White, James - Sector General 03 - Major Operation

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MAJOR OPERATION by James White
scanned by lzmini Jan 2003
Copywrite 1971
Other BOOKS BY JAMES WHITE
The Secret Visitor (1957)
Second Ending (1962)
Deadly Litter (1964)
Escape Orbit (1965)
The Watch Below (1966)
All Judgment Fled (1968)
The Aliens Among Us (1969)
Tomorrow Is Too Far (1971)
Dark Inferno (1972)
The Dream Millennium (1974)
Monsters and Medics (1977)
Underkill (1979)
Future Past (1982)
Federation World (1988)
The Silent Stars Go By (1991)
The White Papers (1996)
Gene Rodden berry's Earth:
Final Conflict-The First Protector (Tor, 2000)
THE SECTOR GENERAL SERIES
Hospital Station (1962)
Star Surgeon (1963)
Major Operation (1971)
Ambulance Ship (1979)
Sector General (1983)
Star Healer (1985)
Code Blue-Emergency (1987)
The Genocidal Healer (1992)
The Galactic Gourmet (Tor, 1996)
Final Diagnosis (Tor, 1997)
Mind Changer (br, 1998)
Double Contact (br, 1999)
INVADER
Far out on the Galactic Rim, where star systems were widely scattered and the darkness nearly
absolute, the tremendous structure which was Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space. Inside
its three hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent
life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum ranging from the ultra frigid
methane species through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic
beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation. In addition to the patients, whose
number and physiological classification was a constant variable, there was a medical and
maintenance staff who were composed of sixty-odd differing life-forms with sixty different sets of
mannerisms, body odors and ways of looking at life.
The staff of Sector General was an extremely able, dedicated, but not always serious group
of people who were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life-had this not been so they
could never have served in such a multienvironment hospital in the first place. They prided
themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless, and their facilities and
professional reputation were second to none. It was unthinkable that one of their number should be
guilty of nearly killing a patient through sheer carelessness.
"Obviously the thought isn't unthinkable," O'Mara, the Chief Psychologist, said dryly.
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"I'm thinking it, reluctantly, and you are also thinking it-if only momentarily. Far worse, Mannon
himself is convinced of his own guilt. This leaves me with no choice but to-"
"No!" said Conway, strong emotion overriding his usual respect for authority. "Mannon is
one of the best Seniors we have-you know that!
He wouldn't. . . I mean, he isn't the type to.. . He's..
"A good friend of yours," O'Mara finished for him, smiling. When Conway did not reply he
went on, "My liking for Mannon may not equal yours, but my professional knowledge of him is much
more detailed and objective. So much so that two days ago I would not have believed him capable of
such a thing. Now, dammit, uncharacteristic behavior bothers me...
Conway could understand that. As Chief Psychologist, O'Mara's prime concern was the smooth
and efficient running of the hospital's medical staff, but keeping so many different and
potentially antagonistic life-forms working in harmony was a big job whose limits, like those of
O'Mara's authority, were difficult to define. Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and
mutual respect in its personnel, there were still occasions when friction occurred.
Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being
could develop a xenophobic neurosis which might affect its efficiency, mental stability, or both.
An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to
bring to bear on one of the insectile Cinrusskin patients the proper degree of clinical detachment
necessary for its treatment. It was O'Mara's duty to detect and eradicate such trouble, or to
remove the potentially troublesome individuals. This guarding against wrong, unhealthy or
intolerant thinking was a duty which he performed with such zeal that Conway had heard him likened
to a latter-day Torquemada.
Now it looked as if this paragon of psychologists had been something less than alert. In
psychology there were no effects without prior cause and O'Mara must now be thinking that he had
missed some small but vital warning signal-a slightly uncharacteristic word or expression or
display of temper, perhaps-which should have warned him of trouble developing for Senior Physician
Mannon.
The psychologist sat back and fixed Conway with a pair of gray eyes which saw so much and
which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave O'Mara what amounted to a
telepathic faculty He said, "No doubt you are thinking that I have lost my grip. You feel sure
that Mannon's trouble is basically psychological and that there is an explanation other than
negligence for what happened. You may decide that the recent death of his dog has caused him to go
to pieces from sheer grief, and other ideas of an equally uncomplicated and ridiculous nature will
occur to you. In my opinion, however, any time spent investigating the psychological aspects of
this business will be completely wasted. Doctor Mannon has been subjected to the most exhaustive
tests. He is physically sound and as sane as we are. As sane as I am any...
"Thank you," said Conway.
"I keep telling you, Doctor," O'Mara said sourly, "my job here is to shrink heads, not
swell them. Your assignment, if we can call it that, is strictly unofficial. Since there is no
excuse for Mannon's error so far as health and psycho profile are concerned I want you to look for
some other reason-some outside influence, perhaps, of which the Doctor is unaware. Doctor Prilicla
observed the incident in question and may be able to help you.
