“But you’ve got to admit it hit us,” Weeks protested.

“Yes, and the Eysie ship was able to foresee it—­report us before we snapped out of Hyper.  Sounds almost as if they expected us to carry plague, doesn’t it?” Shannon wanted to know.

“Planted?” Ali frowned at the banks of controls.  “But how—­no Eysie came on board—­no Salarik either, except for the cub who showed us what they thought of catnip.”

Rip shrugged.  “How would I know how they did—­” he was beginning when Dane cut in: 

“If they didn’t know about our immunity the Queen might stay in Hyper and never come out—­there wouldn’t be anyone to set the snap-out.”

“Right enough.  But on the chance that somebody did keep on his feet and bring her home, they were ready with a cover.  If no one raises a howl Sargol will be written off the charts as infected, I-S sits on her tail fins a year or so and then she promotes an investigation before the Board.  The Survey records are trotted out—­no infection recorded.  So they send in a Patrol Probe.  Everything is all right—­so it wasn’t the planet after all—­it was that dirty old Free Trader.  And she’s out of the way.  I-S gets the Koros trade all square and legal and we’re no longer around to worry about!  Neat as a Salariki net-cast—­and right around our collective throats, my friends!”

“So what do we do now?” Weeks wanted to know.

“We keep on the Old Man’s course, get lost in the asteroids until we can do some heavy thinking and see a way out.  But if I-S gave us this prize package, some trace of its origin is still aboard.  And if we can find that—­why, then we have something to start from.”

“Mura went down first—­and then Karl.  Nothing in common,” the old problem faced Dane for the hundredth time.

“No.  But,” Ali arose from his place at the com-unit.  “I’d suggest a real search of first Frank’s and then Karl’s quarters.  A regular turn out down to the bare walls of their cabins.  Are you with me?”

“Fly boy, we’re ahead of you!” Rip contributed, already at the door panel.  “Down to the bare walls it is.”

Chapter X

E-STAT LANDING

Since Mura was in the isolation of ship sick bay the stripping of his cabin was a relatively simple job.  But, though Rip and Dane went over it literally by inches, they found nothing unusual—­in fact nothing from Sargol except a small twig of the red wood which lay on the steward’s worktable where he had been fashioning something to incorporate in one of his miniature fairy landscapes, to be imprisoned for all time in a plasta-bubble.  Dane turned this around in his fingers.  Because it was the only link with the perfumed planet he couldn’t help but feel that it had some importance.

But Kosti had not shown any interest in the wood.  And he, himself, and Weeks had handled it freely before they had tasted Graft’s friendship cup and had no ill effects—­so it couldn’t be the wood.  Dane put the twig back on the work table and snapped the protecting cover over the delicate tools—­never realizing until days later how very close he had been in that moment to the solution of their problem.