and provide food and shelter for
both. Finally, after thousands of years of searching, they had found
this planet with its dull-minded, fruit-gathering inhabitants. These
creatures had seemed perfect as hosts, and the virus-creatures had
thought their long search for a perfect partner was finally at an end.

It was not until they had expended the last dregs of their energy in
anchoring themselves into the cells and tissues of their new hosts that
they discovered to their horror that the host-creatures could not
tolerate them. Unlike their original hosts, the bodies of these
creatures began developing deadly antibodies that attacked the virus
invaders. In their desperate attempts to hold on and fight back, the
virus-creatures had destroyed vital centers in the new hosts, and one by
one they had begun to die. There was not enough energy left for the
virus-creatures to detach themselves and move on; without some way to
stem the onslaught of the antibodies, they were doomed to total
destruction.

"We were afraid to tell you doctors the truth," the spokesman said. "As
we wandered and searched we discovered that creatures like ourselves
were extreme rarities in the universe, that most creatures similar to us
were mindless, unintelligent parasites that struck down their hosts and
destroyed them. Wherever we went, life-forms of your kind regarded us as
disease-bearers, and their doctors taught them ways to destroy us. We
had hoped that from you we might find a way to save ourselves--then you
unleashed on us the one weapon we could not fight."

"But not maliciously," Dal said. "Only because we did not understand.
And now that we do, there may be a way to help. A difficult way, but at
least a way. The antibodies themselves can be neutralized, but it may
take our biochemists and virologists and all their equipment months or
even years to develop and synthesize the proper antidote."

The spokesman looked at Dal, and turned away with a hopeless gesture.
"Then it is too late, after all," he said. "We are dying too fast. Even
those of us who have not been affected so far are beginning to feel the
early symptoms of the antibody attack." He smiled sadly and reached out
to stroke the small pink creature on Dal's arm. "Your people too have a
partner, I see. We envy you."

Dal felt a movement on his arm and looked down at Fuzzy. He had always
taken his little friend for granted, but now he thought of the feeling
of emptiness and loss