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"What's that?" "A tormal" said Calhoun. "He's not a pet. Your medical men will know something about him. This is a Med Ship and I'm a Med Ship man, and he's an important member of the crew. He's a Med Ship tormal and he stays with me!" The man with the blue hand said harshly, "There's somebody waiting to ask you questions. Here!"
Two uniformed men jumped out. The first of them jerked at his blaster in its holster on his hip. "That's the tormal!" he snapped. "This's the man, all right!" Calhoun pulled the trigger of his blaster three times. It whined instead of rasping, because of its low-power setting. The Minister for Health collapsed.
The doctor moved toward the Med Ship's exit-port. "I answered your questions," he said grimly. "But if I talked to anyone else as I've done to you, I'd be lucky only to be driven into exile!" "I shan't give you away," said Calhoun. He did not smile. When the doctor had gone, Calhoun said deliberately; "Murgatroyd, you should be grateful that you're a tormal and not a man.
"I mentioned coffee!" "Chee!" shrilled Murgatroyd. But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lower in the other cabin, and the look of things was different from the control-compartment. The difference was part of the means by which a man was able to be alone for weeks on end alone save for his tormal without becoming ship-happy.
There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody was half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved of Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function. He was, of course, a Med Service tormal, and tormals were creatures of talent.
They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins, and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to which a tormal could not more or less immediately develop antibody resistance. So that in interstellar medicine tormals were priceless.
"It's not," he told the tormal with a sort of despairing humor, "that I'm ashamed of you, Murgatroyd, but I'm afraid I may become ashamed of myself. Keep low!" He started the car and drove away. He passed through a business district, with many smashed windows. He passed through canyons formed by office buildings.
He snapped a command to Murgatroyd, and when the tormal was on the ground outside, he locked the port with that combination that nobody but a Med Ship man was at all likely to discover or use. "She's an idiot!" he told Murgatroyd sourly. "Come along! We've got to be idiots too!" He set out in pursuit. The girl had a long start.
There's nothing about being a tormal to make you ashamed!" Then he grimly changed his garments for the full-dress uniform of the Med Service. There was to be a banquet at which he would sit next to the planet's chief executive and hear innumerable speeches about the splendor of Weald. Calhoun had his own, strictly Med Service opinion of the planet's latest and most boasted-of achievement.
Maril, four cups of coffee, please." Murgatroyd said "Chee?" The Med Ship was badly crowded with six humans and Murgatroyd in a space intended for Calhoun and Murgatroyd alone. The little tormal had spent most of his time in his cubbyhole, watching with beady eyes as so many people moved about on what had been a spacious ship before. "No coffee for you, Murgatroyd," said Calhoun.
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