fever."

"I feel like I've been through the mill," I said.

"We'd better get back to the ship. Doc should have a look at you."

I wanted nothing more than the familiar safety of the ship, away from these odd natives and exotic diseases that struck despite omnivaccination. And we should get back before the others fell sick.

"All right, Pat," I said. "Contact Dan. Have him send the big 'copter. We'll leave at once." I discounted the experience of last night as delirium, but just to make sure, I checked with Allardyce and Barger when they came in.

"Obviously fever," Barger said. "Nothing happened to me like you describe."

"Nor to me," Allardyce said.

I nodded. They were right, of course, unless the Lyranian in their dreams had eaten and absorbed them. Then—but that was sheer nonsense. I was being a suspicious fool. But that dream—all of it—had been damnably real.

We made our excuses to K'wan as the 'copter fluttered down into a nearby clearing.

"I'm sorry about this," K'wan said apologetically, "but I never thought of the possibility of diseases. We are all immune. We do have some biological skill, as you've surely guessed, but our engineering technology is far inferior to yours. We thought it would be better not to let you know about us until we had a chance to observe you. But you undoubtedly have seen enough to deduce our culture." He grinned—a ferocious grimace that exposed his long tusks. "I suppose we are rather bad liars. But then we're not accustomed to deception."

"I understand," I said. "You had no way of knowing what we were really like. We could have been the advance guard of a conquering space armada. You showed great courage to open relations with us."

"Not as great as yours. We had the opportunity of examining your man Alex. You had only his untried opinions to go by."

The 'copter came down with a flutter of rotor blades, and I shook hands with K'wan. For a moment I was tempted to call Dan and tell him to turn our hostages loose, but on second thought decided that could wait. I slipped my menticom off. There was no point in broadcasting my thoughts, and without the gadget K'wan couldn't intercept them unless they were directed. After all, we were a minority on 

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