three Earth-humans this time, the senior nurse being Murchison. Conway was just settling down to a very pleasant chat when the siren sounded a steady, low-pitched, faintly derisive note. The attack was over.
Conway was helping Murchison out of her suit when the PA hummed into life.
“Attention, please,” it said urgently. “Will Doctor Conway go to Lock Five at once, please …
Probably a casualty, Conway thought, one they are not sure how to move … But then the PA shifted without a break into another message.
Will Doctor Mannon and Major O’Mara go to Lock Five immediately, please …
What, Conway wondered, could be at Lock Five which required the services of two Senior Physicians and the Chief Psychologist. He began to hurry.
O’Mara and Mannon had been closer to Five to begin with and so were there ahead of him by a few seconds. There was a third person in the lock antechamber, clad in a heavy-duty suit with its helmet thrown back. The newcomer was graying, had a thin, lined face and a mouth which was like a tired gray line, but the overall harshness was offset by a pair of the softest brown eyes Conway had ever seen in a man. The insignia on his collar was more ornate than Conway had ever seen before, the highest ranking Corps officer he’d had dealings with being a Colonel, but he knew instinctively that this was Dermod, the fleet commander.
O’Mara tore off a salute which was returned as punctiliously as it had been given, and Mannon and Conway received handshakes with apologies for the gauntlets being worn. Then Dermod got straight down to business.
“I am not a believer in secrecy when it serves no useful purpose,” he began crisply. “You people have elected to stay here to look after our casualties, so you have a right to know what is happening whether the news is good or bad. Being the senior Earth-human medical staff remaining in the hospital, and having an understanding of the probable behavior of your staff in various contingencies, I must leave it up to you whether this information should or should not be made public.”
He had been looking at O’Mara. His eyes moved quickly to Mannon, then Conway, then back to O’Mara again. He went on, “There has been an attack, a completely surprising attack in that it was totally abortive. We did not lose a single man and the enemy force was completely wiped out. They didn’t seem to know the first thing about deployment or … or anything. We were expecting the usual sort of attack, vicious, pressed home regardless of cost, that previously has taken everything we’ve got to counter. This was a massacre …
Dermod’s voice and the look in his eyes, Conway noted, did not reflect any joy at the victory.
… Because of this we were able to investigate the enemy wreckage quickly enough to have a chance of finding survivors. Usually we’re too busy licking our own wounds to have time for this. We didn’t find any survivors, but …
He broke off as two Corpsmen came through the inner seal carrying a covered stretcher. Dermod was looking straight at Conway when he went on.
He said, “You were on Etla, Doctor, and will see the implications behind this. And at the same time you might think about the fact that we are under attack by an enemy who refuses either to communicate or negotiate, fights as though driven by a fanatical hatred, and yet uses only limited warfare against us. But first you’d better take a look at this.”
When the cover was pulled off the stretcher nobody said anything for a long time. It was the tattered, grisly remnant of a once-living, thinking and feeling entity who was now too badly damaged even to classify with any degree of accuracy. But enough remained to show that it was not and never had been a human being.
The war, Conway thought sickly, was spreading.
CHAPTER 18
Since Vespasian left Etla we have been trying to infiltrate the Empire with our agents,” Dermod resumed quietly, “and have been successful in planting eight groups including one on the Central World itself. Our intelligence regarding public opinion, and through it the propaganda machinery used to guide it, is fairly dependable.
“We know that feeling against us is high over the Etla business,” he continued, “or rather what we are supposed to have done to the Etlans, but I’ll come to that later. This latest development will make things even worse for us …
According to the Imperial government, Dermod explained, Etla had been invaded by the Monitor Corps. Its natives, under the guise of being offered medical assistance, had been callously used as guinea-pigs to test out various types of bacteriological weapons. As proof of this hadn’t the Etlans suffered a series of devastating plagues which had commenced within days of the Monitors leaving? Such callous and inhuman behavior could not go unpunished, and the Emperor was sure that every citizen was behind him in the decision he had taken.
But information received-again according to Imperial sources- from a captured agent of the invaders made it plain that their behavior on Etla was no isolated instance of wanton brutality. On that luckless planet the invaders had been preceded by an extra-terrestrial-a stupid, harmless being sent to test the planet’s defenses before landing themselves, a mere tool about which they had denied any connection or knowledge when later they contacted the Etlan authorities. It was now plain that they made wide use of such extra-terrestrial life-forms. That they used them as servants, as experimental animals, probably as food …
There was a tremendous structure maintained by the invaders, a combination military base and laboratory, where atrocities similar to those practiced on Etla were carried on as a matter of course. The invader agent, who had been tricked into giving the spatial coordinates of this base, had confessed to what went on there. It appeared that the invaders ruled over a large number of differing extra-terrestrial species, and it was here that the methods and weapons were developed which held them in bondage.
The Emperor stated that he was quite willing, indeed he considered it his duty, to use his forces to stamp out this foul tyranny. He also felt that he should use only Imperial forces, because he had to confess with shame that relations between the Empire and the extra-terrestrials within its sphere of influence had not always been as warm as they should have been. But if any of these species who may have been slighted in the past were to offer their aid, he would not refuse it.
And this explains many of the puzzling aspects of these enemy attacks,” Dermod went on. “They are restricting themselves to vibratory and chemical weapons, and in the confined space of our defense globe we must do the same, because this place must be captured rather than destroyed. The Emperor must find out the positions of the Federation planets to keep the war going. The fact that they fight viciously and to the death can be explained by their being afraid of capture, because to them the hospital is nothing but a space-going torture chamber.
“And the completely ineffectual recent attack,” he continued, “must have been mounted by some of the hot- headed e-t friends of the Empire, who were probably allowed to come here without proper training or information about our defenses. They were wiped out, and that will cause a lot of e-ts on their side who are wavering to make up their minds.
“In the Empire’s favor,” he ended bitterly.
When the fleet commander stopped speaking Conway remained silent; he had had access to the Empire reports sent to Williamson and knew that Dermod was not exaggerating the situation. O’Mara had had similar information and maintained the same grim silence. But Dr. Mannon was not the silent type.
“But this is ridiculous!” he burst out. “They’re twisting things! This is a hospital, not a torture chamber. And they’re accusing us of the things they are doing themselves …
Dermod ignored the outburst, but in such a way as not to give offense. He said soberly, “The Empire is unstable politically. With enough time we could replace their present government with something more desirable. The Imperial citizens would do it themselves, in fact. But we need time. And we also have to stop the war from spreading too much, from gaining too much momentum. If too many extra-terrestrial allies join the Empire against us the situation will become too complex to control, the original reasons for fighting, or the truth or otherwise of these accusations, will cease to matter.
“We can gain time by holding out here as long as possible,” he ended grimly, “but there isn’t much we can do about restricting the war. Except hope.”
He swung his helmet forward and began to fasten it, although his face-plate was still open for conversation. It was then that Mannon asked the question which Conway had wanted to ask for a long time, but fear of being thought a coward had stopped him from asking it.
