She heard them talking with a third person in the corridor, but the words were
too muffled for translation. Then the door opened and another Earth-human
entered. It was wearing the dark-green uniform of the Monitor Corps and looked
familiar.
Cheerfully it said, “I’ve been waiting outside in case they couldn’t talk you
into leaving, and O’Mara was pretty sure they wouldn’t. I’m Timmins, in case you
don’t remember me. We have to have a long talk.
“And before you ask,” it went on, “the doghouse, so far as you’re concerned, is
the Maintenance Department.”
Chapter 9
It was obvious from the beginning that Lieutenant Timmins did not consider its
job to be either servile or menial, and it was not long before the Lieutenant
had her beginning to feel the same way. It wasn’t just the Earth-human’s quiet
enthusiasm for its job, there was also the portable viewer and set of study
tapes it had left at her bedside that convinced her that this was work
forIwarriors—although not, of course, for warrior-surgeons. The wide-ranging and
complex problems of providing technical and environmental support for the
sixty-odd— some of them very odd indeed—life-forms comprising the hospital’s
patients and staff made her earlier medical and physiological studies seem easy
by comparison.
Her last formal contact with the training program was when Cresk-Sar arrived,
carried out a brief but thorough examination, and, subject to the findings of
the eye specialist, Doctor Yeppha, who would be visiting her shortly, pronounced
her physically fit to begin the new duties. She asked if there would be any
objection to her continuing to view the medical teaching channels in her free
time, and the Senior Physician told her that she could watch whatever she
pleased in her spare time, but it was unlikely that she would ever be able to
put any of the medical knowledge gained into practice.
It ended by saying that while it was relieved that she was no longer the
Training Department’s responsibility, it was sorry to lose her and that it
joined her erstwhile colleagues in wishing her success and personal satisfaction
in the new work she had chosen.
Doctor Yeppha was a new life-form to her experience, a small, tripedal, fragile
being that she classified as DRVJ. From the furry dome of its head there
sprouted, singly and in small clusters, at least twenty eyes. She wondered
whether the overabundance of visual sensors had any bearing on its choice of
specialty, but thought it better not to ask.
“Good morning, Cha Thrat,” it said, taking a tape from the pouch at its waist
and pushing it into the viewer. “This is a visual acuity test designed primarily
to check for color blindness. We don’t care if you have muscles like a Hudlar or
a Cinrusskin, there are ma-cniiies lu uu me icaiiy ncavy worn., oui you nave 10
oe able to see. Not only that, you must be able to clearly identify colors and
the subtle shades and dilution of color brought about by changes in the
intensity of the ambient lighting. What do you see there?”
“A circle made up of red spots,” Cha Thrat replied, “enclosing a star of green
and blue spots.”
“Good,” Yeppha said. “I am making this sound much simpler than it really is, but
you will learn the complexities in time. The service bays and interconnecting
tunnels are filled with cable looms and plumbing all of which is color coded.
This enables the maintenance people to tell at a glance which are power cables
and which the , less dangerous communication lines, or which pipes carry oxygen,
chlorine, methane, or organic effluvia. The danger of contamination of wards by
other-species atmospheres is always present, and such an environmental
catastrophe should not be allowed to occur because some partially sighted
nincompoop has connected up the wrong set of pipes. What do you see now?”
And so it went on, with Yeppha putting designs in subtly graduated colors on the
screen and Cha Thrat telling it what she saw or did not see. Finally the DRVJ
turned off the viewer and replaced the tape in its pouch.
“You don’t have as many eyes as I do,” it said, “but they all work. There is no