Futures Past Read Free

Lieutenant . . . ?"
       Brenner shook his head. "The captain would like to spend some time here, if possible, and so would I if I wouldn't be in the way. It's my first time to visit this place. Are there, ah, many other Earth-humans on the medical staff?"
       // you mean like Murchison, Conway thought smugly, the answer is no. Aloud, he said, "We would welcome your help, of course. But you do not know what you are letting yourself in for, Lieutenant, and you keep asking about the Earth-humans on the staff. Are you xenophobic, even slightly? Uncomfortable near extra-terrestrials?"
       "Certainly not," said Brenner firmly, then added, "of course, I wouldn't want to marry one."
       Prilicla began the slow shakes again. The musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech formed a pleasant background to its translated voice as it said, "From the sudden flood of pleasant emotional radiation, for which I can see no apparent reason in the current situation and recent dialogue, I assume that someone has made what Earth-humans call a joke."
       At Level 103 Prilicla left to check on its wards while the others supervised the transfer of the great, stiff-winged bird into the storage chamber. Looking at the swept-back, partially folded wings and stiffly extended neck, Conway was reminded of one of the old-time space shuttles. His mind began to slip off on an interesting, but ridiculous, tangent and he had to remind himself that birds did not fly, in space.
        With the patient immobilized under one full G of artificial gravity it still took another three hours before Murchison had everything she wanted in the way of specimens and x-rays. In part the delay was caused by them having to work in pressure suits because, as Murchison put it, there would be little risk in observing the patient for a few more hours in airless conditions until they had worked out its atmospheric requirements with exactness—otherwise they might simply end by observing its processes of decomposition.
       But their information on the patient was growing with every minute that passed, and the results of their tests— transmitted direct from Pathology by the portable communicator beside them—were both interesting and utterly baffling. Conway lost all track of time until the communicator chimed for attention and the face of Major O'Mara glowered out at them.
       "Conway, you arranged to see me here seven and one half minutes ago," said the chief psychologist. "No doubt you were just leaving."
       "I'm sorry, sir," said Conway, "the preliminary investigation is taking longer than I estimated, and I wanted to have something concrete to report before seeing you."
       There was a faint rustling sound as O'Mara breathed heavily through his nose. The chief psychologist's face was about as readable as a piece of weathered basalt, which in some respects it resembled, but the eyes which studied Conway opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave the major what amounted to a telepathic faculty.
       As chief psychologist of a multi-environment hospital he was responsible for the mental well-being of a staff of several thousand entities belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of Major did not place him high in the chain of command, there was no clear limit to his authority. To O'Mara, the medical staff were patients, too, and part of his job was to assign the right kind of doctor—whether Earth-humans or e-t—to a given patient.
       Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, potentially dangerous situations could still arise through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which threatened to affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary