"But—" That was Kim Walpole, frowning.
"I'm bringing my ship to the grid," said Calhoun, "and we'll recharge my Duhanne cells and replace my vision screens. I can make it here on rocket power, but it's a long way back to Headquarters. So I'll report, and a field team will come here from Med Service to get the exact data on the plague, and just how the synergy factor worked, and to make everything safe for the people the city was built for. Incidentally, I've a tiny blood-sample from Helen that they can get to work on for the bacteriology."
Kim said, frowning:
"I wish we could do something for you!"
"Put up a statue," said Calhoun dryly, "and in twenty years nobody will know what it was for. You and Helen are going to be married, aren't you?" When Kim nodded, Calhoun said, "In course of time, if you remember and think it worth while, you may inflict a child with my name. That child will wonder why, and ask, and so my memory will be kept green for a full generation!"
"Longer than that!" insisted Kim. "You'll never be forgotten here!"
Calhoun grinned at him.
Three days later, which was six days longer than he'd expected to be aground on Maris III, the landing grid heaved the little Med Ship out to space. The beautiful, nearly-empty city dwindled as the grid-field took the tiny spacecraft out to five planetary diameters and there released it. And Calhoun spun the Med Ship about and oriented it carefully for that place in the Cephis cluster where Med Service Headquarters was, and threw the overdrive switch.
The universe reeled. Calhoun's stomach seemed to turn over twice, and he had a sickish feeling of spiraling dizzily in what was somehow a cone. He swallowed. Murgatroyd made gulping noises. There was no longer a universe preceptible about the ship. There was dead silence. Then those small random noises began which have to be provided if a man is not to crack up in the dead stillness of a ship traveling at thirty times the speed of light.