The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 159
"We'll dispense with the Minutes of the last Meeting," Richard began formally, then opened his mind to all of them. Up until then the gang had been acting on orders, although from the things they had been doing they must have guessed what he intended, but now they knew. He gave them all the pieces of the puzzle and showed them how it fitted together.
The evasions of their parents, the overflowing toy stores and the computers which could direct a rocket to any spot in the world. A strangely uncomfortable deputy Santa—they must have had some kind of hold over him at the store—and secret caverns guarded by angry soldiers and storekeepers who were robbers. And juvenile delinquents, and a Santa Claus who couldn't be found because he must have run away and hidden himself because he was ashamed to face the children and tell them that all their toys had been stolen.
Obviously the juvenile delinquents had raided Santa's toy caverns and cleaned them out, leaving only big people's toys which the adults themselves no longer wanted—this explained why Santa's guards were so mad at everybody. Then the stolen toys had been sent to the store-keepers, who were probably in cahoots with the delinquents. It was as simple as that. Santa just would not be coming around this Christmas and nobody would get any toys, unless the gang did something about it
"... We're going to see that the children get something," Richard went on grimly. "But none of us is going to get what we asked for. There is no way of telling which one of all those hundreds of rockets is meant for any one of us. So we'll just have to take what comes. The only good thing is that we're going to make Christmas come three days early.
"All right, gang, let's get started."
Buster returned to the room where he had been given candy the night before, the room with the man who watched a screen with a white line going round on it. But he stayed hidden this time—he was merely acting as the gang's eyes. Then Mub and Loo, linked to the distant room through Buster and Richard's mind, began to move the grown-up who sat before the screen. More precisely they moved his hand and arm in the direction of the big red button.
But the grown-up didn't want to push the button and make blips. He struggled to pull back his hand so hard that Loo complained that it was hurting her head. Then they all got together—Liam, Greg, Buster and the girls—and concentrated. The man's finger started moving towards the button again and he began to shout to somebody on the radio. Then he drew his gun with the other hand and hit his arm with it, knocking it away from the button. He was being very, very naughty.
"Why don't we push the button," Greg asked suddenly, "instead of making the grown-up push it?"
Richard felt his face going red, he should have thought of that. Within a second the big red button drove down into the bottom of its socket.
THE EARLY Warning systems were efficient on both sides. Within three minutes all forty-seven missile bases had launched or were launching their rockets. It was an automatic process, there were no last-minute checks, the missiles being maintained in constant readiness. In those same three minutes orders went out to missile-carrying submarines to take up previously-assigned positions off enemy coasts, and giant bombers screamed away from airfields which expected total annihilation before the last one was off. Like two vast, opposing shoals of fish the missiles slid spacewards, their numbers thinned—but only slightly—by the suicidal frenzy of the anti-missiles. The shoals dispersed and curved groundwards again, dead on course, to strike dead on target. The casualty and damage reports began coming in.
Seventeen people injured by falling plaster or masonry; impact craters twenty feet across in the middle of city streets; tens of thousands of dollars and pounds and rubles worth of damage. It was not long before urgent messages were going out to recall the subs and bombers. Before anything else was tried the authorities had to know why every missile that had been sent against the enemy, and every missile that the enemy had sent against them, had failed to explode.
They also wanted to know who or what had been making rocket base personnel on both sides do and see things which they didn't want to. And why an examination of the dud missiles revealed the shattered and fused remains of train sets and toy six-shooters, and if this could have any possible connection with the robberies of large toy stores in such widely separate places as Salt Lake City, Irkutsk, Londonderry and Tokyo. Tentatively at first both sides came together to compare notes, their intense curiosity to know what the blazes, had happened being one thing they had in common. Later, of course, they discovered other things ...
That year Christmas came with the beginnings of a lasting peace on Earth, although six members of a young and very talented gang did not appreciate this. The toys which they had put in the noses of the rockets to replace the sparkly stuff—which they had dumped in the ocean because the grownups didn't want it—had failed to reach them. They had been worrying in case they had done something very wrong or been very bad. They couldn't have been very bad, however, because Santa came just as they had been told he would, on a sleigh with reindeer.
They were asleep at the time, though, and didn't see it.
The End
Field Hospital
Sector General
New Worlds – January / February / March 1962
Part 1
New Worlds – January 1962
Author James White expands the scope of his "Sector General" characters in this new novel of the giant hospital in space, as the Monitor Corp discover a distant world in urgent need of medical aid and Dr. Conway is sent to assess the requirements.
Chapter One
FAR OUT on the galactic Rim, where star systems were sparse and the darkness nearly absolute, Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space. In its three hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum ranging from the ultra-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. Its thousands of viewports were constantly ablaze with light—light in the dazzling variety of colour and intensity necessary for the visual equipment of its extra-terrestrial patients and staff—so that to approaching ships the great hospital looked like a tremendous, cylindrical Christmas Tree.
