"If we could only have kept your medical knowledge!"
"Trouble is, being a doctor doesn't suit my personality," I said. I felt absurdly light-hearted. Where I sat, I could raise my head and study the panorama of blackish-green foothills which lay beyond Carthon, and search out the stone roadways, like a tiny white ribbon, which we could follow for the first stage of the trip. Forth evidently did not share my enthusiasm.
"You know, Jason, there is one real danger—"
"Do you think I care about danger? Or are you afraid I'll turn—foolhardy?"
"Not exactly. It's not a physical danger, Jason. It's an emotional—or rather an intellectual danger."
"Hell, don't you know any language but that psycho double-talk?"
"Let me finish, Jason. Jay Allison may have been repressed, overcontrolled, but you are seriously impulsive. You lack a balance-wheel, if I could put it that way. And if you run too many risks, your buried alter-ego may come to the surface and take over in sheer self-preservation."
"In other words," I said, laughing loudly, "if I scare that Allison stuffed-shirt he may start stirring in his grave?"
Forth coughed and smothered a laugh and said that was one way of putting it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said, "Forget it, sir. I promise to be godly, sober and industrious—but is there any law against enjoying what I'm doing?"
Somebody burst out of the warehouse-palace place, and shouted at me. "Jason? The guide is here," and I stood up, giving Forth a final grin. "Don't you worry. Jay Allison's good riddance," I said, and went back to meet the other guide they had chosen.