Major Operation

MEATBALL

Conway had been worrying about the Meatball problem during the whole of the trip back to the hospital, but only in the past two hours had the process become a constructive one. That had been the period during which he had finally admitted to himself that he could not solve the problem and had begun thinking of the names and professional capabilities of some of the beings, human and otherwise, who might help him find the solution. He was worrying so hard and constructively that he did not know that their ship had materialized the regulation twenty miles from the hospital until the flat, translated voice of Reception rattled from the control room’s speaker.

“Identify yourself please. Patient, visitor, or staff and species.”

The Corps lieutenant who was piloting looked back at Conway and Edwards, the mother ship’s medical officer and raised an eyebrow.

Edwards cleared his throat nervously and said, “This is scout ship Dl 835, tender and communications ship to the Monitor Corps survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes. We have four visitors and one staff member onboard. Three are human and two are native Drambons of different—”

“Give physiological classifications, please, or make full-vision contact. All intelligent races refer to themselves as human and consider others to be nonhuman, so what you call yourself is irrelevant so far as preparing or directing you to suitable accommodation is concerned.”

Edwards muted the speaker and said helplessly to Conway, “I know what we are, but how the blazes do I describe Surreshun and the other character to this medical bureaucrat?”

Thumbing the transit switch, Conway said, “This ship contains three Earth-humans of physiological classification DBDG. They are Major Edwards and Lieutenant Harrison of the Monitor Corps and myself, Senior Physician Conway. We are carrying two Drambon natives. Drambo is the native name for the planet-you may still have it listed as Meatball, which was our name for it before we knew it had intelligent life. One of the natives is a CLHG, water-breathing with a warm-blooded oxygen-based metabolism. The other is tentatively classified as SRJH and seems comfortable in either air or water.

“There is no urgency about the transfer,” Conway went on. “At the same time the CLHG occupies a physically irksome life-support mechanism and would doubtless feel more comfortable in one of our water filled levels where it can roll normally. Can you take us at lock Twenty-three or Twenty-four?”

“Lock Twenty-three, Doctor. Do the visitors require special transport or protective devices for the transfer?”

“Negative.”

“Very well. Please inform Dietetics regarding food and liquid requirements and the periodicity of their meals. Your arrival has been notified and Colonel Skempton would like to see Major Edwards and Lieutenant Harrison as soon as possible. Major O’Mara would like to see Doctor Conway sooner than that.”

“Thank you.”

Conway’s words were received by the being who was manning the reception board, whose translator pack relayed them to the computer which occupied three whole levels at the nerve-center of the hospital, which in turn returned them stripped of all emotional overtones to the scaly, furry, or feathery receptionist in the form of hoots, cheeps, growls, or whatever other odd noises the being used as its spoken language.

To Edwards, Conway said, “Unless you are attached to a multienvironment hospital you normally meet e-ts one species at a time and refer to them by their planet of origin. But here, where rapid and accurate knowledge of incoming patients is vital, because all too often they are in no condition to furnish this information themselves, we have evolved the four-letter classification system. Very briefly, it works like this.

“The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution,” he continued. “The second indicates the type and distribution of limbs and sense organs and the other two the combination of metabolism and gravity-pressure requirements, which in turn gives an indication of the physical mass and form of tegument possessed by a being. Usually we have to remind some of our e-t students at this point that the initial letter of their classification should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, and that the level of physical evolution has no relation to the level of intelligence.”

Species with the prefix A, B and C, he went onto explain, were water breathers. On most worlds life had begun in the seas and these beings had developed high intelligence without having to leave it. D through F were warm-blooded oxygen breathers, into which group fell most of the intelligent races in the galaxy, and the G to K types were also oxygen breathing but insectile. The Ls and Ms were light-gravity, winged beings.

Chlorine-breathing life-forms were contained in the 0 and P groups, and after that came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically and the downright weird types. Radiation eaters, frigid-blooded or crystalline beings and entities capable of modifying their physical structure at will. Those possessing extrasensory powers sufficiently well-developed to make walking or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V regardless of size or shape.

“There are anomalies in the system,” Conway went on, “but those can be blamed on a lack of imagination by its originators-the AACP life-form, for instance, which has a vegetable metabolism. Normally the prefix A denotes a water breather, there being nothing lower in the system than the piscatorial life-forms, but the AACPs are intelligent vegetables and plants came before fish—”

“Sorry, Doctor,” said the pilot. “We’ll be docking in five minutes and you did say that you wanted to prepare the visitors for transfer.”

Conway nodded and Edwards said, “I’ll lend a hand, Doctor.”

The scout ship entered the enormous cubic cavern which was Lock Twenty-three while they were donning the lightweight suits used for environments where the liquid or gas was lethal but at reasonably normal pressures. They felt the grapples draw them into the adjustable cradle and staggered slightly as the artificial gravity grids were switched on. The Lock’s outer seal clanged shut and there was the sound of waterfalls pouring down metal cliffs.

Conway had just finished securing his helmet when its receiver said, “Harrison here, Doctor. The reception team leader says that it will take some time to completely fill the lock with water as well as making it necessary to carry out the full anti contamination procedure at the other five internal entrances. It is a big lock, pressure of water on the other seals will be severe if—”

“Filling won’t be necessary,” said Conway. “The Drambon CLCH will be all right so long as the water reaches the top edge of the freight hatch.”

“The man says bless you.”

They let themselves into the scout ship’s hold, carefully avoiding the self-powered life support machinery which kept the first Drambon rotating like an organic prayer wheel as they removed the retaining straps from the freight lashing points.

“We’ve arrived, Surreshun,” said Conway. “In a few minutes you’ll be able to say good-bye to that contraption for a few days. How is our friend?”

It was a purely rhetorical question because the second Drambon did not and perhaps could not speak. But if it could not converse it could at least react. Like a great, translucent jellyfish-it would have been completely invisible in water had it not been for its iridescent skin and a few misty internal organs-the Drambon undulated toward them. It curled around Conway like a thick, translucent cocoon for a moment, then transferred its attentions to Edwards.

“Ready when you are, Doctors.”

“This is a much better entrance than your first one,” said Conway as Edwards helped him maneuver Surreshun’s life-support equipment out of the hold. “At least this time we know what we are doing.”

