el turned off--it's like walking on two balls
of fluff. Thanks for getting me out of that awful hospital and back
to work."

Brion was suddenly sorry for having driven her from her sick bed.

"Don't be sorry!" Lea said, apparently reading his mind, but really
seeing only his sudden ashamed expression. "I'm feeling no pain.
Honestly. I feel a little light-headed and foggy at times, nothing
more. And this is the job I came here to do. In fact ... well, it's
almost impossible to tell you just how fascinating it all is! It was
almost worth getting baked and parboiled for."

She swung back to the microscope, centering the specimen with a turn
of the stage adjustment screw. "Poor Ihjel was right when he said
this planet was exobiologically fascinating. This is a gastropod,
a lot like _Odostomia_, but it has parasitical morphological changes
so profound that--"

"There's something else I remember," Brion said, interrupting her
enthusiastic lecture, only half of which he could understand.
"Didn't Ihjel also hope that you would give some study to the
natives as well as their environment? The problem is with the
Disans--not with the local wild life."

"But I _am_ studying them," Lea insisted. "The Disans have attained
an incredibly advanced form of commensalism. Their lives are so
intimately connected and integrated with the other life forms that
they must be studied in relation to their environment. I doubt if
they show as many external physical changes as little eating-foot
_Odostomia_ on the slide here, but there will surely be a number of
psychological changes and adjustments that will crop up. One of
these might be the explanation of their urge for planetary
suicide."

"That may be true--but I don't think so," Brion said. "I went on
a little expedition this morning and found something that has more
immediate relevancy."

For the first time Lea became aware of his slightly battered
condition. Her drug-grooved mind could only follow a single idea at
a time and had over-looked the significance of the bandage and dirt.

"I've been visiting," Brion said, forestalling the question on her
lips. "The magter are the ones who are responsible for causing the
trouble, and I had to see them up close before I could make any
decisions. It wasn't a very pleasant thing, but I found out what
I wanted to know. They are different in every way from the normal
Disans. I've compared them. I've talked to Ulv--the native who saved
us in