weren’t rooted in pure xenophobia then something the med team was doing or perhaps not doing was being badly misunderstood because the spiders’ hatred and loathing was mounting steadily in intensity. But how could he explain a misunderstanding in the middle of a battle when all he could do was feel but not speak? War, he thought sadly as he looked down at the terrified casualty, was composed mostly of hatred and heroism, both of them misplaced.

CHAPTER 32

Apart from the glider pilot pierced by the wing spar,” Murchison dictated into the recorders as it worked, “the spiders taken from the two wrecks are presenting with multiple limb fractures but, according to my scanner, few of the expected internal injuries. This is due to the fact that their bodies are encased in a tough but flexible exoskeleton which bends rather than breaks. Three of them display physical damage which, in a previously known physiological type, is a condition which would be considered serious but not critical. One of these, the spider who tried to attack the station singlehanded, if that’s the right word, got squashed by the pressor beam and sustained anoxia and minor limb deformation. Both of these conditions are treatable by temporary supportive splinting and a period of rest, so by rights it should go to the end of the line. But these are new life-forms to us and that is the reason why, with Dr. Prilicla’s permission, I propose using the fourth and least damaged casualty as a medical benchmark for its more seriously injured colleagues.”

It broke off to look searchingly at Prilicla before going on. “The mental condition of the fourth casualty must be causing severe emotional distress to Dr. Prilicla, perhaps of an intensity that could affect its work. For that reason I propose to render the fourth casualty unconscious before proceeding with . . .”

“Can that be done safely?” Prilicla broke in.

“I believe so, sir,” it replied. “We know from experience that the metabolism, brain structure, and associated nerve and sensory networks of insectoid life-forms have much in common, as has the painkilling and anesthetic medication used on them. Graduated and increasing doses will be administered to Spider Patient Four and the effects noted and calibrated for use on the others.”

“Proceed, friend Murchison,” he said, “and thank you.”

Gradually the close-range source of hatred, fear, and revulsion that was Spider Patient Four died away to become the mild radiation signature characteristic of a mind that was no longer capable of a sentient or sapient response. Strangely, the emotional radiation emanating from the multitude of more distant sources was also diminishing. The voice of the captain on their communicator gave the reason.

“The sun is going down and the spider ground forces are withdrawing to their ships,” it said, and Prilicla could feel its pleasure and relief, “as are all of the gliders. The attack is over for now. We’ll remain alert for any hostile night activity and kill the meteorite shield to conserve power.”

“Next,” said Naydrad, ruffling its fur irritably, “it will want us to operate by candlelight.”

“Spider Patient Four appears to be deeply unconscious,” said Murchison, ignoring the remark, “and there are no indications suggesting a physiological rejection of the anesthetic. Do you detect any emotional radiation to the contrary, sir?”

“I do not, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla. “Now let us proceed at once with the patient who is most grievously ill. Friend Naydrad, is Spider One ready for us?”

“As ready as it will ever be,” the nurse replied with another impatient tufting of its fur. “I have immobilized the patient on its undamaged side but otherwise have done nothing. Carpentry was not included in my medical training.”

Nor in mine, thought Prilicla. He led the way towards the glider pilot’s operating frame and projected reassurance as he said “The accurate cutting, smoothing, and extraction of splintered wood from the deeply perforated carapace of the patient and the rebuilding of the damaged exoskeleton and limbs are, to my mind a form of carpentry in that initially we shall be cutting wood. Let us begin-”

The impact that had torn the wing spar loose at its fuselage attachment point had also driven it transversely into the pilot’s underbelly and upwards until it had penetrated the inner surface of the beings thick, leathery carapace, where it emerged for a few inches beyond it, that natural body-armor had resisted penetration to the extent that it had caused the structural member to bend and break in a classic example of a greenstick fracture inside the abdominal contents, and removing the broken-but-still-joined spar, including the splinters and pieces of binding cord adhesive material, and tattered wing fabric still attached to it could cause more damage than that inflicted by the original entry wound.

The few inches of spar projecting through the hole it had made in the carapace they left until later. The earlier scanner examination had shown that the wooden member was pressed so tightly into surrounding tissues that it had sealed off most of the damaged blood vessels and reduced the bleeding in the area That section of spar could safely be left in place for the time being while the more urgent repair work in the abdominal area was attempted

Prilicla began by surgically enlarging the entry wound to give Danalta and himself more space to work, since speed rather than minimal surgery was required here. Carefully he slid a fine laser knife with an angled blade focus along the spar to the point where it had fractured and bent. There was a brief puff of vapor as he cut it in two and the small quantity of wood, spider blood, and body fluid in the area dried up or boiled away

“Naydrad'” said Prilicla, “withdraw the spar smoothly along the original angle of entry and apply suction where I indicate. Danalta, be ready to help me control the bleeding and subsequent repairs. Murchison, remove foreign material from the lost blood and retain it for possible reuse . . .”

There were a large number of spiders around, he thought, but he was not in a position to ask for volunteer blood donors.

“. . . We will ignore any loose splinters for now,” he went on, “and tidy up later. But Murchison, keep track of them in case they find a way into the circulatory system. Gently, Naydrad, begin the withdrawal.”

Before the section of spar had been pulled free of the wound, Murchison’s scanner was showing copious bleeding from two of the major blood vessels that it had been compressing.

He said quickly, “Naydrad, suction, let’s see what we’re doing. Danalta, clamp off the bleeders while I go after the the torn section of bowel. Murchison, enlarge the image of the operative field by four, and hold it as steady as you can.”

Danalta was waiting with a blocky hand resting against one of the operating-frame supports to steady it, and with two long, pencil-thin fingers already extruded. When the digits reached the severed blood vessels they divided in half and each one grew two wide, wafer-thin spatulate tips which wrapped themselves gently around two veins above and below the tears and tightened until the blood diminished to a trickle and stopped. Prilicla inserted his own long, featherlike digits into the wound and isolated and tied off the torn length of bowel in a more orthodox fashion with running sutures.

“The tearing is too irregular and widespread for us to attempt a dependable, long-term repair,” he said, “so we’ll have to do a resection after completely removing the affected length. But not too much of it. The digestive and waste-elimination system in this species has a lesser redundancy of internal tubing than have our Earth-human and Kelgian friends. Naydrad, be ready with a sterile biodegradable sleeve with a fifty-day dissolution period. By that time, judging by our patient’s basal metabolism, healing should be complete. Friend Murchison?”

“I agree,” it said, radiating controlled concern. “But, sir, can I make a suggestion? Two, in fact. One is that we don’t spend too much time on the tidiness of the work. The patient’s vital signs, when compared with those of the spiders with minimal injures, are not good. Taking into consideration the severe trauma caused by it being transfixed by that wing spar, the other suggestion is that you do the remaining repair work from your present operating site rather than cutting open a flap of carapace, which would certainly increase the amount and duration of the trauma.”

“Very well,” he replied and felt her relief, “we’ll do it that way.”

Even though it was being performed for the first time on a member of a hitherto-unknown species, the procedure was in most respects routine. That was because the other-species Educator tapes that had been impressed on his Cinrusskin mind contained physiological and medical data as well as the surgical knowledge of five other intelligent life-forms—Kelgians, Melfans, Earth-humans, Tralthans, and the light-gravity Eurils—as well as his own. There were only so many ways, in spite of the wide variety of outward physical differences, that the internal plumbing of a warm-blooded oxygen breather could be put right, and he had good second-hand surgical knowledge of most of them. He was relieved to find that the spider physiology shared a few minor similarities with the Kelgian caterpillars and his own Cinrusskin species, but he had to keep searching for others.

