his lips. Her eyes were on the floor now so that he couldn’t see the glint of amusement, but she said softly, “I’ll…I’ll keep the ring, Johnny. We can talk about it when…when we’re back again. No, you’d better go.” She avoided his arms again. “Everybody would be angry if they knew you’d been in here.”
After he’d gone, she put the ring in a small drawer—with a dozen others.
* * * *
The sick call was almost daily growing in magnitude and Doc Thorndon didn’t like it. Not a bit. The cruise still had half way to go. He was amazed that they’d hung on this far, actually, but six months was still too long a period to stretch before them.
He applied various tests to the last of his callers and then flicked a stylus against his teeth in irritation as he considered the findings.
Rosen said, worriedly, “What is it Doc? Not…not cafard, is it, Doc?”
Thorndon looked down at him and laughed gently. “Ever had even a touch of cafard, Rosen?
“Well, no sir. But I saw a man with it once.” Rosen’s eyes went nervously about the ship’s hospital. The room was about the size of a bedroom of a Pullman of the 20th Century. It had two bunks, one above the other, a tiny folding table, a medicine chest built into the titanium alloy wall, a lavatory.
Doc Thorndon chuckled. “Don’t worry. You’ll know it when you get space cafard.”
Rosen shuddered. “Yes, sir, I know. The fear of black space. The terror of free fall. Complete, berserk hysteria.” The little crewman’s eyes went empty.
Doc patted him on the shoulder. “Forget about it, Rosen. Haven’t you heard? There hasn’t been a case of cafard on this ship since I’ve been ship’s doctr.” His face tightened subtly. “By the way, what’s this I hear about some of you crew members tapping the tract-torpedoes for alcohol and brewing up some jungle juice?”
The crewman was surprised. He hadn’t heard about it. But he came to his feet and began shruging back into his coveralls. He said, warily, “Where’d you hear this, Doc?”
Thorndon laughed cheerfully. “Never mind, and don’t worry about it, Rosen. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt you to try a little of it. Get your mind off your worries.”
Rosen looked at him, shocked. Nothing was more taboo in space than drinking.
“Get on with you,” Doc laughed and shooed him from the room.
After the other was gone, the doctr sank down to the side of the bunk and emptied his lungs in a sigh which touched on despair. Six more months to go.
Kathy put her head in the door and said, “Doctr Thorndon?”
He looked up. “Come on in, Kathy. I’m through for the day and I have some suggestions for you.”
She entered and closed the door behind her. She leaned back against it and looked at him thoughtfully, and once again he reminded himself that she wasn’t attractive—really. It was her aggressive personality, that and her obvious femininity. You seldom saw mammary glands like…He pulled his mind away from that trend of thought. Doc was masculine too, and not that old.
“Well, Kathy?” he said wearily.
She said, “I think I’ve finally figured out just what you’re doing.”
“You have? Well, I’m not surprised. You’re not a very stupid person, Kathy.” He didn’t look up as he talked. “How many of them have proposed to you this week?”
“Four. Lieutenant Roland, and three more of the crew members.”
He snorted, amusedly. “I’ll wager you’ll have hooked two thirds of them before the cruise is over.” The amusement left him. “If it’s ever over.”
She said, very softly, “It’s even more than usually important that the ship get back, isn’t it?”
He looked up at her, without speaking.
She said, “I’ve been picking up odds and ends, here and there. I don’t know too much about politics, but from what the crew says, and the officers too, for that matter, Commander Mike Gurloff is pretty big potatoes in reform politics back on Terra.”
Doc rubbed the end of his nose with a thoughtful forefinger and wondered just how much to tell her.
She said, “It’s pretty important that he get back, isn’t it?”
Doc Thorndon said slowly, “More than just get back, Kathy. He’s got to return with his reputation as strong as ever. He’s got to be able to throw into their faces just what tricks the present administration has been pulling on him.”
She sank into the one chair the room boasted. “Are we going to make it?”
Doc pursed his lips. Finally he said, “The odds arc against it, Kathy.”
They sat silently for awhile.
Doc took a deep breath. “By the way, Kathy, I just had Rosen in here, you know, the signalman. He’s in the first stages of cafard. He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.”
Air hissed through her teeth.
He nodded, seriously. “We’ve got to snap him out of it, but quick. One bad case, and it’d spread through this ship like wildfire. Now this is what you’ll have to do…
She listened very carefully and nodded. The two of them looked like a pair of conspirators, leaning toward each other, their faces very serious.
* * * *
Commander Gurloff looked up and down the corridor, spotted no one and slipped into the ship’s hospital. He closed the door and turned to Doc Thorndon who was lying on the bottom bunk reading.
Doc looked up from his book and said, “Hello, Mike. Have a seat,”
Mike Gurloff scowled at him, but lowered himself into the indicated chair.
He said, “Doc, what the kert are you trying to do with my ship and crew? The whole command is falling apart.”
Doc Thornton put a finger in his place. “Oh?” he said.
“Yeah, oh. Don’t act so innocent.” Gurloff hesitated, then went into the matter that bothered him in some detail. “Doc,” he said, “You’ve always had a lot of leeway on the New Taos. Of course, it’s not just the New Taos, any ship’s doctr on any space craft on a long cruise has lots of leeway—as much as he needs to fight off the threat of space cafard. Maybe you’ve had a bit more than most, but maybe that’s because you’ve accomplished more than most.”
The doctr reminded him softly, “We haven’t had a serious case of cafard since I’ve been aboard, Mike.”
In an earlier age, Commander Gurloff would have knocked on wood. Now he shuddered. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take that. But this time, Doc, I’m afraid you’re going too far. What’s this about stun gun fights between crew members down in the tract-torpedo room? What’s this about gambling
