they want to grow in the area.

"Perhaps they aren't exactly farming," he elaborated. "That is, they may not be planting anything in an orderly fashion. But they are cultivating. And it all adds up to the same thing. They are increasing an edible crop by eliminating—well, weeds. And if they can do that, they should have a corresponding cultural development.

"Another thing bothers me," Gallifa complained. "If these stupids are a natural prey for animals, as unprotected as they are, I should think they would live in some kind of thick brambles. That at least would give them some measure of safety. I think the bio team is going to have more than their share of headaches."

"Let's work on it tomorrow," MacFarland suggested tiredly. "I want to get back to camp."

Hawkins returned them to the truck, and Gallifa and MacFarland jolted off into the gathering dusk. It was fully dark by the time they reached the camp.

Gallifa checked his team, then gathered their various findings together and sent them over to the Administration Building for further evaluation. Samuels didn't check in with the rest. Gallifa assumed that he was busy with the gnomes. He wanted to discuss the queer creatures with him, and wandered over to the specimen shack. Samuels wasn't there. Neither were any of the natives.

Gallifa returned to the team shack and left a note on Samuel's bunk telling him where he could be found. Then he went over to the Administration Building to work with MacFarland. The next few hours he and MacFarland were so busy sorting material and feeding it to the analyzers that he forgot his aide.

Finally Gallifa finished verifying the last of a huge stack of photographs, and stuffed the important ones into a plastic envelope. He added the date seal, initialed it, and handed it to one of the men to take to the laboratory for micro-filming. Then he produced a battered pipe and filled it with tobacco, slowly tamping the bowl with his fingers.

He had just about finished his smoke when the messenger returned to the Administration Building. "—Gallifa," he began.

Gallifa knew that something was wrong by the way the man hesitated. He sprang up. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Some of the boys ran into Samuels over on the edge of camp," the messenger said miserably. "He was clear out of his head. He fought like a tiger, and they had to tie him hand and foot to get him over to the sick bay. The doctor wants you to come right over."

Gallifa turned a white face to MacFarland. "What the devil," he said woodenly. "Is my whole team going crazy?"

MacFarland slipped into his field boots. "I'll go with you," he said.

Outside a cold drizzle was falling, and from the way the leaden skies were piling up, Gallifa was convinced that it would stay around for several days. Evidently the weather boys had been right in predicting that the planet was about to be plagued by a rainy season.

As they drew near to the edge of camp, Cummings, the little, bald-headed meteorologist of the weather group, burst out of the weather shack, cursing soundly and waving a boot in one hand.

"Damn those piebald dwarfs," he shouted. "They've got more brass than a fire pole. They stole one of my boots."

He threw the boot and disappeared around the corner. "Get out of here, you little devils!"

"The gnomes seem to have invaded the camp," MacFarland remarked. "We'll have to take steps to chase them out. They might get into our stores."

"Yeah," Gallifa nodded glumly. He was too upset with the problem of Bradshaw and Samuels to worry about gnomes.

From all indications Samuels had developed the same malady as Bradshaw. The doctor pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders. Thirty-three hours on the planet and two men suddenly, violently insane! Did that herald an epidemic, Gallifa wanted to know. Or could it simply be put down to an unlucky coincidence? Could it be a disease or a virus?

There were tests that might shed some light on the mystery, the doctor admitted. But it would take time to apply them and reach any kind of conclusion. Meanwhile, the work had to continue. The survey could not wait.

Samuels had been given a hypo and been moved to the ward with Bradshaw. Gallifa walked past the ward corpsman and looked in the door. Bradshaw was tossing fretfully in his sleep. Both he and Samuels were in restraint jackets.

Gallifa shuddered and swabbed a perspiring brow. The rain was making everything muggy.

He left MacFarland still talking to Dr. Thorndyke, and started back—heading directly for the team shack. Gallifa was obviously worried. He found himself wishing that he could somehow avoid telling the rest of the crew about Samuels.

Damn! Was the Bio team jinxed?

V

Gallifa kept close to the shacks in a futile effort to protect himself from the rain, which was really driving now. A single light burned in the Administration Building, but the rest of the compound was dark and quiet.

He skirted the deserted equipment building and paused for an instant in the lee of a truck to light his pipe. There was a loud tinkle of glass, and the windshield on the vehicle magically spouted a hole.

Gallifa ducked instinctively and only just in time. The windshield spouted a second hole—and then a third. A faint, bluish flash located his attacker. It was uncomfortably close.

Gallifa lashed out, and fell over a crouching figure. In a moment the two men were thrashing in the mud. The unseen attacker was strong and he fought like a maniac. But Gallifa was even stronger and his determined anger quickly gave him the advantage. He wrested the pellet gun from the other's grasp, and brought the butt down hard—brought it down twice. The man slumped, and was still.

Gallifa snapped on his wrist torch and played the tiny, luminous glow over the sprawled figure. The man who had tried to kill him was Cummings. Gallifa numbly wiped the mud from his pipe and lit it with a flickering lighter. The flame made a weird, cameo-like oval of his gaunt face, with the olive-toned skin of his ancestry stretched tightly across the high cheekbones.

Why? Bradshaw ... Samuels ... Cummings ...

A pattern was forming. And it was forming with a viciousness and a regularity which left little doubt as to the probable outcome.

Did that pattern embrace the space ship with its ring of rain-washed skeletons? Had they disintegrated under a pressure as relentless as the swiftly-tightening jaws of a vise. Something was forcing normal men into homicidal insanity. But what?

Gallifa didn't know. But he did know that someone had better come up with some answers—intelligent ones, and very much to the point. Or was it already too late? Was the compound already infected—with each man only waiting to be struck down?

Gallifa draped the limp body of Cummings over his shoulder, and sloshed his way back to the hospital. The doctor grimly made room in the ward room for the new patient. While he was treating the gash in Gallifa's cheek, MacFarland, Hawkins, and some of the early-rising camp cooks brought in two more men from the weather group.

Gallifa watched in tight-lipped silence as the corpsmen administered hypos and set the new cots end to end in the already overcrowded sickbay.

"There were only two restraint jackets," Dr. Thorndyke said jerkily. "We'll have to secure the rest of them to the bunks."

MacFarland nodded. When he spoke, his voice was low and strained. "This is getting out of hand. I think we'd better get everybody over to the Administration Building as soon as possible."

"All right," Gallifa said quietly. "Only—"

"Only what?" MacFarland asked sharply.

"What if everybody in camp isn't available," Gallifa said flatly. He opened the door and stepped into the rain.

The Administration Building was hot. The windows were steamed over, and the men nearest to them had wiped clear spots with their hands, as if they