held a sterile cloth ready, with curiosity and a touch of horror, to receive the small plug of bone. Peake’s hands were probing, delicately.
“Got the bastard,” he said, holding it up with some small instrument. Moira did not need to look at the blood clot. She had seen it before.
From the table below them a blurry voice spoke.
“What are you — what are you doing with my head? I can’t move, I can’t see—” and a fretful pulling at the restraining straps.
“It’s all right,” Teague said, quickly alert. “Peake’s just bandaging you up now, you’re all right. You can’t see because there’s a towel over your eyes,”
“Oh,” The fretful voice subsided, and Peake let his breath go. He had seen this before; the sudden miracle, the dead speaking from the tomb. Now that it was over, he knew that he had been clenched against disaster, another DeMag failure — what would have happened if the gravity suddenly disappeared at the moment he was making the first incision, would the scalpel have slipped into the brain? Maybe someday there would be a medical specialty, Free-fall surgery; Peake fervently hoped he would never find out.
“My head aches a little. What happened?” Ching murmured in that plaintive, fretful voice.
“You fell. Now lie perfectly still, Ching, it’s all right,” Peake said, in a stern commanding tone, and she was quiet. He knew that the layer where he was working was insensitive to pain in the ordinary sense, but the exposed brain tissue could give rise to irritability.
“Do I have to have my hands tied? I won’t move,” she murmured.
“Sssh, darling, it’s all right,” Teague soothed, holding her hands, and she subsided. Later, when Peake was suturing the skull, which really hurt her, she began to cry softly, but she did not complain; and after a little, exhausted, she fell asleep before he finished. Normal sleep, this time; Peake, checking her reflexes as he transferred her to the stretcher again, realized that she would sleep, and wake without any memory of the operation at all. She would have a small scar, and with luck her hair would grow right back over it. Peake left Fontana to clear away the operating area — Ravi came to help, since he had not done anything — and Teague to stay close to Ching in case she woke and wanted him, and went to dial himself a very stiff drink from the console. Medicinal, he told himself firmly, as he settled down to enjoy it. His chair was next to the bin where Fontana’s electronic keyboard was stored, and he found himself thinking of the Schubert Nocturne he and Jimson had played at the final concert. He thought! ot the lovely plaintive melody without bitterness. He and Fontana would play it, when Ching was well enough that they could all make music again.
Moira came to help Ravi put the soiled cloths into the disposer.
She said, “’You know, all the time 1 was watching Peake operate, I was wondering. I should have been able to see inside the DeMags and find the flaw in the controls, just as ! saw inside Ching’s skull. I’ve got a lot of exploring to do, to find out what my ESP is really good for.”
Ravi smiled at her. “Maybe we can use it to get us back on course again, my darling.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” she said softly, pressing close to him.
And Survey Ship 103 moved past the orbit of Pluto, out into the unknown.
