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The spaceship stood tall and straight on her launching pad, with the afternoon sunlight glinting on her hull. Six crews of technicians swarmed around her, inspecting her engine and fuel supplies, riding up the gantry crane to her entrance lock, and guiding the big cargo nets from the loading crane into her afterhold. High up on her hull Valeris saw golden caduceus emblazoned, the official emblem of the General Practice Patrol, and beneath that the ship's name:
GPPS 1701-A
RAPHAEL
Valeris shifted her purse down from her shoulders, admiring the gleaming scarlet braid on the collar and cuff of her uniform beyond good sense, and lifted Blob up on her shoulder to see. It seemed to Valeris that everybody she'd passed in the terminal had been looking at the colorful insignia; it was all she could do to keep from holding her arm up and waiving it like a victory flag.
"It takes some getting used to," Bones McCoy chuckled as they waited for the taxi to take them across to the launching pad. "At first it seems like everybody's impressed by the colors, that is, until you see some guy go past with the braid all faded and frazzled at the edges. Then you realize you're just the latest greenie in a squad of two hundred thousand people."
"It still feels good to wear it," Valeris said. "I couldn't really believe it until Black Doctor Shah actually turned the collar and cuff over to me." She looked suspiciously at Bones. "You must've known a lot more about that interview than you let on. Or is it just an odd coincidence that we've been assigned together?"
"Coincidence? Well, not exactly." Bones grinned. "I didn't know what was going to happen. I did request an assignment with you on my application, and then when yours was delayed, Doctor Shah asked me if I'd be willing to wait for assignment until after the interview. So I told him yes. He seemed to think you had a pretty good chance."
"I'd never have made it had he not backed me up," Valeris said.
"Well, anyway, he figured that if you were assigned, it'd be a good idea for you to have a friend on the patrol ship team."
"I won't argue about that," Valeris said. "But who is this Blue Service woman?"
Bones's face went dark. "I'm not sure about her," he said. "She trained in Colorado, and I met her just once, at a diagnosis and therapy conference. She's supposed to be a super genius, according to the grapevine. She'd have to be, to pass those damn Diagnostic Service finals." Bones chuckled. "Any stooge can make it in the Medical or Surgical Services, but diagnosis is a horse of a different color."
"Will she be in charge?"
"Of the Raphael? No, no way. We'll share command, same as any other patrol ship crew. If we run into problems we can't agree on, we cry for help. But, I won't lie to you, Val: if she acts like most Blue Doctors I've met, she'll think she's the boss."
A taxi stopped for them, and then zoomed out across the field toward the spaceship. The gantry platform was just clanging to the ground, unloading three technicians and a Four-bar Electronics Engineer. Bones and Valeris rode the lift up again and moments later stepped through the entrance lock of the spaceship that would be their home for months, perhaps years.
They found the bunkroom to the rear of the control and lab sections. A purse and two suitcases were already lodged on one of the bunks; one of the footlockers was already occupied, and a small but expensive camera and a huge pair of binoculars were dangling from one of the wall hooks.
"Looks like our lady has already arrived," Bones said, tossing down his duffel bag and looking around the cramped quarters. "Not exactly a suite at the Venusian Waldorf, is it? Wonder where she is."
"Let's look up front," Valeris said. "We've got lots to do before we take off. She's probably just getting an early start."
They explored the ship, working their way up the central corridor past the communications and computer suites and the laboratory into the main control/observation room. Here they found a thin, blonde-haired young lady in a bright blue collar and cuff, sitting engrossed with an E-reader.
For a moment they thought she hadn't heard them. Then, as if reluctant to tear himself away, the Blue Doctor sighed, snapped off the E-reader, and turned on the swivel stool.
"I was beginning to doubt that you two would ever get here," she said.
"We ran into some delays," Bones said. He grinned and held out his hand. "Christine Chapel? Bones McCoy. We met each other at that conference in Omaha last year."
