oment. "Why do you want to
be a doctor in the first place, Dal? This isn't the calling of your
people. You must be the one Garvian out of millions with the patience
and peculiar mental make-up to permit you to master the scientific
disciplines involved in studying medicine. Either you are different from
the rest of your people--which I doubt--or else you are driven to force
yourself into a pattern foreign to your nature for very compelling
reasons. What are they? Why do you want medicine?"

It was the hardest question of all, the question Dal had dreaded. He
knew the answer, just as he had known for most of his life that he
wanted to be a doctor above all else. But he had never found a way to
put the reasons into words. "I can't say," he said slowly. "I _know_,
but I can't express it, and whenever I try, it just sounds silly."

"Maybe your reasons don't make reasonable sense," the old man said
gently.

"But they do! At least to me, they do," Dal said. "I've always wanted to
be a doctor. There's nothing else I want to do. To work at home, among
my people."

"There was a plague on Garv II, wasn't there?" Doctor Arnquist said. "A
cyclic thing that came back again and again. The cycle was broken just a
few years ago, when the virus that caused it was finally isolated and
destroyed."

"By the physicians of Hospital Earth," Dal said.

"It's happened again and again," the Black Doctor said. "We've seen the
same pattern repeated a thousand times across the galaxy, and it has
always puzzled us, just a little." He smiled. "You see, our knowledge
and understanding of the life sciences here on Earth have always grown
hand in hand with the physical sciences. We had always assumed that the
same thing would happen on _any_ planet where a race has developed
intelligence and scientific methods of study. We were wrong, of course,
which is the reason for the existence of Hospital Earth and her
physicians today, but it still amazes us that with all the technology
and civilization in the galaxy, we Earthmen are the only people yet
discovered who have developed a broad knowledge of the processes of life
and illness and death."

The old man looked up at his visitor, and Dal felt his pale blue eyes
searching his face. "How badly do you want to be a doctor, Dal?"

"More than anything else I know," Dal said.

"Badly enough to do anything to achieve your goal?"

Dal hesitated, and stroked Fuzzy's head gently. "Well ... almost
anythin