Joe raised his finger toward the commander and Al didn't wait. He squeezed the pistol's trigger and then stepped back behind the door as flame lashed toward him again. The report of the gun echoed. "You murderers!" Joe groaned. His body hit the floor with a thud. Al waited, then opened the door again. Joe lay on the floor. No sparks came from his body now. He looked like a sleeping man. Outside, the cherry red glow of the quadrant ebbed till the sides were black as space. * * * * * Al put the gun back in the drawer in the control room. He closed it and then sank into a chair beside Oakey. The young man said nothing, but kept his eyes glued on the control panel. Finally Al spoke. "Ever take the test, Oakey?" "No." "Neither did I. Scared I might have it, I guess. But I kept telling myself that I might catch the Quinnies from the instruments they used to test you. Anyhow, I know the symptoms. I'd show symptoms if I had the Quinnies, wouldn't I?" "Dunno. Joe knew the symptoms. He must have had it for a long time before he began shooting sparks." Oakey paused for a moment. "We've probably been exposed, Al." "Yeah, we've been exposed a thousand times," the commander said. "Everybody on this ship except Joe and I died from the Quinnies after we returned from that voyage ten years ago. Everybody else I sailed space with died too--except you. There's some kind of immunity. Maybe we've got it. You and I." "The Quinnies isn't like measles or small pox, Al. Germs and viruses don't cause it. Something goes wrong with life itself." "Maybe we should know something about life," Al grinned. "But after centuries of finding out about everything else, we don't know what life is. All biologists can tell us is that we're molecules strung together to make cells that produce some sort of energy." "If we knew the cause of life...." "We don't know the cause of anything ... we get to one cause and wonder what caused it. We never know the first cause, and if we found it we'd ask what caused it. Everything goes around in circles. There's the carbon-nitrogen-hydrogen cycle that makes the sun hot--elements change and get back to where they started, losing just a little energy. That energy goes out into space, loses velocity and becomes matter, matter forms suns. Maybe life is part of the merry-go-round. Maybe energy makes matter, life results from matter; life produces a little energy." "We're generators, huh?"