Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  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 caverns 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 b
etween 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 …”