tically telling Catherine that she, as a
nurses' helper, had even less right to go shooting off her mouth.
Catherine started to reply but gave it up. Instead she came over and
looked down at me. She cooed and stroked my forehead.

"Ah, Steve," she breathed, "So you're going for the treatment. Think of
me, Steve. Don't let it hurt too much."

I smiled thinly and looked up into her eyes. They were soft and warm, a
bit moist. Her lips were full and red and they were parted slightly; the
lower lip glistened slightly in the light. These were lips I'd kissed
and found sweet; a face I'd held between my hands. Her hair fluffed
forward a trifle; threatened to cascade down over her shoulders. No, it
was not at all hard to lie there and go on thinking all the soft-sweet
thoughts I'd once hoped might come true--

She recoiled, her face changing swiftly from its mask of sweet concern
to one of hard calculation. I'd slipped with that last hunk of thinking
and given the whole affair away.

Catherine straightened up and turned to head for the door. She took one
step and caved in like a wet towel.

Over her still-falling body I saw Nurse Farrow calmly reloading the
skin-blast hypo, which she used to fire a second load into the base of
Catherine's neck, just below the shoulder blades.

"That," said Farrow succinctly, "should keep her cold for a week. I just
wish I'd been born with enough guts to commit murder."

"What--?"

"Get dressed," she snapped. "It's cold outside, remember?" I started to
dress as Farrow hurled my clothing out of the closet at me. She went on
in the meantime: "I knew you couldn't keep it entirely concealed from
her. She's too good a telepath. So while you were holding her attention,
I let her have a shot in the neck. One of the rather bad things about
being a Mekstrom is that minor items like the hypo don't register too
well."

I stopped. "Isn't that bad? Seems to me that I've heard that pain is a
necessary factor for the preservation of the--"

"Stop yapping and dress," snapped Farrow. "Pain is useful when it's
needed. It isn't needed in the case of a pin pricking the hide of a
Mekstrom. When a Mekstrom gets in the way of something big enough to
damage him physically, then it hurts him."

"Sort of when a locomotive falls on their head?" I grunted.

"Keep on dressing. We're not out of this jungle yet."

"So have you any plans?"

She nodded soberly. "Yes, Steve. Once you asked me to be your telepath,