“There is no need to apologize, friend Conway,” said Surreshun in its flat, translated voice. “To a being of my high intelligence and ethical values, sympathy for the mental shortcomings of lesser beings and, of course, forgiveness for any wrongs they may have done me are but small facets of my generous personality.”

Conway had not been aware that he was apologizing, but to a being to whom the concept of modesty was completely alien it was possible that his words had sounded that way. Diplomatically he said nothing.

Lock Twenty-three’s reception team arrived to help them move Surreshun’s wheel to the entrance to the water-filled AUGL wards. The team leader, whose black suit had red and yellow striped arms and legs making him look like an updated court jester, swam up to Conway and touched helmets.

“Sorry about this, Doctor,” his voice sounded, clearly if somewhat distorted by the transmitting media, “but an emergency has come up suddenly and I don’t want to tie up the suit frequency. I’d like all you people to move into the ward as quickly as possible. Surreshun has been through our hands before so we don’t have to worry about it, just take charge of the other character wherever it is and … What the blazes!”

The other character had wrapped itself around his head and shoulders, pinioning his arms and nuzzling at him like a dog with a dozen invisible heads.

“Maybe it likes you,” said Conway. “If you ignore it for a minute it will go away.

“Things usually do find me irresistible,” said the team leader dryly. “I wish the same could be said for females of my own species …

Conway swam around and over it, grabbed two large handfuls of the flexible, transparent tegument covering its back and kicked sideways against the water until the being’s front end was pointing toward the ward entrance. Great, slow ripples moved along its body and it began undulating toward the corridor leading to the AUGL ward like an iridescent flying carpet. Less gracefully Surreshun’s ferris wheel followed close behind.

“An emergency, you said?”

“Yes, Doctor,” said the team leader on the suit frequency. “But nothing will happen for another ten minutes, so I can use the suit radio if we keep it brief. My information is that a Kelgian DBLF on the Hudlar operating theater staff was injured by a muscular spasm and involuntary movement of the patient’s forward tentacles during the course of the op. The injuries are complicated by compression effects plus the fact that the constituents of that high-pressure muck which Hudlars breathe are highly toxic to the Kelgian metabolism. But it is the bleeding which is the real cause of the emergency. You know Kelgians.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Conway.

Even a small punctured or incised wound was a very serious matter for a Kelgian. They were giant, furry caterpillars and only their brain, which was housed in the blunt, conical head section, was protected by anything resembling a bony structure. The body consisted of a series of wide, circular bands of muscle which gave it mobility and served to protect, very inadequately, the vital organs within.

The trouble was that to give those tremendous bands of muscle an adequate blood supply the Kelgian pulse rate and pressure were, by Earth standards, abnormally high.

“They haven’t been able to control the bleeding very well,” the team leader went on, “so they are moving it from the Hudlar section two levels above us to the Kelgian theater just below, and taking it through the water-filled levels to save time … Excuse me, Doctor, here they come.

Several things happened at once just then. With an untranslatable gurgle of pleasure Surreshun released itself from the wheel and went rolling ponderously along the floor, zig-zagging slowly among the patients and nursing staff who ranged from squat, crab-like Melfans to the forty foot long tentacled crocodile who were natives of the ocean-covered world of Chalderescol. The other Drambon had twitched itself free of Conway’s grip and was drifting away, while high up on the opposite wall a seal had opened and the injured Kelgian was being moved in, attended by too many people for Conway’s assistance to be either necessary or desirable.

There were five Earth-humans wearing lightweight suits like his own, two Kelgians, and an Illensan whose transparent envelope showed the cloudy yellow of chlorine inside. One of the Earth-human helmets contained a head which he recognized, that of his friend Mannon who specialized in Hudlar surgery. They swarmed around the Kelgian casualty like a shoal of ungainly fish, pushing and tugging it toward the other side of the ward, the size of the shoal increasing as the reception-team leader and his men swam closer to assess the situation. The Drambon jellyfish also moved closer.

At first Conway thought the being was merely curious, but then he saw that the carpet of iridescence was undulating toward the injured being with intent.

“Stop it!” Conway shouted.

They all heard him because he saw them jerk as his voice rattled deafeningly from their suit phones. But they did not know and there was no time to tell them who, what, or even how to stop it.

Cursing the inertia of the water Conway swam furiously toward the injured Kelgian, trying to head the Drambon off. But the big, blood soaked area of fur on the Kelgian’s side was drawing the other like a magnet and, like a magnet, its attraction increased with the inverse square of the distance. Conway did not have time to shout a warning before the Drambon struck softly and clung.

There was a soft explosion of bubbles as the Drambon’s probes ruptured the Kelgian’s pressure litter and slid into the already damaged suit it had been wearing in the Hudlar theater and through the thick, silvery fur beneath. Within seconds its transparent body was turning a deepening shade of red as it sucked the blood from the injured Kelgian.

“Quickly,” Conway yelled, “get them both to the air-filled section!”

He could have saved his breath because everyone was talking and overloading the suit radio. The direct sound pickup was no help, either- all he could hear was the deep, water-borne growl of the ward’s emergency siren and too many voices jabbering at once, until one very loud, translated Chalder voice roared out above the others.

“Animal! Animal!”

His strenuous swimming had overloaded the drying elements in his suit, but those words caused the sweat bathing his body to turn from hot to cold.

Not all the inhabitants of Sector General were vegetarians by any means, and their dietary requirements necessitated vast quantities of meat from extraterrestrial as well as terrestrial sources to be shipped in. But the meat invariably arrived frozen or otherwise preserved, and for a very good reason. This was to avoid cases of mistaken identity on the part of the larger, meat-eating life-forms who very often came into contact with smaller e-ts who frequently bore a physical resemblance to the former’s favorite food.

The rule in Sector General was that if a being was alive, no matter what size or shape it might take, then it was intelligent.

Exceptions to this rule were very rare and included pets-nonviolent, of course-belonging to the staff or important visitors. When a nonintelligent being entered the hospital by accident, protective measures had to be taken very quickly if the smaller intelligent life-forms were not to suffer.

Neither the medical staff engaged in transferring the casualty nor the reception team were armed, but in a few minutes’ time the alarm siren would bring corpsmen who would be and meanwhile one of the Chalder patients-all multitentacled, armored, thirty feet of it-was moving in to remove the clinging Drambon with one or at most two bites of its enormous jaws.

