"Tell them to forget the armada," said Jenkins, grinning. "And anyway, they've got things all wrong back at HQ." He brandished a huge roll of parchment, stricken through with the colors of the seven Medical Services of Hospital Earth. "Take a look, my boy--the juiciest Medical Services Contract that's been written in three centuries--" He tossed the Contract in the dry-storage locker with a sigh. "Old Kiz just finished his first lesson, and he's still wondering what went on--" "So am I," said the Green Doctor suspiciously. "It was simple. We cured His Eminence of the Pox." "With what? Incantations?" "Oh, the incantations were for the _doctors_," said Jenkins. "They expected them, obviously, since that was the only level of medicine they could understand. And incidentally, the only level that could possibly get us a Contract. Anyway, I couldn't do very much else, under the circumstances, except for a little supportive therapy. Without a Bio-survey we were hamstrung. But whatever the Pox is, it obviously involves fever, starvation and dehydration. I knew that His Eminence could assimilate carbohydrates, and I took a long gamble that an antipyretic wouldn't hurt him too much--" Wally Stone's jaw sagged. "So you treated him with sugar-water and aspirin," he said weakly. "And on that you risked our necks." "Not quite," said the Red Doctor. "You're forgetting that I had one other prescription to use--the oldest, most trustworthy healer-of-all-ills known to medicine, just as potent now as it was a thousand years ago. Without it, Hospital Earth might just as well pack up her little black bag and go home." He smiled into the mirror as he adjusted the scarlet band of the Red Service across his shoulders. "We call it Tincture of Time," he said. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of RX, by Alan E. Nourse