Hospital Station

III

The helmet which Prilicla brought was in a reality a mask, a mask with a self-contained air supply which, when in position, adhered firmly along the edge of the hair line, cheeks and lower jaw. Its air was good only for a very limited time-ten minutes or so — but with it on and the danger of death temporarily removed, Conway discovered that he could think much more clearly.

His first action was to go through the still open intersection lock. The PVSJ inside it was motionless and with the gray blush, the beginning of a type of skin cancer, spreading over its body. To the PVSJ life-form oxygen was vicious stuff. As gently as possible he dragged the Illensan into its own section and to a nearby storage compartment which he remembered being there. Pressure in this section was slightly greater than that maintained for warm-blooded oxygen-breathers so that where the PVSJ was concerned the air here was reasonably pure. Conway shut it in the compartment, after first grabbing an armful of the woven plastic sheets, in this section the equivalent of bed linen. There was no sign of the SRTT.

Back in the other corridor he explained to Prilicla what he wanted done-the Earth-human he had seen earlier had succeeded in donning his suit, but was blundering about, eyes streaming and coughing violently and was obviously incapable of giving any assistance. Conway picked his way around the weakly moving or unconscious bodies to the seal of Lock Six and opened it. There was a neatly racked row of air-bottles on the wall inside. He lifted down two of them and staggered out.

Prilicla had one unconscious form already covered with a sheet. Conway cracked the valve of an air-bottle and slid it under the covering, then watched as the plastic sheet bellied and rippled slightly with the air being released underneath it. It was the crudest possible form of oxygen tent, Conway thought, but the best that could be done at the moment. He left for more bottles.

After the third trip Conway began to notice the warning signs. He was sweating profusely, his head was splitting and big black splotches were beginning to blot out his vision-his air supply was running out. It was high time he took off the emergency helmet, stuck his own head under a sheet like the others and waited for the rescuers to arrive. He took a few steps toward the nearest sheeted figure, and the floor hit him. His heart was banging thunderously in his chest, his lungs were on fire and all at once he didn’t even have the strength to pull off the helmet …

Conway was forced from his state of deep and oddly comfortable unconsciousness by pain: something was making strong and repeated attempts to cave in his chest. He stuck it just as long as he could, then opened his eyes and said, “Get off me, dammit, I’m all right!”

The hefty intern who had been enthusiastically engaged in giving Conway artificial respiration climbed to his feet. He said, “When we arrived, daddy-longlegs here said you had ceased to emote. I was worried about you for a moment — well, slightly worried.” He grinned and added, “If you can walk and talk, O’Mara wants to see you.

Conway grunted and rose to his feet. Blowers and filtering apparatus had been set up in the corridor and were rapidly clearing the air of the last vestiges of chlorine and the casualties were being removed, some on tented stretcher-carriers and others being assisted by their rescuers. He fingered the raw area of forehead caused by the hurried removal of his helmet and took a few great gulps of air just to reassure himself that the nightmare of a few minutes ago was really over.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said feelingly.

“Don’t mention it, Doctor,” said the intern.

They found O’Mara in the Educator Room. The Chief Psychologist wasted no time on preliminaries. He pointed to a chair for Conway and indicated a sort of surrealistic wastepaper basket to Prilicla and barked, “What happened?”

The room was in shadow except for the glow of indicator lights on the Educator equipment and a single lamp on O’Mara’s desk. All Conway could see of the psychologist as he began his story was two hard, competent hands projecting from the sleeves of a dark green uniform and a pair of steady gray eyes in a shadowed face. The hands did not move and the eyes never left him while Conway was speaking.

When he was finished O’Mara sighed and was silent for several seconds, then he said, “There were four of our top Diagnosticians at Lock Six just then, beings this hospital could ill afford to lose. The prompt action you took certainly saved at least three of their lives, so you’re a couple of heroes. But I’ll spare your blushes and not belabor that point. Neither,” he added dryly, “will I embarrass you by asking what you were doing there in the first place.”

Conway coughed. He said, “What I’d like to know is why the SRTT ran amok like that. Because of the crowd running to meet it, I’d say, except that no intelligent, civilized being would behave like that. The only visitors we allow here are either government people or visiting specialists, neither of which are the type to be scared at the sight of an alien life form. And why so many Diagnosticians to meet it in the first place?”

“They were there,” replied O’Mara, “because they were anxious to see what an SRTT looked like when it was not trying to look like something else. This data might have aided them in a case they are working on. Also, with a hitherto unknown life-form like that it is impossible to guess at what made it act as it did. And finally, it is not the type of visitor which we allow here, but we had to break the rules this time because its parent is in the hospital, a terminal case.