“Edwards! Mannon! Help me keep it off!” Conway shouted, but there were still too many other people shouting for them to hear him. He grabbed two fistfuls of the Drambon’s tegument and looked around wildly. The team leader had reached the scene at the same time and he had pushed one leg between the injured Kelgian and the clinging SRJH and with his hands was trying to pry them apart. Conway twisted around, drew both knees up to his chin and with both feet booted the team leader clear. He could apologize later. The Chalder was moving dangerously close.

Edwards arrived then, saw what Conway was doing and joined him.

Together they kicked out at the gigantic snout of the Chalder, trying to drive it away. They could not hurt the brute, but were trusting the e-t not to attack two intelligent beings in order to kill an apparent animal who was attacking a third intelligent being. The situation was sufficiently confused, however, for a mistake to be made. It was quite possible that Edwards and Conway could have their legs amputated from the waist down.

Suddenly Conway’s foot was grabbed by a pair of large, strong hands and his friend Mannon swarmed along his body until their helmets were touching.

“Conway, what the blazes are you …

“There’s no time to explain,” he replied. “Just get them both to the air-filled section quickly. Don’t let anyone hurt the SRJH, it isn’t doing any harm.

Mannon looked at the being who was covering the Kelgian like an enormous, blood-red blister. No longer transparent, the blood of the injured nurse could actually be seen entering and being diffused throughout the Drambon’s great, slug-like body which now seemed filled to bursting point.

“You could have fooled me,” said Mannon, and pulled away. With one hand he gripped one of the Chalder’s enormous teeth, swung around until he was staring it in an eye nearly the size of a football and with his other hand made jabbing, sideways motions. Looking confused the Chalder drifted away, and a few seconds later they were in the lock leading to the air-filled section.

The water drained out and the seal opened to show two green-clad Corpsmen standing in the lock antechamber, weapons at the ready. One of them cradled an enormous gun with multiple magazines capable of instantly anesthetizing any one of a dozen or more life-forms who came within the category of warm-blooded oxygen breathers, while the other held a tiny and much less ferocious-looking weapon which could blast the life from a bull elephant or any e-t equivalent.

“Hold it!” said Conway, slipping and skidding across the still-wet floor to stand in front of the Drambon. “This is a VIP visitor. Give us a few minutes. Everything will be all right, believe me.

They did not lower their weapons, neither did they look as though they believed him.

“You’d better explain,” said the team leader quietly, but with the anger showing in his face.

“Yes,” said Conway. “I, ah, hope you weren’t hurt when I kicked you back there.”

“Only my dignity, but I still—”

“O’Mara here,” roared a voice from the communicator on the wall opposite. “I want vision contact. What’s happening down there?”

Edwards was closest. He trained and focused the vision pickup as directed and said, “The situation is rather complicated, Major—”

“Naturally, if Conway has anything to do with it,” said O’Mara caustically. “What is he doing there, praying for deliverance?”

Conway was on his knees beside the injured Kelgian, checking on its condition. From what he could see the Drambon had attacked itself so tightly that very little water had entered the pressure litter or the damaged protective suit-it was breathing normally with no indications of water in its lungs. The Drambon’s color had lightened again. No longer deep red, it had returned to its normal translucent iridescent coloring tinged only faintly with pink. As Conway watched, it detached itself from the Kelgian and rolled like a great, water-filled balloon to come to rest against the wall.

Edwards was saying … A full report on this life-form three days ago. I realize three days is not a long time for the results to be disseminated throughout an establishment of this size, but none of this would have happened if the Drambon had not been exposed to a seriously injured being who—”

“With respect, Major,” said O’Mara in a voice oozing with everything else but, “a hospital is a place where anyone at any time can expect to see serious illness or injury. Stop making excuses and tell me what happened!”

“The Drambon over there,” put in the team leader, “attacked the injured Kelgian.”

“And?” said O’Mara.

“Cured it instantly,” said Edwards smugly.

It was not often that O’Mara was lost for words. Conway moved to one side to allow the Kelgian, who was no longer a casualty, to climb to its multitudinous feet. He said, “The Drambon SRJH is the closest thing to a doctor that we have found on that planet. It is a leech-like form of life which practices its profession by withdrawing the blood of its patients and purifying it of any infection or toxic substances before returning it to the patient’s body, and it repairs simple physical damage as well. Its reaction in the presence of severe illness or injury is instinctive. When the injured Kelgian appeared suddenly it wanted to help. The casualty was suffering from poisoning due to toxic material from the Hudlar theater environment infecting the wound. So far as the Drambon was concerned it was a very simple case.

“Not all the blood withdrawn is returned, however,” Conway went on, 'and we have not been able to establish whether it is physiologically impossible for the being to return all of it or whether it retains a few ounces as payment for services rendered.”

The Kelgian gave a low-pitched hoot like the sound of a modulated foghorn. The noise translated as “It’s very welcome, I’m sure.”

The DBLF moved away then followed by the two armed corpsmen. With a baffled look at the Drambon the team leader waved his men back to their stations and the silence began to drag.

Finally O’Mara said, “When you’ve taken care of your visitors and if there are no physiological reasons against it, I suggest we meet to discuss this. My office in three hours.”

His tone was ominously mild. It might be a good idea if Conway roped in some moral as well as medical support for the meeting with the Chief Psychologist.

Conway asked his empath friend Prilicla to attend the meeting as well as the Monitor officers Colonel Skempton and Major Edwards, Doctor Mannon, the two Drambons, Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, and two medics from Hudlar and Melf who were currently taking courses at the hospital. It took several minutes for them all to enter O’Mara’s enormous outer office-a room normally occupied only by the Major’s aide and more than a score of pieces of furniture suited to the e-ts with whom O’Mara had professional contact. On this occasion it was the Chief Psychologist who occupied his assistant’s desk and waited with visibly controlled impatience for everyone to sit, lie, or otherwise insinuate themselves into the furniture.

When they had done so O’Mara said quietly, “Since the period of high drama accompanying your arrival, I have caught up with the latest Meatball reports, and to know all is to forgive all — except, of course, your presence here, Conway. You were not due back for another three—”

“Drambo, sir,” said Conway. “We use the native word sound for it now.

