The loading ramp was beginning to fill up, and Dal saw half a dozen of his classmates from the medical school burst through the door from the station below, shifting their day packs from their shoulders and chattering among themselves. Several of them saw him, standing by himself against the guard rail. One or two nodded coolly and turned away; the others just ignored him. Nobody greeted him, nor even smiled. Dal turned away and stared down once again at the busy activity on the field below.
“Why so gloomy, friend?” a voice behind him said. “You look as though the ship left without you.”
Dal looked up at the tall, dark-haired young man, towering at his side, and smiled ruefully. “Hello, Tiger! As a matter of fact, it did leave. I’m waiting for the next one.”
“Where to?” Frank Martin frowned down at Dal. Known as “Tiger” to everyone but the professors, the young man’s nickname fit him well. He was big, even for an Earthman, and his massive shoulders and stubborn jaw only served to emphasize his bigness. Like the other recent graduates on the platform, he was wearing the colored cuff and collar of the probationary physician, in the bright green of the Green Service of Medicine. He reached out a huge hand and gently rubbed the pink fuzz-ball sitting on Dal’s arm. “What’s the trouble, Dal? Even Fuzzy looks worried. Where’s your cuff and collar?”
“I didn’t get any cuff and collar,” Dal said.
“Didn’t you get an assignment?” Tiger stared at him. “Or are you just taking a leave first?”
Dal shook his head. “A permanent leave, I guess,” he said bitterly. “There’s not going to be any assignment for me. Let’s face it, Tiger. I’m washed out.”
“Oh, now look here—”
“I mean it. I’ve been booted, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But you’ve been in the top ten in the class right through!” Tiger protested. “You know you passed your finals. What is this, anyway?”
Dal reached into his jacket and handed Tiger a blue paper envelope. “I should have expected it from the first. They sent me this instead of my cuff and collar.”
Tiger opened the envelope. “From Doctor Tanner,” he grunted. “The Black Plague himself. But what is it?”
“Read it,” Dal said.
“‘You are hereby directed to appear before the medical training council in the council chambers in Hospital Seattle at 10:00 A.M., Friday, June 24, 2375, in order that your application for assignment to a General Practice Patrol ship may be reviewed. Insignia will not be worn. Signed, Hugo Tanner, Physician, Black Service of Pathology.’” Tiger blinked at the notice and handed it back to Dal. “I don’t get it,” he said finally. “You applied, you’re as qualified as any of us—”
“Except in one way,” Dal said, “and that’s the way that counts. They don’t want me, Tiger. They have never wanted me. They only let me go through school because Black Doctor Arnquist made an issue of it, and they didn’t quite dare to veto him. But they never intended to let me finish, not for a minute.”
For a moment the two were silent, staring down at the busy landing procedures below. A warning light was flickering across the field, signaling the landing of an incoming shuttle ship, and the supply cars broke from their positions in center of the field and fled like beetles for the security of the garages. A loudspeaker blared, announcing the incoming craft. Dal Timgar turned, lifting Fuzzy gently from his arm into a side jacket pocket and shouldering his day pack. “I guess this is my flight, Tiger. I’d better get in line.”
Tiger Martin gripped Dal’s slender four-fingered hand tightly. “Look,” he said intensely, “this is some sort of mistake that the training council will straighten out. I’m sure of it. Lots of guys have their applications reviewed. It happens all the time, but they still get their assignments.”
“Do you know of any others in this class? Or the last class?”
“Maybe not,” Tiger said. “But if they were washing you out, why would the council be reviewing it? Somebody must be fighting for you.”
“But Black Doctor Tanner is on the council,” Dal said.
“He’s not the only one on the council. It’s going to work out. You’ll see.”
“I hope so,” Dal said without conviction. He started for the loading line, then turned. “But where are you going to be? What ship?”
Tiger hesitated. “Not assigned yet. I’m taking a leave. But you’ll be hearing from me.”
The loading call blared from the loudspeaker. The tall Earthman seemed about to say something more, but Dal turned away and headed across toward the line for the shuttle plane. Ten minutes later, he was aloft as the tiny plane speared up through the black night sky and turned its needle nose toward the west.
*
He tried to sleep, but couldn’t. The shuttle trip from the Port of Philadelphia to Hospital Seattle was almost two hours long because of passenger stops at Hospital Cleveland, Eisenhower City, New Chicago, and Hospital Billings. In spite of the help of the pneumatic seats and a sleep-cap, Dal could not even doze. It was one of the perfect clear nights that often occurred in midsummer now that weather control could modify Earth’s air currents so well; the stars glittered against the black velvet backdrop above, and the North American continent was free of clouds. Dal stared down at the patchwork of lights that flickered up at him from the ground below.
Passing below him were some of the great cities, the hospitals, the research and training centers, the residential zones and supply centers of Hospital Earth, medical center to the powerful Galactic Confederation, physician in charge of the health of a thousand intelligent races on a thousand planets of a thousand distant star systems. Here, he knew, was the ivory tower of galactic medicine, the hub from which the medical care of the confederation arose. From the huge hospitals, research centers, and medical schools here, the physicians of Hospital Earth went out to all corners of the galaxy. In the permanent outpost clinics, in the gigantic hospital ships that served great sectors of the galaxy, and in the General Practice Patrol ships that roved from star system to star system, they answered the calls for medical assistance from a multitude of planets and races, wherever and whenever they were needed.
Dal Timgar had been on Hospital Earth for eight years, and still he was a stranger here. To him this was an alien planet, different in a thousand ways from the world where he was born and grew to manhood. For a moment now he thought of his native home, the second planet of a hot yellow star which Earthmen called “Garv” because they couldn’t pronounce its full name in the Garvian tongue. Unthinkably distant, yet only days away with the power of the star-drive motors that its people had developed thousands of years before, Garv II was a warm planet, teeming with activity, the trading center of the galaxy and the governmental headquarters of the powerful Galactic Confederation of Worlds. Dal could remember the days before he had come to Hospital Earth, and the many times he had longed desperately to be home again.
He drew his fuzzy pink friend out of his pocket and rested him on his shoulder, felt the tiny silent creature rub happily against his neck. It had been his own decision to come here, Dal knew; there was no one else to blame. His people were not physicians. Their instincts and interests lay in trading and politics, not in the life sciences, and plague after plague had swept across his home planet in the centuries before Hospital Earth had been admitted as a probationary
