the care of the intelligent marine races that required specialized
hospital care. The depths of Puget Sound served as a vast aquatic ward
system where creatures which normally lived in salt-water oceans on
their native planets could be cared for, and the specialty physicians
who worked with marine races had facilities here for research and
teaching in their specialty. The dry-land sectors of the hospital were
organized to support the aquatic wards; the surgeries, the laboratories,
the pharmacies and living quarters all were arranged on the periphery of
the salt-water basin, and rapid-transit tubes carried medical workers,
orderlies, nurses and physicians to the widespread areas of the hospital
city.

The pathology sector lay to the north of the city, and Black Doctor
Arnquist was the chief pathologist of Hospital Seattle. Dal found a
northbound express tube, climbed into an empty capsule, and pressed the
buttons for the pathology sector. Presently the capsule was shifted
automatically into the pressure tube that would carry him thirty miles
north to his destination.

It was the first time Dal had ever visited a Black Doctor in his
quarters, and the idea made him a little nervous. Of all the medical
services on Hospital Earth, none had the power of the Black Service of
Pathology. Traditionally in Earth medicine, the pathologists had always
occupied a position of power and discipline. The autopsy rooms had
always been the "Temples of Truth" where the final, inarguable answers
in medicine were ultimately found, and for centuries pathologists had
been the judges and inspectors of the profession of medicine.

And when Earth had become Hospital Earth, with status as a probationary
member of the Galactic Confederation of Worlds, it was natural that the