of Nidia and its offworld visitors looking on, and you made your point about
closer and more honest contact between species in a way that we are not going to
forget. You are heroes again and I think—no, damn it, I’m sure—that you have
only to ask and the Nidians will rescind their deportation order.”
“We’re going home,” MacEwan said firmly. “To Orligia and Earth.”
The Colonel looked even more embarrassed. He said, “I can understand your
feelings about this sudden change in attitude. But now the authorities are
grateful. Everybody, Nidians and offworlders alike, wants to interview you, and
you can be sure that your ideas will be listened to. But if you require some
form of public apology, I could arrange something.”
MacEwan shook his head. “We are leaving because we have |he answer to the
problem. We have found the area of common interest to which ail offworlders will
subscribe, a project in which they will gladly cooperate. The answer was obvious
all along but until today we were too stupid to see it.
“Implementing the solution,” he went on, smiling, “is not a job for two tired
old veterans who are beginning to bore People. It will take an organization like
your Monitor Corps
to coordinate the project, the technical resources of half a dozen planets, more
money than I can conceive of, and a very, very
long time—–”
As he continued, MacEwan was aware of excited movement among the members of the
video team who had stayed behind hoping for an interview with Grawlya-Ki and
himself. They would not get an interview but they were recording his final words
to the Colonel. And when the Orligian and the Earth-person turned to leave they
also got a not very interesting picture of the ranking Monitor Corps officer on
Nidia standing very still, with one arm bent double so that the hand was held
stiffly against the head. There was an odd brightness in the Earth-person’s eyes
and an expression on the pink, furless face which they were, naturally, unable
to read.
It took a very long time, much longer than the most generous estimates. The
original and relatively modest plans had to be continually extended because
scarcely a decade passed without several newly discovered 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