the chrome ear-ring he wore, once they were satisfied it
was adequately sterile. As soon as he came in range of
the eddy-currents surrounding the machinery, the metal
heated up. It was as well Cyclops was not so totally
backward as still to use metal tooth-fillings, for the effect
on those would have been agonising. As it was, he felt as
though he had been seized by the ear-lobe in a pair of
red-hot pincers, and screamed, and incontinently fled
back towards the door.
And that was where they gassed him down, but not
before he had acquired a dose of hard radiation sufficient
to strip the other half of his head bare of his prized black
hair.
“We got him,” Nole said unnecessarily as the limp
body was placed on a trolley for removal to the wards.
“But he’ll be one sick boy for at least a week.”
“You’re an idiot, Nole,” Langenschmidt said in a tone-
less voice. “That’s only the start of the trouble. How
about the family he’s said to have left in Grarignol?
Now we’ll have to send them some sort of relief, and if
we don’t gauge it exactly right we’ll have half the poor
fisherfolk of the planet begging for handouts to match
those given to this one family . . . Hell, that’s my worry,
and it can wait for tomorrow. I’m getting tired, you
know? I’ve had a pretty wearing time lately, and dealing
with emergencies when I ought to be catching up on lost
sleep isn’t helping me any! ”
Nole hesitated. “Uh don’t you want to know about
the data I got on Kolb’s leg?”
It seemed like last year, instead of an hour earlier,
when they had set out to the computing room to inspect
these carious findings. Langenschmidt ran a weary hand
through his hair.
“Okay, I guess so. But there’s not much point, really. I
can hardly take any action before the morning, and even
thenoh. I’m rambling! Hurry up, then, before I keel
over and take my nap on the floor!”
Following him down the corridor with Nole, Madda-
lena found herself regretting that she had. ever uttered
her contrary opinion when Langenschmidt told her
about the ZRP controversy. The pleasure he had felt on
seeing her had masked the toll the problem had taken
from him. Now, she was coming to realise that if it af-
fected him so deeply she had no right to judge it on the
basis of her own miserable experience on a single ZRP
which, after all, she had chosen herself, with her eyes
open.
“Here’s the print-out,” Nole said, with a kind of eager
nervousness perhaps intended to disguise his embarrass-
ment at letting the Dyge boy get out of his room and
cause so much bother. “You’ll see it come in three sec-
tions. First off, I asked for a local identificationin other
words, for a likely point of origin on Cyclops.”
“And got a zero reading, hm?” Langenschmidt’s brow
was furrowing; he seemed to have recovered a little
from his fit of exhaustion.
“That’s right. The gene-type is non-Cyclopean, yoa
may take that as definite. His other leg, from which I
took a comparison sample, is local and quite common.
“Now the memory does contain a list of those
worldssome eight or ten of them, I believewhere do-
nor-grafting is still accepted medical practice. Some cul-
tures regard it as an honorable thing to permit part of
one’s body to continue in service after one’s death. But
there’s nowhere within about thirty parsecs where this
applies.
“Anyway, I got another zero out of that line of in-
quiry. So I set for all-galaxy parameters, and I got non-
sense!”
He made an impatient gesture at the print-out, and
Langenschmidt read it through very slowly and care-
fully.
“How many’s that? Ninety-some worlds.?” he grunted.
“Ninety-twobut blazes, look at them, will you?
Highest probability, which isn’t a match even so, is
Earth! And who would conceivably have got Kolb a
limb-graft from Earth?”
“What do you think, Maddalena?” Langenschmidt de-
manded.
“Unless things have changed beyond belief,” Mad-
dalena said slowly, “no Earthborn person would consider
letting part of his body be exported after death.”