Before Murgatroyd waked, the two ground-cars had returned. At intervals, nearly a dozen other cars followed to the control building, hurtling across the grid's clear center with magnificent clouds of dust following them. They braked violently when they arrived. Youths piled out. Some of them yelled at the Med ship and made threatening gestures. They swarmed into the building.

Murgatroyd said tentatively, "Chee?"

He was awake. Calhoun could have embraced him.

"Now we see what we see!" he said grimly. "I hope you've done your stuff, Murgatroyd!"

Murgatroyd came obligingly to him, and Calhoun lifted him to the table he had ready. Again, what he did did not hurt. A tiny patch on Murgatroyd's side had been made permanently insensitive shortly after he was born. Calhoun extracted a quantity of what he hoped was a highly concentrated bacterial antagonist. He took thirty CCs in all. He clumped the red cells. He separated the serum. He diluted an infinitesimal bit of it and with a steady hand added it to a slide of the same cultures—living—on which Murgatroyd's dynamic immunity system had worked.

The cultures died immediately.

Calhoun had an antibody sample which could end the intolerable now-spreading disaster on the world of young people—if he could analyze it swiftly and accurately, and if the hospital ships from Phaedra could be landed, and if they could synthesize some highly complex antibody compounds, and if the inhabitants of Canis III would lay aside their hatred—

He heard a tapping sound on the Med ship's hull. He looked at a screen. Two youths stood in the doorway of the control building, leisurely shooting at the Med ship with sporting weapons.

Calhoun set to work. Sporting rifles were not apt to do much damage.

For an hour, while there was the occasional clanking of a missile against the ship's outer planking, he worked at the infinitely delicate job of separating serum from its antibody content. For another hour he tried to separate the antibody into fractions. Incredibly, it would not separate. It was one substance only.

There was a crackling sound and the whole ship shivered. The screen showed a cloud of smoke drifting away. The members of the grid-guard had detonated some explosive—intended for mining, most likely—against one of the landing-fins.

Calhoun swore. His call to the Phaedrian fleet was the 

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