James White - Star Surgeon

Roughly, he said, “I don’t hate you, but I don’t want you to discuss my exact feelings at the moment, either. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

But he didn’t take her home. The alarm siren went a few minutes later and when it stopped a voice on the PA was asking Doctor Conway to come to the intercom.

Once it had been Reception, with three fast-talking Nidians to handle the sometimes complex problems of getting patients out of their ambulances and into the hospital. Now it was Command Headquarters and twenty Monitor officers murmuring tensely into throat mikes, their eyes glued to screens which showed the enemy at all degrees of magnification from nil to five hundred. Two of the three main screens showed sections of the enemy fleet, the images partly obliterated by the ghostly lines and geometrical figures that was a tactical officer trying to predict what they would do next. The other screen gave a wide-angle view of the outer hull.

A missile came down like a distant shooting star, making a tiny flash and throwing up in minute fountain of wreckage. The tearing, metallic crash which reverberated through the room was out of all proportion to the image.

Dermod said, “They’ve withdrawn out of range of the heavy stuff mounted on the hospital and are sending in missiles. This is the softening up process designed to wear us down prior to the main attack. A counterattack by our remaining mobile force would result in its destruction, they are so heavily outnumbered that they can operate effectively only if backed by the defenses of the hospital. So we have no choice but to soak up this stage as best we can and save our strength for—”

“What strength?” said Conway angrily. Beside him O’Mara made a disapproving noise, and across the desk the Fleet commander looked coldly at him. When Dermod spoke it was to Conway, but he didn’t answer the question.

“We can also expect small raids by fast, maneuverable units designed to further unsettle us,” he went on. “Your casualties will come from Corpsmen engaged on hull defense, personnel from the defending ships, and perhaps enemy casualties. Which brings me to a point which I would like cleared up. You seem to be handling a lot of enemy wounded, Doctor, and you’ve told me that your facilities are already strained to the limit …

“How the blazes can you tell?” said Conway. Dermod’s expression became more frigid, but this time he answered the question.

“Because I have reports of patients lying beside each other finding that the other one is talking gibberish, patients of the same physological type, that is. What steps are you taking to—”

“None!” said Conway, so angry suddenly that he wanted to take this cold, unfeeling martinet by the throat and shake some humanity into him.

At the beginning he had liked Dermod. He had thought him a thoughtful and sensitive as well as a competent Fleet commander, but during the past few days he had become the embodiment of the blind, coldly implacable forces which had Conway and everyone else in the hospital trapped. Daily conferences between the military and medical authorities in the hospital had been ordered since the last attack had begun, and at all three of them Conway had found himself running across the fleet commander with increasing frequency.

But when Conway snapped, the Fleet commander did not snap back. Dermod merely looked at him with his eyes so bleak and distant that Conway felt that the commander wasn’t seeing him at all. And it did no good at all when O’Mara advised him quietly to hold his tongue and not be so all-fired touchy-that Dermod had a war to fight and he was doing the best he could, and that the pressures he was under excused a certain lack of charm in his personality.

“Surely,” said Dermod coldly, just as Conway had decided that he really ought to be more patient with this cold-blooded, military creature, you are not treating enemy casualties the same as our own …

“It is difficult,” said Conway, speaking so quietly that O’Mara looked suddenly worried, “to tell the difference. Subtle variations in spacesuit design mean nothing to the nursing staff and myself. And when, as frequently happens, the suit and underlying uniform is cut away the latter may be unidentifiable due to the bleeding. Between the injection of anti-pain and unconsciousness the oral noises they make are not easily translatable. And if there is any way to tell the difference between a Corpsman and one of the enemy screaming, I don’t want to know about it.

He had started quietly, but when he ended he was close to shouting. I won’t make any such distinction between casualties and neither

will my staff! This is a hospital, damn you! Well isn’t it?”

“Take it easy, son. It’s still a hospital,” said O’Mara gently.

“It is also,” Dermod snapped, “a military base!”

“What I don’t understand,” O’Mara put in quickly, trying desperately to pour on the oil, “is why the hell they don’t finish us with atomic warheads …

Another hit, more distant this time, sent its tinny echoes through the room.

“The reason they don’t finish us off with an atomic bomb, Major,” he replied, with his eyes still locked with Conway’s, “is because they must make a conquest. The political forces involved demand it. The Empire must take and occupy this outpost of the hated enemy, the Emperor’s general must have a triumph and not a pyrrhic victory, and subjugating the enemy and capturing his territory, no matter how few or how little, can be made to look like a triumph to the citizens of the Empire.

“Our own casualties are heavy,” Dermod went on coldly. “A space battle being what it is only ten percent of the casualties survive to be hospitalized and we are fortunate both in having medical facilities immediately available and in occupying a strong defensive position. The number of enemy casualties is much higher than ours, my estimate would be twenty to one, so that if they were to knock us out with an atomic missile now, when they could have done the same thing at the very beginning without losing a man, some very awkward questions will be asked within the Empire. If the Emperor can’t answer them he might find that the war, and all the fine, martial fervor he has built up, will backfire on him …”

“Why don’t you communicate with them?” Conway interrupted harshly. “Tell them the truth about us, and tell them about the wounded here. You surely don’t expect to win this battle now. Why don’t we surrender.

“We cannot communicate with them, Doctor,” the commander said bitingly, “because they won’t listen to us. Or if they do listen they don’t believe what we say. They know, or think they know, what we did on Etla and what we are supposed to be doing here. Telling them that we were really helping the Etlan natives and that we have been forced to defend our hospital is no good. A series of plagues swept Etla soon after we left and this establishment no longer behaves, outwardly, that is, like a hospital. What we say to them has no importance, it is what we do that counts. And we are doing exactly what their Emperor has lead them to expect of us.

“If they were really thinking,” he continued savagely, “they would wonder at the large number of our e-ts who are helping us. According to them our e-ts are downtrodden, subject races who are little more than slaves. The volunteers who have come out to help us do not fight like slaves, but at the present stage that is too subtle a thing to make any impression. They are thinking emotionally instead of logically …

“And I’m thinking emotionally, too!” Conway broke in sharply. “I’m thinking of my patients. The wards are full. They are lying in odd corners and along corridors all over the place, with inadequate protection against pressure loss …