When Tiger and Jack came back to the _Lancet_ after their first trip to
the planet's surface, they were visibly shaken. Geographically, they had
found it just as it had been described in the exploratory reports--a
barren, desert land with only a few large islands of vegetation in the
equatorial regions.

"But the people!" Jack said. "They don't fit into _any_ kind of pattern.
They've got houses--at least I guess you'd call them houses--but every
one of them is like every other one, and they're all crammed together in
tight little bunches, with nothing for miles in between. They've got an
advanced technology, a good communications system, manufacturing
techniques and everything, but they just don't use them."

"It's more than that," Tiger said. "They don't seem to _want_ to use
them."

"Well, it doesn't add up, to me," Jack said. "There are thousands of
towns and cities down there, all of them miles apart, and yet they had
to go dig an old rusty jet scooter out of storage and get the motor
rebuilt just specially to take us from one place to another. I know
things can get disorganized with a plague in the land, but this plague
just hasn't been going on that long."

"What about the sickness?" Dal asked. "Is it as bad as it sounded?"

"Worse, if anything," Tiger said gloomily. "They're dying by the
thousands, and I hope we got those suits of ours decontaminated, because
I don't want any part of this disease."

Graphically, he described the conditions they had found among the