"Not here, they aren't," Dal said. "Take a look at these tests!" They carried the heap of notes they had collected out into the control room and began sifting and organizing the data, just as a survey team would do, trying to match it with the pattern of a thousand other living creatures that had previously been studied. Hours passed, and they were farther from an answer than when they began. Because this data did not fit a pattern. It was _different_. No two individuals showed the same reactions. In every test the results were either flatly impossible or completely the opposite of what was expected. Carefully they retraced their steps, trying to pinpoint what could be going wrong. "There's _got_ to be a laboratory error," Dal said wearily. "We must have slipped up somewhere." "But I don't see where," Jack said. "Let's see those culture tubes again. And put on a pot of coffee. I can't even think straight any more." Of the three of them, Jack was beginning to show the strain the most. This was his special field, the place where he was supposed to excel, and nothing was happening. Reports coming up from the planet were discouraging; the isolation techniques they had tried to institute did not seem to be working, and the spread of the plague was accelerating. The communiques from the Bruckians were taking on a note of desperation. Jack watched each report with growing apprehension. He moved restlessly from lab to control room, checking and rechecking things, trying to find some sign of order in the chaos. "Try to get some sleep," Dal urged him. "A couple of hours will freshen you up a hundred per cent." "I can't, I've already tried it," Jack said. "Go ahead. Tiger and I can keep working on these things for a while." "No, no, it's not that," Jack said. "Without a diagnosis, we can't do a thing. Until we have that, our hands are tied, and we aren't even getting close to it. We don't even know whether this is a bacteria, or a virus, or what. Maybe the Bruckians are right. Maybe it's a curse." "I don't think the Black Service of Pathology would buy that for a diagnosis," Tiger said sourly. "The Black Service would choke on it--but what other answer do we have? You two have been doing all you can, but diagnosis is _my_ job. I'm supposed to be good at it, but the more we dig into this, the farther away we seem to get." "Do you want to call for help?" Tiger said.