Outside in the starlight the Med Ship rested peacefully on the ground. Around and above it the grid rose like geometric fantasy to veil most of the starry sky. Here in the starlight the ground-car communicators gave out the same voice. The same message. The President of Tallien Three made a speech. Earlier, he'd made another. Earlier still he'd taken orders from the man who was already absolute master of the population of this planet. Police stood uneasy guard about the Med Ship because they could not enter it. Some of their number who had entered the control building now stood shivering outside it, unable to force themselves inside again. There was a vast, detached stillness about the spaceport. It seemed the more unearthly because of the thin music of wind in the landing grid's upper levels. At the horizon there was a faint glow. Street lights still burned in the planet's capitol city, but though buildings rose against the sky no lights burned in them. It was not wise for anybody to burn lights that could be seen outside their dwellings. There were police, to be sure. But they were all in Government Center, marshaled there to try to hold a perimeter formed by bricked-up apartment buildings. But most of the city was dark and terribly empty save for mobs of all sizes but all raging. Nine-tenths of the city was at the mercy of the paras. Families darkened their homes and, terrified, hid in corners and in closets, listening for outcries or the thunderous tramping of madmen at their doors. In the Med Ship the loud-speaker went on: "_I have told you,_" said the rounded tones of the Planetary President--but his voice shook, "_I have told you that Dr. Lett has perfected and is making a vaccine which will protect every citizen and cure every para. You must believe me, my fellow-citizens. You must believe me! To paras, I promise that their fellows who were not afflicted with the same condition will forget! I promise that no one will remember what... what has been done in delirium! What has taken place--and there have been tragedies--will be blotted out. Only be patient now! Only...._" * * * * * Calhoun went over his glass slides again while the computer stood motionless, apparently without life. But he had called for it to find, in its memory banks, an organic compound of such-and-such a crystalline form, such-and-such a diffusion rate, such-and-such a specific gravity, and such-an-such a refractive index. Men no longer considered that there was any effective limit to the number of organic compounds that were possible. The old guess at half a million different substances was long exceeded. It took time even for a computer to search all its microfilmed memories for a compound such as Calhoun had described.