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Page 434
Amalie Hebert asked, "How do you feel, Avery, all right? You spent a lot of time right over that missile. Did the Waymer experimental treatment work properly?"
"I had a relatively easy time," Ave said. "It was Morgan over there who really went through the mill with the quacks at Bethesda. It wasn't until I got home and read up on plutonium that I really got scared. You? Any ill effects yet?"
"No, nor Evan either. But, we'll not know until it happens, will we? I'd like to tell my children, if I ever am able to have any, about it." Her voice was wistful. "I wouldn't have missed the adventure for the world, but I am afraid we will all pay a price, sooner or later."
Morgan and Vincent Kellner walked out onto the small balcony overlooking the river. The late May sun was hot in a sky the color of cornflowers. Morgan relished warmth and light these days, and sought it out whenever he could. It blocked out remembrance of that bone-chilling cold, a cold about which he still dreamed.
"How do you feel, John," Kellner asked, putting his arm over Morgan's shoulders. "I've thought about you so often, wondering. I've felt responsible for the state of your health, since I sent you up there."
Morgan laughed. "Not to worry, Vincent." To be truthful, he was, in fact, feeling far better than he had any right to feel. For one thing, he wasn't still at Bethesda, being poked, prodded, tested, and questioned by every doctor in the place. At least the ones who were stationed at the hospital had pretty much run the course. It was the visitors who were the real bane. Doctors from countries he'd never even heard of marched through at all hours of the day and night, marveling that he was still alive. They discussed his condition in loud voices and bald terms, as if he were not there. Morgan had felt more like a training dummy for medical students than the national hero the media had pronounced him to be.
Doris Waymer had been furious with him for removing a

 
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