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