"You have a peculiar mind, Doctor," O'Mara concluded, rising from his seat, "and an odd
way of looking at problems. We don't want to lose Doctor Mannon, but if you do get him out of
trouble the surprise will probably kill me. I mention this so that you will have an added
incentive . .
Conway left the office, fuming slightly. O'Mara was always flinging his allegedly peculiar
mind in his face when the simple truth was that he had been so shy when he had first joined the
hospital, especially with nurses of his own species, that he had felt more comfortable in
extraterrestrial company. He was no longer shy, but still he numbered more friends among the weird
and wonderful denizens of Traltha, Illensa and a score of other systems than beings of his own
species. This might be peculiar, Conway admitted, but to a doctor living in a multi-environment
hospital it was also a distinct advantage.
Outside in the corridor Conway contacted Prilicla in the other's ward, found that the
little empath was free and arranged a meeting for as soon as possible on the Forty-sixth Level,
which was where the Hudlar operating theater was situated. Then he devoted a part of his mind to
the problem of Mannon while the rest of it guided him toward Forty-six and kept him from being
trampled to death en route.
His Senior Physician's armband automatically cleared the way so far as nurses and
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subordinate grades of doctors were concerned, but there were continual encounters with the lordly
and absentminded Diagnosticians who plowed their way through everyone and everything regardless,
or with junior members of the staff who happened to belong to a more massive species. Tralthans of
physiological classification FGLI-warm-blooded oxygen breathers resembling a sort of low-slung,
six-legged elephant. Or the Kelgian DBLFs who were giant, silver-furred caterpillars who hooted
like a siren when they were jostled whether they were outranked or not, or the crab-like ELNTs
from Melf LV...
The majority of the intelligent races in the Federation were oxygen breathers even though
their physiological classifications varied enormously, but a much greater hazard to navigation on
foot was the entity traversing a foreign level in protective armor. The protection required by a
TLTU doctor, who breathed superheated steam and whose gravity and pressure requirements were three
times those of the oxygen levels, was a great, clanking juggernaut which was to be avoided at all
costs.
At the next intersection lock he donned a lightweight suit and let himself into the
yellow, foggy world of the chlorine-breathing Illensans. Here the corridors were crowded with the
spiny, membranous and unadorned denizens of Illensa while it was the Tralthans, Kelgians and Earth
humans like himself who wore, or in some cases drove, protective armor. The next leg of his
journey took him through the vast tank where the thirty-foot long, water-breathing entities from
Chalderescol II swam ponderously through their warm, green world. The same suit served him here
and, while the traffic was less dense, he was slowed down considerably through having to swim
instead of walk. Despite this he was on the Forty-sixth Level observation gallery, his suit still
streaming Chalder water, just fifteen minutes after leaving O'Mara's office, and Prilicla arrived
close behind him.
"Good morning, friend Conway," said the little empath as it swung itself deftly onto the
ceiling and hung by six fragile, sucker-tipped legs. The musical trills and clicks of its
Cinrusskin speech were received by Conway's Translator pack, relayed down to the tremendous
computer at the center of the hospital and transmitted back to his earpiece as flat, emotionless
English. Trembling slightly, the Cinrusskin went on, "I feel you needing help, Doctor."
"Yes indeed," said Conway, his words going through the same process of Translation and
reaching Prilicla as equally toneless Cinrusskin. "It's about Mannon. There was no time to give
details when I called you..
"No need, friend Conway," said Prilicla. "On the Mannon incident the grapevine is more
than usually efficient. You want to know what I saw and felt, of course.
"If you don't mind," said Conway apologetically.
Prilicla said that it didn't mind. But the Cinrusskin was, in addition to being the nicest
entity in the whole hospital, its greatest liar.
Of physiological classification GLNO-insectile, exoskeletal with six pipe stem legs and a
pair of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings, and possessing a highly developed empathic
faculty, only on Cinruss with its one-eighth Earth gravity could a race of insects have grown to
such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and a high civilization. But in Sector General
Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity nullification
devices everywhere outside its quarters because the gravity pull which most beings considered
normal would instantly have crushed it flat, and when Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it
swung itself out of reach of any thoughtless movement of arm or tentacle which would have caved in
its fragile body or snapped off a leg. While accompanying anyone on rounds it usually kept pace
with them along the corridor walls or ceiling so as to avoid the same fate.
Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt Prilicla in any way-it was too well liked for
that. Prilicla's empathic faculty saw to it that the little being always said and did the right
thing to people-being an emotion-sensitive to do otherwise would mean that the feelings of anger
or sorrow which its thoughtless action caused would bounce back and figuratively smack it in the
face. So the little empath was forced constantly to lie and to always be kind and considerate in
order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible.
