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“Well, good for you!” Timmins said, showing its teeth approvingly. “We can’t look directly at the Telfi anyway, so we aren’t missing much. Suppose you begin by learning to drive a delivery sled. A small one, at first, so that an accident will damage you more than the hospital structure. And you’ll have to really master your internal geography, and be able to navigate accurately and at speed through the service tunnel network. It seems to be a law of nature that when a ward or diet kitchen has to be resupplied, the requisition is always urgent and usually arrives late.

“We’ll head for the internal transport hangar now,” it ended, “unless you have another question?”

She had, but thought it better to wait until they were moving again before asking it.

“What about the damage to the AUGL ward for whichI was indirectly responsible?” she said. “Will the cost be deducted from my salary?”

Timmins showed its teeth again and said, “I’d say that it would take about three years to pay for the damage caused by your AUGL friend. But when the damage was done you were one of the medical trainee crazies, not a serious and responsible member of the Maintenance Department, so don’t worry about it.”

She did not worry about it because, for the rest of the day, there were far more important things to worry about — principally the control and guidance of the uncontrollable and misguided, multiply accursed heap of machinery called an antigravity sled.

In operation the vehicle rode a repulsion cushion so that there was no contact with the deck, and changes in direction were effected by lowering friction pads, angling the thrusters, or, for fine control, leaning sideways. If emergency braking was necessary, the power was switched off. This caused the vehicle to drop to the deck and grind noisily to a halt. But this maneuver was discouraged because it made the driver very unpopular with the service crew who had to realign the repulsor grids.

By the end of the day her vehicle had slipped and spun all over the transport hangar floor, hit every collapsible marker that she was supposed to steer around, and generally displayed a high level of noncooperation. Timmins gave her a packet of study tapes, told her to look over them before next morning, and said that her driving was pretty good for a beginner.

Three days later she began to believe it.

“I drove a sled with a trailer attached, both fully loaded, from Level Eighteen to Thirty-three,” she told Tarsedth, when her one-time classmate visited her for the customary evening gossip. “I did it Using only theservice tunnels, and without hitting anything or anybody.”

“Should I be impressed?” the Kelgian asked.

“A little,” Cha Thrat said, feeling more than a little deflated. “What’s been happening to you?”

“Cresk-Sar transferred to me LSVO Surgical,” Tar-sedth said, its fur rippling in an unreadable mixture of emotions. “It said I was ready to broaden my other-species nursing experience, and working with a light-gravity life-form would improve my delicacy of touch. And anyway, it said, Charge Nurse Lentilatsar, the rotten, chlorine-breathing slimy slob, was not entirely happy with the way I exercised my initiative. What tape is that? It looks massively uninteresting.”

“To the contrary,” Cha Thrat said, touching the pause stud. The screen showed a picture of a group of Monitor Corps officers meeting the great Earth-human MacEwan and the equally legendary Orligian Grawlya-Ki, the true founders, it was said, of Sector General hospital. “It’s the history, organization, and present activities of the Monitor Corps. I find it very interesting, but ethically confusing. For example, why must a peace-keeping force be so heavily armed?”

“Because, stupid, it couldn’t if it wasn’t,” Tarsedth said. It went on quickly. “But on the subject of the Monitor Corps I’m an expert. A lot of Kelgians join these days, and I was going to try for a position as Surgeon-Lieutenant, a ship’s medic, that is, and might still do it if I don’t qualify here.

“Of course,” it went on enthusiastically, “there are other, nonmilitary, openings …”

As the Galactic Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, the Monitor Corps was essentially a police force on an interstellar scale, but during the first century since it had come into existence it had becomemuch more. Originally, when the Federation naa comprised a rather unstable alliance of only four inhabited systems — Nidia, Orligia, Traltha, and Earth — its personnel had been exclusively Earth-human. But those Earth-humans were responsible for discovering other inhabited systems, and more and more intelligent life-forms, and for establishing friendly contact with them.

The result was that the Federation now numbered among its citizens close on seventy different species— the figure was constantly being revised upward — and the peace-keeping function had taken second place to that of the Survey, Exploration, and Other-species Communications activities. The people with the heavy weaponry did not mind because a police force, unlike an army, feels at its most effective when there is nothing for it to do but keep in training by carving up the odd mineral-rich asteroid for the mining people, or clearing and leveling large tracts of virgin land on a newly discovered world in preparation for the landing of colonists.

The last time a Monitor Corps police action had been indistinguishable from an act of war had been nearly two decades ago, when they had defended Sector General itself from the badly misguided Etlans, who had since become law-abiding citizens of the Federation. A few of them had even joined the Corps.

“Nowadays membership is open to any species,” Tarsedth continued, “although for physiological reasons, life-support and accommodation problems on board the smaller ships, most of the space-going personnel are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers.

“Like I said,” the Kelgian went on, undulating forward and restarting the tape, “there are lots of interesting openings for restless, adventurous, home-hating types like us. You could do worse than join.”

“I have joined,” Cha Thrat said. “But driving a gravity sled isn’t exactly adventurous.”

Tarsedth’s fur spiked in surprise, then settled down again as it said, “Of course you have. Stupid of me, I’d forgotten that all nonmedical staff are automatically coopted into the Monitor Corps. And I’ve seen how you people drive. Adventurous verging on the suicidal best describes it. But you made a good decision. Congratulations.”

The decision had been made for her, Cha Thrat thought wryly, but that did not mean that it was necessarily a wrong decision. They had settled back to watch the remainder of the Monitor Corps history tape when Tarsedth’s fur became agitated again.

“I’m worried about you and the Corps people, Cha Thrat,” the Kelgian said suddenly. “They can be a bit stuffy about some things, easy-going about others. Just study and work hard. And think carefully before you do anything that will get you kicked out.”

CHAPTER 11

Time slipped past and Cha Thrat felt that she was making no progress at all, until one day she realized that she was performing as routine tasks that only a little earlier would have been impossible. Much of the work was servile but, strangely, she was becoming increasingly interested in it and felt proud when she did it well.

Sometimes the morning assignments contained unpleasant surprises.

“Today you will begin moving power cells and other consumables to the ambulance ship Rhabwar,” Timmins said, consulting its worksheet. “But there is a small job I want you to do first — new vegetable decoration for the AUGL ward. Study the attachment instructions before you go so that the medics will think you know what you’re doing … Is there a problem, Cha Thrat?”