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Authors: James White

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Conway made no attempt to protect himself against attacking tools. He intended concentrating so hard on one particular shape that anything which came within mental range would, he hoped, lose its dangerous edges or points.
Thought-shaping the creature’s outward aspect was easy. Within a few minutes there was a large, silvery pancake—a small-scale replica of the patient—lying in the center of the pool. But thinking three dimensionally of the mouths and their connecting tunnels and stomachs was not so easy. Even harder was the stage when he began thinking the tiny stomachs into expanding and contracting, sucking the gritty, algae-filled water into his scale model and expelling it again.
It was a crude, oversimplified model. The best he could manage at
one time was eight mouths and connecting stomachs, and he was very much afraid that it bore the same relation to the patient that a doll did to a living baby. But then he began to add the creeping motions he had observed in smaller, younger strata creatures, keeping the area around the central depression motionless, however, and hoping that with the pumping motions of the stomachs he was giving the impression of a living organism. The sweat poured off his forehead and into his eyes, but by then it did not matter that he could not see properly, because the sections he was shaping were out of sight anyway. Then he began to think certain areas solid, motionless, dead. He extended these dead, motionless and detail-less areas until gradually the whole model was a solid, lifeless lump.
Then he blinked the sweat out of his eyes and started all over again, and then again, and suddenly the others were standing beside him.
“They aren’t attacking us anymore,” said Harrison quietly, “and before they change their minds I am going to try fixing that damaged track. At least, there is no shortage of tools.”
Murchison said, “Can I help—apart from keeping my mind blank to avoid warping your model?”
Without looking up Conway said, “Yes, please. I’m going to take it through the same sequence once again, but halt it at the point where the dead areas extend to at the present time. When I do that I would like you to think the positions of our incisions and extend and widen them while I seal the severed throat tunnels and think the feeding and transfusion shafts. You withdraw the excised material a short distance and think it solid—dead, that is—while I try to get across the idea that the remainder is alive and twitching and likely to stay that way.”
She caught on very quickly but Conway had no way of knowing if their patient had, or could, catch on. Behind them Harrison was at work on the damaged tread while before them their model of the patient and the effects of their present surgery became more and more detailed—right down to the miniature corrugated seals and what happened to the creature when one of them was collapsed. But still there was no indication from the patient that it understood what they were trying to tell it.
Suddenly Conway stood up and began climbing the sloping floor. He said, “I’m sorry, I have to move out of range for a minute to catch my mental breath.”
“Me, too,” she said a few minutes later. “I’ll join you … look!”
Conway had been staring at the darkness of the cavern roof to rest both his mind and his eyes. He looked down quickly, thinking they were
under attack again, and saw Murchison pointing at their model, their working model.
Despite it being out of range of both their minds it had not slumped down or lost detail. Somebody was maintaining it exactly as they had been doing. All at once Conway forgot his physical and mental fatigue.
Excitedly he said, “This must be its way of saying that it understands us. But we’ve got to widen communications, tell it more about ourselves. Go collect a few more tools and think a model of this cavern complete with nerve cables—I’ll shape the digger to scale with moving models of the three of us. They’ll be crude, of course, but to begin with we only need to get across the idea of our small size and vulnerability to tool attacks. Then we’ll move away for a short distance and shape a model of the digger in operation, then ’dozers, copters and scout-ship on the surface—nothing as big and complicated as
Descartes
, at least to begin with. We’ll have to keep everything very simple.”
In a very short time the shelf around the digger was carpeted with models which were being maintained by the patient as soon as they were completed, and more and more tools were rolling heavily but very gently toward them eager to be shaped. But their visors were becoming almost opaque with perspiration and their suit air was running out. Murchison insisted that she had time for just one more shaping, a large one using upward of twenty tools, when Harrison appeared from behind the digger.
“I have to go inside,” said the Lieutenant. “Unlike some people I have been working hard and burning up my ir …”
“Kick him for me. You’re closer.”
“ … But the digger will work at about quarter speed,” Harrison continued. “And if it doesn’t we may still be able to call for help. I used a tool to shape a new antenna—I knew the exact dimensions—so we may even get two-way vision—”
He stopped abruptly, staring at what Murchison was doing to her tools.
A little crossly she said, “As the pathologist of the party it is my job to tell the patient what we look, or rather feel, like. This model has a much simplified respiratory, digestive and circulatory system and, as you can see, articulation at all the main joints. Naturally, as I know a little more about myself than anyone else, this representative of mankind is in fact female. Equally important, I do not want to needlessly confuse the patient by adding clothes.”
Harrison did not have enough oxygen left to reply. They followed
