cated they
thought he had lost his senses. Thompson paid them no attention. He was
too busy watching something inside the bell jar even to notice that they
existed.

He could not see the creature under the jar.

He knew it could fly but he did not know its shape or size. He could
hear it hitting the falls of the jar. And each time it hit the wall, a
tiny greenish smudge appeared at the point of impact.

"What--what the hell have you got there?" Neff whispered.

"I don't know for sure. But I think I've got the carrier of the virus."

"What?"

"Watch."

"I can't see anything."

"Nor can I yet, but I can hear it and I can see the places where it hits
the wall of the jar. There's something under the jar. Something that
Buster has been seeing all along."

"What?"

Thompson pointed at the jar. "One or several of those things came into
the ship when the lock was open. We couldn't see them, didn't know they
existed. But Buster saw them. He caught one of them in this cabin soon
after we took off. I thought he was playing a game to amuse himself,
or--" He broke off. From the back of his mind came a fragment of
history, now in the forgotten Dark Ages of Earth, whole populations had
been ravaged and destroyed by a fever that was carried by some kind of
an insect. Did they have some kind of an insect under his jar?

Holding his breath, Thompson watched.

The pounding against the walls of the jar was growing weaker. Then it
stopped. On the desk top, a smudge appeared. Wings quavered there, wings
that shifted through a range of rainbow colors as they became visible.

As the flutter of the wings stopped the whole creature became visible.
Made up of some kind of exceedingly thin tissue that was hardly visible,
it was about as big as a humming bird.

Silence held the room. Thompson was aware of his eyes coming to focus on
the long pointed bill of the creature.

"Alive it was not visible at all," Fortune whispered. "Dead, you can see
it." His voice lifted, picked up overtones of terror. "Say an hour or so
ago Ross was complaining that something had bit him."

Like the last remnant of a picture puzzle fitting together, something
clicked in Thompson's mind. "And Kurkil. While we were out of the ship
something bit him."

Silence again. His eyes went from Neff to Fortune. "Did--"

They shook their heads.

"Then that ties up the package," Thompson whispered. "This creature
carried the virus, or poison, or whatever it w