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Authors: James White

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BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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The helmet which Prilicla brought was in a reality a mask, a mask with a self-contained air supply which, when in position, adhered firmly along
the edge of the hair line, cheeks and lower jaw. Its air was good only for a very limited time—ten minutes or so—but with it on and the danger of death temporarily removed, Conway discovered that he could think much more clearly.
His first action was to go through the still open intersection lock. The PVSJ inside it was motionless and with the gray blush, the beginning of a type of skin cancer, spreading over its body. To the PVSJ life-form oxygen was vicious stuff. As gently as possible he dragged the Illensan into its own section and to a nearby storage compartment which he remembered being there. Pressure in this section was slightly greater than that maintained for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers so that where the PVSJ was concerned the air here was reasonably pure. Conway shut it in the compartment, after first grabbing an armful of the woven plastic sheets, in this section the equivalent of bed linen. There was no sign of the SRTT.
Back in the other corridor he explained to Prilicla what he wanted done—the Earth-human he had seen earlier had succeeded in donning his suit, but was blundering about, eyes streaming and coughing violently and was obviously incapable of giving any assistance. Conway picked his way around the weakly moving or unconscious bodies to the seal of Lock Six and opened it. There was a neatly racked row of air-bottles on the wall inside. He lifted down two of them and staggered out.
Prilicla had one unconscious form already covered with a sheet. Conway cracked the valve of an air-bottle and slid it under the covering, then watched as the plastic sheet bellied and rippled slightly with the air being released underneath it. It was the crudest possible form of oxygen tent, Conway thought, but the best that could be done at the moment. He left for more bottles.
After the third trip Conway began to notice the warning signs. He was sweating profusely, his head was splitting and big black splotches were beginning to blot out his vision—his air supply was running out. It was high time he took off the emergency helmet, stuck his own head under a sheet like the others and waited for the rescuers to arrive. He took a few steps toward the nearest sheeted figure, and the floor hit him. His heart was banging thunderously in his chest, his lungs were on fire and all at once he didn’t even have the strength to pull off the helmet …
Conway was forced from his state of deep and oddly comfortable unconsciousness by pain: something was making strong and repeated attempts to cave in his chest. He stuck it just as long as he could, then
opened his eyes and said, “Get off me, dammit, I’m all right!”
The hefty intern who had been enthusiastically engaged in giving Conway artificial respiration climbed to his feet. He said, “When we arrived, daddy-longlegs here said you had ceased to emote. I was worried about you for a moment—well, slightly worried.” He grinned and added, “If you can walk and talk, O’Mara wants to see you.”
Conway grunted and rose to his feet. Blowers and filtering apparatus had been set up in the corridor and were rapidly clearing the air of the last vestiges of chlorine and the casualties were being removed, some on tented stretcher-carriers and others being assisted by their rescuers. He fingered the raw area of forehead caused by the hurried removal of his helmet and took a few great gulps of air just to reassure himself that the nightmare of a few minutes ago was really over.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said feelingly.
“Don’t mention it, Doctor,” said the intern.
 
 
They found O’Mara in the Educator Room. The Chief Psychologist wasted no time on preliminaries. He pointed to a chair for Conway and indicated a sort of surrealistic wastepaper basket to Prilicla and barked, “What happened?”
The room was in shadow except for the glow of indicator lights on the Educator equipment and a single lamp on O’Mara’s desk. All Conway could see of the psychologist as he began his story was two hard, competent hands projecting from the sleeves of a dark green uniform and a pair of steady gray eyes in a shadowed face. The hands did not move and the eyes never left him while Conway was speaking.
When he was finished O’Mara sighed and was silent for several seconds, then he said, “There were four of our top Diagnosticians at Lock Six just then, beings this hospital could ill afford to lose. The prompt action you took certainly saved at least three of their lives, so you’re a couple of heroes. But I’ll spare your blushes and not belabor that point. Neither,” he added dryly, “will I embarrass you by asking what you were doing there in the first place.”
