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members were squeezed inside protective suits for environmental reasons.
Several times they visited the ambulance ship, initially to thank the
officers and medical team on the Rhabwar for saving the young Dwerlan, who had
been the only survivor of the disaster to its ship, and later to talk about
their impressions of the hospital or of their home world of Dwerla and its four
thriving colonies. The visits were welcome breaks in the monotony of what, for
the personnel of the Rhabwar, had become an extended period of self-education.
At least, that was how the Chief Psychologist described the series of
lectures and drills and technical demonstrations that would occupy them for the
next few months, unless a distress call was received before then.
 When the ship is in dock you will spend your on-duty time on board,
O Mara had told Conway during one brief but not particularly pleasant interview,
 until you have satisfied yourselves, and me, that you are completely familiar
with every aspect of your new duty-the ship, its systems and equipment, and
something of the specialties of its officers. As much, at least, as they will be
expected to learn about your specialty. Right now, and in spite of having to
answer two distress calls in as many weeks, you are still ignorant.
 Your first mission resulted in considerable inconvenience to yourselves,
he had gone on sourly,  and the second in a near panic for the hospital. But
neither job could be called a challenge either to your extraterrestrial medical
skill or Fletcher s e-t engineering expertise. The next mission may not be so
easy, Conway. I suggest you prepare yourselves for it by learning to act
together as a team, and not by fighting continually to score points like two
opposing teams. And don t bang the door on your way out.
And so it was that the Rhabwar became a shipshaped classroom and
laboratory in which the ship s officers lectured on their specialties in as much
detail as they considered mere medical minds could take, and the medical team
tried to teach them the rudiments of e-t physiology. Because so many of the
lectures had to give a general, rather than a too narrowly specialized,
treatment of their subjects, it was usually the Captain or Conway who delivered
them. With the exception of the watch-keeping officer on duty in Control-and he
could look and listen in and ask questions-all the ship s officers were present
at the medical lectures.
On this occasion Conway was discussing e-t comparative physiology.
..... Unless you are attached to a multienvironment hospital like this
one, Conway was explaining to Lieutenants Haslam, Chen and Dodds, and with a
brief glance at the vision pickup to include Captain Fletcher in Control,  you
normally meet extraterrestrials one species at a time, and refer to them by
their planet of origin. But here in the hospital and in the wrecked ships we
will encounter, rapid and accurate identification of incoming patients and
rescued survivors is vital, because all too often the casualties are in no fit
condition to furnish physiological information about themselves. For this reason
we have evolved a four-letter physiological classification system, which works
like this:
 The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution, he continued.
 The second letter indicates the type and distribution of limbs and sensory
equipment, which in turn gives us information regarding the positioning of the
brain and the other major organs. The remaining two letters refer to the
combination of metabolism and gravity and/or atmospheric-pressure requirements
of the being, and these are tied in with the physical mass and the protective
tegument, skin, fur, scales, osseous plating and so on represented by the
relevant letter.
 It is at this point during the hospital lectures, Conway said, smiling,
 that we have to remind some of our e-t medical students that the initial letter
of their classifications should not be allowed to give them feelings of
inferiority, and that the level of physical evolution, which is, of course, an
adaptation to their planetary environment, has no relation to the level of
intelligence . .
Species with the prefix A, B or C, he went on to explain, were water-
breathers. On most worlds, life had originated in the sea, and these beings had
developed high intelligence without having to leave it. The letters D through F
were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, into which group fell most of the
intelligent races in the Galaxy; and the G to K types were also warm-blooded but
insectile. The L s and M s were light-gravity, winged beings.
Chlorine-breathing life-forms were contained in the 0 and P groups, and
after that came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically and the
downright weird types. These included the ultra-high-temperature and frigid-
blooded or crystalline beings, and entities capable of modifying their physical
structures at will. Those possessing extrasensory powers sufficiently well
developed to make ambulatory or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given
the prefix V, regardless of physical size or shape.
..... There are anomalies in the system, Conway went on,  but these can
be blamed on a lack of imagination by its originators. One of them was the AACP
life-form, which has a vegetable metabolism. Normally, the prefix A denotes a
water-breather, there being nothing lower in the system than the piscine life-
forms. But then we discovered the AACPs, who were, without doubt, vegetable
intelligences, and the plant came before the fish-
 Control here. Sorry for the interruption, Doctor.
 You have a question, Captain? asked Conway. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]