Black Doctor glared at Dal Timgar. "Well, I dare say the Red Doctors
will have their chance at me, all in good time. But first there are
certain things which must be taken care of." He looked up at the
attendant. "You're quite certain that the ship has been decontaminated?"

The attendant nodded. "Yes, sir."

"And the crewmen?"

"It's safe to talk to them, sir, as long as you avoid physical contact."

The Black Doctor grunted and wheezed and settled himself down in a seat.
"All right now, gentlemen," he said to the three, "let's have your story
of this affair in the Brucker system, right from the start."

"But we sent in a full report," Tiger said.

"I'm aware of that, you idiot. I have waded through your report, all
thirty-five pages of it, and I only wish you hadn't been so
long-winded. Now I want to hear what happened directly from you. Well?"

The three doctors looked at each other. Then Jack began the story,
starting with the first hesitant "greeting" that had come through to
them. He told everything that had happened without embellishments: their
first analysis of the nature of the problem, the biochemical and medical
survey that they ran on the afflicted people, his own failure to make
the diagnosis, the incident of Fuzzy's sudden affliction, and the
strange solution that had finally come from it. As he talked the Black
Doctor sat back with his eyes half closed, his face blank, listening and
nodding from time to time as the story proceeded.

And Jack was carefully honest and fair in his account. "We were all of
us lost, until Dal Timgar saw the significance of what had happened to
Fuzzy," he said. "His idea of putting the creature through the filter
gave us our first specimen of the isolated virus, and showed us how to
obtain the antibody. Then after we saw what happened with our initial
series of injections, we were really at sea, and by then we couldn't
reach a hospital ship for help of any kind." He went on to relate Dal's
idea that the virus itself might be the intelligent creature, and
recounted the things that happened after Dal went down to talk to the
spokesman again with Fuzzy on his shoulder.

Through it all the Black Doctor listened sourly, glancing occasionally
at Dal and saying nothing. "So is that all?" he said when Jack had
finished.

"Not quite," Jack said. "I want it to be on the record that it was my
failure in diagnosis that got us into trouble. I don't want any
misunderstanding abou