So long as the surface lasted.

"You know," Carol said presently, "that on the surface artificial pancreases--artiforgs--are available. You've considered this possibility, of course, in your official capacity."

Nicholas said, "It's illegal. Military hospitals only. Priority. Rating 2-A. We don't qualify."

"There is said to be--"

"And get caught." It would no doubt be a quick kangaroo-court military tribunal session and then execution, if one were caught trading on the blackmarket. In fact if one were caught up there at all.

"Are you afeared to go up?" Carol asked, with her brisk, brilliant hard scrutiny.

"Yep." He nodded: it was so. Two weeks: death by destruction of the red bloodcell-making capacity of the bone marrow. One week: the Bag Plague or the Stink of Shrink or Raw-Claw-Paw and he already felt germphobic; already, a few moments ago, he had quaked with the trauma of it--as did virtually every tanker, although in actual fact not one case of any of the poxes had broken out at the Tom Mix.

"You can," Carol said, "call a meeting of those--you know-- those you can trust. And ask for a volunteer."

"Goddam it, I'll go if anyone does." But he didn't want to send anyone because he knew what was up there. No one would return because a homotropic weapon, if not the tribunal, would flush him out of hiding and it would follow him until he died. And that in a matter of minutes, perhaps.

And homotropic weapons were vile things; they did it in a vile way.

Carol said, "I know how badly you want to save old Souza."

"I love him," he said. "Above and beyond the shops, the quota, all of that. Did he ever, in all the time we've been locked up down below here, refuse anyone anything? Any time of the night, a leaking water pipe, break in power, clogged protine chute--he always came and hammered and patched and stitched and rewrapped it back into operation." And, since Souza was, officially, Chief Mechanic, he could have dispatched any one of fifty assistants and snoozed on. From the old man Nicholas had learned; you did the job yourself--you did not drop it in the lap of a subordinate.