“Waring saw me,” O’Mara cut in.
Caxton stared at him intently, his expression changing from suppressed anger to one of utter disgust and scorn. Despite himself O’Mara felt his face heating up.
“Waring eh?” said the section chief tonelessly. “A nice touch, that. You know, and we all know, that you have been riding Waring constantly, needling him and playing on his disability to such an extent that he must hate you like poison. Even if he did see you, the court would expect him to keep quiet about it. And if he did not see you, they would think that he had and was keeping quiet about it anyway. O’Mara, you make me sick.”
Caxton wheeled and stamped toward the airlock. With one foot through the inner seal he turned again.
“You’re nothing but a troublemaker, O’Mara,” he said angrily, “a surly, quarrelsome lump of bone and muscle with just enough skill to make you worth keeping. You may think that it was technical ability which got you these quarters on your own. It wasn’t, you’re good but not that good! The truth is that nobody else in my section would share accommodation with you …”
The section chief’s hand moved to the cut-off switch on his recorder. His voice, as he ended, became a quiet, deadly thing.
… And O’Mara if you let any harm come to that youngster, if anything happens to it at all, the Monitors won’t even get the chance to try you.
The implications behind those final words were clear, O’Mara thought angrily as the section chief left; he was sentenced to live with this organic half-ton tank for a period that would feel like eternity no matter how short it was. Everybody knew that exposing Hudlarians to space was like putting a dog out for the night — there were no harmful effects at all. But what some people knew and what they felt were two vastly different things and O’Mara was dealing here with the personalities of simple, uncomplicated, over-sentimental and very angry construction men.
When he had joined the project six months before, O’Mara found that he was doomed again to the performance of a job which, while important in itself, gave him no satisfaction and was far below his capabilities. Since school his life had been a series of such frustrations. Personnel officers could not believe that a young man with such square, ugly features and shoulders so huge that his head looked moronically small by comparison could be interested in subtle subjects like psychology or electronics. He had gone into space in the hope of finding things different, but no. Despite constant efforts during interviews to impress people with his quite considerable knowledge, they were too dazzled by his muscle-power to listen, and his applications were invariably stamped “Approved Suitable for Heavy, Sustained Labor.”
On joining this project he had decided to make the best of what promised to be another boring, frustrating job — he decided to become an unpopular character. As a result his life had been anything but boring. But now he was wishing that he had not been so successful at making himself disliked.
What he needed most at this moment was friends, and he hadn’t a single one.
O’Mara’s mind was dragged back from the dismal past to the even less pleasant present by the sharp all-pervading odor of the Hudlarian’s food compound. Something would have to be done about that, and quickly. He hurriedly got into his lightweight suit and went through the lock.
II
His living quarters were in a tiny sub-assembly which would one day form the theater surgical ward and adjoining storage compartments of the hospital’s low-gravity MSVK section. Two small rooms with a connecting section of corridor had been pressurized and fitted with artificial gravity grids for O’Mara’s benefit, the rest of the structure remaining both airless and weightless. He drifted along short, unfinished corridors whose ends were open to space, staring into the bare, angular compartments which slid past. They were all full of trailing plumbing and half-built machinery the purpose of which it was impossible to guess without actually taking an MSVK educator tape. But all the compartments he examined were either too small to hold the alien or they were open in one direction to space. O’Mara swore with restraint but great feeling, pushed himself out to one of the ragged edges of his tiny domain and glared around him.
Above, below and all around him out to a distance of ten miles floated pieces of hospital, invisible except for the bright blue lights scattered over them as a warning to ship traffic in the area. It was a little like being at the center of a dense globular star cluster, O’Mara thought, and rather beautiful if you were in a mood to appreciate it. He wasn’t, because on most of these floating sub-assemblies there were pressor-beam men on watch, placed there to fend off sections which threatened to collide. These men would see and report it to Caxton if O’Mara took his baby alien outside even for feeding.
The only answer apparently, he told himself disgustedly as he retraced his way, was nose-plugs.
Inside the lock he was greeted by a noise like a tinny foghorn. It blared out in long, discordant blasts with just enough interval in between to make him dread the arrival of the next one. Investigation revealed bare patches of hide showing through the last coat of food, so presumably his little darling was hungry again. O’Mara went for the sprayer.
When he had about three square yards covered there was an interruption. Dr. Pelling arrived.
The project doctor took off his helmet and gauntlets only, flexed the stiffness out of his fingers and growled, “I believe you hurt your leg. Let’s have a look.”
Pelling could not have been more gentle as he explored O’Mara’s injured leg, but what he was doing was plainly a duty rather than an act of friendship. His voice was reserved as he said, “Severe bruising and a couple of pulled tendons is all — you were lucky. Rest. I’ll give you some stuff to rub on it. Have you been redecorating?”
“What …?” began O’Mara, then saw where the doctor was looking. “That’s food compound. The little so-and-so kept moving while I was spraying it. But speaking of the youngster, can you tell me—”
“No, I can’t,” said Pelling. “My brain is overloaded enough with the ills and remedies of my own species without my trying to stuff it with FROB physiology tapes. Besides, they’re tough-nothing can happen to them!” He sniffed loudly and made a face. “Why don’t you keep it outside?”
“Certain people are too soft — hearted,” O’Mara replied bitterly. “They are horrified by such apparent cruelties as lifting kittens by the scruff of the neck …
“Humph,” said the doctor, looking almost sympathetic. “Well, that’s your problem. See you in a couple of weeks.”
“Wait!” O’Mara called urgently, hobbling after the doctor with one empty trouser leg flapping. “What if something does happen? And there has to be rules about the care and feeding of these things, simple rules. You can’t just leave me to … to …
“I see what you mean,” said Pelling. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then went on, “There’s a book kicking around my place somewhere, a sort of Hudlarian first aid handbook. But it’s printed in Universal
“I read Universal,” said O’Mara.
Pelling looked surprised. “Bright boy. All right, I’ll send it over.” He nodded curtly and left.
O’Mara closed the bedroom door in the hope that this might cut down the intensity of the food smell, then lowered himself carefully into the living room couch for what he told himself was a well-deserved rest. He settled his leg so that it ached almost comfortably and began trying to talk himself into an acceptance of the situation. The best he could achieve was a seething, philosophical calm.