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momentarily with hope as they turned expectant eyes on him. Rawlins brought the struggling, bound Perez into the lounge. "Here," he ordered, "make him as comfortable as you can on the couch. But be sure he's secure." He turned from the wild-eyed man mouthing unintelligible gibberish and stated, "As you can see, Perez is, as far as we are concerned, hopelessly insane. This thing has driven him mad and with no chemiopsychologist, insanity is incurable, again, as far as we are concerned.
    "Now for the plan I am going to outline. It will involve physical discomfort, but not of too serious a nature. This disease seems to show a predilection for warmth, apparently preferring the warmth of humanity, for it to continue to thrive." He felt the ceasing movement of the ship beneath him, but knew it was from thorough familiarity with her, and none of the others showed awareness as he continued. "Several days ago I had one of my men start going through the medical records kept by our doctor before he succumbed. In every instance there was no new illness until one of the prior cases died, suggesting this—thing—stays with a host until it no longer supports it and then seeks new warmth. I feel that by isolating the victims in the lifeboats and sending them out before they died, we may have ridded the ship of a lot of virulence. The decrease in the number of cases seems to confirm this."
    No one else seemed to notice the sudden movement that brought Debby to the screen of the communicator, thumb and forefinger making a circle before his face. Royle nodded and kept talking without interrupting himself.
    "Our doctor abandoned a virus as the causative agent, and the research men on Capella Four support this. We have been in communication," he said, putting a ring of truth behind his lies, "and we believe that an alien life form is aboard this ship." There were the explosive interruptions that he had expected and he waited several moments before he began silencing them. He continued, "We believe this alien form is invisible in its environment of air, that it can move about and that it has escaped detection by any of our instruments solely because it has no material body to detect. We know several things about it, and these data are our ammunition against it. First, it is a parasite on warm blooded creatures and leaves its host only when his temperature has fallen below that of the surrounding air. Apparently it does not multiply itself, or grow, or reproduce in any way—or we'd all be dead by now. It has mobility and can seek out a new host, not by intelligence, but by instinct, or, perhaps, in accordance with a law that governs a non-living thing—like magnetism." There was a dissent from one of the passengers and he said, "If it were intelligent life it would leave the victims before their entombment in the lifeboats." He waited and the man nodded slightly.
    "So," he concluded, "the theory is that all this—thing—wants from us is heat, that it is not a life-form in any sense of the word, but that it is irresistibly drawn to heat-producing bodies. This heat in some way activates it. I intend to give it heat—human heat—and offer it no alternative to accepting that heat. In short, I intend to inoculate someone with every vaccine and serum that we had in the medical supplies. We have all taken these things all our lives with no ill effects, therefore I'll probably have to use all of them together to produce the required rise in temperature. I want someone to become so feverish that every heat-seeking entity aboard this ship will flock to him." He paused again and let them have their say. They all very clearly had something to say.
    "Royle, this is nonsense! You're guessing and it sounds like a lot of stuff to me," Windlass got in.
    "He's sick himself," Mrs. Clevers moaned over and over.
    Giroden's drawl was quite serious as he said, "They could be all over the ship just waiting for someone to get close enough for contact. Why would they