With Vesta to translate, two days sufficed to rid Tominga of her loose atomic vortices; and no one so much as suspected that the Patrol ship or any of its crew had had anything to do with the upheaval in Mingia.
The trip to Manarka, a two-day flit, was uneventful. So was the extinguishment of Manarka’s vortices.
When the job was done, Nadine’s mind and Cloud’s met briefly. No direct reference was made to the unpleasantness on Tominga, nor to their somewhat variant ideas concerning it. Nadine wanted to stay on. She liked the job and she liked Cloud. He was somewhat impractical and visionary, a bit too idealistic in his outlook at times; but a strong and able man and a top-bracket commander, nevertheless.
And the Manarkan, in Cloud’s mind, was not only a top-bracket medico, but also a very handy hand to have around.
On the fourteenth of Sol, then, the good ship Vortex Blaster I took off for Tellus, with Cloud wondering more than a little as to what was in the wind. He wasn’t the type to be unduly perturbed about being called up on the carpet per se; but Phil didn’t go in for mystery much—he explained things . . . He couldn’t possibly know anything about that Mingian business so soon . . . and he was going to tell him all about it anyway. . . .
There was plenty of Laboratory business that shouldn’t be relayed all over space, and this was undoubtedly some of it. Whatever it was, it’d have to keep until he got to Tellus, anyway, so he’d forget it until then.
But he didn’t.
Chapter 10
▂▂▂▂▂▂JANOWICK
BACK ON TELLUS, Cloud took a fast copter to the Vortex Control Laboratory, still wondering what it was all about.
“Go right in, Dr. Cloud,” Strong’s secretary told him, even before he stopped at her desk. “He’s been gnawing his nails ever since you landed.”