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la Santoya, the first Terran doctor he had ever met, skidded into the galley from a different doorway, a silver-sided case in her hand. She scrambled to the fallen girl—woman, Li’eth corrected himself—and quickly flicked open the latches. A babble of words spat from her mouth, words he didn’t understand.
    Jackie did; it was Spanish. She quickly translated it into V’Dan, knowing that the doctor was too focused on her patient, checking pulse, eyelids, testing the puffiness swelling her face. “What did she eat? Does anyone know if she ate or drank anything?”
    “The corporal said she was hungry, sir,” one of the men kneeling by the patient responded. Li’eth realized both were in very similar brown or mottled brown-and-beige uniforms, as were the other six in the room. “She tried one of the fruits. I tried it, too, and it tasted good, but kinda hot and peppery—that red one, like a red pear but with the three lobes at the bottom?”
    Jackie eyed the bowl he pointed to, and shook her head. “That’s a V’Dan fruit. I’ve seen just about every kind there is on Earth, and that’s not one of ours.”
    The soldier started to speak, then widened his eyes . . . or tried to. His own face was starting to swell. Li’eth felt his hands starting to heat up. (
Jackie, I think my holy—my
biokinesis
is activating. It does that when it’s needed!
)
    She looked quickly between him, the soldier, and grabbed his hands, dragging him over to the soldier. Li’eth moved willingly. With her palms on top of his, she pressed his hands tothe man’s face (
Concentrate . . . breathe deep . . . imagine the swelling and the airway constriction reducing . . . imagine his blood pressure holding steady instead of dropping . . . there! I can feel it working . . . Thank goodness biokinesis
doesn’t
require a medical degree.
)
    Maria looked up from where she had injected epinephrine into the corporal’s outer thigh at the midpoint. Her hand continued rubbing the muscles to distribute the drug, but her gaze fell on the pair of psis.
“What are you two doing?”
    “He ate the fruit, too,”
Jackie replied in Spanish, lifting her chin. She could feel a bit of heat in her own fingers.
“Li’eth’s biokinesis triggered. We’re trying to clear the anaphylactic shock from their systems.”
    “Mother of God! I thought the booster shoots we developed would have
stopped
this. Jackie . . . we only have twenty days’ worth of food for two hundred people,”
the doctor stressed. She put the epi injector aside and pulled out a breather mask with a small ampoule of compressed oxygen. Fitting it together, she placed it over the wheezing woman’s mouth and nose, and pressed the button, forcing oxygen into her lungs.
“Stupid primitive location—I don’t even know what sort of medical facilities these people have. They insisted on showing me to a
cabin
, first!”
    “What is going on in here?” a silver-suited figure demanded. This voice was female, not male, but the V’Dan words were flavored with a touch of annoyance. “This isn’t a play-place! Get off the floor!”
    Li’eth couldn’t move since his hands still felt hot; he had to stay crouched and continue to stave off whatever weird infection the other man had. But Jackie could. In quick mental consultation—almost faster than thought—she stood and faced the speaker.
    “We are experiencing a medical emergency,” she stated clearly in V’Dan. After several months of speaking it, with Li’eth’s help in correcting her pronunciation, she knew she would be understood. “Please clear the area of all nonessential personnel. This includes you. If you wish to be useful, assist in guiding all the Terrans not in this chamber back to the hangar bay and
politely
ask them to wait for further instructions.”
    For a moment, the quarantine-suited figure lingered, as ifuncertain whether or not to argue, then the V’Dan woman left. Li’eth felt his hands fall