“We prefer that,” Surreshun’s translated voice joined in. “Meatball is not an accurate name for a world covered with a relatively thin layer of animal life, or for what we consider to be the most beautiful planet in the galaxy-even though we have not as yet had an opportunity to visit any of the others. Besides, your translator tells me that Meatball as a name lacks accuracy, reverence and respect. The continued use of your name for our glorious planet will not anger me-I have too great an understanding of the often shallow thinking engaged in by your species, too much sympathy for these mental shortcomings to feel anger or even irritation—”

“You’re too kind,” said O’Mara.

“That as well,” agreed Surreshun.

“The reason I returned,” Conway said hastily, “was simply to get help. I wasn’t making any progress with the Drambo problem and it was worrying me.”

“Worry,” said O’Mara, “is a particularly useless activity — unless, of course, you do it out loud and in company. Ah, now I see why you brought half the hospital along.”

Conway nodded and went on, “Drambo is badly in need of medical assistance, but the problem is unlike any other that we have already met on Earth-human or e-t planets and colonies. On those occasions it was simply a matter of investigating and isolating the diseases, bringing in or suggesting where the specifics could be distributed most effectively and then allowing the people affected to administer their own medicine through local doctors and facilities. Drambo is not like that. Instead of trying to diagnose and treat a large number of individuals, the patients are relatively few but very, very large indeed.

“The reason for this is that within the past few years Surreshun’s race has learned how to liberate atomic energy,” Conway went on, then added, “Explosively, of course, and with vast quantities of radiational dirt. They are very …” he hesitated, trying to find a diplomatic word for careless, or criminally stupid or suicidal, and failing … proud of their new-found ability to kill large areas of the strata creatures and render the shallows around these living coastlines safe for their expanding population.

“But living in or under and perhaps controlling these strata creatures is yet another intelligent race whose land is quite literally in danger of dying all around them,” Conway continued. “These people made the tool which came aboard Descartes, and judging by that gadget they are highly advanced indeed. But we still know nothing at all about them.

“When it became clear that Surreshun’s people were not the tool makers,” Conway went on, “we asked ourselves where they would be most likely to be found, and the answer was in those areas where their living country was under attack. It was in this situation that I expected to find their medical people as well, and I did in fact find our transparent friend here. It saved my life, in its rather disconcerting fashion, and I’m convinced that it is the Drambon equivalent of a doctor. Unfortunately it does not seem to be able to communicate in any fashion that I can understand and, bearing in mind the fact that anyone can directly observe its innards without the necessity for X rays, there doesn’t seem to be a localized gathering of nerve ganglia or indeed anything at all resembling a brain.

“We badly need the help of its people,” Conway added seriously, “which is the reason for bringing it here so that a specialist in e-t communications can succeed, perhaps, where the ship’s contact experts and myself failed.”

He looked pointedly at O’Mara, who was looking thoughtfully at the leech-like Drambon. It, in turn, had put one of its eyes into a pseudopod and had extended it toward the ceiling so that it could look at the fragile, insect-like figure of the empath Prilicla. Prilicla had enough eyes to look everywhere at once.

“Isn’t it odd,” said Colonel Skempton suddenly, “that one of your Drambons is heartless and the other appears to be brainless?”

“Brainless doctors I am used to,” said O’Mara dryly. “I communicate with them, on the whole successfully, every day. But this isn’t your only problem?”

Conway shook his head. “I’ve already said that we have to treat a small number of very large patients. Even with the assistance of all the Drambon medical people I would still need help in charting-and I do mean charting by photoreconnaissance-the extent of the trouble as accurately as possible and probing subsurface areas. X rays on this scale are impossible. A full-scale drilling operation to withdraw deep tissue samples would be of little use either, since the drill would be a short and impossibly fine needle. So we will need to investigate the diseased or damaged areas in person, using armored ground cars and, where possible, our hands and feet inside heavy-duty spacesuits. Entrance to the affected areas will be through natural body openings, and the exercise will go much faster if we have the help of people with medical training who do not need the protection of armored vehicles and suits. I’m thinking of species like the Chalders and Hudlars and Melfans who are armored already.

“From Pathology,” he went on, looking toward Thornnastor, “I would like suggestions for providing a cure by surgery rather than medication. Present indications are that the trouble will be largely the result of radiation poisoning, and while I realize that we can cure even advanced cases these days, the treatment may well be impossible to apply to patients this size, not to mention the fact that the regenerative medication required for only one of them could represent the total output of that drug from a dozen planets for many years. Hence the necessity for a surgical solution.”

Skempton cleared his throat and said, “I begin to see the scope of your problem, Doctor. My part will be in organizing transport and supplies for your medical people. I’d also suggest a full battalion of engineers to set up and maintain the special equipment …

“To begin with,” said Conway.

“Naturally,” said the Colonel a trifle coldly, “we shall continue to assist you in whatever—”

“You misunderstood me, sir,” said Conway. “I can’t be sure just how much help we will need at the present time, but I had been thinking in terms of a full sector sub fleet armed with long-range lasers, surface penetrating torpedoes, tactical atomic weapons-clean, of course-and whatever other forms of frightfulness you can suggest that are both concentrated and capable of being directed accurately.

“You see, Colonel,” Conway concluded, “surgery on this scale will mean that the operation will be military rather than surgical.” To O’Mara he added, “Those are a few of the reasons for my unscheduled return. The others are less urgent and …

“Can damn well wait until this lot are sorted out,” said O’Mara firmly.

The meeting broke up shortly after that because neither Surreshun nor Conway could give any information on Drambo which was not already available in the Corps reports. O’Mara retreated into his inner office with the Drambon doctor, Thornnastor and Skempton returned to their quarters and Edwards, Mannon, Prilicla, and Conway, having first seen to the comfort of Surreshun in the AUGL tank, headed for the cafeteria reserved for warm-blooded oxygen breathers to refuel. The Hudlar and Melfan doctors went along to find out more about Drambo and to watch the others eat. As very recent additions to the hospital staff in the first flush of enthusiasm, they were spending every available minute observing and talking to e-ts.

