Chapter 7: Alarums and Excursions

Once more the crew of the Lancet settled down to routine, and the incident on Morua VIII seemed almost forgotten.

But a change had come about in the relations between the three doctors, and in every way the change was for the better. If Jack Alvarez was not exactly cordial to Dal Timgar, at least he had dropped the open antagonism that he had shown before. Apparently Tiger’s angry outburst had startled Jack, as though he had never really considered that the big Earthman might honestly be attached to his friend from Garv II, and the Blue Doctor seemed sincere in his agreement to work with Dal and Tiger as a team.

But bit by bit Dal could sense that the change in Jack’s attitude went deeper than the surface. “You know, I really think he was scared of me,” Dal said one night when he and Tiger were alone. “Sounds silly, but I think it’s true. He pretends to be so sure of himself, but I think he’s as worried about doing things wrong as we are, and just won’t admit it. And he really thought I was a threat when I came aboard.”

“He probably had a good thorough briefing from Black Doctor Tanner before he got the assignment,” Tiger said grimly.

“Maybe--but somehow I don’t think he cares for the Black Doctor much more than we do.”

But whatever the reason, much of the tension was gone when the Lancet had left the Moruan system behind. A great weight seemed to have been lifted, and if there was not quite peace on board, at least there was an uneasy truce. Tiger and Jack were almost friendly, talking together more often and getting to know each other better. Jack still avoided Dal and seldom included him in conversations, but the open contempt of the first few weeks on the ship now seemed tempered somewhat.

Once again the Lancet‘s calls fell into a pattern. Landings on the outpost planets became routine, bright spots in a lonely and wandering existence. The calls that came in represented few real problems. The ship stopped at one contract planet to organize a mass inoculation program against a parasitic infestation resembling malaria. They paused at another place to teach the native doctors the use of some new surgical instruments that had been developed in Hospital Earth laboratories just for them. Frantic emergency calls usually proved to involve trivial problems, but once or twice potentially serious situations were spotted early, before they could develop into real trouble.

And as the three doctors got used to the responsibilities of a patrol ship’s rounds, and grew more confident of their ability to handle the problems thrust upon them, they found themselves working more and more efficiently as a team.

This was the way the General Practice Patrol was supposed to function. Each doctor had unsuspected skills that came to light. There was no questioning Jack Alvarez’s skill as a diagnostician, but it seemed uncanny to Dal the way the slender, dark-haired Earthman could listen carefully to a medical problem of an alien race on a remote planet, and then seem to know exactly which questions to ask to draw out the significant information about the situation. Tiger was not nearly as quick and clever as Jack; he needed more time to ponder a question of medical treatment, and he would often spend long hours poring over the data tapes before deciding what to do in a given case--but he always seemed to come up with an answer, and his answers usually worked. Above all, Tiger’s relations with the odd life-forms they encountered were invariably good; the creatures seemed to like him, and would follow his instructions faithfully.

Dal, too, had opportunities to demonstrate that his surgical skill and judgment was not universally faulty in spite of the trouble on Morua VIII. More than once he succeeded in almost impossible surgical cases where there was no time to call for help, and little by little he could sense Jack’s growing confidence in his abilities, grudging though it might be.

Dal had ample time to mull over the thing that had happened on Morua VIII and to think about the interview with Black Doctor Tanner afterward. He knew he was glad that Tiger had intervened even on the basis of a falsehood; until Tiger had spoken up Dal had been certain that the Black Doctor fully intended to use the incident as an excuse to discharge him from the General Practice Patrol. There was no question in his mind that the Black Doctor’s charges had been exaggerated into a trumped-up case against him, and there was no question that Tiger’s insistence on taking the blame had saved him; he could not help being thankful.

Yet there was something about it that disturbed Dal, nibbling away persistently at his mind. He couldn’t throw off the feeling that his own acceptance of Tiger’s help had been wrong.

Part of it, he knew, was his native, inbred loathing for falsehood. Fair or unfair, Dal had always disliked lying. Among his people, the truth might be bent occasionally, but frank lying was considered a deep disgrace, and there was a Garvian saying that “a false tongue wins no true friends.” Garvian traders were known throughout the Galaxy as much for their rigid adherence to their word as they were for the hard bargains they could drive; Dal had been enormously confused during his first months on Hospital Earth by the way Earthmen seemed to accept lying as part of their daily life, unconcerned about it as long as the falsehood could not be proven.

