You'll
find the first Martian disease. And maybe if you begin working on that
now, you can learn to be a real doctor in time to do something about it.
But I doubt it."
She fell back from him then. "Research! You've been doing unauthorized
research!"
"Prove it," he suggested. "But you'd be a lot smarter to try some
yourself, and to hell with your precious rules."
He followed Jake out to the tractor.
Surprisingly, the old man was sweating now. He shook his head at Doc's
look, and his grin was uncertain.
"Matthews is an incompetent," he said. "They could have had you, Doc.
That charter is so sloppy a man can prove anything by it, and building a
hospital here did bring in Earth rules. Wilson went out on a limb in
letting you go. But I guess we got away with it. Let's get out of here."
Doc climbed into the tractor more soberly. They had escaped this time.
But there would be another time, and he was pretty sure that would be
Chris' round. He had no intention of giving up his research.
VII
Plague
Dr. Feldman leaned back from his microscope and lighted another bracky
weed. He glanced about the room and sighed wearily. Maybe he'd been
better off when he had no friends and couldn't risk the safety of others
in an effort to do research that was the highest crime on two worlds.
The evidence of his work was hidden thirty feet beyond his former
laboratory in Jake's village, with a tunnel that led from another
root-cellar.
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