Except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and violent emotion in a patient,
or it wanted to help a friend.
Just before Prilicla began its report Conway said, "I'm not sure myself what exactly it is
I'm looking for, Doctor. But if you can remember anything unusual about Mannon's actions or
emotions, or those of his staff. .
With its fragile body trembling with the memory of the emotional gale which had emanated
from the now empty Hudlar theater two days ago, Prilicla set the scene as it had been at the
beginning of the operation. The little GLNO had not taken the Hudlar physiology tape and so had
not been able to view the proceedings with any degree of involvement with the patient's condition,
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and the patient itself was anesthetized and scarcely radiating at all. Mannon and his staff had
been concentrating on their duties with only a small part of their minds free to think or emote
about anything else. And then Senior Physician Mannon had his... accident. In actual fact it was
five separate and distinct accidents.
Prilicla's body began to quiver violently and Conway said, "I... I'm sorry.
"I know you are," said the empath, and resumed its report.
The patient had been partially decompressed so that the operative field could be worked
more effectively. There was some danger in this considering the Hudlar pulse rate and blood
pressure, but Mannon himself had evolved this procedure and so was best able to weigh the risks.
Since the patient was decompressed he had had to work quickly, and at first everything seemed to
be going well. He had opened a flap of the flexible armor-plating which the Hudlars used for skin
and had controlled the subcutaneous bleeding when the first mistake occurred, followed in quick
succession by two more. Prilicla could not tell by observation that they were mistakes, even
though there was considerable bleeding-it was Mannon's emotional reactions, some of the most
violent the empath had ever experienced, which told it that the surgeon had committed a serious
and stupid blunder.
There were longer intervals between the two others which followed- Mannon's work had
slowed drastically, his technique resembling the first fumblings of a student rather than that of
one of the most skillful surgeons in the hospital. He had become so slow that curative surgery was
impossible, and he had barely time to withdraw and restore pressure before the patient's condition
deteriorated beyond the point of no return.
It was very distressing," Prilicla said, still trembling violently. "He wanted to work
quickly, but the earlier mistakes had wrecked his self confidence. He was thinking twice about
doing even the simplest things, things which a surgeon of his experience would do automatically,
without thinking."
Conway was silent for a moment, thinking about the horrible situation Mannon had been in.
Then he said, "Was there anything else unusual about his feelings? Or those of the theater staff?"
Prilicla hesitated, then said, "It is difficult to isolate subtle nuances of emotion when
the source is emoting so. . . so violently. But I received the impression of. . . the effect is
hard to describe . . . of something like a faint emotional echo of irregular duration..."
"Probably the Hudlar tape," said Conway. "It's not the first time a physiology tape gave
me mental double vision."
"That might possibly be the case," said Prilicla. Which, in a being who was invariably and
enthusiastically in agreement with whatever was said to it, was as close as the empath could come
to a negative reply. Conway began to feel that he might be getting onto something important.
"How about the others?"
"Two of them," said Prilicla, "were radiating the shock-worry-fear combination indicative
of a mildly traumatic experience in the recent past. I was in the gallery when both incidents
occurred, and one of them gave me quite a jolt..
One of the nurses had almost had an accident while lifting a tray of instruments. One of
them, a long, heavy, Hudlar Type Six scalpel used for opening the incredibly tough skin of that
species, had slipped off the tray for some reason. Even a small punctured or incised wound was a
very serious matter for a Kelgian, so that the Kelgian nurse had a bad fright when it saw that
vicious blade dropping toward its unprotected side. But somehow it had struck in such a way-it was
difficult to know how, considering its shape and lack of balance-that it had not penetrated the
skin or even damaged the fur. The Kelgian had been relieved and thankful for its good fortune, but
still a little disturbed.
"I can imagine," said Conway. "Probably the Charge Nurse read the riot act. Minor errors
become major crimes where theater staff are concerned . .
Prilicla's legs began to tremble again, a sign that it was nerving itself for the effort
of being slightly disagreeable. It said, "The entity in question was the Charge Nurse. That was
why, when the other nurse goofed on an instrument count-there was one too many or too few-the
ticking off was relatively mild. And during both incidents I detected the echo effect radiated by
Mannon, although in these cases the echo was from the respective nurses.
"We may have something there!" said Conway excitedly. "Did the nurses have any physical
contact with Mannon?"
"They were assisting him," said Prilicla, "and they were all wearing protective suits. I
don't see how any form of parasitic life or bacteria could have passed between them, if that is
the idea which is making you feel so excited and hopeful just now. I am very sorry, friend Conway,
but this echo effect, while peculiar, does not seem to me to be important."
"It's something they had in common," said Conway.
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"Yes," Prilicla said, "but the something did not have self identity, it was not an
individual. Just a very faint emotional echo of the feelings of the people concerned."
"Even so," said Conway.
