I'll have to. It's the only way to retain public
confidence. There'd be a leak, with all the guides and others here, and
we can't afford that. I like you--you have color. But touch that wound
and I'll crucify you."
Chris added her own threats. She'd spent years making him the outlet for
all her ambitions, denied because women were still only second-rate
members of Medical Lobby. She couldn't let it go now. And she was
probably genuinely shocked.
Baxter groaned again and started to bleed more profusely.
There wasn't much equipment. Feldman operated with a pocketknife
sterilized in a bottle of expensive Scotch and only anodyne tablets in
place of anesthesia. He got the bullet out and sewed up the wound with a
bit of surgical thread he'd been using to tie up a torn good-luck
emblem. The photographer and writer recorded the whole thing. Chris
swore harshly and beat her fists against the bole of a tree. But Baxter
lived. He recovered completely, and was shocked at the heinous thing
that had been done to him.
They crucified Feldman.
III
Spaceman
Most crewmen lived rough, ugly lives--and usually, short ones.
Passengers and officers on the big tubs were given the equivalent of
gravity in spinning compartments, but the crews rode "free". The lucky
crewmen lived through their accidents, got space-stomach now and then,
and recovered.
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