White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

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