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Contamination Crew
by Alan E. Nourse
(The following is taken from the files of the Medical Disciplinary Board, Hospital Earth,
from the preliminary hearings in re: The Profession vs. Samuel B. Jenkins, Physician; First Court
of Medical Affairs, final action pending.) COM COD S221VB73 VOROCHISLOV SECTOR; 4th GALACTIC
PERIOD 22, 2341 GENERAL SURVEY SHIP MERCY TO HOSPITAL EARTH
VIA: FASTEST POSSIBLE ROUTING, PRIORITY UNASSIGNED TO: Lucius Darby, Physician Grade I, Black
Service Director of Galactic Periphery Services, Hospital Earth
FROM: Samuel B. Jenkins, Physician Grade VI, Red Service General Practice Patrol Ship Lancet
(Attached GSS Mercy pro tem) SIR: The following communication is directed
to your attention in hopes that it may anticipate various charges which are certain to be placed
against me as a Physician of the Red Service upon the return of the General Survey Ship
Mercy to Hospital Earth (expected arrival four months from above date).
These charges will undoubtedly be preferred by one Turvold Neelsen, Physician Grade II
of the Black Service, and Commander of the Mercy on its current survey mission into the
Vorochislov Sector. Exactly what the charges will be I cannot say, since the Black Doctor
in question refuses either audience or communication with me at the present time; however, it seems
likely that treason, incompetence and mutinous insubordination will be among the milder complaints
registered. It is possible that even Malpractice might be added, so you can readily understand
the reasons for this statement— The following will also clarify my attached
request that the GSS Mercy, upon arrival in orbit around Hospital Earth, be met immediately
by a decontamination ship carrying a vat of hydrochloric acid, concentration 3.7%, measuring
no less than twenty by thirty by fifty feet, and that Quarantine officials be prepared
to place the entire crew of the Mercy under physical and psychiatric observation for a
period of no less than six weeks upon disembarkation. The facts, in brief, are as follows:
Three months ago, as crew of the General Practice Patrol Ship Lancet, my colleague Green Doctor
Wallace Stone and myself began investigating certain peculiar conditions existing on the
fourth planet of Mauki, Vorochislov Sector (Class I Medical Service Contract.) The entire
population of that planet was found to be suffering from a mass psychotic delusion of
rather spectacular proportions: namely, that they and their entire planet were in imminent
danger of being devoured, in toto, by an indestructible non-humanoid creature which they called a
hlorg. The Maukivi were insistent that a hlorg had already totally consumed a non-existent
outer planet in their system, and was now hard at work on neighboring Mauki V. It was
their morbid fear that Mauki IV was next on its list. No amount of reassurance could convince
them of the foolishness of these fears, although we exhausted our energy, our patience, and
our food and medical supplies in the effort. Ultimately we referred the matter to the Grey
Service, feeling confident that it was a psychiatric problem rather than medical or surgical. We
applied to the GSS Mercy to take us aboard to replenish our ship's supplies, and provide
us a much-needed recovery period. The Black Doctor in command approved our request and
brought us aboard. The trouble began two days later....
There were three classes of dirty words in use by the men who travelled the spaceways
back and forth from Hospital Earth. There were the words you seldom used in public,
but which were colorful and descriptive in private use.
Then there were the words which you seldom used even in private, but which effectively
relieved feelings when directed at mirrors, inanimate objects, and people who had just
left the room. Finally, there were the words that you just
didn't use, period. You knew they existed; you'd heard them used at one time or another,
but to hear them spoken out in plain Earth-English was enough to rock the most space-hardened
of the Galactic Pill Peddlers back on his well-worn heels.
Black Doctor Turvold Neelsen's Earth-English was spotty at best, but the word came through
without any possibility of misinterpretation. Red Doctor Sam Jenkins stared at the little
man and felt his face turning as scarlet as the lining of his uniform cape.
"But that's ridiculous!" he finally stammered. "Quite aside from the language you use to
suggest it." "Ah! So the word still has some punch left,
eh? At least you puppies bring something away from your Medical Training, even if it's only
taboos." The Black Doctor scowled across the desk at Jenkins' lanky figure. "But sometimes,
my good Doctor, it is better to face a fact than to wait for the fact to face you. Sometimes
we have to crawl out of our ivory towers for a minute or two—you know?"
