Part 17 (1/2)

Chris stood beside him, looking as if it were a bitter pill for her, too. She'd risked herself in the hands of the enemy, had cooperated with him in everything she'd been taught to oppose, and had worked like a dog. Now the Lobbies seemed to forget her as a useless tool. They were falling back on a raw power play and forgetting any earlier schemes.

”Maybe they'd hold off for a while if I agreed to go to them and share all my ideas, specimens and notes,” he said at last. ”Do you think your Lobby would settle for that, Chris?”

”I don't know, Dan. I've stopped thinking their way.” She seemed almost apologetic for the admission.

He dropped an arm over her shoulder and turned with her back to the laboratory. ”Okay, then we've got to find a miracle. We've got two days ahead of us. At least we can try.”

But he knew he was lying to himself. There wasn't anything he could think of to try.

XV

Decision

Two days was never enough time for a miracle. Doc decided as he packed his notes into a small bag and put it beside his bundle of personal belongings. He glanced around the room for the last time, and managed a grin at Jake's gloomy expression.

”Maybe I can bluff them, or maybe they'll string along for a while,” he said. ”Anyhow, now that they've agreed to take me and my notes in place of the cure we're fresh out of, I've got to be on that shuttle when it goes back to their men at orbital station.”

Jake nodded. ”I don't like selling friends down the river, Doc. But it wouldn't do you any more good to blow up with the planet, I reckon. They won't call off the war rockets when they do get you, of course. But maybe they won't use them, except as a threat to put the Lobbies back in, stronger than ever.”

He stuck out one of his awkwardly shaped hands, clapped the aspirator over his face and hurried out. Doc picked up his bags and went toward the little tractor where Lou was waiting to drive him and Chris back toward Southport and the shuttle rocket that would be landing for them.

They hadn't mentioned Chris in their demands, but her father must expect her to return.

After they had him, he'd be on his own. His best course was probably to insist on talking only to Ryan at Medical Lobby, and then being completely honest. The room here would be kept sealed, in case the Lobby wanted to investigate where he had failed. And his notes were honest, which was something that could usually be determined. Chris could testify to that, anyhow, since she'd kept a lot of them for him.

At best, there would be a chance for some compromise and perhaps some clue for them that might eventually end the plague. They had enough men to work on it, and billions in equipment. At worst, he should gain a little time.

”Cheer up, Chris,” he told her as he climbed through the little airlock.

”Maybe Harkness will turn up the cure before our negotiations break down. He has the whole of Northport Hospital to play with. They haven't tried to chase him out of there yet. After all, we almost found something with no equipment except wild imaginations.”

She shook her head as the tractor began moving. ”Shut up! I've got enough trouble without your coming down with logorrhea. Don't be a fool.”

”Why change now?” he asked her. ”Everything I've done has been because I am a fool. I guess my luck lasted longer than I could expect. And I'm still fool enough to think that the solution has to turn up eventually.

We know it has to be in that room. d.a.m.n it, we must know it--if we could only think straight now.”

She reached over and touched his hand, but made no comment. They had been over that statement of desperation too many times already. But it kept nagging at him--something in the room, something in the room!

Something so common that n.o.body noticed it!

They pa.s.sed a crowd chasing down a runner. Something in that room could have saved the unlucky man. It could have saved Mars, perhaps.

He growled for the hundredth time, cursing his fatigue-numbed mind. Too little sleep, too much coffee and bracky....

He reached for the package of weed, realizing that he would miss it on Earth, if he ever got there. Like everything here on the planet, he'd begun by detesting it and wound up finding it the thing he wanted to keep forever. He lighted the bracky and sat smoking, watching Lou drive.

When the first was finished, he lighted another from the b.u.t.t.

She put out a hand and took it away. ”Please, Dan. I can stand the stuff, but I'll never like it, and the tractor's stuffy enough already.