The third instalment in James White’s acclaimed Sector General series. Sector General is an enormous hospital based far out on the Galactic Rim. No other hospital on or off the Earth encounters the wildly diverse problems created by the hundreds of different alien life forms that turn up at Sector General for treatment.

Being a doctor, human or otherwise, in this establishment requires a degree of adaptability Hippocrates never imagined. The staff are used to big problems – but can they heal a 900-mile-long carpet of flesh?