"You've done a fine job. We'll be landing soon and then there will be professional help and equipment." "All right. I don't feel too lively, I admit." "So try to rest." Hazel picked up my blood-soiled trousers.
"I'm going to soak these before the stain sets."
"Use cold water!" Gretchen blurted, then turned pink and added shyly, "So Mama says."
"Ingrid is right, dear." Hazel ran water into the hand basin. "Richard, I'm forced to admit that I lost your new clothes during that fuss."
"Clothes we can buy. I thought I was going to lose you."
"Good Richard. Here's your wallet and some this and that. Pocket plunder."
"Better let me have it." I crowded it all into a breast pocket.
"Where's Choy-Mu? I did see him-or did I?"
"He's in the other 'fresher, with Father Schultz and Father Ezra."
"Uh? Are you telling me that a four-seater has two refreshers? It is a four-place job, isn't it?"
"It is and it does and wait till you see the rose gardens. And the swimming lounge."
I started to make a retort but chopped it off. I had not figured out any formula by which to tell when my bride was jesting, or was telling literal but unbelievable truth. I was saved from a silly discussion by one of the redheads coming in-female, young, muscled, freckled, catlike, wholesome, sultry. "Aunt Hazel, we're grounded."
'Thank you. Lor."
"I'm Laz. Cas wants to know who stays here, who comes along, and how long till lift? Gay wants to know whether or not we'll be bombed and can she park one shift over? Bombing makes her nervous."
"Something is wrong here. Gay should not be asking directly. Should she?"
"I don't think she trusts Cas's judgment."
"She may have reason. Who's commanding?"
"I am."
"Oh. I'll let you know who goes, who stays, after I talk to my papa and Uncle Jock. A few minutes, I think. You can let Gay park in a dead zone if you wish but please have her stay on my frequency triple; we may be in a hurry. Right now I want to move my husband... but first I must ask another of our passengers to lend me his wheelchair."
Hazel turned to leave. I called out, "I don't need a wheel-chair," but she didn't hear me. Apparently.
Two of the redheads lifted me out of the craft and placed me in Ezra's wheelchair, with its back support lowered and front support lifted; one of them spread a kingsize bath towel over my lap and legs. I said, "Thanks, Laz." .
"I'm Lor. Don't be surprised if this towel vanishes; we've never tried taking one outside before."
She got back aboard and Hazel wheeled me under the nose of the craft and around to its port side... which suited me, as I had seen at once that this was indeed a sort of spaceplane, with lifting body and retractable wings-and I was curious to see how the designer had managed to crowd two large refreshers into its port side. It did not seem aerodynamically possible.
And it wasn't. Portside was like the starboard side, sleek and slender. No cubic for bathrooms.
I had no time to ponder this. When we had turned into the Raffles' side tunnel a few minutes earlier, my Sonychron had just blinked seventeen, Greenwich or L-City time... which would make it eleven in the morning in zone six, dirtside.
And so it was because that's where we were, zone six, in the north pasture of my Uncle Jock's place outside Grinnell, Iowa. So it becomes obvious that I not only had lost much blood but also had been hit hard on the head-as even the hottest military courier needs at least two hours, Luna to Terra.
In front of us was Uncle Jock's fine old restored Victorian, cupola and verandas and widow's walk, and he himself was coming toward us, accompanied by two other men. Uncle was as spry as ever, and still with a mop of silver-white hair that made him look like Andrew Jackson. The other two I did not recognize. They were mature men but much younger than Uncle Jock-well, almost everybody is.
Hazel stopped pushing me, ran and threw her arms around one of them, kissed him, all out. My uncle picked her out of that man's arms, bussed her just as enthusiastically, then surrendered her to the third, who saluted her the same way and put her back on her feet.
Before I could feel left out, she turned and took the first one by his left hand. "Papa, I want you to meet my husband, Richard Colin. Richard, this is my Papa Mannie, Manuel Gar-cia O'Kelly Davis."
"Welcome to family. Colonel." He offered me his right hand.
"Thank you, sir."
Hazel turned to the third man. "And Richard, this-"
"-is Dr. Hubert," Uncle Jock interrupted. "LAfe, slap skin with my nephew Colonel Colin Campbell. Welcome home, Dickie. What are you doing in that baby carriage?" • "Just lazy, I guess. Where's Aunt Cissy?"
"Locked up, of course; knew you were coming. But what have you been doing? Looks like you failed to duck. Sadie, you have to expect that from Dickie; he's always been slow. Hard to toilet train and never did leam pattycake."
I was selecting a sufficiently insulting answer to this canard (I learned long ago the way to treat our family scandal) when the ground shook, followed immediately by Krrrumpf Not nuclear, just high explosive. But disquieting just the same; HE is not a toy and is not a better way to become dead-there isn't one. Uncle said, "Don't pee your pants, Dickie; they're not shooting at us. Lafe, will you examine him here? Or inside?"
Dr. Hubert said, "Let me see your pupils. Colonel."
So I looked at him as he looked at me. When Hazel stopped pushing the wheelchair, the spaceplane was then on my left; but when that HE detonation took place, the spaceplane was abruptly elsewhere. Gone. "-not a rack behind." Least hypothesis suggests that I was out of my gourd.
Nobody else seemed to notice it.
So I pretended not to and looked at my physician... and wondered where I had seen him lately.
"No concussion, I think. What's the natural log of pi?"
"If I had all my marbles, would I be here? Look, Doc, no guessing games, please; I'm tired." Another HE shell (or bomb) landed nearby, closer if anything. Dr. Hubert moved the towel off my left leg, poked at the pack Xia had placed.
"Does that hurt?"
"Hell, yes!"
"Good. Hazel, you had best take him home. I can't take proper care of him here as we are about to shift to New Harbor in Beulahland; the Angelenos have taken Des Moines and are moving this way. He's in good shape for a man who's taken a hit... but he should have proper treatment without delay."
I said, "Doctor, are you any relation to the redheaded girls in that spaceplane we arrived in?"
"They're not girls; they are superannuated juvenile delinquents. Whatever they told you I deny categorically. Give them my love."
Hazel blurted, "But I have to make my report!"
Everybody talked at once until Dr. Hubert said, "Quiet! Hazel goes with her husband and sees him settled in, stays as long as she finds necessary, then reports to New Harbor... but with time tick established now. Objection? So ordered."
Having that spaceplane reappear was even more disconcerting and I'm glad I didn't watch. Or not much. The two redheaded men (turned out there were only four redheads, not a mob) got me and the wheelchair inside and Hazel went into that odd refresher with me... and almost at once Laz (Lor?) followed us in and announced, "Aunt Hazel, we're home."
"Home" turned out to be the flat roof of a large building- and it was late evening, almost sundown. That spaceplane should be named the Cheshire Cat. (But its name is Gay. Her name is Gay. Oh, never mind!)
The building was a hospital. In checking into a hospital you first wait an hour and forty minutes while they process the paperwork. Then they undress you and put you on a gumey under a thin blanket with your bare feet sticking out into a cold draft and make you wait outside the X-ray lab. Then they demand a urine sample in a plastic duck while a young lady waits for it, staring at the ceiling and looking bored. Right?