Jenkins reddened again. He had never had any great love for physicians of the Black Service—who
did?—but he found himself disliking this short, blunt-spoken man even more cordially
than most. "Why implicate the Lancet?" he burst out. "You've landed the Mercy on plenty
of planets before we brought the Lancet aboard her—"
"But we did not have it with us before the Lancet came aboard, and we do have it now.
The implication is obvious. You have brought aboard a contaminant."
He'd said it again. Red Doctor Jenkins' face darkened. "The Green
Doctor and I have maintained the Lancet in perfect conformity with the Sterility Code.
We've taken every precaution on both landing and disembarking procedures. What's more,
we've spent the last three months on a planet with no mutually compatible flora or fauna.
From Hospital Earth viewpoint, Mauki IV is sterile. We made only the briefest check-stop
on Mauki V before joining you. It was a barren rock, but we decontaminated again after leaving.
If you have a—a contaminant on board your ship, sir, it didn't come from the Lancet.
And I won't be held responsible." It was strong language to use to a Black Doctor,
and Sam Jenkins knew it. There were doctors of the Green and Red Services who had spent
their professional lives on some god-forsaken planetoid at the edge of the Galaxy for saying
less. Red Doctor Sam Jenkins was too near the end of his Internship, too nearly ready
for his first Permanent Planetary Appointment with the rank, honor, and responsibility it
carried to lightly risk throwing it to the wind at this stage—
But a Red Doctor does not bring a contaminant aboard a survey ship, he thought doggedly,
no matter what the Black Doctor says— Neelsen looked at the young man slowly. Then
he shrugged. "Of course, I'm merely a pathologist. I realize that we know nothing of medicine,
nor of disease, nor of the manner in which disease is spread. All this is beyond our
scope. But perhaps you'll permit one simple question from a dull old man, just to humor
him." Jenkins looked at the floor. "I'm sorry, sir."
"Just so. You've had a very successful cruise this year with the Lancet, I understand."
Jenkins nodded. "A most successful cruise. Four planets elevated
from Class IV to Class II contracts, they tell me. Morua II elevated from Class VI to
Class I, with certain special riders. A plague-panic averted on Setman I, and a very complex virus-bacteria
symbiosis unravelled on Orb III. An illustrious record. You and your colleague from the Green
Service are hoping for a year's exemption from training, I imagine—" The Black Doctor
looked up sharply. "You searched your holds after leaving the Mauki planets, I presume?"
Jenkins blinked. "Why—no, sir. That is, we decontaminated according to—"
"I see. You didn't search your holds. I suppose you didn't notice your food supplies dwindling
at an alarming rate?" "No—" The Red Doctor hesitated. "Not really."
"Ah." The Black Doctor closed his eyes wearily and flipped an activator switch. The scanner
on the far wall buzzed into activity. It focussed on the rear storage hold of the Mercy where
the little Lancet was resting on its landing rack. "Look closely, Doctor."
At first Jenkins saw nothing. Then his eye caught a long, pink glistening strand lying
across the floor of the hold. The scanner picked up the strand, followed it to the place
where it emerged from a neat pencil-sized hole in the hull of the Lancet. The strand
snaked completely across the room and disappeared through another neat hole in the wall into
the next storage hold. Jenkins shook his head as the scanner flipped
back to the hole in the Lancet's hull. Even as he watched, the hole enlarged and a pink
blob began to emerge. The blob kept coming and coming until it rested soggily on the
edge of the hole. Then it teetered and fell splat on the floor.
"Friend of yours?" the Black Doctor asked casually.
It was a pink heap of jelly just big enough to fill a scrub bucket. It sat on the floor,
quivering noxiously. Then it sent out pseudopods in several directions, probing the metal floor.
After a few moments it began oozing along the strand of itself that lay on the floor,
and squeezed through the hole into the next hold.
"Ugh," said Sam Jenkins, feeling suddenly sick.
"The hydroponic tanks are in there," the Black Doctor said. "You've seen one of those before?"
