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Authors: James White

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“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 between 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 …”

MAJOR OPERATION

O
n the whole weird and wonderful planet there were only thirty-seven patients requiring treatment, and they varied widely both in size and in their degree of physical distress. Naturally it was the patient who was in the greatest distress who was being treated first, even though it was also the largest—so large that at their scoutship’s suborbital velocity of six thousand plus miles per hour it took just over nine minutes to travel from one side of the patient to the other.

“It’s a large problem,” said Conway seriously, “and even altitude doesn’t make it look smaller. Neither does the shortage of skilled help.”

Pathologist Murchison, who was sharing the tiny observation blister with him, sounded cool and a little on the defensive as she replied, “I have been studying all the Drambon material long before and since my arrival two months ago, but I agree that seeing it like this for the first time really does bring the problem home to one. As for the shortage of help, you must realize, Doctor, that you can’t strip the hospital of its staff and facilities for just one patient even if it is the size of a subcontinent—there are thousands of smaller and more easily curable patients with equal demands on us.

“And if you are still suggesting that I, personally, took my time in getting here,” she ended hotly, “I came just as soon as my chief decided that you really did need me, as a pathologist.”

“I’ve been telling Thornnastor for six months that I needed a top pathologist here,” said Conway gently. Murchison looked beautiful when she was angry, but even better when she was not. “I thought everybody in the hospital knew why I wanted you, which is one reason why we are sharing this cramped observation blister, looking at a view we have both
seen many times on tape and arguing when we could be enjoying some unprofessional behavior—”

“Pilot here,” said a tinny voice in the blister’s ’speaker. “We are losing height and circling back now and will land about five miles east of the terminator. The reaction of the eye plants to sunrise is worth seeing.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. To Murchison he added, “I had not planned on looking out the window.”

“I had,” she said, punching him with one softly clenched fist on the jaw. “You I can see anytime.”

She pointed suddenly and said, “Someone is drawing yellow triangles on your patient.”

Conway laughed. “I forgot, you haven’t been involved with our communications problems so far. Most of the surface vegetation is light-sensitive and, some of us thought, might act as the creature’s eyes. We produce geometrical and other figures by directing a narrow, intense beam of light from orbit into a dark or twilight area and moving it about quickly. The effect is something like that of drawing with a high-persistency spot on a vision screen. So far, there has been no detectable reaction.

“Probably,” he went on, “the creature can’t react even if it wanted to, because eyes are sensory receptors and not transmitters. After all, we can’t send messages with our eyes.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said.

“Seriously,” Conway said, “I’m beginning to wonder if the strata creature itself is highly intelligent …”

They landed shortly afterward and stepped carefully onto the springy ground, crushing several of the vegetable eyes with every few yards of progress. The fact that the patient had countless millions of other eyes did not make them feel any better about the damage inflicted by their feet.

When they were about fifty yards from the ship, she said suddenly, “If these plants are eyes—and it is a natural assumption, since they are sensitive to light—why should it have so many in an area where danger threatens so seldom? Peripheral vision to coordinate the activity of its feeding mouths would be much more useful.”

Conway nodded. They knelt carefully among the plants, their long shadows filled with the yellow of tightly closed leaves. He indicated their tracks from the entry lock of the ship, which were also bright yellow, and moved his arms about so as to partly obscure some of the plants from
the light. Leaves partially in shade or suffering even minor damage reacted exactly as those completely cut off from the light. They rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides.

“The roots are thin and go on forever,” he said, excavating gently with his fingers to show a whitish root which narrowed to the diameter of thin string before disappearing from sight. “Even with mining equipment or during exploratories with diggers we haven’t been able to find the other end of one. Have you learned anything new from the internals?”

He covered the exposed root with soil, but kept the palms of both hands pressed lightly against the ground.

Watching him, she said, “Not very much. Light and darkness, as well as causing the leaves to open out or roll up tight, causes electrochemical changes in the sap, which is so heavily loaded with mineral salts that it makes a very good conductor. Electrical pulses produced by these changes could travel very quickly from the plant to the other end of the root. Er, what are you doing, dear, taking its pulse?”

Conway shook his head without speaking, and she went on. “The eye plants are evenly distributed over the patient’s top surface, including those areas containing dense growths of the air-renewal and waste-elimination types, so that a shadow or light stimulus received anywhere on its surface is transmitted quickly—almost instantaneously, in fact—to the central nervous system via this mineral-rich sap. But the thing which bothers me is what possible reason could the creature have for evolving an eyeball several hundred miles across?”

“Close your eyes,” said Conway, smiling. “I’m going to touch you. As accurately as you can, try to tell me where.”

“You’ve been too long in the company of men and e-ts, Doctor,” she began, then broke off, looking thoughtful.

Conway began by touching her lightly on the face, then he rested three fingers on top of her shoulder and went on from there.

“Left cheek about an inch from the left side of my mouth,” she said. “Now you’ve rested your hand on my shoulder. You seem to be rubbing an X onto my left bicep. Now you have a thumb and two, maybe three, fingers at the back of my neck just on the hairline … Are you enjoying this? I am.”

Conway laughed. “I might if it wasn’t for the thought of Lieutenant Harrison watching us and steaming up the pilot’s canopy with his hot little breath. But seriously, you see what I’m getting at, that the eye plants have nothing to do with the creature’s vision but are analogous to
pressure- , pain- or temperature-sensitive nerve endings?”

