I was ready to give it to him right off the top of the regs about the relationship between ship's master and agents-on-assignment and the responsibilities of command, but the leg chose that moment to fail. Until then, I hadn't really been worried. I fell forward against the pitch of the slope, caught myself with my arms, and rolled over on my back. I hit my left thigh with my fist and felt absolutely nothing. Massage didn't help. I heard Moya panting down the brow of the hill. "Keep away!" I shouted. "Get back to the ship!" Moya bent over me; he had opened the hood of the bug suit, and his face was grave. "What's the trouble, Callum?" "Can't you take orders?" He shook his head. I pointed to the leg. He looked swiftly at the broken skin. "How does it feel?" "That's the trouble; it doesn't." He grabbed my arm, put it over his shoulder, and got me on my feet. We made good time, considering. "Too bad you're such a shrimp," I said. "I can take you on any time." Shuttler IV was closest, parked on a shelf fifty yards below the top of the hill, but Moya was heading to miss it. "I programmed for auto, just in case, and the generators are up to power. We waste time to save time. That way I can give you some help on the ascent." The generator part was fine; the rest wasn't. It started to rain again, just before we reached 250's shuttler. I put my face up to it. Moya got me through the lock and onto an acceleration couch. Then he headed for the panel. I was beginning to feel a desperate weakness, but my head was still clear. "Wait a minute," I said. "What's your gee tolerance?" "High, but--" "So strap me and raise this couch to vertical. Then override the auto and take us up fast." He blinked. "Listen," I said. "This feels like a neuro-toxin. Remember snake-bite aid? Well, the numbness is up to my groin now. No place for a tourniquet. And nothing here for freezing." It was strange going up. I blacked out almost immediately, but Moya took it flat and apparently stayed alert all the way. "Space!" I managed to gasp finally. "Any more of that sort of thing and I'd have ended up stupid." Then there was utter confusion. * * * * * I came to full awareness under the luminescence of the infirmary's overhead. I was naked on the padding of the table. I could see a respirator off to my right, and a suction octopus near it. The medic was just stowing an auto-heart. But for a different tingling in my leg and an all-is-lost sensation south of my diaphragm, I felt reasonably sound. The medic approached. I hadn't gotten a very good impression of the lean, blond youngster on the trip out, but now he seemed Hippocrates, Luke, Lister, Salk, O'Grady, and Yakamura all rolled into one. He weakened it by asking the classic redundancy. "How do you feel?" I elbowed up for a look at the leg. There was a series of little welts the length of it, masked by forceheal.