Prilicla cringed mentally as he shuffled through the welter of other-species thoughts and impressions that filled his mind with apparently warring alien entities. Without the Educator tape system the practice of all but the simplest forms of other-species surgery and medicine would have been impossible, but the tapes had one serious, psychological disadvantage that barred their use to all but the most stable, adaptable, and, he suspected in his own case, the most cowardly and non-resistant of minds. That was because the tapes did not transfer only the clinical information possessed by the donor minds but their entire personalities, which included all of their pet peeves, phobias, short tempers, and greater or lesser psychological faults as well.

Many times the hospital’s diagnosticians as well as his fellow senior physicians had described the process as an experience of multiple schizophrenia viewed from the inside, as the donor entities apparently struggled with the tape recipient for possession of its mind. The effect was purely subjective, naturally, but where mental or physical discomfort was concerned there was no real difference so far as he was concerned. His own method of dealing with the problem, a solution which had sorely perplexed the hospital’s department of other-species psychology because most intelligent beings were incapable of acting in such cowardly fashion, had been to offer no resistance at all to the donor mind and to use its information no matter which of them thought they were boss of their mental world.

But in the physical world, while an other-species entity was occupying most of his mind, he had to remember to behave like a weak and incredibly fragile Cinrusskin and, if his donor entity should be a heavy-gravity Hudlar or Tralthan with a body-weight measured in tons, not to throw his non-existent weight around.

Like himself the spiders possessed six legs, but they were much more heavily muscled and he doubted if “cowardice” was in common usage in their vocabularies.

Even with Naydrad pressing down on the remainder of the spar where it projected through the carapace while Danalta and himself drew it out from underneath, the second half of the procedure took longer because the repair work to the lacerated blood vessels in the area, while operationally similar, was both more delicate and more awkwardly situated. But finally it was done, the operative field was cleared of foreign debris and the abdominal wound sutured and a small, sterile plate placed over the exit wound in the carapace. The repair work that remained was urgent and necessary but not life-threatening.

The glider impact had broken three of the patient’s limbs, with one of them sustaining a double fracture that had come close to being a traumatic amputation.

“We have already ascertained,” he said with a glance towards Murchison, “that the limbs on this species are exoskeletal and are composed of hardened, organic cylinders with no external sensors or muscle system apart from those serving the digits at the extremities. They use a proprioceptor system which enables the brain to know the exact, three-dimensional position of a limb with respect to the body at any given time, and movement is controlled hydraulically by the increase or reduction of internal fluid. Much of this fluid has been lost because of its injuries, but the supply should be replaced artificially with sterile fluid until it is replaced naturally in the manner of other species who automatically restore blood or other body fluids to the required volume.

“With this patient,” he went on, “we will use the accepted procedure for joining exoskeletal fractures and encase them in a rigid collar of the required length. We will begin with the left forward member and . . . I’m tired, Murchison, but still operational. Control your feelings, you are emoting like a nagging life-mate!”

The other was radiating concern rather than irritation but it did not reply.

“I’m sorry, friend Murchison,” he apologized a moment later, “for my lack of concentration and mental confusion. Certain aspects of the procedure brought my Earth-human and Kelgian tape-donor personalities to the forefront of my mind, and that is not a polite combination.”

Murchison laughed quietly and said, “I guessed as much. But look out of the window, it’s morning already. This has been a long op and you must be close to the limits of your endurance. With the experience we’ve already gained on this one, treating its limb fractures and the superficial injuries of the other spider casualties will be simple by comparison. The rest of the cases are non-urgent so that if we do encounter problems, they can wait until you waken. But I’m sure the rest of us can handle them.”

“I’m sure you can,” said Prilicla, looking at it through a thickening fog of fatigue that was becoming opaque to coherent thought. “But there is something about this one that concerns me, subtle differences in the external and internal body structure from that of your benchmark patient in recovery. This is a new species to us. The pilot may have sustained impact injuries that at first were not as obvious as physical trauma, deformation, and internal-organ displacement, perhaps, which . . .”

He broke off as Murchison laughed, louder this time, and there was an explosion of amusement from it and the other members of the team that momentarily hid their feelings of concern for himself.

“Perhaps you were concentrating so much on the surgical details,” Murchison said, “that you were too busy to notice or identify the differences you mentioned. They are due to the fact that our benchmark patient is a female and this one isn’t.”

“You are right, I must be tired,” he said, joining and adding to their waves of amusement as he flew unsteadily to the large, flat top of an instrument cabinet in a corner of the room and settled onto it. “But I shall observe and try to stay awake until all of our spiders are treated.”

He surprised himself by doing just that before his increasing physical and mental fatigue rendered sentience and sapience next to impossible. With all of the spider patients treated and transferred to the recovery room, his last conscious impression was of Murchison standing before the communicator and speaking to the captain.

“I’ve already tried to talk to one of them,” it was saying, “and I’d like to try again using simplified first contact procedure. These people aren’t space-travelers so I won’t need the complicated Federation historical material used during the Trolanni contact. There’s nothing else to do here at the moment except brood about the nasty things that could happen to us. So I want to try talking to them again. What do you think?”

“I think yes, ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “Give me half an hour to modify the program, then I’ll stand by to advise on its usage. There are eight more spider ships hull-up on the horizon and another twenty on the radar screens but still no activity on the beach. That situation will certainly change before long and the result will be a lot of people, possibly including ourselves, being killed.

“Talking our way out of this trouble,” it ended, “is the preferred option.”

CHAPTER 34

Prilicla wakened suddenly with the feeling that he had been caught up in a riot. Many strident, other-species word sounds and waves of angry emotional radiation were beating into his mind. Suddenly terrified and still befuddled with sleep, he wondered if the meteorite shield had failed and the spiders were overrunning the station. But then his slowly clearing mind and empathic faculty made him aware that the loudest sounds and strongest feelings were emanating from two principle sources, one of which was long-familiar to him, and both of them were in the adjoining recovery ward.

Not trusting his trembling wings to fly, he walked unsteadily into the other room to find out what was happening.

With the exception of the recently treated and still-unconscious spider pilot and Captain Fletcher, who was staring at the proceedings from the ward communicator screen, everyone in the ward was trying to talk at the same time, so much so that parts of the conversations were lost in the derisive beeping of the ward translator going into overload. Farther down the ward the Terragar casualties and Keet were arguing, heatedly but in tones low enough for them to hear the quiet voice of Jasam, who was postoperatively debilitated but recovering well, making a contribution. But most of the vocal and emotional noise was coming from the argument between Murchison and the glider pilot’s uninjured passenger.

The spider passenger was arguing . . . ?

Surprised but not yet knowing if he should be pleased, he turned up the output volume of his own translator unit and, borrowing a phrase from his Earth-human mind partner that seemed appropriate in the circumstances, said, “Will everyone please shut the hell up?” When the arguments tapered off into silence, he added, “Except you, friend Murchison. The spider passenger’s words are being translated. We can talk to and understand each other now, and make peace before anyone else is hurt. This should be the best possible news, but instead it feels as if a war is starting. Explain.”

The pathologist inhaled and exhaled slowly as it strove to regain its customary emotional equilibrium before speaking; then it said, “As you know, I’d already learned a few words of their language when I was captured, and with the help of the captain’s first-contact material and a lot of sign language, we were able to make ourselves understood to the point where the translation computer could take over and finish the job. We can now talk to each other, and that includes talking with the other patients and staff, but we aren’t communicating. It won’t believe a damn thing I or anyone else says to it.” Murchison spread her arms out horizontally to full extension with the palms of its hands facing each other. “There’s a credibility gap this wide.”