Sector General represented a two-fold miracle of engineering and psychology. Its supply and maintenance was handled by the Monitor Corps—the Federation's executive and law enforcement arm—who also saw to its administration, but the traditional friction between the military and civilian members of its staff did not occur. Neither were there any serious squabbles among its ten thousand-odd medical personnel, who were composed of over sixty different life-forms with sixty differing sets of mannerisms, body odours and ways of looking at life. Perhaps their one and only common denominator was the need of all doctors, regardless of size, shape, or number of legs, to cure the sick.
The staff of Sector General were a dedicated, but not always serious group of beings who were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life—had this not been so they would not have been there in the first place. And they prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless. Their advice or assistance was sought by medical authorities from all over the Galaxy. Pacifists all, they waged a constant, all-out war against suffering and disease whether it was in individuals or whole planetary populations.
But there were times when the diagnosis and treatment of a diseased interstellar culture, entailing the surgical removal of deeply-rooted prejudice and unsane moral values without either the patient's co-operation or consent could, despite the pacifism of the doctors concerned, lead to the waging of war. Period.
SENIOR Physician Conway sat uncomfortably in a very comfortable chair and watched the square, craggy features of the hospital's Chief Psychologist across an expanse of cluttered desk. Conway had been in Major O'Mara's office many times for re-assignment and to take physiology tapes, and he knew that being given the comfortable chair meant that O'Mara was feeling favourably disposed towards him, but a peremptory summons over the PA could mean anything.
"How would you like to get away from the hospital for a few months, Doctor?" O'Mara said suddenly, without looking up from the report he was studying. "It would be in the nature of a holiday, practically."
Conway felt his initial unease grow rapidly into panic. He had urgent personal reasons for not leaving the hospital for a few months. He said, "Well ..."
The psychologist raised his head and fixed Conway with a pair of level grey eyes which saw so much and which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave O'Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty. He said drily, "Don't bother to thank me, it is your own fault for curing such powerful influential patients."
He went on briskly, "This is a large assignment, Doctor, but it will consist mainly of clerical work. Normally it would be given to someone at Diagnostician level, but that EPLH, Lonvellin, has been at work on a planet which it says is urgently in need of medical aid. Lonvellin had requested Monitor Corps as well as hospital assistance in this, and has asked that you personally should direct the medical side. Apparently a Great Intellect isn't needed for the job, just one with a peculiar way of looking at things ..."
"You're too kind, sir," said Conway.
Grinning, O'Mara said, "I've told you before, I'm here to shrink heads, not inflate them. And now, this is the report on the situation there at the moment ..." He slid the file he had been reading across to Conway, and stood up. "... You can brief yourself on it when you board ship. Be at Lock Sixteen to board Vespasian at 2130, meanwhile I expect you have loose ends to tidy up. And Conway, try not to look as if all your relatives had died. Very probably she'll wait for you. If she doesn't, why you have two hundred and seventeen other female DBDGs to chase after. Good-bye and good luck, Doctor."
OUTSIDE O'Mara's office Conway tried to work out how best to tidy up his loose ends in the six hours remaining before embarkation time. He was scheduled to take a group of trainees through a basic orientation lecture in ten minutes from now, and it was too late to foist that job on to someone else. That would kill three of the six hours, four if he was unlucky and today he felt unlucky. Then an hour to tape instructions regarding his more serious ward patients, then dinner. He might just do it. Conway began hurrying towards Lock Seven on the one hundred and eighth level.
He arrived at the lock antechamber just as the inner seal was opening, and while catching his breath began mentally checking off the trainees who were filing past him. Two Kelgian DBLFs who undulated past like giant, silver-furred caterpillars; then a PVSJ from Illensa, the outlines of its spiny, membranous body softened by the chlorine fog inside its protective envelope; a water-breathing Creppelian octopoid, classification AMSL, whose suit made loud bubbling noises. These were followed by five AACPs, a race whose remote ancestors had been a species of mobile vegetable. They were slow moving, but the CO2 tanks which they wore seemed to be the only protection they needed. Then another Kelgian ...
WHEN THEY were all inside and the seal closed behind them Conway spoke. Quite unnecessarily and simply as a means of breaking the conversational ice, he said," Is everyone present?"
Inevitably they all replied in chorus, sending Conway's Translator into a howl of oscillation. Sighing, he began the customary procedure of introducing himself and bidding his new colleagues welcome. It was only at the end of these polite formalities that he worked in a gentle reminder regarding the operating principles of the Translator, and the advisability of speaking one at a time so as not to overload it.
On their home worlds these were all very important people, medically speaking. It was only at Sector General that they were new boys, and for some of them the transition from acknowledged master to lowly pupil might be difficult, so that large quantities of tact were necessary when handling them at this stage. Later, however, when they began to settle in, they could be bawled out for their mistakes like anyone else.
