lay.

But one thing took priority. He found a quiet spot in the waiting room
near the subway entrance and dug into his day pack for the pressed
biscuit and the canister of water he had there. He broke off a piece of
the biscuit and held it up for Fuzzy to see.

Fuzzy wriggled down onto his hand, and a tiny mouth appeared just below
the shoe-button eyes. Bit by bit Dal fed his friend the biscuit, with
squirts of water in between bites. Finally, when the biscuit was gone,
Dal squirted the rest of the water into Fuzzy's mouth and rubbed him
between the eyes. "Feel better now?" he asked.

The creature seemed to understand; he wriggled in Dal's hand and blinked
his eyes sleepily. "All right, then," Dal said. "Off to sleep."

Dal started to tuck him back into his jacket pocket, but Fuzzy abruptly
sprouted a pair of forelegs and began struggling fiercely to get out
again. Dal grinned and replaced the little creature in the crook of his
arm. "Don't like that idea so well, eh? Okay, friend. If you want to
watch, that suits me."

He found a map of the city at the subway entrance, and studied it
carefully. Like other hospital cities on Earth, Seattle was primarily a
center for patient care and treatment rather than a supply or
administrative center. Here in Seattle special facilities existed for
the care of the intelligent marine races that required specialized
hospital care. The depths of Puget Sound served as a vast aquatic ward
system where creatures which normally lived in salt-water oceans on
their native planets could be cared for, and the specialty physicians
who worked with marine races had facilities here for research and
teaching in their specialty. The dry-land sectors of the hospital were
organized to support the aquatic wards; the surgeries, the laboratories,
the pharmacies and living quarters all were arranged on the periphery of
the salt-water basin, and rapid-transit tubes carried medical workers,
orderlies, nurses and physicians to the widespread areas of the hospital
city.

The pathology sector lay to the north of the city, and Black Doctor
Arnquist was the chief pathologist of Hospital Seattle. Dal found a
northbound express tube, climbed into an empty capsule, and pressed the
buttons for the pathology sector. Presently the capsule was shifted
automatically into the pressure tube that would carry him thirty miles
north to his destination.

It was the first time Dal had ever visited a Black Doctor in his