"I remember you," the Blue Doctor said. "You found some holes in an E-article I wrote. Matter of fact, I've patched them up very nicely since then. You'd have trouble finding fault with the work now. And I suppose this is the Vulcan they told me about?" Chapel turned her eyes to Valeris, looking her up and down. "Well, you're a cute girl, for an alien. But letting your pink sidekick ride on your shoulder like that is somehow---inappropriate."
The moment they had walked in the door, Valeris had felt Blob crouch down tight against her shoulder. Now a wave of hostility struck her mind like a meteor storm. She had never seen this thin, golden-haired woman before, nor even heard of her, but she recognized this sharp impression of hatred and anger immediately. She had felt it thousands of times among her medical school classmates during the past nine years, and just hours before she had felt it in the praesidium meeting room when Black Doctor Chang had turned on her.
"It's a lucky break that we've got Valeris for a Red Doctor," Bones said. "We almost didn't get her."739Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6CbGoTG5zZ
"Oh, I heard all about how lucky we are," Christine Chapel said sourly. She looked Valeris over once again, from the pointed ears to the graceful curves of her body. Then the Blue Doctor shrugged in disgust and turned back to the E-reader. "A Vulcan and her Blob!" he muttered. "I hope one or the other knows something about surgery."
"We know enough," Valeris said slowly.
"You damn well better, honey," Christine Chapel replied.
Valeris and Bones looked at each other, and Bones shrugged. "Doctor Chapel," he said, "we know our jobs, and we'll manage."
Valeris nodded, and started back for the bunk room. No doubt, she thought, they would manage.
But if she had thought before that the assignment on the Raphael was going to be easy, she knew now that he was wrong.
Bones McCoy may have been Doctor Shah's selection as a crewmate for her, but there was no doubt in her mind that the Blue Doctor on the Raphael's crew was Black Doctor Blasius Chang's choice.
The first meeting with Christine Chapel was far from promising to either Valeris or Bones, but if trouble was brewing it was (thankfully) postponed for the moment by common consent. In the few days before lift-off there was no time for bickering, or conversation of any kind. All three of them had two full weeks of work to accomplish in forty-eight hours; all three knew their jobs and buried themselves in a with an iron will.
The spaceship's medical and surgical supplies had to be inventoried, and missing or required supplies ordered up. Incoming replacement supplies had to be checked, tested, and stored in the ship's limited hold space. It was just like preparing for an extended hike into wilderness country; once the Raphael left its home base on Hospital Earth it would become a planet unto itself, equipped to support its physician-crew and provide the needed equipment and data they would need to tackle the crises they would face. Just like all patrol ships, the Raphael was equipped with automated launching, navigation and drive mechanisms; no crew other than the three doctors was necessary, and in the event of mechanical issues, maintenance ships were on constant call.
The spaceship was responsible for patrolling an enormous area that included hundreds of stars and their planetary systems—yet its territory made up only a miniscule fragment of the galaxy. Landings were to be made at various specified planets that maintained permanent clinic annexes of Hospital Earth; certain staple supplies were carried for each of these checkpoints. Apart from these lonely annex contacts, the nearest port of call for the Raphael was one of the great hospital ships that continuously worked slow orbits through the subject star systems of the Federation.
But a hospital ship, with its staff of Two-star and Three-star Physicians, was never to be summoned except in cases of urgent need. All probationers on the patrol ships were expected to be self-sufficient, for it was their job to handle diagnosis and care of all but the most difficult problems that arose in their rounds. They were the first to answer medical calls from any planet that had a medical service contract with Hospital Earth.
It was one hell of an enormous responsibility for doctors-in-training to assume, but over the years it had proven the best way to train and weed out new doctors for the bigger responsibilities of hospital ship and Hospital Earth assignments. There was no set tour of duty on the patrol ships; how long a fledgling doctor stayed in the General Practice Patrol depended to a large extent upon how well he/she handled the trials and tribulations that faced him/her; and since the early years of Hospital Earth, the young doctors in the General Practice Patrol—the so-called "Great Pill Peddlers of the Galaxy"—had lived up to their responsibilities. The prestige of Hospital Earth rested on their shoulders, and they were never to forget it.
