The men who'd entered the building stumbled out and stammered of what they'd smelled inside the building. Their companions drew back, frightened by even so indirect a contact with supposed contagion. They stayed outside, while a man who hadn't entered used the police-car communicator to report to the headquarters of the planetary police. The attempt to enter the ship was known inside, of course. But Calhoun paid no attention. He emptied the pockets of the garments he'd worn into the city. There were the usual trivia a man carries with him. But there was also a blaster--set for lower-power bolts--and a small thick-glass phial of a singular grayish fluid, and a plastic container. He was changing to other clothing when he heard the muttering report, picked up by a ship-receiver tuned to planetary police wave length. It reported affrightedly that the Med Ship could not be entered, and the grid's control building was dark and empty and sprayed as if to destroy contagion. The operator was gone. Another voice snapped orders in reply. The highest authority had given instructions that the Med Ship man now somewhere in the capital city must be captured, and his escape from the planet must be prevented at all costs. So if the ship itself could not be entered and disabled, get the grid working and throw it away. Throw it out to space! Whether there was contagion in the control building or not, the ship must be made unusable to the Med Ship man! "They think well of me," said Calhoun. "I hope I'm as dangerous as Dr. Lett now believes." Then he said crisply: "You say you're a para. I want the symptoms: how you feel and where. Then I want to know your last contact with scavengers." * * * * * The intentions of the police outside could be ignored. It wouldn't matter if the Med Ship were heaved out to space and abandoned. He was in it. But it couldn't happen. The grid operator had brought away certain essential small parts of the grid control system. Of course the ship could be blown up. But he'd have warning of that. He was safe except for one thing. He'd been exposed to whatever it was that made a man a para. The condition would develop. But he did have a thick-glass container of grayish fluid, and he had a plastic biological-specimen container. One came from Dr. Lett's safest pocket. It would be vaccine. The other came from the culture oven in the doctor's laboratory. The thick-glass phial was simply that. Calhoun removed the cover from the other. It contained small and horrible squirming organisms, writhing in what was probably a nutrient fluid to which they could reduce human refuse. They swarm jerkily in it so that the liquid seemed to seethe. It smelled. Like skunk. The grid operator clenched his hands. "Put it away!" he commanded fiercely. "Out of sight! Away!" Calhoun nodded. He locked it in a small chest. As he put down the cover he said in an indescribable tone: "It doesn't smell as bad to me as it did."