The trouble in her eyes changed to a vague recognition, as she bent over him, and her full woman's lips made a wistful baby-smile.
She reached out uncertainly to touch his forehead and his lips, and he thought he saw a momentary shadow of baffled longing on her too-young face, before she found that she had dropped her furry toy.
Her painted lips turned petulant, then, and quick tears rolled down her cheeks, until the deft machine picked up the toy.
She reached for it jealously, and hugged it in her arms, and let the machine wipe away her tears.
She was smiling again, crooning to it, as the humanoid guided her away.
Some other time he was lying in a padded chair, which had a lifted rest for his bandaged leg.
Taut with a sudden bleak loneliness that rose up from that drugged oblivion to seize him, he whispered wistfully to the dark thing beside him:
"Haven't I any friends left who could come and see me?"
Bitterness lifted his voice. "Or have you doped them all?"
"Most of your old associates have found relief in euphoride," the machine said.
"Only a few fortunate exceptions were able to find happiness for themselves, with harmless creative activities.
Dr. Pitcher is one, writing the dramas for which he had no time before we came.
Another is Mr. Ironsmith."
"Will you have them come to see me?"
"They've both been here," murmured the machine.
"But you didn't seem to know them."
"When Frank Ironsmith comes again-"
His words slowed and ceased, because another needle had pricked his arm.
Trying to shape the questions to ask Ironsmith, he forgot - until a time when he lay on that same hard table again, in the same white room.
Intent humanoids were stabbing him with other, more painful needles, and the pain seemed to sweep away that gray forgetfulness.
An illness came with the pain, but gentle-fingered machines rubbed and kneaded him until the shivering and the sweat of it had gone.
They were wheeling him back to his room on that special chair when he found something clutched in his hand: a gay-colored furry toy, shaped like a winged worm.
He tossed it away disgustedly.
"Feeling well, Forester?"
Startled by the cheery voice of Frank Ironsmith, he saw the mathematician waiting at the door of his room, smiling amiably and unattended by any humanoid.
"I suppose so." Nodding uncertainly, he felt of his leg.
The bandages had been removed, and the swelling was gone.
Flexing the muscles, he felt no pain.
"I think I'm all right," he said. "Though I was pretty sick, just now."
"Reaction," murmured Ironsmith. "From the neutralizing serum."
Taking the handles of the rolling chair, he pushed it on into the room and gestured casually for the humanoids to close the sliding door, leaving the two alone together.
"I had them wake you," he said, "because I need your help."
Forester had half risen to test his knee, but he sat back at that, studying Ironsmith.
The mathematician seemed less sophomoric, more mature.
Still candid-seeming, his friendly, sunburned face looked firmer and more forceful.
Still clear and honest, his level eyes were somehow sobered.
Even his clothing was different, for the dilapidated slacks had been replaced with a loose-fitting, tweedy suit which made him seem larger and more self-assured. The gray coat fastened conservatively, Forester noticed, with buttons that a man could undo.
"Is your memory clear again?" Ironsmith inquired.
"Then I want you to help me locate Mark White and his gallery of freaks."
He frowned with a mild concern. "Because we still haven't run them down, even after all these months."
Forester said nothing.
"Little Jane Carter was with you nearly an hour, here at Starmont." Watching him with shrewd gray eyes, Ironsmith absently began filling a pipe with fragrant tobacco.
"She probably told you where they're hiding, and exactly what they're up to.
Even if she wasn't specific, there would be clues enough to work on."
A dark place underground, Forester remembered, and the sound of water running. His lips tightened.
"White can do a lot of harm," Ironsmith insisted softly.
"If I were you, I wouldn't help conceal him."
Watching the pipe, Forester trembled to a bitter longing.
"It's more important than you might imagine." A mounting urgency was tightening Ironsmith's face.
"I'm still not at liberty to tell you much more than you already know, not until you join us, but I had you aroused in the hope that now you're willing to see the humanoids for what they are-"