Alan E. Nourse Super Pack. Alan E. Nourse
point. You will be allowed to wear a collar and cuff, uniform and insignia of a probationary physician, in the Red Service, and will be assigned aboard the General Practice Patrol ship Lancet, leaving from Hospital Seattle next Tuesday. If you prove your ability in that post, your performance will once again be reviewed by this board, but you alone will determine our decision then. Your final acceptance as a Star Surgeon will depend entirely upon your conduct as a member of the patrol ship’s crew.” He smiled at Dal, and set the paper down. “The council wishes you well. Do you have any questions?”
“Just one,” Dal managed to say. “Who will my crewmates be?”
“As is customary, a probationer from the Green Service of Medicine and one from the Blue Service of Diagnosis. Both have been specially selected by this council. Your Blue Doctor will be Jack Alvarez, who has shown great promise in his training in diagnostic medicine.”
“And the Green Doctor?”
“A young man named Frank Martin,” the White Doctor said. “Known to his friends, I believe, as ‘Tiger.’”
The Galactic Pill Peddlers
The ship stood tall and straight on her launching pad, with the afternoon sunlight glinting on her hull. Half a dozen crews of check-out men were swarming about her, inspecting her engine and fuel supplies, riding up the gantry crane to her entrance lock, and guiding the great cargo nets from the loading crane into her afterhold. High up on her hull Dal Timgar could see a golden caduceus emblazoned, the symbol of the General Practice Patrol, and beneath it the ship’s official name:
GPPS 238 LANCET
Dal shifted his day pack down from his shoulders, ridiculously pleased with the gleaming scarlet braid on the collar and cuff of his uniform, and lifted Fuzzy up on his shoulder to see. It seemed to Dal that everyone he had passed in the terminal had been looking at the colorful insignia; it was all he could do to keep from holding his arm up and waving it like a banner.
“You’ll get used to it,” Tiger Martin chuckled as they waited for the jitney to take them across to the launching pad. “At first you think everybody is impressed by the colors, until you see some guy go past with the braid all faded and frazzled at the edges, and then you realize that you’re just the latest greenhorn in a squad of two hundred thousand men.”
“It’s still good to be wearing it,” Dal said. “I couldn’t really believe it until Black Doctor Arnquist turned the collar and cuff over to me.” He looked suspiciously at Tiger. “You must have known a lot more about that interview than you let on. Or, was it just coincidence that we were assigned together?”
“Not coincidence, exactly.” Tiger grinned. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. I’d requested assignment with you on my application, and then when yours was held up, Doctor Arnquist asked me if I’d be willing to wait for assignment until the interview was over. So I said okay. He seemed to think you had a pretty good chance.”
“I’d never have made it without his backing,” Dal said.
“Well, anyway, he figured that if you were assigned, it would be a good idea to have a friend on the patrol ship team.”
“I won’t argue about that,” Dal said. “But who is the Blue Service man?”
Tiger’s face darkened. “I don’t know much about him,” he said. “He trained in California, and I met him just once, at a diagnosis and therapy conference. He’s supposed to be plenty smart, according to the grapevine. I guess he’d have to be, to pass Diagnostic Service finals.” Tiger chuckled. “Any dope can make it in the Medical or Surgical Services, but diagnosis is something else again.”
“Will he be in command?”
“On the Lancet? Why should he? We’ll share command, just like any patrol ship crew. If we run into problems we can’t agree on, we holler for help. But if he acts like most of the Blue Doctors I know, he’ll think he’s in command.”
A jitney stopped for them, and then zoomed out across the field toward the ship. The gantry platform was just clanging to the ground, unloading three technicians and a Four-bar Electronics Engineer. Tiger and Dal rode the platform up again and moments later stepped through the entrance lock of the ship that would be their home base for months and perhaps years.
They found the bunk room to the rear of the control and lab sections. A duffel bag was already lodged on one of the bunks; one of the foot lockers was already occupied, and a small but expensive camera and a huge pair of field glasses were hanging from one of the wall brackets.
“Looks like our man has already arrived,” Tiger said, tossing down his own duffel bag and looking around the cramped quarters. “Not exactly a luxury suite, I’d say. Wonder where he is?”
“Let’s look up forward,” Dal said. “We’ve plenty to do before we take off. Maybe he’s just getting an early start.”
They explored the ship, working their way up the central corridor past the communications and computer rooms and the laboratory into the main control and observation room. Here they found a thin, dark-haired young man in a bright blue collar and cuff, sitting engrossed with a tape-reader.
For a moment they thought he hadn’t heard them. Then, as though reluctant to tear himself away, the Blue Doctor sighed, snapped off the reader, and turned on the swivel stool.
“So!” he said. “I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to get here.”
“We ran into some delays,” Tiger said. He grinned and held out his hand. “Jack Alvarez? Tiger Martin. We met each other at that conference in Chicago last year.”
“Yes, I remember,” the Blue Doctor said. “You found some holes in a paper I gave. Matter of fact, I’ve plugged them up very nicely since then. You’d have trouble finding fault with the work now.” Jack Alvarez turned his eyes to Dal. “And I suppose this is the Garvian I’ve been hearing about, complete with his little pink stooge.”
The moment they had walked in the door, Dal had felt Fuzzy crouch down tight against his shoulder. Now a wave of hostility struck his mind like a shower of ice water. He had never seen this thin, dark-haired youth before, or even heard of him, but he recognized this sharp impression of hatred and anger unmistakably. He had felt it a thousand times among his medical school classmates during the past eight years, and just hours before he had felt it in the council room when Black Doctor Tanner had turned on him.
“It’s really a lucky break that we have Dal for a Red Doctor,” Tiger said. “We almost didn’t get him.”
“Yes, I heard all about how lucky we are,” Jack Alvarez said sourly. He looked Dal over from the gray fur on the top of his head to the spindly legs in the ill-fitting trousers. Then the Blue Doctor shrugged in disgust and turned back to the tape-reader. “A Garvian and his Fuzzy!” he muttered. “Let’s hope one or the other knows something about surgery.”
“I think we’ll do all right,” Dal said slowly.
“I think you’d better,” Jack Alvarez replied.
Dal and Tiger looked at each other, and Tiger shrugged. “It’s all right,” he said. “We know our jobs, and we’ll manage.”
Dal nodded, and started back for the bunk room. No doubt, he thought, they would manage.
But if he had thought before that the assignment on the Lancet was going to be easy, he knew now that he was wrong.
Tiger Martin may have been Doctor Arnquist’s selection as a crewmate for him, but there was no question in his mind that the Blue Doctor on the Lancet’s crew was Black Doctor Hugo Tanner’s choice.
*
The first meeting with Jack Alvarez hardly seemed promising to either Dal or Tiger, but if there was trouble coming, it was postponed for the moment by common consent.