Conway coughed. He said, “What I’d like to know is why the SRTT ran amok like that. Because of the crowd running to meet it, I’d say, except that no intelligent, civilized being would behave like that. The only visitors we allow here are either government people or visiting specialists, neither of which are the type to be scared at the sight of an alien life-form.
And why so many Diagnosticians to meet it in the first place?”
“They were there,” replied O’Mara, “because they were anxious to see what an SRTT looked like when it was not trying to look like something else. This data might have aided them in a case they are working on. Also, with a hitherto unknown life-form like that it is impossible to guess at what made it act as it did. And finally, it is not the type of visitor which we allow here, but we had to break the rules this time because its parent is in the hospital, a terminal case.”
Conway said softly, “I see.”
A Monitor Lieutenant came into the room at that point and hurried across to O’Mara. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’ve been able to find one item which may help us with the search for the visitor. A DBLF nurse reports seeing a PVSJ moving away from the area of the accident at about the right time. To one of the DBLF caterpillars the PVSJs are anything but pretty, as you know, but the nurse says that this one looked worse than usual, a real freak. So much so that the DBLF was sure that it was a patient suffering from something pretty terrible—”
“You checked that we have no PVSJ suffering from the malady described?”
“Yes, sir. There is no such case.”
O’Mara looked suddenly grim. He said, “Very good, Carson, you know what to do next,” and nodded dismissal.
 
 
Conway had been finding it hard to contain himself during the conversation, and with the departure of the Lieutenant he burst out, “The thing I saw come out of the air-lock had tentacles and … and … Well, it wasn’t anything like a PVSJ. I know that an SRTT is able to modify its physical structure, of course, but so radically and in such a short time … !”
Abruptly O’Mara stood up. He said, “We know practically nothing about this life-form-its needs, capabilities or emotional response patterns—and it is high time we found out. I’m going to build a fire under Colinson in Communications to see what he can dig up; environment, evolutionary background, cultural and social influences and so on. We can’t have a visitor running around loose like this, it’s bound to make a nuisance of itself through sheer ignorance.
“But what I want you two to do is this,” he went on. “Keep an eye open for any odd-looking patients or embryos in the Nursery sections. Lieutenant Carson has just left to get on the PA and make these instructions
general. If you do find somebody who may be our SRTT approach them
gently
. Be reassuring, make no sudden moves and be sure to avoid confusing it, that only one of you talks at once. And contact me immediately.”
When they were outside again Conway decided that nothing further could be done in the current work period, and postponing the rounds of their wards for another hour, led the way to the vast room which served as a dining hall for all the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers on the hospital’s Staff. The place was, as usual, crowded, and although it was divided up into sections for the widely variant life-forms present, Conway could see many tables where three or four different classifications had come together—with extreme discomfort for some—to talk shop.
Conway pointed out a vacant table to Prilicla and began working toward it, only to have his assistant—aided by its still functional wings—get there before him and in time to foil two maintenance men making for the same spot. A few heads turned during this fifty yard flight, but only briefly—the diners were used to much stranger sights than that.
“I expect most of our food is suited to your metabolism,” said Conway when he was seated, “but do you have any special preferences?”
Prilicla had, and Conway nearly choked when he heard them. But it was not the combination of well-cooked spaghetti and raw carrots that was so bad, it was the way the GLNO set about eating the spaghetti when it arrived. With all four eating appendages working furiously Prilicla wove it into a sort of rope which was passed into the being’s beak-like mouth. Conway was not usually affected by this sort of thing, but the sight was definitely doing things to his stomach.
Suddenly Prilicla stopped. “My method of ingestion is disturbing you,” it said. “I will go to another table—”
“No, no,” said Conway quickly, realizing that his feelings had been picked up by the empath. “That won’t be necessary, I assure you. But it is a point of etiquette here that, whenever it is possible, a being dining in mixed company uses the same eating tools as its host or senior at the table. Er, do you think you could manage a fork?”
Prilicla could manage a fork. Conway had never seen spaghetti disappear so fast.
