judgment was still a major human pursuit,
no native of one world had a right to force his customs down the
unwilling throat of another. It would be better to accept his present
situation and live with it rather than trying to impose his Betan
conception of morality upon Lani that neither understood nor appreciated
it. His business was to treat and prevent animal disease. What happened
to the animals before infection or after recovery was none of his
affair. That was a matter between Alexander and his conscience.

Blalok was waiting for him, sitting behind the wheel of a square boxy
vehicle that squatted with an air of unpolished efficiency on the
graveled drive behind his house. He smiled a quick greeting as Kennon
approached. "It's about time you showed up," he said. "You'll have to
get into the habit of rising early on this place. We do most of our work
early in the morning and late in the afternoon. During the day it's too
hot to breathe, let alone work. Well, let's get going. There's still
time to visit the outer stations."

Kennon climbed in and Blalok started the vehicle. "I thought we'd take a
jeep today," he said. "They aren't very pretty, but they get around." He
turned onto the surfaced road that ran down the hill toward the hospital
and the complex of red-roofed buildings clustered about it. "About those
flukes," he said. "You have any plans to get rid of them?"

"Not yet. I'll have to look the place over. There's more detective work
than medicine involved in this."

"Detective work?"

"Sure--we know the criminal, but to squelch him we have to learn his
hangouts, study his modus operandi, and learn how to make his victims
secure from his activities. Unless we do that, we can treat individuals
from now to infinity and all we'll have is more cases. We have to apply
modern criminology tactics--eliminate the source of crime--stop up the
soft spots. In other words, kill the flukes before they enter the Lani."

"Old Doc never said anything about this," Blalok said.

"Probably he never knew about it. I was looking over the herd books last
night, and I saw nothing about trematodes, or anything that looked like
a parasite pattern until the last few months."

"Why not?"

"My guess is that he was one of the first deaths."

"You mean this thing attacks human beings?"

"Preferentially," Kennon said. "It's strange, too, because it originated
on Santos so far as we know. In fact, some people think that the Varl