More than any other entity in Conway’s experience, Khone knew how to ignore people.
All at once his hands were no longer shaking and the alien babel within his mind had quieted to an insistent murmur which he could choose to ignore. He tapped the Melfan assisting Hossantir sharply on its carapace.
“Please withdraw and leave your instruments in position,” he said. To the Tralthan Senior he added, “The bleeding is obscuring everything in the operative field, including the magnifiers and light sources of the instruments and, if we approach closely, our visors. We must…
“Suction isn’t working, Conway,” Hossantir broke in, “and won’t until the flow has been checked at source. But we can’t see the source!”
….. Use the scanners,” Conway continued quietly, enclosing the tiny, hollow-coned handles of the Melfan clamp with his Earthhuman fingers, “in conjunction with my hands and your eyes.
Since normal vision was useless because of his helmet’s close proximity to the spray from the wound, Conway’s idea was that Hossantir use two scanners angled so as to bear on the operative field from two viewpoints as far apart as possible. This would give an accurate stereoscopic picture of what was happening which the Senior could describe for him and guide the movements of his clamp. He would be operating blind, but only long enough to find and seal off the bleeder, after which the operation would proceed in the normal way. It would be a very uncomfortable few minutes for Hossantir, two of whose four eyes would be extended laterally to the limits of its flattened, ovoid helmet. It would also have to withdraw temporarily from the operation, Conway told it apologetically, so that its scanners and helmet would not be affected by the spray.
“This could give me a permanent squint,” Hossantir said, “but no matter.”
None of his alter egos saw anything funny in the idea of a great, elephantine Tralthan with a squint in two of its widely extensible eyes. Fortunately, a smothered Earth-human laugh was not translatable.
His hands and the instruments felt heavy and awkward, and not just because he was using Melfan clamps. The gravity nullification field surrounding him did not, of necessity, extend to the patient, so that everything at the operating site weighed four times heavier than normal. But the Tralthan used its scanners to guide him verbally to the blood vessel which had to be origin of the massive hemorrhaging, and considering the elevated blood pressure of the Hudlar life-form, he expected to feel resistance as he clamped it off.
There was none, and the bleeding continued with undiminished force.
One of his alter egos had encountered something like this situation during a transplant on an entirely different life-form, a diminutive Nidian whose blood pressure had been only a fraction of that of this Hudlar. On that occasion the blood flow had also been a fine spray rather than the pulsing stream characteristic of arterial bleeding, and the trouble had been due to a mechanical failure rather than to faulty surgical technique.
Conway was not sure if that was the problem here, but a part of his multiple mind felt sure, and he decided to trust that part.
“Stop the artificial heart,” he said firmly. “Cut off the blood supply to the area.
“We can easily make good the blood loss,” Hossantir objected, “but cutting off circulation for more than a few minutes could kill the patient.”
“Do it now,” Conway said.
Within a few seconds the bright red spray had subsided and died. A nurse cleaned Conway’s visor while Hossantir used suction to clear the operative field. They did not need the scanners to see what had happened.
“Technician, quickly,” Conway said.
Before he had finished speaking there was a furry little Nidian, looking like a gift-wrapped teddy bear in its transparent OR suit, hovering beside his elbow.
“The nonreturn valve of the connector is jammed in the closed position,” the Nidian said in its staccato, barking speech. “This was caused, I would say, by the valve setting being altered accidentally when it was struck by one of the surgical instruments. The flow from the artificial heart has been blocked and was forcing its way out via the recess of the valve setting control, hence the fine, highpressure spray. The valve itself isn’t damaged, and if you will raise the organ so that I will have space to reset the valve…”