“Yes,” he said.
While the captain had been talking, the two security officers had been edging closer in the expectation of imminent violence. They relaxed visibly and backed away again, leaving him a clear path to the door.
“Please leave now,” said Grulya-Mar.
O’Mara nodded, but paused when he was halfway to the entrance.
“May I be allowed communicator contact with sickbay,” he said, “so that I can check on the progress of the patient?”
The captain gave an untranslatable growl and the hair bristled all over its body, but it was Sennelt, who was plainly anxious to maintain the peace, who replied.
“You may contact me here at any time, Lieutenant,” it said, then added with heavy sarcasm, “although I will not promise to take your medical advice regarding the patient’s treatment.”
He was in his cabin only a few minutes when a Nidian steward arrived to leave a breakfast tray, explaining that it contained the type and amount of Earth-human food that O’Mara usually consumed, but if he wanted something different to eat in future or if there were any card or board games or puzzles that might help him to pass the time, the lieutenant had only to ask. Plainly, he thought wryly, the captain was doing all it could to keep the ship’s madman pacified. But the characteristic heavy breathing and snuffling sounds from outside the door told him that Orligian security guards had been posted outside his door. He shifted the contents of the tray without really tasting it, then threw himself onto his bunk to think dark thoughts about his uncertain and probably unhappy future.
It was about an hour later that a quiet knocking on the door brought his mind back to the here and now. Thinking it was the steward returning for the breakfast tray he growled, “Come in.”
It was Joan.
She was wearing an incredibly abbreviated white swimsuit and sandals with the incandescently patterned towel she had bought on Traltha draped around her shoulders. He began swinging his feet to the floor, but she moved forward quickly, placed a small, firm hand on his chest, and pushed him back into his bunk.
“Stay there,” she said. “You didn’t get any sleep last night, remember. How is our patient and, more important, how are you?”
“I don’t know,” said O’Mara, “twice.”
She gave a small frown of concern, turned away, and sat down in the only chair. The cabin was so small that she was still disturbingly close.
“Seriously,” she said, “what is going to happen to you as a result of this Kledenth business? Will it be bad?”
O’Mara tried to smile. “Same answer,” he said.
She continued staring at him, her expression reflecting puzzlement and concern. For the first time since he had come aboard over two weeks earlier, she wasn’t actively trying to attract him, and for some strange reason that was making the attraction stronger. He wanted to look away from her steady, brown eyes, but he could not look anywhere else without feeling even more disturbed and possibly giving offense.
“All right,” he said finally. “Depending on whether or not Kledenth’s op was successful, and in diminishing order of importance, I could be kicked out of the Monitor Corps, I could be prosecuted for pretending to be a doctor, sent for psychological reconstruction because I believed I was a doctor” He forced a laugh. “Or maybe all three at once.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand you, O’Mara,” she said. “You’re throwing your whole career away because of a Kelgian you thought was sick.”
“No,” he corrected her quietly. “I knew it was sick.”
“So you knew or thought you knew or maybe firmly believed that it was sick,” she continued, “enough to talk me into operating on it. I still don’t believe I did that. It was something I’ve always dreamed of doing, of using my skill to save the life, not of someone’s pet but of a fully sapient being. I’ve no wish to repeat the experience, it carries too much responsibility, but you talked me through it. I think it was successful because you guided my hands at every stage and you seemed to know what had to be done. But I did it, not you, and it’s not fair that you should take all the blame when you didn’t even lay a bloody knife on the patient!”