"Not in person." Jenkins shook his head weakly. "Only pictures. It's a hlorg. We thought it
was only a Maukivi persecution fantasy." "This thing is growing pretty fast for a persecution
fantasy. We spotted it eight hours ago, demolishing what was left of your food supply. It's twice
as big now as it was then." "Well, we've got to get rid of it," said Jenkins,
suddenly coming to life. "Amen, Doctor."
"I'll get the survey crew alerted right away. We won't waste a minute. And my apologies."
Jenkins was hurrying for the door. "I'll get it cleared out of here fast."
"I do hope so," said the Black Doctor. "The thing makes me ill just to think about."
"I'll give you a clean-ship report in twenty-four hours," the Red Doctor said as confidently
as he could and beat a hasty retreat down the corridor. He was wishing fervently that
he felt as confident as he sounded. The Maukivi had described the hlorg in excruciating
detail. He and Green Doctor Stone had listened, and smiled sadly at each other, day after
day, marvelling at the fanciful delusion. Hlorgs, indeed! And such creatures to dream
up—eating, growing, devouring plant, animal and mineral without discrimination—
And the Maukivi had stoutly maintained that this hlorg of theirs was indestructible—
Green Doctor Wally Stone, true to his surgical calling, was a man of action.
"You mean there is such a thing?" he exploded when his partner confronted him with the news.
"For real? Not just somebody's pipe dream?" "There is," said Jenkins, "and we've got it.
Here. On board the Mercy. It's eating like hell-and-gone and doubling its size every
eight hours." "Well what are you waiting for? Toss it overboard!"
"Fine! And what happens to the next party it happens to land on? We're supposed to be
altruists, remember? We're supposed to worry about the health of the Galaxy." Jenkins shook
his head. "Whatever we do with it, we have to find out just what we're tossing before
we toss." The creature had made itself at home aboard
the Mercy. In the spirit of uninvited guests since time immemorial, it had established
a toehold with remarkable asperity, and now was digging in for the long winter. Drawn
to the hydroponic tanks like a flea to a dog, the hlorg had settled its bulbous pink body
down in their murky depths with a contented gurgle. As it grew larger the tank-levels
grew lower, the broth clearer. The fact that the twenty-five crewmen of the
Mercy depended on those tanks for their food supply on the four-month run back to Hospital
Earth didn't seem to bother the hlorg a bit. It just sank down wetly and began to eat.
Under Jenkins' whip hand, and with Green Doctor Stone's assistance, the Survey Crew snapped
into action. Survey was the soul and lifeblood of the medical services supplied by Hospital
Earth to the inhabited planets of the Galaxy. Centuries before, during the era of exploration,
every Earth ship had carried a rudimentary Survey Crew—a physiologist, a biochemist,
an immunologist, a physician—to determine the safety of landings on unknown planets.
Other races were more advanced in technological and physical sciences, in sales or in merchandising—but
in the biological sciences men of Earth stood unexcelled in the Galaxy. It was not surprising
that their casual offerings of medical services wherever their ships touched had led to a
growing demand for those services, until the first Medical Service Contract with Deneb
III had formalized the planetary specialty. Earth had become Hospital Earth, physician
to a Galaxy, surgeon to a thousand worlds, midwife to those susceptible to midwifery
and psychiatrist to those whose inner lives zigged when their outer lives zagged.
In the early days it had been a haphazard arrangement; but gradually distinct Services
appeared to handle problems of medicine, surgery, radiology, psychiatry and all the other functions
of a well-appointed medical service. Under the direction of the Black Service of Pathology,
Hospital ships and Survey ships were dispatched to serve as bases for the tiny General Practice
Patrol ships that answered the calls of the planets under Contract.
But it was the Survey ships that did the basic dirty-work on any new planet taken under Contract—outlining
the physiological and biochemical aspects of the races involved, studying their disease
patterns, their immunological types, their susceptibility to medical, surgical, or psychiatric
treatment. It was an exacting service to perform, and Survey did an exacting job.
Now, with their own home base invaded by a hungry pink jelly-blob, the Survey Crew of
the Mercy dug in with all fours to find a way to exorcise it.
