"Then we'll try to get him conscious again at least long enough to tell us. You'd better get back to the house, Miss Trelawney. I'll dig out the kit. Be up there in a minute." He watched the tall supple figure start back across the slope, shook his head a little, and turned to the wrecked car. She was either somewhat stupid, or being cagey with a non-Terran. The last seemed a little more likely. Too bad if she turned out to be involved with something like the YM business, but that was out of his hands. He'd have to report immediately, and the Overgovernment specialists would be here in an hour. It wasn't his job. He climbed cautiously back into the car. Out of sight of the house, he pressed a key on the wrist communicator, said, "Chris? This is Dowland. Emergency," and waited for the hum of response from the instrument. There was no hum. Half a minute later, he had the communicator off his wrist and opened. He couldn't remember having struck his wrist hard enough against anything to have damaged it, but the delicate mechanisms inside were a crystal shambles. There was a portable communicator packed in with his camping equipment. But it operated on grid-power. It looked like it was going to remain his job for a while, after all. * * * * * Miguel Trelawney, in Dowland's unvoiced opinion, was a man who was dying. He was big-boned and heavily muscled, but on the low couch in the living room he looked shrunken. Lead-colored skin and thready pulse. Internal bleeding at a guess--an informed layman's guess. Radiation burns. Dowland looked over at the girl. She was disturbed and tense, but nowhere near hysteria. "We might bring him around," he said bluntly. "But it will take some hours at least. He's in bad shape." Her hands, clasped together in her lap, went white around the knuckles. "Will he ... can you save...." Dowland shook his head. "I don't know if we can save him here. If we got him to one of your hospitals tonight, he should have a very good chance. But we can't do that--unless the grid-power cuts in again." She said faintly, "What's happened to him?" "Lady, that's fairly obvious. He's been ray-burned." "Ray-burned? But how?" "I wouldn't know." Dowland opened the medical kit, slid out several of the tiny containers, turned one of them over in his hand. He asked, "Where was he when you found him?" "Lying outside the door of the lab." "Lab?" Jill Trelawney bit her lip. "The building I showed you." "Where Paul Trelawney's locked up?" "Yes. They call it a lab." "Who are they?" "Miguel and Paul." "What kind of lab is it?" Dowland asked absently. "I don't know. They're building something there. Some sort of a machine." "Are your uncles scientists?" "Yes." Her tone had begun to harden--a Freeholder lady rebuffing a non-Terran's prying. Dowland said, "If we knew whether they had radiation suits in that lab...." "I believe they do." He nodded. "That might account for Miguel."