"A simple thing, Earl, and harmless. Life can be hard and lonely for those who live in space and who can begrudge them a dream? You care to try one? I have patterns and compounds to induce illusions of love, of adventure, of unbridled luxury and domestic bliss. Oddly the latter is the one in greatest demand. A loving and faithful wife, children, the sweetness of contained passion. Or-"

"Get him out of it."

"Earl, I can't! The dream must ran its course." Charl leaned forward and touched the man's temple, the great arteries in the throat. "It won't be long now. The acceleration of the heart, the growing warmth of the skin-soon it will be over and he will wake. But this I can do." His plump hands moved with sure dexterity as he scrawled a message with a crayon on the back of the pattern. "There, when he wakes he will see it and obey. Now, Earl, please come with me."

"Harmond?"

He lay supine on his bunk, his face relaxed, his body naked from the waist down. Bandages covered his ankle and the air held the taint of charred flesh. A drain had been set in the lanced swelling of his groin; a thin, plastic tube held with sticky tape to permit the escape of accumulated fluids. The thing had a professional look about it as did the bandage.

"Did you have to burn deep?"

"Almost to the bone but I think we caught it in time. But that's not what I wanted to show you." Charl lifted the edge of the shirt and drew it upwards over the stomach and the lower ribs. "There, Earl. There!"

Dumarest followed the guide of the pointing finger, seeing a small, ebon blotch, a patch of velvety darkness rimmed with a thin band of angry red.

Chapter Six

Throwing back her hair Dephine said, "So Fren's got it. Well, I guess we can't all be lucky. How bad is it, Earl?"

"It's too early to tell."

"And you were close to him. Earl-you fool!"

"Charl was there too."

"I don't give a damn about Charl! You're different. I need you."

"Why?"

"Why?" Her voice rose as she echoed the question. "How big a fool are you that you can't guess that? Who else on this ship can I turn to? Who-Earl!"

"Stay away from me!" He backed as she came towards him, arms extended in open invitation. "Dephine!"

Her bare arms fell to her naked sides, the slap of her palms clear in the hold. Stripped she stood beneath the UV lights, taking her turn at the prophylactic precaution. One which Dumarest doubted would be of much use but at least it had a psychological benefit.

"All right, Earl," she said, bleakly. "So I mustn't touch you. But at least you can look at me. Does it help?"

She was like a child, he thought, wanting confirmation of her charm. A small girl asking strangers if they thought she was beautiful. But there was nothing childish about her body, lean and lithe though it was. The breasts and hips were those of a mature and feminine woman. The clear musculature revealed beneath the skin added to rather than distracted from her appeal. There was life in her, a vibrant urge to experience it to the full, a heat of primeval passion. One which had abruptly revealed itself when she'd heard the news as if nature itself was trying to compensate for imminent death by a burst of biological activity. An urge he had recognised and felt even as he had denied its logical outcome.

Death could be riding on his hands-he must not pass it on.

"Give yourself thirty minutes," he ordered. "Then call Allia to take your place. Make her strip if you can."

"That's impossible, Earl."

"Try, but don't touch her. Don't touch anyone or anything unless you have to."

She turned, slowly, arms lifted above her head in order to accentuate the thrust of her breasts, stomach indrawn. Her legs, long and slender, looked like marble as she stood on her toes.

"Am I beautiful, Earl?"

"Beautiful."

"You mean that?"

He said, bluntly, "Of us all you will look the best in a coffin. Don't fall in love with yourself so deeply as to forget that. Thirty minutes, remember, not a second less."

Charl Tao called to him as Dumarest passed the door of his cabin. He sat, a bottle of unusual design on the table before him, glasses to hand.

"Earl, come and join me."

"You know better than that, Charl."

"We were both with Fren and if one of us has contacted the disease then so has the other. We were both exposed. Which isn't to say that either of us needs to suffer. Sit and I will explain."

The man had medical experience and what he said was true. Dumarest entered the cabin. He sat and watched as the plump man tilted the opened bottle. The wine was of a thick consistency as if it were syrup, but in the mouth it had a clean sweetness filled with stinging bubbles.

Charl smiled at his expression. "Unusual isn't it, Earl? A rare and precious vintage made on a small world which has nothing to commend it aside from this one art. One day, perhaps, I shall go back to it and obtain a vinery. All it needs is money and a gracious presence. You would have no difficulty in obtaining a place in their society."

"Have I money?"

"Did I say you had? The vines are passed from mother to daughter and from a part of her dowry. To obtain a footing it is necessary to marry. Money makes a man more attractive but some, attractive without, could make themselves an easy living." He lifted the bottle and poured a little more into Dumarest's glass. "A wine which lasts, Earl. A little goes a long way."

"Like trouble."

"And disease. You've experienced it before?"

Dumarest nodded, remembering a settlement, the cries of the afflicted, the deaths, the plague which had swept through the camp like a wind. He had survived with a few others and had walked away leaving the place in flames; rude huts and gathered branches making a cleansing pyrs for the dead.

"And?"

"Buboes beneath the armpits. Rashes. Pustules on the face, neck and body. Nothing like this. You know of it?"

"No." Charl sipped at his wine. "It is most probably a mutation, something triggered to sudden life which feeds on an unsuspected weakness. The ebon patches seem to have some resemblance to gangrene though I can see no true correlation. Certainly they are foci of destroyed and expelled tissue."

"Not origin-points?"

"I don't think so. I studied Fren pretty closely as you know. The first blotch was the forerunner of several more all of which appeared in rapid succession. They begin as pin-points and expand within the course of a few hours, the red rim becomes noticeable only when they have reached an easily visible diameter. Help yourself to more wine if you want it, Earl."

"I have enough. A virus?"

"Most probably, yes."

If so their chances were small. In the closed environment of the ship it would be quickly spread from one to the other, most probably had been spread already. Dumarest remembered the stripped cabin of the dead steward; the bulkheads had remained, the air he had breathed, the things he had touched.

"How is Fren?"

"Unconscious. I've kept him that way though I will admit we could learn more if he were revived. As it is I've taken smears and done what I could, but without instruments it isn't enough. We haven't even a microscope. There is no centrifuge, no laboratory equipment, no reagents. All I managed to do was test growth-rates on a culture plate and try a few inhibiting chemicals." Charl lifted his glass, sipped, puffed his cheeks to accommodate the dancing bubbles. "What medicines do we have?"

"Some sedatives, tranquilizers and pain-killers," said Dumarest.

"Slow-time?"

"No."

"A pity. If we'd had some we could have fitted our patient with intravenous feeding and given him a month's subjective living in a day. At least it would have shown us the progression of the disease."