From the subject of food the talk drifted not too unnaturally to the hospital’s Diagnosticians and the Educator Tape system without which these august beings—and indeed the whole hospital—could not function.
Diagnosticians deservedly had the respect and admiration of everyone
in the hospital—and a certain amount of the pity as well. For it was not simply knowledge which the Educator gave them, the whole personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on their brains as well. In effect the Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic type of multiple schizophrenia, and with the alien other components sharing their minds so utterly
different
in every respect that they often did not even share the same system of logic.
Their one and only common denominator was the need of all doctors, regardless of size, shape or number of legs, to cure the sick.
There was a DBDG Earth-human Diagnostician at a table nearby who was visibly having to force himself to eat a perfectly ordinary steak. Conway happened to know that this man was engaged on a case which necessitated using a large amount of the knowledge contained in the Tralthan physiology tape which he had been given. The use of this knowledge had brought into prominence within his mind the personality of the Tralthan who had furnished the brain record, and Tralthans abhorred meat in all its forms …
After lunch Conway took Prilicla to the first of the wards to which they were assigned, and on the way continued to reel off more statistics and background information. The Hospital comprised three hundred and eighty-four levels and accurately reproduced the environments of the sixty-eight different forms of intelligent life currently known to the Galactic Federation. Conway was not trying to cow Prilicla with the vastness of the great hospital nor to boast, although he was intensely proud of the fact that he had gained a post in this very famous establishment. It was simply that he was uneasy about his assistant’s means of protecting itself against the conditions it would shortly meet, and this was his way of working around to the subject.
But he need not have worried, for Prilicla demonstrated how the light, almost diaphanous, suit which had saved it at Lock Six could be strengthened from inside by a scaled-down adaptation of the type of force-field used as meteorite protection of interstellar ships. When necessary its legs could be folded so as to be within the protective covering as well, instead of projecting outside it as they had done at the lock.
While they were changing prior to entering the AUGL Nursery Ward,
which was their first call, Conway began filling in his assistant on the case history of the occupants.
The fully-grown physiological type AUGL was a forty foot long, oviparous, armored fish-like life-form native of Chalderescol II, but the beings now in the ward for observation had been hatched only six weeks ago and measured only three feet. Two previous hatchings by the same mother had, as had this one, been in all respects normal and with the offspring seemingly in perfect health, yet two months later they had all died. A PM performed on their home world gave the cause of death as extreme calcification of the articular cartilage in practically every joint in the body, but had been unable to shed any light on the cause of death. Now Sector General was keeping a watchful eye on the latest hatching, and Conway was hoping that it would be a case of third time lucky.
“At present I look them over every day,” Conway went on, “and on every third day take an AUGL tape and give them a thorough checkup. Now that you are assisting me this will also apply to you. But when you take this tape I’d advise you to have it erased immediately after the examination, unless you would
like
to wander around for the rest of the day with half of your brain convinced that you are a fish and wanting to act accordingly …”
“That would be an intriguing but no doubt confusing hybrid,” agreed Prilicla. The GLNO was now enclosed completely—with the exception of two manipulators—in the bubble of its protective suit, which it had weighted sufficiently for it not to be hampered by too much buoyancy. Seeing that Conway was also ready, it operated the lock controls, and as they entered the great tank of warm, greenish water that was the AUGL ward it added, “Are the patients responding to treatment?”
Conway shook his head. Then realizing that the gesture probably meant nothing to the GLNO he said, “We are still at the exploratory stage—treatment has not yet begun. But I’ve had a few ideas, which I can’t properly discuss with you until we both take the AUGL tape tomorrow and am fairly certain that two of our three patients will come through—in effect, one of them will have to be used as a guinea-pig in order to save the others. The symptoms appear and develop very quickly,” he continued, “which is why I want such a close watch kept on them. Now that the danger point is so close I think I’ll make it three-hourly, and we’ll work out a timetable so’s neither of us will miss too much sleep. You see, the quicker we spot the first symptoms the more time we have
to act and the greater the possibility of saving all three of them. I’m very keen to do the hat-trick.”
