Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

She stopped, apparently noticing his hesitation, and smiled at him

quizzically.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Just leave her with your clothes. She won’t

wander off and no one will bother her. You may have a very complete

physical exam ahead of you, and we can’t take the chance that she might

misinterpret it.”

That seemed logical enough. Jorn had never had an intensive physical

before, and Tabath had been known to take even cursory ones as having

aggressive intent. He began to stammer out his thanks, but the doctor had

already smiled again and moved on. As he stared after her, he realized why

it was that he had thought he knew her: She was Dr. Haryt Chase-Huebner,

one of the worl&s foremost authorities in cancer research. He had seen her

most recently on television only a month ago, in a newscast of the awarding

of a government-sponsored prize.

Her presence here was convincing evidence that the job, whatever else it

might prove to be, could hardly be what Jurg Wester had called “just the

usual guinea-piggery”; but that was not the aspect of the encounter which

impressed Jorn most. Instead, he was bemused to find that with a smile and

a few words the scientist had cut right through his ritual dislike of

women-in-general. In her own person she was a gentle but forcible reminder

that women, like men, came in all colors of the personal spectrum: some

bad, most indifferent, a few undeniably good. He found himself

And all the Stars a Stage 25

wondering how many husbands she had, and how much of her family she had kept