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It had been a long layover for the Starholm's crew, hunting heavy elements for fuel--eight months, on an idyllic green paradise of a planet; a soft, windy, whispering world, inhabited only by trees and winds. But in the end it presented its own unique problem.
Specifically, it presented Captain Merrihew with the problem of Robin, male, father unknown, who had been born the day before, and a month prematurely, to Dr. Helen Murray.
Merrihew found her lying abed in the laboratory shelter, pale and calm, with the child beside her.
The little shelter, constructed roughly of green planks, looked out on the clearing which the Starholm had used as a base of operations during the layover; a beautiful place at the bottom of a wide valley, in the curve of a broad, deep-flowing river. The crew, tired of being shipbound, had built half a dozen such huts and shacks in these eight months.
Merrihew glared down at Helen. He snorted, "This is a fine situation. You, of all the people in the whole damned crew--the ship's doctor! It's--it's--" Inarticulate with rage, he fell back on a ridiculously inadequate phrase. "It's--criminal carelessness!"
"I know." Helen Murray, too young and far too lovely for a ship's officer on a ten-year cruise, still looked weak and white, and her voice was a gentle shadow of its crisp self. "I'm afraid four years in space made me careless."
Merrihew, brooded, looking down at her. Something about ship-gravity conditions, while not affecting potency, made conception impossible; no child had ever been conceived in space and none ever would.
On planet layovers, the effect wore off very slowly; only after three months aground hadDr. Murray started routine administration of anticeptin to the twenty-two women of the crew, herself included. At that time she had been still unaware that she herself was already carrying a child.
Outside, the leafy forest whispered and rustled, and Merrihew knew Helen had forgotten his existence again. The day-old child was tucked up in one of her rolled coveralls at her side. To Merrihew, he looked like a skinned monkey, but Helen's eyes smoldered as her hands moved gently over the tiny round head.