Three people had made mistakes or had had accidents in this theater two days ago, all of
whom had radiated an odd emotional echo which Prilicla did not consider important. The presence of
an accident-prone Conway ruled out because O'Mara's screening methods were too efficient in that
respect. But suppose Prilicla was wrong and something had got in the theater or into the hospital,
some form of life which was difficult to detect and outside their present experience. It was well
known that when odd things happened in Sector General the reasons very often were found outside
the hospital. At the moment, however, he hadn't enough evidence to form even a vague theory and
the first job should be to gather some-even though he might not recognize it if he tripped over it
with both feet.
"I'm hungry and it's high time we talked to the man himself," said Conway suddenly. "Let's
find him and invite him to lunch."
The dining hall for the oxygen-breathing Medical and Maintenance staff occupied one complete
level, and at one time it had been sectioned off into physiological types with low dividing ropes.
But this had not worked out too well because the diners very often wanted to talk shop with other
species colleagues or they found that there were no vacant places in their own enclosure and space
going to waste in that of another life-form. So it was no surprise when they arrived to find that
they had the choice of sitting at an enormous Tralthan table with benches which were a shade too
far from the table's edge and one in the Melfan section which was cozier but whose chairs
resembled surrealistic wastepaper baskets. They insinuated themselves into three of the latter and
began the usual preliminaries to ordering.
"I'm just myself today," said Prilicla in answer to Conway's question. "The usual, if you
please."
Conway dialed for the usual, which was a triple helping of Earth type spaghetti, then
looked at Mannon.
"I've an FROB and an MSVK beastie riding me," the other Senior said gruffly. "Hudlars
aren't persnickity about food, but those blasted MSVKs are offended by anything which doesn't look
like birdseed! Just get me something nutritious, but don't tell me what it is and put it in about
three sandwiches so's I won't see what it is...."
While they were waiting for the food to arrive Mannon spoke quietly,. the normality of his
tone belied by the fact that his emotional radiation was making Prilicla shake like a leaf. He
said, "The grapevine has it that you two are trying to get me out of this trouble I'm in. It's
nice of you, but you're wasting your time.
"We don't think so and neither does O'Mara," said Conway, shading the truth considerably.
"O'Mara gives you a clean bill of mental and physical health, and he said that your behavior was
most uncharacteristic. There must be some explanation, some environmental influence, perhaps, or
something whose presence or absence would make you behave, if only momentarily, in an
uncharacteristic fashion...
Conway outlined what little they knew to date, trying to sound more hopeful than he really
felt, but Mannon was no fool.
"I don't know whether to feel grateful for your efforts or concerned for your respective
mental well-beings," Mannon said when he had finished. "These peculiar and rather vague mental
effects are.., are.. . at the risk of offending Daddy-longlegs here I would suggest that any
peculiarities there are lie in your own minds-your attempts to find excuses for me are becoming
ridiculous!"
"Now you're telling me I have a peculiar mind," said Conway.
Mannon laughed quietly, but Prilicla was trembling worse than ever. "A circumstance, person or
thing," Conway repeated, "whose presence or absence might effect your- "Ye Gods!" Mannon burst
out. "You're not thinking of the dog!" Conway had been thinking about the dog, but he was too much
of
a moral coward to admit it right then. Instead he said, "Were you thinking about it during that
op, Doctor?"
"No!" said Mannon.
There was a long, awkward silence after that, during which the service panels slid open
and their orders rose into view. It was Mannon who spoke first.
"I liked that dog," he said carefully, "when I was myself, that is. But for the past four
years I've had to carry MSVK and LSVO tapes permanently in connection with my teaching duties, and
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recently I've needed the Hudlar and Melfan tapes for a project Thornnastor invited me to join.
They were in permanent occupation as well. With my brain thinking that it was five different
people, five very different people... Well, you know how it is..."
Conway and Prilicla knew how it was only too well.
The Hospital was equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life, but no single
person could hold in his brain even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this
purpose. Surgical dexterity was a matter of ability and training, but the complete physiological
knowledge of any patient was furnished by means of an Educator Tape, which was simply the brain
record of some great medical genius belonging to the same or a similar species to that of the
patient being treated. If an Earth human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took a DBLF
physiology tape until treatment was completed, after which it was erased. The sole exceptions to
this rule were Senior Physicians with teaching duties and the Diagnosticians.
A Diagnostician was one of the elite, a being whose mind was considered stable enough to
retain permanently six, seven or even ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed
minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the treatment of new
diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.
But the tapes did not impart only physiological data, the complete memory and personality
of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. In effect a Diagnostician
subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of schizophrenia. The entities
apparently sharing one's mind could be unpleasant, aggressive individuals- geniuses were rarely
charming people-with all sorts of peeves and phobias. These did not become apparent only at
mealtimes. The worst period was when the possessor of the tapes was relaxing prior to sleeping.