The early returns were not encouraging. Bowman, the anatomist, spent six hours with
the creature. He'd go after the functional anatomy first, he thought, as he approached
the task with gusto. Special organs, vital organ systems—after all, every Achilles
had his heel. Functional would spot it if anything would—
Six hours later he rendered a preliminary report. It consisted of a blank sheet of paper
and an expression of wild frustration. "What's this supposed to mean?" Jenkins asked.
"Just what it says." "But it says nothing!"
"That's exactly what it means." Bowman was a thin, wistful-looking man with a hawk nose
and a little brown mustache. He subbed as ship's cook when things were slow in his specialty.
He wasn't a very good cook, but what could anyone do with the sludge from the harvest
shelf of a hydroponic tank? Now, with the hlorg incumbent, there wasn't even any sludge.
"I drained off a tank and got a good look at it before it crawled over into the next
one," Bowman said. "Ugly ***. But from a strictly anatomical standpoint I can't help
you a bit." Green Doctor Stone glowered over Jenkins'
shoulder at the man. "But surely you can give us something."
Bowman shrugged. "You want it technical?" "Any way you like."
"Your hlorg is an ideal anamorph. A nothing. Protoplasm, just protoplasm."
Jenkins looked up sharply. "What about his cellular organization?"
"No cells," said Bowman. "Unless they're sub-microscopic, and I'd need an electron-peeker to tell you
that." "No organ systems?"
"Not even an integument. You saw how slippery he looked? That's why. There's nothing holding
him in but energy." "Now, look," said Stone. "He eats, doesn't
he? He must have waste materials of some sort." Bowman shook his head unhappily. "Sorry. No
urates. No nitrates. No CO2. Anyway, he doesn't eat because he has nothing to eat with. He
absorbs. And that includes the lining of the tanks, which he seems to like as much as the
contents. He doesn't bore those holes he makes—he dissolves them."
They sent Bowman back to quarters for a hot bath and a shot of Happy-O and looked up Hrunta,
the biochemist. Hrunta was glaring at paper electrophoretic
patterns and pulling out chunks of hair around his bald spot. He gave them a snarl and shoved
a sheaf of papers into their hands. "Metabolic survey?" Jenkins asked.
"Plus," said Hrunta. "You're not going to like it, either."
"Why not? If it grows, it metabolizes. If it metabolizes, we can kill it. Axiom number
seventeen, paragraph number four." "Oh, it metabolizes, all right, but you'd
better find yourself another axiom, pretty quick."
"Why?" "Because it not only metabolizes, it consumes.
There's no sign of the usual protein-carbohydrate-fat metabolism going on here. This baby has an
enzyme system that's straight from hell. It bypasses the usual metabolic activities that
produce heat and energy and gets right down to basic-basic."
Jenkins swallowed. "What do you mean?" "It attacks the nuclear structure of whatever
matter the creature comes in contact with. There's a partial mass-energy conversion in
its rawest form. The creature goes after carbon-bearing substances first, since the C seems to break
down more easily than anything else—hence its preference for plant and animal material
over non-C stuff. But it can use anything if it has to—"
Jenkins stared at the little biochemist, an image in his mind of the pink creature in
the hold, growing larger by the minute as it ate its way through the hydroponics, through
the dry stores, through— "Is there anything it can't use?"
"If there is, I haven't found it," Hrunta said sadly. "In fact, I can't see any reason
why it couldn't consume this ship and everything in it, right down to the last rivet—"
They walked down to the hold for another look at their uninvited guest, and almost wished
they hadn't. It had reached the size of a small hippopotamus,
although the resemblance ended there. Twenty hours had elapsed since the survey had begun.
The hlorg had used every minute of it, draining the tanks, engulfing dry stores, devouring
walls and floors as it spread out in search of food, leaving trails of eroded metal wherever
it went. It was ugly—ugly in its pink shapelessness,
ugly in its slimy half-sentient movements, in its very purposefulness. But its ugliness
went even deeper, stirring primordial feelings of revulsion and loathing in their minds as
they watched it oozing implacably across the hold to another dry-storage bin.
Wally Stone shuddered. "It's grown." "Too fast. Bowman charts it as geometric progression."
Stone scratched his jaw as a lone pink pseudopod pushed out on the floor toward him. Then he
leaped forward and stamped on it, severing the strand from the body.