But something else about Tiger’s defense of him bothered Dal far more than the falsehood--something that had vaguely disturbed him ever since he had known the big Earthman, and that now seemed to elude him every time he tried to pinpoint it. Lying in his bunk during a sleep period, Dal remembered vividly the first time he had met Tiger, early in the second year of medical school. Dal had almost despaired by then of making friends with his hostile and resentful classmates and had begun more and more to avoid contact with them, building up a protective shell and relying on Fuzzy for company or comfort. Then Tiger had found him eating lunch by himself in the medical school lounge one day and flopped down in the seat beside him and began talking as if Dal were just another classmate. Tiger’s open friendliness had been like a spring breeze to Dal who was desperately lonely in this world of strangers; their friendship had grown rapidly, and gradually others in the class had begun to thaw enough at least to be civil when Dal was around. Dal had sensed that this change of heart was largely because of Tiger and not because of him, yet he had welcomed it as a change from the previous intolerable coldness even though it left him feeling vaguely uneasy. Tiger was well liked by the others in the class; Dal had been grateful more than once when Tiger had risen in hot defense of the Garvian’s right to be studying medicine among Earthmen in the school on Hospital Earth.

But that had been in medical school, among classmates. Somehow that had been different from the incident that occurred on Morua VIII, and Dal’s uneasiness grew stronger than ever the more he thought of it. Talking to Tiger about it was no help; Tiger just grinned and told him to forget it, but even in the rush of shipboard activity it stubbornly refused to be forgotten.

One minor matter also helped to ease the tension between the doctors as they made their daily rounds. Tiger brought a pink dispatch sheet in to Dal one day, grinning happily. “This is from the weekly news capsule,” he said. “It ought to cheer you up.”

It was a brief news note, listed under “incidental items.” “The Black Service of Pathology,” it said, “has announced that Black Doctor Hugo Tanner will enter Hospital Philadelphia within the next week for prophylactic heart surgery. In keeping with usual Hospital Earth administrative policy, the Four-star Black Doctor will undergo a total cardiac transplant to halt the Medical education administrator’s progressively disabling heart disease.” The note went on to name the surgeons who would officiate at the procedure.

Dal smiled and handed back the dispatch. “Maybe it will improve his temper,” he said, “even if it does give him another fifty years of active life.”

“Well, at least it will take him out of our hair for a while,” Tiger said. “He won’t have time to keep us under too close scrutiny.”

Which, Dal was forced to admit, did not make him too unhappy.

Shipboard rounds kept all three doctors busy. Often, with contact landings, calls, and studying, it seemed only a brief time from sleep period to sleep period, but still they had some time for minor luxuries. Dal was almost continuously shivering, with the ship kept at a temperature that was comfortable for Tiger and Jack; he missed the tropical heat of his home planet, and sometimes it seemed that he was chilled down to the marrow of his bones in spite of his coat of gray fur. With a little home-made plumbing and ingenuity, he finally managed to convert one of the ship’s shower units into a steam bath. Once or twice each day he would retire for a blissful half hour warming himself up to Garv II normal temperatures.

Fuzzy also became a part of shipboard routine. Once he grew accustomed to Tiger and Jack and the surroundings aboard the ship, the little creature grew bored sitting on Dal’s shoulder and wanted to be in the middle of things. Since the early tension had eased, he was willing to be apart from his master from time to time, so Dal and Tiger built him a platform that hung from the ceiling of the control room. There Fuzzy would sit and swing by the hour, blinking happily at the activity going on all around him.

But for all the appearance of peace and agreement, there was still an undercurrent of tension on board the Lancet which flared up from time to time when it was least expected, between Dal and Jack. It was on one such occasion that a major crisis almost developed, and once again Fuzzy was the center of the contention.

Dal Timgar knew that disaster had struck at the very moment it happened, but he could not tell exactly what was wrong. All he knew was that something fearful had happened to Fuzzy.

There was a small sound-proof cubicle in the computer room, with a chair, desk and a tape-reader for the doctors when they had odd moments to spend reading up on recent medical bulletins or reviewing their textbooks. Dal spent more time here than the other two; the temperature of the room could be turned up, and he had developed a certain fondness for the place with its warm gray walls and its soft relaxing light. Here on the tapes were things that he could grapple with, things that he could understand. If a problem here eluded him, he could study it out until he had mastered it. The hours he spent here were a welcome retreat from the confusing complexities of getting along with Jack and Tiger.

These long study periods were boring for Fuzzy who wasn’t much interested in the oxygen-exchange mechanism of the intelligent beetles of Aldebaran VI. Frequently Dal would leave him to swing on his platform or explore about the control cabin while he spent an hour or two at the tape-reader. Today Dal had been working for over an hour, deeply immersed in a review of the intermediary metabolism of chlorine-breathing mammals, when something abruptly wrenched his attention from the tape.