 
 
Prilicla wouldn’t know what a hat-trick was either, Conway thought, but the being would quickly learn how to interpret his nods, gestures and figures of speech—Conway had had to do the same in his early days with e-t superiors, sometimes wondering fulminating why somebody did not make a tape on Alien Esoterics to aid junior interns in his position. But these were only surface thoughts. At the back of his mind, so steady and so sharp that it might have been painted there, was the picture of a young, almost embryonic life-form whose developing exoskeleton—the hundred or so flat, bony plates normally free to slide or move on flexible hinges of cartilage so as to allow mobility and breathing—was about to become a petrified fossil imprisoning, for a very short time, the frantic consciousness within …
“How can I assist you at the moment?” asked Prilicla, bringing Conway’s mind back from near future to present time with a rush. The GLNO was eyeing the three thin, streamlined shapes darting about the great tank and obviously wondering how it was going to stop one long enough to examine it. It added, “They’re fast, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and very fragile,” said Conway. “Also they are so young that for present purposes they can be considered mindless. They frighten easily and any attempt to approach them closely sends them into such a panic that they swim madly about until exhausted or injure themselves against the tank walls. What we have to do is lay a minefield …”
Quickly Conway explained and demonstrated how to place a pattern of anesthetic bulbs which dissolved in the water and how, gently and at a distance, to maneuver their elusive patients through it. Later, while they were examining the three small, unconscious forms and Conway saw how sensitive and precise was the touch of Prilicla’s manipulators and the corresponding sharpness of the GLNO’s mind, his hopes for all three of the infant AUGLs increased.
They left the warm and to Conway rather pleasant environment of the AUGLs for the “hot” ward of their section. This time the checking of the occupants was done with the aid of remote-controlled mechanisms from behind twenty feet of shielding. There was nothing of an urgent nature in this ward, and before leaving Conway pointed out the complicated masses of plumbing surrounding it. The maintenance division he
explained, used the “hot” ward as a stand-by power pile to light and heat the hospital.
Constantly in the background the wall annunciators kept droning out the progress of the search for the SRTT visitor. It had not been found yet, and cases of mistaken identity and of beings seeing things were mounting steadily. Conway had not thought much about the SRTT since leaving O‘Mara, but now he was beginning to feel a little anxious at the thought of what the runaway visitor might do in this section especially—not to mention what some of the infant patients might do to it. If only he knew more about it, had some idea of its militations. He decided to call O’Mara.
In reply to Conway’s request the Chief Psychologist said, “Our latest information is that the SRTT life-form evolved on a planet with an eccentric orbit around its primary. Geologic, climatic and temperature changes were such that a high degree of adaptability was necessary for survival. Before they attained a civilization their means of defense was either to assume as frightening an aspect as possible or to copy the physical form of their attackers in the hope that they would escape detection in this way—protective mimicry being the favorite method of avoiding danger, and so often used that the process had become almost involuntary. There are some other items regarding mass and dimensions at different ages. They are a very long-lived species—and this not particularly helpful collection of data, which was digested from the report of the survey ship which discovered the planet, ends by saying that all the foregoing is for our information only and that these beings do not take sick.”
O’Mara paused briefly, then added, “Hah!”
“I agree,” said Conway.
“One item we have which might explain its panicking on arrival,” O’Mara went on, “is that it is their custom for the very youngest to be present at the death of a parent rather than the eldest—there is an unusually strong emotional bond between parent and last-born. Estimates of mass place our runaway as being very young. Not a baby, of course, but definitely nowhere near maturity.”
Conway was still digesting this when the Major continued, “As to its limitations, I’d say that the Methane section is too cold for it and the radioactive wards too hot—also that glorified turkish bath on level Eighteen where they breathe super-heated steam. Apart from those, your guess is as good as mine where it may turn up.”
“It might help a little if I could see this SRTT’s parent,” Conway said. “Is that possible?”
There was a lengthy pause, then: “Just barely,” said O’Mara dryly. “The immediate vicinity of that patient is literally crawling with Diagnosticians and other high-powered talent … But come up after you’ve finished your rounds and I’ll try to fix it.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Conway and broke the circuit.