The severed member quivered and lay still for a moment. Then it flowed back to rejoin
the body with a wet gurgle. Stone looked at his half-dissolved shoe.
"Egotropism," Jenkins said. "Bowman played around with that, too. A severed piece will
rejoin if it can. If it can't it just takes up independent residence and we have two hlorgs."
"What happens to it outside the ship?" Stone wanted to know.
"It falls dormant for several hours, and then splits up into a thousand independent chunks.
One of the boys spent half of yesterday out there gathering them up. I tell you, this
thing is equipped to survive." "So are we," said Green Doctor Stone grimly.
"If we can't outwit this free-flowing gob of obscenity, we deserve anything we get.
Let's have a conference." They met in the pilot room. The Black Doctor
was there; so were Bowman and Hrunta. Chambers, the physiologist, was glumly clasping and
unclasping his hands in a corner. The geneticist, Piccione, drew symbols on a scratch pad and
stared blankly at the wall. Jenkins was saying: "Of course, these are
only preliminary reports, but they serve to outline the problem. This is not just an annoyance
any longer, it's a crisis. We'd all better understand that."
The Black Doctor cut him off with a wave of his hand, and glowered at the papers as he
read them through minutely. As he sat hunched at the desk with the black cowl of his office
hanging down from his shoulders he looked like a squat black judge, Jenkins thought,
a shadow from the Inquisition, a Passer of Spells. But there was no medievalism in Black
Doctor Neelsen. In fact, it was for that reason, and only that reason, that the Black Service
had come to be the leaders and the whips, the executors and directors of all the manifold
operations of Hospital Earth. The physicians of the General Practice Patrol
were fledglings, newly trained in their specialties, inexperienced in the rigorous discipline of
medicine that was required of the directors of permanent Planetary Dispensaries in the
heavily populated systems of the Galaxy. On outlying worlds where little was known of
the ways of medicine, the temptation was great to substitute faith for knowledge, cant for
investigation, nonsense rituals for hard work. But the physicians of the Black Service were
always waiting to jerk wandering neophytes back to the scientific disciplines that made
the service of Hospital Earth so effective. The Black Doctors would not tolerate sloppiness.
"Show me the tissue, Doctor," they would say. "Prove to me that what you say is so. Prove
that what you did was valid medicine...." Their laboratories were the morgues and autopsy
rooms of a thousand planets, the Temples of Truth from which no physician since the days
of Pasteur and Lister could escape for long and retain his position.
The Black Doctors were the pragmatists, the gadflies of Hospital Earth.
For this reason it was surprising to hear Black Doctor Neelsen saying, "Perhaps we are
being too scientific, just now. When the creature has exhausted our food stores, it will look
elsewhere for food. Perhaps we must cut at the tree and not at the root."
"A frontal attack?" said Jenkins. "Just so. Its enzyme system is its vulnerability.
Enzyme systems operate under specific optimum conditions, right? And every known enzyme
system can be inactivated by adverse conditions of one sort or another. A physical approach
may tell us how in this case. Meanwhile we will be on emergency rations, and hope that
we don't starve to death finding out." The Black Doctor paused, looking at the men around
him. "And in case you are thinking of enlisting help from outside, forget it. I've sent plague-warnings
out for Galactic relay. We have this thing isolated, and we're going to keep it that
way as long as I command this ship." They went gloomily back to their laboratories
to plan their frontal attack. That was the night that Hrunta disappeared.
He was gone when they came to wake him from his sleep period. His bunk had been slept
in, but he wasn't in it. In fact, he wasn't anywhere on the ship.
"But he couldn't just vanish!" the Black Doctor burst out when they told him the news. "Maybe
he's hiding somewhere. Maybe this business was working on his mind."
Green Doctor Stone took a crew of men to search the ship again, even though he considered
it a waste of precious time. He had his private convictions about where Hrunta had gone.
So did every other man on the ship, including Jenkins.
The hlorg had stopped eating. Huge and round and wet and ugly, it squatted in the after-hold,
quivering gently, without any other sign of life.
Surfeited. Like a fat man after a turkey dinner. Jenkins reviewed progress with the others.