While working on her inventories, Valeris thought about Doctor Shah's words to her after the praesidium had made its final decision. "Judgment and skill are two different things," he had said. "Without skill in the basic principles of diagnosis and treatment, medical judgment is not helpful, but skill without the judgment to know how and when to use it is absolutely dangerous. You will be judged both on the judgment you use in deciding the proper course of action, and on the skill you use in performing that action." He had given Valeris the silver box containing the coveted collar and cuff. "The colors are pretty, but you must never forget what they stand for. Until you can convince the praesidium that you possess both the skill and the judgment of a true physician, you will never get your Star. And you will be watched closely; Black Doctor Chang and certain others will be waiting for the slightest excuse to recall you from the Raphael. Should you be foolish enough to give them that excuse, I will be powerless to help you."
Even now, as they worked to ready the spaceship for service, Valeris was determined not to give them that excuse. When she was not working in the cargo bays, she was in the computer room, reviewing the thousands of E-files that carried the essential data about the contract planets that they would be visiting, and the races that inhabited them. If errors, fumbles and mistakes were made by the crew of the Raphael, she thought grimly, it would not be Valeris who made them.
The first night they met in the control room to delegate the many extracurricular jobs necessary to maintain a patrol ship.
Bones's interest in electronics and communications made him the best man to handle the subspace radio; he accepted the post without comment. "Christine, you should be in charge of the computer," he said, "because you'll be the one who'll need the information first. The lab's probably your field too. Valeris can be responsible for stores and supplies as well as her own surgical tools."
Christine shrugged. "I'd just as soon handle supplies, too," she said.
"No need to overload anyone," Bones said.
"I wouldn't mind that. But when there's something I need, I want to be cocksure it'll be there without any screw-ups," Christine said.
"I can handle it, don't worry," Valeris said.
Christine just scowled. "All right, who's going to be the contact guy when we make landings?" she asked Bones.
"Seems to me Valeris would be the right one for that," Bones said. "Her people are traders and bargainers, aren't they, Val? And first contact with the people on unknown planets can be very important."
"Yes, it can," Christine said. "Much too important to take any chances with. Think rationally: this is a ship from Hospital Earth. When someone calls for help, they expect to see a Terran turn up in response. Now, what in the hell are they going to think when a patrol ship lands and she walks out?"
Bones's face darkened. "They'll be able to see her collar and cuff and think help has arrived, obviously."
"Maybe. But I'm sure they'll wonder what she's doing wearing them."
"Then they'll just have to learn," Bones snapped. "And you'll have to learn, too, I guess."
Valeris had been sitting silently. Now she shook her head. "No, Christine's right," she said. "It would be best for one of you to be the contact guy."
"Why?" Bones said angrily. "You're just as much a doctor from Hospital Earth as we are, and the sooner we get your position here straight, the better. We're not going to have any 'freaks' on this ship, and we're not going to hide you in the cargo bay every time we land on a planet. If we want to make anything other than a mess of this cruise, we've got to work as a team, and that means everyone pulls their own weight."
"Fine," Valeris said, "but I still think Christine's right on this point. If we're walking into a medical problem on a planet where the patrol's existence is virtually unknown, the contact guy should be a Terran."
Bones started to say something, and then spread his hands helplessly. "All right," he said. "If you're okay with it, let's move on to something else." But obviously she wasn't okay with it, and when Christine disappeared toward the storeroom, Bones turned to Valeris. "Why did you give in?" he asked. "If you give that little bitch as much as a light-year, you're just begging for trouble."
"I didn't give in," Valeris insisted. "I just agreed with her, that's all. Let's not create conflict where there isn't any."
