A moment
later she was obviously asleep. Doc meant to join her, but it was too
much effort. He leaned his head forward onto his arms, vaguely wondering
why she was calling off the feud.
It was night outside when he awoke, and he was lying on the cot, though
he still felt cramped and strained. He stirred, groaning, and finally
realized that a hand was on his shoulder shaking him. He looked up to
see Jake above him. Chris was busy with the coffee maker.
Jake slumped onto the cot beside Doc. "We took Southport," he announced.
That knocked the sleep out of Doc's system. "You what?"
"We took it, lock, stock and barrel. I figured the news of your cure
would put guts into the men, and it did. But we'd probably have taken it
anyhow. There wasn't anything to fight for there after Earth pulled out
and the plague really hit. Wilson mistook last-minute panic for fighting
spirit. The poor devils didn't have anything to fight about, once the
Lobby stopped goading them."
Doc tried to assimilate the news. But once the surprise was gone, he
found it meant very little. Maybe his revolutionary zeal had cooled,
once the Lobby men had pulled out. "We'll need a lot more plasma than
there is in Southport," he said.
"Not so much, maybe," Jake denied. "Doc, three of the men you injected
were shot down as runners. Your plasma's no good."
"It takes time to work, Jake.
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