seconds. Then he pried open an eyelid and looked closely at an eye.
"What happened to him?" he asked, without looking up.

"Got hit with a beam from a stun gun," said Jeffers.

"How did he fall? Did he hit his head?"

"I don't know--maybe." He looked at Ensign Vaneski. "Did he, Mister
Vaneski? He was right on top of you; I was across the room."

Vaneski swallowed. "I don't know. He--he just sort of--well, he _fell_."

"You didn't catch him?" asked the chief. He was a physician on a case
now and had no time for sirring his superiors.

"No. No. I jumped away from him."

"Why? What's the trouble?" Jeffers asked.

"He's dead," said the Chief Physician's Mate.

17

Leda Crannon was standing outside the cubicle that had been built for
Snookums. Her back and the palms of her hands were pressed against the
door. Her head was bowed, and her red hair, shining like a hellish flame
in the light of the glow panels, fell around her shoulders and cheeks,
almost covering her face.

"Leda," said Mike the Angel gently.

She looked up. There were tears in her blue eyes.

"Mike! Oh, Mike!" She ran toward him, put her arms around him, and tried
to bury her face in Mike's chest.

"What's the matter, honey? What's happened?" He was certain she couldn't
have heard about Mellon's death yet. He held her in his arms, carefully,
tenderly, not passionately.

"He's crazy, Mike. He's completely crazy." Her voice had suddenly lost
everything that gave it color. It was only dead and choked.

Mike the Angel knew it was an emotional reaction. As a psychologist, she
would never have used the word "crazy." But as a woman ... as a human
being....

"Fitz is still in there talking to him, but he's--he's--" Her voice
choked off again into sobs.

Mike waited patiently, holding her, caressing her hair.

"Eight years," she said after a minute or so. "Eight years I spent. And
now he's gone. He's broken."

"How do you know?" Mike asked.

She lifted her head and looked at him. "Mike--did he really hit you? Did
he refuse to stop when you ordered him to? What _really_ happened?"

Mike told her what had happened in the darkened companionway just
outside his room.

When he finished, she began sobbing again. "He's lying, Mike," she said.
"_Lying!_"

Mike nodded silently and slowly. Leda Crannon had spent all of her adult
life tending the hurts and bruises and aches of Snookums the Child. She
had educated him, cared for him, taken