Bones yielded the point, but when Christine returned, Bones avoided her, keeping to himself for the rest of the evening. And later, as she tried to get to sleep, Valeris wondered for a moment. Was Bones right? Was he just dodging a head-on collision with the Blue Doctor now and setting the stage for a real collision later on?
Next day the argument was forgotten in the air of rising excitement as the embarkation orders for the Raphael finally came through. Preps were completed, and only last-minute double-checks were needed before lift-off.
But an hour before count-down began, a taxi buzzed across the field, and a Two-star Pathologist climbed aboard with his three black-cloaked orderlies. "Shakedown inspection," he said curtly. "Standard procedure, nothing to worry about." With that he stalked slowly through the ship, checking the cargo bays, the inventories, the lab, the computer with its information banks, and the control room. As he went along he kept firing medical questions at Valeris and Bones, barely pausing long enough for the answers, and ignoring Christine Chapel completely. "State the normal range of serum cholesterol in a vegetarian race that lives on a Class-M planet? How do you run a Lipman vesicoscope? How do you determine individual radiation tolerance? What is SOP for prepping heart culture for cardiac transplant aboard this ship?" The questions went on until Valeris and Bones were breathless, as count-down time drew near. Finally the Black Doctor turned back toward the entrance lock, seemingly disappointed, albeit vaguely, as he checked the record sheets the orderlies had been keeping. With a strange at Valeris, he shrugged. "Here are your clearance papers," he said to Christine. "Your supply of serum globulin fractions is up to black-book specifications, but you'll run short if you happen to hit a virus epidemic. I suggest you take on two more cases. And make sure to check central information prior to departure. We've signed two new contracts in the past week, and the coordinator's office has some advance information on both of them."
When the inspector had gone, Bones wiped his forehead and sighed. "Boy, that was not your everyday shakedown!" he said. "What the hell is a Lipman vesicoscope?"
"An instrument used for analyzing serum proteins," Christine Chapel said. "You ran them in third year biochemistry. God forbid we do hit a virus epidemic, you damn well better remember how to run one."
She gave Bones an antagonistic smile, and started back down the corridor as the count-down signal started buzzing.
But for all the advance arrangements they'd made to delegate the ship's work, it was Valeris who took absolute control of the Raphael for the first two weeks of its cruise. Neither Bones nor Christine challenged her command; not a word was raised in protest. The Terrans were too ill to speak, much less complain about anything.
For Valeris the lift-off from the port of San Francisco and the conversion to Cochrane warp-drive was nothing new. Her father owned a squadron of Vulcan trading ships that traveled to the far corners of the galaxy by means of a warp-drive so much like the Cochrane engines that only an electronics engineer could tell them apart. All her life Valeris had traveled on the outgoing freighters with her father, so warp-drive conversion was no surprise to her.
But for Bones and Christine, it was their first time in a warp-drive ship. The Raphael's piloting and navigation were wholly automatic; its destination was simply programmed into the drive computers, and the spaceship was ready to leap across light years of space in a matter of hours. But the conversion to warp-drive, as the Raphael was wrenched, crew and all, out of the normal space-time continuum, was far beyond normal human experience. The psychosomatic shock of the conversion hit Bones and Christine like a ton of bricks, and during the long hours while the ship traversed the timeless, distanceless universe of the drive to the pre-programmed coordinates where it materialized again into conventional space-time, the Terrans were retching violently, too ill to budge from the bunk room. It took over two weeks, with stops at six contract planets, before Bones and Christine began to adjust themselves to the scary and mind-boggling sensations of conversion to warp-drive. During this time Valeris carried the bulk of the ship's work alone, while the others lay gasping and exhausted in their bunks, trying to muster the needed strength for the next shift.
