Ole Doc Methuselah Read Free Page A

back of the medulla oblongata—which took care of the fellow
nicely.
    Hippocrates
lowered himself with disappointed grunts down to the ladder. At his master’s
hand signal he came forth with two needles, filled, sterilized and awaiting
only a touch to break their seals and become useful.
    Into
the gluteal muscle—through clothes and all, because of sterilizing radiation of
the point—Ole Doc gave the Earthman the contents of needle one. At the jab the
fellow had squirmed a little and the doctor lifted one eyelid.
    â€œYou
are a stone!” said Ole Doc. “You can’t move.”
    The
Earthman lay motionless, wide-eyed, being a stone. Hippocrates carefully noted
the time with the fact in order to remind his master to let the fellow stop
being a stone sometime. But in noting the time, Hippocrates found that it was
six minutes to thirty-six o’clock and therefore time for a much more important
thing—Ole Doc’s own medicine.
    Brusquely,
Hippocrates grabbed up the unconscious girl and waded back across the stream
with her. The girl could wait. Thirty-six o’clock was thirty-six o’clock.
    â€œHold
up!” said Ole Doc, needle poised.
    Hippocrates
grunted and kept on walking. He went directly into the main operating room of
the Morgue and there amidst the cleverly jammed hotchpotch of trays and
ray tubes, drawers, masks, retorts and reflectors, he unceremoniously dropped
the girl. Monominded now, for this concerned his master—and where the rest of
the world could go if it interfered with his master was a thing best expressed
in silence—Hippocrates laid out the serum and the proper rays.
    Humbly
enough, the master bared his arm and then exposed himself—as a man does before
a fireplace on a cold day—to the pouring out of life from the fixed tubes. It
took only five minutes. It had to be done every five days.
    Satisfied
now, Hippocrates boosted the girl into a proper position for medication on the
center table and adjusted a lamp or two fussily, while admiring his master’s
touch with the needle.
    Ole
Doc was smiling, smiling with a strange poignancy. She was a very pretty girl,
neatly made, small waisted, high breasted. Her tumbling crown of hair was like
an avalanche of fire in the operating lights. Her lips were very soft, likely
to be yielding to—
    â€œFather!”
she screamed in sudden consciousness. “Father!”
    Ole
Doc looked perplexed, offended. But then he saw that she did not know where she
was. Her wild glare speared both master and thing.
    â€œWhere
is my father?”
    â€œWe
don’t rightly know, ma’am,” said Ole Doc. “You just—”
    â€œHe’s
out there. They shot our ship down. He’s dying or dead! Help him!”
    Hippocrates
looked at master and master nodded. And when the servant left the ship it was
with a bound so swift that it rocked the Morgue a little. He was only a
meter tall, was Hippocrates, but he weighed nearly five hundred kilos.
    Behind
him came Ole Doc, but their speeds were so much at variance that before the
physician could reach the tall flowers, Hippocrates was back through them
carrying a man stretched out on a compartment door wrenched from its strong
hinges for the purpose. That was page eight of First Aid in Space, not
to wrestle people around but to put them on flat things. Man and door weighed
nearly as much as Hippocrates but he wanted no help.
    â€œâ€˜Lung
burns,”’ said Hippocrates, “‘are very difficult to heal and most usually
result in death. When the heart is also damaged, particular care should be
taken to move the patient as little as possible since exertion. . . .”’
    Ole
Doc listened to, without heeding, the high, squeaky singsong. Walking beside
the girl’s father, Ole Doc was not so sure.
    He
felt a twinge of pity for the old man. He was proud of face, her father, gray
of hair and very high and noble of brow. He was a