Dal shook his head. “He understands, all right, and he’s the one who’s determined to get me out of medicine. This is a flimsy excuse, but he has to use it, because it’s now or never. He knows that if we bring in a contract with a new planet, and it’s formally ratified, we’ll all get our Stars and he’d never be able to block me again. And Black Doctor Tanner is going to be certain that I don’t get that Star, or die trying.”
“But this is completely unfair,” Jack protested. “He’s turning our own words against you! You can bet that he’ll have a survey crew down on that planet in no time, bringing home a contract just the same as the one we wrote, and there won’t be any questions asked about it.”
“Except that I’ll be out of the service,” Dal said. “Don’t worry. You’ll get the credit in the long run. When all the dust settles, he’ll be sure that you two are named as agents for the contract. He doesn’t want to hurt you, it’s me that he’s out to get.”
“Well, he won’t get away with it,” Tiger said. “We can see to that. It’s not too late to retract our stories. If he thinks he can get rid of you with something that wasn’t your fault, he’s going to find out that he has to get rid of a lot more than just you.”
But Dal was shaking his head. “Not this time, Tiger. This time you keep out of it.”
“What do you mean, keep out of it?” Tiger cried. “Do you think I’m going to stand by quietly and watch him cut you down?”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Dal said sharply. “I meant what I said. I want you to keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything more at all, just let it be.”
“But I can’t stand by and do nothing! When a friend of mine needs help—”
“Can’t you get it through your thick skull that this time I don’t want your help?” Dal said. “Do me a favor this time. Leave me alone. Don’t stick your thumb in the pie.”
Tiger just stared at the little Garvian. “Look, Dal, all I’m trying to do—”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Dal snapped, “and I don’t want any part of it. I don’t need your help, I don’t want it. Why do you have to force it down my throat?”
There was a long silence. Then Tiger spread his hands helplessly. “Okay,” he said, “if that’s the way you want it.” He turned away from Dal, his big shoulders slumping. “I’ve only been trying to make up for some of the dirty breaks you’ve been handed since you came to Hospital Earth.”
“I know that,” Dal said, “and I’ve appreciated it. Sometimes it’s been the only thing that’s kept me going. But that doesn’t mean that you own me. Friendship is one thing; proprietorship is something else. I’m not your private property.”
He saw the look on Tiger’s face, as though he had suddenly turned and slapped him viciously across the face. “Look, I know it sounds awful, but I can’t help it. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to change things with us, but I’m a person just like you are. I can’t go on leaning on you any longer. Everybody has to stand on his own somewhere along the line. You do, and I do, too. And that goes for Jack, too.”
They heard the door to the communications shack open, and the Black Doctor was back in the room. “Well?” he said. “Am I interrupting something?” He glanced sharply at the tight-lipped doctors. “The call was from the survey section,” he went on blandly. “A survey crew is on its way to 31 Brucker to start gathering some useful information on the situation. But that is neither here nor there. You have heard the charges against the Red Doctor here. Is there anything any of you want to say?”
Tiger and Jack looked at each other. The silence in the room was profound.
The Black Doctor turned to Dal. “And what about you?”
“I have something to say, but I’d like to talk to you alone.”
“As you wish. You two will return to your quarters and stay there.”
“The attendant, too,” Dal said.
The Black Doctor’s eyes glinted and met Dal’s for a moment. Then he shrugged and nodded to his attendant. “Step outside, please. We have a private matter to discuss.”
The Black Doctor turned his attention to the papers on the desk as Dal stood before him with Fuzzy sitting in the crook of his arm. From the moment that the notice of the inspection ship’s approach had come to the Lancet, Dal had known what was coming. He had been certain what the purpose of the detainment was, and who the inspector would be, yet he had not really been worried. In the back of his mind, a small, comfortable thought had been sustaining him.
It didn’t really matter how hostile or angry Black Doctor Tanner might be; he knew that in a last-ditch stand there was one way the Black Doctor could be handled.
He remembered the dramatic shift from hostility to friendliness among the Bruckians when he had come down from the ship with Fuzzy on his shoulder. Before then, he had never considered using his curious power to protect himself and gain an end; but since then, without even consciously bringing it to mind, he had known that the next time would be easier. If it ever came to a showdown with Black Doctor Tanner, a trap from which he couldn’t free himself, there was still this way. The Black Doctor would never know what happened, he thought. It would just seem to him, suddenly, that he had been looking at things the wrong way. No one would ever know.
But he knew, even as the thought came to mind, that this was not so. Now, face to face with the showdown, he knew that it was no good. One person would know what had happened: himself. On 31 Brucker, he had convinced himself that the end justified the means; here it was different.
For a moment, as Black Doctor Tanner stared up at him through the horn-rimmed glasses, Dal wavered. Why should he hesitate to protect himself? he thought angrily. This attack against him was false and unfair, trumped up for the sole purpose of destroying his hopes and driving him out of the Service. Why shouldn’t he grasp at any means, fair or unfair, to fight it?
But he could hear the echo of Black Doctor Arnquist’s words in his mind: I beg of you not to use it. No matter what happens, don’t use it. Of course, Doctor Arnquist would never know, for sure, that he had broken faith . . . but he would know . . . .
“Well,” Black Doctor Tanner was saying, “speak up. I can’t waste much more time dealing with you. If you have something to say, say it.”
Dal sighed. He lifted Fuzzy down and slipped him gently into his jacket pocket. “These charges against me are not true,” he said.
The Black Doctor shrugged. “Your own crewmates support them with their statements.”
“That’s not the point. They’re not true, and you know it as well as I do. You’ve deliberately rigged them up to build a case against me.”
The Black Doctor’s face turned dark and his hands clenched on the papers on the desk. “Are you suggesting that I have nothing better to do than to rig false charges against one probationer out of seventy-five thousand traveling the galaxy?”
“I’m suggesting that we are alone here,” Dal said. “Nobody else is listening. Just for once, right now, we can be honest. We both know what you’re trying to do to me. I’d just like to hear you admit it once.”
The Black Doctor slammed his fist down on the table. “I don’t have to listen to insolence like this,” he roared.
“Yes, you do,” Dal said. “Just this once. Then I’ll be through.” Suddenly Dal’s words were tumbling out of control, and his whole body was trembling with anger. “You have been determined from the very beginning that I should never finish the medical training that I started. You’ve tried to block me time after time, in every way you could think of. You’ve almost succeeded, but never quite made it until this time. But now you have to make it. If that contract were to go through I’d get my Star, and you’d never again be able to do anything about it. So it’s now or never if you’re going to break me.”