Free Seed of Stars by Dan Morgan, John Kippax Page B

we have to stick to the regulations." He ran his hand along her left arm and felt the embedded capsule, frowned for a moment, then took his hand away. "These things don't very often fail, maybe you've just been unfortunate. But you've let it go for nearly four months. You must have known. Why didn't you come to me?"
    Still she lay silent, gazing upwards, unseeing as the webs of colored light changed and moved, and her tears flowed.
    "You must see, Mia, that there's only one thing we can do. It doesn't hurt, you know. A matter of less than half an hour, then a few days rest, and after that light duties for a day or two. YouH be all right"
    This time she answered him. "I'm all right now," she said quietly, her seal-brown eyes looking up into his.
    Hell! Maseba's bedside manner almost slipped as he realized fully, for the first time, just what he was dealing with here. This was something more than just a simple failure of a contracapsule—it was also something more than a matter of a crewwoman evading sick report.
    "You want this baby?" he said.
    She nodded. Her tears had ceased now, and she looked up at him with a pleading intensity.
    "You know who the father is?"
    Brief anger flared in her eyes. "Of course!"
    "And you want the child because it's his?"
    "Because I love him," she said.
    "Love! Hell and damn, girl! Not here, not on a Corps ship—on my ship. Just look at the position sensibly. What kind of a mess would we be in, if all the female crew members went and got themselves pregnant, and concealed—" Maseba stopped as he had a sudden flash. What if something of that nature really had happened, a massive failure of an entire batch of contracapsules, due perhaps to the use of a quantity of incorrectly synthesized estrogen? Could be that this girl was the first of fifty, maybe sixty such cases, each—
    "Is it so strange that two people in love should wish to make a baby together?" she asked, breaking in on his waking nightmare.
    Despite the possible implications of the situation, looking down into her small doll face, George Maseba found himself smiling sympathetically. "Mia, my dear, don't tell me that you've never heard the old Corps line about love?"
    She frowned. "About love?"
    "Yes—love," he said, gently. "I've heard it attributed to Admiral Carter, Ivan Kavanin, even President Oharo, but I've a feeling that the first person who said it was just an ordinary, faceless, nameless medical officer, like me, in just this kind of situation." He quoted: " 'On board the ships of the Space Corps sex is permitted, but love is a bloody nuisance.'"
    Her round features were solemn as she considered the words. "Yes, I can see that might very well be so," she said. A brief shudder passed through her small body.
    "There will be other chances for you and your man," Maseba said. "I'm not going to ask you who he is. I don't want to know. But talk to him, tell him that this is the way it has to be. He'll help you more than I can. And when we get back to Earth at the end of this tour—then if you both feel the same way, come to me again, and I'll do what I can to help you both sign out of the Corps."
    "Other chances . . ." she echoed his words quietly.
    For a moment his black face and her golden one looked at each other and understood all that lay between them, understood the other's irrevocable point of view.
    "May I go now, sir?" she asked.
    He nodded. "Yes—I'll make the necessary arrangements. YouH be fitted in with the other things sickbay has to do, and we'll ... do the job some time very soon. Now go back to your friends in your four-bunk, and carry on with your normal duties. And—here, take these." He held up a small box. "They're 'A' sedatives, mildest of the mild. They can't hurt you, and they may make you feel a little better. .. ." Still with some irrational hope that he might win from her a smile, or a cheerful word, he continued. "IH tell you what—I'll see if we can't arrange some planet leave for you when we land on