“I’ve got a gun,” said the Monitor.
Conway could not remember adjusting the firing controls, or even taking the weapon from the Monitor’s holster. It was in his hand and trained on the AACL below, and Conway felt sick and cold. But he had not given in to Williamson completely. Near at hand was a sprayer of the fast-setting plastic which, when used quickly enough, could sometimes save a person whose suit had been holed. Conway planned to wound the being, immobilize it, then re-seal its suit with cement. It would be a close thing and risky to himself, but he could not deliberately kill the being.
Carefully he brought his other hand up to steady the gun and took aim. He fired.
When he lowered it there was not much left except shredded twitching pieces of tentacles scattered all over the room. Conway wished now that he had known more about guns, known that this one shot explosive bullets, and that it had been set for continuous automatic fire…
Williamson’s lips were moving again. Conway touched helmets out of pure reflex. He was past caring about anything anymore.
It’s all right, Doctor,” the Monitor was saying. “It isn’t anybody..
“It isn’t anybody now,” Conway agreed. He went back to examining the Monitor’s gun and wished that it wasn’t empty. If there had been one bullet left, just one, he knew how he would have used it.
“It was hard, we know that,” said Major O’Mara. The rasp was no longer in his voice and the iron-gray eyes were soft with sympathy, and something akin to pride. “A doctor doesn’t have to make a decision like that usually until he’s older, more balanced, mature, if ever. You are, or were, just an over-idealistic kid-a bit on the smug and self-righteous side maybe-who didn’t even know what a Monitor really was.”
O’Mara smiled. His two big, hard hands rested on Conway’s shoulders in an oddly fatherly gesture. He went on, “Doing what you forced yourself to do could have ruined both your career and your mental stability. But it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to feel guilty about a thing. Everything’s all right.”
Conway wished dully that he had opened his face-plate and ended it all before those Engineers had swarmed into the gravity grid control room and carried Williamson and himself off to O’Mara. O’Mara must be mad. He, Conway, had violated the prime ethic of his profession and killed an intelligent being. Everything most definitely was not all right.
“Listen to me,” O’Mara said seriously. “The Communications boys managed to get a picture of the crashed ship’s control room, with the occupant in it, before it hit. The occupant was not your AACL, understand? It was an AMSO, one of the bigger life-forms who are in the habit of keeping a non-intelligent AACL-type creature as pets. Also, there are no AACLs listed in the hospital, so the beastie you killed was simply the equivalent of a fear-maddened dog in a protective suit.” O’Mara shook Conway’s shoulder until his head wobbled. “Now do you feel better?”
Conway felt himself coming alive again. He nodded wordlessly.
“You can go,” said O’Mara, smiling, “and catch up on your sleep. As for the reorientation talk, I’m afraid I haven’t the time to spare. Remind me about it sometime, if you still think you need it. .
During the fourteen hours in which Conway slept, the intake of wounded dropped to a manageable trickle, and news came that the war was over. Monitor engineers and maintenance men succeeded in clearing the wreckage and repairing the damaged outer hull. With pressure restored, the internal repair work proceeded rapidly, so that when Conway awoke and went in search of Dr. Mannon he found patients being moved into a section which only hours ago had been a dark, airless tangle of wreckage.
He tracked his superior down in a side ward off the main FGLI Casualty section. Mannon was working over a badly burned DBLF whose caterpillar-like body was dwarfed by a table which was designed to take the more massive Tralthan FGLIs. Two other DBLFs, under sedation, showed as white mounds on a similarly outsize bed against the wall, and another lay twitching slightly on a stretcher-carrier near the door.