"They're just a precaution, same as Father would take if he was in charge," Jak soothed. "We won't go out of this clearing this first time."
"You'd better give Mr. C. another feeding first, hadn't you?"
Jak consulted his wrist-chronom. "Yes, it's nearly time, and we might not be back by the regular hour."
The problem of keeping their father fed and in good health, apart from his head and leg injuries, had not proven too hard when they became convinced that he was not going to wake up often enough to eat normally.
Jak, while working as orderly in the Centropolitan Hospital the previous summer, had assisted the interns and nurses in giving intravenous feedings to unconscious patients. So he knew the general procedure, as well as the composition and quantity of the nutrient liquid to be administered.
"Will you come help me, Mother," he had asked when he was sure he was ready for that first feeding. "We've got to find certain things in our food stores."
"You're sure you know how to do it?"
"Yes, it's not hard. We need liquid proteins, salt, sugar and glucose." With his mother helping, he had gathered these from their stores, and taken them into the galley. There he had carefully measured out and mixed these ingredients in the proportions his books stated.
Then he and Jon had gone into the workshop and there the younger, under his brother's supervision, and with pictures of the apparatus as a guide, had rigged up a drip-regulator to go into the mouth of a large bottle. To this they had attached a long, slender, plastic tube, and to the far end of that a large, hollow feeding needle.
As the others watched anxiously, Jak had inserted the needle into the large vein on the inside of his father's left elbow. With his thumb Jak had softly rubbed the vein just above the needle's point, to assist the flow of the nutrient. Soon it was done. Mr. Carver had stirred and his eyelids had fluttered when the needle was inserted but he had not fully regained consciousness.