“Do we have any chance, really, of holding out?”
Dermod hesitated a moment, obviously wondering whether to be reassuring or to tell the truth. Then he said, “A well-supported and supplied defensive globe is the ideal tactical position. It can also, if the enemy outnumbers it sufficiently, be a perfect trap …
When Dermod left, the specimen he had brought with him was claimed by Thornnastor, the Tralthan Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, who would no doubt be happy with it for days. O’Mara went back to bullying his charges into remaining sane, and Mannon and Conway went back to their wards. The reaction of the staff to the possibility of e-ts attacking them was about equally divided between concern over the war spreading and interest regarding the possible methods necessary to treat casualties belonging to a brand new species.
But two weeks passed without the expected attack developing. The Monitor Corps warships continued to arrive, shoot their astrogators back in life-ships, and take up their positions. From the hospital’s direct vision ports they seemed to cover the sky, as if Sector General was the center of a vast, tenuous star cluster with every star a warship. It was an awesome and tremendously reassuring sight, and Conway tried to visit one of the direct vision panels at least once every day.
Then on the way back from one of these visits he ran across a party of Kelgians.
For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes. All the Kelgian DBLFs had been evacuated, he had watched the last of them go himself, yet here were twenty-odd of the outsize caterpillars humping along in single file. A closer look showed that they were not wearing the usual brassard with engineering or medical emblems on it-instead their silvery fur was dyed with circular and diamond patterns of red, blue and black. This was Kelgian military insignia. Conway went storming off to O’Mara.
… I was about to ask the same question, Doctor,” the Chief Psychologist said gruffly, indicating his vision screen, “although in much more respectful language. I’m trying to get the fleet commander now, so stop shouting and sit down!”
Dermod’s face appeared a few minutes later. His tone was polite but hurried when he said, “This is not the Empire, gentlemen. We are obliged to inform the Federation government and through it the people of the true state of affairs as we see them, although the item about our being attacked by an enemy e-t force has not yet been made public.
“But you must give the e-ts within the Federation credit for having the same feelings as ourselves,” he went on, “Extra-terrestrials have stayed behind at Sector General, and on their various home worlds their friends are beginning to feel that they should come out here and help defend them. It is as simple as that.”
“But you said that you didn’t want the war to spread,” Conway protested.
“I didn’t ask them to come here, Doctor,” Dermod said sharply, “but now they’re here I can certainly use them. The latest intelligence reports indicate that the next attack may be decisive …
Later over lunch Mannon received the news about the e-t defenders with the deepest gloom. He was beginning to enjoy being only himself and guzzling steak at dinner, he told Conway sadly, and now with the likelihood of e-t casualties coming in it looked as if they were all going to be tape-ridden again. Prilicla ate spaghetti and observed how lucky it was that the e-t staff hadn’t left the hospital after all, not-looking at Conway when it said it, and Conway said very little.
The next attack, Dermod had said, may be decisive …
It began three weeks later after a period during which nothing happened other than the arrival of a volunteer force of Tralthans and a single ship whose crew and planet of origin Conway had never heard of before, and whose classification was QLCL. He learned that Sector General had never had the opportunity of meeting these beings professionally because they were recent, and very enthusiastic, members of the Federation. Conway prepared a small ward to receive possible casualties from this race, filling it with the horribly corrosive fog they used for an atmosphere and stepping up the lighting to the harsh, actinic blue which QLCLs considered restful.
The attack began in an almost leisurely fashion, Conway thought as he watched it through the observation panel. The main defense globe seemed barely disturbed by the three minor attacks launched at widely separate points on its surface. All that was visible was three tiny, confused swirls of activity-moving points of light that were ships, missiles, counter-missiles and explosions-which looked too slow to be dangerous. But the slowness was only apparent, because the ships were maneuvering at a minimum of five Gs, with automatic anti-gravity devices keeping their crews from being pulped by the tremendous accelerations in use, and the missiles were moving at anything up to fifty Gs. The wide-flung repulsion screens which sometimes deflected the missiles were invisible as were the pressors and rattlers which nearly always stopped those which the screens missed. Even so this was merely an initial probing at the hospital’s defenses, a series of offensive patrols, the curtain-raiser.
Conway turned away from the view-port and began moving toward his post. Even the unimportant skirmishes produced casualties and he really had no business being up here sightseeing. Besides, he would get a much truer picture of how the battle was going down in the wards.
For the next twelve hours casualties arrived in a steady trickle, then the light, probing attacks changed to heavy, feinting thrusts and the wounded came in an irregular stream. Then the attack proper began and they became a flood.
He lost all sense of time, of who his assistants were, of the number of cases he dealt with. There were many times when he needed a pep shot to clear the fatigue from his mind and hands, but pep-shots were now forbidden regardless of circumstances — the medical staff were hard pressed enough without some of them becoming patients. Instead he had to work tired, knowing that he was not bringing everything he had to the treatment of his patients, and he ate and slept when he reached the point of not being able to hold his instruments properly. Sometimes it was the towering bulk of a Tralthan at his side, sometimes a Corpsman medical orderly, sometimes Murchison. Mostly it was Murchison, he thought. Either she didn’t need to sleep, or she snatched a catnap the same times as he did, or even at a time like this he was more inclined to notice her. It was usually Murchison who pushed food at his unresisting face and told him when he really ought to lie down.
By the fourth day the attack showed no signs of diminishing. The rattlers on the outer hull were going almost constantly, their power drain making the lights flicker.
The principle which furnished artificial gravity for the floor and compensated for the killing accelerations used by the ships also lay behind the weapons of both sides — the repulsion screen, originally a meteor protection device, the tractor and pressor beams, and the rattler which was a combination of both. The rattler pushed and pulled-vibrated- depending on how narrowly it was focused, at up to eighty Gs. A push of eighty gravities then a pull of eighty gravities, several times a minute. Naturally it was not always focused accurately on target, both ships were moving and taking counter-measures, but it was still tight enough to tear the plating off a hull or, in the case of a small ship, to shake it until the men inside rattled.
There was a lot of rattler work going on now. The Empire forces were attacking savagely, compressing the Monitor defense globe down against the hospital’s outer hull. The infighting which was taking place was with rattler only, space being too congested to fling missiles about indiscriminately. This applied only to the warring ships, however — there were still missiles being directed at the hospital, probably hundreds of them, and some of them were getting through. At least five times Conway felt the tell-tale shock against the soles of his shoes where his feet were strapped to the operating room floor.
There was no fine diagnostic skill required in the treatment of these rattled men. It was all too plain that they suffered from multiple and complicated fractures, some of them of nearly every bone in their bodies. Many times when he had to cut one of the smashed bodies out of its suit Conway wanted to yell at the men who had brought it in, “What do you expect me to do with this …
But this was alive, and as a doctor he was supposed to do everything possible to make it stay that way.
He had just finished a particularly bad one, with both Murchison and a Tralthan nurse assisting, when Conway became aware of a DBLF in the room. Conway had become familiar with the dyed patterns of color used by the Kelgian military to denote rank, and he saw that this one bore an additional symbol which identified it as a doctor.
“I am to relieve you, Doctor,” the DBLF said in a flat, Translated, hurried voice. “I am experienced in treating beings of your species. Major O’Mara wants you to go to Lock Twelve at once.”
Conway quickly introduced Murchison and the Tralthan — there was another casualty being floated in and they would be working on it within minutes — then said, “Why?”
“Doctor Thornnastor was disabled when the last missile hit us,” the Kelgian replied, spraying its manipulators with the plastic its race used instead of gloves. “Someone with e-t experience is required to take over Thornnastor’s
