"White, James - Sector General 03 - Major Operation.PDB" - читать интересную книгу автора (White James)

It was a long, involved, many-sided question, designed to tell him how a small, intelligent life-form had reached this area without detection. It was also a stupid question because any intelligence which affected the minds of Earth-humans and e-ts alike could not have remained undetected with an empath like Prilicla around. Which left him back where he started with a nonmaterial something which refused, or was incapable of, moving beyond the environs of the theater.
"Harrison says he had lots of delusions during the trip back," O'Mara's voice sounded suddenly. "He says the ship's doctor said this was normal considering all the dope he had in him. He also says he was completely out when he arrived here and doesn't know how or where he came in. And now I suppose we contact Reception, Doctor. I'm patching you in, just in case I ask the wrong questions..
Seconds later a slow, flat, translated voice which could have belonged to anything said, "Lieutenant Harrison was not processed in the usual way. Being a corpsman whose medical background was known in detail he was admitted to Service Lock Fifteen into the charge of Major Edwards.
Edwards was not available, but his office promised O'Mara that they would have him in a few minutes.
All at once Conway felt like giving up. Lock Fifteen was too far away-a difficult, complicated journey involving three major changes of environment. For their hypothetical invader, who was also a stranger to the hospital, to find its way to this theater would have necessitated it taking mental control of someone and being carried. But if that was the case Prilicla would have detected its presence. Prilicla could detect anything which thought-from the smallest insect to the slow emanations of a mind deeply and totally unconscious. No living thing could shut its mind down completely and still be alive.
Which meant that the invader might not be alive!
A few feet distant Mannon had signaled for a nurse to stand by the pressure cock. A sudden return to Hudlar normal pressure would diminish the violence of any bleeding which might occur, but it would also make it impossible for Mannon to operate without heavy gloves. Not only that, the pressure increase would cause the operative field to subside within the opening, where movement transmitted from the nearby heart would make delicate work impossible. At present, despite the danger of a wrong incision, the complex of blood vessels was distended, separate and relatively motionless.
Suddenly it happened. Bright yellow blood spurted out, so violently that it hit Mannon's visor with an audible slap. Driven by the patient's enormous blood pressure and pulse rate the severed vein whipped about like a miniature unheld hose-pipe. Mannon got to it, lost it, tried again. The spurting became a thin, wavering spray and stopped. The nurse at the pressure cock relaxed visibly while the one at Mannon's side cleaned his visor.
Mannon moved back slightly while the field was sucked clear. Through the visor his eyes glittered oddly in the sweating white mask of his face. Time was important now. Hudlars were tough, but there were limits-they could not stand decompression indefinitely. There would be a gradual movement of body fluid toward the opening in the tegument, a strain on vital organs in the vicinity and an even greater increase in blood pressure. To be successful the operation could not last for much more than thirty minutes and more than half the time had gone merely in opening up the seat of the trouble. Even if the growth was removed, its removal entailed damage to underlying blood vessels which had to be repaired with great care before Mannon withdrew.
They all knew that speed was essential, but to Conway it seemed suddenly as if he was watching a film which was steadily being speeded up. Mannon's hands were moving faster than Conway had ever seen them move before. And faster still.
"I don't like this," said O'Mara harshly. "It looks like he's regained his confidence, but more likely that he's ceased caring-about himself, that is. He still cares about the patient, obviously, even though he knows it hasn't much chance. And the tragic thing about it is that it never did have much chance, Thornnastor tells me. If it hadn't been for your hypothetical friend's interference Mannon wouldn't have worried too much about losing this patient-it would have been one of his very few failures. When he made that first slip it wrecked his self-confidence and now he's-"
"Something made him slip," said Conway firmly.
"You've tried convincing him of that, with what result?" the psychologist snapped back. He went on, "Prilicla is seriously agitated and its shakes are getting worse by the minute. But Mannon is, or was, a pretty stable type I don't think he'll crack until after the operation. Though with these serious, dedicated types whose profession is their whole life it's hard to say what might happen."
"Edwards here," said a new voice. "What is it?"
"Go ahead, Conway," said the psychologist. "You ask the questions. Right now I've other things on my mind."
The spongy growth had been lifted clear, but a great many small blood vessels had been severed to accomplish this and the job of repairing them would be much more difficult than anything which had gone before. Insinuating the severed ends into the tubing, far enough so that they would not simply squirm out again when circulation was restored, was a difficult, repetitious, nerve-wracking procedure.
There were only eighteen minutes left.
"I remember Harrison well," the distant Edwards replied when Conway had explained what he wanted to know. "His suit was damaged in the leg section only, so we couldn't write it off-those things carry a full set of tools and survival gear and are expensive. And naturally we decontaminated it! The regulations expressly state that-"
"It still may have been a carrier of some kind, Major," Conway said quickly. "How thoroughly did you carry out this decon-"
"Thoroughly," said the Major, beginning to sound annoyed. "If it was carrying any kind of bug or parasite it is defunct now. The suit together with all its attachments was sterilized with high-pressure steam and irradiated-it went through the same sterilization procedure as your surgical instruments, in fact. Does that satisfy you, Doctor?"
"Yes," said Conway softly. "Yes indeed."
He now had the link-up between Meatball and the operating theater, via Harrison's suit and the sterilization chamber. But that wasn't all he had. He had Yehudi!
Beside him Mannon had stopped. The surgeon's hands were trembling as he said desperately, "I need eight pairs of hands, or instruments that can do eight different operations at once. This isn't going well, Conway. Not well at all. .
"Don't do anything for a minute, Doctor," Conway said urgently, then began calling out instructions for the nurses to file past him carrying their instrument trays. O'Mara started shouting to know what was going on, but Conway was concentrating too hard to answer him. Then one of the Kelgian nurses made a noise like a foghorn breathing in, the DBLF equivalent of a shriek of surprise, because suddenly there was a medium sized box spanner among the forceps on her tray.
"You won't believe this," said Conway joyfully as he carried the- thing-to Mannon and placed it in the surgeon's hands, "but if you'll just listen for a minute and then do as I tell you..
Mannon was back at work in less than a minute.
Hesitantly at first, but then with growing confidence and speed, he resumed the delicate repair work. Occasionally he whistled through his teeth or swore luridly, but this was normal behavior for Mannon during a difficult op which was promising to go well. In the observation blister Conway could see the happily scowling, baffled face of the Chief Psychologist and the fragile,. spidery body of the empath. Prilicla was still trembling, but very slowly. It was a type of reaction not often seen in a Cinrusskin off its native planet, indicating a nearby source of emotional radiation which was intense and altogether pleasant.


