Cruise Doctor. Kerry Mitchell
the interview. Ten years ago the identification of size and speed and course of ships had been a necessary prerequisite for him to pilot a rocket-firing Sabre jet, and as he looked at the lines of Pacific Queen Grady knew that she would be fast, and about fifteen thousand tons. White and gleaming in the warm June afternoon, she was not a huge ocean liner, just the right comfortable size for a privileged couple of hundred.
“Nice,” he murmured aloud, “very nice.” Still looking at the ship, he picked up his bags and stepped forward straight into a screech of brakes.
“Tired of it all, Mac?” a saw-edged voice inquired.
It was so close that as Grady swung round one of his suitcases struck the car’s fender. And the voice further inquired:
“Taking it out on the car? Better you should take out more insurance, Mac.”
The cynical jeer of the voice brought Grady out of his shock at his close escape. The knowledge that he was to blame made him feel foolish, and that, since he was a normal young man, made him feel angry. Still clutching his bags he stepped toward the driver’s seat.
It was then he saw several things. The vehicle which might have ended his cruise before it had begun was not a cab, but a Cadillac. The voice belonged to a smartly dark-uniformed driver. He was jumping from the car, but he was ignoring his near-victim, concentrating instead on opening the rear door of the big car.
From the car came a shapely pair of legs, then the owner followed her smooth-clad extremities. And all that Ben Grady could think of at that moment of revelation was that the face fitted perfectly those beautiful legs. As the girl smoothed her skirt and looked at him, he saw that she was young, not yet twenty, with golden hair and one of the most freshly lovely faces he had been privileged to stare at.
She seemed used to that characteristic reaction from male scanners. She said, her smooth line of eyebrows drawn together a little in concern:
“You’re not hurt?”
There should have been a rain of silver music from tinkling bells along that eminently practical pier. Grady was disappointed. The voice was pleasant, but patently it issued from a normally human larynx. He recovered himself.
“Yes. Yes, thanks, I’m quite okay. Just a near-miss.”
“Power brakes,” muttered the chauffeur, as his hand went in to help a second passenger alight.
“Thank heavens for that,” the girl was saying, “I thought we had you on the hood for a mascot.”
Grady smiled automatically. His eyes were on the other passenger. He knew even before she came into full view what she would be—loveliness like this, and so young, would probably be traveling accompanied. The woman stepped on to the pier; comfortably plump, expensively dressed, middle-aged, yet something in the form of her face that suggested an earlier and familiar beauty.
She came up to the girl while the chauffeur busied himself with luggage in the trunk. She examined Ben Grady in an automatic reflex reaction: a shepherd studying a possible wolf. She saw the cut of his linen suit and the assured intelligence in his rugged good looks; the clean athleticness of his big frame.
“You are a passenger, too?” she asked.
“No.” Grady smiled. “I’m the ship’s doc . . . surgeon.”
The corners of the girl’s eyes crinkled and her nose twitched at him.
“How nice. My name is Beth Goodrich. This is my aunt, Mrs. Kenyon. Perhaps we’ll see something of you during the cruise?”
“Not professionally, I hope,” Mrs. Kenyon put in before he could answer, “Doctor . . . ?”
“Grady. Ben Grady.”
This was a good start.
“Glad to meet you, Doctor,” Mrs. Kenyon said dryly. “I certainly didn’t expect to run into the ship’s surgeon like this. Well, come on now, honey. We’d better get on board and I’m sure the doctor has things to do. Charles, the small luggage in the cabin first.”
“Yes, madam,” the chauffeur answered, in a tone different from his greeting of Grady. They moved off toward the gangway. Behind Charles and his shining leather luggage Grady carried his own weathered suitcases.
At the head of the gangway an officer in immaculate white met the ladies and ushered them along the deck. A seaman met Grady.
“Passenger, sir?” he asked, and his eyes on the suitcases belied the need of the question. But his eyes snapped up to a hard, browned, understanding face when Grady said coolly:
“No, ship’s surgeon. My cabin, please.”
There was a whip of ex-officer and operating-room authority in that tone. The seaman recognized it.
“Yes, sir. Will you follow me?”
The seaman took his luggage and led Grady to his cabin. It was small but comfortable. To a man used to berthing in a room behind the surgery of a country practice this berth sailed close to luxury. There was a single bunk, a wash-basin, a separate shower recess and toilet, a desk and a daybed opposite the bunk. And all, from the carpet on the deck to the curtains at the porthole and the covers on the daybed cushions, was spotlessly clean.
Plushness for passengers, self-respecting comfort for officers, Grady judged, a little cynically. What he did now know was that the shipping company manager had been as interested in the tone of his voice and the cut of his clothes as he had been in his medical qualifications. Pacific Queen was a class ship. She must not be let down by her officers.
He got out his uniforms and laid one of them across the bunk. The drill was immaculately white, the buttons gleamed golden. For a moment he felt a little foolish. He was a surgeon, not a ship’s officer. He knew nothing of seamanship or navigation or cargo stowage. His specialty was in a different province, his uniform a sterile gown.
But he was a ship’s officer. A member of the staff, the crew. Everything these shorebound passengers had read or learned about a ship and the sea tended to focus their minds on one dominant equation—discipline. From the captain down through the first officer and the third engineer and the quartermaster—discipline. Uniformed and recognizable. A patient did not expect a surgeon to enter the operating room in flannels and open shirt. He expected the uniform of gown and mask and cap. The passengers would be the same here, looking for white drill and gold buttons. And anyway, Grady thought with a twitch of his mouth, it looked a damned fine uniform.
He showered quickly and put on the uniform. And now there was no vestige left of that feeling of foolishness. It was an honorable dress he was in; he wore now the marks of one who served the austere servitude of the sea, a profession older, and as noble, as his own.
But there was something else. As he put on the peaked cap and studied himself in the mirror above the basin, the years abruptly telescoped backward, back into the times in the mess in Pusan, and Pyong-Yang. It was different, but it was a uniform, one which men had been proud to wear in that war, and the war before it. It was pleasant to be officially dressed again.
“Patriotic, yet,” he muttered in deprecation of his thoughts, and went out in search of the captain’s cabin.
Fifteen thouand tons is a lot of ship, and he might have been still searching when it reached Hawaii if the seaman at the gangway had not seen and recognized his perplexed frown as Grady stared along the vast reach of deck. Remembering that earlier tone, the seaman asked politely:
“Can I help you, sir?”
“You certainly can,” Grady answered thankfully, “where’s the captain’s cabin? He’s here? I mean on board?”
“Yes, sir. This way.”
They moved off. It was a sweet berth, and the seaman could see no sound reason why he should not be on the right side of an officer, no matter how green and insignificant. As they went he offered sea-marks.
“This is the main deck, sir. Just