“For political reasons,” Stillman was saying as he loosened his kilt’s waistband to relieve the pressure on his recently expanded stomach, “the Monitor Corps does not refer to the Etlan conflict as a war. The idea of a fifty-world empire tucked away in a hitherto unexplored galactic sector opening undeclared hostilies on a totally unprepared Federation was, well, destabilizing to say the least, and had to be played down.
“There has been only one interstellar war,” he continued, “the one between Earth and Orligia, whose cessation brought about the formation of the Galactic Federation. Since then it has been generally accepted that interstellar warfare for economic or territorial gain is logistically and economically impossible. It costs too much and there are too many uninhabited planets just waiting for colonization. If the belligerent culture or its rulers were sufficiently demented to be motivated by hatred alone rather than the expectation of gain, their victim worlds could simply be detonated or otherwise rendered uninhabitable. But a culture does not develop the technology to get into space, much less to mount successful interstellar colonization projects, without learning the basic lessons of civilization, that is the ability to understand, cooperate, and live together in peace. So it was axiomatic that any new species we discovered that had an interstellar-travel capability had to be highly civilized as well as technically advanced.
“Where the Etlan Empire was concerned,” he went on, “the Monitor Corps had to consider the possibility that it was the exception to that rule. But until we were sure, everything possible was done to conceal the locations of the Federation worlds from them while we found out all we could about their culture and at the same time played down the true gravity of the threat. That is why we, as the Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, prefer to think of it as a large-scale police action …
“Doctor,” said Naydrad, its fur tufting into spikes of irritation, “with hundreds of armed ships dogfighting all around us and non-nuclear torpedoes blowing chunks out of the hospital’s outer hull, it felt like a war, not a riot! Were you there?”
“Yes,” said Stillman. In the quiet, serious tone of one who is recalling unpleasant memories, he went on, “I was the junior medic on Vespasian when she collided with that Etlan transport, and helped move the casualties into the hospital. When Conway, who was the senior surviving medic by that time, saw that I had escaped with only a few bruises, he told me that they were desperately short of staff and put me to work in an other-species ward somewhere. The hospital’s translation computer had been knocked out and trying to communicate was … Anyway, it might have felt like a war but officially it is recorded as a police operation involving organized and heavily armed lawbreakers.”
In the silence that followed, Hewlitt looked from Stillman to Murchison to Prilicla, who were all reacting in characteristic fashion to their memories of a terrible experience they had shared. He felt excluded, but for the first time in his life he was grateful for being an outsider.
Stillman gave an abrupt shake of his head and continued, “The trouble began when one of your ex-patients, a very high-powered entity called Lonvellin, discovered what it called Etla the Sick Planet …”
“I am familiar with the Lonvellin case,” Prilicla broke in. “It was the then Senior Physician Conway’s patient and I assisted with the emotional radiation readings while it was unconscious … .I’m sorry. Friend Stillman, please go on.
Following its discharge from Sector General, Lonvellin had boarded its private starship and resumed the interrupted search for a world, said to be in a hitherto unexplored section of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, about which it had heard some very disquieting rumors. In spite of its physiological classification of EPLH, its massive body and fearsome natural weaponry, Lonvellin was a highly intelligent, compulsively altruistic, extremely long-lived, and intensely independent being who made it very plain that it did not and probably never would need help from anyone in rectifying any nasty situation it might find because it had been curing ailing planetary cultures for the greater part of its very long life.
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