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Even at that rate, Ossian Orne did insist that Harnden was a complete fool. Orne would not take town orders for his nursery stock. But Orne's nose was out of joint, it was generally agreed.
I trust you, but you deserve a peaceful convalescence. We've no right to saddle you with " "Stet?" Orne's voice was low, amused. "Huh?" Stetson looked up. "Let's save the noble act for someone who doesn't know you," said Orne. "You've a job for me. O.K. You've made the gesture for your conscience." Stetson produced a wolfish grin. "All right. So we're desperate, and we haven't much time.
What breeds in that atmosphere?" He shook his head. "The Rim War would seem like a picnic!" "We can't just ignore this!" barked Spencer. He stiffened, glared at Orne. "We can and we will," said Orne. "No choice." Polly looked up, studied Orne's face. Diana looked confused. "Once a Nathian, always a Nathian, eh?" snarled Spencer. "There's no such thing," said Orne.
"That is final, emphatically final!" Orne's shoulders drooped. He turned away, stumbled, and abruptly collapsed full length on the thick carpets. There was a collective gasp behind him. Stetson barked: "Call a doctor! They warned me at the hospital he was still hanging on a thin thread!" There was the sound of Polly's heavy footsteps running toward the hall. "Lew!" It was Diana's voice.
His pangs took his mind off the other affairs. He was pallid and his lips were blue when Emissary Orne came waddling into the office. Mr. Orne, in addition to other characteristics that suggested a fowl, had a sagging dewlap, and the February nip had colored it into resemblance to a rooster's wattles. When he came in Mr. Orne's face was sagging, in general.
Orne, with an oracle's decisiveness. But that declaration in Mr. Orne's political terminology did not convey much information to the candidate. Britt, thoroughly incensed by what seemed to be evasion, leaped up, twitched the toothpick from Orne's lips, and flung it away. "I've paid for the English language, and I want it straight and in short words, and not trigged by a toothpick." "All right!
Fourteen months, eleven days, five hours and two minutes after he had been picked up "as good as dead," Orne walked out of the hospital under his own power, accompanied by a strangely silent Umbo Stetson. Under the dark blue I-A field cape, Orne's coverall uniform fitted his once muscular frame like a deflated bag.
She had demure gray eyes, grandmotherly gray hair combed straight back in a jeweled net and that shocking baritone husk of a voice issuing from a small mouth. Her figure sloped out from several chins to a matronly bosom, then dropped straight like a barrel. The top of her head came just above Orne's dress epaulets. "We want you to feel at home here, Lewis," she husked.
He had been in terminal shock for more than ninety hours. Umbo Stetson, Orne's section chief, went back into his cruiser's "office" after a hospital flitter took pod and patient. There was an added droop to Stetson's shoulders that accentuated his usual slouching stance. His overlarge features were drawn into ridges of sorrow.
"Perhaps, then, it was the way the light fell on your face." He peered closely at his client. Mr. Britt's color was coming back. Orne's cryptic speeches and his haste to collect had warmed the banker's wrath. "It'll be ten dollars, as we agreed." Britt yanked a big wallet from his breast pocket, plucked out a bill, and shoved it at Orne.
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