"I threw that dirty water back in the pond. It’s probably what he caught something from. And he was breaking himself down, humping over that thing. It’s _your_ fault, for getting it for him. Are you coming?" She glared coldly at him, turning back to the stairway. "I’m coming," he said heavily, and followed her upstairs. Harry lay back in his bed, a low mound under the covers. His head was propped against a single pillow, and his eyes were half-closed, the lids swollen-looking, his face hotly flushed. He was breathing slowly as if asleep. But as his father entered the room, he opened his eyes as if with an effort, fixed them on him, said, "Dad ... I’ve got to tell you." Mr. Chatham took the chair by the bedside, quietly, leaving his wife to stand. He asked, "About what, Harry?" "About—things." The boy’s eyes shifted to his mother, at the foot of his bed. "I don’t want to talk to her. _She_ thinks it’s just fever. But you’ll understand." Henry Chatham lifted his gaze to meet his wife’s. "Maybe you’d better go downstairs and wait for the doctor, Sally." She looked hard at him, then turned abruptly to go out. "All right," she said in a thin voice, and closed the door softly behind her. "Now what did you want to tell me, Harry?" "About _them_ ... the rotifers," the boy said. His eyes had drifted half-shut again but his voice was clear. "They did it to me ... on purpose." "Did _what_?" "I don’t know.... They used one of their cultures. They’ve got all kinds: beds of germs, under the leaves in the water. They’ve been growing new kinds, that will be worse than anything that ever was before.... They live so fast, they work so fast." Henry Chatham was silent, leaning forward beside the bed. "It was only a little while, before I found out they knew about me. I could see them through my microscope, but they could see me too.... And they kept signaling, swimming and turning.... I won’t tell you how to talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they hate us. They never knew before—that there was anybody but them.... So they want to kill us all." "But why should they want to do that?" asked the father, as gently as he could. He kept telling himself, "He’s delirious. It’s like Sally says, he’s been wearing himself out, thinking too much about—the rotifers. But the doctor will be here pretty soon, the doctor will know what to do." "They don’t like knowing that they aren’t the only ones on Earth that can think. I expect people would be the same way." "But they’re such little things, Harry. They can’t hurt us at all." The boy’s eyes opened wide, shadowed with terror and fever. "I told you, Dad—They’re growing germs, millions and billions of them, _new_ ones.... And they kept telling me to take them back to the pond, so they could tell all the rest, and they could all start getting ready—for war."