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Authors: James White

Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (33 page)

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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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 …”
O
n 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.
To some it might have seemed callous to evacuate the convalescent patients first, but there were very good reasons for doing so. With these walking wounded out of the way the wards and approaches to the locks would be less congested, which would allow the complicated frames and harnesses containing the more seriously ill patients to be moved more easily, as well as giving them a little more time in the optimum conditions of the wards.
“Two more Illensan ships, Doctor,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “Small jobs, capacity about twenty patients each.”
“Lock Seventeen is still tied up,” said Conway. “Tell them to orbit.”
The next arrival was a small passenger ship from the Earth-human world of Gregory, and with it came the lunch trays. There were only a few Earth-human patients at Sector General, but at a pinch the Gregorian ship could take any warm-blooded oxygen-breather below the mass of a Tralthan. Conway dealt with both arrivals at the same time, not caring if he did have to speak or even shout, with his mouth full …
Then suddenly the sweating, harassed face of Colonel Skempton flicked onto the internal screen. He said sharply, “Doctor, there are two Illensan ships hanging about in orbit. Don’t you have work for them?”
“Yes!” said Conway, irritated by the other’s tone. “But there is a ship already loading chlorine-breathers at Seventeen, and there is no other lock suitable on that level. They’ll have to wait their turn …”
“That won’t do,” Skempton cut in harshly. “While they’re hanging about out there they are in danger should the enemy attack suddenly. Ether you start loading them at once or we send them away to come back later. Probably much later. Sorry.”
Conway opened his mouth and then shut it with a click over what he had been about to say. Hanging grimly onto his temper he tried to think.
He knew that the build-up of the defense fleet had been going on for days and that the astrogation officers responsible for bringing those units in would leave again as soon as possible—either on their own scout-ships or with the patients leaving Sector General. The plan devised by the Monitor Corps called for no information regarding the whereabouts of
the Federation being available in the minds of the defending forces or the non-combatants who remained in the hospital. The defense fleet was deployed to protect the hospital and the ships locked onto it, and the thought of two other ships swinging around loose, ships which contained fully qualified astrogators aboard, must have made the Monitor fleet commander start biting his nails.
“Very well, Colonel,” Conway said. “We’ll take the ships at Fifteen and Twenty-one. This will mean chlorine-breathers traveling through the DBLF maternity ward and a part of the AUGL section. Despite these complications we should have the patients aboard in three hours …”
Complications was right …
! Conway thought grimly as he gave the necessary orders. Luckily both the DBLF ward and that section of the AUGL level would be vacant by the time the chlorine-breathing Illensans in their pressure tents came through. But the ship from Gregory was at an adjoining lock taking on ELNTs who were being shepherded through the area by DBLF nurses in protective suits. Also there were some of the low-G, bird-like MSVKs being brought to the same vessel through the chlorine ward which he was hoping to clear …
There weren’t enough screens in Reception to keep properly in touch with what was going on down there, Conway decided suddenly. He had the horrible feeling that a most awful snarl-up would occur if he wasn’t careful. But he couldn’t be careful if he didn’t know what was going on. The only course was for him to go there and direct the traffic himself.
He called O’Mara, explained the situation quickly and asked for a relief.
D
r. Mannon arrived, groaned piteously at the battery of screens and flashing lights, then smoothly took over the job of directing the evacuation. As a replacement Conway could not have hoped for anyone better. He was turning to go when Mannon pushed his face within three inches of one of the screens and said “Harrumph.”
Conway stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Mannon, without turning round. “It’s just that I’m beginning to understand why you want to go down there.”
“But I told you why!” said Conway impatiently. He stamped out, telling himself angrily that Mannon was indulging in senseless conversation at a time when unnecessary talk of any kind was criminal. Then he wondered if the aging Dr. Mannon was tired, or had a particularly confusing tape riding him, and felt suddenly ashamed. Snapping at Skempton or the receptionists hadn’t worried him unduly, but he did not want to begin biting the heads off his friends—even if he was harassed and tired and the whole place was rapidly going to Hell on horseback Then very soon he was being kept too busy to feel ashamed.
Three hours later the state of confusion around him seemed to have doubled, although in actual fact it was simply that twice as much was being accomplished twice as fast. From his position at one of the high-level entrances to the main AUGL ward Conway could look down on a line of ELNTs—six-legged, crab-like entities from Melf IV—scuttling or being towed across the floor of the great tank. Unlike their amphibious patients, the thickly-furred, air breathing Kelgians attending them had to wear protective envelopes which were sweltering hot inside. The scraps of Translated conversation which drifted up to him, although necessarily
emotionless, verged on the incandescent. But the work was being done, and much faster than Conway had ever hoped for.
