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18

It seemed like thirty-hour days would give me plenty of time to rest up and study between classes, but as with everything else I had a lot to learn. Being a night-shifter for so long helped, since I was used to living on the wrong side of the clock, but only a little. Recalibrating my body took a while; recalibrating my brain took longer.

Part of the problem was that their hours were more like an hour and twelve in human time. If classroom time on Earth feels like it’s running backward, try adding another twelve minutes to it. According to the wristwatch I stubbornly wore, our class sessions were easily eleven hours.

That made sense as it was a little over a third of a standard day, so not that much different from the way we did things. It left me with close to a whole human day in between classes, and I didn’t want to spend all of it in my suite.

It was certainly nice enough. It has been appointed with human-compatible furniture, which no doubt came from the Emissaries since they were of almost identical builds. The artwork on the walls could best be described as “space alien impressionist” with lots of pastels and fuzzy outlines depicting scenes from what I gathered were planets throughout the Union. As a barely initiated human, to me they were almost surreal, but looking out my window into the atrium below I could tell there was more to them.

I wandered over to my kitchen, which wasn’t much more than a food synthesizer with a recycling port for dirty dishes, and considered its menu. Bjorn had assured me the synth would offer more selections as it got to know me, but for the first time in my life I was tired of burgers and yakisoba noodles. I glanced at the window again and decided it was time to get out and explore. I had about eighteen hours to kill and maybe there was a food truck down there.


Stepping into the atrium for the first time was a full-frontal sensory assault. Imagine the lushest conservatory on Earth, but easily covering ten acres under a dome that had to be a few hundred feet tall, enough for clouds to form along its ceiling.

The scents from so many varieties of alien vegetation were unlike anything I’d experienced before. The best way to describe it is a blend of citrus, herbs, and pines, but even that doesn’t do it justice. Some reminded me of lemon and rosemary, but with enough difference to know that couldn’t be what they were.

The map on my data crystal showed the interior was laid out with representative plants from the Emissaries and insectoids, which seemed like an odd combination, but their climates must have been similar. The reptilian Thubans no doubt had a dome somewhere that would’ve felt a lot like a desert on Earth.

It was easy to tell which sections were tailored for which race, as each seemed to concentrate in specific areas. Small insectoids were clambering around dense trees which looked like massive palms, with elegantly curving fronds and multicolored fruit that resembled pomegranates. The fronds were a deep indigo, and I wondered what gave them such a color—it couldn’t be chlorophyl, could it? Beneath the palms sat larger insectoids, which I assumed were parents watching after their swarms of kids. It made them feel a little less creepy, and I wondered if this was where they took their meals.

My stomach growled, another reminder that it was well past suppertime. It didn’t help that the fragrant plants were whetting my appetite.

The gardens were separated by a wide, carefully groomed stone walkway like something you might find in a conservatory on Earth. Where the insectoid side was dense and naturally chaotic, like a jungle, the Emissary’s section was orderly and meticulously cultivated, like an orchard or Japanese garden. Deciduous trees bloomed with intricate flowers in regal shades of violet and gold, as if they’d been bred for royalty. Their brilliant jade-green leaves highlighted the richly colored blooms. It felt like I should be wandering the garden, gently caressing its flowers as I contemplated the meaning of life.

Right now I could only contemplate my growing hunger. More oddly shaped fruit dangled from the trees, some resembling curlicue-twist bananas. Others looked like garden-variety pears. The temptation to pick one of each and dig in was hard to resist, but I had no idea which ones would be compatible with human metabolism. The Emissaries had told me we were “mostly” compatible, but that meant some things weren’t. I didn’t want my first week in class to be interrupted by a case of food poisoning, so I reluctantly trudged back up to my suite. Maybe I could tweak the synth to create a steak with asparagus.


The synth created a decent sirloin, which was not surprising since it could already duplicate a good cheeseburger. The veggies proved to be trickier. What it thought was asparagus came out as a jumble of olive-colored sticks with the consistency of beef jerky, and no amount of extra cooking would soften them up. I needed the vegetables so I choked them down. The synth added all the necessary nutrients to whatever it prepared, but presentation is everything and that part was going to take some work.

It was enough to fill me up, which made sleep come easier. I got in a solid eight hours in GU time, which was closer to ten in human time. Going by the clock on my data crystal, I had over a full GU hour before it was time for class to start. I’d planned to get there early today and needed to hustle.

I jumped into the shower, a closet-sized compartment that felt like a car wash. It sprayed me with a cleansing mist and caressed me with sonic waves before rinsing me down with a stream of nice hot water, then finished with a blast of warm air. I was standing in a giant blow dryer. It was efficient but left me unsatisfied—I’d never wanted a hot bath and a plain dry towel so much. Maybe I could get to know a few hextopods and take a dip in their pool sometime.

