There was doubling up of duties.  Tau could no longer share with Mura the care of the hydro garden so Van Rycke took over.  While Dane found himself in charge of the galley and, while he did not have Mura’s deft hand at disguising the monotonous concentrates to the point they resembled fresh food, after a day or two he began to experiment cautiously and produced a stew which brought some short words of appreciation from Captain Jellico.

They all breathed a sigh of relief when, after three days, no more signs of the mysterious illness showed on new members of the crew.  It became routine to parade before Tau stripped to the waist each morning for the inspection of the danger points, and the Medic’s vigilance did not relax.

In the meantime neither Mura nor Kosti appeared to suffer.  Once the initial stages of headaches and blackouts were passed, the patients lapsed into a semi-conscious state as if they were under sedation of some type.  They would eat, if the food was placed in their mouths, but they did not seem to know what was going on about them, nor did they answer when spoken to.

Tau, between visits to them, worked feverishly in his tiny lab, analyzing blood samples, reading the records of obscure diseases, trying to find the reason for their attacks.  But as yet his discoveries were exactly nothing.  He had come out of his quarters and sat in limp exhaustion at the mess table while Dane placed before him a mug of stimulating caf-hag.

“I don’t get it!” The Medic addressed the table top rather than the amateur cook.  “It’s a poison of some kind.  Kosti went dirt-side—­Mura didn’t.  Yet Mura came down with it first.  And we didn’t ship any food from Sargol.  Neither did he eat any while we were there.  Unless he did and we didn’t know about it.  If I could just bring him to long enough to answer a couple of questions!” Sighing he dropped his weary head on his folded arms and within seconds was asleep.

Dane put the mug back on the heating unit and sat down at the other end of the table.  He did not have the heart to shake Tau into wakefulness—­let the poor devil get a slice of bunk time, he certainly needed it after the fatigues of the past four days.

Van Rycke passed along the corridor on his way to the hydro, Sinbad at his heels.  But in a moment the cat was back, leaping up on Dane’s knee.  He did not curl up, but rubbed against the young man’s arm, finally reaching up with a paw to touch Dane’s chin, uttering one of the soundless, mews which were his bid for attention.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Dane fondled the cat’s ears.  “You haven’t got a headache—­have you?” In that second a wild surmise came into his mind.  Sinbad had been planet-side on Sargol as much as he could, and on ship board he was equally at home in all their cabins—­could he be the carrier of the disease?

A good idea—­only if it were true, then logically the second victim should have been Van, or Dane—­whereas Sinbad lingered most of the time in their cabins—­not Kosti.  The cat, as far as he knew, had never shown any particular fondness for the jetman and certainly did not sleep in Karl’s quarters.  No—­that point did not fit.  But he would mention it to Tau—­no use overlooking anything—­no matter how wild.