Billie's experience was totally different. She found herself
transformed into a mental humming-bird.
Her mind seemed to be darting with infinite rapidity, here and there
throughout the universe. She got only the most lightninglike glimpse
of any one spot; flash after flash of unfamiliar, indescribable
situations succeeded each other like the speeded-up scenes of a
photoplay farce. For an unguessable length of time this
helter-skelter process occupied her mind.
Then there came a scene which stayed. It was dim at first; she was
more thoroughly aware of the sound of voices than anything else.
Then she saw clearly.
She--that is, her agent--was in some sort of a room, giving
instructions to a group of white-clad figures. Before Billie could
concentrate upon what was being said the talk ceased; and next
moment, amid perfect silence, the agent bent over something which
lay on a high table.
Whereupon Billie got a severe jolt. For, unless she was most
woefully mistaken, the thing she was now looking at was the
unconscious form of a patient; the place was the operating-room of a
hospital; and the eyes she was using belonged to a surgeon.
She watched breathlessly. The surgeon's nimble fingers proceeded
with the utmost unconcern to open wide the patient's torso. Other
pairs of hands, belonging to nurses, aided in this; and Billie found
the intricate process decidedly interesting rather than otherwise.
Of course she was spared the odor of blood.
As soon as the ribs were entirely displaced, the lungs were
carefully laid aside. Extraordinary delicacy seemed called for here.
Billie shortly began to wonder if it were not high time to quit when
her agent, assisted as before, calmly exposed the patient's heart to
full view.
Billie could see it throbbing; more, she could hear it. She watched
in wonder for the next step.
They consisted in forcibly untangling the mass of tubes and arteries
all about the organ. Presently everything was clear; and then,
without delay, the nurses brought forward a strange-looking device.
It was of silver, shaped like a flattened egg, and a trifle smaller
than that laboring, human blood-pump; To it was attached a pair of
long, flexible, silver pipes, which led to Billie knew not where.
And near one extremity the egg was provided with eight curious
nozzles.
At times the flying hands partly interfered with Billie's vision;
yet she saw nearly all that amazing process, from beginning to end.
To put it briefly, the eight nozzles were boldly introduced, almost
at a single operation, into tiny incisions in the eight
corresponding tubes of the heart. In they were forced, until they
filled the arteries and veins; and once inserted, silver clamps were
instantly tightened on the outsides of the tubes. All this was done
in two or three seconds; and when all was complete, the heart itself
had been entirely isolated and its place absolutely taken by that
little silver egg.
The patient gave no sign that anything out of the ordinary had
occurred. Not a drop of blood had been spilled except in the process
of getting at the organ; but now, with a few deft motions of certain
instruments, the heart was sliced away from the surrounding tissues,
the tubes were severed, and the whole powerful pump, still beating
faintly, was removed from the body altogether.
Next, the surgeon proceeded to stanch the bleeding of the tubes;
that is, of the stubs projecting below those tight silver nozzles.
This done, the nimble fingers calmly replaced the lungs and other
items, quite as though they were reassembling a piece of machinery.
Lastly, the opening was sewed up in a manner which would have
delighted any seamstress.
The two long silver pipes were left protruding. Now, for the first
time, Billie saw where they led to.
On a stand alongisde the operating-table stood an extremely small,
flat box, with its lid open. The pipes ended there. And as the
surgeon inspected the outfit Billie saw that it comprised, in
effect, a pair of diminutive air-pumps. There were two tiny dials, a
regulating device, some sort of an automatic electric switch, and
what looked like a steel storage tank; all on a watchlike scale.
Looking more closely, Billie made out two pairs of electric wires
running from this case to another of the same size. The surgeon
lifted its lid, disclosing two electric storage batteries, each with
its own circuit.
In short, the arrangement provided duplicate sources, in vest-pocket
size, of power for operating a mechanical heart. The electricity
worked the air-pumps, which in turn supplied the little silver
egg--implanted in the patient--with both pressure and vacuum, while
doubtless the artificial organ itself housed a valve system which
did the rest. The regulating device kept the blood circulating at
the proper rate.
The surgeon seemed satisfied with it all, and, after another
critical examination of the patient, glanced about the room,
straightened up, took a deep breath, and spoke:
"Quick work. Thanks very much, everybody."
And Billie did not know which to be the more astonished at: the fact
that the voice was unmistakably a woman's, or that she, Billie, was
able to understand all that was said. She did not fully appreciate
until afterward that it was her own brain which did the translating;
the surgeon's subconscious mind had merely furnished a thought-image
which would have been exactly the same, regardless of language.
"Any special instructions, Surgeon Aldor?" inquired one of the
white-clad, face-swathed figures.
"No. The usual handling. Simply keep the batteries charged in
rotation."
The surgeon took off a mouth mask and a blood-soaked apron, and then
swiftly washed her hands. Next she stepped briskly from the room;
and the architect who was using her eyes rejoiced to see the
door-knobs of the standard height of thirty-five inches, indicating
that this agent of hers was of about her own height. From the sound
of her footsteps, however, Billie concluded that she was somewhat
heavier than herself.