My plan was to play around with that transducer disc before class; I wanted to test it against the comparatively primitive gear I’d brought from home. How much more accurate—or not—was it compared to an old-fashioned BP cuff and pulse oximeter?

It felt a little like burglary, but the classroom door slid open as I passed my bio ring across it, so it must have been okay. I expected to enter a darkened room, but to my surprise it was as bright as day. And uncomfortably warm. At first I assumed they kept the A/C off when it wasn’t in use, but then I saw why.

Chonk was hunched over his desk, his temperature regulator placed atop his neatly folded tunic beneath his seat. He turned as I walked in, apparently not the least ashamed to be buck naked. For a giant lizard, it seemed appropriate.

He hissed. “Excuse appearance,” said the translator in my head.

I waved it away, then realized he might not grasp my gesture. “It’s not a problem,” I said, and studied the room. A lot of the equipment was out of place. “Have you been here all night?”

“What ‘night’?”

How to describe that, especially being in deep space? It was always night out there. “Solar cycles,” I began, and caught myself. “Sol” wouldn’t mean much to him. “When your home star is in the sky, it’s ‘day.’ When your planet rotates away from the star, it gets dark. Where I’m from, we call that ‘night.’”

“Ah. Understand now. Our home world tidally locked to star. Always presents same face. One half planet always in light. Other side always dark. We live in between.”

I hadn’t heard of ‘tidally locked’ and had to think on it. It sounded like our moon, where the same side always faced Earth. “Oh, okay. I understand now. You live in the space between, then?” I tried to imagine a strip of arable land bordered by full sun and eternal darkness. It couldn’t have been very big.

He thought for a minute. “Yes. Between. Is very warm.”

I unconsciously tugged at my coveralls. It had to be close to a hundred degrees in here. “This is more comfortable for you, then.”

“Much more comfortable.”

“I don’t understand. Could you not get your own quarters warm enough?”

“Could warm. Needed stay here. Learn more.”

I thought about how I’d spent the last eighteen hours and felt like a slacker. He was driven and disciplined, appropriate for someone from a warrior culture. “Did you sleep here, too?”

“Sleep . . .” He trailed off in thought. “Ah. Rest. Yes. Not for long.”

I’d worked with a few veterans over the years and they’d all said the same thing: a soldier learned to sleep anywhere, anytime, because they never knew how long they’d have to go without. It applied to medics and firefighters, too. “I came in early myself to play with the equipment.”

“Play?” He paused again. “Not play. Serious.”

I smiled. “It’s an expression we use. Humans can be indirect like that.”

He thought that over and seemed satisfied. “You come work? Learn?”

“Yes. Learn.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a pressure cuff, pulse oximeter, and stethoscope. He regarded them in the way we might consider a collection of eighteenth-century dental tools. I didn’t yet know how to read the body language of a giant lizard, but his widened eyes hinted he was appalled.

“Use on Earth? Primitive.”

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at the high-tech gear arranged along the back wall. “Compared to that stuff? Yeah, I suppose. This is standard equipment on Earth, and they work very well.” I placed the pulse ox on my index finger, and after a moment its tiny screen flashed with numbers. “See? This device tells me heart rate and blood oxygen levels. Simple.”

“Yes. Simple.”

Of course, “simple” could have meant “easy” or “stupid.” I placed the stethoscope into my ears, slipped on the BP cuff, and began pumping. “The others are a little more complicated. This will tell me blood pressure, but I have to take those readings myself with this gauge.” He seemed interested in the old-fashioned dial. I held the stethoscope’s bell to my chest. “This lets me listen to heart and lung function, abdominal sounds, that sort of thing.”

“Like transducer,” he said. “Is that not easier?”

“Much easier. I wanted to know how it compares to what I’m used to.” I handed him the stethoscope, which barely fit against his ear openings. He moved the bell around his chest. “Ah. See now. Useful.”

I smiled again. “Very useful.” It made me wonder, though . . .  “Does your race not use this kind of equipment?”

“No.” He tapped the side of his head. “Ears sensitive. Can hear much direct.” He removed the stethoscope and held one arm against the side of his head to demonstrate. “Good as stetho . . . thing.”

Now that seemed primitive, not that I was going to say so to a seven-foot-tall warrior lizard. It must have worked for them, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. It made me even more curious. “So how did you end up with the Med Corps?”