To her sheer horror, Valeris discovered that the first planetary stopover was traditionally a hazing stop. It had been a well-kept patrol secret; the annex clinic on Strides XI was eagerly waiting for the arrival of the new "greenie" crew, known damn well that the doctors aboard would hardly be able to stumble out of their bunks, let alone cope with medical problems. The annex men had concocted a medical "crisis" of mega proportions to present to the Raphael's crew, they were so clearly disappointed to find the ship's Red Doctor in full control of herself that Valeris obligingly became violently ill too, and gave it her all to imitate Bones and Christine's floundering efforts to pull themselves together and do something about the "problem" that suddenly descended upon them.
Later on, there was a party and celebration, with music and food, as the clinic staff welcomed the pale and shaken doctors into the prank. The annex men plied Valeris for the latest news from Hospital Earth. They were shocked to see a Vulcan aboard the Raphael, but nobody at the annex showed any sign of resentment at the scarlet braid on Valeris's collar and cuff.
Slowly Bones and Christine became accustomed to the oddities of popping in and out of hyperspace. Word had it that immunity to warp-drive sickness was difficult to acquire, but lasted a lifetime, and would never again trouble them once it was achieved. Little by little the Terrans crept out of their shells, to find the ship in good working order and a busy Valeris relieved and happy to have them aboard again.
Thankfully, the medical problems that came to the Raphael in the first few weeks were largely routine. The ship stopped at the mandatory contact points—some far out near the edge of the galactic constellation, others in closer to the densely star-populated center. At each annex clinic the Raphael received a warm and hearty welcome. The annex men were hungry for news from home, and happy to see fresh supplies; but they were also glad to review the current medical problems on their planets with the new doctors, exchanging opinions and arguing diagnosis and therapy into the wee hours of the night.
Sometimes calls came in to the ship from contract planets in need of help. Usually the problems were simple to handle. On Blabdreus, a tiny planet of a cooling giant star, help was needed to deal with a new outbreak of a cholera-like plague that had once decimated the population; the disease had finally been brought under control after a Hospital Earth survey team had isolated the microorganism that caused it, analyzed its molecular structure, and synthesized an antibiotic capable of destroying it without damaging the host's body. But now a flareup had occurred. The Raphael brought in supplies of the antibiotic, and Bones McCoy spent two days instructing Blabdrean physicians how to control further outbreaks using the very latest methods of immunization and antisepsis.
Then another planet called for a patrol ship when a bridge-building disaster occurred; one of the beetle-like workmen had been badly crushed under a massive steel girder. Valeris spent over eighteen tense hours with the patient in the Raphael's surgery, carefully repairing the creature's broken exoskeleton and grafting new segments of bone for regeneration of the hopelessly ruined parts, with Bones administering anesthesia and Christine prepping the grafts from the freezer.
On yet another planet Christine faced her first real diagnostic challenge and passed the test with flying colors. Here a new cancer-like degenerative disease had been appearing among the natives of the planet, one that had never before been noted. Initial attempts to identify a causative agent had all three of the Raphael's crew spending sleepless nights for a week, but Christine's meticulous study of the pattern of the disease and the biochemical reactions that accompanied it produced the answer: the disease was caused by a rare form of genetic change that made debilitating alterations in a vital enzyme system. Knowing this, Bones quickly found a drug which could be substituted for the injured enzyme, thereby solving the problem. They departed the planet, assuring the planetary government that labs on Hospital Earth would begin working at once to find a way to actually rebuild the damaged genes in the embryonic cells, and thus put a permanent end to the disease.
These were routine calls, the kind of ordinary general medical work that the patrol ships were naturally expected to handle. However the visits to the various planets were welcome breaks in the repetitive pattern of patrol ship life. The Raphael was fully equipped, but her crew's quarters and living space were cramped. Even under the best conditions, the crewmen on patrol ships got on each other's nerves; on the Raphael there was an additional focus of tension that worsened with each passing hour.
