BACK TO FARSIDE
Grant faded in and out of consciousness. Vaguely he was aware of somebody bending over him. Not Trudy.
“Pretty bad,” he heard a voice mutter. Dr. Kapstein. Ridiculously, Grant wondered if she’d thrown up again in her space suit on the way over from Farside.
With Trudy helping, Kapstein and whoever else had come to Korolev with her worked Grant into a fresh space suit. He felt them lift his pain-wracked body and carry him to the shelter’s airlock. The pain seemed to be easing, but he felt woozy, as if he were muffled in cotton batting. Painkillers, he thought; Kapstein’s pumped me full of painkillers.
When he opened his eyes again he saw that he was in the locker area at Farside. Kapstein and Trudy and even Carter McClintock were looking down at him. His nose wrinkled.
“Smells like … salad dressing…”
Kris Cardenas’s youthful face bent over him. “Stopgap defense against the disassemblers,” she said. “We used all the salad oil in the kitchen, and lots of other oils.”
“Great…”
Dr. Kapstein’s face looked grim. “We’ve got to get you to Selene.”
“But … quarantine…”
“The quarantine’s lifted,” Cardenas said. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, Selene’s open again.”
“Good.”
Kapstein said to Cardenas, “Whatever you put into him probably has saved his life.”
“Therapeutic nanomachines,” Cardenas said.
“They stopped his bleeding and even reduced the subcranial edema.”
With a knowing smile, Cardenas said, “My little nanobugs have their uses.”
* * *
Edie Elgin rode back to Selene with Grant. Trudy wanted to go, too, but Uhlrich insisted there was too much work to be done for him to allow her to leave Farside.
Grant rode on one of the lobber’s passenger compartment seats, tilted back almost flat. Sitting on the seat next to him, Edith shook her head mournfully.
“The biggest news story since the war, and I can’t say a peep about it,” she complained. “Even my husband has told me to keep quiet about it.”
Feeling light-headed, but free of pain, Grant asked, “How can you cover up Mrs. Halleck’s death?”
“Hopper accident,” Edith said with a shrug. “Blame it on the guy she was with, that Oberman fellow.”
It was really my fault, Grant told himself. But he said nothing to Edie Elgin.
Kris Cardenas stayed at Farside, supervising the cleanup as the vanadium-gobbling nanomachines ran to the end of their programmed lifespans and went inert. Grant fidgeted in his hospital bed, wondering how his people were getting along without him.
By the time he was able to walk and exercise normally, Trudy flew in to see him.
Grant was sitting up in his bed, watching a news broadcast on the wall-mounted television set when she appeared at the door of his hospital room, looking bright and fresh and totally happy. He jumped out of bed as she ran to him. They embraced and kissed and he reveled in the warmth of her.
Then he realized he was wearing a ridiculous flimsy hospital gown, open at the back.
“I’m not dressed very well,” he said, grinning.
“You look great to me,” said Trudy.
“My head’s okay,” he told her as he led her to the only chair in the room. “The medics say the nanomachines inside me accelerated my healing. I ought to be going back to Farside tomorrow.”
“I know. I came to see you and go back with you.”
“Uhlrich let you go?” Grant asked as he sat on the edge of the bed.
Nodding, she replied, “The professor is just about delirious. Carter’s decided that the McClintock Trust will fully fund Farside’s operations for the next five years. We won’t need to beg money from Selene.”
“No wonder he’s happy.”
“And my paper…” She hesitated, then amended, “Our paper on the composition of New Earth’s atmosphere has been favorably refereed. It’ll be in the next issue of the International Astrophysics Letters!”
“That’s terrific,” Grant said. “Your first published paper.”
“And it’s an important one. The professor’s pushing to finish the ’scopes at Korolev and Gagarin. Once we get all three working together, we’ll be able to produce detailed imagery of the planet’s surface.”
“And the Ulcer will get his Nobel Prize after all.”
“Looks like,” said Trudy.
Grant felt his brows knitting into a scowl. “But it’s not fair. You’re doing the work. He’s just sitting on his butt and taking the credit. What do you get, Trudy?”
She got up from the chair and came smiling to the bed and sat down beside Grant.
“I get you,” said Trudy. “The professor can have his Nobel. I get the real prize.”