As far as they could tell the Hoobat was
their only possible protection against the pest and to leave it in the
center of infection was the wisest course.
Having dumped the now metal colored catch into the freeze, they held a
conference.
"No plague--" Weeks breathed a sigh of relief.
"No proof of that yet," Ali caught him up short. "We have to prove it
past any reasonable doubt."
"And how are we going to do--?" Dane began when he saw what the other had
brought in from Tau's stores. A lancet and the upper half of the creature
Queex had killed in the cargo hold.
The needle pointed front feet of the thing were curled up in its death
throes and it was now a dirty white shade as if the ability to change
color had been lost before it matched the cotton on which it lay. With
the lancet Ali forced a claw away from the body. It was oozing the watery
liquid which they had seen on the one in the hydro.
"I have an idea," he said slowly, his eyes on the mangled creature rather
than on his shipmates, "that we might have escaped being attacked because
they sheered off from us.
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