“I’ll need control of their computer.” He was pulling his suit on, too. I didn’t want him along, but I might need somebody to return to the Dotterel for medical supplies.

“What should I be doing?” Thank heaven Nina showed no signs of panic. She sounded impatient, with the touch of President Velez in her voice. “I’ve sat around in this ship for weeks with nothing to do. Now we need action but I daren’t take it.”

“What field are you in now? What net field?”

“One gee. The drive’s off now, and we’ve got the life-capsule right out at the end of the column.”

“Right. I want to you stay in that position, but set the drive at one gee acceleration. I want McAndrew in a zero-gee environment to slow the bleeding. Dr. Wenig, can you dictate instructions for that while we are rendezvousing?”

“No problem.” He was an irritating devil, but I’d choose him in a crisis. He was doing three things at once, putting on his suit, watching the computer action for the rendezvous, and giving exact and concise instructions to Nina.

Getting ourselves from one ship to the other through open space wasn’t as easy as it might sound. We had both ships under one gee acceleration drives, complicated by the combined attraction of the two mass plates. The total field acting on us was small, but we had to be careful not to forget it. If we lost contact with the ships, the nearest landing point was back on Triton Station, thirty billion miles away.

Nina in the flesh was even more impressive than she was over the video link, but I gave her little more than a cursory once-over. McAndrew’s color was bad and even while I was cracking my suit open and hustling out of it I could hear a frightening bubbling sound in his breathing. Thank God I had learned how to work in zero gee — required part of any space medicine course. I leaned over him, vaguely aware of the two others intently watching. The robodoc beside me was clucking and flashing busily, muttering a faint complaint at McAndrew’s condition and the zero-gee working environment. Standard diagnosis conditions called for at least a partial gravity field.

I took the preliminary diagnosis and prepared to act on it while the doc was still making up its mind. Five cc’s of cerebral stimulant, five cc’s of metabolic depressant, and a reduction in cabin pressure. It should bring Mac up to consciousness if his brain was still in working order. I worried about a cerebral hemorrhage, the quiet and deadly by-product of super-high gees. Ten minutes and I would know one way or the other.

I turned to Wenig and Nina who were still watching the robodoc’s silent body trace. “I don’t know how he is yet. We may need emergency treatment facilities ready for us as soon as we get back to the System. Can you go over to Dotterel, cut the drive and try to make contact with Triton Station? By the time you have the connection we should have the full diagnosis here.”

I watched them leave the ship, saw how carefully Wenig helped Nina to the transfer, and then I heard the first faint noise behind me. It was a sigh, with a little mutter of protest behind it. The most wonderful sound I ever heard in my life. I glanced over at the doc. Concussion — not too bad — and a little more bleeding than I wanted to see from the left lung. Hell, that was nothing. I could patch the lung myself, maybe even start the feedback regeneration for it. I felt a big grin of delight spreading like a heat wave over my face.

“Take it easy, Mac. You’re doing all right, just don’t try and rush yourself. We’ve got lots of time.” I secured his left arm so that he couldn’t disturb the rib cage on that side.

He groaned. “Doing fine, am I?” He suddenly opened his eyes and stared up at me, “Holy water, Jeanie, that’s just like a medic. I’m in agony, and you say it’s a little discomfort. How’s Nina doing?”

“Not a mark on her. She’s not like you, Mac, an old bag of bones. You’re getting too old for this sort of crap.”

“Where is she?”

“Over on Dotterel, with Wenig. What’s the matter, still infatuated?”

He managed a faint smile. “Ah, none of that now. We were stuck on Merganser for more than two weeks, locked up in a three meter living sphere. Show me an infatuation, and I’ll show you a cure for it.”

The com-link behind me was buzzing. I cut it in, so that we could see Wenig’s worried face.

“All right here,” I said, before he had time to worry any more. “We’ll be able to take our time going back. How are you? Got enough water?”

He nodded. “I took some of your reserve supply to make up for what we threw at you. What should we do now?”

“Head on back. Tell Nina that Mac’s all right, and say we’ll see you both back at the Institute.”

He nodded again, then leaned closer to the screen and spoke with a curious intensity. “We don’t want to run the risk of having a stuck life capsule again. I’d better keep us down to less than ten gee acceleration.”

He cut off communication, without another word. I turned to McAndrew. “How high an acceleration before you’d run into trouble with these ships?”

He was staring at the blank screen, a confused look on his thin face. “At least forty gee. What the devil’s got into Wenig? And what are you laughing at, you silly bitch?”

I came over to him and took his right hand in mine. “To each his own, Mac. I wondered why Wenig was so keen to get here. He wants his shot at Nina — out here, where nobody else can compete. What did you tell her — some sweet talk about her lovely eyes?”

He closed his eyes again and smiled a secret smile. “Ah, come on Jeanie. Are you telling me you’ve been on your best behavior since I last saw you? Gi’ me a bit of peace. I’m not soft on Nina now.”

“I’ll see.” I went across to the drive and moved us up to forty gee. “Wait until the crew on Titan hear about all this. You’ll lose your reputation.”

He sighed. “All right, I’ll play the game. What’s the price of silence?”

“How long would it take a ship like this to get out to Alpha Centauri?”

“You’d not want this one. We’ll have the next one up to a hundred gee. Forty-four ship days would get you there, standing start to standing finish.”

I nodded, came back to his side and held his hand again. “All right, Mac, that’s my price. I want one of the tickets.”

He groaned again, just a bit. But I knew from the dose the doc had put into him that it wasn’t a headache this time.

As soon as the ship got back from the midyear run to Titan, I went down to Earth and asked Woolford for a leave of absence. I had been working hard enough for six people, and he knew it. He nodded agreeably as soon as I made the formal request.

“I think you’ve earned it, Captain Roker, no doubt about that. But don’t you have quite a bit of leave time saved up? Wouldn’t that be enough?” He stopped staring out of the window at the orange-brown sky and called my records onto the screen in front of him.

“That won’t do it,” I said, while he was still looking.

Woolford frowned and became less formal. “It won’t? Well, according to this, Jeanie, you’ve got at least…” He looked up. “Just how long do you want to take off?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Somewhere between nine and sixteen years, I think.”

I would have liked to break the news more gently, but maybe there was no graceful way.

It had taken McAndrew a while to deliver on his promise. The design of the more advanced ship contained no new theory, but this time he intended that the initial tests would be conducted more systematically. I kept pushing him along, while he tried to wriggle out of the commitment. He had been full of drugs and painkillers at the time, he said — surely I didn’t consider it fair, to hold him to what he’d been silly enough to promise then?