ign of order in the chaos.

"Try to get some sleep," Dal urged him. "A couple of hours will freshen
you up a hundred per cent."

"I can't, I've already tried it," Jack said.

"Go ahead. Tiger and I can keep working on these things for a while."

"No, no, it's not that," Jack said. "Without a diagnosis, we can't do a
thing. Until we have that, our hands are tied, and we aren't even
getting close to it. We don't even know whether this is a bacteria, or a
virus, or what. Maybe the Bruckians are right. Maybe it's a curse."

"I don't think the Black Service of Pathology would buy that for a
diagnosis," Tiger said sourly.

"The Black Service would choke on it--but what other answer do we have?
You two have been doing all you can, but diagnosis is _my_ job. I'm
supposed to be good at it, but the more we dig into this, the farther
away we seem to get."

"Do you want to call for help?" Tiger said.

Jack shook his head helplessly. "I'm beginning to think we should have
called for help a long time ago," he said. "We're into this over our
heads now and we're still going down. At the rate those people are dying
down there, we don't have time to call for help now." He stared at the
piles of notes on the desk and his face was very white. "I don't know, I
just don't know," he said. "The diagnosis on this thing should have been
duck soup. I thought it was going to be a real feather in my cap, just
walking in and nailing it down in a few hours. Well, I'm whipped. I
don't know what to do. If either of you can think of an answer, it's all
yours, and I'll admit it to Black Doctor Tanner himself."

* * * * *

It was bitter medicine for Blue Doctor Jack Alvarez to swallow, but that
fact gave no pleasure to Dal or Tiger now. They were as baffled as Jack
was, and would have welcomed help from anyone who could offer it.

And, ironically, the first glimpse of the truth came from the direction
they least expected.

From the very beginning Fuzzy had been watching the proceedings from his
perch on the swinging platform in the control room. If he sensed that
Dal Timgar was ignoring him and leaving him to his own devices much of
the time, he showed no sign of resentment. The tiny creature seemed to
realize that something important was consuming his master's energy and
attention, and contented himself with an affectionate pat now and then
as Dal went through the control room. Everyone assumed without much
th