He took his own temperature. He nodded.
"Murgatroyd and I have one more chore to do," he told her. "Would you go in the other cabin for a moment?"
She went disturbedly into the other cabin. Calhoun drew a sample of blood from the insensitive area on Murgatroyd's flank. Murgatroyd submitted with complete confidence in the man. In ten minutes Calhoun had diluted the sample, added an anticoagulant, shaken it up thoroughly, and filtered it to clarity with all red and white corpuscles removed. Another Med Ship man would have considered that Calhoun had had Murgatroyd prepare a splendid small sample of antibody-containing serum, in case something got out of hand. It would assuredly take care of two patients.
But a Med Ship man would also have known that it was simply one of those scrupulous precautions a Med Ship man takes when using cultures from store.
Calhoun put the sample away and called Maril back and offered no explanation. She said;
"I'll fix lunch." She hesitated. "You brought some food from the first Weald ship. Do you want it?"
He shook his head.
"I'm squeamish," he admitted. "The trouble on Dara is Med Service fault. Before my time, but still—I'll stick to rations until everybody eats."
He watched her unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily. He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic and expert use of probability increased one's chance of winning.