There had been a period when the crew of the downed ship had needed help in repairing their vessel, the like of which had not been seen on Cardigan's Green for two centuries. The crewmen had paid off in Crystals and in small machines that did various things. After the crew had died of the Plague, Yon the Fisher had waited for fifteen days; then, in the dead of night, he had entered the ship. The hold had been almost entirely full of Crystals. Yon the Fisher was not an uneducated man; the books which had been brought with Cardigan's ship, two hundred years before, had been carefully preserved and used in spite of the heavy death toll of the Plague. The Crystals alone meant nothing to him; what he wanted was the _Morris_ itself. But the Crystals could be used--they represented wealth. The Commander, the elected head of Cardigan's Green, liked jewels, and the beauty of the Crystals had caught his eyes, as they had everyone else's, and that made them valuable. If Yon played his cards right, he could become one of the wealthiest men on Cardigan's Green. Eventually, the old Commander would die, and Yon intended to get himself elected in the Commander's place. Then he would finish repairing the spaceship. He had dreams--big ones. He would rule Cardigan's Green. He would have a spaceship, all his own. He would have.... There would be no limit to the things he would have. That was Yon the Fisher--intelligent, shrewd, and an excellent politician. He had a knack for making people like and respect him. He was wealthy, but he was not greedy for anything material. He wanted only one thing--power. He, then, was a part of the second factor that entered into this phase of the history of Cardigan's Green. * * * * * The third factor was a hospital ship of the Interstellar Health Commission, the _IHCS Caduceus_. The ship was _en route_ from Praxilies to Aldebaran, but she had to go off course to avoid an ion storm. A star went supernova in the Skull Nebula, and for six months or so the whole area was full of cosmic ray particles and mesons, which blocked the regular route. Lieutenant Riggs Blair, the sub-radio operator, picked up a very weak distress call as they were making the loop around the Skull Nebula. He listened to it as it was repeated twice and then called the ship's commander, Captain Doctor Latimer Wills. "Captain, I've got a distress signal. The freighter _Morris_ developed generator trouble four weeks ago, when they got caught in that storm. Ruined their infraspace drive and fouled up their subspace radio--almost no power left." "Put a call through to the police," the captain replied. "Just relay it through, that's all. Why bother me with something as simple as that?" "There's more to it, sir; the men are dying. They're sick with some sort of disease." "What are the symptoms?" the captain asked. There was a marked change in the tone of his voice. This was his meat.