Conway knew the feeling. It was still very much with him, but nowadays he was practical enough to use as well as admire the enthusiasm of the new boys …

“The Chalders are tough and mobile enough to hold their own against the native predators,” Conway said as they distributed themselves around a table designed for Tralthan FGLIs-the Earth-human DBDG tables were all taken, by Kelgians-and dialed their orders. “You Melfans are very fast movers on the sea bed and your legs, being mostly osseus material, are proof against the poisonous plants and spines growing on the ocean floor. Hudlars, however, while slow-moving do not have to worry about anything less than an armor-piercing shell hurting them and the water all over the planet is so thick with vegetable and animal life anxious to attach itself to any smooth surface that you could throw away your food spraying gear and live completely off the sea.”

“It sounds like heaven,” said the Hudlar, its flat, translated tone making it impossible to tell whether or not it was being sarcastic. “But you will need large numbers of doctors in all three species-far too many to be supplied by the hospital even if everyone on the staff was allowed to volunteer.

“We’ll need hundreds of you,” Conway replied, “and Drambo isn’t heaven even for Hudlars. At the same time I thought there might be doctors-young, still restless, newly qualified people-anxious for e-t experience …

“I’m not Prilicla,” said Mannon, laughing, “but even I can sense that you are preaching to the converted. Do you like lukewarm steak, Conway?”

For several minutes they concentrated on eating so that the gentle breeze produced by Prilicla’s wings-it preferred to hover during meals, claiming that flying aided its digestion-would not ruin everything but the ice cream.

“At the meeting,” said Edwards suddenly, “you mentioned other, less urgent problems. I expect the recruiting of thick-skinned beasties like Garoth here was one of them. I’m afraid to ask about the others …

Conway said, “We will need on-the-spot advice during this large-scale medical examination, which means doctors, nurses and medical technicians experienced in the processing and analysis of specimens covering the widest possible range of life-forms. I am going to have to talk Thornnastor into releasing some of his pathology staff …”

Prilicla side-slipped suddenly and almost put one of its pencil-thin legs into Mannon’s dessert. It was trembling slightly as it flew, a sure sign that someone at the table was radiating strong and complicated emotions.

“I’m still not Prilicla,” said Mannon, “but from the behavior of our empathic friend I would guess that you are seeking, and trying to justify, a much closer liaison with the pathology department and especially a pathologist called Murchison. Right, Doctor?”

“My emotions are supposed to be privileged,” said Conway.

“I did not say a word,” said Prilicla, who was still finding difficulty in maintaining a stable hover.

Edwards said, “Who’s Murchison?”

“Oh, a female of the Earth-human DBDG classification,” said Garoth through his translator. “A very efficient nurse with theater experience covering more than thirty different life-forms, who recently qualified as a pathologist senior grade. Personally I have found her pleasant and polite, so much so that I am able to ignore the, to me, physically repellent slabs of adipose overlaying much of her musculature.”

“And you’re going to bring her to Drambo with you, Conway?” The Monitor Corps and its officers had very old-fashioned ideas about mixed crews, even on long survey missions.

“Only,” said Mannon gravely, “if he’s given half a chance.”

“You should marry the girl, Conway.”

“He did.”

“This is a very strange establishment in some ways, Major,” said Mannon, smiling, “full of odd and peculiar practices. Take sex, for instance. To a large number of the entities here it is either a continuing, involuntary process as public, and giving the about degree of stimulation, as breathing, or it is physiological earthquake which rocks them for perhaps three days in the year. People like these find it hard to understand the, to them, bewildering complications and ritualistic behavior connected with pairing off and mating in our species-although admittedly there are a few whose sex lives make ours look about as simple as crosspollination.

“But the point I’m trying to make,” Mannon went on, “is that the vast majority of our e-ts just do not understand why the female of our species should lose her identity, surrender that most precious of all possessions, her name. To many of them this smacks of slavery, or at least second-class citizenship, and to the others sheer stupidity. They don’t see why an Earth-human female doctor, nurse or technician should change her identity and take the name belonging to another entity for purely emotional reasons and neither, if it comes to that, does the Records computer. So they retain their professional names, like actresses and similar professional females, and are very careful to use them at all times to avoid confusions of identity with e-ts who—”

“He gets the point,” said Conway dryly. “But sometime I’d like you to explain the difference between an amateur as opposed to a professional female.”

“They behave differently in private, of course,” Mannon went on, ignoring him. “Some of them are sufficiently depraved to call each other by their first names.

“We need a pathology team,” said Conway, ignoring Mannon. “But even more we need local medical help. Surreshun’s people, for physiological reasons, can give us only moral support, which means that everything depends on gaining the cooperation of our leech-like friends. This is where you come in, Prilicla. You were monitoring its emotional radiation during the meeting. Any ideas?”

“I’m afraid not, friend Conway,” said the empath. “During the whole of the meeting the Drambon doctor was conscious and aware, but it did not react to anything that was said or done or engage in any concentrated thinking. It emoted only feelings of well-being, repletion and self satisfaction.”

“It certainly did a good job on that Kelgian,” said Edwards, “and to a leech the pint or so of blood it siphoned off …

Prilicla waited politely for the interruption to cease, then went on, “There was a very brief heightening of interest detectable when members of the meeting first entered the room-the emotion was not one of curiosity, however, but more like the increase of awareness necessary for a cursory identification.”

“Was there any indication that the trip here had affected it?” asked Conway. “Impaired its physical or mental faculties, anything like that?”

“It was thinking only contented thoughts,” replied Prilicla, “so I would say not.—

They discussed the Drambon doctor until they were about to leave the dining hall, when Conway said, “O’Mara will be glad of your help, Prilicla, while he is putting our blood-sucking friend through his psychological hoops, so I would be grateful if you could monitor its emotional radiation while contact is being established. The Major may want to wait until communication is complete and a special translator pack has been programmed for the Drambon before contacting me. But I would like to have any useful information as you get it …”

Three days later as he was about to board Descartes with Edwards and the first batch of recruits-a very carefully chosen few who would, he hoped, by their enthusiasm attract and instruct many more-the PA began quietly insisting that Doctor Conway contact Major O’Mara at once, its insistence reinforced by the repeated double chime which preceded most urgent signals. He waved the others ahead and went to the lock’s communicator.

“Glad I caught you,” said the Chief Psychologist before Conway could do anything more than identify himself. “Listen, don’t talk. Prilicla and I are getting nowhere with your Drambon medic. It emotes but we can’t get it excited about anything so that we cannot even establish its likes and dislikes.

