Ferrel nodded, satisfied with his own guess. “I thought so. You didn’t crack, as you put it, until your mind knew it was safe to do so—and then you simply passed the work on. By that definition, I’m cracking, too. I’m sitting in here, smoking, talking to you, when out there a man needs attention. The fact that he’s getting it from two others, one practically fresh, the other at least a lot better off than we are, doesn’t have a thing to do with it, does it?”
“But it wasn’t that way, Doc. I’m not asking for grandstand stuff from anybody.”
“Nobody’s giving it to you, son. All right, you screamed—why not? It didn’t hurt anything. I growled at Brown when I came in for the same reason—exhausted, overstrained nerves. If I went out there and had to take over from them, I’d probably scream myself, or start biting my tongue—nerves have to have an outlet; physically, it does them no good, but there’s a psychological need for it.” The boy wasn’t convinced, and Doc sat back in the chair, staring at him thoughtfully. “Ever wonder why I’m here?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you might. Twenty-seven years ago, when I was about your age, there wasn’t a surgeon in this country—or the world, for that matter—who had the reputation I had; any kind of surgery, brain, what have you. They’re still using some of my techniques…uh-hum, thought you’d remember when the association of names hit you. I had a different wife then, Jenkins, and there was a baby coming. Brain tumor—I had to do it, no one else could. I did it, somehow, but I went out of that operating room in a haze, and it was three days later when they’d tell me she’d died; not my fault—I know that now—but I couldn’t realize it then.
“So, I tried setting up as a general practitioner. No more surgery for me! And because I was a fair diagnostician, which most surgeons aren’t, I made a living, at least. Then, when this company was set up, I applied for the job, and got it; I still had a reputation of sorts. It was a new field, something requiring study and research, and damned near every ability of most specialists plus a general practitioner’s, so it kept me busy enough to get over my phobia of surgery. Compared to me, you don’t know what nerves or cracking means. That little scream was a minor incident.”
Jenkins made no comment, but lighted the cigarette he’d been holding. Ferrel relaxed farther into the chair, knowing that he’d be called if there was any need for his work, and glad to get his mind at least partially off Jorgenson. “It’s hard to find a man for this work, Jenkins. It takes too much ability at too many fields, even though it pays well enough. We went through plenty of applicants before we decided on you, and I’m not regretting our choice. As a matter of fact, you’re better equipped for the job than Blake was—your record looked as if you’d deliberately tried for this kind of work.”
“I did.”
“Hm-m-m.” That was the one answer Doc had least expected; so far as he knew, no one deliberately tried for a job at Atomics—they usually wound up trying for it after comparing their receipts for a year or so with the salary paid by National. “Then you knew what was needed and picked it up in toto. Mind if I ask why?”
Jenkins shrugged. “Why not? Turnabout’s fair play. It’s kind of complicated, but the gist of it doesn’t take much telling. Dad had an atomic plant of his own—and a darned good one, too, Doc, even if it wasn’t as big as National. I was working in it when I was fifteen, and I went through two years of university work in atomics with the best intentions of carrying on the business. Sue—well, she was the neighbor girl I followed around, and we had money at the time; that wasn’t why she married me, though. I never did figure that out—she’d had a hard enough life, but she was already holding down a job at Mayo’s, and I was just a raw kid. Anyway—
“The day we came home from our honeymoon, Dad got a big contract on a new process we’d worked out. It took some swinging, but he got the equipment and started it…. My guess is that one of the controls broke through faulty construction; the process was right! We’d been over it too often not to know what it would do. But, when the estate was cleared up, I had to give up the idea of a degree in atomics, and Sue was back working at the hospital. Atomic courses cost real money. Then one of Sue’s medical acquaintances fixed it for me to get a scholarship in medicine that almost took care of it, so I chose the next best thing to what I wanted.”
