Surgeon captain Lioren of the monitor corpse was a hard driven perfectionist who expected the same high standards to be met by all who worked with him. But while on a first Contact mission on the planet Cromsag, where plague had reduced a peaceful civilization to barbarism and war, his Perfection was his undoing. In his zeal to find a cure for the plague, he inadvertently caused the death of the entire planetary population. His guilt let him to seek a penalty of death. But the monitor corpse was left to waste Talent. Instead he was stripped of his Rank and assigned to sector 12 General Hospital as a lowly trainer and the psychology department. He then met a huge alien the first of its kind to allow contact with the galactic federation. It was vital that sector General succeeded in curing the giant being, but it would not even speak to anyone except him. The medical problem was a simple one, but what the alien needed most was the one thing that he could not give. For before he could offer help he would have to do the impossible forgive himself