He still felt a vague uneasiness about the SRTT visitor, a dark premonition that he had not yet finished with this e-t juvenile delinquent who was the ultimate in quick-change artists. Maybe, he thought sourly, his current duties had brought out the mother in him, but at the thought of the havoc which that SRTT could cause—the damage to equipment and fittings, the interruption of important and closely-timed courses of treatment and the physical injury, perhaps even death, to the more fragile life-forms through its ignorant blundering about—Conway felt himself go a little sick.
For the failure to capture the runaway had made plain one very disquieting fact, and that was that the SRTT was not too young and immature not to know how to work the intersection locks …
Half angrily, Conway pushed these useless anxieties to the back of his mind and began explaining to Prilicla about the patients in the ward they were going to visit next, and the protective measures and examinative procedures necessary when handling them.
 
 
This ward contained twenty-eight infants of the FROB classification—low, squat, immensely strong beings with a horny covering that was like flexible armor plate. Adults of the species with their increased mass tended to be slow and ponderous, but the infants could move surprisingly fast despite the condition of four times Earth-normal gravity and pressure in which they lived. Heavy-duty suits were called for in these conditions and the floor level of the ward was never used by visiting physicians or nursing staff except in cases of the gravest emergency. Patients for examination were raised from the floor by a grab and lifting apparatus to the cupola set in the ceiling for this purpose, where they were anesthetized before the grab was released. This was done with a long, extremely strong needle which was inserted at the point where the inner side of the foreleg joined the trunk—one of the very few soft spots on the FROB’s body.
“ … I expect you to break a lot of needles before you get the hang
of it,” Conway added, “but don’t worry about that, or think that you are hurting them. These little darlings are so tough that if a bomb went off beside them they would hardly blink.”
Conway was silent for a few seconds while they walked briskly toward the FROB ward—Prilicla’s six, multi-jointed and pencil-thin legs seeming to spread out all over the place, but somehow never actually getting underfoot. He no longer felt that he was walking on eggs when he was near the GLNO, or that the other would crumple up and blow away if he so much as brushed against it. Prilicla had demonstrated its ability to avoid all contacts likely to be physically harmful to it in a way which, now that Conway was becoming accustomed to it, was both dexterous and strangely graceful.
A man, he thought, could get used to working with anything.
“But to get back to our thick-skinned little friends,” Conway resumed, “physical toughness in that species—especially in the younger age groups—is not accompanied by resistance to germ or virus infections. Later they develop the necessary antibodies and as adults are disgustingly healthy, but in the infant stage …”
“They catch everything,” Prilicla put in. “And as soon as a new disease is discovered they get that, too.”
Conway laughed. “I was forgetting that most e-t hospitals have their quota of FROBs and that you may already have had experience with them. You will know also that these diseases are rarely fatal to the infants, but that their cure is long, complicated, and not very rewarding, because they straightaway catch something else. None of our twenty-eight cases here are serious, and the reason that they are here rather than at a local hospital is that we are trying to produce a sort of shotgun serum which will artificially induce in them the immunity to infection which will eventually be theirs in later life and so … Stop!”
The word was sharp, low and urgent, a shouted whisper. Prilicla froze, its sucker-tipped legs gripping the corridor floor, and stared along with Conway at the being who had just appeared at the intersection ahead of them.
 
 
At first glance it looked like an Illensan. The shapeless, spiny body with the dry, rustling membrane joining upper and lower appendages belonged unmistakably to the PVSJ chlorine-breathers. But there were two eating tentacles which seemed to have been transplanted from an FGLI, a furry
breast pad which was pure DBLF and it was breathing, as they were, an atmosphere rich in oxygen.
It could only be the runaway.
All the laws of physiology to the contrary Conway felt his heart battering at the back of his throat somewhere as, remembering O’Mara’s strict orders not to frighten the being, he tried to think of something friendly and reassuring to say. But the SRTT took off immediately it caught sign of them, and all Conway could find to say was, “Quick, after it!”
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