“I understand,” said Prilicla. He began walking towards the disbelieving spider, slowly in case his appearance might frighten it, to stop beside its litter. It was capable of ambulation but was being firmly restrained by webbing for its own as well as for the other patients’ protection. Then spreading his wings he took off to maintain a stable hover close to the ceiling where he was sure of getting everyone’s attention.

“What the hell are you,” said the spider, its chittering speech serving as a background to the accurately translated words, “some kind of performing bloody pet?”

He ignored Naydrad’s agitated fur and the choking sounds Murchison was making and replied, “No, I am the entity in charge of the people here.” Because the members of his medical team already knew what was required, it was to the Trolanni and Earth-human patients that he went on. “Everyone, please be quiet and, so far as you are able, stop emoting for the next few minutes. I must be free of extraneous emotional interference if I am to obtain an accurate reading of this patient’s feelings and the reasons for the hostility the spiders show towards us . . .”

“I’m not a spider,” the patient broke in, “I am Irisik, a Crextic, and a free and intelligent member of the floating clan Sitikis, who will shortly join the other clans in wiping you off the face of our world. And if you don’t know the reason for our hostility, then in spite of the strange and wondrous magic you have used against us, you are very stupid.”

“Not stupid, just ignorant,” said Prilicla, trying to maintain his stable hover in spite of the gale of strong emotion blowing up at him; “but ignorance is a temporary condition that can be relieved by the acquisition of knowledge. You have feelings of fear, anger, intense hatred, and loathing towards us. If you will tell me why you feel this way, I will tell you why there is no reason for the Sitikis to have these feelings. A simple exchange of knowledge about ourselves will solve the problem.”

“Your problem, not ours,” said Irisik, looking towards the injured glider pilot. “You will satisfy your curiosity regarding your victims as well as your hunger. In the end we will be eaten with the rest of your catch.”

“I’ve told it over and over again that we don’t eat people. . .” Murchison began angrily, then stopped as Prilicla made the Cinrusskin gesture for silence.

“Please,” he said. “I want to hear this patient speaking to me and no one else. Irisik, what makes you think that we eat people?”

Irisik inclined its head, the only part of its body free of the litter restraints, towards Murchison. “This other stupid one,” it said, “has been

telling me many things, including the lie that it wants us to go on living. That, a sane, adult, reasoning person cannot and will not believe. Don’t waste time telling me new and even more fantastic lies. You know the answer to your question, so don’t pretend that either one of us is stupid.”

Prilicla was silent for a moment. Considering the other’s emotional state, and in particular its behavior and verbal coherency in a situation that was unique in its experience and which it fully believed would have only a lethal outcome, he found Irisik’s behavior admirable. But not the feelings of solid self-certainty and disbelief that surrounded the creature’s mind like a stone wall.

Murchison, he knew, would already have given it a simplified version of the work of the Federation, the Monitor Corps, the hospital, and the special ambulance ship nearby and the duties its crew performed, clearly without success. He thought of explaining that he himself felt only sympathy for its fears which would in a short time be proved groundless. But he felt sure, and his feelings were rarely wrong, that the wall of certainty surrounding the other’s beliefs and disbeliefs was impervious to anything he could do or say.

Perhaps the wall could only be demolished from within.

“To the contrary,” he continued, “pretend that I and everyone else here is stupid. You are an intelligent, logical being who has good reasons for feeling and believing as you do, so share these reasons with us. Whether you believe what I am telling you now or not, we do not intend to do anything to anyone here, apart from feeding them, for the rest of the day. So if you were to talk about yourself, your world and your people and why you believe the things you do, the day or days will pass for us in an interesting manner. If what you tell us is particularly interesting, it may be that so much time will pass that . . .”

“Shades of Scheherazade,” said Murchison quietly.

No doubt it was an obscure reference from something in the pathologist’s Earth-human past, but this was not the time to go off on historical tangents. He went on. “. . . that your friends will be able to find a way of rescuing you. There is a saying among our people, Irisik, that while there is life there is hope.”

“We have a similar saying,” the other said.

“Then talk to us, Irisik,” said Prilicla. “Tell us the things you think we already know, and with them the many things that you know we don’t know. Is there anything we can do to make you feel more comfortable, apart from letting you go free, before you begin?”

“No,” said Irisik. “But how do you know I won’t tell you lies, or exaggerate the truth?”

“We won’t,” Prilicla replied, settling to the ground beside the other’s litter. “As strangers we might not be able to tell the difference, but the lies or exaggerated truth will be equally interesting to us. Please go on, and begin with the reason why you think we will eat you.”

Irisik was radiating fear, anger, and impatience, but it spent a few moments getting these feelings under control before it spoke.

“You will eat us,” it began, “because your actions from the start made it clear that that is why you are here. Piracy and food-gathering raids are well known to us, unfortunately, but they are by other sea clans who are too uncivilized, or too lazy, to fish or practice the arts of plant and animal husbandry and find it easier, like you, to steal rather than to cultivate. We don’t know where you came from except that it was somewhere in the sky, but from the first time you were observed by the Crextic who walk the clouds, your intentions were clear. As a precaution they maintained a height too great for them to view your activities in detail, or to see you take our growing food into your great white ship. In fact, many of us could not believe that you could be so shortsighted, stupid, and criminal as to take immature livestock that would rob us not only of the animals, but of the many generations of food beasts that would have followed, but we were shown to be wrong . . .”

. . . While the living food and fruit was still too immature and small to be seen by the cloud-walkers, Irisik went on to explain, the other strange animals that the strangers used for food had been clearly visible to them. They had observed how these creatures had been tethered to litters, how they had had their walking limbs removed to prevent them from escaping, how they had been exposed to sunlight and been periodically washed in the sea in order to remove wastes and harmful parasites and render them more fit for consumption.

While it had been speaking, Prilicla felt Murchison trying very hard to control its feelings of shock and abhorrence and its vain attempts to maintain silence. He didn’t try to stop it speaking because it was wanting to ask the questions that he badly wanted answered himself.

“Some of these are members of our own species,” Murchison said, gesturing towards the Terragar casualties. “Do you think we would eat them? Would Kritik—I mean Krititkukik—have eaten me?”

“Yes, to both questions,” Irisik replied without hesitation. “It is stupid to waste a supply of edible food, regardless of the emotional connections, if any, that one may have with the source. It is not pleasant for the immediate family or friends of the deceased, and many choose to eat only the smallest of morsels and pass the remainder to hungry or needy strangers who have no memories of or emotional ties with the meal. But it must be done if the essence of a beloved parent or siblings is to continue into the future. Plainly it is the same with you people.”

Murchison’s emotional radiation was so confused that it was unable to speak. Irisik went on. “Knowing your intentions and reason for being here, we spread the word about you and set about assembling all of the sea clans in this ocean. Some of them are little more than pirates and food robbers like you, and normally we would prefer to shoot our crossbows at them as sky-talk to their ships to ask for their cooperation, but everyone agreed to forget our differences for the present in order to kill the strangers.

“You may think me guilty of exaggeration,” it went on, “but I assure you that the Crextic ships already assembled around this island are only a small fraction of those which will arrive within the next few days. In spite of your fire throwers, your invisible weapons that hurl sand and water at us, and your magic shield, we will smother and crush you with our cloud-walkers and surface fighters. The cost to us will be extreme, but we must ensure that no more of your kind are tempted to raid our world.

“And I must correct your mistake,” it continued into the shocked silence. “Krititkukik is not a name, it is the title of the leader of our sea clan. It would have eaten your most desirable parts, as is its right, before sharing you with the rest of the crew. Being a sensitive person as well as one who was filled with scientific curiosity, and knowing that you were a strange but intelligent source of food with feelings, it would have concealed from you as long as possible the fact that you were to be eaten. Sometimes I think the Krititkukik lacks the quality of ruthlessness necessary to a leader.”