“National and one of the biggest competitors—if you can call it that—are permitted to give degrees in atomics,” Doc reminded the boy. The field was still too new to be a standing university course, and there were no better teachers in the business than such men as Palmer, Hokusai and Jorgenson. “They pay a salary while you’re learning, too.”
“Hm-m-m. Takes ten years that way, and the salary’s just enough for a single man. No, I’d married Sue with the intention she wouldn’t have to work again; well, she did until I finished internship, but I knew if I got the job here I could support her. As an atomjack, working up to an engineer, the prospects weren’t so good. We’re saving a little money now, and some day maybe I’ll get a crack at it yet…. Doc, what’s this all about? You babying me out of my fit?”
Ferrel grinned at the boy. “Nothing else, son, though I was curious. And it worked. Feel all right now, don’t you?”
“Mostly, except for what’s going on out there—I got too much of a look at it from the truck. Oh, I could use some sleep, I guess, but I’m O.K. again.”
“Good.” Doc had profited almost as much as Jenkins from the rambling off-trail talk, and had managed more rest from it than from nursing his own thoughts. “Suppose we go out and see how they’re making out with Jorgenson? Um, what happened to Hoke, come to think of it?”
“Hoke? Oh, he’s in my office now, figuring out things with a pencil and paper since we wouldn’t let him go back out there. I was wondering—”
“Atomics?…. Then suppose you go in and talk to him; he’s a good guy, and he won’t give you the brush-off. Nobody else around here apparently suspected this Isotope R business, and you might offer a fresh lead for him. With Blake and the nurses here and the men out of the mess except for the tanks, there’s not much you can do to help on my end.”
Ferrel felt better at peace with the world than he had since the call from Palmer as he watched Jenkins head off across the surgery toward his office; and the glance that Brown threw, first toward the boy, then back at Doc, didn’t make him feel worse. That girl could say more with her eyes than most women could with their mouths!
He went over toward the operating table where Blake was now working the heart massage with one of the fresh nurses attending to respiration and casting longing glances toward the mechanical lung apparatus; it couldn’t be used in this case, since Jorgenson’s chest had to be free for heart attention.
Blake looked up, his expression worried. “This isn’t so good, Doc. He’s been sinking in the last few minutes. I was just going to call you. I—”
The last words were drowned out by the bull-throated drone that came dropping down from above them, a sound peculiarly characteristic of the heavy Sikorsky freighters with their modified blades to gain lift. Ferrel nodded at Brown’s questioning glance, but he didn’t choose to shout as his hands went over those of Blake and took over the delicate work of simulating the natural heart action. As Blake withdrew, the sound stopped, and Doc motioned him out with his head.
“You’d better go to them and oversee bringing in the apparatus—and grab up any of the men you see to act as porters—or send Jones for them. The machine is an experimental model, and pretty cumbersome; must weigh seven or eight hundred pounds.”
“I’ll get them myself—Jones is sleeping.”
There was no flutter to Jorgenson’s heart under Doc’s deft manipulations, though he was exerting every bit of skill he possessed. “How long since there was a sign?”
“About four minutes, now. Doc, is there still a chance?”
“Hard to say. Get the machine, though, and we’ll hope.”
But still the heart refused to respond, though the pressure and manipulation kept the blood circulating and would at least prevent any starving or asphyxiation of the body cells. Carefully, delicately, he brought his mind into his fingers, trying to woo a faint quiver. Perhaps he did, once, but he couldn’t be sure. It all depended on how quickly they could get the machine working now, and how long a man could live by manipulation alone. That point was still unsettled.
But there was no question about the fact that the spark of life burned faintly and steadily lower in Jorgenson, while outside the man-made hell went on ticking off the minutes that separated it from becoming Mahler’s Isotope. Normally, Doc was an agnostic, but now, unconsciously, his mind slipped back into the simple faith of his childhood, and he heard Brown echoing the prayer that was on his lips. The second hand of the watch before him swung around and around and around again before he heard the sound of men’s feet at the back entrance, and still there was no definite quiver from the heart under his fingers. How much time did he have left, if any, for the difficult and unfamiliar operation required?
