Alien Emergencies - James White [132]
There was silence for a few minutes, then Reception said, “Use Entry Lock Nine into Level One Six Three, Rhabwar. Your traffic coding is Priority Red One. ETA?”
Fletcher looked across at his astrogator, and Lieutenant Dodds said, “Two hours, seven minutes, sir.”
“Wait,” Reception said.
There was another silence, much longer this time, before the voice returned. “Diagnostician Thornnastor wishes to discuss the patient’s condition and metabolic profile with Pathologist Murchison and yourself as soon as possible. Senior Physician Edanelt has been assigned to assist Thornnastor during the operation. Both require information on the type and extent of the EGCL’s injuries and want you to transmit surface and deep-scan pictures at once. Until otherwise instructed you are assigned to the Cinrusskin patient. As soon as possible Chief Psychologist O’Mara wants to talk to you about Prilicla.”
It promised to be a very busy two hours and seven minutes.
In Rhabwar’s forward viewscreen the hospital grew from a fuzzy smear of light against the stellar background until it seemed to fill all of space like a gigantic, cylindrical Christmas tree. Its thousands of viewports blazed with light in the dazzling variety of color and intensity necessary for the visual equipment of its patients and staff.
Within a few minutes of Rhabwar docking at Lock Nine, the EGCL and Prilicla had been moved into Operating Room Three and Ward Seven respectively on Level 163. Conway was not familiar with this particular level because it had still been in the process of conversion from the old FROB, FGLI, and ELNT medics’ quarters when he had been detached for ambulance ship duty. Now the Tralthans, Hudlars, and Melfans had more spacious accommodations and their old abode had become the emergency admission and treatment level for warm-blooded oxygen breathers, with its own operating theaters, intensive care units, observation and recovery wards, and a diet kitchen which could reproduce the staples of every known warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing race.
While Naydrad and Conway were transferring the EGCL casualty from the litter’s portable life-support and biosensor systems to those of the operating room, Thornnastor and Edanelt arrived.
Senior Physician Edanelt had been the natural if not the inevitable choice for this case. Not only was it one of the hospital’s top surgeons, the permanent possessor of four physiology tapes and, according to the grapevine, a being shortly to be elevated to Diagnostician status, the crablike Melfan’s physiological classification of ELNT was perhaps the closest of all the life-forms on the medical staff to that of the EGCL survivor—a vitally important factor when no physiology tape was available for the patient being treated. Where Thornnastor, the elephantine Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, was concerned there were no physical similarities to the patient at all, other than that they breathed the same air.
In spite of being a Tralthan FGLI and as such one of the more massive intelligent species in the Federation, Thornnastor was no mean surgeon itself. But on this case its primary responsibility was the rapid investigation of the survivor’s physiology and metabolism and, using its own vast experience in the field of e-t pathology together with the facilities available in its department, the synthesizing of the required medication which would include a safe anesthetic, coagulant, and tissue regenerative.
Edanelt and Conway had already discussed the case in detail on the way in, as had Murchison and her chief, Thornnastor. He knew that their initial efforts would be directed toward repairing the grosser structural damage, after which would come the extremely delicate, dangerous, and perhaps impossible operation to relieve the pressure on and repair the damage to the brain and adjacent organs caused by the extensive depressed fracturing of the carapace. At that stage the assistance of Prilicla and its wonderfully sensitive and precise empathic faculty would be required