No stone had been left unturned. They had sliced the hlorg, and squeezed it. They had
boiled it and frozen it. They had dropped chunks of it in acid vats and covered other
chunks with desiccants and alkalis. Nothing seemed to bother it.
A cold environment slowed down its activity, true, but it also stimulated the process of
fission. Warmed up again, the portions sucked back together again and resumed eating.
Heat was a little more effective, but not much. It stunned the creature for a brief
period, but it would not burn. It hissed frightfully and gave off an overpowering stench, and curled
up at the edges, but as soon as the heat was turned off it began to recover.
In Hrunta's lab chunks of the hlorg sat in a dozen vats on tables and in sinks. Some
contained antibiotics, some concentrated acids, some desiccants. In each vat a blob of pink
protoplasm wiggled happily, showing no sign of discomfiture. On another table were the
remains of Hrunta's (unsuccessful) attempt to prepare an anti-hlorg serum.
But no Hrunta. "He was down there with the thing all day,"
Bowman said sadly. "He felt it was his responsibility, really. Hrunta thought biochemistry was the
answer to all things, of course. Very conscientious man."
"But he was in bed." "He claimed he did his best thinking in bed.
Maybe he had a brainstorm and went down to try it out, and—"
"Yes." Jenkins nodded sourly. "And." He walked down the row of vats. "You'd think that at
least concentrated sulphuric would dessicate it a little. But it's just formed a crust
of coagulated protein around itself, and sits there—"
Bowman peered over his shoulder, his mustache twitching. "But it does dessicate."
"If you use enough long enough." "How about concentrated hydrochloric?"
"Same thing. Maybe a little more effective, but not enough to count."
"Okay. Next we try combinations. There's got to be something the wretched beast can't tolerate—"
There was, of course. Green Doctor Stone brought it to Jenkins as
he was getting ready to turn in for a sleep period. Jenkins had checked to make sure double
guards were posted in the hlorg's vicinity, and jolted them with Sleep-Not to keep them
on their toes. All the same, he tied a length of stout cord around his ankle just to make
sure he didn't do any sleepwalking. He was tying it to the bunk when Stone came in with
a pan in his hand and a peculiar look on his face.
"Take a look at this," he said. Jenkins looked at the sickly brown mass in
the tray, and then up at Stone. "Where did you find it?"
"Down in the hold. Our hlorg has broken precedent. It's rejected something that it ate."
"Yeah. What is it?" "I don't know. I'm taking it to Neelsen for
paraffin sections. But I know what it looks like to me."
"Mm. I know." Jenkins felt sick. Stone headed up to the path lab, leaving the Red Doctor
settled in his bunk. Ten minutes later Jenkins sat bolt upright
in the darkness. Frantically he untied himself and slid into his clothes. "Idiot!" he growled
to himself. "Seventh son of a seventh son—" Five minutes later he was staring at the vats
in Hrunta's laboratory. He found the one he was looking for. A pink blob of hlorg wiggled
slowly around the bottom. Jenkins drew a beaker of distilled water and
added it to the fluid in the vat. It hissed and sputtered and sent up quantities of acrid
steam. When the steam had cleared away, Jenkins peered in eagerly.
The pink thing in the bottom was turning a sickly violet. It had quit wiggling. As Jenkins
watched, the violet color changed to mud grey, then to black. He prodded it with a stirring
rod. There was no response. With a whoop Jenkins buzzed Bowman and Stone.
"We've got it!" he shouted to them when they appeared. "Look! Look at it!"
Bowman poked and probed and broke into a wide grin. The piece of hlorg was truly and sincerely
dead. "It inactivates the enzyme system, and renders the base protoplasm vulnerable to
anything that normally attacks it. What are we waiting for?"
