Conway stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Mannon, without turning round. “It’s just that I’m beginning to understand why you want to go down there.”
“But I told you why!” said Conway impatiently. He stamped out, telling himself angrily that Mannon was indulging in senseless conversation at a time when unnecessary talk of any kind was criminal. Then he wondered if the aging Dr. Mannon was tired, or had a particularly confusing tape riding him, and felt suddenly ashamed. Snapping at Skempton or the receptionists hadn’t worried him unduly, but he did not want to begin biting the heads off his friends-even if he was harassed and tired and the whole place was rapidly going to Hell on horseback. Then very soon he was being kept too busy to feel ashamed.
Three hours later the state of confusion around him seemed to have doubled, although in actual fact it was simply that twice as much was being accomplished twice as fast. From his position at one of the high level entrances to the main AUGL ward Conway could look down on a line of ELNTs-six-legged, crab-like entities from Melf IV-scuttling or being towed across the floor of the great tank. Unlike their amphibious patients, the thickly-furred, air breathing Kelgians attending them had to wear protective envelopes which were sweltering hot inside. The scraps of Translated conversation which drifted up to him, although necessarily emotionless, verged on the incandescent. But the work was being done, and much faster than Conway had ever hoped for.
In the corridor behind him a slow procession of Illensans, some in protective suits and the more seriously ill in pressure tents which enclosed their beds, moved past. They were being attended by Earth-human and Kelgian nurses. The transfer was going smoothly now, but there had been a time only half an hour back when Conway had wondered if it would go at all…
When the large pressure tents came through into the water-filled AUGL section they had risen like giant chlorine bubbles and stuck fast against the ceiling. Towing them along the corridor ceiling had been impossible because outgrowths of plumbing might have ruptured the thin envelopes, and getting five or six nurses to weigh them down was impractical. And when he brought in powered stretcher carriers from the level above-vehicles not designed for but theoretically capable of operating under water-with the idea of both holding his super-buoyant patients down and moving them quickly, a battery casing had split and the carrier became the center of a mass of hissing, bubbling water which had rapidly turned black.
Conway would not be surprised to hear that the patient on that particular carrier had a relapse.
He had solved the problem finally with a magnificent flash of inspiration which, he told himself disgustedly, should have come two seconds after he had seen the problem. He had quickly switched the artificial gravity grids in the corridor to zero attraction and in the weightless condition the pressure tents had lost their buoyancy. It meant that the nurses had to swim instead of walk with their patients, but that was a small thing.
It was during the transfer of these PVSJs that Conway learned the reason for Mannon’s “Harrumph” up in Reception-Murchison was one of the nurses on that duty. She hadn’t recognized him, of course, but he knew there was only one person who could fill a nurse’s lightweight suit the way she did. He didn’t speak to her, however-it didn’t seem to be the proper time or place.
Time passed rapidly without another major crisis developing. At Lock Five the Kelgian hospital ship was ready to go, waiting only for some of the hospital’s senior staff to go aboard and for a Monitor ship to escort them out to a safe jump distance. Remembering some of the beings who were scheduled to leave on that ship, many of them friends of long standing, Conway decided the chance offered by the quiet spell to say a quick good-bye to some of them. He called Mannon to tell him where he was going, then headed for Five.
But by the time he arrived the Kelgian ship had gone. In one of the big direction vision panels he could see it drawing away with a Monitor cruiser in close attendance; and beyond them, hanging like newly-formed constellations in the blackness, lay the Monitor defense fleet. The buildup of units around the hospital was proceeding as planned and had increased visibly since Conway had looked at it yesterday. Reassured, and not a little awed by the sight, he hurried back to the AUGL section.