From the start Christine Chapel had made no pretense of pleasure at Valeris's company, but now it seemed that he deliberately sought opportunities to annoy her. The thin Blue Doctor's face set into an angry mold anytime Valeris was around. She would get up and leave when Valeris walked into the control room, and complained loudly and bitterly at minor flaws in Valeris's shipboard work. Nothing Valeris did seemed to please her.
But Bones had a worse time controlling himself at the Blue Doctor's digs and slights than Valeris did. "It's like being in a war zone," he complained one night when Christine had stalked angrily out of the bunk room. " My God, Val! You can't even open your mouth without having her jump down your throat."
"I know," Valeris said.
"And she's doing that deliberately."
"She is. But losing you're temper isn't helping things."
Bones clenched a huge fist and slammed it into his palm. "She's just deliberately picking at you and picking at you," he said. "You can't take it indefinitely, girl. Something's got to give."
"Don't worry," Valeris assured him. "I'll just ignore it."
But when Christine began to shift her attack to Blob, Valeris couldn't ignore it anymore.
One night in the control room Christine threw down the report she was writing and whirled angrily on Valeris. "Tell your friend there to turn the other way before I thrown him on the floor and stomp him," she said, pointing to Blob. "He doesn't do anything to sit there and stare at me and I'm getting damn sick and tired of it!"
Blob drew himself up tightly, shivering on Valeris's shoulder. Valeris reached up, stroked the tiny being, and Blob's shoe-button eyes disappeared completely. "There," Valeris said. "Is that better?"
Christine stared at the place the eyes had been, and her face darkened suspiciously. "What happened to them?" she demanded.
"What happened to what?"
"His eyes, bitch! What happened to his eyes?"
Valeris looked down at Blob. "What eyes?"
Christine jumped up from the stool. She scowled at Blob as if willing the eyes to return, but all she saw was a small ball of pink slime. "Look, he's been blinking them at me for a week," she snarled. "I thought all along there was something weird about him. Sometimes he's got legs and sometimes he doesn't. But he's always got that slimy look about him."
"That's because he's a pleomorph," Valeris said. "He has no cellular structure at all, just a protein-colloid matrix."
Christine glowered at the inert little pink lump. "That's ridiculous," he said, curious in spite of herself. "What holds him together?"
"Who knows? I don't. Some kind of electro-chemical cohesive force. The only reason he's got 'eyes' is because he thinks I want him to have eyes. If it bothers you that much, he won't have them any more."
"How very obliging of you, doctor," Christine said. "But why do you keep him around? What good does he do you, anyhow? All he does is eat and drink and sleep."
"Does he have to do something?" Valeris said evasively. "He's not bothering you, so why pick on him?"
"He just seems to worry you an awful lot," Christine said unpleasantly. "Let me see him a minute." She reached out for Blob, then jerked her finger back with a yelp. Blood dripped from the finger tip.
Christine's face slowly went white. "The little son of a bitch bit me!"
"He did, and you're lucky he didn't take a finger off," Valeris said, trembling with anger. "He doesn't like you any more than I do, and that's what you'll get every time you come near him, so you'd best keep your hands to yourself from now on."
"Don't worry," Christine Chapel said, "he won't get another chance because you're going to get rid of him."
"No way," Valeris said. "You let him be and he won't bother you, that's all. And the same thing goes for me."
"If he's not out of here in twelve hours, I'll get a warrant," Christine said tightly. "There happen to be laws against keeping hazardous pets on patrol ships."
Somewhere in the main corridor an alarm bell began buzzing. For a moment Valeris and Christine stood frozen, glaring at each other. Then the door burst open and Bones McCoy's head appeared. "Hey, you guys, let's go! We've got a call coming in, and it looks like a nasty one. Come on back here!"
They headed back toward the radio room. The signal was coming through frantically as Bones reached for the pile of punched tape running out on the floor. But as they crowded into the radio room, Valeris felt Christine's hand on her arm. "I'm not kidding, sweetie," the Blue Doctor said through her clenched teeth. "You've got twelve hours to get rid of him."
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