CHAPTER 22

The intercom buzzer awakened Conway , instantly but without confusion in the pleasant, familiar, cramped surroundings of his own room. He felt rested and alert and ready for breakfast, and the hand he used to push back the sheets had five pink fingers on it and felt just right that way. But then he became aware of a certain strangeness which made him hesitate for a moment. The place was quiet...

"To save you the where-am-I-what-time-is-it? routine," O'Mara's voice came wearily, "you have not been consciously with us for two days. During that time, early yesterday, to be exact, the attack ceased and has not yet been resumed and I did a lot of work on you. For your own good you were given a hypno treatment to forget everything, so you will not be eternally grateful for what I've done for you. How do you feel now?"

"Fine," said Conway enthusiastically. "I can't feel any. . . I mean, there seems to be plenty of room in my head. .

O'Mara grunted. "The obvious retort is that your head is empty, but I won't make it."

The Chief Psychologist, despite his attempt to maintain his usual dry, sardonic manner, sounded desperately tired-his words were actually slurred with weariness. But O'Mara, Conway knew, was not the type who became tired-he might, if driven long and hard enough, succumb to mental fatigue. .

"The fleet commander wants a meeting with us in four hours time," O'Mara went one, "so don't get involved with any cases between now and then. Things are running fairly smoothly now, anyway, so you can afford to play hooky for a while. I'm going to sleep. Off."

But it was very difficult to spend four hours doing nothing, Conway found. The main dining hall was jammed with Corpsmen-projector crews engaged on hull defense, replacements for the defending ships, maintenance men and Medical Division personnel who were supplementing the civilian medical staff. Conversation was loud and nervous and too cheerful, and revolved around the past and possible future aspects of the attack.

Apparently the Monitor force had practically been pushed down onto the outer hull when an e-t force of volunteer Illensans had emerged from hyperspace just outside the enemy globe. Illensan ships were big and badly designed and looked like capital ships even though they only had the armament of a light cruiser, and the sight of ten of them popping out of nowhere had put the enemy off his stride. The attacking force had pulled back temporarily to regroup and the Monitors, with nothing to regroup with, were concentrating on increasing the armament of their last line of defense, the hospital itself. But even though it concerned him as closely as anyone else in the room, Conway felt averse to joining in the cheerfully morbid conversations.

Since O'Mara had erased all the physiology tapes and indulged in some curative tinkering with his mind, the nightmare of two days ago and the e-t language data he had gained had faded, so he could not indulge in polite conversation with the e-ts scattered about the hall. And the Earth-human nurses were being monopolized by Corpsmen, usually at the rate of ten or twelve to one, with an obvious improvement in morale in both directions. Conway ate quickly and left, feeling that his own morale was in need of improvement, too.

Which made him wonder suddenly if Murchison was on duty, off duty or asleep. If she was asleep there was nothing he could do, but if she was on duty he could very soon take her off it, and when she was off...

Strangely he felt only the slightest prick lings of conscience over this shameless abuse of his authority for his own selfish ends. In time of war, he thought, people became less bound by their professional and moral codes. Ethically he was going to the dogs.

But Murchison was just going off duty when he arrived in her ward, so he did not have to openly commit the crime he had been intent on committing. In the same loud, too-cheerful tone that he had considered so artificial when he had heard it in the dining hall he asked if she had any previous engagement, suggested a date, and muttered something horribly banal about all work and no play...

"Previous engage. . . play. . . ! But I want to sleep!" she protested; then in more reasonable tones, "You can't. . . I mean, where would we go, what would we do? The place is a wreck. Would I have to change?"

"The recreation level is still there," Conway said, "and you look fine." The regulation nurses uniform of blue, tight-fitting tunic and slacks- very tight-fitting so as to ease the problem of climbing in and out of protective suits-flattered Murchison, but she looked worn out. As she unhooked the broad white belt and instrument pouches and removed her cap and hairnet Conway growled deep in his throat, and immediately burst into a fit of coughing because it was still tender from making e-t noises.

Murchison laughed, shaking out her hair and rubbing her cheeks to put some color into them. She said brightly, "Promise you won't keep me out too late ?"

On the way to the recreation level it was difficult not to talk shop. Many sections of the hospital had lost pressure so that in the habitable levels overcrowding was severe-there was scarcely an air-filled corridor which was not also filled with casualties. And this was a situation which none of them had foreseen. They had not expected the enemy to use limited warfare on them. Had atomic weapons been used there would not have been any overcrowding, or, possibly, any hospital. Most of the time Conway was not listening to Murchison, but she didn't seem to notice. Perhaps because she wasn't listening to him.

The recreation level was the same in detail as they remembered it, but the details had been dramatically changed around. With the hospital's center of gravity being above the recreation level what little attraction there was upward, and all the loose material normally on the ground or in the bay had collected against the roof, where it made a translucent chaos of sand-veined water, air-pockets and trailing watery globes through which the submerged sun shone a deep, rich purple.

"Oh, this is nice!" said Murchison. "And restful, sort of."

