Hanson nodded. "You're going to go get him."
"I'm not."
Hanson shook his head. "You'll be safe," he said. "At the present moment you have too many inhibitions to rouse a stir in Cliff Maculay."
Ava snorted angrily. She was still forgetting Maculay; in fact she forgot him four or five times each day. Each time she reminded herself that it was a good thing that she did not 'go' for his type of man since the two of them would never get along.
Defensively, Ava said, "I'm to go to Venus and comb the entire planet for a man on a binge?"
Doctor Hanson chuckled. "For he who knows the answer, Cliff Maculay would leave a trail a mile wide," he said. "But you'd never make the grade, Ava."
"You're quite right," she said.
Hanson grunted unintelligibly. It sounded like agreement to Ava, but was actually a grunt of disgust. The doctor was old enough to be beyond the sparring age, and he was disgusted at the sidelong mental attitude of a race that admitted that love, marriage, and a family were at the bottom of all effort—and then invented croquet, television, and chaperones to make it difficult.
Hanson looked at his nurse, and shook his head slowly. He was willing to bet his hat that Ava remembered every line in Maculay's face. And that her dislike of Maculay was as genuine as a seven dollar bill, Hanson would also bet money on. He had not been untying mental knots for fifty years without being able to listen to one statement and hear the truth unspoken between the words. He watched her stand there uncomfortably, and knew that she was uncomfortable because she knew that he knew what she was trying to hide to herself. Deliberately letting her squirm, Hanson began to fiddle with his watch chain.