Prilicla caught a brief, complex burst of emotion whose meaning was unmistakable, composed as it was of the strange combination of yearning, tenderness, and a feeling of grief over the impending loss of someone with whom one was deeply and emotionally involved. They were the feelings, he felt sure, of and for a life-mate.

“Believe me,” said Prilicla, “you will be together again soon.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Irisik, “or anything else that you or the other meat gatherers say to me.”

“I understand,” said Prilicla, “so I shall instruct my meat gatherers, as you insist on calling them, not to speak to you at all. You and the other sources of meat may talk to each other if and when either of you wish. The charge nurse will continue to administer food, medication, and to periodically check on your condition and that of the others, but without speaking to you . . .”

“Good,” said Naydrad, rippling its fur. “I hate being called a liar, especially when my people don’t even know what a lie is.”

“. . . until, that is,” he ended, “you ask to speak to us. All other members of the medical staff including myself will leave you now.”

Irisik was radiating surprise, confusion, and uncertainty. It said, “I know you aren’t telling the truth, but your lies are interesting and I want to listen to more of them before I am killed. Please stay.”

“No,” said Prilicla firmly. “Until you believe that you are being told the truth, including the truth that we mean no harm to you, your people, or your world and the animal life here, we will not speak again. And remember, I know exactly how you are feeling about everything from moment to moment, and it is impossible to lie with the emotions. When I feel that you are ready to believe

me, I shall speak with you again.”

He led Murchison and Danalta into the communications room where Fletcher, displaying the symptoms of Earth-human elevated blood pressure, was glaring at them from the viewscreen. His two assistants were bursting to speak, but the captain got its question in first.

“Doctor,” it said, “this is an unnecessary waste of time. I know the feelings of a person of your medical seniority and emotional sensitivity must be hurt at being treated as a liar. You wouldn’t be human—I’m sorry, I mean Cinrusskin—if you didn’t feel angry about that six-legged doubting Thomas. But I’m sure that with a little more patience and forbearance on your part you will be able to convince it that . . .”

“I know its present feelings, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla broke in, “well enough to know that I won’t be able to change them. It is a strong-minded, stubborn entity who considers itself to be one of the many victims around it who are shortly to be terminated and eaten. It won’t believe us, but hopefully our other so-called victims will be able to disabuse it and the other spider patients of that idea.”

“Very quickly, I hope,” Fletcher said, its features losing some of their high color. “If there is a sustained attack lasting more than thirty-six hours, the screen will go down. Before then we will have to make a main-drive takeoff and crisp a few hundred spiders. That is not the Federation’s idea of making friendly contact with another intelligent, if temporarily misguided, species. All our careers are on the line here, apart from the psychological trauma we’ll suffer if things go that badly wrong.”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, feeling the other’s tortured, emotional radiation all the way from the ship and trying to do something about it. “But there is a precedent. This is on a smaller, less bloody scale, but remember what happened when Sector General was caught in the middle of the Federation-Etlan War. Due to massive overcrowding the casualties from both sides were treated in the same ward. There is a close similarity to our present situation.”

“Is there,” said the captain, its mind obviously contemplating a future where all was desolation. Irritably it added, “I wasn’t there, Doctor, and it wasn’t a war. It was a large-scale police action.”

Prilicla well remembered that vicious and incredibly violent battle which had been waged around Sector General, when six of the Federation’s sector subfleets including three of its capital ships had opposed a much heavier force from the Etlan Empire, whose ruler had fed his people totally wrong information about the other side. He didn’t want to argue with the captain who, like the rest of its Monitor Corps colleagues, were touchy about the fact that their organization comprised the greatest assemblage of military might that the galaxy had ever known.

But Prilicla had been there and it had certainly felt like a war.

CHAPTER 35

The sun shone down on the golden beach, the white, lacy edge of the deep-blue sea, and on the many ships assembling around the island that were continually launching their gliders. Apart from a small working party of spiders who were engaged in transferring odd pieces of Terragars equipment to the beach, there was no ground activity visible, but the aerial bombardment was unceasing.

Instead of carrying an armed passenger as payload, the gliders were loading up with the equivalent weight in rocks, climbing to an altitude of about two thousand meters and dropping them on the med station. More often than not, their aim was wide of the mark, but on the off-chance that some of those ridiculously unsophisticated missiles would pierce the flimsy structures, injuring or killing the patients or team members inside, the meteorite shield had had to be deployed. Everyone was safe for the time being, but that time was limited.

Another battle, verbal rather than physical, was raging between the spider patients and the other occupants of the recovery ward. Apart from Naydrad, that was, who had turned off its translator and whose fur was moving in gentle, restful waves while it watched the medical monitors in case the various blood pressures rose above acceptable safety limits. And in the communications room yet another and more polite war of words was raging between the other members of the medical team and Captain Fletcher and his crew.

“We can’t understand why you’re waiting, Doctor,” the captain said as it restated the position in unnecessarily simple language for the recorders. “Plainly your idea isn’t working. We now have shield power for less than twenty-one hours’ duration. With no power to spare for pressor beams to lift us to an area of sea that is clear of ships, it will have to be an environmentally unfriendly takeoff on main thrusters. The vegetation on this half of the island, not to mention the spiders and their ships, will be toast. Go in and explain the scientific facts of life to Irisik and the spider pilot, now that it has regained consciousness. I know this is a hard decision for both of us to make, Doctor, but we can’t sacrifice Rhabwars crew and the Trolanni patients by letting a bunch of misguided spiders overrun and kill us.”

It softened its tone, and in spite of the distance separating them, Prilicla could feel the other’s determination overriding its reluctance to cause emotional distress to an empathic friend as it went on. “You have the medical rank in the present situation, Doctor, but in this instance I am disputing it. So tell your spider patients, as gently but firmly as you can, that they are not to be eaten but they must leave us and return to their vessels at once before they, and the crews of the ships along the beach, die in the fires we will light during our takeoff. You can move the injured glider pilot in one of your litters, with the power unit and circuitry set for a non-catastrophic self-destruct shortly after they reach their ships. For a pre-space age species they’ve already been contaminated with too much advanced technology as it is.”

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla gently, “please don’t be feeling so uncomfortable about your threat to depose the senior medical officer during a medical emergency, and do nothing hasty. Irisik is one cynical spider and I have a strong feeling, amounting to a virtual certainty that it wouldn’t believe anything I told it, which is why I shall tell it nothing and allow what it thinks are the other sources of food to do the talking. Please wait, watch the ward vision pickup, and listen . . .”

Naydrad had just finished its round of patient observations and had curled its caterpillar-like body into its relaxer frame in front of the monitor screens when the silence was broken by one of the Terragar casualties.

“Charge Nurse,” it said, “I’m starving to death.”

“Your self-diagnosis is not confirmed by the monitor readings,” Naydrad replied. “Considering the fact that your lower ambulatory limbs are missing and your food requirements are proportionately reduced, terminal malnutrition would only occur if fluids as well as food were to be withheld for twenty-plus standard days. Lunch will be in three hours. Until then, compose yourself and try to think beautiful thoughts.”

“He can’t think beautiful thoughts,” another one of the Terragar casualties joined in, “and neither can I, because Pathologist Murchison hasn’t been in for nearly three days. I like her around even if the spiders are keeping her from dunking us in the ocean . . .”

The other Earth-human patients radiated feelings of approval and minor disappointment while making whistling sounds that did not translate.

“. . . but why,” it ended, “won’t she come in and talk to us?”

