odded slowly. "Maybe, Doc. And maybe some day Mars will break free
of the Lobbies. You'd better pray for that."

"I've been--" Doc stopped, realizing what he'd started to say. The old
man chuckled.

"You've been talking rebellion for months, Doc. I hear rumors. Whenever
you get mad, you want us to secede. But you don't really mean it yet.
You can't picture any government but the one you're used to."

Doc grinned. Jake had a point, but it was not as strong as it would have
been a few months before. The towns under the Lobby were cheap
imitations of Earth, but here, divorced to a large extent from the
lobbies, the villages were making Mars their own. Their ways might be
strange; but they worked.

Jake shifted his body in the weak sunlight. "Newton village forgot to
report a death on time. I hear Ryan is sweating them out, trying to
prove it was your fault."

There was no evidence against him yet, Doc was sure. But Chris was out
to prove something, and to get a reputation as a top-flight
administrator. It must have hurt when they shipped her here as head of
the lesser hemisphere of Mars. She'd expected to use Feldman as a front
while she became the actual ruler of the whole Lobby. Now she wanted to
strike back.

"She's using blackmail," he said, and some of his old bitterness was in
his voice. "Anyone taking treatment from an herb doctor in this section
is cut off from Medical Lobby service. Damn it, Jake, that could mean
letting people die!"

"Yeah." Jake sighed softly. "It could mean letting people begin to
think about getting rid of the Lobby, too. Well, I gotta help harvest
the bracky. Take it easy on operating for a while, will you, Doc?"

"All right, Jake. But stop keeping the serious cases a secret. Two men
died last month because you wouldn't call me for surgery. I've broken
all my oaths already. It doesn't matter anymore."

"It matters, boy. We've been lucky, but some day one case will go to the
hospital and they'll find your former work. Then they'll really be after
you. The less you do the better."

Doc watched Jake slump off, then turned down into the little root cellar
and back toward the room concealed behind it, where his crude laboratory
lay. For the moment, he was free to work on the mystery of the black
spots.

He kept running into them--always on the body of someone who died of
something that seemed like a normal disease. Without a microscope, he
was almost helpless, but he had taken specim