Code Three | Page 5

troopers. Across the passageway was a tiny latrine and shower. Clay tossed his helmet on
the lower bunk as he went down the passageway. At the bulkhead to the rear, he pressed
a wall panel and a thick, insulated door slid back to admit him to the engine compartment.
The service crews had shut down the big power plants and turned off the air exchangers
and already the heat from the massive engines made the compartment uncomfortably
warm.
He hurried through into a small machine shop. In an emergency, the troopers could turn
out small parts for disabled vehicles or for other uses. It also stocked a good supply of the
most common failure parts. Racked against the ceiling were banks of cutting torches, a
grim reminder that death or injury still rode the thruways with increasing frequency.
In the tank storage space between the ceiling and top of the hull were the chemical
fire-fighting liquids and foam that could be applied by nozzles, hoses and towers now
telescoped into recesses in the hull. Along both sides and beneath the galley, bunks,
engine and machine-shop compartments between the walls, deck and hull, were Beulah's
fuel storage tanks.
The last after compartment was a complete dispensary, one that would have made the
emergency room or even the light surgery rooms of earlier-day hospitals proud.
Clay tapped on the door and went through. Medical-Surgical Officer Kelly Lightfoot was
sitting on the deck, stowing sterile bandage packs into a lower locker. She looked up at
Clay and smiled. "Well, well, you DID manage to tear yourself away from your adoring
bevies," she said. She flicked back a wisp of golden-red hair from her forehead and stood
up. The patrol-blue uniform coverall with its belted waist didn't do much to hide a lovely,
properly curved figure. She walked over to the tall Canadian trooper and reached up and

grabbed his ear. She pulled his head down, examined one side critically and then quickly
snatched at his other ear and repeated the scrutiny. She let go of his ear and stepped back.
"Damned if you didn't get all the lipstick marks off, too."
Clay flushed. "Cut it out, Kelly," he said. "Sometimes you act just like my mother."
The olive-complexioned redhead grinned at him and turned back to her stack of boxes on
the deck. She bent over and lifted one of the boxes to the operating table. Clay eyed her
trim figure. "You might act like ma sometimes," he said, "but you sure don't look like
her."
It was the Irish-Cherokee Indian girl's turn to flush. She became very busy with the
contents of the box. "Where's Ben?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Making outside check. You about finished in here?"
Kelly turned and slowly scanned the confines of the dispensary. With the exception of the
boxes on the table and floor, everything was behind secured locker doors. In one corner,
the compact diagnostician--capable of analyzing many known human bodily ailments and
every possible violent injury to the body--was locked in its riding clamps. Surgical trays
and instrument racks were all hidden behind locker doors along with medical and surgical
supplies. On either side of the emergency ramp door at the stern of the vehicle, three
collapsible autolitters hung from clamps. Six hospital bunks in two tiers of three each,
lined another wall. On patrol, Kelly utilized one of the hospital bunks for her own use
except when they might all be occupied with accident or other kind of patients. And this
would never be for more than a short period, just long enough to transfer them to a
regular ambulance or hospital vehicle. Her meager supply of personal items needed for
the ten-day patrol were stowed in a small locker and she shared the latrine with the male
members of the team.
Kelly completed her scan, glanced down at the checklist in her hand. "I'll have these
boxes stowed in five minutes. Everything else is secure." She raised her hand to her
forehead in mock salute. "Medical-Surgical Officer Lightfoot reports dispensary ready
for patrol, sir."
Clay smiled and made a checkmark on his clipboard. "How was the seminar, Kelly?" he
asked.
Kelly hiked herself onto the edge of the operating table. "Wonderful, Clay, just
wonderful. I never saw so many good-looking, young, rich and eligible doctors together
in one place in all my life."
She sighed and smiled vacantly into space.
Clay snorted. "I thought you were supposed to be learning something new about tissue
regeneration," he said.
"Generation, regeneration, who cares," Kelly grinned.

Clay started to say something, got flustered and wheeled around to leave--and bounded
right off Ben Martin's chest. Ferguson mumbled something and pushed past the older
officer.
Ben looked after him and then turned back to Car 56's combination doctor, surgeon