"Oh, but going to dinner with the base commander is a different thing, is it?"
Kinsman pulled himself to his full height, unnoticeable inside the bulky suit. "The base commander," he replied, "is a very dashing and romantic figure—so I'm told."
They laughed and clumped back to the main dome, hand in gloved hand.
"Chet," Diane said, "I don't want to make any commit- ments, either. I can't. Not yet."
"Sure," he said. "I understand. I shouldn't be dawdling over romantic dinners, anyway. I've got plenty of work to do." And I've got to find out why Leonov backed down.
Jill Meyers was just finishing her rounds in Selene's hospital. Like most of the underground community, the hospital was built in two interconnecting sections, one Ameri- can and one Russian. Nearly all the facilities were duplicated.
Jill looked almost as youthful as when she had been an astronaut trainee, fifteen years earlier- Her bright-eyed, round, snub-nosed face, framed by short-clipped straight brown hair, would look young well into her golden years. But within her tiny frame was strength and skill and a quality that was rare in a physician: empathy.
The hospital was large and staffed out of all proportion to Selene's total size. It had been the original justification for a permanent lunar base. and now most of the permanent lunar 325 residents—Russian and American—were on the Moon for medical reasons: bad hearts, bad lungs, muscular diseases. Jill herself had developed an intolerable set of allergies that had incapacitated her Earthside. Here in the controlled environ- ment of the lunar community she was virtually perfect.
Jill looked tired now as she left the last of her patients and headed for the hospital's core of administrative offices and monitoring stations. She got as far as the first station, a horseshoe-shaped set of desks covered with display screens that monitored the sensors watching over a dozen patients' heart rates, respirations, alpha rhythms, and other parame- ters. The nurse sitting inside the horseshoe called to her, "Dr. Meyers, phone for you."
Jill stopped and accepted the handset from the young woman. Leaning wearily against the desk she watched the phone's picture screen crackle with momentary interference; then it cleared to show a bearded, dark-eyed man whom Jill immediately recognized as one of the Russian doctors. He looked very grave.
"Alexsei, what's wrong?" Jill blurted as her free hand unconsciously went up to smooth her brown hair.
"We have a difficult situation on our hands," he said, in smooth American English. "Cardiac infarction. Our emer- gency equipment is not available at the moment; one of the carts is in use and the other broke down yesterday. If you can't loan us an aortic pump system I'll have to decide who to help and who to let die. It's not a decision I want to make."
"Of course. Can you move the patient here?"
"Not without a pump in him."
"I'll be there in ten minutes," Jill said. "No, five."
"Good."
Turning to the monitoring nurse she said, "Put me through to the base commander, and while I'm talking to him get the emergency team across to Dr. Landau with a heart pump cart."
Pat Kelly's face showed up on the picture screen. "Kins- man's off someplace. Not to be disturbed except for cata- clysms." He grinned toothily to show what he thought of the commander's absence.
Jill outlined the problem in two sentences. Then, "I'm taking an emergency unit to the Lunagrad section." 326
Kelly hiked his eyebrows. "Regs don't permit that, you know."
"Then either find Chet in the next three minutes or send an armed guard down here to stop me! There's a life at stake."
"Not one of ours."
"Oh, you're not a member of the human race? I'll remember that the next time you come in here. What you do with your regulations is your problem, but I can make a medical suggestion ..."
"Okay, okay!" Kelly threw his hands up. "I'll write out the order and ask Chet to sign it when he gets back to his office."
"All right," Jill said. "Thanks."