Unable to lie, Naydrad elected to remain silent.

“Among my people,” said Irisik, speaking for the first time that day, “it is considered socially indelicate, unless the entity concerned is a close family relation or a loved one, to hold a lengthy conversation with what is in effect one’s next meal. To do such a thing would unsettle the emotions as well as the digestion, and this one is delicate in its handling of your feelings. After all, your two walking limbs are missing and yet you feel no hostility towards it, the person who ate them. Or is it a religious thing with you, and you know that the food you contribute in this way enables part of your being to survive into the indefinite future?”

“No!” said the Terragar casualty, radiating irritation and impatience. “It isn’t religious. She doesn’t eat intelligent entities. . .”

“But all living creatures have intelligence,” Irisik broke in. “Are you saying that it eats only vegetation?”

“No,” said the other. “Meat is eaten, not frequently, and only when it originates from beings of very low intelligence.”

“Like you?” asked Irisik in a disparaging voice. After a moment, it went on. “But who sets the level of intelligence for edibility? You yourself do not appear to be of very low intelligence, so I suspect that a process of mental persuasion, perhaps reinforced by the use of mind-altering poisons rather than a spiritual belief in survival after death, is used to hide from you your status as a food animal. The mental persuasion must be both subtle and strong if it can make you, an apparently young and healthy person whose body has already been partially eaten, argue on behalf of your eater.

“My own mind,” it added, “would not be so easily influenced, especially by another member of my own species.”

“But my legs weren’t eaten, dammit,” the other replied. “They were cooked, maybe, but definitely not eaten. I was there and remember exactly what happened to them.”

“They might look like outsized druuls,” said Keet, joining the conversation, “but we know that they don’t eat people, they repair them.”

“Or perhaps you only believe that you know what happened,” Irisik went on, “because mental influence or chemicals have been used to influence you into thinking that way. It is natural among civilized beings to conceal the true facts from their prey so that they will not dwell unnecessarily on their fate, and remain content until the ultimate moment.” It swiveled its head towards the Trolanni patient. “Food appearance and presentation are important. Repairing its wounds, so as to avoid the possibility of a premature death, is a sensible course if the food is to live and remain fresh until the time for consumption arrives.

There is no reason why living food should be made to suffer unnecessarily.”

Prilicla felt a brief eruption of fear and uncertainty from the two Trolanni which they controlled and negated within a few seconds. From its litter, Jasam said weakly, “When a bunch of outsized druuls tried to tether and board our

searchsuit, we had the same idea. But the others who came along later placed themselves in great personal danger while retrieving the first group and learning to communicate with us and repairing our injuries. Plainly they were taking far too much trouble, when we had time to think about it, for a very meager addition to their food supply. As a species we are deeply frightened about our future survival, and these druul-like creatures and the others from their two ships have promised to help us to solve your problems, but we have no fears regarding our survival as individuals. Neither should you.”

Irisik paused before replying. “You say that you and your captors have walked the web between the stars, in ships with structures so hard that they have been neither woven nor grown, and that you have the knowledge to make and use many wondrous tools to build and repair these vessels and the sailors who fly in them. By your standards we Crextic are not educated. But I know the difference between education and intelligence and, with respect, an educated person can also be gullible.”

Keet lost its patience. “I know that skepticism is supposed to be a sign of intelligence, but this is ridiculous. You are a seagoing spider who disbelieves people who have sailed among the stars. It’s a waste of time trying to make you see sense because you probably haven’t got any. Your mind is tightly closed.”

The growing irritation and impatience from both Trolanni did not quite blot out the quieter, more complex emotional radiation coming from Irisik. The Crextic’s mind was beginning to suffer from the first stirrings of self-doubt.

For an instant Prilicla wondered if he should go in and join the conversation, then decided against it. A phrase used by Chief

Dietitian Gurronsevas back at the hospital came to him, regarding the preparation of food. He would let Irisik stew in its own juices for a while. He could feel growing uncertainty and a need to ask questions, but decided to wait for Irisik to voice them.

Keet left its litter and and moved quickly to the row of the Terragar casualties.

“There is something that Jasam and I must say to you,” it began. “It is an apology for the way that our searchsuit defense systems caused you to be burned and lose limbs. We could not believe that anyone who looked like a druul could want only to help us, but we were wrong. We ask your forgiveness and, if and when we return to Trolann, we offer help with the replacement of the burned limbs. Our technology on the interfacing of organic and inorganic materials is advanced. Your metal limbs would be linked to the relevant nerve connections to produce the sensations of pressure, touch, and temperature you knew in the past, although possibly not with the former degree of sensitivity, and be visually indistinguishable from the missing ones. Your fellow officers on Rhabwar, who have had firsthand experience of our searchsuit technology, will confirm this. Unless you have psychological or religious objections to . . .”

“We haven’t,” said one of the casualties.

“Could they be made four or five inches longer than the old ones?” asked another, and explained, “I’ve always wanted to be tall as well as handsome.”

The third made a derogatory sound that did not translate, and gradually the conversation became increasingly general, serious, and animated as Keet, Jasam, and the Terragar casualties talked about their respective futures.

When Irisik tried to join in, it was pointedly ignored. Its emotional radiation, Prilicla noted with satisfaction, was revealing a strange mixture of growing indecision and increasing certainty.

“. . . I know that the druul are not nice people,” one of the Terragar casualties was saying, “but the Federation won’t . . .”

“Not nice?” Keet broke in. “They are vicious, cunning, implacable, depraved vermin who want only to kill and, if possible, eat, everyone and everything who is not a druul. And they have been known to eat their own casualties rather than waste time and resources in treating them. They should be wiped out, exterminated down to the last member of their merciless and murderous species.”

“. . . As I was saying,” the Earth-human went on, “the Federation will not instruct its Monitor Corps to exterminate a whole species just on your say-so, and they know that we wouldn’t do it if they did. That would make us as uncivilized and savage as you say they are. Instead they will investigate the druul and—”

“Maybe you have sympathy, a fellow feeling towards them,” Jasam broke in, radiating sudden suspicion, “because they look so very much like you. People can give sympathy, kindness, and even affection towards pets or dolls or smaller editions of themselves. Until they turn vicious which, believe me, they will.”

“I do believe you,” said the other, “but we’re talking about an intelligent species here. We have no right to destroy them. The Federation will subject them to a covert sociological and psychological assessment. If they are as blindly antisocial as you say, they will almost certainly be isolated on their home planet to survive as best they can, fight each other to mutual extinction, or demonstrate to us over a lengthy period that they have learned sense and are on the way to true civilization, in which case we would help them as we are planning to help you.”

The two Trolanni were silent, angry, and disappointed, but their more subtle feelings were rendered unreadable because of the buildup of emotional radiation coming from Irisik. But it, too, remained silent as the Monitor Corps officer continued speaking.

“Your people will also be assessed,” it went on, “but as a technologically advanced star-traveling species, that will be a formality. Over the past century we have discovered several planets, as fresh and clean and unpolluted as this one and without indigenous intelligent life, that would suit your requirements. Considering the relatively few Trolanni remaining on your dying home world, transportation for yourselves, and your personal possessions and technical support hardware, would be no problem . . .”

Feelings of pride and enthusiasm suffused the words like a bright, emotional fog as it went on. “. . . We have Emperor-class capital ships—technically, vessels of war although they haven’t been used as such since the Etlan police action. Their beam weapons will clear large areas of ground for building and cultivation, and colonization transports and specialist officers to advise on moving your population to a new, clean world. We will help you while you are getting established, but not too much because taking over the responsibility completely would be psychologically undesirable. You might become overly dependent on us rather than independent. That’s an important part of the Federation’s first-contact philosophy. And you can forget about the druul. Unless they begin to show evidence of civilized behavior they won’t be going anywhere.”

