"James White - SG 06 - Star Healer" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

Star Healer
James White
1984
This was the first full length novel in the Sector General series. Previous
books realeased were comprised of a series of short stories.


Scanned by lzmini Feb 03


CHAPTER 1

Something struck Conway as odd about the latest bunch of trainees as he stood
aside to allow them to precede him into the observation gallery of the Hudlar
Children’s Ward. It was not that among the fourteen of them they comprised five
widely different life-forms or that their treatment of him—he was, after all, a
Senior Physician attached to the galaxy’s largest multienvironment hospital—was
condescending to the point of rudeness.
To be accepted for advanced training at Sector Twelve General Hospital a
candidate—in addition to possessing a high degree of medical and surgical
ability—had to be able to adapt to and accept people and circumstances which,
back in their home-planet hospitals, they could barely have imagined. At home an
off-planet patient would be a rarity indeed, while at Sector General they would
be treating nothing else. Furthermore, many of them would find it difficult to
make the transition from highly respected member of the local medical fraternity
to mere trainee at Sector General, but they would soon settle in.
His mind was playing tricks on him, Conway decided—probably because he had
so much on it at the present time. A rumor was going around about changes in his
ambulance ship setup, and he was scheduled for an hour early that afternoon with
the Chief Psychologist, always an unsettling prospect.
Conway was also irritated because he seemed to be coming in for more than
his fair share of short-term projects and medical odd jobs—such as giving the
trainees their initial orientation tour. His special ambulance-ship team had had
very few calls in recent months.
“The patients in the ward below are infant Hudlars,” Conway explained when
the trainees had formed an untidy crescent around and behind him. “They belong
to an immensely strong species and, as adults, are extremely resistant to
physical injury and disease. So much so that the concept of curative medical
treatment has been foreign to them. No medical profession exists on Hudlar, and
the high infant mortality rate of the recent past was simply accepted. Their
young fall prey to a large number of indigenous pathogens from the moment they
are born, and those which do not quickly develop or inherit resistance to them
perish. The hospital is trying to develop a wide-spectrum immunization procedure
to be carried out during the prenatal stage, but so far with limited success.”
He indicated a young Hudlar standing just below them, looking up. “You
will already have deduced from this individual’s general stance and musculature
that the species evolved on a world with very heavy gravity and proportionately
high atmospheric pressure, both of which have been reproduced in the ward. You
will also observe no beds or rest furniture; patients who can move simply roam
about at will. This is because their body tegument is so tough that padded rest