xcuse to
discharge him from the General Practice Patrol. There was no question in
his mind that the Black Doctor's charges had been exaggerated into a
trumped-up case against him, and there was no question that Tiger's
insistence on taking the blame had saved him; he could not help being
thankful.

Yet there was something about it that disturbed Dal, nibbling away
persistently at his mind. He couldn't throw off the feeling that his own
acceptance of Tiger's help had been wrong.

Part of it, he knew, was his native, inbred loathing for falsehood. Fair
or unfair, Dal had always disliked lying. Among his people, the truth
might be bent occasionally, but frank lying was considered a deep
disgrace, and there was a Garvian saying that "a false tongue wins no
true friends." Garvian traders were known throughout the Galaxy as much
for their rigid adherence to their word as they were for the hard
bargains they could drive; Dal had been enormously confused during his
first months on Hospital Earth by the way Earthmen seemed to accept
lying as part of their daily life, unconcerned about it as long as the
falsehood could not be proven.

But something else about Tiger's defense of him bothered Dal far more
than the falsehood--something that had vaguely disturbed him ever since
he had known the big Earthman, and that now seemed to elude him every
time he tried to pinpoint it. Lying in his bunk during a sleep period,
Dal remembered vividly the first time he had met Tiger, early in the
second year of medical school. Dal had almost despaired by then of
making friends with his hostile and resentful classmates and had begun
more and more to avoid contact with them, building up a protective shell
and relying on Fuzzy for company or comfort. Then Tiger had found him
eating lunch by himself in the medical school lounge one day and flopped
down in the seat beside him and began talking as if Dal were just
another classmate. Tiger's open friendliness had been like a spring
breeze to Dal who was desperately lonely in this world of strangers;
their friendship had grown rapidly, and gradually others in the class
had begun to thaw enough at least to be civil when Dal was around. Dal
had sensed that this change of heart was largely because of Tiger and
not because of him, yet he had welcomed it as a change from the previous
intolerable coldness even though it left him feeling vaguely uneasy.
Tiger was well liked by the others in the class; Dal ha