“But wait,” said Jasam, radiating sudden worry. “You’re talking about moving a planetary population. You will need very big ships.”

“Don’t worry,” said the other, “we have big ships.”

While they had been speaking, the pressure of Irisik’s emotional radiation had been building up to the point where angry words would be its only release. Prilicla knew to the split second when it would speak.

“You are talking and behaving as if I am not here,” it said furiously. “It is not easy for me to say this, for I am a person of rank and influence among my fishing clan, but there is a possibility that I have misunderstood the situation and I wish to speak to all of you about that.”

“They may not wish to speak to you,” said Naydrad, breaking its long silence, “or even listen to you.”

The Crextic glider pilot, who was still post-operatively debilitated from its recent major surgery but was otherwise recovering well, spoke for the first time.

Slowly and weakly it said, “Irisik is the mate of our clan’s Krititkukik, our senior captain and fleet commodore. As such she is rarely placed in a position where it is necessary for her to apologize for anything, but she is trying to do so now. She is an independent, strong-willed, intelligent, and abrasive person who must be finding the process of apologizing very difficult.”

“Cloud-walker,” said Irisik sharply, “your tone lacks respect. Be quiet or, or I’ll bite your head off.”

“Promises,” said the pilot softly.

Prilicla concurred. Judging by Irisik’s emotional radiation it was finding it very difficult to apologize, but not impossible. Now was the time for him to rejoin them and, so far as the Crextic patients were concerned, start laying down Federation law and telling them the unpleasant truth—possibly more unpleasant than their earlier personal fear of being eaten—about their present situation. But the spider had come to a crucial decision, and from the dialogue that was developing and the accompanying emotional radiation, Prilicla knew what it was. He was flying slowly and happily into the recovery ward when the captain spoke urgently from the communicator.

“Doctor,” it said, “the heavies have arrived. Three Monitor Corps cruisers, the cultural contact vessel Descartes and Sector Marshal Dermod’s flagship Vespasian, no less. He has been appraised of our situation but says, regrettable as it is, that we must not risk jeopardizing the successful Trolanni contact by allowing them and our other casualties to be killed due to our bungled contact with the Crextic. The sector marshal says we must on no account sacrifice our own people and two members of an intelligent, star-traveling species. It says that it was a difficult decision but he had to make it. We are ordered to move all casualties to Rhabwar, warn off the spiders, and take off forthwith.”

Prilicla’s flight path wavered for a moment, then steadied as he said, “Right now that would be very inconvenient, friend Fletcher. Please tell the sector marshal that our second contact with the Crextic is ongoing and at a delicate stage which must not be interrupted by a hasty evacuation, and remind it that this is predominantly a medical emergency, with all that implies.”

“But, but you can’t say that, dammit,” the captain burst out. “Not to a sector marshal!”

“Be diplomatic,” said Prilicla, resuming his flight.

CHAPTER 35

Prilicla flew into the recovery ward and hovered above and between the lines of patients. He was noticed but ignored. Considering the conversation that was taking place between Irisik and Keet he could live with the delay, for a while.

“. . . It seems that I have been completely wrong in my assessment of this situation,” Irisik was saying, “and when they learn about it the Crextic will be grateful for the healing that was done for us here. But these healers are strange creatures, not unfriendly but still frightening. I don’t know how long it would take, if ever, for us to come to like them . . .”

“Dr. Prilicla,” the captain broke in. “The sector marshal rejects your suggestion and orders an immediate return of the medical team and casualties to Rhabwar. We can warn the Crextic to move clear before taking off, and hope they heed the warning. I’m sorry, Doctor. Start evacuating your casualties at once.”

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “please ask the . . .” At that point one of his Educator tape donors, a straight-talking Kelgian, slipped suddenly to the forefront of his mind and he ended, “We’ve begun to make good progress here, so tell Sector Marshal Dermod to stay the hell out of my fur!”

“. . . You’ve said that your home world is poisoned and dying and that there aren’t many Trolanni left on it,” Irisik was saying. “Here there are many islands, particularly those close to the polar continents where high seas and treacherous currents make them dangerous for plant and animal cultivation but which you, with your greater knowledge and machines, could use. So why go to another and perhaps less suitable world when you would be welcomed here?

“You bear a closer physical resemblance to the Crextic than these others,” it went on, “so that even the most intellectually timid among us would have no difficulty in accepting you as strange but helpful neighbors. You Trolanni would be too few in numbers to threaten us and your knowledge is too valuable for us to waste it by hurting you . . .”

“That,” said one of the Terragar casualties, using one of its obscure Earth-human sayings, “would be like killing the geese that lay golden eggs.”

Prilicla was well pleased at the way things were going, but it was a time to be tough and, to use another Earth-human expression, tell the Crextic a few home truths.

“. . . If you have an ethical problem with this,” Irisik continued, “as we would have if the positions were reversed, think of it as paying ground rent, or a simple exchange of knowledge for a peaceful and pleasant living space. In time we would learn fully to understand and trust each other, and in more time you could show us how to harvest the metals that you have said lie deep beneath our surface, and work them into machines which will enable the Crextic one day, as these others do, to walk the web between the stars . . .”

“Doctor!” the captain’s voice broke in urgently. “Look at your ward repeater screen. All the Crextic vessels are launching their gliders and ground forces. Get your med team and casualties back to to Rhabwar. Now, Doctor.”

Prilicla looked at the repeater screen which showed spiders pouring out of the nearer ships and forming up on the beach while their gliders were moving in thermal-seeking circles above the hot sand as they strove for height. He felt sure, but not very sure, that the Crextic would wait until more force arrived and that an attack wasn’t imminent.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “if you’ve been listening you’ll know that we are making good progress . . .”

“Not to all of it,” the captain broke in. “We’re too busy here readying the ship for a hot blastoff. But everything said was and is being relayed to Vespasian. We’ve no time to retrieve the buildings and non-portable equipment, so just get your people out of there.”

“. . . and it would be a major crime to throw it away,” Prilicla continued, as if the other had not spoken. “Neither, I feel sure, would it favorably impress our Trolanni friends if we were to burn all the nearby Crextic ships and many hundreds of sailors just to save the lives of a few patients and medical staff.”

“So we are to be killed—” Irisik began, its anger and disappointment outweighing its personal fear. “You lied to us.”

“. . . You will now have realized, friend Fletcher, that the ward translator is on and our conversation is open,” he said, then continued briskly. “Naydrad, use the robots to help you move the Trolanni and Earth-human casualties to Rhabwar. Please link my translator to the ship’s external speaker system. The Crextic patients and I are going out and will try to talk some sense into their Krititkukik. Murchison, Danalta, set the other Crextic litters and restraints for remote control and quick release on my command, then assist Naydrad with the other patient transfers.”

“No, sir,” said Murchison, radiating feelings that were a strange combination of affection, respect, and downright mutiny. It glanced towards the shape-changer who twitched its upper body in assent, and added, “We are staying with you.”

“As will I,” said Keet.

He knew from the intensity of their emotional radiation that he could not make them change their minds. There were occasions, he thought gratefully, when insubordination had its place. It was obvious that the captain thought otherwise and was voicing its feelings without the usual verbal niceties.

“Are you losing your mind entirely, Doctor?” it said angrily. “And have you no control at all over your medical staff? Explain our situation to your spider patients, urge them to pass it on to their friends, and tell them that they will all die if they don’t move away fast. And don’t dare go outside. The meteorite shield has been withdrawn to support the launch system . . .”

