ast by the planetary president, terror of
paras was too well-established to be cured by an official statement.

The men who'd entered the building stumbled out and stammered of what
they'd smelled inside the building. Their companions drew back,
frightened by even so indirect a contact with supposed contagion. They
stayed outside, while a man who hadn't entered used the police-car
communicator to report to the headquarters of the planetary police.

The attempt to enter the ship was known inside, of course. But Calhoun
paid no attention. He emptied the pockets of the garments he'd worn
into the city. There were the usual trivia a man carries with him. But
there was also a blaster--set for lower-power bolts--and a small
thick-glass phial of a singular grayish fluid, and a plastic
container.

He was changing to other clothing when he heard the muttering report,
picked up by a ship-receiver tuned to planetary police wave length. It
reported affrightedly that the Med Ship could not be entered, and the
grid's control building was dark and empty and sprayed as if to
destroy contagion. The operator was gone.

Another voice snapped orders in reply. The highest authority had given
instructions that the Med Ship man now somewhere in the capital city
must be captured, and his escape from the planet must be prevented at
all costs. So if the ship itself could not be entered and disabled,
get the grid working and throw it away. Throw it out to space! Whether
there was contagion in the control building or not, the ship must be
made unusable to the Med Ship man!

"They think well of me," said Calhoun. "I hope I'm as dangerous as Dr.
Lett now believes." Then he said crisply: "You say you're a para. I
want the symptoms: how you feel and where. Then I want to know your
last contact with scavengers."

* * * * *

The intentions of the police outside could be ignored. It wouldn't
matter if the Med Ship were heaved out to space and abandoned. He was
in it. But it couldn't happen. The grid operator had brought away
certain essential small parts of the grid control system. Of course
the ship could be blown up. But he'd have warning of that. He was safe
except for one thing. He'd been exposed to whatever it was that made a
man a para. The condition would develop. But he did have a thick-glass
container of grayish fluid, and he had a plastic biological-specimen
container. One came from Dr. Lett's safest pocke