"Go ahead. Tiger and I can keep working on these things for a while."

"No, no, it's not that," Jack said. "Without a diagnosis, we can't do a
thing. Until we have that, our hands are tied, and we aren't even
getting close to it. We don't even know whether this is a bacteria, or a
virus, or what. Maybe the Bruckians are right. Maybe it's a curse."

"I don't think the Black Service of Pathology would buy that for a
diagnosis," Tiger said sourly.

"The Black Service would choke on it--but what other answer do we have?
You two have been doing all you can, but diagnosis is _my_ job. I'm
supposed to be good at it, but the more we dig into this, the farther
away we seem to get."

"Do you want to call for help?" Tiger said.

Jack shook his head helplessly. "I'm beginning to think we should have
called for help a long time ago," he said. "We're into this over our
heads now and we're still going down. At the rate those people are dying
down there, we don't have time to call for help now." He stared at the
piles of notes on the desk and his face was very white. "I don't know, I
just don't know," he said. "The diagnosis on this thing should have been
duck soup. I thought it was going to be a real feather in my cap, just
walking in and nailing it down in a few hours. Well, I'm whipped. I
don't know what to do. If either of you can think of an answer, it's all
yours, and I'll admit it to Black Doctor Tanner himself."

* * * * *