They began tearing the laboratory apart, searching for the right bottles. The supply was discouragingly
small, but there was some in stock. The three of them raced down the corridor for the hold
where the hlorg was. It took them three hours of angry work to
exhaust the supply. They whittled chunks off the hlorg, tossed them in pans of the deadly
fluid. With each slice they stopped momentarily to watch it turn violet, then black, as it
died. The hlorg, dwindling in size, sensed the attack and slapped frantically at their
ankles, sending out angry plumes of wet jelly, but they ducked and dodged and whittled some
more. The hlorg quivered and gurgled and wept pinkish goo all over the floor, but it grew
smaller and weaker with every whack. "Hrunta must have spotted it and come down
here alone," Jenkins panted between slices. "Maybe he slipped, lost his footing, I don't
know—" They continued to work until the supply was
exhausted. They had reduced the hlorg to a quarter its previous size. "Check the other
labs, see if they have some more," said Stone. "I already have," Bowman said. "They don't.
This is it." "But we haven't got it all killed. There's
still—" He pointed to the thing quailing in the corner.
"I know. We're licked, that's all. There isn't any more of the stuff on the ship."
They stopped and looked at each other suddenly. Then Jenkins said: "Oh, yes there is."
There was silence. Bowman looked at Stone, and Stone looked at Bowman. They both looked
at Jenkins. "Oh, no. Sorry. I decline." Stone shook his head slowly.
"But we have to! There's no other way. If the enzyme system is inactivated, it's just
protoplasm—there's no physiological or biochemical reason—"
"You know what you can do with your physiology and biochemistry," Bowman said succinctly.
"You can also count me out." He left them and the hatchway clanged after him.
"Wally?" "Yeah."
"It'll be months before we get back to Hospital Earth. We know how we can hold it in check
until we get there." "Yeah."
"Well?" Green Doctor Wally Stone sighed. "Greater
love hath no man," he said wearily. "We'd better go tell Neelsen, I guess."
Black Doctor Turvold Neelsen's answer was a flat, unequivocal no. "It's monstrous and
preposterous. I won't stand for it. Nobody will stand for it."
"But you have the proof in your own hands," Jenkins said. "You saw the specimen that the
Green Doctor brought you." Neelsen hunched back angrily. "I saw it."
"And your impression of it? As a pathologist?" "I fail to see how my impression applies one
way or the other—" "Doctor, sometimes we have to face facts.
Remember?" "All right." Neelsen seemed to curl up into
himself still further. "The specimen was stomach." "Human stomach?"
"Human stomach." "But the only human on this ship that doesn't
have a stomach is Hrunta," said Jenkins. "So the hlorg ate him."
"Most of him. Not quite all. It threw out the one part of him it couldn't eat. The part
containing a substance that inactivated its enzyme system. Dilute hydrochloric acid, to
be specific. We used the entire ship's supply, and cut the hlorg down to three-quarters size,
but we need a continuous supply to keep it whittled down until we get home. And there's
only one good, permanent, reliable source of dilute hydrochloric acid on board this
ship—" The Black Doctor's face was purple. "I said
no," he choked. "My answer stands." The Red Doctor sighed and turned to Green
Doctor Stone. "All right, Wally," he said. (From the files of the Medical Disciplinary
Board, Hospital Earth, op. cit.) I am certain that you can see from the foregoing
that a reasonable effort was made by Green Doctor Stone and myself to put the plan in
effect peaceably and with full approval of our commander. It was our conviction, however,
that the emergency nature of the circumstances required that it be done with or without his
approval. Our subsequent success in containing the hlorg to at least reasonable and manageable
proportions should bear out the wisdom of our decision.
Actually, it has not been as bad as one might think. It has been necessary to confine the
crew to their quarters, and to restrain the Black Doctor forcibly, but with liberal use
of Happy-O we can occasionally convince ourselves that it is rare beefsteak, and the Green Doctor,
our pro-tem cook has concocted several very tasty sauces, such as mushroom, onion, etc.
We reduce the hlorg to half its size each day, and if thoroughly heated the chunks lie
still on the plate for quite some time. No physical ill effects have been noted, and
the period of quarantine is recommended solely to allow the men an adequate period for psychological
recovery. I have only one further recommendation: that
the work team from the Grey Service be recalled at once from their assignment on Mauki IV.
The problem is decidedly not psychiatric, and it would be one of the tragedies of the
ages if our excellent psychiatric service were to succeed in persuading the Maukivi
out of their 'delusion'. After all, Hospital Earth cannot afford to
jeopardize a Contract—
Signed,
Samuel B. Jenkins