The target should have emerged from Jupiter’s rim at 3:37 P.M., according to revised estimates. Given the time lag in signals from Jupiter, Operations Control began receiving data slightly before 4:30 P.M. The main dish’s search was completed within an hour. They couldn’t use the narrow-angle camera—not enough technicians were free from the Mars Burrower and the planetary satellites. In any case, nothing indicated that there was anything worth seeing.

“Looks like balls-up on that,” Nigel said.

“Either the whole idea is a pipe dream—” Lubkin began.

“Or we haven’t got the orbit right,” Nigel finished. An engineer in portable headphones came down the curved aisle, asked Lubkin to sign a clipboard, and went away.

Lubkin leaned back in his roller chair. “Yeah, there’s always that.”

“We can have another go tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Lubkin did not sound particularly enthusiastic. He got up from the console and paced back and forth in the aisle. There wasn’t much room; he nearly bumped into a technician down the way who was checking readouts at the Antenna Systems console. Nigel ignored the background murmur of the Control Bay and tried to think. Lubkin paced some more and finally sat down. The pair studied their green television screens, which were tilted backward for ease of viewing, where sequencing and programming data were continually displayed and erased. Occasionally the computer index would exceed its allowed parameter range and the screen would jump from yellow-on-green to green-on-yellow. Nigel had never gotten used to this; he remained disconcertingly on edge until someone found the error and the screen reverted.

The console telephone rang, jarring his concentration still further. “There’s an external call for you,” an impersonal woman’s voice said.

“Put them off a bit, will you?”

“I believe it’s your wife.”

“Ah. Put her on hold.”

He turned to Lubkin. “I’d like to get the camera free tomorrow.”

“What’s the use?”

“Call it idle speculation,” he said shortly. He was rather tired and wasn’t looking for an argument.

“Okay, try it,” Lubkin said, threw down his pencil and labored to his feet. His white shirt was creased and wrinkled. In defeat he seemed more likable to Nigel, less an edgy executive measuring his moves before he made them. “See you tomorrow,” Lubkin said and turned away, shoulders slumped.

Nigel punched a button on the telephone.

“Sorry I took so long, I—”

“Nigel, I’m at Dr. Hufman’s.”

“What’s—”

“I, I need you here. Please.” Her voice was thin and oddly distant.

“What’s going?”

“He wants to talk to both of us.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, really. Not totally.”

“What’s the address?”

She gave him a number on Thalia. “I’m going down for some lab tests. A half hour or so.”

Nigel thought. “I don’t know which bus serves that—” “Can’t you…”

“Certainly. Certainly. I’ll sign off for a Lab car, tell them it’s for business tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Nigel. I, I just…”

He pursed his lips. She seemed dazed, distracted, her executive briskness melted away. Usually the efficient manner did not seep from her until evening.

“Right,” he said. “I’m leaving now.” He replaced the telephone in its cradle.

A gray haze layer cut off all buildings at the fourth story, giving Thalia Avenue an oddly truncated look. The cramped car labored along with an occasionally irregular pocketa-pocketa as Nigel leaned out the window, searching for building numbers. He had never become accustomed to the curious American reticence about disclosing addresses. Immense, imposing steel and concrete masses stood anonymously, challenging the mere pedestrian to discover what lay inside. After some searching, 2636 Thalia proved to be a low building of elegant striated stonework, the most recent addition to the block, clearly assembled well after the twentieth-century splurge of construction materials.

Dr. Hufman’s waiting room had the hushed antechamber feel to it that marked a private practice. A public medical center would have been all tile and tan partitions and anonymous furniture. As he walked in, Nigel’s attention returned to Alexandria’s unspoken tension and he looked around the waiting room, expecting to see her.

“Mr. Walmsley?” a nurse said from a glass-encased box that formed one wall of the room. He advanced.

“Where is she?” He saw no point in wasting time.

“In the laboratory, next door. I wanted to explain that I didn’t, we didn’t know Miss Ascencio was, ah…”

“Where’s the lab?”

“You see, she filled out her form as Single and gave her sister as person to be notified. So we didn’t know—”

“She was living with me. Right. Where’s—”

“And Dr. Hufman likes to have both parties present when…”

“When what?”

“Well, I, ah, only wanted to apologize. We, I would have asked Miss Ascencio to come with you if we had—”

“Mr. Walmsley. Come in.”

Dr. Hufman was an unremarkable man in an ill-fitting brown jacket, no tie, large cushioned shoes. His black hair thinned at the temples, showing a marble-white scalp. He turned and walked back into his office without waiting to see if Nigel would follow.

The office differed in detail but not general theme from every other doctor’s office Nigel had ever seen. There were old-fashioned books with real bindings, some of them leather or a convincing synthetic. Long lines of medical journals, mostly out of date, marched across the shelves on one wall, punctuated by a model ship here and there. On the desk and a side table were collections of stubby African dolls. Nigel wondered if physicians were given a course in med school in interior decorating, with special emphasis on patient-soothing bric-a-brac, restful paintings and humanizing oddments.

He began to sit down in the chair Hufman offered when a door opened to his left and Alexandria stepped in. She hesitated when she saw Nigel and then closed the door softly. Her hands seemed bony and white. There was in her manner something Nigel had never seen before.

“Thank you, dear, for coming so quickly.”

Nigel nodded. She sat in another chair and both turned toward Hufman, who was sitting behind a vast mahogany desk, peering into a file folder. He looked up and seemed to compose himself.

“I’ve asked that you come over, Mr. Walmsley, because I have some rather bad news for Miss Ascencio.” He spoke almost matter-of-factly, but Nigel sensed a balanced weight behind the words.

“Briefly, she has systemic lupus erythematosus.” “Which is?” Nigel said.

“Sorry, I thought you might have heard of it.”

“I have,” Alexandria said quietly. “It’s the second most common cause of death now, isn’t it?”

Nigel looked at her questioningly. It seemed an unlikely sort of thing for Alexandria to know, unless—unless she’d guessed.

“Yes, cancer of all sorts is still first. Lupus has increased rapidly in the last two decades.”

“Because it comes from pollution,” she said. Hufman leaned back in his chair and regarded her. “That is a common opinion. It is very difficult to verify, of course, because of the difficulty in isolating influences.”

“I think I’ve heard of it,” Nigel murmured. “But…” “Oh. A disease of the connective tissue, Mr. Walmsley. It strikes primarily the skin, joints, kidneys, heart, the fibrous tissue that provides internal support for the organs.”

“Her sprained wrists—”

“Exactly, yes. We can expect further inflammation, though not so much as to create a deformity. That is only one symptom, not the total disease, however.”

“What else is there?”

“We don’t know. It’s an insidious process. It could reside in the joints or it could spread to the organs. We have very little diagnostic capability. We simply treat it—”

“How?”

“Aspirin,” Alexandria said mildly with a wan smile. “That’s absurd!” Nigel said. “Fixing up a disease with—”