“The only trouble with this is that I’ll have to depend on your word for it that you’ve not had an attack. Well, not really. I could put you under hypnosis to find out if you’ve been telling the truth. But I don’t like to do that. It’d mean I don’t trust you. I don’t want anybody on the ship I can’t trust one hundred percent.”
Jill felt like running over to him and throwing her arms around him. Her eyes filmed, and she almost sobbed with joy. But she stayed in her chair. An officer did not embrace the captain. Besides, he might misinterpret her behavior and try to take her into his bedroom.
She felt ashamed of herself. Firebrass would never take advantage of any woman. He would scorn using his influence. At least, she thought he would.
“I don’t understand about this hypnosis,” shesaid. “How could you make all the others go through with it but omit me? That’s discrimination which the others …”
“I’ve changed my mind about that.”
He got up and walked to a rolltop desk, bent over it to write on a piece of paper, and then gave it to her.
“Here. Take this down to Doc Graves. He’ll take an X-ray of you.”
She was bewildered. “Whatever on earth for?”
“As your captain I could tell you to shut up and obey my order. I won’t because you’d be resentful. Let’s just say it’s something the psychologists learned in 2000 A.D. It would defeat the purpose of the test if I told you what it was all about.
“Everybody else will have to be X-rayed, too. You have the honor of being the first.”
“I don’t understand,” shemurmured. “But I’ll do it, of course.”
She rose. “Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary. Now get your tail down to Doc Graves.”
When she arrived at the doctor’s office, she found him talking on the phone. He was frowning and chewing his cigar savagely.
“All right, Milt. I’ll do it. But I don’t like it that you won’t confide in me.”
He hung the phone up and turned to her.” Hello, Jill. You’ ll have to wait until Ensign Smithers gets here. He’ll pick up the X-ray photos as soon as they’re made and run them up to Firebrass.”
“He has a darkroom?”
“No. They don’t need developing. Didn’t you know? They’re just like other photographs, electronically processed at the moment they’re taken. Firebrass himself designed the equipment. It’s a process developed about 1998, he said.”
Graves began striding back and forth, biting hard oh the cigar.
“Damn it! He won’t even let me see the X-rays! Why?”
“He said he didn’t want anyone but himself to see the X-rays .It’s part of the psychological evaluation tests-.”
“How in hell could X-rays of the head tell you anything about a man’s psyche? Is he nuts?”
“I suppose he’ll tell us all about it when he’s seen all the photos. By the way, speaking of a man’s psyche, I’m not a man.”
“I was speaking in the abstract.”
He stopped and scowled even more fiercely. “I won’t be able to sleep nights worrying about this. Man, I wish I’d lived longer. I shuffled off this mortal coil in 1980, so I didn’t get to see the later developments in medical science. Just as well, I suppose. I couldn’t keep up with the deluge of new stuff as it was.”
Turning to Jill, and stabbing the cigar at her, he said, “Something I’d like to. ask you, Jill. Something that’s been bothering me. Firebrass is the only one I’ve ever met who lived beyond 1983. Have you ever met anyone who did?”
She blinked with surprise. “No-o-o. No, I haven’t, now I think about it. Firebrass excepted.”
For a moment, she had been about to tell him about Stem. That was going to be a hard secret to keep.
“Neither have I. Damn peculiar.”
“Not really,” she said. “Of course, I haven’t been all over The River, but I have traveled several hundred thousand kilometers and talked to thousands of people. The twentieth-century people seem to have been scattered thinly everywhere. If they were resurrected in clumps, as it were, I never heard of any. So that means that anywhere in the Valley you’ll likely find a few, but most of the population segments will be from other centuries.
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