"Very well," said Trigg. "Suppose we take up the last item first. We are all specialists in some branch of science. Together we cover the extant field of knowledge rather thoroughly. Louisville is near. It has a large library and there is a fine technical school with laboratories and a library of its own. Those books should be preserved. It might even be advisable for us to move to the campus. "Expeditions can be sent to other cities to cull the cream of their shelves. We should set ourselves to instruct the children--" "What children?" Barb Poindexter interrupted. She was the psychiatrist, a plump brown-haired woman with ample curves. "Your children. You aren't over thirty-three, Miss Poindexter." The director made rapid mental calculations. "You should be able to produce a minimum of seven children." Miss Poindexter gasped, regarded the grinning men in horror and got very red. "No occasion to be embarrassed," said Trigg. "Most natural thing in the world." He glared about the audience. No one seemed inclined to dispute his assertion, so he went on. "This is all very sketchy. Our plans will have to be elastic. We should, I believe, continue to live in the ship until we can thoroughly explore the neighborhood. According to Captain Bascom, there is an abundance of canned food. We won't starve. "There is, though, the danger of contracting the plague. I am rather hazy on that subject. So I am going to turn you over to Dr. Lewis." Cam Lewis stood up. She was a tall, raw-boned blonde, handsome, self-assured and groomed to the last degree. She said in a crisp voice: "To the best of our information, the plague struck seven months ago and wiped out civilization. There is a better than even chance that it has run its course. "If, as Jesse Sawyer thinks"--she smiled at the fat biologist--"the plague was caused by a cloud of life spores from outer space, then the spores might have adjusted to this environment and are no longer malignant...." Matt leaned forward and asked, "Do you mean, Cam, that these life spores may have begun to evolve into something else?" "Why not?" came the biologist's terse answer. Matt glanced around. Jesse Sawyer hadn't risen. He was sprawled in his chair, his bald crown gleaming. "Evolution," he said with a wave of his pudgy hand, "isn't static. The spores could have developed in the human body into microscopic organisms. Parasitic, probably. But when the humans died they had to adapt themselves to a different environment. They might still be with us but have lost the faculty of feeding off animal tissue or whatever they attacked." He shrugged his heavy shoulders. "That's all speculative, of course." "Anyway," said Cam brightly, "we've all been exposed. There's nothing we can do but wait and see if the black spots develop." And she sat down.