He sat up straight. “Was legion medico. Like physician. Treat many other races on expeditions.” He seemed to be searching for the right word. “Improvised. Union impressed.” The translator didn’t do an especially good job of conveying tone, but he seemed proud to be selected. It was an intimidating reminder of how unique my situation was.

“You said ‘physician.’ In my language that means a doctor. Are you a doctor?”

“Not doctor. Much training. But not doctor.”

That was a relief. I’d started to worry that I was the only medic in a room full of alien MDs. Maybe he’d been more like a physician’s assistant, which on Earth was still pretty far up in the pecking order. His remark about “expeditions” piqued my interest, though. Did he mean scouting other systems, or something more aggressive? Call me naive, but the Union didn’t strike me as being interested in conquest.

War stories would have to come later. There wasn’t much time left to do what I’d come early for in the first place. I snatched the transducer kit from the equipment shelf and began running it over my body, comparing it to the numbers on my pulse ox and BP cuff. That was a bit of a trick, keeping the disc in place while I pumped the cuff. My numbers were all over the place, no doubt from the awkward effort of holding the disc with one hand and pumping with the other, while twisting my head to one side to see the gauge. You’re supposed to be relaxed for a stable BP reading, and my contortion act was the opposite of relaxed.

To my chagrin, it reminded me of my own self-imposed limitations. For the same reason I clung to my old-fashioned paper notebooks, I’d kept a comparatively outdated manual BP cuff long after our squads had been equipped with the automated digital gear. The newer equipment was accurate, but I preferred the personal touch, relying on my own skill to pinpoint systolic and diastolic pressures. Plus the old ones didn’t need electricity to work.

One nice thing about the Med Corps’ device was the error bars, assuming they were correct. A healthy human’s pressure should stay close to 120/80, but this can vary, and there are definite danger zones at the upper and lower ends. The “typical human” range looked awfully generous, with an upper limit that would have me worried about stroking out. Pulse and O2 ranges were more reasonable, with the lower ends matching what I’d expected to see.

Again, I must have been telegraphing my uncertainty because Chonk seemed to notice. “Have problem, Mel?”

“Maybe. The acceptable BP ranges seem optimistic.”

“Optimistic . . .” He pondered that a moment as his translator must have been scrambling to keep up. “Optimistic. Hopeful. Mean unrealistic?”

I nodded, and made a mental note to be more precise. “Yes, that’s it. Unrealistic.” I held up the transducer disk. “The range of acceptable human blood pressure this device thinks is healthy is not accurate.”

“Ah. Will fix in time.” He pointed at the crystal propped up on my desk. “Need data. Make”—my translator stuttered—“baseline.” It was another indication that I was something of a guinea pig here. Chonk unfolded himself from his seat, towering over me at his full, intimidating height. He began collecting the displaced equipment and held out an opened claw. “Come. Class soon. Must organize.”


It was another day of equipment familiarization, which Xeelix assured us we would have plenty of opportunities to practice with. Some of the gear was familiar enough that I understood the machines as soon as he explained their function. Some purely mechanical devices like suction units and infusion pumps were remarkably familiar once I got over the near-magical technology upgrades, because in the end they had to function by the same principles. Nearly every device could adapt itself for individual races, while some had to be crafted for a specific race—spine boards, cervical collars, and so on.

I was especially fascinated with the laryngoscope. Another purely mechanical tool, it’s the flashlight-looking device we use to insert breathing tubes down a patient’s trachea. Intubating is dicey work, an acquired skill that relies heavily on sense of touch. Like everything else in emergency medicine, as a patient you really don’t want to find yourself in a condition where that thing becomes necessary.

This one was both smaller and way more capable than any I’d ever seen, made of something called “meta materials.” Not only did it come with a case full of tracheal blades that could change shape for each race, its grips could adapt to whichever being might be using it. The settings for a Gray were a lot different than a Thuban’s, for instance. Fortunately the Emissary-sized grips fit my own hands pretty well.

The neatest trick was 3D projection. We learned the displays Xeelix had used to show us what the “assessment disc” could do were for classroom illustration. In actual practice we’d be wearing transparent wraparound goggles that overlaid holographic images from whatever device we were using. With the laryngoscope, we could see exactly what it was seeing in three dimensions, projected in our visors. We tried it out on some of the training dummies and it was like looking straight into the patient’s body. It made intubating almost idiot-proof. Same for the little miracle disc—with the goggles on, it was like having Superman’s X-ray vision wherever you pressed it. I was dying to take this thing back home to show off to my buddies at the station.

I was less excited over Xeelix’s next presentation. He pulled out a container with the green Med Corps slash and opened it to reveal a cluster of gleaming metallic cigar-shaped objects of varying sizes. I immediately recognized them and groaned inwardly.

