The man at the wall straightened up from his labors and announced something, unintelligible to Jerry (the voice was an unbroken hum that rose and fell in pitch, unarticulated into consonants or vowels), which undoubtedly meant, "She's all fixed." The fur-face in profile turned with quick attention and stepped to the machine. He pulled from its slot a thing like the cable-supported arm of a small crane terminating in a cone-shaped flexible surface, and arranged it over the thing on the table which his movement to the machine had exposed to Jerry's gaze. The thing on the table was the face of another of the white-furred men, and Jerry suddenly knew that this was an operating room. These men were doctors, involved in surgery. The machine, so hastily repaired, was some sort of anesthetizing gadget. They'd had to wait for it before proceeding. All this information Jerry worked out with only a small part of his mind; the majority of his concentration was focused upon the other thing he'd seen upon the table, strapped wide-eyed into position beside the patient. It had scales, sharp orange teeth, and might have been a rabbit-sized cross between a raccoon and a pangolin, and the wide eyes were tightly irised into discs of coppery red, with no visible pupils, under the light that overhung the operating table. "What the hell is going on here?" Jerry thought, with dismay. "Surgery? In the same room with cages full of animals? What about sanitation? What about infection? The doctors are maskless. The room is only passably clean--certainly not scoured with green soap, alcohol or live steam. And that repairman is standing beside the table scratching his stomach!" Bewildered, yet drawn to watch with morbid fascination, Jerry ignored the pain that staring into the room brought to his eyes, and gave full attention to the proceedings. * * * * * They were--from a raccoon/pangolin's viewpoint--pretty ghastly. The men, muttering to each other as medics the universe over must while engaged in surgery, started snipping and plucking and sawing and clamping with lackadaisical facility upon the two bodies strapped to the table. One medic concentrated upon the man, the other upon the animal, while the anesthetist merely held the cone lightly upon the patient's face, and glanced now and then at dials upon the machine proper, as if for reassurance, or possibly to show that they were efficient and well-trained. They did not trouble to anesthetize the animal.