“We know that it sees and feels,” O’Mara went on, “but we aren’t sure if it can hear or talk or, if it can, how it does these things. Prilicla thinks it may have a low form of empathy, but until we can put a few ripples into its even disposition there is no way of proving that. I am not admitting that I’m beaten, Conway, but you have handed us a problem which may have a very simple solution—”

“Did you try it with the thought-controlled tool?”

“That was the first, second and twenty-eighth thing we tried,” said O’Mara sourly. “Prilicla detected a very slight heightening of interest consistent, it says, with the identification of a familiar object. But the Drambon made no attempt to control the gadget. I was saying that you handed us a problem. Maybe the simplest answer would be for you to hand us another just like it.”

The Chief Psychologist disliked having to give unnecessary explanations almost as much as people who were slow on the uptake, so Conway thought for a moment before saying, “So you would like me to bring back another Drambon medic so that you could observe and eavesdrop on their conversation when they meet, and reproduce the method on the translator …

“Yes, Doctor, and fast,” said O’Mara, “before your Chief Psychologist needs a psychiatrist. Off.”

It was not possible for Conway to immediately seek out, kidnap or otherwise acquire another leech-like SRJH on his return to Drambo. He had a group of e-ts of widely varying dietary, gravity and atmosphere requirements to attend to and, while all three life-forms could exist without too much difficulty in the Drambon ocean, their quarters on Descartes had to have some of the comforts of home.

They also had to be given some appreciation of the scope of the medical problem they were being asked to help solve, and this entailed many copter flights over the strata creatures. He showed them the great tracks of living “land” covered with the tiny, long-rooted plants which might or might not serve as the strata beasts’ eyes-the leaves rolled back tightly to reveal their bright undersides when the helicopter’s shadow passed over them, and opened out again a few seconds after it had passed. It was as if their shadow was a high-persistency yellow spot on a bright green radar screen. And he showed them the coastlines, which were much more dramatic.

Here the sea predators, large and small, tore at each other and at the periphery of the great land beasts, stirring the thick, turgid ocean into yellow foam streaked and stained with red. It was in an area like this, where Conway had judged the strata beast’s need for protection had been greatest, that he had found the leech-like SRJHs and where, as soon as he could possibly manage it, he must look for another.

But this time he would have lots of willing and specialized help.

Every day there was a message from O’Mara, different only in the mounting impatience evident between the lines. Prilicla and the Chief Psychologist were having no success with the Drambon doctor and had come to the conclusion that it used one of the exotic Visio tactile languages which were virtually impossible to reproduce without a detailed sight touch vocabulary.

The first expedition to the coast was in the nature of a rehearsal-at least, it started out that way. Camsaug and Surreshun took the lead, wobbling and wheeling along the uneven sea bed like a pair of great organic doughnuts. They were flanked by two crab-like Melfans who were easily capable of scuttling along twice as fast as the Drambons could roll, while a thirty-foot scaled and tentacled Chalder swam ponderously above them ready to discourage local predators with its teeth, claws and great bony club of a tail-although in Conway’s opinion one look from any one of its four extensible eyes would be enough to discourage anything with the slightest will to live.

Conway, Edwards, and Garoth traveled in one of the Corps’s surface cruisers, a vehicle capable not only of moving over any conceivable topography but of going over, through or under the sea as well as being able to hover for a limited period in the air. They kept just far enough in the rear to keep everyone else in sight.

They were headed toward a dead section of coast, a deep strip of the strata beast which Surreshun’s people had killed to give themselves more protected rolling space. They had accomplished this by lobbing a series of very dirty atomic bombs ten miles inland and then waiting while the living coastline stopped killing and eating and drinking, and the coastline predators lost interest in the dead meat and left.

Fallout did not concern the rollers because the prevailing wind blew inland. But Conway had deliberately selected a spot which was only a few miles from a stretch of coast which was still very much alive, so that with any luck their first examination might turn out to be something more than an autopsy.

With the departure of the predators the sea’s plant life had moved in. On Drambo the division between plant and animal life was rarely sharp and all animals were omnivorous. They had to travel along the coast for nearly a mile before finding a mouth that was not either closed too tightly or too badly overgrown to allow entry, but the time was not wasted because Camsaug and Surreshun were able to point out large numbers of dangerous plants that even the heavily armored e-ts should avoid whenever possible.

The practice of extraterrestrial medicine was greatly simplified by the fact that the illnesses and infections of one species were not transmittable to another. But this did not mean that poisons or other toxic material secreted by e-t animals and plants could not kill, and on the Drambon sea bed the vegetation was particularly vicious. Several varieties were covered with poisoned spines and one acted as if it had delusions of being a vegetable octopus.

The first usable mouth looked like an enormous cavern. When they followed the rollers inside the vehicle’s spotlights showed pallid vegetation waving and wriggling slowly to the limit of vision. Surreshun and Camsaug were rolling out unsteady figure-eights on the densely overgrown floor and apologizing for the fact that they could not take the party any farther without risking being stopped.

“We understand,” said Conway, “and thank you.”

As they moved deeper into the enormous mouth the vegetation became sparse and more pallid, revealing large areas of the creature’s tissue. It looked coarse and fibrous and much more like vegetable rather than animal material, even allowing for the fact that it had died several years earlier. The roof began suddenly to press down on them and the forward lights showed the first serious barrier, a tangle of long, tusk-like teeth so thick that they looked like the edge of a petrified forest.

One of the Melfans was the first to report. It said, “I cannot be absolutely sure until Pathology checks my specimens, Doctor Conway, but the indications are that the creature’s teeth are vegetable rather than animal osseous material. They grow thickly on both the upper and lower surfaces of the mouth and to the limit of our visibility. The roots grow transversely so that the teeth are free to bend forward and backward under steady pressure. In the normal position they are angled sharply toward the outer orifice and act as a killing barrier to large predators rather than as a means of grinding them into small pieces.

“From the position and condition of several large cadavers in the area,” the Melfan went on, “I would say that the creature’s ingestion system is very simple. Sea water containing food animals of all sizes is drawn into a stomach or prestomach. Small animals slip through the teeth while large ones impale themselves, whereupon the inward current and the struggles of the animal concerned cause the teeth to bend inward and release it. I assume that the small animals are no problem but that the big ones could do serious damage to the stomach before the digestive system neutralizes them, so they have to be dead before they reach the stomach.”