Prilicla turned down the volume on his headset and addressed the Crextics.

“We have no intention of eating or harming any of you,” he said while the irate voice of the captain muttered in the background, “and you have a choice. You are free to go with the other casualties to the safety of our ship. Or leave here now with me, to rejoin your friends and help me convince them that I am telling the truth. If we can’t do that, then we and many hundreds of them will be burned to death.

“The next attack is about to begin so there isn’t much time to stop it,” he went on as he took control of the spider pilot’s litter. “I am asking for an immediate meeting with your Kritit-kukik and will explain the situation to you as we move outside. . .”

Although the preparations for the attack were continuing, the Krititkukik came out to meet them without hesitation. It was a responsible commander, Irisik insisted, who preferred to win a battle with the minimum possible butcher’s bill. But it was still at a distance when the pathologist drew his attention to a difference in its appearance. A tubular collar into which variously-colored twigs and vegetation had been woven was encircling its long, thin neck.

“It wasn’t wearing that when I met it on its ship,” said Murchison. “Is it an insignia of rank?”

“No,” said Irisik.

The spider’s emotional radiation was far from unpleasant but it was so intense, poignant, and deeply personal that it made Prilicla waver in flight. Similar feelings were reaching him from the approaching Krititkukik. Considering the intimate nature of those feelings, he did not expect Irisik to elaborate, but it did.

“It is the Collar of First Mating,” it said through a surge of emotion, “worn by the male as self-protection and as a compliment to his partner’s sexual ardor which could and might be aroused to the point where the female loses control and bites off her mate’s head. There have been no cases reported for many centuries, and now it is worn only twice. On the night of first mating as a promise of the life of loving to come, and when the life of one aged partner or the other is about to end in gratitude for the life and loving that has gone before.”

The effect of its words on the females Murchison and Keet, and on the male subject of the discussion, Krititkukik, forced Prilicla to drop to the sand before he was forced to make an undignified crash-landing. Again, as he had done in the ward, he allowed Irisik and Keet, with a little help from the recuperating glider pilot and the other two Crextic casualties, to make the conversation run while he monitored the emotional radiation of all concerned.

The Krititkukik was a highly intelligent being whose credence was not won easily, but when it was an equally intelligent and much-loved life-mate who was leading the attack on the basis of all its hard-held beliefs, the battle, although lengthy, was lost from the start.

Finally it said, “Suppose I believe you, Irisik, which is what I would like to do; the sailors of the other Krititkukikii assembled on and around this island may not. They want to kill the strangers, no matter what the cost, to keep more of them from coming and eating our people . . .”

“You saw what happened to me when I crashed into their invisible shield,” the glider pilot broke in. “They don’t eat people, they make them well again. Look at what they did for me.”

“We made the same mistake at first,” Keet joined in, “when the strangers tried to help rescue us from our wrecked ship. But they healed my life-mate, who was in a much worse condition than your glider pilot, and now both of them will live. And we certainly don’t want to eat spiders. Irisik has invited the few of my species who are left to join you on your beautiful, unspoiled world, and in return we will teach you, in the years or the centuries to come, how to leave it and walk the star web that connects it to the other worlds, in peace and prosperity . . .”

“Yes, yes,” said the Krititkukik, its level of resistance dropping but not quite to zero. “Irisik and you and the tall, soft, lumpy one who escaped from my ship have already told me all of this, many times. But it is like a story told to please young children, full of good things that are not real. And like children you have tried to frighten us with threats of a great fire when your ship lifts into the sky if we do not behave. Why should we believe you? You have helped a few of my people, including my life-mate, and promised great things for the future, and threatened much death and devastation now when your great ship with its invisible shields rises into the sky, but the strangers face no punishment for not telling us the truth and risk nothing and . . .”

“We risk our lives,” said Prilicla, breaking in gently. He indicated the disturbance in the sand that had shown the surface limits of the meteorite shield and went on, “We no longer have protection. You can kill us now and we could do nothing to stop you. But if you don’t call off your attack we will be burned to death with all of your people on this beach. Think about that, Krititkukik, and about the reasons we have given you for this risk we are taking, and believe what we say.”

Prilicla could feel the other’s growing uncertainty, but there was no indication of immediate hostile action being planned. He went on. “Why don’t you test the truth of what I’m saying with your weapon?”

“Doctor, this is madness!” Fletcher’s broke in. The other must have been shouting for its voice to sound so loud, considering the reduced gain on Prilicla’s headset. “I’m going to pull you in with tractor beams before you get everyone killed. I mean all of you, including the Crextic casualties—that way we can save a few of them though they probably won’t love us for it . . .” Its tone, although still loud, softened a little. “. . . The transfer will be sudden, and will be very rough on you physically, Doctor, but you are, after all, heading back to the best hospital in the galaxy for treatment. . .”

It broke off again as a more authoritative but quieter voice— too quiet for Prilicla to distinguish the individual words—broke in, then the captain went on. “Sir? But, but you can see that an attack is developing as we speak. I understand, sir. No action on my part unless expressly ordered by you.”

Prilicla didn’t ask for clarification because the situation around him was at too delicate a stage. He felt the sudden agitation of Keet and the medical-team members as the Krititkukik unlimbered its crossbow and loosed a single bolt, which flew through the intervening space unhindered until it clattered against the wall of the med station and fell onto the sand. The crossbow was replaced and it raised its speaking trumpet. First it spoke to the gliders circling above them, then to the sailors assembling on the beach. But this time their translators were online so that they could understand as well as hear everything it was saying.

All of the Crextic ground forces and gliders were being ordered to cease offensive actions and return without delay to their ships, with the exception of one aircraft which was instructed to gain altitude so that it could perform the signal aerobatic that would transmit the same message to the more distant ships and aircraft. The relief of the people all around bathed Prilicla in a bonfire glow of friendship and warmth, but again there was one exception.

“There is disagreement,” the Krititkukik said. “More than a quarter of the Crextic assembled here are little more than pirates, violent, unsubtle people with whom we normally would have no dealings. But they are influencing the others. In an effort to convince them of your good feelings for all of the Crextic, I told them that your ship was defenseless, but that if they attacked and forced it to leave, it would kill many hundreds of us as it went. The cloud-walkers’ signals are of necessity short, simple, and incapable of carrying closely reasoned arguments. This uncivilized element disbelieves me and they intend to press home their attack, very soon.”

With its words the bright, warm emotional cloud of pleasure and relief coming from the people surrounding him congealed suddenly into a dark, icy cloud of fear and angry disappointment. For the first time in his life, Prilicla could think of nothing that he could say that would help relieve their emotional distress. Even though it must have heard the Kritikukik’s words on Rhabwar’s aural sensors, friend Fletcher, too, was silent or at a loss for words.

But the silence was not complete. There was a faint growling sound, so deep that was felt in the bones as well as being heard through the ears, that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. From the top of its shapeless body Danalta extruded an ear that resembled a fleshy dish-antenna, and shortly afterwards grew a hand with one upwardly-pointing digit. They followed its direction and looked up.

Vespasian was making a slow and increasingly thunderous approach.

The Monitor Corps’ Emperor-class battleships were unable to land on a planetary surface because of the complex antennae, weapon mounts, and other structural projections sprouting from a hull so vast that, even at an altitude of several miles it looked like another shining metal island, except this island was floating on its four ravening underlets. Looking tiny beside the vast capital ship, its escort of three cruisers traced wide, fiery circles around it, their thunder sounding falsetto by comparison.

Ponderously avoiding the spider ships in the area, Vespasian closed on the bay and dropped to less than one thousand meters’ altitude, its underlets exploding the surface of the sea into dazzling white clouds of steam that boiled upwards to almost obscure its vast underside and making it seem that it was riding on self-generated clouds.