In the corridor behind him a slow procession of Illensans, some in protective suits and the more seriously ill in pressure tents which enclosed their beds, moved past. They were being attended by Earth-human and Kelgian nurses. The transfer was going smoothly now, but there had been a time only half an hour back when Conway had wondered if it would go at all …
When the large pressure tents came through into the water-filled AUGL section they had risen like giant chlorine bubbles and stuck fast against the ceiling. Towing them along the corridor ceiling had been impossible because outgrowths of plumbing might have ruptured the thin envelopes, and getting five or six nurses to weigh them down was impractical. And when he brought in powered stretcher carriers from the level above—vehicles not designed for but theoretically capable of operating under water—with the idea of both holding his super-buoyant patients down and moving them quickly, a battery casing had split and the carrier became the center of a mass of hissing, bubbling water which had rapidly turned black.
Conway would not be surprised to hear that the patient on that particular carrier had a relapse.
He had solved the problem finally with a magnificent flash of inspiration which, he told himself disgustedly, should have come two seconds after he had seen the problem. He had quickly switched the artificial gravity grids in the corridor to zero attraction and in the weightless condition the pressure tents had lost their buoyancy. It meant that the nurses had to swim instead of walk with their patients, but that was a small thing.
It was during the transfer of these PVSJs that Conway learned the reason for Mannon’s “Harrumph” up in Reception—Murchison was one of the nurses on that duty. She hadn’t recognized him, of course, but he knew there was only one person who could fill a nurse’s lightweight suit the way she did. He didn’t speak to her, however—it didn’t seem to be the proper time or place.
Time passed rapidly without another major crisis developing. At Lock Five the Kelgian hospital ship was ready to go, waiting only for some of the hospital’s senior staff to go aboard and for a Monitor ship to escort them out to a safe jump distance. Remembering some of the beings who were scheduled to leave on that ship, many of them friends of long standing,
Conway decided the chance offered by the quiet spell to say a quick good-bye to some of them. He called Mannon to tell him where he was going, then headed for Five.
But by the time he arrived the Kelgian ship had gone. In one of the big direction vision panels he could see it drawing away with a Monitor cruiser in close attendance; and beyond them, hanging like newly-formed constellations in the blackness, lay the Monitor defense fleet. The buildup of units around the hospital was proceeding as planned and had increased visibly since Conway had looked at it yesterday. Reassured, and not a little awed by the sight, he hurried back to the AUGL section.
And arrived to find the corridor almost plugged by an expanding sphere of ice.
The ship from Gregory contained a specially refrigerated compartment for beings of the SNLU classification. These were fragile, crystalline, methane-based life-forms who would be instantly cremated if the temperature rose above minus one-twenty. Sector General was currently treating seven of these ultra-frigid creatures, and all of them had been packed into a ten-foot refrigerated sphere for the transfer. Because of the difficulties expected in handling them they were the last patients for the Gregorian ship.
If there had been a direct opening to space from the cold section they would have been moved to the ship along the outer hull, but as this was not possible they had to be brought through fourteen levels from the methane ward to their loading point at Lock Sixteen. In all the other levels the corridors had been spacious and filled with air or chlorine, so that all that the protective sphere had done was to collect a coating of frost and chill the surrounding atmosphere. But in the AUGL section it was growing ice. Fast.
Conway had known this would happen but had not considered it important because the sphere should not have been in the water-filled corridor long enough to cause a problem. But one of the towing lines had snapped and pulled it against some projecting conduit and within seconds they were welded together with ice. Now the sphere was encased in an icy shell four feet thick and there was barely room to pass above or below it.
“Get cutting torches down here,” Conway bawled up to Mannon, “quick!”
Three Corpsmen arrived just before the corridor was completely blocked. With the cutting flames of their torches set to maximum dispersal
they attacked the icy mass, melting it free of the projection and trying to reduce it to a more managable size. In the confined space of the corridor the heat being applied to the ice-ball sent the water temperature soaring up, and none of their suits had cooling units. Conway began to feel a distinct empathy toward boiled lobsters. And the great, awkward mass of ice was a danger to life and limb—danger from being crushed between it and the corridor wall, and the scalding, nearly opaque water which made it so easy to put an arm or leg between the ice and a cutting flame.
But finally the job was done. The container with its SNLU occupants was maneuvered through the inter-level lock into another air-filled section. Conway rubbed a hand across the outside of his helmet in an unconscious attempt to wipe the sweat from his forehead and wondered what else would go wrong.
The answer, according to Dr. Mannon up in Reception was not a thing.
All three levels of DBLF patients had left with the Kelgian ship, Mannon told him enthusiastically, the only caterpillars remaining in the hospital being a few of the nursing staff. Between them the three Illensan freighters had cleared the PVSJ wards of their chlorine-breathers, except for a few stragglers who would be aboard within a few minutes. Among the water-breathing types the AUGLs and ELNTs were clear, and the SNLUs in their baby iceberg were just going aboard. In all fourteen levels had been cleared and that was not a bad day’s work. Dr. Mannon suggested that Dr. Conway might take this opportunity of applying a pillow to his head and going into a state of voluntary unconsciousness in preparation for an equally busy day tomorrow.
