Star Surgeon | Page 4

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 member of the Galactic
Confederation.
But as long as Dal could remember, he had wanted to be a doctor. From
the first time he had seen a General Practice Patrol ship landing in his
home city to fight the plague that was killing his people by the
thousands, he had known that this was what he wanted more than
anything else: to be a physician of Hospital Earth, to join the ranks of
the doctors who were serving the galaxy.
Many on Earth had tried to stop him from the first. He was a Garvian,
alien to Earth's climate and Earth's people. The physical differences
between Earthmen and Garvians were small, but just enough to set him
apart and make him easily identifiable as an alien. He had one too few
digits on his hands; his body was small and spindly, weighing a bare
ninety pounds, and the coating of fine gray fur that covered all but his
face and palms annoyingly grew longer and thicker as soon as he came
to the comparatively cold climate of Hospital Earth to live. The bone
structure of his face gave his cheeks and nose a flattened appearance,
and his pale gray eyes seemed abnormally large and wistful. And even
though it had long been known that Earthmen and Garvians were equal
in range of intelligence, his classmates still assumed just from his
appearance that he was either unusually clever or unusually stupid.
The gulf that lay between him and the men of Earth went beyond mere
physical differences, however. Earthmen had differences of skin color,
facial contour and physical size among them, yet made no sign of
distinction. Dal's alienness went deeper. His classmates had been civil
enough, yet with one or two exceptions, they had avoided him carefully.
Clearly they resented his presence in their lecture rooms and

laboratories. Clearly they felt that he did not belong there, studying
medicine.
From the first they had let him know unmistakably that he was
unwelcome, an intruder in their midst, the first member of an alien race
ever to try to earn the insignia of a physician of Hospital Earth.
And now, Dal knew he had failed after all. He had been allowed to try
only because a powerful physician in the Black Service of Pathology
had befriended him. If it had not been for the friendship and support of
another Earthman in the class, Tiger Martin, the eight years of study
would have been unbearably lonely.
But now, he thought, it