Alien nightmares were really nightmarish and alien sexual fantasies and wish-fulfillment
dreams were enough to make the person concerned wish, if he were capable of wishing coherently for
anything, that he was dead.
..... Within the space of a few minutes," Mannon continued, "she would change from being a
ferocious, hairy beast intent on tearing out my belly feathers to a brainless bundle of fur which
would get squashed by one of my six feet if it didn't get to blazes out of the way, to a perfectly
ordinary dog wanting to play. It wasn't fair to the mutt, you know. She was a very old and
confused dog toward the end, and I'm more glad than sorry that she died.
"And now let's talk and emote about some other subject," Mannon ended briskly. "Otherwise
we will completely ruin Prilicla's lunch..
He did just that for the remainder of the meal, discussing with apparent relish a juicy
piece of gossip originating in the SNLU section of the methane wards. How anything of a scandalous
nature could occur between two intelligent crystalline life-forms living at minus one hundred and
fifty degrees Centigrade was something which puzzled Conway, or for that matter why their moral
shortcomings were of such interest to a warm-blooded oxygen-breather. Unless this was one of the
reasons why Senior Physician Mannon was so far on the way to becoming a Diagnostician himself.
Or had been.
If Mannon was assisting Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology (and as such
the hospital's senior Diagnostician) in one of that august being's projects, then Mannon had to be
in good physical and mental shape-Diagnosticians were terribly choosy about their assistants. And
everything the Chief Psychologist had told him pointed the same way. But then what had got into
Mannon two days ago to make him behave as he had?
As the others talked Conway began to realize that the sort of evidence he needed might be
difficult to gather. The questions he had to ask would require tact and some sort of theory to
explain his line of investigation. His mind was still miles away when Mannon and Prilicla began
rising to go. As they were leaving the table Conway moved closer to Prilicla and asked softly,
"Any echoes, Doctor?"
"Nothing," said Prilicla, "nothing at all."
Within seconds their places at the table were taken by three Kelgians who draped their
long, silvery, caterpillar bodies over the backs of the ELNT chairs so that their forward
manipulators hung over the table at a comfortable distance for eating. One of the three was
Naydrad, the Charge Nurse on Mannon's theater staff. Conway excused himself to his friends and
returned quickly to the table.
When he had finished talking it was Naydrad who spoke first. It said, "We would like to
help, sir, but this is an unusual request. It involves, at very least, the wholesale betrayal of
confidence. .
"We don't want names," said Conway urgently. "The mistakes are required for statistical
purposes only and no disciplinary action will be taken. This investigation is unofficial, an idea
of my own. Its only purpose is to help Doctor Mannon."
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They were all keen to help their Chief, naturally, and Conway went on, "To summarize, if
we accept that Senior Physician Mannon is incapable of gross professional misconduct-which we all
do-then we must assume that his error was caused by an outside influence. Since there is strong
evidence that the Doctor was mentally stable and free from all disease or physical malfunction it
follows that we are looking for an outside influence-or more accurately, indications of the
presence of an outside influence-which may be nonphysical.
"Mistakes by a person in authority are more noticeable, and serious, than those of a
subordinate," Conway went on, "but if these errors are being caused by an outside agency they
should not be confined only to senior staff, and it is here that we need data. There are bound to
be mistakes, especially among trainee staff-we all realize this. What we must know is whether
there has been an overall or local increase in the number of these minor errors and, if so,
exactly where and when they occurred."
"Is this matter to be kept confidential?" one of the Kelgians asked.
Conway nearly choked at the idea of anything being kept confidential in this place, but
the sarcasm was, fortunately, filtered out of his tone by the process of Translation.
"The more people gathering data on this the better," he said. "Just use your discretion...
A few minutes later he was at another table saying much the same thing, then another and
another. He would be late back to his wards today, but fortunately he had a couple of very good
assistants-the type who just loved it when they had a chance to show how well they could do
without him.
During the remainder of the day there was no great response, nor had he expected any, but
on the second day nursing staff of all shapes and species began approaching him with elaborate
secrecy to tell of incidents which invariably had happened to a third party. Conway noted times
and places carefully while showing no curiosity whatever regarding the identities of the persons
concerned. Then on the morning of the third day Mannon sought him out during his rounds.
"You're really working at this thing, aren't you, Conway," Mannon said harshly, then
added, "I'm grateful. Loyalty is nice even when it's misplaced. But I wish you would stop. You're
heading for serious trouble."
Conway said, "You're the one in trouble, Doctor, not me.
"That's what you think," said Mannon gruffly. "I've just come from O'Mara's office. He
wants to see you. Forthwith."
