stricken people. There was no question that a plague was stalking the
land. In the rutted mud roads of the villages and towns the dead were
piled in gutters, and in all of the cities a deathly stillness hung over
the streets. Those who had not yet succumbed to the illness were nursing
and feeding the sick ones, but these unaffected ones were growing
scarcer and scarcer. The whole living population seemed resigned to
hopelessness, hardly noticing the strangers from the patrol ship.

But worst of all were those in the final stages of the disease,
wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws
slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off
from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said.
"I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me or hear me."

"But don't they have _any_ knowledge of antisepsis or isolation?" Dal
asked.

Tiger shook his head. "Not that we could see. They don't know what's
causing this sickness. They think that it's some kind of curse, and
they never dreamed that it might be kept from spreading."

Already Tiger and Jack had taken the first routine steps to deal with
the sickness. They gave orders to move the unaffected people in every
town and village into isolated barracks and stockades. For half a day
Tiger tried to explain ways to prevent the spread of a bacteria or
virus-borne disease. The people had stared at him as if he were talking
gibberish; finally he gave up trying to explain, and just laid down
rules which the people were instructed to follow. Together they had
collected standard testing specimens of body fluids and tissue from both
healthy and afflicted Bruckians, and come back to the _Lancet_ for a