Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  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 anti-gravity 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 with
out 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 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, computermen 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 fish-like 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 Illensan 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.