him into the digger and, while Conway made contact with the surface, Murchison instinctively raised her hand in farewell to the cavern and the shapes of the tool models scattered across the shelf. She must have been thinking very hard about her good-bye because her last model raised its hand also and kept it there while the digger crawled slowly out of mental range.
Suddenly all three repeaters were alive and Dermod was staring at him, his face reflecting concern, relief and excitement in sequence and then altogether. He said, “Doctor, I thought we’d lost you—you blanked out four hours ago. But I can report progress. The incision is proceeding and all tool attacks ceased half an hour ago. There is no tool trouble reported from the tunnel seals, the decontamination teams, the transfusion shafts anywhere. Doctor, is this a temporary condition?”
Conway let his breath go in a long, loud sigh of relief. Their patient was a very bright lad despite its physically slow reaction times. He shook his head and said, “You will have no more trouble from the tools. In fact, you will find them of assistance in helping maintain equipment and for use in awkward sections of the incision once we make it understand our needs. You can also forget about digging that isolation trench—our patient retains enough mobility to withdraw itself from the newly excised material—which means that ships which would have been tied up in digging that trench will now be free to extend the incision more rapidly, so that our operation will be completed in a fraction of the time originally thought necessary.
“You see, sir,” Conway ended, “we now have the active cooperation of our patient.”
Major surgery was completed in just under four months and Conway was ordered back to Sector General. Postoperative treatment would take a great many years and would proceed in conjunction with the exploration of Drambo and the closer investigation of its life-forms and cultures. Before leaving, while he was still seriously troubled by the thought of the casualty figures, Conway had once questioned the value of what they had done. A rather supercilious cultural contact specialist had tried to make it very simple for him by saying that difference, whether it was cultural, physiological or technological, was immensely valuable. They would learn much from the strata creature and the rollers while they were teaching them. Conway, with some difficulty, accepted that. He could also accept the fact that, as a surgeon, his work on Drambo was done. It was much
harder to accept the fact that the pathology team, particularly one member of it, still had a lot of work to do.
While O’Mara did not openly enjoy his anguish, neither did he display sympathy.
“Stop suffering so loudly in silence, Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist on his return, “and sublimate yourself—preferably in quicklime. But failing that there is always work, and an odd case has just come in which you might like to look at. I’m being polite, of course. It is your case as of now. Observe.”
The large visiscreen behind O’Mara’s desk came to life and he went on. “This beastie was found in one of the hitherto unexplored regions, the victim of an accident which virtually cut its ship and itself in two. Airtight bulkheads sealed off the undamaged section and your patient was able to withdraw itself, or some of itself, before they closed. It was a large ship, filled with some kind of nutrient earth, and the victim is still alive—or should I say half alive. You see, we don’t know which half of it we rescued. Well?”
Conway stared at the screen, already devising methods of immobilizing a section of the patient for examination and treatment, of synthesizing supplies of that nutrient soil which now must be virtually sucked dry, and for studying the wreck’s controls to gain data on its sensory equipment. If the accident which had wrecked its ship had been due to an explosion in the power plant, which was likely, then this might well be the front half containing the brain.
His new patient was not quite the Midgard Serpent but it did not fall far short of it. Twisting and coiling it practically filled the enormous hangar deck which had been emptied to accommodate it.
“Well?” said O’Mara again.
Conway stood up. Before turning to go he grinned and said, “Small, isn’t it?”
The Secret Visitor
(1957)
Second Ending
(1962)
Deadly Litter
(1964)
Escape Orbit
(1965)
The Watch Below
(1966)
All Judgement Fled
(1968)
The Aliens Among Us
(1969)
Tomorrow Is Too Far
(1971)
Dark Inferno
(1972)
The Dream Millennium
(1974)
Monsters and Medics
(1977)
Underkill
(1979)
Future Past (1982)
Federation World
(1988)
The Silent Stars Go By
(1991)
The White Papers
(1996)
Gene Roddenberry’s Earth:
Final Conflict—The First Protector (Tor, 2000)
 
THE SECTOR GENERAL SERIES
 
Hospital Station
(1962)
Star Surgeon
(1963
)
Major Operation (
1971)
Ambulance Ship
(1979)
Sector General
(1983)
Star Healer (
1985)
Code Blue—Emergency
(1987)
The Genocidal Healer
(1992)
The Galactic Gourmet
(Tor, 1996)
Final Diagnosis
(Tor, 1997)
Mind Changer
(Tor, 1998)
Double Contact
(Tor, 1999)
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
 
 
BEGINNING OPERATIONS
Copyright © 2001 by the Estate of James White. This book is an omnibus edition comprising the novels
Hospital Station
, copyright © 1962 by James White,
Star Surgeon
, copyright © 1963 by James White, and
Major Operation
, copyright © 1971 by James White.
Introduction copyright © 2001 by Brian Stableford.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
 
 
An Orb Edition
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
 
 
Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
 
 
eISBN 9781429982290
First eBook Edition : April 2011
 
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
White, James.
Beginning operations / James White.—1st Orb ed. p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-87544-4
1. Science fiction, English. 2. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 3. Life on other planets—Fiction. 4. Space medicine—Fiction. 5. Hospitals—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6073.H494 A6 2001
823’.914—dc21
2001027077
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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