Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  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 musclature. 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 m
outh 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, pipestem 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 ha
d 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 contraterrene 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.