all," Dal said. "The information is all
here. We just aren't reading it right, somehow. Somewhere in here is a
key to the whole thing, and we just can't see it."

They went back to the data again, going through it step by step. This
was Jack Alvarez's specialty--the technique of diagnosis, the ability to
take all the available information about a race and about its illness
and piece it together into a pattern that made sense. Dal could see that
Jack was now bitterly angry with himself, yet at every turn he seemed to
strike another obstacle--some fact that didn't jibe, a missing fragment
here, a wrong answer there. With Dal and Tiger helping he started back
over the sequence of events, trying to make sense out of them, and came
up squarely against a blank wall.

The things they had done should have worked; instead, they had failed. A
specific antibody used against a specific virus should have destroyed
the virus or slowed its progress, and there seemed to be no rational
explanation for the dreadful response of the uninfected ones who had
been inoculated for protection.

And as the doctors sifted through the data, the Bruckian they had
brought up from the enclosure sat staring off into space, making small
noises with his mouth and moving his arms aimlessly. After a while they
led him back to a bunk, gave him a medicine for sleep and left him
snoring gently. Another hour passed as they pored over their notes, with
Tiger stopping from time to time to mop perspiration from his forehead.
All three were aware of the moving clock hands, marking off the minutes
that the force screen could hold out.

And then Dal Timgar was digging into the pile of papers, searching
frantically for something he could not find. "That first report we got,"
he said hoarsely. "There was something in the very first information we
ever saw on this planet...."

"You mean the Confederation's data? It's in the radio log." Tiger pulled
open the thick log book. "But what...."

"It's there, plain as day, I'm sure of it," Dal said. He read through
the report swiftly, until he came to the last paragraph--a two-line
description of the largest creatures the original Exploration Ship had
found on the planet, described by them as totally unintelligent and only
observed on a few occasions in the course of the exploration. Dal read
it, and his hands were trembling as he handed the report to Jack. "I
knew the answer was there!" he said. "Take a look at that ag