In the Tissue Culture Room, Pat was already busy with the specimens and had time only to wink at me. No hope for enlightenment there! I looked back at her trim figure as I moved away and, at the door of Electron Microscopy, ran head on into Polly Cripps, our electron microscopy technician and Harry Cope's fiancee. Even at thirty-five she was still good looking in a bold way, with white gold hair waving over deep blue eyes, a full mouth and a full figure to go with it.
When I recovered my breath after bouncing off that pneumatic form, I started to speak but, as usual, she beat me to it.
"My Goodness, John, you Northerners are always in a hurry," she gasped. "You almost mashed me flat."
"Ah caint see no difference honey," I parodied her Alabama drawl. "Say, Harry tells me something big is happening."
"It surely is," she said, "I've taken more pictures in the last two weeks than in the six months before that. I took a whole mess of them to Dr. Hallam this morning."
"Maybe I'd better go find out for myself. See you later, cutie." As I went by I gave her a friendly pat on her well rounded posterior and got the back of my head clipped for my temerity.
"You keep your cotton-pickin' hands to yourself, boy," she said, but she was smiling.
The time was late autumn. Because of a special project, I hadn't been able to take my summer vacation. Patricia Delaney, our senior virology technician, had worked with me and, as the days went by, it looked as if neither of us would get a break. The fall is the season for respiratory viruses to start causing trouble and we couldn't afford to take time off if even a minor outbreak appeared. But the weather stayed dry and finally, one lovely Indian summer day, Dr. Hallam had shoved us both out of the office for ten days' rest.
I stopped on the front steps of the Lab and looked at Pat, standing beside me, her brown curly head, topped by one of the new round space satellite hats, bent over as she fumbled at her handbag.