eyes and blinked up at him, and Dal absently stroked the tiny creature
with a finger. The fuzz-ball quivered happily and clung closer to Dal's
side as he started up the long ramp to the observation platform.
Automatic doors swung open as he reached the top, and Dal shivered in
the damp night air. He could feel the gray fur that coated his back and
neck rising to protect him from the coldness and dampness that his body
was never intended by nature to endure.

Below him the bright lights of the landing fields and terminal buildings
of the port of Philadelphia spread out in panorama, and he thought with
a sudden pang of the great space-port in his native city, so very
different from this one and so unthinkably far away. The field below was
teeming with activity, alive with men and vehicles. Moments before, one
of Earth's great hospital ships had landed, returning from a cruise deep
into the heart of the galaxy, bringing in the gravely ill from a dozen
star systems for care in one of Earth's hospitals. Dal watched as the
long line of stretchers poured from the ship's hold with white-clad
orderlies in nervous attendance. Some of the stretchers were encased in
special atmosphere tanks; a siren wailed across the field as an
emergency truck raced up with fresh gas bottles for a chlorine-breather
from the Betelgeuse system, and a derrick crew spent fifteen minutes
lifting down the special liquid ammonia tank housing a native of
Aldebaran's massive sixteenth planet.

All about the field were physicians supervising the process of
disembarcation, resplendent in the colors that signified their medical
specialties. At the foot of the landing crane a Three-star Internist in
the green cape of the Medical Service--obviously the commander of the
ship--was talking with the welcoming dignitaries of Hospital Earth.
Half a dozen doctors in the Blue Service of Diagnosis were checking new
lab supplies ready to be loaded aboard. Three young Star Surgeons swung
by just below Dal with their bright scarlet capes fluttering in the
breeze, headed for customs and their first Earthside liberty in months.
Dal watched them go by, and felt the sick, bitter feeling in the pit of
his stomach that he had felt so often in recent months.

He had dreamed, once, of wearing the scarlet cape of the Red Service of
Surgery too, with the silver star of the Star Surgeon on his collar.
That had been a long time ago, over eight Earth years ago; the dream had
faded s