Occasionally calls came in to the ship from contract planets in need of
help. Usually the problems were easy to handle. On Singall III, a tiny
planet of a cooling giant star, help was needed to deal with a new
outbreak of a smallpox-like plague that had once decimated the
population; the disease had finally been controlled after a Hospital
Earth research team had identified the organism that caused it,
determined its molecular structure, and synthesized an antibiotic that
could destroy it without damaging the body of the host. But now a
flareup had occurred. The _Lancet_ brought in supplies of the
antibiotic, and Tiger Martin spent two days showing Singallese
physicians how to control further outbreaks with modern methods of
immunization and antisepsis.

Another planet called for a patrol ship when a bridge-building disaster
occurred; one of the beetle-like workmen had been badly crushed under a
massive steel girder. Dal spent over eighteen hours straight with the
patient in the _Lancet_'s surgery, carefully repairing the creature's
damaged exoskeleton and grafting new segments of bone for regeneration
of the hopelessly ruined parts, with Tiger administering anaesthesia and
Jack preparing the grafts from the freezer.

On another planet Jack faced his first real diagnostic challenge and met
the test with flying colors. Here a new cancer-like degenerative disease
had been appearing among the natives of the planet. It had never before
been noted. Initial attempts to find a causative agent had all three of
the _Lancet_'s crew spending sleepless nights for a week, but Jack's
careful study of the pattern of the disease and the biochemical
reactions that accompanied it brought out the answer: the disease was
caused by a rare form of genetic change which made crippling alterations