for you. The authorities are delighted to learn we've a registered entomologist aboard. Very few of them have come this way."

By the time Bridget had read the sheaf of papers, she had made the transition from the world of shipboard romance to her accustomed world of science and order. There was work to be done. Her talents were needed in a dozen places at once. She left orders for the confiscated clovers to be destroyed and went to her cabin to pack. She was on the first shuttle to leave the ship.

The weeks that followed were filled with hard work with test tube and microscope, at her desk and in the field. The majority of her co-workers were men, but none had time to look for a laughing eye or a smiling mouth. The beautiful garden planet of New Eden was being reduced to a desert by a mysterious something that was swiftly attacking all the cultivated areas. Starvation was looming and there was talk of hasty evacuation. The situation was passing out of control.

The villain could not be isolated. Was it an insect, a virus, a chemical in the soil? Some of the few native insects were caught and subjected to experiment. The soils were analyzed and tested. Those were not the answer. The only thing certain was that the previously lush brown loam was turning to a yellow, chalky sand, and everything that grew in it withered and died.

Bridget visited farm after farm and trudged from field to field. She looked at worried faces and tried to think of words of encouragement. Back at the laboratory she studied her specimens far into the night and fell asleep at her desk. She was too tired to think about Patch Maguire, who, she concluded, had never left the spaceship. What would a grower of gardens, a breeder of plants do in a spreading desert? He had gone on to some more flourishing planet.

She was called to the office one day.

"I hear there's a farm that claims they don't have the plague," said the harassed young scientist behind the desk. "Better get over there and see if it's any more than a rumor. Take the heli and bring back all the usual samples. Here's the directions on getting there."

He shoved a torn piece of paper at her and turned back to his cluttered desk. Bridget picked up her collecting kit and climbed into the cab of the machine. By this time she knew her way about the settlements. Without doubt, she told herself, this farm was on the outskirts of civilization, in some valley as yet untouched by the plague. But long before she reached the limits of 

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