In the Devil's Pot, Tel had just gotten over a case of the runs which had kept him away from food all day. Feeling hungry, now, he was foraging in the cold storage cabinet of the inn's kitchen. In the freezing chest he found the remains of a baked fish, so he got a sharp knife from over the sink, and cut a piece. Then the door opened and the barmaid came in. She was nearly seventy years old and wore a red scarf around her stringy neck. Tel had cut a slice of onion and was putting it on top of the fish when the barmaid ran forward and knocked the dish from his hand. "Ouch," Tel said, and jumped, though nothing had hurt him. "Are you completely crazy?" the woman asked. "You want to be carried out of here like the rest of them?" Tel looked puzzled as Rara entered the kitchen. "Good grief," she declared. "Where is everybody? I'm starved. I started selling that homebrew tonic of mine that I made up yesterday, and around noon, suddenly everybody was buying the stuff. They wanted something for cramps, and I guess my Super Aqueous Tonic is as good as anything else. I couldn't even get back to eat. Is there some sort of epidemic? Say, that looks good," and she went for the fish. The old barmaid snatched up the dish and carried it to the disposal can. "It's poisoned, don't you understand?" She dumped it into the chute. "It's got to be the fish that's causing it. Everybody who ate it has been carried off to General Medical with cramps. Lots of them died, too. The woman who lives across the street and me, we figured it out. We both bought it from the same woman this morning, and that's all it could be. "Well, I'm still hungry," Tel said. "Can we have some cheese and fruit?" asked Rara. "I guess that's safe," the woman said. "Who was carried out?" Tel wanted to know, looking back in the cabinet. "Oh, that's right," the barmaid said, "you've been upstairs sick all day." And then she told him. * * * * * At about the same time, an observer in a scouting plane noticed a boat bearing prefabricated barracks foundations some sixty miles away from any spot that could possibly be receiving such a shipment. In fact, he had sent a corrective order on a typographical error concerning ... yes, it must be, that same boat. He'd sent it that morning through Communication Sector 27B. They were near the shore, one of the few spots away from the fishing villages and the farm communes where the great forest had crept down to the edge of the water itself. A tiny port, occasionally used as an embarkation for the families of emigrants going to join people in the city, was the only point of civilization between the rippling smoke-green sea on one side and the crinkling deep green of the forest tree tops on the other. The observer also noted that a small tetron tramp was about to dock also. But that transport ship ... He called the pilot and requested contact be made. The pilot was shaking his head, groggily.