"The trouble with you," he addressed them all, "is that
you think of earth only in terms of Terraport--"
"Well, there _is_ the Patrol field at Stella," Weeks agreed doubtfully.
"But we'd be right in the middle of trouble there--"
"Did we have a regular port on Sargol--on Limbo--on fifty others I can
name out of our log?" Rip wanted to know.
Ali voiced a new objection. "So--we have the luck of Jones and we set
down somewhere out of sight. Then what do we do?"
"We seal ship until we find the pest--then we bring in a Medic and get to
the bottom of the whole thing," Rip's confidence was contagious. Dane
almost believed that it _could_ be done that way.
"Did you ever think," Ali cut in, "what would happen if we were wrong--if
the Queen really is a plague carrier?"
"I said--we seal the ship--tight," countered Shannon. "And when we earth
it'll be where we won't have visitors to infect--"
"And that is where?" Ali, who knew the deserts of Mars better than he did
the greener planet from which his stock had sprung, pursued the question.
"Right in the middle of the Big Burn!"
Dane, Terra born and bred, realized first what Rip was planning and what
it meant.
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