A few minutes later Conway was being waved into the inner sanctum by one of O'Mara's
assistants, who was trying hard to warn him of impending doom with his eyebrows while
commiserating with him by turning down the corners of his mouth. The combination of expressions
looked so ridiculous that Conway found himself inside before he realized it, facing a very angry
O'Mara with what must have been a stupid grin on his face.
The psychologist stabbed a finger in the direction of the least comfortable chair and
shouted, "What the blazes do you mean by infesting the hospital with a disembodied intelligence?"
"What. . . ?" began Conway.
Are you trying to make a fool of yourself?" O'Mara stormed on, disregarding him. "Or make
a fool out of me? Don't interrupt! Granted you're the youngest Senior in the place and your
colleagues-none of whom specialize in applied psychology, let me add-think highly of you. But such
idiotic and irresponsible behavior is worthy only of a patient in the psychiatric wards!
"Junior staff discipline is going to pot, thanks to you," O'Mara went on, a little more
quietly. "It is now becoming the done thing to make mistakes! Practically every Charge Nurse in
the place is screaming for me-me!-to get rid of the thing! All you did was invent this invisible,
undetectable, insubstantial monster-apparently the job of getting rid of it is the responsibility
of the Chief Psychologist!"
O'Mara paused to catch his breath, and when he continued his tone had become quiet and
almost polite. He said, "And don't think that you are fooling anyone. Boiled down to its simplest
terms, you are hoping that if enough other mistakes are made your friend's will pass relatively
unnoticed. And stop opening and closing your mouth-your turn to talk will come! One of the aspects
of this whole situation which really troubles me is that I share responsibility for it in that I
gave you an insoluble problem hoping that you might attack it from a new angle-an angle which
might give a partial solution, enough to let our friend off the hook. Instead you created a new
and perhaps worse problem!
"I may have exaggerated things a little because of excusable annoyance, Doctor," O'Mara
went on quietly, "but the fact remains that you may be in serious trouble over this business. I
don't believe that the nursing staff will deliberately make mistakes-at least, not of the order
which would endanger their patients. But any relaxation of standards is dangerous, obviously. Do
you begin to see what you've been doing, Doctor?"
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"Yes, sir," said Conway.
"I see that you do," O'Mara said with uncharacteristic mildness. "And now I would like to
know why you did it. Well, Doctor?"
Conway took his time about answering. This was not the first time he had left the Chief
Psychologist's office with his ego singed around the edges, but this time it looked serious. The
generally held opinion was that when O'Mara was not unduly concerned over, or in some cases when
he actually liked an individual, the psychologist felt able to relax with them and be his bad-
tempered, obnoxious self, but when O'Mara became quiet and polite and not at all sarcastic, when
he began treating a person as a patient rather than a colleague in other words, that person was in
trouble up to his or its neck.
Finally, Conway said, "At first it was simply a story to explain why I was being so nosy,
sir. Nurses don't tell tales and it might have looked as if that was what I wanted them to do. All
I did was suggest that as Doctor Mannon was in all respects fit, outside physical agencies such as
e-t bacteria or parasites and the like were ruled out because of the thoroughness of our aseptic
procedures. You, sir, had already reassured us regarding his mental condition. I postulated an...
an outside, nonmaterial cause which might or might not be consciously directed.
"I haven't anything so definite as a theory about it," Conway went on quickly. "Nor did I
mention disembodied intelligences to anyone, but something odd happened in that theater, and not
only during the time of Mannon's operation. .
He described the echo effect Prilicla had detected while monitoring Mannon's emotional
radiation, and the similar effect when Naydrad had had the accident with the knife. There was also
the later incident of the Melfan intern whose sprayer wouldn't spray-their mandibles weren't
suited to surgical gloves so that they painted them with plastic before an op. When the intern had
tried to use the sprayer it oozed what the Melfan described as metallic porridge. Later the
sprayer in question could not be found. Perhaps it had never existed. And there were other
peculiar incidents. Mistakes which seemed a little too simple for trained staff to make-errors in
instrument counts, dropping things, and all seeming to involve a certain amount of temporary
mental confusion and perhaps outright hallucination.
So far there has not been enough to make a statistically meaningful sample," Conway went
on, "but they are enough to make me curious. I'd give you their names if I wasn't sworn to keep
them confidential, because I think you would be interested in the way they describe some of these
incidents.
"Possibly, Doctor," said O'Mara coldly. "On the other hand I might not want to lend my
professional support to a figment of your imagination by investigating such trivia. As for the
near-accidents with scalpels and the other mistakes, it is my opinion that some people are lucky,
others a little bit stupid at times, while others are fond of pulling other peoples' legs. Well,
Doctor?"
Conway took a firmer grip on the arms of his chair and said doggedly, "The dropped scalpel
was an FROB Type Six, a very heavy, unbalanced instrument. Even if it had struck handle first it
would have spun into Naydrad's side a few inches below the point of impact and caused a deep and
serious wound-if the blade had any actual physical existence at all! This is something I'm
beginning to doubt. That is why I think we should widen the scope of this investigation. May I
have permission to see Colonel Skempton and if necessary contact the Corps survey people, to check
on the origins of recent arrivals?"
