intelligent species joining the Federation and these, too, had to be accommodated. So gigantic and complex was the structure required that in the end hundreds of worlds had each fabricated sections of it and transported them like pieces of a vast, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle to the assembly area.
The tremendous structure which had finally taken shape in Galactic Sector Twelve was a hospital, a hospital to end all hospitals. In its 384 levels were reproduced the environments of all the different life-forms who comprised the Galactic Federation — a biological spectrum ranging from the frigid, methane life-forms through the more normal oxygen and chlorine-breathing types, up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation.
Sector Twelve General Hospital represented a twofold miracle of engineering and psychology. Its supply, maintenance, and administration were handled by the Monitor Corps, but the traditional friction between the military and civilian members of the staff did not occur. Neither were there any serious disagreements among its ten thousand-odd medical personnel, who were composed of over sixty differing life-forms with the same number of mannerisms, body odors, and life views.
Perhaps their only common denominator, regardless of size, shape, and number of legs, was their need to cure the sick.
And in the vast dining hall used by the hospital’s warmblooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms there was a small dedication plaque just inside the main entrance. The Kelgian, Ian, Melfan, Nidian, Etlan, Orligian, Dwerlan, Tralthan, and Earth-human medical and maintenance staff rarely had time to look at the names inscribed on it, because they were all too busy talking shop, exchanging other-species gossip, and eating at tables with utensils all too often designed for the needs of an entirely different life-form — it was a very busy place, after all, and one grabbed a seat where one could. But then that was the way Grawlya-Ki and MacEwan had wanted it.
SURVIVOR
FOR more than an hour Senior Physician Conway had been dividing his attention between the interstellar emptiness outside the direct vision port and the long-range sensor display, which showed surrounding space to be anything but empty, and feeling more depressed with every minute that Passed. Around him the officers on Rhabwar’s Control Deck were radiating impatience — but inaudibly, because they all knew that when their ship was at the scene of a disaster it was the senior medical officer on board who had the rank.
“Only one survivor,” he said dully.
From the Captain’s position, Fletcher said, “We’ve been fortunate on previous missions, Doctor. More often than not this is all an ambulance ship finds. Just think of what must have happened here.”
Conway did not reply because he had been thinking of little ekse for the past hour.
An interstellar vessel of unknown origin and fully three times the mass of their ambulance ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction which had reduced it to finely divided and widely scattered wreckage. Analysis of the temperature and relative motions showed the debris to be much too cool to have been at the center of a nuclear explosion less than seven hours earlier, when the distress beacon had been automatically released. It was obvious, therefore, that the ship had lost one of its hypergenerators and it had not been of a sufficiently advanced design for the occupants, with one exception, to have any chance of surviving the accident.
On Federation ships, Conway knew, if one of the matched set of hyperdrive generators failed suddenly, the others were designed to cut out simultaneously. The vessel concerned emerged safely into normal space somewhere between the stars, to sit there helplessly, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until it either repaired its sick generator or help arrived. But there were times when the safety cutoffs had failed or been late in functioning, which meant that while a part of the ship had continued for a split second at hyperspeed the remainder was braked instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the early hyperships had been, to say the least, catastrophic.
“The survivor’s species must be relatively new to hyper-travel,” Conway said, “or they would be using the modular design philosophy which we, from long experience, know to be the only structural form which enables a proportion of a ship’s crew to survive when a sudden hypergenerator imbalance tears the vessel apart around them. I can’t understand why the section containing the survivor wasn’t fragmented like the rest.”
The Captain was visibly controlling his impatience as he replied, “You were too busy getting the survivor out before the compartment lost any more air and decompression was added to its other problems, Doctor, to have time for structural observations. The compartment was a separate unit, purpose unknown, which was mounted outboard of the main hull and joined by a short access tube and airlock, and it simply broke away in one piece. That beastie was very lucky.” He gestured toward the long-range sensor displays. “But now we know that the remaining pieces of wreckage are too small to contain survivors and frankly, Doctor, we are wasting time here.”
“I agree,” Conway said absently.
“Right,” Fletcher said briskly. “Power Room, prepare to Jump in five—”
“Hold, Captain,” Conway broke in quietly. “I hadn’t finished. I want a scoutship out here, more than one if they can be spared, to search the wreckage for personal effects, photographs, solid and pictorial an, anything which will assist in reconstructing the survivor’s environment and culture. And request Federation Archives for any information on an intelligent life-form of physiological classification EGCL. Since this is a new species to us, the cultural contact people will want this information as soon as possible, and if our survivor continues to survive, the hospital will need it the day before yesterday.
“Tag the signals with Sector General medical first-contact priority coding,” he went on, “then head for home. I’ll be on the Casualty Deck.”
Rhabwar’s communications officer, Haslam, was already preparing for the transmission when Conway stepped into the gravity-free central well and began pulling himself toward the Casualty Deck amidships. He broke his journey briefly to visit his cabin and get out of the heavy-duty spacesuit he had been wearing since the rescue. He felt as though every bone and muscle in his body was aching. The rescue and transfer of the survivor to Rhabwar had required intense muscular activity, followed by a three-hour emergency op, and another hour sitting still in Control. No wonder he felt stiff.
Try to think about something else, Conway told himself firmly. He exercised briefly to ease his cramped muscles but the dull, unlocalized aching persisted. Angrily he wondered if he was becoming a hypochondriac.
“Subspace radio transmission in five seconds,” the muted voice of Lieutenant Haslam said from the cabin speaker. “Ex-Pect the usual fluctuations in the lighting and artificial gravity systems.”
As the cabin lights flickered and the deck seemed to twitch under his feet, Conway was forced to think of something else — specifically, the problems encountered in transmitting intelli-Sence over interstellar distances compared with the relative simplicity of sending a distress signal.
Just as there was only one known method of traveling faster wan light, there was only one way of calling for help when an accident left a ship stranded between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio could rarely be used in emergency conditions since it was subject to interference from intervening stellar material and required inordinate amounts of a vessel’s power — power which a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence.' It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast its location, a subspace scream for help which ran up and down the usuable frequencies until it died, in a matter of a few hours. And on I this occasion it had died amid a cloud of wreckage containing one survivor who was very lucky indeed to be alive.
But considering the extent of the being’s injuries, Conway thought, it could not really be described as lucky. Mentally shaking himself loose of these uncharacteristically morbid feelings, he went down to the Casualty Deck to check on” the patient’s condition.
Typed as physiological classification EGCL, the survivor was a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-form of approximately twice the body weight of an adult Earth-human. Visually it resembled an outsize snail with a high, conical shell which was pierced around the tip where its four extensible eyes were I located. Equally spaced around the base of the shell were eight triangular slots from which projected the manipulatory appendages. The carapace rested on a thick, circular pad of muscle I which was the locomotor system. Around the circumference of the pad were a number of fleshy projections, hollows and slits associated with its systems of ingestion, respiration,