Conway directed the spotlight toward the area containing the Melfan and saw it wave one of its mandibles. He said, “That sounds reasonable, Doctor. It wouldn’t surprise me if the digestive processes are very slow indeed-in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the creature is more vegetable than animal. An organism of normal flesh, blood, bone and muscle of this size would be too heavy to move at all. But it moves, and does everything else, very slowly …” He broke off and narrowed the beam for maximum penetration, then went on, “You had better get aboard so we can burn a way through those teeth.”

“No need, Doctor,” said the Melfan. “The teeth have decayed and are quite soft and brittle. You can simply drive through them and we will follow.”

Edwards allowed the cruiser to sink to the floor, then moved it forward at a comfortable scuttling pace for Melfans. Hundreds of the long, discolored plant teeth snapped and toppled slowly through the cloudy water before they were suddenly in the clear.

“If the teeth are a specialized form of plant life,” said Conway thoughtfully, “they occupied a very sharply defined area, which suggests that someone is responsible for planting them.”

Grunting assent, Edwards checked to see that everyone had come through the tunnel they had just made, then he said, “The channel is widening and deepening again, and I can see another presumably specialized form of plant life. Big, isn’t it? There’s another. They’re all over the place.

“This is far enough,” said Conway. “We don’t want to lose sight of the way out.

Edwards shook his head. “I can see openings on both sides just like this one. If the place is a stomach, and it looks big enough, there are several inlets.”

Angry suddenly, Conway said, “We know that there are hundreds of these mouths in this dead section alone and the number of stomachs is anybody’s guess-great, flat, hollow caveins miles across if that radar isn’t telling fluorescent lies. We aren’t even nibbling at the problem!”

Edwards made a sympathetic noise and pointed ahead. “They look like stalactites that have gone soft in the middle. I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look.”

Even the Hudlar went out to have a closer look at the great, sharply curved pillars which supported the roof. Using their portable analyzers they were able to establish that the pillars were a part of the strata beast’s musculature and not, as they had earlier thought, another form of plant life-although the surface of all the muscular supports in the area were covered with something resembling outsize seaweed. The blisters were nearly three feet across and looked about ready to burst. A Melfan taking a specimen of the underlying muscle accidentally touched one and it did burst, triggering off about twenty others in the vicinity. They released a thick, milky liquid which spread rapidly and dissolved in the surrounding water.

The Melfan made untranslatable noises and scuttled backward.

“What’s wrong?” said Conway sharply. “Is it poisonous?”

“No, Doctor. There is a strong acid content but it is not immediately harmful. If you were a water breather you would say that it stinks. But look at the effect on the muscle.”

The great pillar of muscle rooted firmly to both floor and roof was quivering, its sharp curve beginning to straighten out.

“Yes,” said Conway briskly, “this supports our theory about the creature’s method of ingestion. But now I think we should return to Descartes-this area may not be as dead as we thought.”

Specialized teeth plants served as a filter and killing barrier to food drawn into the creature’s stomach. Other symbiotic plants growing on the muscle pillars released a secretion which caused them to stiffen, expand the stomach, and draw in large quantities of food-bearing water. Presumably the secretion also served to dissolve the food, digest it for assimilation through the stomach wall or by other specialized plants- they had taken enough specimens for Thornnastor to be able to work out the digestive mechanism in detail. When the power of the digestive secretion had been diluted by the food entering the stomach their effect on the muscles diminished, allowing the pillars to partially collapse again and expel undigested material.

Blisters were beginning to rupture off the other pillars now. By itself that did not mean that the beast was alive, only that a dead muscle could still respond to the proper stimulus. But the cavern roof was being pushed up and water was flowing in again.

“I agree, Doctor,” said Edwards, “let’s get out of here. But could we leave by a different mouth-we might learn something from a stretch of new scenery.

“Yes,” said Conway, with the uncomfortable feeling that he should have said no. If dead muscles could twitch, what other forms of involuntary activity were possible to the gigantic carcass? He added, “You drive, but keep the cargo hatch and personnel lock open-I’ll stay outside with the e-ts.

A few minutes later Conway was hanging onto a handy projection as the vehicle followed the e-ts into a different mouth opening. He hoped it was a mouth and not a connection with something deeper inside the beast, because Edwards reported that it was curving toward a live area of coast. But before the lowering temperature of his feet could affect his speech centers enough for him to order them back the way they had come, there was an interruption.

“Major Edwards, stop the cruiser, please,” said one of the Melfans. “Doctor Conway, down here. I think I have found a dead … colleague.”

It was a Drambon SRJH, no longer transparent but milky and shriveled with a long, incised wound traversing its body, drifting and bumping along the floor.

“Thornnastor will be pleased with you, friend,” said Conway enthusiastically. “And so will O’Mara and Prilicla. Let’s get it aboard with the other specimens. Oh, I’m not a water breather, but …

“It doesn’t,” the Melfan replied to the unspoken question. “I’d say that it was too recently dead to be offensive.”

The Chalder came sweeping back, its tentacles gripped the dead SRJH and transferred it to the refrigerated specimen compartment, then it returned to its position. A few seconds later one flat, toneless, translated word rasped in their receivers.

“Company. ”

Edwards directed all his lights ahead to show a fighting, squirming menagerie practically filling the throat ahead. Conway identified two kinds of large sea predators who had obviously been able to batter a way through the brittle teeth, several smaller ones, about ten SRJHs and a few large-headed, tentacled fish that he had never seen before. It was impossible to tell at first which were fighting which or even if it mattered to the beings concerned.

Edwards dropped the vehicle to the floor. “Back inside! Quickly!”

Half-running, half-swimming toward the vehicle, Conway envied the underwater mobility of the Melfans so much that it hurt. He overtook the Hudlar who had the jaws of a big predator locked on its carapace. Just above him one of the new life-forms had an SRJH wrapped around it, the Drambon doctor already turning red as it treated its patient in the only way it knew how. There was a deep, reverberating clang as another predator charged the cruiser, smashing two of their four lights.

“Into the cargo hold!” Edwards shouted hoarsely. “We’ve no time to fiddle about with personnel locks!”

