Stine combed his beard with stubby fingers before answering. "Diagnosis: heat-syncope. Prognosis: complete recovery. Condition fair, considering the dehydration and extensive sunburn. I've treated the burns and a saline drip is taking care of the other. She just missed going into heat-shock. I have her under sedation now." "I'd like to have her up and helping me tomorrow morning. Could she do this--with stimulants or drugs?" "She could--but I don't like it. There might be side factors, perhaps long-standing debilitation. It's a chance." "A chance we will have to take. In less than seventy hours this planet is due for destruction. In attempting to avert that tragedy I'm expendable as is everyone else here. Agreed?" The doctor grunted deep in his beard and looked Brion's immense frame up and down. "Agreed," he said, almost happily. "It is a distinct pleasure to see something beside black defeat around here. I'll go along with you." "Well you can help me right now. I checked the personnel roster and discovered that out of the twenty-eight people working here there isn't a physical scientist of any kind--other than yourself." "A scruffy bunch of button-pushers and theoreticians. Not worth a damn for field work, the whole bunch of them!" The doctor toed the floor switch on a waste receptacle and spat into it with feeling. "Then I'm going to depend on you for some straight answers," Brion said. "This is an un-standard operation and the standard techniques just don't begin to make sense. Even Poisson Distributions and Pareto Extrapolations don't apply here." Stine nodded agreement and Brion relaxed a bit. He had just relieved himself of his entire knowledge of Societics and it had sounded authentic. "The more I look at it the more I believe that this is a physical problem; something to so with the exotic and massive adjustments the Disans have made to this hellish environment. Could this tie up in any way with their absolutely suicidal attitude towards the cobalt bombs?" "Could it? Could it?" Dr. Stine paced the floor rapidly on his stocky legs, twining his fingers behind his back. "You are bloody well right it could. Someone is thinking at last and not just punching bloody numbers into a machine and sitting and scratching while waiting for the screen to light up with the answers. Do you know how Disans exist?" Brion shook his head no. "The fools here think it disgusting, but I call it fascinating. The have found ways to join in a symbiotic relationship with the life forms on this planet. Even a parasitic relationship. You must realize, that living organisms will do anything to survive. Castaways at sea will drink any liquid at all in their search for water. Disgust at this is only the attitude of the over-protected who have never experienced extreme thirst or hunger. Well, here on Dis you have a planet of castaways."