"I propose to start our tour at Reception," Conway went on, "where the problems of admittance and initial treatment are dealt with. Then, providing the environment does not require complex protective arrangements for ourselves and the patient's condition is not critical, we will visit the adjacent wards to observe examination procedures on newly-arrived patients. If anyone wants to ask questions at any time, feel free to do so.
"On the way to Reception," he continued, "we will use corridors which may be crowded. There is a complicated system of precedence governing the rights of way of junior and senior medical staff, a system which you will learn in time. But for the present there is just one simple rule to remember. If the being coming at you is bigger than you are, get out of its way."
He was about to add that no doctor in Sector General would deliberately trample a colleague to death, but thought better of it. A great many e-ts did not have a sense of humour and such a harmless pleasantry, if taken literally, could lead to endless complications. Instead he said, "Follow me, please."
Conway arranged for the five AACPs, who were the slowest-moving of the group, to follow himself and set the pace for the others. After them came the two Kelgians whose undulating gait was only slightly faster than the vegetable life-forms preceeding them. The chlorine breather came next and the Creppelian octopoid brought up the rear, the bubbling noise from its suit giving Conway an audible indication that his fifty-yard long tail was all in one piece.
Strung out as they were there was no point in Conway trying to talk, and they negotiated the first stage of the journey in silence—three ascending ramps and a couple of hundred yards of straight and angled corridors. The only person they met coming in the opposite direction was a Nidian wearing the arm-band of a two-year intern. Nidians averaged four feet in height so that nobody was in any danger of being trampled to death. They reached the internal lock which gave access to the water-breather's section.
In the adjoining dressing room Conway supervised the suiting-up of the two Kelgians, then climbed into a lightweight suit himself. The AACPs said that their vegetable metabolism enabled them to exist under water for long periods without protection. The Illensan was already sealed against the oxygen-laden air so that the equally poisonous water did not worry it. But the Creppelian was a water-breather and wanted to take its suit off—it had eight legs which badly needed stretching, it said. But Conway vetoed this on the grounds that it would only be in the water for fifteen minutes at most.
The lock opened into the main AUGL ward, a vast, shadowy tank of tepid green water two hundred feet deep and five hundred feet across. Conway quickly discovered that moving the trainees from the lock to the corridor entrance on the other side was like trying to drive a three dimensional herd of cattle through green glue. With the single exception of the Creppelian they all lost their sense of direction in the water within the first few minutes. Conway had to swim frantically around them, gesticulating and shouting directions, and despite the cooling and drying elements in his suit the interior soon became like an overheated turkish bath. Several times he lost his temper and directed his charges to a place other than the corridor entrance.
And during one particularly chaotic moment an AUGL patient—one of the forty-foot, armoured, fish-like natives of Chalderescol II—swam ponderously towards them. It closed to within five yards, causing a near panic-among the AACPs, said "Student!" and swam away again. Chalders were notoriously antisocial during convalescence, but the incident did not help Conway's temper any.
IT SEEMED much longer than fifteen minutes later when they were assembled in the corridor at the other side of the tank.
Conway said, "Three hundred yards along this corridor is the transfer lock into the oxygen section of Reception, which is the best place to see what is going on there. Those of you who are wearing protection against water only will remove their suits, the others will go straight through ..."
As he was swimming with them towards the lock the Creppelian said to one of the AACPs, "Ours is supposed to be filled with superheated stream, but you have to have done something very bad to be sent there." To which the AACP replied, "Our Hell is hot, too, but there is no moisture in it at all ..."
Conway had been about to apologise for losing his temper back in the tank, fearing that he might have hurt some sensitive extra-terrestrial feelings, but obviously they hadn't taken what he'd said very seriously.
Chapter Two
THROUGH the transparent wall of its observation gallery, Reception showed as a large, shadowy room containing three large control desks, only one of which was currently occupied. The being seated before it was another Nidian, a small, humanoid with seven-fingered hands and an overall coat of tight, curly red fur. Indicator lights on the desk showed that it had just made contact with a ship approaching the hospital.
Conway said, "Listen ..."
"Identify yourself, please," said the red teddy-bear in its staccato, barking speech—which was filtered through Conway's Translator as flat, toneless English and which came to the others as equally toneless Kelgian, Illensan or whatever. "Patient, visitor or staff, and species?"
"Pilot, with one passenger-patient aboard," came the reply. "Both human."
There was a short pause, then; "Give your physiological classification, please, or make full-vision contact," said the Nidian with a very Earth-human wink towards the watchers in the gallery. "All intelligent races refer to their own species as human and think of all others as being non-human. What you call yourself has no meaning so far as preparing accommodation for the patient is concerned ..."
