tensity and see what happens."

Tiger took the earphones and speaker, and turned the signal beam to
coincide with the direction of the incoming message.

"We have your contact. Can you hear me? Who are you and what do you
want?"

There was a long delay and they thought the contact was lost. Then a
voice came whispering through the static. "Where is your ship now? Are
you near to us?"

"We need your co-ordinates in order to tell," Tiger said. "Who are you?"

Again a long pause and a howl of static. Then: "If you are far away it
will be too late. We have no time left, we are dying...."

Abruptly the voice message broke off and co-ordinates began coming
through between bursts of static. Tiger scribbled them down, piecing
them together through several repetitions. "Check these out fast," he
told Jack. "This sounds like real trouble." He tossed Dal another pair
of earphones and turned back to the speaker. "Are you a contract
planet?" he signaled. "Do we have a survey on you?"

There was a much longer pause. Then the voice came back, "No, we have no
contract. We are all dying, but if you must have a contract to come...."

"Not at all," Tiger sent back. "We're coming. Keep your frequency open.
We will contact again when we are closer."

He tossed down the earphones and looked excitedly at Dal. "Did you hear
that? A planet calling for help, with no Hospital Earth contract!"

"They sound desperate," Dal said. "We'd better go there, contract or no
contract."

"Of course we'll go there, you idiot. See if Jack has those co-ordinates
charted, and start digging up information on them, everything you can
find. We need all of the dope we can get and we need it fast. This is
our golden chance to seal a contract with a new planet."

All three of the doctors fell to work trying to identify the mysterious
caller. Dal began searching the information file for data on 31 Brucker,
punching all the reference tags he could think of, as well as the
galactic co-ordinates of the planet. He could hardly control his fingers
as the tapes with possible references began plopping down into the
slots. Tiger was right; this was almost too good to be true. When a
planet without a medical service contract called a GPP Ship for help,
there was always hope that a brand new contract might be signed if the
call was successful. And no greater honor could come to a patrol craft
crew than to be the originators of a new contract for Hospital Earth.

B