"I can't leave you."
"You must ... if you want me! I'm good for six or seven hours. Go and get that information, Cal."
"But I'm no physician. Much less a surgeon. Even less a neurosurgeon."
"Murdoch's records are such that a deft and responsible child could follow them. According to history, his hoard is filled with instruments and equipment. Cal—"
"Yes?"
"Cal. This is the place where Murdoch worked on living nerves!"
Tinker Elliott closed her eyes and tried to rest. She did not sleep, nor did she feel faint. But her closed eyes were a definite argument against objection on Cal's part. Worrying, he left her and went back to his flier. He called for help and then he went to work on the Key.
Cal does not remember the next four hours. It was a whirling montage of dismal swamp and winking pilot lights and thrumming whistles. It was a lonely boulder with a handle on it that Cal lifted out of the ground with ease. It was an immaculate hospital driven deep into the murky ground of Venus. Three hundred and fifty years ago, Dr. Allison Murdoch worked here and today his refrigerating plants started to function as soon as Cal snapped the main switch.
On a stretcher that must have held many a torn and mangled set of nerves before, Cal trundled Tinker through the muggy swamp of Venus and lowered her into Murdoch's hospital.