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distention,” the Omorr said. “I can’t get him over on the machine.”
    I stopped feeling guilty and became furious. “He’s going into cardiac shock. Goddamn it.” I yanked the table scanner over his chest. “Compression’s coming from the pericardium. Great. Cardiac tamponade. Just what we needed.”
    “Fluid bolus?” the Omorr asked me.
    “No time. Number four chest aspirator.” I held out a hand, and the instrument nurse slapped the big needle onto my palm. With a hard push I stabbed it through the wall of Dhreen’s chest until I penetrated the smooth membrane surrounding his lung/heart. Immediately the aspirator’s empty reservoir began to fill up with bloody fluid. So much had accumulated inside the pericardium that the membrane was literally crushing the organ that it was supposed to protect.
    Once I finished the aspiration, I withdrew the needle. “Make sure we’ve got plenty of Oenrallian whole blood synthesized; we’re going to need it.” I looked toward the head of the table. Vlaav was manning the anesthesia rig. “Status?”
    “He’s leveling, Doctor, but his vitals remain borderline,” the Saksonan said.
    “Can’t be helped. Squilyp?”
    “Almost there.” The Omorr finished inducting the arterial lines that would supply Dhreen with oxygen and pump his blood. “Ready.”
    I powered up the lascalpel rig and made the initial midline incision with one stroke. Every order I gave was clipped with impatience. “Clamp. Get those ribs out of my way. Suction.”
    Once the blood and tissue fragments had been cleared from the chest cavity, I stopped Dhreen’s cardio-pulmonary organ and switched him over to the lung/heart machine, then inspected the damage. A large, clean perforation ran straight through his liver and into his lung/heart on the cardiac side. Because Oenrallians breathe with the same organ that pumps the blood through their bodies, he had in essence collapsed both lung and heart.
    “Dhreen, you’d better not die on me,” I told his unconscious face, “because you still owe me a hundred credits for that last whump-ball game I won.”
    My boss took a position on the other side of the table and studied the mess. “Acoustic inhomogeneity refracted the blast wave, judging by the tissue displacement.”
    “We’ll deal with that later.” I carefully suctioned the pooled blood out of his delicate cadiac sacs and began removing several bits of scorched tunic that had lodged in the wound. “You’d better get that bleeding in the liver under control. Cauterize and suture if it’s clean.”
    Plugging the holes in his lung/heart wasn’t enough. I had to piece back together the internal bronchial structures that had been ruptured by the point-blank shot first. He’d lost too much tissue for a normal repair job on the cardiac structures as well. “I’m going to have to use a pericardial graft to fix the ventricular sacs and install a triventricular assist device for the interim.” I glanced down at Squilyp’s membranes, which were busily sewing the two halves of Dhreen’s liver back together. “How’s it look?”
    “The shot exited the liver through the hepatic flexure.” He tossed aside a suture laser and asked for suction. “I’ve debrided and litigated the enterotomies. Left lobe is intact and functional.” Squilyp peered into his scope. “I can’t resect the flexure.”
    “You’d make a defect the size of Texas if you did. Anastomose with the primary and tertiary hepatic vessels.”
    The Omorr lifted his face from the viewer. “The ternary’s too narrow.”
    “Damn.” I finished removing a piece of the smooth membrane surrounding Dhreen’s lung/heart for the graft and set it on a sterile procedure tray before stepping around the table to look in the endoscope myself. “Do it anyway. We’ll find a way to keep it functional until I can clone a new liver.”
    Behind his view lens, one dark eye narrowed. “That is very risky.”
    “Have you got any other