His side glance showed the seemingly innumerable filaments of platinum that had to be connected into the nerves governing Jorgenson’s heart and lungs, all carefully coded, yet almost terrifying in their complexity. If he made a mistake anywhere, it was at least certain there would be no time for a second trial; if his fingers shook or his tired eyes clouded at the wrong instant, there would be no help from Jorgenson. Jorgenson would be dead!
V
“Take over massage, Brown,” he ordered. “And keep it up no matter what happens. Good. Dodd, assist me, and hang onto my signals. If it works, we can rest afterward.”
Ferrel wondered grimly with that part of his mind that was off by itself whether he could justify his boast to Jenkins of having been the world’s greatest surgeon; it had been true once, he knew with no need for false modesty, but that was long ago, and this was at best a devilish job. He’d hung on with a surge of the old fascination as Kubelik had performed it on a dog at the convention, and his memory for such details was still good, as were his hands. But something else goes into the making of a great surgeon, and he wondered if that were still with him.
Then, as his fingers made the microscopic little motions needed and Dodd became another pair of hands, he ceased wondering. Whatever it was, he could feel it surging through him, and there was a pure joy to it somewhere, over and above the urgency of the work. This was probably the last time he’d ever feel it, and if the operation succeeded, probably it was a thing he could put with the few mental treasures that were still left from his former success. The man on the table ceased to be Jorgenson, the excessively gadgety Infirmary became again the main operating theater of that same Mayo’s which had produced Brown and this strange new machine, and his fingers were again those of the Great Ferrel, the miracle boy from Mayo’s, who could do the impossible twice before breakfast without turning a hair.
Some of his feeling was devoted to the machine itself. Massive, ugly, with parts sticking out in haphazard order, it was more like something from an inquisition chamber than a scientist’s achievement, but it worked—he’d seen it functioning. In that ugly mass of assorted pieces, little currents were generated and modulated to feed out to the heart and lungs and replace the orders given by a brain that no longer worked or could not get through, to coordinate breathing and beating according to the need. It was a product of the combined genius of surgery and electronics, but wonderful as the exciter was, it was distinctly secondary to the technique Kubelik had evolved for selecting and connecting only those nerves and nerve bundles necessary, and bringing the almost impossible into the limits of surgical possibility.
Brown interrupted, and that interruption in the midst of such an operation indicated clearly the strain she was under. “The heart fluttered a little then, Dr. Ferrel.”
Ferrel nodded, untroubled by the interruption. Talk, which bothered most surgeons, was habitual in his own little staff, and he always managed to have one part of his mind reserved for that while the rest went on without noticing. “Good. That gives us at least double the leeway I expected.”
His hands went on, first with the heart which was the more pressing danger. Would the machine work, he wondered, in this case? Curare and radioactives, fighting each other, were an odd combination. Yet, the machine controlled the nerves close to the vital organ, pounding its message through into the muscles, where the curare had a complicated action that paralyzed the whole nerve, establishing a long block to the control impulses from the brain. Could the nerve impulses from the machine be forced through the short paralyzed passages? Probably—the strength of its signals was controllable. The only proof was in trying.
Brown drew back her hands and stared down uncomprehendingly. “It’s beating, Dr. Ferrel! By itself…it’s beating!”
He nodded again, though the mask concealed his smile. His technique was still not faulty, and he had performed the operation correctly after seeing it once on a dog! He was still the Great Ferrel! Then, the ego in him fell back to normal, though the lift remained, and his exultation centered around the more important problem of Jorgenson’s living. And, later, when the lungs began moving of themselves as the nurse stopped working them, he had been expecting it. The detail work remaining was soon over, and he stepped back, dropping the mask from his face and pulling off his gloves.
