"Or are you going to pretend that the medics have found a way to boil the bugs out of us?" Zealley asked. Did I detect a concealed pleading for just that assurance? I shook my head. "No, they haven't found any way, Howard," I obliterated the hope. "Good old Max." Bitterness crept into his voice. "Faithful, selfless old Max. Going to save the world. Going to save the whole of humanity," he amended expansively. He hadn't changed too much. Sarcasm had always come natural with him, which made it no more likable. * * * * * He might have said dull, stupid, cloddish old Max. The words would have better matched the tone of his voice. At that, he might be right. The authorities back on our home world of New Nebraska had said pretty much the same thing, only more diplomatically. "You and Zealley are different," I'd been told. "That was one of the reasons we made you a team, originally. Zealley is clever and imaginative, but basically an egotist. A to-hell-with-the-other-fellow character. Fortunately, you're not like him. You're a man who accepts his responsibilities, a man with a strong sense of duty. We know we can trust you." Whether it was actually trust or only that they had little choice, I had not let myself decide. "We had such high hopes." Zealley was reminiscing, speaking more to himself than to me. We had. We'd been a two-man survey crew, mapping out new territory for the future expansion of the human race. On a world listed only as TR768-L-14 on the star maps, we had run into disaster. We found the planet unfit for human habitation, but not before we'd been bitten several times by things we never did see. No infection had resulted and we thought little about it, until we were a good part of the way home. Gradually then we noticed a quickening of our sensory processes, a well-being of body too pronounced to be normal. During the next several weeks of flight, Zealley wrote a historical novel that I was certain would turn out to be a classic. I found myself mastering, without difficulty, higher math, which had always been beyond me before. At the end of the third month we stopped needing sleep. During the days and nights that followed we conversed brilliantly on subjects that had not interested us before, and the depth of which we couldn't have fathomed if they had interested us. We were at a loss to explain the reason for the change, though we knew it tied in somehow with our stay on TR768-L-14, and probably with the things that had bitten us. The cause was of secondary importance; the marvel of the reality was what intrigued us. We looked forward with poorly restrained excitement to displaying our new mental and physical dexterity. * * * * *