Andre Norton - Redline the Stars

"Where to, Doctor? You're the Medic. This is your line. You call it."

"To the docks," she responded without hesitation. "The worst cases will be closest to that, and they may have to wait the longest before any real help can reach them."

"Most there will have been killed outright," he pointed out.

Rael nodded. "We'll work our way back inland again until we start finding a few we can try to aid." Or comfort a little if nothing else.

"All right. It's as good a plan as any."

Neither of them looked at the crumpled remains of their flier as they moved away from it. By the grace of whatever gods ruled this accursed planet, it had apparently not killed or seriously injured anyone, but neither of them could take credit for that fact. Not that they could have done anything had they stayed with the' machine, apart from very probably dying in it.

The off-worlders worked their way down the street until they came to the place where it intersected with what had been the avenue.

Because the place was that much closer to the blast site and more open besides, the proportion of the dead to those still alive was greater than they had encountered near their shelter. A larger number of people had been caught here, however, and those who survived tended to be even more severely injured than their earlier patients, and the panfound themselves hard-pressed on every side by victims desperately in need of aid.

They had no choice but to triage those they discovered still alive, treating first the ones whose chances for survival were the greatest, leaving the most hopeless cases for last.

The choosing fell to Rael Cofort. It was a bitter task, especially so when one of those she ordered set aside was still conscious, but more lives would be saved in the end by ordering their efforts in this manner, and so she grimly held to the policy need had dictated that they adopt. Her strength was such that it kept Jellico firm in his determination to abide by her decisions, that and the seemingly unerring correctness of them.

Cofort had told him that she had proven capable at triage work when she had done her emergency room practical training, but he quickly realized that she was more than merely good. It was as if she were somehow reading her patients' bodies and selecting those in whom the spark of life was burning the strongest.

Her skills, too, were superb. With all the limitations under which they had to operate, that was still apparent even to a layman like himself. Rael Cofort was practicing actual medicine with the first aid they had to offer.

The Medic's side hurt abominably, but she strove not to visibly favor it as they clambered along the rubble-strewn remnant of the street. She would have been ashamed to do so even had she not been determined to conceal as much as possible of her continuing pain from Jellico. What right had she to study herself for so little in the face of the massive agony all around her?

She had little opportunity to dwell on her own difficulties. Conditions worsened with every step closer to the water that they took. Survivors were few, and they were not always easy to locate among the mountains of rubble and the mangled corpses of their fellows. Rael leaned on her talent, used the sickening unease that told her someone nearby was in trouble to locate those still able to receive help. It was difficult to pinpoint a particular source of suffering with the collective misery of the district pouring into her, but she forced herself to concentrate as she had aboard the Mermaid. Usually, it worked. Usually, but not in every case.

Sometimes, they located the victim but could not reach him. Sometimes, they could help a little but could not free their patient and had to leave him pinned or partly buried

with only a caim of debris raised nearby to alert properly equipped rescuers to his presence, markers whose meaning they would have to communicate to the appropriate authorities as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Jellico's hands balled into tight fists by his side. He felt sick with frustration and the seeming hopelessness of their efforts. He could do little for the people they found accessible in the streets and nothing for the handful of buried victims. He could not even be of much help to Rael Cofort as she faced and made decision after wrenching decision.

All he could do was stick with her, that and offer no protest in face or stance, do or say nothing to add to the weight she already carried.

They had traveled more than a third of the ruined street when suddenly both Free Traders stopped walking. They listened intently, their heads turning toward one of the remaining arches, the only one still standing on this block.

They spotted him quickly, a man sitting braced against its farther, seaward side, sobbing aloud. It was that sound which had caught their attention.

The pair hastened toward him. Rael's eyes closed momentarily as they drew nearer. He was clutching a human leg to his breast. It had been severed at midthigh, and the material still clinging to it matched the blood-stained trousers he was wearing.

"I'm a Medic," she said by way of introduction as she knelt beside him. "What happened?"

He stared at her blankly for a moment but then answered coherently enough. "I was walking along kind of fast when the explosion came. It knocked me down, but I got up again and started running. Then something, that metal thing over there, hit my leg. It was a red-hot ... It hurt . . ." He squeezed the limb still tighter. "I fell, but I didn't see for a minute . . ."

While he had been speaking, the woman was examining both parts of the wound. "You were lucky," she declared, making herself speak matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing the result of a minor stumble. "The cut is straight and clean, and the missile was so hot that it cauterized as it sliced through."

"Lucky .. ."

"Hold on to that leg. They'll want to put it back."

"It's too late!" For the first time, emotion, anguish, broke through the numbness that had seemed to envelop him.

"It'll be too late! There're too many hurt. They'll all need first-time treatment just to live before anyone'll be able to do a fix-up job like this. The leg'll be dead . . ."

"Nonsense," she responded briskly. "Ultrahyperbaric restoration can reawaken life in tissue detached for a full

two weeks and probably longer."

Rael finished her examination. "You didn't lose much blood. That's standing you in good stead, but we're going to help you to the center of the street where you'll be easier to spot by the rescue teams.-l want you to lie back and set your mind on getting well. It shouldn't be all that much longer now before you're under full, proper care."

“Space," Jellico muttered as they moved away from the Canuchean. "I hope we don't run into too many more like that one."

"At least he'll survive and regain all or most of his mobility," she replied grimly.

It had been hard leaving the man, but he was not in dire peril. There was not a whole lot they could have done for him by remaining with him unless they had rigged up a stretcher from some of the debris and tried to carry him out, which they were not prepared to attempt at this point.

There were simply too many others for whom prompt first aid could mean the difference between survival and death.

They could not have evacuated him in any event. Given her own injuries, she could not have held up her end of a stretcher, not for any distance. Whatever her will to the contrary, broken ribs demanded and would force a certain degree of consideration.

The Medic sighed. "I doubt we'll be able to do much of anything for very many of those that we'll encounter from here on in."

The off-worlders' hearts pounded fast and painfully as they continued to make their way along the short stretch that still separated them from the sea and the site of the great explosion itself. If things were so bad here, what combination of the Federation's hells would they find when they reached the source of all this chaos? Would they find anything, living or dead, whole or shattered, there at all?