Chapter 37 Chapter Twenty Eight

The doctor looked very happy. "I've never seen a cold," he explained. "No one in Trantor gets a cold." "Perhaps so," said Dors in a nonchalant tone. "I'm glad you had the opportunity to experience this novel case. But does that mean you don't know how to heal Dr. Seldon?" The bald old doctor with two small gray beards suddenly burst into anger. "Of course I do. Colds are so common in the outer world that they are almost daily. And I've had a good number of them." Treatments include injections of antiviral serum and the use of microwave wraps.

"That should work," said the doctor. "In hospitals in the outer world, they use more elaborate equipment, but on Trantor, we won't have that. It's just a mild treatment, I'm sure it will take effect." As Seldon gradually recovered without showing any aftereffects, Dors had thought that perhaps he had survived because he was an alien.Darkness, coldness, and even ice and snow are not completely unfamiliar things to him. Under similar circumstances, a Trantorian might die, not from physical trauma but from psychological shock. She couldn't be sure of that, though, because she wasn't a Trantorian herself.

Brushing those thoughts away, she pulled up a chair, sat down beside Seldon's bed, and began to wait patiently.