For a few moments it hung there, the incredibly loud, hissing thunder making it impossible for anyone to hear themselves or anyone else speak. Then it withdrew, again avoiding the spider ships in the area as it began a rapid ascent spacewards, accompanied by its cruiser escorts. When the noise reduced to something less than deafening, a new voice sounded over Rhabwars external speakers.

It said, “Dr. Prilicla, Sector Marshal Dermod. I have found that a prior show of police force can often avert a riot by forcing the rioters to calm down and see sense. I am now returning my ships to orbit and withdrawing their sound pollution so as to give everyone down there a chance to talk together which, with your help and a little more of your creative insubordination, I’m sure they will.

“You have done very well, Dr. Prilicla,” it ended. “Very well indeed.”

CHAPTER 36

By the evening of the following day, the majority of the Crextic vessels had withdrawn from the island to return to their various homelands, the exceptions

being the flagships of the Kri-titkukikii from every clan fleet, and their advisors. During the days and weeks that followed, many gliders were continually airborne, flying at the cold, upper limits of their operational capability as they signaled the results of the talks that were going on in what had been the medical station, to the other relay gliders farther afield.

There was plenty going on, although the negotiations between the Federation’s cultural-contact specialists from Descartes and the Crextic representatives—but strangely, not with the Tro-lanni, whom the spiders considered their new friends—as often as not, resembled non-violent riots. But one of Sector Marshal Dermod’s cruisers kept station on the island, maintaining a distance and altitude that would not inconvenience the signaling gliders.

Only once, when it seemed that the negotiations might degenerate into physical violence, did the sector marshal order it to make a low pass over the medical station, to remind anyone who might be thinking of using muscle instead of mind, where the real strength lay. Apart from the horrendous noise of its passage, no spider injuries were sustained, and the Monitor Corps negotiators pointedly ignored the incident, but thereafter the talking continued more peaceably.

For the ensuing three weeks Prilicla spent his every waking moment with them, including the times when he had to eat, a process which startled but did not disgust the spiders. When the cultural-contact specialists from Descartes expertly plied their tri-di projections to illustrate and explain in detail the organization and political ramifications of the Galactic Federation to the Crextic—the two Trolanni present had already seen most of it—the spiders’ feelings reflected in turn incredulity, wonder, fear, and distrust. By pinpointing the individual emotional radiation of the person concerned, he was able to subtly guide the contact specialist into a conversational area that the other found more reassuring.

Captain Fletcher was also content because a cargo shuttle, too small to do more than scorch an insignificant area of sand on the beach, was plying between the orbiting Vespasian and Rhabwar, carrying with the relays of cultural-contact

specialists the fuel cells and organic and engineering consumables that would shortly result in a virtual refit and resupply of its beloved ambulance ship so that it could again take off with a pressor-beam assist and not burn up half the island as it left.

Then the day came when Prilicla knew that their work on the spider planet was complete, because the supply shuttle touched down with no supplies on board since it carried instead no less a personage than Sector Marshal Dermod.

The dark green Monitor Corps uniform with its insignia of rank and quietly impressive ribbons meant nothing to the Trolanni and Crextic gathered in what had been the station’s recovery ward, but the habit of command in its manner said all that was necessary about it as a person—a person who meant exactly what it said.

“My warmest compliments to everyone here who has been involved in successfully concluding this epoch-making agreement between three different intelligent species,” it said. “Not only has there been it a first contact between the Federation and the Trolanni, but a second contact with ourselves and the Crextic, and another possible future contact with the druul—”

It looked along the line of joined litters which served as a conference table and raised a hand to quell an outburst from Keet and Jasam, then went on. “. . . I know that you have already discussed this matter with my subordinate officers and members of the medical team, but I am required to restate our position officially. Federation law forbids us to exterminate any intelligent species, regardless of the past and present evidence of their concerted violence and antisocial behavior towards others. Instead, a rigorous and lengthy psychological and sociological assessment will be conducted regarding the possibility of their reeducation. Should the findings go against them and, as our Trolanni friends have insisted, they turn out to be nothing but intelligent and amoral animals, they will not be exterminated. Instead their world will be placed under Federation Interdict until they either become civilized, which seems improbable, or they exterminate themselves.

“The Trolanni currently living among them,” it went one, “will be evacuated and transferred, at the invitation of the Crextic, to this planet to share a part of it with them, and to cooperate in the future to the benefit of both species.

“Such an event as this has no precedent in the history of the Federation,” Dermod continued, glancing up at the hovering Prilicla, “and we were worried in case it did not succeed and we had the druul-Trolanni conflict repeat itself here. But my em-pathic advisor assures me that the Crextic and Trolanni feelings, based as they are on mutual help and future scientific and commercial advantages, are honest and will be more long-lasting than any agreement based on empty diplomacies. As a precaution we will observe the situation from orbit. If the cultural contact fails, we will move the Trolanni to another planet which has no sapient life-forms to oppose their resettlement, but I do not foresee that happening because this is a contact that the Crextic and the Trolanni both want and need. At no time will we interfere in disputes which you are plainly capable of solving yourselves, nor will we give unwanted technical help, because psychologically that would be bad for both species. In time, perhaps not too long a time as progressing cultures go, I can foresee the Trolanni and the Crextic being welcomed into the Galactic Federation.

“But our more immediate plan,” it went on briskly, “is to take Jasam and its searchsuit back to Trolann to explain the situation to its people, advise them regarding the evacuation, and begin instructing our scientists regarding the organic-cybernetic interface and the lifesuit technology they use for self-defense. This will have important applications far beyond their use as fully-sensitive limbs for amputees. Meanwhile Keet has elected to remain here with Irisik to prepare everyone concerned for the arrival of the first Trolanni evacuees. The medical station will be left here for their use as will the remains of Terragar. Both will be a constant reminder of the future that lies ahead for both species.

“Rhabwar,” it added, looking at Prilicla and then Captain Fletcher, “will return to Sector General when convenient.”

“Thank you, friend Dermod,” said Prilicla.

“Doctor!” the captain said, its face deepening in color and its emotional radiation reflecting shock and embarrassment. “You don’t talk that way to a, to a sector marshal!” To its superior officer, it went on quickly, “Please excuse Dr. Prilicla, sir, it sometimes takes friendly informality to excess. And yes, sir, we can leave within the hour.”

“A degree of informality is acceptable,” said the sector marshal, its eyes turning towards Prilicla, “especially from someone who has achieved so much here. I feel no insult at your mode of address, little friend, and your empathic faculty is already telling you that, among other things . . .”

There was an unusual feeling of warmth and expectancy emanating from the sector marshal that was characteristic of a pleasure soon to be shared. It showed its teeth in the grimace Earth-humans called a smile.

“. . . Besides,” it went on, “just before leaving for this meeting I received a signal from Administrator Braithwaite at the hospital to say that you have been appointed, or, more precisely, you have been elected unanimously to the rank of Diagnostician. My warmest congratulations, friend Prilicla.”

To Captain Fletcher it added dryly, “As I recall them, my words were ‘when convenient,’ not ‘as soon as possible.’ One does not give orders to a Sector General Diagnostician.”

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Sector General 1—Hospital Station

Sector General 2—Star Surgeon

Sector General 3—Major Operation

Sector General 4—Ambulance Ship

Sector General 5—Sector General

Sector General 6—Star Healer

Sector General 7—Code Blue Emergency

Sector General 8—The Genocidal Healer

Sector General 9—The Galactic Gourmet

Sector General 10—Final Diagnosis

Sector General 11—Mind Changer

Sector General 12—Double Contact