Melanie Mooney is an EMT in rural Indiana when she comes across an unusual accident scene while going home after a shift. Thinking it a downed experimental military jet, and being who she is, she renders aid to those inside. They prove to be space aliens straight out of a supermarket tabloid.
“Interstellar Medic: The Long Run,” by Patrick Chiles, opens as Melanie helps those inside a crashed “flying saucer.” It leads to an unusual job offer: to join the Galactic Union Medical Corps.
Melanie has a trait vanishingly rare among the sentient species in the Galactic Union. As she demonstrates dealing with the extraterrestrial accident victims, she can work and empathize with alien races. Most species prefer to provide medical care only to their own species. That makes it difficult to find galactic EMTs. The Galactic Union wants to give Melanie a try.
She is ready for the adventure and joins up. Soon Melanie is going through a crash course to become a Galactic EMT while adapting to the culture shock of immersion into a completely alien culture. Yet, once she becomes an EMT and starts making runs, she finds the work comfortingly familiar.
Galactic children, regardless of species, get inconveniently ill and swallow inappropriate stuff, just like human kids. Adolescents indulge in risk-taking activities as they do on Earth, requiring emergency care. Vehicle crashes and industrial accidents still happen. Galactic Union bureaucracy proves just as frustrating as Earth bureaucracies.
Yet, there is another agenda in recruiting Melanie. It seems the Galactic Union has been secretly observing Earth for millennia. It turns out many of the observers are the Galactic equivalent of grad students, who prove just as feckless as their human counterparts. This lets Chiles gleefully weave in accepted UFO lore into the story. Roswell happened. Betty and Barney Hill? True. The aliens’ favorite method of administering medicines and conducting medical observation are rectal probes.
The Galactic Union is considering contacting humans and inviting them to join, but hasn’t made a decision yet. If Melanie succeeds, the decision may tilt toward Earthling admissions. If not, Earth may remain embargoed.
If you liked James White’s Sector General novels or Murray Leinster’s Med Service tales, you will find this novel, and the series it promises, appealing. Patrick Chiles brings medical science fiction into the 21st century with “Interstellar Medic: The Long Run.” It is fast-paced, entertaining, and amusing.
