James White - Star Surgeon

“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 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 …

On 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, computer men 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 fishlike 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 …