Reaching another room, the surgeon proceeded to don hat and coat.
Next, she stepped in front of a long mirror; but the action was so
quick, and it took Billie so completely by surprise, she was not
able to inspect the image closely. To be frank, she looked first at
the woman's clothes, finding that her suit was a very trim affair of
blue leather, cut in a semi-military fashion. Slashes of dark-red
material across the sleeves were repeated about the collar, while
the cap, a jaunty affair with a bell crown, matched the suit. The
lower ends of the breeches, much like ordinary riding trousers, were
tucked into high lace-up boots of red leather.
Before Billie could see any more other than that the surgeon was
small-featured in striking contrast to the robustness of her body,
she stepped from the room. A moment later an automatic elevator took
her to a lower floor, where she was greeted by a person whom Billie
assumed to be a head nurse.
"Anything out of the ordinary, surgeon?"
"No," with a bruskness which was startling by comparison with her
cheeriness upstairs. "I understand that Dr. Norbith wishes to go
home as soon as possible?"
"Yes."
"He may go as soon as the cast is hard. Make sure his machine is a
smooth one."
The nurse simply nodded as the surgeon stepped on, through a very
ordinary pair of sliding doors, and so on out into an anteroom and
thence to a porch, where she stood looking into the street for a
moment.
It was exceedingly broad, and lined on both sides with imposing
structures whose architecture was entirely strange to Billie. She
would liked to have examined them all in detail; but she had no
control over her agent, who straightway walked down a short flight
of steps and thence to a sidewalk.
Here Billie became perfectly willing to neglect the architecture.
People were coming and going; people apparently quite as human as
herself. Except for a certain gorgeous voluminousness of dress, they
seemed for the most part simply men and women of affairs.
For it was comparatively easy to distinguish the sexes. The women's
garments, while not making any display of the strictly feminine
lines, nevertheless did not attempt to disguise them. Billie saw
that loose breeches had completely displaced the skirt with these
women; while the men invariably wore either knickerbockers or some
other form of short trousers; so that the general effect was very
youthful. She saw no men with beards, although several wore their
hair long, down to their shoulders, as though to compensate for
those women who chose to wear theirs short.
The surgeon seemed to have more leisure than most doctors. She stood
for some minutes, greeting perhaps a score of passers-by, all of
whom seemed to be proud of the acquaintance. Presently, however, the
sidewalk became temporarily clear of pedestrians; and then Billie
heard the surgeon mutter something to herself, such as was past all
understanding at the time:
"The fools! The poor, ignorant cattle!"
And she turned and stepped to the middle of the street, where Billie
had already marked a large number of flying-machines. In fact, the
space from curb to curb was practically filled with them, all neatly
parked.
Without exception they were ornithopters; that is, machines built on
the bird-wing principle, sustaining themselves by a flapping motion
rather than by air-pressure due to a propeller. Their size varied
from one-seater affairs of very small size to craft large enough to
hold a score. Most were gaudily painted.
The surgeon's own machine was a two-seater, small but powerful in
design. She stepped up a short ladder into a comfortable cockpit,
provided with a folding top, which at that time was laid back out of
the way. She proceeded to adjust various levers and hand-wheels,
glanced at certain dials, touched a button, and immediately the
craft took flight, its wings beating the air with a dull leathery
rhythm which drowned out the faint clanking of the machinery.
A moment later the flier was high above the street. To Billie's
disappointment, the surgeon did not glance down enough to tell the
architect whether the street belonged to a city of any size.
Instead, her agent drove carefully through the traffic, which Billie
would have called dangerously dense. She remembered that she had
seen nothing but aircraft in that street; no automobiles at all.
And then the flier was rushing through the air at a lively rate.
Billie caught quick glimpses of innumerable machines, few of which
were moving in the same direction as the surgeon's.
A few minutes more elapsed, and then Billie was experiencing a much
higher level, with the machine flying at what must have been a
tremendous velocity. Shortly it was all but alone in the sky.
After a while the surgeon's eyes made out something far below, which
puzzled Billie exceedingly. It seemed to be a ship under full sail;
only, so far as she could see the craft was resting upon clouds, not
air. It was still a long way ahead.
And then Billie was given a glance aloft, where she saw another
craft, a small flapping affair like the surgeon's. It was just
rising on a long slant so as to cross above her course. And at that
very instant there came a sharp crack, followed by a splintering
crash. The surgeon's flier lurched heavily to one side.
Next second the woman was staring at her left wing. It was broken
about the middle and thrashing wildly. Another instant, and a part
of the thing came loose, flew off, and struck the surgeon on the top
of her head. A muffled cry, and then blackness came.
And the next thing Billie saw was the emergency ward of Smith's
great skycruiser, with the surgeon, blinking as she recovered,
looking up into the smiling face of her big blond rescuer.
V