"Oh, I'm not very important."
"We can't spare you," Tim replied positively. "But we can talk about that in a few minutes. Can I trust you to hang on to this brush?"
"I guess so."
Tim released his grip when he felt Wyckoff's firm hold on the handle. He darted into the tiny laboratory and opened the medicine cabinet. The bulb in the interior glowed softly through the few plastic articles on the shelves. Tim rummaged among the soapaks and found a small glass bottle of aspirillin tablets. Grasping it by the neck, he struck it smartly against the monel basin, shattering it into the basin and onto the floor. He dropped the neck among the tablets in the basin and went back to the top drawer of the chest where he found another handkerchief. Back at the bunkside, he sopped up as much blood as he could with the cloth, then took it back to the lavatory and wrung out a little on the floor, wadded the handkerchief and tossed it into the basin.
Approaching Wyckoff, who had sat up in the bunk, he pushed him down again gently. "You push your button for the steward and get the doctor right away. Tell him you dropped the aspirillin bottle and got cut by a piece of flying glass. I'm going to wait in the darkroom next door and come back for a long talk after the doc is done. Hear me?"
"Yes."
"Because if the doctor doesn't come in five minutes, I'm going for him and the psychiatrist, too. But I think you'd rather not have this get out any more than I would."
"No."
"All right, then. Push the button."
Daneshaw waited while Wyckoff pushed the button in the wall above his right elbow. Then he hurried out of the cabin and into the next door, the darkroom where the biological photographer would do his work after the landing on Venus until the building was completed. He left the door open a crack and waited for the approach of the steward and doctor.