Sector General sg-5

by James White

  “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 too
k 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 upto 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 sens
ible 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 withthe 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.”