"It sounds grisly? Maybe it is. Look, Guy, I'm a healthy, normal woman, no different than the average. I'm not much different than the average male when it comes to stamina, fortitude, and will. Look, Guy, it's all right for other women?"
Guy's blank face told Joan that she had scored a hit.
"But you think it not all right for a friend of yours? That's stuffy, ridiculous, and hypocritical. Rot, Guy. After all, what's good for the patrol marshal should be good enough for the girl that pinned on his insignia."
"Hm-m-m, I suppose you're right."
"I am right. After all, in order to do any limb-grafting, the free limb must be fresh. A corpse will not keep too long, Guy. Autointoxication sets in and kills the cells, and then the limb is useless for grafting. The same is true for eyes, ears, and anything that can be grafted. All right," she snapped, "it's ghoulish to take a leg from a corpse and graft it on to a man who is alive but with a shattered thigh. It's inhuman? Not at all. Of what good to the dead is their lifeless body?"
"O.K., Joan, I didn't mean to sound sanctimonious."
"All right. It's pretty ghastly sometimes, but I think it's worth it all the way."
"I'm sorry, Joan."
"Well, consider me good enough to be where the trouble is," she said with a shy smile.
"Look, Senior Aide Forbes, you are as fine an officer and gentleman as I have ever seen, even though it did take an Act of Terran Congress to make a gentleman out of you. You have my undying admiration."