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dangerous working environments in the Galaxy for one of the GLNO
classification, but the answer was always the same.
Despite the fact that his every waking moment was spent in a condition of
perpetual vigilance verging on terror that would have driven the majority of
his species mad, he had discovered that this was the only place and type of
work that he wanted to be and do. Doubtless a Healer of the Mind would have
talked learnedly about deeply buried death wishes, professional maso-chism,
and the pathological need for constant danger, and would have pronounced him
psychologically abnormal if not downright insane. But then, that diagnosis
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
would have applied to the ma-jority of beings who had aspired to permanent
positions in the multispecies medical menagerie that was Sector Twelve General
Hospital.
Considering his ability to fly unobstructed above everyone else's heads, it
was no surprise that he was the first to board Rhabwar, where he logged his
presence before moving quickly to his tiny, deeply upholstered quarters,
checking that both backup sets of his gravity nullifiers were in operation.
His cabin closely resembled the cocoonlike living quarters of his home world,
and its artificial gravity was already set to Cinruss normal, which was
slightly less than one-quarter of a standard Earth G. He stretched his wings
and limbs to full extension, then distributed them into their most comfortable
position for sleeping. Cinrusskins, fragile but physically active, needed a
lot of sleep; and he knew that nothing important would be said or done until
they were many hours into hyperspace.
A few minutes later he heard the captain coming along the boarding-tube and
climbing the central well to the control deck, closely followed by the other
three Monitor Corps officers and the members of the medical team who collected
on the casualty deck. They were complaining loudly and bitterly at the sudden
interruption to their work or recreation, but all of the emotional radiation
they emitted was of controlled excitement rather than bitterness.
For a few moments he eavesdropped on the emotional ra-diation filtering
through to him from the casualty and control decks. They all knew that he
couldn't help doing that because it was impossible to switch off his empathic
faculty, so their emo-tional radiation was subdued, well-controlled, and, at
this range, restful. They knew better than to radiate unpleasant feelings when
their boss was trying to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
The briefing tape provided by Administrator Braithwaite had been played but
not yet discussed, and their feelings of cu-riosity, caution, and growing
impatience filled the casualty deck around him like a thick, emotional fog.
Captain Fletcher was sitting on a padded Kelgian treatment frame, flanked by
Lieutenants Dodds and Chen, the communi-cations and engineering officers
respectively, while the astrogator and current watch-keeping officer,
Lieutenant
Haslam, viewed the proceedings through the control deck's vision link.
Pathol-ogist Murchison occupied the swivel seat of the diagnostic con-sole
with its back turned to the screen; Charge Nurse Naydrad had curled itself
into a furry question mark on the nearest bed; and the polymorphic Dr. Danalta
sat in the middle of the deck like a small green haystack from which it had
extruded an ear and a single stalked eye. In order to avoid even the slightest
risk of injury from sudden, unthinking movements of the others' limbs,
Prilicla maintained a stable hover close to the ceiling while they all stared
at the wall screen below him.
"As we have just seen," Prilicla said, "we will be entering what may be a
unique situation for us, and we will have to be very careful..."
We're always careful," Naydrad broke in, its mobile fur rippling into waves of
impatience and anxiety. "How careful is Very'?"
Kelgians always said exactly what they felt because their mobile fur made
their feelings plain, at least to another member of their species or they said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]