After the operation they had all wanted to question Harrison about Meatball, but before they could do so Conway had first to explain what had happened again to the Lieutenant.
"...And while we still have no idea what they look like," Conway was saying, "we do know that they are highly intelligent and in their own fashion technically advanced. By that I mean they fashion and use tools...
"Indeed yes," said Mannon dryly, and the thing in his hand became a metallic sphere, a miniature bust of Beethoven and a set of Tralthan dentures. Since it had become certain that the Hudlar would be another one of Mannon's successes rather than a failure he had begun to regain his sense of humor.
..... But the tool-making stage must have followed a long way after the development of the philosophical sciences," Conway went on. "The imagination boggles at the conditions in which they evolved. These tools are not designed for manual use, the natives may not possess hands as we know them. But they have minds...
Under the mental control of its owner the "tool" had cut a way into Descartes beside Harrison's station, but during the sudden takeoff it had been unable to get back and a new source of mental control, the Lieutenant, had unwittingly taken over. It had become the foothold which Harrison had needed so badly, only to give under his weight because it had not really been part of the ship's structure. When the attachments of Harrison's suit had been sterilized in the same room as the surgical instruments and when a nurse had come looking for a certain instrument for the theater, it again became what was wanted.
From then on there was confusion over instrument counts and falling scalpels which did not cut and sprayers which behaved oddly indeed, and Mannon had used a knife which had followed his mind instead of his hands, with near-fatal results for the patient. But the second time it happened Mannon knew that he was holding a small, unspecialized, all purpose tool which was subject to mental as well as manual control, and some of the shapes he had made it take and the things he had made it do would make Conway remember that operation for the rest of his life.
..... This. . . gadget.. . is probably of great value to its owner," Conway finished seriously. "By rights we should return it. But we need it here, many more of them if possible! Your people have got to make contact and set up trade relations. There's bound to be something we have or can do that they want. .
"I'd give my right arm for one," said Mannon, then added, grinning, "My right leg, anyway."
The Lieutenant returned his smile. He said, "As I remember the place, Doctor, there was no shortage of raw meat."
O'Mara, who had been unusually silent until then, said very seriously, "Normally I am not a covetous man. But consider the things this hospital could do with just ten of those things, or even five. We have one and, if we were doing the right thing, we would put it back where we found it- obviously a tool like this is of enormous value. This means that we will have to buy or conduct some form of trade for them, and to do this we must first learn to communicate with their owners."
He looked at each of them in turn, then went on sardonically. "One hesitates to mention such sordid commercial matters to pure-minded, dedicated medical men like yourselves, but I must do so to explain why, when Descartes eventually makes contact with the beings who use the tools, I want Conway and whoever else he may select to investigate the medical situation on Meatball.
"Our interest will not be entirely commercial, however," he added quickly, "but it seems to me that if we have to go in for the practice of barter and exchange, the only thing we have to trade is our medical knowledge and facilities."

VERTIGO


It was perhaps inevitable that when the long-awaited indication of intelligent life at last appeared the majority of the ship's observers were looking somewhere else, that it did not appear in the batteries of telescopes that were being trained on the surface or on the still and cine films being taken by Descartes' planetary probes, but on the vessel's close approach radar screens.
In Descartes' control room the Captain jabbed a button on his console and said sharply, "Communications...
"We have it, sir," came the reply. "A telescope locked onto the radar bearing-the image is on your repeater screen Five. It is a two- or three stage chemically fueled vehicle with the second stage still firing. This means we will be able to reconstruct its flight path and pinpoint the launch area with fair accuracy. It is emitting complex patterns of radio frequency radiation indicative of high-speed telemetry channels. The second stage has just cut out and is falling away. The third stage, if it is a third stage, has not ignited. . . It's in trouble!"
The alien spacecraft, a slim, shining cylinder pointed at one end and thickened and blunt at the other, had begun to tumble. Slowly at first but with steadily increasing speed it swung and whirled end over end.
"Ordnance?" asked the Captain.