"I can't let you have technicians now," he said obstinately.
She glanced at him curiously, sauntering closer as if to get a better look. "I forgot. Cameron has Nona, hasn't he? They're going to get married as soon as he can figure out a simple ceremony. And now you hate women, don't you? That's why you won't give Maureen the same chance you'd give a man."
He rocked back under the cold hatred. He had no idea she was capable of such venom. "You're reading into my emotions something that was never there. I'm glad Nona found someone she can respond to. But why are you so concerned with Maureen? You never liked her."
"What rationalization," she said bitterly. "It makes no difference what I thought about her. She's going to die if I don't help her, and I will. I'd expect the same from anyone else."
"Jeriann," he said but she was gone, tearing the smock off and thrusting it on a hook, leaving him alone beside a machine that alternately hummed and purred in oily accents. He stared at it with complete lack of interest as the cycle changed. The synthesizer grunted with satisfied pride and three drops of a colorless fluid were discharged into a retort.
If there was no other way they could save Maureen by contacting the expedition behind them. They had the supplies Jeriann was trying vainly to duplicate. But that was surrender and the only alternative was to go ahead as planned.
Docchi left the laboratory, taking the long way around to avoid the doctor's office. Cameron wouldn't put the same pressure on him that Jeriann had—no one could. Why did she have to think he was responsible?
[13]
The dimensions of the place were fear, panic and loneliness. It was no-time or all-time, the endless instant of survival—or less. It was light or it wasn't, the illumination of the closed mind, the intellect turned in on itself, perception curled backward while it reached for the outside world. It was a universe which neither existed nor would ever quite vanish.