Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  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 anticontamination 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 scoutship’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 nece
ssitated 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 transfering 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 wit
h visibly controlled impatience foreveryone 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.