The expected explosion did not come. Instead O'Mara's voice sounded almost sympathetic as
he said, "I cannot decide whether you are honestly convinced that you're onto something or simply
that you've gone too far to back down without looking ridiculous. So far as I'm concerned you
couldn't look anymore ridiculous at the moment. You should not be afraid to admit you were wrong,
Doctor, and begin repairing some of the damage to discipline your irresponsibility has caused."
O'Mara waited precisely ten seconds for Conway's reply, then he said, "Very well, Doctor.
See the Colonel. And tell Prilicla I'm rearranging its schedule-it may be helpful to have your
emotional echo-detector available at all times. Since you insist on making a fool of yourself you
might as well do it properly. Afterward-well, we will be very sorry to see Mannon go, and in all
honesty I suppose I must say the same about you. Both of you are likely to be on the same ship
out. .
A few seconds later he was dismissed very quietly.
Mannon himself had accused Conway of misguided loyalty and now O'Mara had suggested that his
present stand was the result of not wanting to admit to a mistake. He had been given an out, which
he had refused to take, and now the thought of service in the smaller multienvironment hospital,
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or even a planet-side establishment where the arrival of an e-t patient would be considered a
major event, was beginning to come home to him. It gave him an unpleasantly gone feeling in the
abdominal area. Maybe he was basing his theory on too little evidence and refusing to admit it.
Maybe the odd errors were part of an entirely different puzzle, with no connection whatever with
Mannon's trouble. As he strode along the corridors, taking evading action or being evaded every
few yards, the impulse grew in him to rush back to O'Mara, say yes to everything, apologize
abjectly and promise to be a good boy. But by the time he was ready to give into it he was outside
Colonel Skempton's door.
Sector General was supplied and to a large extent maintained by the Monitor Corps, which
was the Federation's executive and law enforcement arm. As the senior Corps officer in the
hospital, Colonel Skempton handled traffic to and from the hospital in addition to a horde of
other administrative details. It was said that the top of his desk had never been visible since
the day it arrived. When Conway was shown in he looked up, said "Good morning," looked down at his
desk and said, "Ten minutes . .
It took much longer than ten minutes. Conway was interested in traffic from odd points of
origin, or ships which had called at such places. He wanted data on the level of technology,
medical science and physiological classification of their inhabitants-especially if the
psychological sciences or psionics were well-developed or if the incidence of mental illness was
unusually high. Skempton began excavating among the papers on his desk.
But the supply ship, ambulances and ships pressed into emergency service as ambulances
which had arrived during the past few weeks had originated from Federation worlds which were well
known and medically innocuous. All except one, that was-the Cultural Contact and Survey vessel
Descartes. It had landed, very briefly, on a most unusual planet. She was on the ground, if it
could be called that, for only a few minutes. None of the crew had left the ship, the air-locks
had remained sealed and the samples of air, water and surface material were drawn in, analyzed and
declared interesting but harmless. The pathology department of the hospital had made a more
thorough analysis and had had the same thing to say. Descartes had called briefly to leave the
samples and a patient...
"A patient!" Conway almost shouted when the Colonel reached that point in his report.
Skempton would not need an empathic faculty to know what he was thinking.
"Yes, Doctor, but don't get your hopes up," said the Colonel. "He had nothing more exotic
than a broken leg. And despite the fact e-t bugs find it impossible to live on beings of another
species, a fact which simplifies the practice of extraterrestrial medicine no end, ship medics are
constantly on the lookout for the exception which is supposed to prove the rule. In short, he was
suffering only from a broken leg."
"I'd like to see him anyway," said Conway.
"Level Two-eighty-three, Ward Four, name of Lieutenant Harrison," said Skempton. "Don't
slam the door."
But the meeting with Lieutenant Harrison had to wait until late that evening, because
Prilicla's schedule needed time to rearrange and Conway himself had duties other than the search
for hypothetical disembodied intelligences. The delay, however, was fortunate because much more
information was made available to him, gathered during rounds and at mealtimes, even though the
data was such that he did not quite know what to do with it.
The number of boobs, errors and mistakes was surprising, he suspected, only because he had
not interested himself in such things before now. Even so, the silly, stupid mistakes he
encountered, especially among the highly trained and responsible OR staff, were definitely
uncharacteristic, he thought. And they did not form the sort of pattern he had expected. A plot of
times and places should have shown an early focal point of this hypothetical mental contagion
becoming more widespread as the disease progressed. Instead the pattern indicated a single focus
moving within a certain circumscribed area-the Hudlar theater and its immediate surroundings.
Whatever the thing was, if there was anything there at all, it was behaving like a single entity
rather than a disease.
