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,