only been trying to make up for
some of the dirty breaks you've been handed since you came to Hospital
Earth."

"I know that," Dal said, "and I've appreciated it. Sometimes it's been
the only thing that's kept me going. But that doesn't mean that you own
me. Friendship is one thing; proprietorship is something else. I'm not
your private property."

He saw the look on Tiger's face, as though he had suddenly turned and
slapped him viciously across the face. "Look, I know it sounds awful,
but I can't help it. I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to
change things with us, but _I'm a person just like you are_. I can't go
on leaning on you any longer. Everybody has to stand on his own
somewhere along the line. You do, and I do, too. And that goes for Jack,
too."

They heard the door to the communications shack open, and the Black
Doctor was back in the room. "Well?" he said. "Am I interrupting
something?" He glanced sharply at the tight-lipped doctors. "The call
was from the survey section," he went on blandly. "A survey crew is on
its way to 31 Brucker to start gathering some useful information on the
situation. But that is neither here nor there. You have heard the
charges against the Red Doctor here. Is there anything any of you want
to say?"

Tiger and Jack looked at each other. The silence in the room was
profound.

The Black Doctor turned to Dal. "And what about you?"

"I have something to say, but I'd like to talk to you alone."

"As you wish. You two will return to your quarters and stay there."

"The attendant, too," Dal said.

The Black Doctor's eyes glinted and met Dal's for a moment. Then he
shrugged and nodded to his attendant. "Step outside, please. We have a
private matter to discuss."

The Black Doctor turned his attention to the papers on the desk as Dal
stood before him with Fuzzy sitting in the crook of his arm. From the
moment that the notice of the inspection ship's approach had come to the
_Lancet_, Dal had known what was coming. He had been certain what the
purpose of the detainment was, and who the inspector would be, yet he
had not really been worried. In the back of his mind, a small,
comfortable thought had been sustaining him.

It didn't really matter how hostile or angry Black Doctor Tanner might
be; he knew that in a last-ditch stand there was one way the Black
Doctor could be handled.

He remembered the dramatic shift from hostility to friendliness among
the Bruckians when