... Which is ridiculous!" Conway protested. "Even I didn't seriously believe in a
disembodied intelligence-it was a working hypothesis only. I'm not that stupid!"
He had been filling Prilicla in on the latest developments while they were on the way to
see the Lieutenant. The empath kept pace with him along the ceiling for a few minutes in silence,
then said inevitably, "I agree.
Conway would have preferred some constructive objections for a change, so he did not speak
again until they had reached 283-Four. This was a small private ward off a larger e-t compartment
and the Lieutenant seemed glad to see them. He looked, and Prilicla said that he felt, bored.
"Apart from some temporary structural damage you are in very good shape, Lieutenant,"
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Conway began, just in case Harrison was worried by the presence of two Senior Physicians at his
bed. "What we would like to talk about is the events leading up to your accident. If you wouldn't
mind, that is."
"Not at all," said the Lieutenant. "Where do you want me to start? With the landing, or
before that?"
"If you were to tell us a little about the planet itself first," suggested Conway.
The Lieutenant nodded and moved his headrest to a more comfortable angle for conversation,
then began, "It was a weirdie. We had been observing it for a long time from orbit. .
Christened Meatball because Captain Williamson of the cultural contact and survey vessel
Descartes had declined, very forcibly, to have such an odd and distasteful planet named after him,
it had to be seen to be believed-and even then it had been difficult for its discoverers to
believe what they were seeing.
Its oceans were a thick, living soup and its land masses were almost completely covered by
slow-moving carpets of animal life. In many areas there were mineral outcroppings and soil which
supported vegetable life, and other forms of vegetation grew in the water, on the sea bed, or
rooted itself on the organic land surface. But the greater part of the land surface was covered by
a layer of animal life which in some places was half a mile thick.
This vast organic carpet was subdivided into strata which crawled and slipped and fought
their way through each other to gain access to necessary top surface vegetation or subsurface
minerals or simply to choke off and cannibalize each other. During the course of this slow,
gargantuan struggle these living strata heaved themselves into hills and valleys, altering the
shapes of lakes and coastlines and changing the whole topography of their world from month to
month.
It had been generally agreed by the specialists on Descartes that if the planet possessed
intelligent life it should take one of two forms, and both were a possibility. The first type
would be large-one of the tremendous, living carpets which might be capable of anchoring itself to
the underlying rock while pushing extensions toward the surface for the purpose of breathing,
ingestion, and the elimination of wastes. It should also possess a means of defense around its far-
flung perimeter to keep less intelligent strata creatures from insinuating themselves between it
and the ground below or from slipping over it and cutting off light, food, and air as well as
discouraging sea predators large and small who seemed to nibble at it around the clock.
The second possibility might be a fairly small life-form, smooth skinned, flexible, and
fast enough to allow them to live inside or between the strata creatures and avoid the ingestive
processes of the strata beasts whose movements and metabolism were slow. Their homes, which would
have to be safe enough to protect their young and develop their culture and science, would
probably be in caves or tunnel systems in the underlying rock.
If either life-form existed on the planet it was unlikely that they would possess an
advanced technology. Certainly the larger, complex type of industrial machinery was impossible on
this heaving world. Tools, if they developed them at all, would be small, handy and unspecialized,
but the chances were that it would be a very primitive society with no roots.
"They might be strong in the philosophical sciences," Conway broke in at that point.
Prilicla moved closer, trembling with Conway's excitement as well as its own.
Harrison shrugged. "We had a Cinrusskin with us," he said, looking at Prilicla. "It
reported no indication of the more subtle type of emoting usually radiated by intelligent life,
but the aura of hunger and raw, animal ferocity emanating from the whole planet was such that the
empath had to be kept under sedation most of the time. This background radiation might well have
concealed intelligent emoting. The proportion of intelligent life on any given world is only a
small proportion of its total life..
"I see," said Conway, disappointed. "How about the landing?"
The Captain had chosen an area composed of some thick, dry, leathery material. The stuff
looked dead and insensitive so that the ship's tail flare should not cause pain to any life in the
area, intelligent or otherwise. They landed without incident and for perhaps ten minutes nothing
happened. Then gradually the leathery surface below them began to sag, but slowly and evenly so
that the ship's gyros had no trouble keeping them level. They began to sink into what was at first
a shallow depression and then a low-walled crater. The lips of the crater curled toward them,
pressing against the landing legs. The legs were designed to retract telescopically, not fold
toward the center line of the ship. The extension mechanism and leg housings began to give, with a
noise like somebody tearing sheet metal into small pieces.
Then somebody or something began throwing rocks. To Harrison it had sounded almost as if
Descartes was sitting atop a volcano in process of erupting. The din was unbelievable and the only
way to transmit orders was through the suit radios with the volume turned way up. Harrison was
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