Hospital Station by James White HOSPITAL STATION CHAPTER 1 MEDIC The alien occupying OMaras sleeping compartment weighed roughly half a ton possessed sixshort thick appendages which served both as arms or legs and had a hide like a flexible armorplate. Coming as it did from Hudlar a four-G world with an atmospheric pressure nearly seventimes Earth normal such ruggedness of physique was to be expected. But despite its enormousstrength the being was helpless OMara knew because it was barely six months old it had justseen its parents die in a construction accident and its brain was sufficiently well developedfor the sight to have frightened it badly.