It was as though a light had snapped off in his mind, or a door slammed shut. There was no sound, no warning; yet, suddenly, he felt dreadfully, frighteningly alone, as if in a split second something inside him had been torn away. He sat bolt upright, staring, and he felt his skin crawl and his fingers tremble as he listened, trying to spot the source of the trouble.

And then, almost instinctively, he knew what was wrong. He leaped to his feet, tore open the door to the cubicle and dashed down the hallway toward the control room. “Fuzzy!” he shouted. “Fuzzy, where are you?“

Tiger and Jack were both at the control panel dictating records for filing. They looked up in surprise as the Red Doctor burst into the room. Fuzzy’s platform was hanging empty, gently swaying back and forth. Dal peered frantically around the room. There was no sign of the small pink creature.

“Where is he?” he demanded. “What’s happened to Fuzzy?”

Jack shrugged in disgust. “He’s up on his perch. Where else?”

“He’s not either! Where is he?”

Jack blinked at the empty perch. “He was there just a minute ago. I saw him.”

“Well, he’s not there now, and something’s wrong!” In a panic, Dal began searching the room, knocking over stools, scattering piles of paper, peering in every corner where Fuzzy might be concealed.

For a moment the others sat frozen, watching him. Then Tiger jumped to his feet. “Hold it, hold it! He probably just wandered off for a minute. He does that all the time.”

“No, it’s something worse than that.” Dal was almost choking on the words. “Something terrible has happened. I know it.”

Jack Alvarez tossed the recorder down in disgust. “You and your miserable pet!” he said. “I knew we shouldn’t have kept him on board.”

Dal stared at Jack. Suddenly all the anger and bitterness of the past few weeks could no longer be held in. Without warning he hurled himself at the Blue Doctor’s throat. “Where is he?” he cried. “What have you done with him? What have you done to Fuzzy? You’ve done something to him! You’ve hated him every minute just like you hate me, only he’s easier to pick on. Now where is he? What have you done to him?”

Jack staggered back, trying to push the furious little Garvian away. “Wait a minute! Get away from me! I didn’t do anything!”

“You did too! Where is he?”

“I don’t know.” Jack struggled to break free, but there was powerful strength in Dal’s fingers for all his slight body build. “I tell you, he was here just a minute ago.”

Dal felt a hand grip his collar then, and Tiger was dragging them apart like two dogs in a fight. “Now stop this!” he roared, holding them both at arm’s length. “I said stop it! Jack didn’t do anything to Fuzzy, he’s been sitting here with me ever since you went back to the cubicle. He hasn’t even budged.”

“But he’s gone,” Dal panted. “Something’s happened to him. I know it.”

“How do you know?”

“I--I just know. I can feel it.”

“All right, then let’s find him,” Tiger said. “He’s got to be somewhere on the ship. If he’s in trouble, we’re wasting time fighting.”

Tiger let go, and Jack brushed off his shirt, his face very white. “I saw him just a little while ago,” he said. “He was sitting up on that silly perch watching us, and then swinging back and forth and swinging over to that cabinet and back.”

“Well, let’s get started looking,” Tiger said.

They fanned out, with Jack still muttering to himself, and searched the control room inch by inch. There was no sign of Fuzzy. Dal had control of himself now, but he searched with a frantic intensity. “He’s not in here,” he said at last, “he must have gone out somewhere.”

“There was only one door open,” Tiger said. “The one you just came through, from the rear corridor. Dal, you search the computer room. Jack, check the lab and I’ll go back to the reactors.”

They started searching the compartments off the rear corridor. For ten minutes there was no sound in the ship but the occasional slamming of a hatch, the grate of a desk drawer, the bang of a cabinet door. Dal worked through the maze of cubby-holes in the computer room with growing hopelessness. The frightening sense of loneliness and loss in his mind was overwhelming; he was almost physically ill. The warm, comfortable feeling of contact that he had always had before with Fuzzy was gone. As the minutes passed, hopelessness gave way to despair.

Then Jack gave a hoarse cry from the lab. Dal tripped and stumbled in his haste to get down the corridor, and almost collided with Tiger at the lab door.

“I think we’re too late,” Jack said. “He’s gotten into the formalin.”

He lifted one of the glass beakers down from the shelf to the work bench. It was obvious what had happened. Fuzzy had gone exploring and had found the laboratory a fascinating place. Several of the reagents bottles had been knocked over as if he had been sampling them. The glass lid to the beaker of formalin which was kept for tissue specimens had been pushed aside just enough to admit the little creature’s two-inch girth. Now Fuzzy lay in the bottom of the beaker, immersed in formalin, a formless, shapeless blob of sickly gray jelly.