Part 45 (1/2)

”Steve, you poor fool, don't you understand? If our child came as predicted, the first thing I'd do would be to have the child inoculate the father? Then we'd be--”

”Um,” I grunted. ”I hadn't thought of that.” This was a flat lie. I'd considered it a-plenty since my jailing here. Present the Medical Center with a child, a Mekstrom, and a Carrier, and good old pappy would be no longer needed.

”Well, after I found out all about you, Steve, that's what I had in mind. But now--”

”Now what?” I urged her gently. I had a hunch that she was leading up to something, but ducking shy about it until she managed to find out how I thought. It would have been all zero if we'd been in a clear area, but as it was I led her gently on.

”But now I've failed,” she said with a slight wail.

”What do they do with failures?” I asked harshly. ”Siberia? Or a gunny sack weighted down with an anvil? Or do they drum you out of the corps?”

”I don't know.”

I eyed her closely. I was forced to admit that no matter how Catherine thought, she was a mighty attractive dish from the physical standpoint.

And regardless of the trouble she'd put me through, I could not overlook the fact that I had been deep enough in love to plan elopement and marriage. I'd held her slender body close, and either her response had been honestly warm or Catherine was an actress of very rare physical ability. Scholar Phelps could hardly have picked a warmer temptress in the first place; putting her onto me now was a stroke of near-genius.

I got up from the edge of my bunk and faced her through my bars. She came close, too, and we looked into each other's faces over a cross-rail of the heavy fence.

I managed a wistful grin at her. ”You're not really a failure yet, are you, kid?”

”I don't quite know how to--to--” she replied.

I looked around my little cell with a gruesome gesture. ”This isn't my idea of a pleasant home. And yet it will be my home until someone decides that I'm too expensive to keep.”

”I know,” she breathed.

Taking the bit in my teeth, I said, ”Catherine even though--well, heck.

I'd like to help you.”

”You mean that?” she asked in almost an eager voice.

”It's not impossible to forget that we were eloping when all this started.”

”It all seems so long ago,” she said with a thick voice. ”And I wish we were back there--no, Steve, I wish Mekstrom's Disease had never happened--I wish--”

”Stop wis.h.i.+ng and think,” I told her half-humorously. ”If there were no Mekstrom's Disease, the chances are that we'd never have met in the first place.”

”That's the cruel part of it all,” she cried. And I mean _cried_.

I rapped on the metal bars with a fist. ”So here we are,” I said unhappily. ”I can't help you now, Catherine.”

She put her hands through the bars and held my face between them. She looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our lips like a pair of piccolo players to make them meet. It was like making love through a keyhole.

This unsatisfactory lovemaking did not last long. Unsteadily, Catherine said, ”I want you, Steve.”

Inwardly I grinned, and then with the same feeling as if I'd laughed out loud at a funeral, I said, ”Through these steel bars?”

She brought out a little cylindrical key. Then went to a bra.s.s wall plate beside the outer door, inserted the key, and turned. The sliding door to my cell opened on noiseless machined slides.