James White - Star Surgeon

“This will take more than five minutes so you’d better sit down, Doctor,” he said sourly when Conway stopped before his desk. “I take it you’ve had a look at our cannibal?”

Conway nodded and sat down. Briefly he outlined his findings with regard to the EPLH patient, including his suspicion that there might be complications of a psychological nature. Ending, he asked, “Do you have any other information on its background, apart from the cannibalism?”

“Very little,” said O’Mara. “It was found by a Monitor patrol vessel in a ship which, although undamaged, was broadcasting distress signals. Obviously it became too sick to operate the vessel. There was no other occupant, but because the EPLH was a new species to the rescue party they went over its ship with a fine-tooth comb, and found that there should have been another person aboard. They discovered this through a sort of ship’s log cum personal diary kept on tape by the EPLH, and by study of the airlock tell-tales and similar protective gadgetry the details of which don’t concern us at the moment. However, all the facts point to there being two entities aboard the ship, and the log tape suggests pretty strongly that the other one came to a sticky end at the hands, and teeth, of your patient.”

O’Mara paused to toss a slim sheaf of papers onto his lap and Conway saw that it was a typescript of the relevant sections of the log. He had time only to discover that the EPLH’s victim had been the ship’s doctor, then O’Mara was talking again.

“We know nothing about its planet of origin,” he said morosely, “except that it is somewhere in the other galaxy.” However, with only one quarter of our own Galaxy explored, our chances of finding its home world are negligible—”

“How about the Ians,” said Conway, “maybe they could help?”

The Ians belonged to a culture originating in the other galaxy which had planted a colony in the same sector of the home galaxy which contained the Hospital. They were an unusual species-classification GKNM — which went into a chrysalis stage at adolescence and metamorphosized from a ten-legged crawler into a beautiful, winged life-form. Conway had had one of them as a patient three months ago. The patient had been long since discharged, but the two GKNM doctors, who had originally come to help Conway with the patient, had remained at Sector General to study and teach.

“A Galaxy’s a big place,” said O’Mara with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, “but try them by all means. However, to get back to your patient, the biggest problem is going to come after you’ve cured it.

“You see, Doctor,” he went on, “this particular beastie was found in circumstances which show pretty conclusively that it is guilty of an act which every intelligent species we know of considers a crime. As the Federation’s police force among other things the Monitor Corps is supposed to take certain measures against criminals like this one. They are supposed to be tried, rehabilitated or punished as seems fit. But how can we give this criminal a fair trial when we know nothing at all about its background, a background which just might contain the possibility of extenuating circumstances? At the same time we can’t just let it go free …”

“Why not?” said Conway. “Why not point it in the general direction from whence it came and administer a judicial kick in the pants?”

“Or why not let the patient die,” O’Mara replied, smiling, “and save trouble all around?”

Conway didn’t speak. O’Mara was using an unfair argument and they both knew it, but they also knew that nobody would be able to convince the Monitor enforcement section that curing the sick and punishing the malefactor were not of equal importance in the Scheme of Things.

“What I want you to do,” O’Mara resumed, “is to find out all you can about the patient and its background after it comes to and during treatment. Knowing how soft-hearted, or soft-headed you are, I expect you will side with the patient during the cure and appoint yourself an unofficial counsel for the defense. Well, I won’t mind that if in so doing you obtain the information which will enable us to summon a jury of its peers. Understood?”

Conway nodded.

O’Mara waited precisely three seconds, then said, “If you’ve nothing better to do than laze about in that chair …

Immediately on leaving O’Mara’s office Conway got in touch with Pathology and asked for the EPLA report to be sent to him before lunch. Then he invited the two Ian GKNMs to lunch and arranged for a consultation with Prilicla regarding the patient shortly afterward. With these arrangements made he felt free to begin his rounds.

During the two hours which followed Conway had no time to think about his newest patient. He had fifty-three patients currently in his charge together with six doctors in various stages of training and a supporting staff of nurses, the patients and medical staff comprising eleven different physiological types. There were special instruments and procedures for examining these extra-terrestrial patients, and when he was accompanied by a trainee whose pressure and gravity requirements differed both from those of the patient to be examined and himself, then the “routine” of his rounds could become an extraordinarily complicated business.

But Conway looked at all his patients, even those whose convalescence was well advanced or whose treatment could have been handled by a subordinate. He was well aware that this was a stupid practice which only served to give him a lot of unnecessary work, but the truth was promotion to a resident Senior Physician was still too recent for him to have become used to the large-scale delegation of responsibility. He foolishly kept on trying to do everything himself.

After rounds he was scheduled to give an initial midwifery lecture to a class of DBLF nurses. The DBLFs were furry, multipedal beings resembling outsize caterpillars and were native to the planet Kelgia. They also breathed the same atmospheric mixture as himself, which meant that he was able to do without a pressure suit. To this purely physical comfort was added the fact that talking about such elementary stuff as the reason for Kelgian females conceiving only once in their lifetime and then producing quads who were invariably divided equally in sex, did not call for great concentration on his part. It left a large section of his mind free to worry about the alleged cannibal in his observation ward.

Half an hour later he was with the two Ian doctors in the Hospital’s main dining hall — the one which catered for Tralthan, Kelgian, human and the various other warm-blooded, oxygen-breathers on the Staff-eating the inevitable salad. This in itself did not bother Conway unduly, in fact, lettuce was downright appetizing compared with some of the things he had had to eat while playing host to other e-t colleagues, but he did not think that he would ever get used to the gale they created during lunch.

The GKNM denizens of Ia were a large, delicate, winged life-form who looked something like a dragonfly. To their rod-like but flexible bodies were attached four insectile legs, manipulators, the usual sensory organs and three tremendous sets of wings. Their table manners were not actually unpleasant-it was just that they did not sit down to dine, they hovered. Apparently eating while in flight aided their digestions as well as being pretty much a conditioned reflex with them.

Conway set the Path report on the table and placed the sugar bowl on top of it to keep it from blowing away. He said, “… You’ll see from what I’ve just been reading to you that this appears to be a fairly simple case. Unusually so, I’d say, because the patient is remarkably clear of harmful bacteria of any type. Its symptoms indicate a form of epithelioma, that and nothing else, which makes its unconsciousness rather puzzling. But maybe some information on its planetary environment, sleeping periods and so on, would clarify things, and that is why I wanted to talk to you.