“Yes, sir,” said Conway, rising quickly. At the door he paused. Later he was to wonder at his temerity in saying what he did to the Chief Psychologist, and decided that promotion must have gone to his head. As a parting shot he said exultantly, “I’ve got your lousy appendix. Kellerman took it out three years ago. He pickled it and put it up as a chess trophy. It’s on my bookcase…”
O’Mara’s only reaction was to incline his head, as if receiving a compliment.
Outside in the corridor Conway went to the nearest communicator and called Transport. He said, “This is Dr. Conway. I have an urgent outpatient case and need a tender. Also a nurse able to use an analyzer and with experience of fishing people out of wrecks, if possible. I’ll be at Admission Lock Eight in a few minutes. .
Conway made good time to the lock, all things considered. Once he had to flatten himself against a corridor wall as a Tralthan Diagnostician lumbered absently past on its six, elephantine feet, the diminutive and nearly mindless OTSB life-form which lived in symbiosis with it clinging to its leathery back. Conway didn’t mind giving way to a Diagnostician, and the Tralthan FGLI-OTSB combination were the finest surgeons in the Galaxy. Generally, however, the people he encountered-nurses of the DBLF classification mostly, and a few of the low-gravity, bird-like LSVOs-made way for him. Which showed what a very efficient grapevine the hospital possessed, because he was still wearing his old armband.
His swelling head was rapidly shrunk back to size by the entity waiting for him at Lock Eight. It was another of the furry, multi-pedal DBLF nurses, and it began hooting and whining immediately when he came into sight. The DBLF’s own language was unintelligible, but Conway’s Translator pack converted the sounds which it made-as it did all the other grunts, chirps and gobblings heard in the hospital-into English.
“I have been awaiting you for over seven minutes,” it said. “They told me this was an emergency, yet I find you ambling along as if you had all the time in the world. .
Like all Translated speech the words had been flat and strained free of all emotional content. So the DBLF could have been joking, or half joking, or even making a simple statement of fact as it saw them with no disrespect intended. Conway doubted the last very strongly, but knew that losing his temper at this stage would be futile.
He took a deep breath and said, “I might have shortened your waiting period if I had run all the way. But I am against running for the reason that undue haste in a being in my position gives a bad impression- people tend to think I am in a panic over something and so feel unsure of my capabilities. So for the record,” he ended dryly, “I wasn’t ambling, I was walking with a confident, unhurried tread.”
The sound which the DBLF made in reply was not Translatable.
Conway went through the boarding tube ahead of the nurse,, and seconds later they shot away from the lock. In the tender’s rear vision screen the sprawling mass of lights which was Sector General began to crawl together and shrink, and Conway started worrying.
This was not the first time he had been called to a wreck, and he knew the drill. But suddenly it was brought home to him that he would be solely responsible for what was to happen-he couldn’t scream for help if something went wrong. Not that he had ever done that, but it had been comforting to know that he could have done so if necessary. He had an urgent desire to share some of his newly-acquired responsibility with someone-Dr. Prilicla, for instance, the gentle, spidery, emotion sensitive who had been his assistant in the Nursery, or any of his other human and non-human colleagues.
During the trip to the wreck the DBLF, who told him that its name was Kursedd, tried Conway’s patience sorely. The nurse was completely without tact, and although Conway knew the reason for this failing, it was still a little hard to take.
As a race Kursedd’s species were not telepathic, but among themselves they could read each other’s thoughts with a high degree of accuracy by the observation of expression. With four extensible eyes, two hearing antenna, a coat of fur which could lie silky smooth or stick out in spikes like a newly-bathed dog, plus various other highly flexible and expressive features-all of which they had very little control over-it was understandable that this caterpillar-like race had never learned diplomacy. Invariably they said exactly what they thought, because to another member of their race those thoughts were already plain anyhow, so that saying something different would have been stupid.