Murchison shook her head. She took his hand away from her shoulder, squeezed it and said, “Let’s swim.”
Seconds later as he chased her into the shallows he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t a little telepathic after all. She was certainly running fast enough.
In half-C conditions swimming was an exhilarating experience. The waves were high and steep and the smallest splash seemed to hang in the air for seconds, with individual drops sparkling red and amber in the sun. A badly executed dive by one of the heavier life-forms-the FGLIs especially had an awful lot of belly to flop-could cause really spectacular effects. Conway was threshing madly after Murchison on the fringe of just such a titanic upheaval when a loudspeaker on the cliff roared into life.
“Doctor Conway ,” it boomed. “Will Doctor Conway report at Lock Sixteen for embarkation, please.
They were walking rapidly up the beach when Murchison said, very seriously for her, “I didn’t know you were leaving. I’ll change and see you off.”
There was a Monitor Corps officer in the lock antechamber. When he saw Conway had company he said, “Doctor Conway ? We leave in fifteen minutes, sir,” and disappeared tactfully. Conway stopped beside the boarding tube and so did Murchison. She looked at him but there was no particular expression on her face, it was just beautiful and very desirable. Conway went on telling her about his important new assignment although he didn’t want to talk about that at all. He talked rapidly and nervously until he heard the Monitor officer returning along the tube, then he pulled Murchison tightly against him and kissed her hard.
He couldn’t tell if she responded. He had been too sudden, too ungentle . .
“I’ll be gone about three months,” he said, in a voice which tried to explain and apologize at the same time. Then with forced lightness he ended, “And in the morning I won’t feel a bit sorry.”
CHAPTER 8
Conway was shown to his cabin by an officer wearing a medic’s caduceus over his insignia who introduced himself as Major Stillman. Although he spoke quietly and politely Conway got the impression that the Major was not a person who would be overawed by anything or anybody. He said that the Captain would be pleased to see Conway in the control room after they had made the first jump, to welcome him aboard personally.
A little later Conway met Colonel Williamson, the ship’s Captain, who gave him the freedom of the ship. This was a courtesy rare enough on a government ship to impress Conway , but he soon discovered that although nobody said anything he was simply in everyone’s way in the control room, and twice he lost himself while trying to explore the ship’s interior. The Monitor heavy cruiser Vespasian was much larger than Conway had realized. After being guided back by a friendly Corpsman with a too-expressionless face he decided that he would spend most of the trip in his cabin familiarizing himself with his new assignment.
Colonel Williamson had given him copies of the more detailed and recent information which had come in through Monitor Corps channels, but he began by studying the file which O’Mara had given him.
The being Lonvellin had been on the way to a world, about which it had heard some very nasty rumors, in a practically unexplored section of the Lesser Megellanic Cloud, when it had been taken ill and admitted to Sector General. Shortly after being pronounced cured it had resumed the journey and a few weeks later it had contacted the Monitor Corps. It had stated that conditions on the world it had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric, and that it would need advice on the medical side before it could begin to act effectively against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed planet. It had also asked if some beings of physiological classification DBDG could be sent along to act as information gatherers as the natives were of that classification and were violently hostile to all off-planet life, a fact which seriously hampered Lonvellin’s activities.
The fact of Lonvellin asking for help of any sort was surprising in itself in view of the enormous intelligence and experience of his species in solving vast sociological problems. But on this occasion things had gone disastrously wrong, and Lonvellin had been kept too busy using its defensive science to do anything else.