She opened her eyes and nodded. “It’s a good theory, but you don’t look happy about it.”

“I’m not,” said Conway sourly, “and I’d like you to shoot as many holes in it as possible. You see, the complete success of this operation depends on us being able to communicate with the beings who produced the thought-controlled tools. Up until now I had assumed that these beings would be comparable in size to ourselves even if their physiological classification would be completely alien, and that they would possess the usual sensory equipment of sight, hearing, taste, touch and be capable of being reached through any or all of these channels. But now the evidence is piling up in favor of a single intelligent life-form, the strata creature itself, which is naturally deaf, dumb and blind so far as we can see. The problem of communicating even the simplest concepts to it is—”

He broke off, all his attention concentrated on the palm of one hand which was still pressed against the ground, then said urgently, “Run for the ship.”

They were much less careful about stepping on plants on the way back, and as the hatch slammed shut behind them Harrison’s voice rattled at them from the lock communicator.

“Are we expecting company?”

“Yes, but not for a few minutes,” said Conway breathlessly. “How much time do you need to get away, and can we observe the tools’ arrival through something bigger than this airlock port?”

“For an emergency liftoff, two minutes,” said the pilot, “and if you come up to Control you can use the scanners, which check for external damage.

“But what were you doing, Doctor?” Harrison resumed as they entered his control position. “I mean, in my experience the front of the bicep is not considered to be a zone of erotic stimulation.”

When Conway did not answer he looked appealingly at Murchison.

“He was conducting an experiment,” she said quietly, “designed to prove that I cannot see with the nerve endings of my upper arm. When we were interrupted he was proving that I did not have eyes in the back of my neck, either.”

“Ask a silly question …” began Harrison.

“Here they come,” said Conway.

They were three semicircular disks of metal which seemed to flicker into and out of existence on the area of ground covered by the long
morning shadow of the scoutship. Harrison stepped up the magnification of his scanners, which showed that the objects did not so much appear and disappear as shrink rhythmically into tiny metal blobs a few inches across, then expand again into flat, circular blades which knifed through the surface. There they lay flat for a few seconds among the shadowed eye plants, then suddenly the discs became shallow inverted bowls. The change was so abrupt that they bounced several yards into the air to land about twenty feet away. The process was repeated every few seconds, with one disc bouncing rapidly toward the distant tip of their shadow, the second zig-zagging to chart its width and the third heading directly for the ship.

“I’ve never seen them act like that before,” said the lieutenant.

“We’ve made a long, thin itch,” said Conway, “and they’ve come to scratch it. Can we stay put for a few minutes?”

Harrison nodded, but said, “Just remember that we’ll still be staying put for two minutes after you change your mind.”

The third disk was still coming at them in five-yard leaps along the center of their shadow. He had never before seen them display such mobility and coordination, even though he knew that they were capable of taking any shape their operators’ thought at them, and that the complexity of the shape and the speed of the change were controlled solely by the speed and clarity of thought of the user’s mind.

“Lieutenant Harrison has a point, Doctor,” said Murchison suddenly. “The early reports say that the tools were used to undercut grounded ships so that they would fall inside the strata creature, presumably for closer examination at its leisure. On those occasions they tried to undercut the object’s shadow, using the shaded eye plants as a guide to size and position. But now, to use your own analogy, they seem to have learned how to tell the itch from the object causing it.”

A loud clang reverberated along the hull, signaling the arrival of the first tool. Immediately the other two turned and headed after the first, and one after the other they bounced high into the air, higher even than the control position, to arch over and crash against the hull. The damage scanners showed them strike, cling for a few seconds while they spread over hull projections like thin, metallic pancakes, then fall away. An instant later they were clanging and clinging against a different section of hull. But a few seconds later they stopped clinging because, just before making contact, they grew needle points which scored bright, deep scratches in the plating.

“They must be blind,” said Conway excitedly. “The tools must be an extension of the creature’s sense of touch, used to augment the information supplied by the plants. They are feeling us for size and shape and consistency.”

“Before they discover that we have a soft center,” said Harrison firmly, “I suggest that we make a tactical withdrawal, or even get the hell out.”

Conway nodded. While Harrison played silent tunes on his control panels he explained that the tools were controllable by human minds up to a distance of about twenty feet and that beyond this distance the tool users had control. He told her to think blunt shapes at them as soon as they came into range, any shape so long as it did not have points or cutting edges …

“No, wait,” he said as a better idea struck him. “Think wide and flat at them, with an aerofoil section and some kind of vertical projection for stabilization and guidance. Hold the shape while it is falling and glide it as far away from the ship as possible. With luck it will need three or four jumps to get back.”

Their first attempt was not a success, although the shape which finally stuck the ship was too blunt and convoluted to do serious damage. But they concentrated hard on the next one, holding it to a triangle shape only a fraction of an inch thick and with a wide central fin. Murchison held the overall shape while Conway thought-warped the trailing edges and stabilizer so that it performed a balanced vertical bank just outside the direct-vision panel and headed away from the ship in a long, flat glide.

The glide continued long after it passed beyond their range of influence, banking and wobbling a little, then cutting a short swathe through the eye plants before touching down.

“Doctor, I could kiss you …” she began.

“I know you like playing with girls and model airplanes, Doctor,” Harrison broke in dryly, “but we lift in twenty seconds. Straps.”

“It held that shape right to the end,” Conway said, beginning to worry for some reason. “Could it have been learning from us, experimenting perhaps?”

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

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