Conway said softly, “I see.

A Monitor Lieutenant came into the room at that point and hurried across to O’Mara. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’ve been able to find one item which may help us with the search for the visitor. A DBLF nurse reports seeing a PVSJ moving away from the area of the accident at about the right time. To one of the DBLF caterpillars the PVSJs are anything but pretty, as you know, but the nurse says that this one looked worse than usual, a real freak. So much so that the DBLF was sure that it was a patient suffering from something pretty terrible—”

“You checked that we have no PVSJ suffering from the malady described?”

“Yes, sir. There is no such case.”

O’Mara looked suddenly grim. He said, “Very good, Carson, you know what to do next,” and nodded dismissal.

Conway had been finding it hard to contain himself during the conversation, and with the departure of the Lieutenant he burst out, “The thing I saw come out of the air-lock had tentacles and … and … Well, it wasn’t anything like a PVSJ. I know that an SRTT is able to modify its physical structure, of course, but so radically and in such a short time …

Abruptly O’Mara stood up. He said, “We know practically nothing about this life-form — its needs, capabilities or emotional response patterns — and it is high time we found out. I’m going to build a fire under Colinson in Communications to see what he can dig up; environment, evolutionary background, cultural and social influences and so on. We can’t have a visitor running around loose like this, it’s bound to make a nuisance of itself through sheer ignorance.

“But what I want you two to do is this,” he went on. “Keep an eye open for any odd-looking patients or embryos in the Nursery sections. Lieutenant Carson has just left to get on the PA and make these instructions general. If you do find somebody who may be our SRTT approach them gently. Be reassuring, make no sudden moves and be sure to avoid confusing it, that only one of you talks at once. And contact me immediately.”

When they were outside again Conway decided that nothing further could be done in the current work period, and postponing the rounds of their wards for another hour, led the way to the vast room which served as a dining hall for all the warm-blooded oxygen-breathers on the hospital’s Staff. The place was, as usual, crowded, and although it was divided up into sections for the widely variant life-forms present, Conway could see many tables where three or four different classifications had come together — with extreme discomfort for some-to talk shop.

Conway pointed out a vacant table to Prilicla and began working toward it, only to have his assistant — aided by its still functional wings — get there before him and in time to foil two maintenance men making for the same spot. A few heads turned during this fifty yard flight, but only briefly — the diners were used to much stranger sights than that.

“I expect most of our food is suited to your metabolism,” said Conway when he was seated, “but do you have any special preferences?”

Prilicla had, and Conway nearly choked when he heard them. But it was not the combination of well-cooked spaghetti and raw carrots that was so bad, it was the way the GLNO set about eating the spaghetti when it arrived. With all four eating appendages working furiously Prilicla wove it into a sort of rope which was passed into the being’s beak-like mouth. Conway was not usually affected by this sort of thing, but the sight was definitely doing things to his stomach.

Suddenly Prilicla stopped. “My method of ingestion is disturbing you,” it said. “I will go to another table—”

“No, no,” said Conway quickly, realizing that his feelings had been picked up by the empath. “That won’t be necessary, I assure you. But it is a point of etiquette here that, whenever it is possible, a being dining in mixed company uses the same eating tools as its host or senior at the table. Er, do you think you could manage a fork?”

Prilicla could manage a fork. Conway had never seen spaghetti disappear so fast.

From the subject of food the talk drifted not too unnaturally to the hospital’s Diagnosticians and the Educator Tape system without which these august beings-and indeed the whole hospital-could not function.

Diagnosticians deservedly had the respect and admiration of everyone in the hospital-and a certain amount of the pity as well. For it was not simply knowledge which the Educator gave them, the whole personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on their brains as well. In effect the Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic type of multiple schizophrenia, and with the alien other components sharing their minds so utterly different in every respect that they often did not even share the same system of logic.

Their one and only common denominator was the need of all doctors, regardless of size, shape or number of legs, to cure the sick.

There was a DBDG Earth-human Diagnostician at a table nearby who was visibly having to force himself to eat a perfectly ordinary steak. Conway happened to know that this man was engaged on a case which necessitated using a large amount of the knowledge contained in the Tralthan physiology tape which he had been given. The use of this knowledge had brought into prominence within his mind the personality of the Tralthan who had furnished the brain record, and Tralthans abhorred meat in all its forms..