The lighting gave her skin a warm, dusky coloration that was wholly indescribable, Conway thought, but nice. Her lips-soft purple, verging on black-were parted slightly to reveal teeth which seemed almost iridescent, and her eyes were large and mysterious and glowing.

"The word," he said, "is romantic."

They launched themselves gently into the vast room in the direction of the restaurant. Below them the tree tops drifted past and they ran through a wisp of fog-cooling steam produced by the warm, underwater sun which beaded their faces and arms with moisture. Conway caught her hand and held it gently, but their velocities were not exactly matching and they began to spin around their center of gravity. Conway bent his elbow slowly, drawing her toward him, and their rate of spin increased. Then he slid his other arm around her waist and pulled her closer still.

She started to protest and then suddenly, gloriously, she was kissing him and clinging to him as fiercely as he was to her, and the empty bay, cliffs, and purple, watery sky was whirling madly around them.

In a calm, impersonal corner of his mind Conway thought that his head would have been spinning anyway even if his body hadn't, it was that sort of kiss. Then they spun gently into the cliff-top at the other side of the bay and broke apart, laughing.

They used the artificial greenery to pull themselves toward the onetime restaurant. It was dim inside, and during its slow fall ceiling ward a lot of water had collected under the transparent roof and on the undersides of the table canopies. Like some fragile, alien fruit it hung in clusters which stirred gently at their passage or burst into hundreds of tiny silvery globes when they blundered against a table. With the low ceiling and dim light it was difficult to keep from knocking into things and soon the globes were all around them, seeming to crowd in, throwing back a hundred tiny, distorted reflections of Murchison and himself. It was like an alien dream world, Conway thought; and it was a wish-fulfillment dream. The dark, lovely shape of Murchison drifting beside him left no doubt about that.

They sat down at one of the tables, but carefully so as not to dislodge the water in the canopy above them. Conway took her hand in his, the others being needed to hold them onto their chairs, and said, "I want to talk to you.

She smiled, a little warily.

 Conway tried to talk. He tried to say the things that he had rehearsed to himself many times, but what came out was a disjointed hodge-podge. She was beautiful, he said, and he didn't want to be friends and she was a stupid little fool for staying behind. He loved her and wanted her and he would have been happy spending months-not too many months, maybe-getting her in a corner where she couldn't say anything but yes. But now there wasn't time to do things properly. He thought about her all the time and even during the TRLH operation it had been thinking about her that let him hang on until the end. And all during the bombardment he had worried in case...

"I worried about you, too," Murchison broke in softly. "You were all over the place and every time there was a hit... And you always knew exactly what to do and. . . and I was afraid you would get yourself killed."

Her face was shadowed, her uniform clung damply. Conway felt his mouth dry.

She said warmly, "You were wonderful that day with the TRLH. It was like working with a Diagnostician. Seven tapes, O'Mara said. I.. . I asked him to give me one, earlier, to help you out. But he said no because. . ." She hesitated, and looked away. ". . . because he said girls are very choosy who they let take possession of them. Their minds, I mean...

"How choosy?" said Conway thickly. "Does the choice exclude... friends?"

He leaned forward involuntarily as he spoke, letting go his hold on the chair with his other hand. He drifted heavily up from the table, jarred the canopy and touched one of the floating globes with his forehead. With the surface tension broken it collapsed wetly all over his face. Spluttering he brushed it away, knocking it into a cloud of tiny, glowing marbles. Then he saw it.

It was the only harsh note in this dream world, a pile of unarmed missiles occupying a dark corner of the room. They were held to the floor by clamps and further secured with netting in case the clamps were jarred free by an explosion. There was plenty of slack in the netting. Still holding onto Murchison, he kicked himself over to it, searched until he found the edge of the net, and pulled it up from the floor.

"We can't talk properly if we keep floating into the air," he said quietly. "Come into my parlor. .."

Maybe the netting was too much like a spider's web, or his tone resembled too closely that of a predatory spider. He felt her hesitate. The hand he was holding was trembling.

"I. . . I know how you feel," she said quickly, not looking at him. "I like you, too. Maybe more than that. But this isn't right. I know we don't have any time, but sneaking down here like this and. . . it's selfish. I keep thinking about all those men in the corridors, and the other casualties still to come. I know it sounds stuffy, but we're supposed to think about other people first. That's why-"

"Thank you," said Conway furiously. "Thank you for reminding me of my duty."

"Oh, please!" she cried, and suddenly she was clinging to him again, her head against his chest. "I don't want to hurt you, or make you hate me. I didn't think the war would be so horrible. I'm frightened. I don't want you to be killed and leave me all alone. Oh, please, hold me tight and. . . and tell me what to do. .

Her eyes were glittering and it was not until one of the tiny points of light floated away from them that he realized she was crying silently. He had never imagined Murchison crying, somehow. He held her tightly for a long time, then gently pushed her away from him.

Roughly, he said, "I don't hate you, but I don't want you to discuss my exact feelings at the moment, either. Come on, I'll take you home."

But he didn't take her home. The alarm siren went a few minutes later and when it stopped a voice on the PA was asking Doctor Conway to come to the intercom.