“Get off me, you fool,” said the Hudlar with the predator on its back. “I’m inedible.”

“Conway, behind you!”

Two big predators were coming at him along the bottom while the Chalder was shooting in from the flank. Suddenly there was a Drambon doctor undulating rapidly between the leading predator and Conway. It barely touched the beast but the predator went into a muscular spasm so violent that parts of its skeleton popped white through the skin.

So you can kill as well as cure, thought Conway gratefully as he tried to avoid the second predator. The Chalder arrived then and with a swipe of its armored tail cleared the Hudlar’s back while simultaneously its enormous maw opened and crashed shut on the second predator’s neck.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Conway. “Your amputation technique is crude but effective.”

“All too often,” replied the Chalder, “we must sacrifice neatness for speed …”

“Stop chattering and get in!” yelled Edwards.

“Wait! We need another local medic for O’Mara,” began Conway, gripping the edge of the hatch. There was a Drambon doctor drifting a few yards away, bright red and obliviously wrapped around its patient. Conway pointed and to the Chalder said, “Nudge it inside, Doctor. But be gentle, it can kill, too.”

When the hatch clanged shut a few minutes later the cargo hold contained two Melfans, a Hudlar, the Chalder, the Drambon SRJH with its patient and Conway. It was pitch dark. The vehicle shuddered every few seconds as predators crashed against its hull, and conditions were so cramped that if the Chalder moved at all everyone but the armor-plated Hudlar would have been mashed flat. Several years seemed to go past before Edward’s voice sounded in Conway’s helmet.

“We’re leaking in a couple of places, Doctor-but not badly and it shouldn’t worry water breathers in any case. The automatic cameras have some good stuff on internal life-forms being helped by local medics. O’Mara will be very pleased. Oh, I can see teeth ahead. We’ll soon be out of this

Conway was to remember that conversation several weeks later at the hospital when the living and dead specimens and film had been examined, dissected, and viewed so often that the leech-like Drambons undulated through his every dream.

O’Mara was not pleased. He was, in fact, extremely displeased-with himself, which made things much worse for the people around him.

“We have examined the Drambon medics singly and together, friend Conway,” said Prilicla in a vain attempt to render the emotional atmosphere in the room a little more pleasant. “There is no evidence that they communicate verbally, visually, tactually, telepathically, by smell or any other system known to us. The quality of their emotional radiation leads me to suspect that they do not communicate at all in the accepted sense. They are simply aware of other beings and objects around them and, by using their eyes and a mechanism similar to the empathic faculty which my race possesses, are able to identify friend and foe-they attacked the Drambon predators without hesitation, remember, but ignored the much more visually frightening Chalder doctor who was feeling friendship for them.

“So far as we have been able to discover,” Prilicla went on, “its emphatic faculty is highly developed and not allied to intelligence. The same applies to the second Drambon native you brought back, except that it is.

“Much smarter,” O’Mara finished sourly. “Almost as smart as a badly retarded dog. I don’t mind admitting that for a while I thought our failure to communicate may have been due to a lack of professional competence in myself. But now it is clear that you were simply wasting our time giving sophisticated tests to Drambon animals.”

“But that SRJH saved me.”

“A very highly specialized but nonintelligent animal,” said O’Mara firmly. “It protects and heals friends and kills enemies, but it does not think about it. As for the new specimen you brought in, when we exposed it to the thought-controlled tool it emoted awareness and caution — a feeling similar to our emotional radiation if we were standing close to a bare power line — but according to Prilicla it did not think at or even about the gadget.

“So I’m sorry, Conway,” he ended, “we are still looking for the species responsible for making those tools, and for intelligent local medical assistance with your own problem.”

Conway was silent for a long time, staring at the two SRJHs on O’Mara’s floor. It seemed all wrong that a creature responsible for saving his life should have done so without thought or feeling. The SRJH was simply a specialist like the other specialized animals and plants inhabiting the interior of the great strata beasts, doing the work it had evolved to do. Chemical reactions were so slow inside the strata creatures-the material was too diluted for them to be otherwise since its blood might be little more than slightly impure water-that specialized plant and animal symbiotes could produce the secretions necessary for muscle activity, endocrine balance, supplying nourishment to and removing waste material from large areas of tissue. Other specialized symbiotes handled the respiration cycle and gave vision of a kind on the surface.

“Friend Conway has an idea,” said Prilicla.

“Yes,” said Conway, “but I would like to check it by getting the dead SRJH up here. Thornnastor hasn’t done anything drastic to it yet, and if something should happen to it we can easily get another. I would like to face the two living SRJHs with a dead colleague.

“Prilicla says that they do not emote strongly about anything,” Conway added. “They reproduce by fission so there can be no sexual feeling between them. But the sight of one of their own dead should cause some kind of reaction.”

O’Mara stared hard at Conway as he said, “I can tell by the way Prilicla is trembling and by the smug look on your face that you think you have the answer. But what is likely to happen? Are these two going to heal and resuscitate it? Oh, never mind, I’ll wait and let you have your moment of medical drama …

When the dead SRJH arrived Conway quickly slid it from the litter onto the office floor and waved O’Mara and Prilicla back. The two living SRJHs were already moving purposefully toward the cadaver. They touched it, flowed around and over it and for about ten minutes were very busy. When they had finished there was nothing left.

“No detectable change in emotional radiation, no evidence of grief,” said Prilicla. It was trembling but its own feelings of surprise were probably responsible for that.

“You don’t look surprised, Conway,” said O’Mara accusingly.

Conway grinned and said, “No, sir. I’m still disappointed at not making contact with a Drambon doctor, but these beasties are a very good second best. They kill the strata beast’s enemies, heal and protect its friends and tidy up the debris. Doesn’t that suggest something to you? They aren’t doctors, of course, just glorified leucocytes. But there must be millions of them, and they’re all on our side …

“Glad you’re satisfied, Doctor,” said the Chief Psychologist, looking pointedly at his watch.

“But I’m not satisfied,” said Conway. “I still need a senior pathologist trained in and with the ability to use the hospital’s facilities-one particular pathologist. I need to maintain a close liaison with—”

“The closest possible liaison,” said O’Mara, grinning suddenly. “I quite understand, Doctor, and I shall urge it with Thornnastor just as soon as you’ve closed the door …