hug him. Instead, wondering if Mrs. Harris, waiting outside,
had heard, she drew back self-consciously and said, 'Susan
is the cause of all this trouble, the nasty little thing.'
'Oh now!' the medicop exclaimed. 'I don't think so,
Mary. She's in trouble, too, you know.'
'She still eats sauerkraut.' Mary was defiant.
'But what's wrong with that?'
'You told her not to last year because it makes me sick on
my shift. But it agrees in buckets with a little pig like her.'
The medicop took this seriously. He made a note on the
pad. 'Mary, you should have complained sooner.'
'Do you think my father might not like me because Susan
Shorrs is my hypoalter?' she asked abruptly.
'I hardly think so, Mary. After all, he doesn't even know
her. He's never on her ego-shift.'
'A little bit,' Mary said, and was immediately frightened.
Captain Thiel glanced at her sharply. 'What do you mean
by that, child?'
'Oh, nothing,' Mary said hastily. 'I just thought maybe
he was.'
'Let me see your pharmacase,' he said rather severely.
Mary slipped the pharmacase off the belt at her waist and
handed it to him. Captain Thiel extracted the prescription
card from the back and threw it away. He slipped a new
card in the taping machine on his desk and punched out a
new prescription, which he reinserted in the pharmacase. In
the space on the front, he wrote directions for Mary to take
the drugs numbered from left to right.
Mary watched his serious face and remembered that he
had complimented her about being prettier than Susan. 'Cap-
tain Thiel, is your hypoalter as handsome as you are?'
The young medicop emptied the remains of the old pre-
scription from the pharmacase and took it to the dispensary
in the corner, where he slid it into the filling slot. He
seemed unmoved by her question and simply muttered,
'Much handsomer.'
The machine automatically filled the case from the punched
card on its back and he returned it to Mary. 'Are you taking
your drugs exactly as prescribed? You know there are very
strict laws about that, and as soon as you are fourteen,
you will be held to them.'
Mary nodded solemnly. Great strait-jackets, who didn't
know there were laws about taking your drugs?
There was a long pause and Mary knew she was sup-
posed to leave. She wanted, though, to stay with Captain Thiel
and talk with him. She wondered how it would be if he were
appointed her father.
Mary was not hurt that her shy compliment to him had
gone unnoticed. She had only wanted something to talk about.