“While you all appear suitably impressed with the variety of assessment tools at your disposal, these devices will provide you with a more complete view of your patient’s vital functions.” He went on to explain how each was designed for specific GU species, and the proper methods for insertion. A helpful depiction of each species’ rectums and the appropriate probes appeared above our desktops.

Understand that I’m not repulsed by other people’s butts. We’re all meat sacks of one form or another, and it’s all gross, some parts more so than others. You learn to deal with it, or you find another line of work.

This felt different. After laughing off all the tabloid stories of alien abductors probing the more tender parts of human anatomy, here I was smack in the middle of it, learning how to use said probes.

What the hell was it with these guys and anal probes, anyway? On Earth, we poked around our patient’s nether regions for two things: One, it’s the most accurate way to read body temperature. Two, it’s a quick way to find internal bleeding in a gunshot victim. The first was hardly ever needed in the field, and the second was case-specific for obvious reasons. There's a third reason I won't get into, as it involves certain sexual misadventures which are best left unsaid. These guys, on the other hand, seemed to have a probe for everything.

Xeelix held up one of the devices, a particularly large (for me) and shiny butt cigar. “If conditions permit use, you will find these probes to be quite useful.” He seemed to focus on me, sensing my uncertainty. “In combination with the other tools we’ve demonstrated, you will be able to rapidly assess your patient’s condition to the fullest extent possible, even generating preliminary diagnoses.”

That was a big leap. As medics, we never diagnosed. That was an MD’s job. “Excuse me,” I said. “I feel like we need to understand scope of practice here. Where I came from, medics and nurses can’t diagnose patients. Only doctors like yourself can do that.”

Xeelix nodded in acknowledgment. “I understand the differences may seem profound, and I assure you that we will explain your limitations under Union Code in more detail.” He took a seat beside his podium, indicating that we were in for a bit of a philosophy lesson. “This is an excellent opportunity to discuss the legal boundaries of your position.” While he was addressing the class, I had the distinct feeling this was mostly for my benefit.

“Your role is to treat and stabilize patients for transport. Melanie Mooney, this is similar to what you are familiar with on your home world. However, the distances and time scales involved are significantly greater.”

“I understand the time lag for light-wave signals.” I inclined my head toward Bjorn. “They also explained the ‘entanglement’ device you use for long-range communication.”

“Signal lag and the limitations of entanglement are certainly factors. However, I don’t believe you have been adequately prepared for the true impact of relative time.”

Now I turned to Bjorn. Relative time? It seemed like everyone else in the Union had an innate understanding of mind-bending physics. It was a reminder that here, I was the alien.

Xeelix continued. “Are you familiar with the effect of velocity on perceived time?”

“Barely,” I admitted. “It slows down the faster you go, right?”

“For the individual traveling, it passes at the same perceived rate. But relative to an outside observer, the traveler’s time slows down. It is a difficult concept for one who has no need to understand it.”

“But your ships can’t travel at light speed. That’s still impossible.”

“Strictly speaking, yes, though many travel at a considerable fraction of light speed. This creates time-dilation effects. What you may not yet grasp is that gravity has the same effect. Our use of gravity-manipulation drives to cross interstellar distances results in the same phenomenon, as if we were traveling faster than light. You will not know if the medical team you left behind on station is the same that will be there when you arrive. Or for that matter, what diagnostic tools they may have available. In extreme situations the facility may no longer be operable; however, this is quite rare.”

Once again, my brain hurt, but now was accompanied by a sick feeling in my gut. I’d been here not quite two weeks, but how much time had passed on Earth? And how isolated would we be on long runs? The idea of leaving one of the Med Corps’ orbiting hospitals and coming back to a completely different place—or no place at all—was a lot to digest.

It was one more thing to compartmentalize for later. I had to focus on the immediate questions. “That’s why these ambulances”—and I could tell that word tripped a few of my classmate’s translators—“are more like self-contained ERs.” That also made their translators skip. “Emergency Rooms,” I explained.

Xeelix nodded appreciatively. “That is precisely correct, Melanie.” It was the first time he’d dropped my surname, which felt like progress. Maybe he’d needed time to catch up with human cultural norms. The Grays could be scrupulously formal. “Recall that I said the probes and transducers can generate a diagnosis. It is all automated and ready for access by a physician. Your personal observations are vital, but they are not the ‘final word,’ as you might say.”

That made me feel better about the GU’s standard of care. But now there was a bigger question to ponder: How much time had I already lost back on Earth, and how much more would I lose in the future?

I would find out soon enough.

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