Conway was swimming tiredly toward the inter-level lock, his mind revolving around the infinitely alluring concepts of a large steak and a long sleep, when it happened.
Something which he did not see struck him a savage, disabling blow. It bit simultaneously in the abdomen, chest and legs—the places where his suit was tightest. Agony burst inside him like a red explosion that was just barely contained by his tortured body. He doubled up and began to black out, he wanted to die and he desperately wanted to be sick. But some tiny portion of his brain unaffected by the pain and nausea insisted that he did not allow himself to be sick, that being sick inside his helmet was a very
nasty
way to die …
Gradually the pain receded and became bearable. Conway still felt as
if a Tralthan had kicked him in the groin with all six feet, but other things were beginning to register. Loud, insistent, gurgling noises and the extremely odd sight of a Kelgian drifting in the water without its protective suit. A second look told him that it was wearing a suit, but that it was ruptured and full of water.
Further down in the AUGL tank two more Kelgians floated, their long, soft, furry bodies burst open from head to tail, the ghastly details mercifully obscured by an expanding red fog. And against the opposite wall of the tank there was an area of turbulence around a dark, irregular hole through which the water seemed to be leaving.
Conway swore. He thought he knew what had happened. Whatever had made that ragged-edged hole had, because of the non-compressibility of water, also expended its force on the unfortunate occupants of the AUGL tank. But because the other Kelgian and himself had been up here in the corridor they had escaped the worst effects of it.
Or maybe only one of them had escaped …
It took three minutes for him to drag the Kelgian nurse into the lock ten yards along the corridor. Once inside he set the pumps going to clear the chamber of water, simultaneously cracking an air valve. While the last of the water was draining away he struggled to lay the sodden, inert body on its side against one wall. The being’s silvery pelt was a mass of dirty gray spikes, and he could detect no pulse or respiration. Conway quickly lay down on his side on the floor, moved the third and fourth set of legs apart so that he could put his shoulder into the space between them, then with his own feet braced firmly against the opposite wall he began to push rhythmically. Sitting on top of it and pressing down with the palms was not, Conway knew, an effective method of applying artificial respiration to one of the massive DBLFs. After a few seconds water began trickling out of its mouth.
He broke off suddenly as he heard somebody trying to open the lock from the AUGL corridor side. Conway tried his radio, but one or the other of their sets was not working. Taking off his helmet quickly he put his mouth up against the seal, cupped his hands around it and yelled, “I’ve an air-breather in here without its suit, don’t open the seal or else you’ll drown us! Come in from the other side … !”
A few minutes later the seal on the air-filled side opened and Murchison was looking down at him. She said, “D-Doctor Conway …” in a peculiar voice.
Conway straightened his legs sharply, ramming his shoulder into the
area of the Kelgian’s underbelly nearest its lungs and said, “What?”
“I … You … the explosion …” she began. Then after the brief false start her tone became firm and purposeful as she went on, “There’s been an explosion, Doctor. One of the DBLF nurses is injured, severe lacerated wounds caused by a piece of floor plating spinning against it. We coagulated at once but I don’t think its holding. And the corridor where its lying is being flooded, the explosion must have opened a way into the AUGL section. The air-pressure is dropping slightly so we must be open to space somewhere, too, and there is a distinct smell of chlorine …”
Conway groaned and ceased his efforts with the Kelgian, but before he could speak Murchison went on quickly, “All the Kelgian doctors have been evacuated and the only DBLFs left are this one and a couple who should be around here somewhere, but they’re just nursing staff …”
Here was a proper mess, Conway thought as he scrambled to his feet; contamination and threatening decompression. The injured being would have to be moved quickly, because if the pressure dropped too much the airtight doors would drop and if the patient was on the wrong side of them when they did it would be just too bad. And the absence of a qualified DBLF meant that he would have to take a Kelgian physiology tape and do the job himself, which meant a quick trip to O’Mara’s office. But first he would have to look at the patient.
“Take over this one, please Nurse,” he said, indicating the sodden mass on the floor, “I think it’s beginning to breath for itself, but will you give it another ten minutes …” He watched while Murchison lay down on her side, knees bent and with both feet planted against the opposite wall. This was definitely neither the time nor the place, but the sight of her lying there in that demoralizingly tight suit made the urgency of patients, evacuations and physiology tapes diminish for just an instant. Then the tight, moisture beaded suit made him remember that Murchison had been in the AUGL tank, too, just a few minutes before the explosion, and he had an awful vision of her lovely body burst open like those of the two hapless DBLFs …
“Between the third and fourth pair of legs, not the fifth and sixth!” Conway said harshly as he turned to go.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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