“Fifteen times I was wounded,” my voice drowned him out, “and fourteen times the wound was repaired. The fifteenth time— The fifteenth time —Well, the fifteenth time it wasn’t a wound they could repair. They couldn’t help me one little bit the fifteenth time.”
Roger Grey opened his mouth.
“Fortunately,” I whispered, “it wasn’t a wound that showed.”
Weinstein started to ask me something, decided against it and sat back. But I told him what he wanted to know.
“A nucleonic howitzer. The way it was figured later, it had been a defective shell. Bad enough to kill half the men on our second-class cruiser. I wasn’t killed, but I was in range of the back-blast.”
“That back-blast,” Lamehd was figuring it out quickly in his mind. “That back-blast will sterilize anybody for two hundred feet. Unless you’re wearing—”
“And I wasn’t.” I had stopped sweating. It was over. My crazy little precious secret was out. I took a deep breath. “So you see—well, anyway, I know they haven’t solved that problem yet.”
Roger Grey stood up and said, “Hey.” He held out his hand. I shook it. It felt like any normal guy’s hand. Stronger maybe.
“Sling-shot personnel,” I went on, “are all volunteers. Except for two categories: the commanders and soldier surrogates.”
“Figuring, I guess,” Weinstein asked, “that the human race can spare them most easily?”