Alien Emergencies - James White [83]
“I’ll help you,” offered Murchison, “and with the ward medication stores downstairs. I’m not tired.”
“As you very well know,” said Conway as he opened the panel of the litter’s stowage compartment, “the proper term is ‘on the lower deck,’ not ‘downstairs.’ Are you trying to give the Captain the idea that you are ignorant in everything but your own specialty?”
Murchison laughed quietly. “He seems already to have formed that idea, judging by the insufferably patronizing way he talks, or rather lectures, to me.” She helped him roll out the litter, then added briskly: “Let’s inflate the envelope with an inert at triple Earth-normal pressure, just in case we get a heavy-gravity casualty this time. Then we can brew up a few likely atmospheres.”
Conway nodded and stepped back as the thin but immensely tough envelope ballooned outwards. Within a few seconds it had grown so taut that it resembled a thin, elongated glass dome enclosing the upper surface of the litter. The internal pressure indicator held steady.
“No leaks,” Conway reported, switching on the pump that would extract and recompress the inert gas in the envelope. “We’ll try the Illensan atmosphere next. Mask on, just in case.”
The base of the litter had a storage compartment in which were racked the basic surgical instruments, the glove extensions that would enable treatment to be carried out on a casualty without the doctor having to enter the envelope, and general-purpose filter masks for several different physiological types. He handed a mask to Murchison and donned one himself. “I still think you should try harder to give the impression that you are intelligent as well as beautiful.”
“Thank you, dear,” Murchison replied, her voice muffled by the mask. She watched Conway use the mixing controls for a moment, checking that the corrosive yellow fog that was slowly filling the envelope was, in fact, identical to the atmosphere used by the chlorine-breathing natives of Illensa.
“Ten, even five years ago, that may have been true,” she went on. “It was said that every time I put on a lightweight suit I upped the blood pressure, pulse and respiration rate of every non-geriatric male DBDG in the hospital. It was mostly you who said it, as I remember.”
“You still have that effect on Earth-human DBDGs, believe me,” said Conway, briefly offering his wrist so that she could check his pulse. “But you should concentrate on impressing the ship’s officers with your intellect; otherwise, I shall have too much competition and the Captain will consider you prejudicial to discipline. Or maybe we are being a bit too unfair to the Captain. I heard one of the officers talking about him, and it seems that he was one of the Monitor Corps’ top instructors and researchers in extraterrestrial engineering. When the special ambulance ship project was first proposed, the Cultural Contact people placed him first as their choice for ship commander.
“In some ways he reminds me of one of our Diagnosticians,” Conway went on, “with his head stuffed so full of facts that he can only communicate in short lectures. So far, Corps discipline, the respect due his rank and professional ability have enabled him to operate effectively without interpersonal communication in depth. But now he has to learn to talk to ordinary people—people, that is, who are not subordinates or fellow officers—and sometimes he does not do a very good job of it. But he is trying, however, and we must—”
“I seem to remember,” Murchison broke in, “a certain young and very new intern who was a lot like that. In fact, O’Mara still insists that this person prefers the company of his extraterrestrial colleagues to those of his own species.”
“With one notable exception,” Conway said smugly.
Murchison squeezed his arm affectionately and said that she could not react to that remark as she would have liked while wearing a mask and coveralls, and that it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on Conway’s checklist as time went on. But the high level of emotional radiation in the area was reduced suddenly