Rex sniffed the air of Mars, somewhat thinner than what he was used to, but fresh and sweet. He walked out, hand in hand with Morino, and they strolled across the town square. The others followed, all slightly unsteady in the reduced gravity. It always took a few minutes to adjust to different planetary conditions.

After a couple of minutes, Rex noticed a small group of people moving purposefully towards them. At the front, he could see Rolto. He turned his head to talk to Tiger. 'Do you see that?' he observed quietly. 'Rolto definitely looks as if he's pleased to see us.'

Certainly there was nothing in Rolto’s demeanour to show that he had ever treated the Professor and his friends with suspicion. 'Rex, Morino', he called amiably. 'My congratulations to you both.'

'Thank you,' returned Rex, rather embarrassed. 'Hello, Rolto. How are you?'

Rolto shrugged. 'Very well, until that ship arrived.' He pointed away to the west. 'Is the Professor with you? We would like to speak with him.'

'We?' queried the Professor, walking up to where Rex and Morino had stopped.

Rolto nodded. 'I mean the Council. As you may have heard, I am now a junior member myself.'

‘Congratulations, Rolto,’ put in Tiger.

Rolto looked rather sheepish. 'In the past, I admit, I have not been fair to you, Professor, or to your colleagues. Now I realise we are all on the same side.'

'The same side?' questioned Tiger, frowning. 'Same side against what? Have those toughs from that spaceship been giving you trouble?' Unconsciously he gripped his rifle a little more tightly.

'Nobody has been giving us trouble, as you put it,' interjected another man, whom Rex recognised as Thormin. But we think the ship has brought disease here.'

The Professor's glasses slid down his nose. 'Goodness me! This sounds serious. Let us go and discuss this indoors.'

Presently, in one of the houses reserved for space travellers, Rolto told the tale of the crashed ship.

'It came down just after dawn, three days ago,' he stated. 'People in the city here saw the spaceship moving irregularly, wobbling, before it landed heavily. It was thought that the crew might be running short of oxygen. Rescue personnel went to see if they could help. When they forced the doors open, all but two of the people were dead, and both survivors were ill. They were taken to the local healing clinic, but not long after, three of the doctors in turn fell ill. Now the building has been isolated, to try and stop the infection spreading.'

'And you've put a barrier up around the spacecraft,' murmured Toby, 'to stop anybody else

becoming infected.'

'Yes,' agreed Rolto. 'Nobody else has become ill, so we may well have contained the outbreak. However, we are naturally worried about the people who have succumbed to whatever this sickness is.'

Thormin nodded in agreement, and leant forward. 'We would be grateful for your expertise, Professor. Firstly, from what you have told us, your planet has had more experience of large-scale disease than our own, so your bodies are far less vulnerable than our own. Secondly, because of this, you are all more used to dealing with common infections and so on.'

Tiger looked surprised. 'So you want us to check over that spaceship for you?'

'I don't think that's a problem,' interposed Toby, looking first at Tiger, and then at Thormin and Rolto, both sitting across the table from him. 'We can always wear spacesuits, after all. They will give us full protection. Thormin's right as well, the Martians are more prone to disease than we are. It's up to us to do what we can.'

The Professor nodded. 'If you say so, then of course I accept your judgement, Doctor. What would you suggest we do?'

'I think,' said Toby thoughtfully, 'we should begin by finding out something about the disease itself. Are the people from the spacecraft still at the healing centre?'

Thormin nodded. 'And so are their carers. The ones that fell ill, and the others who are still well. Would you like to talk to them?'

Toby looked surprised. 'Can we do that?' he asked.

'We have a radio link to the centre,' explained Rolto. 'It has always been in place, in case something like this happened.'

The Professor smiled. 'Excellent!' he remarked approvingly. This means that we can get as much information as possible before going there.'

While Toby and Rolto spoke to the doctors at the healing centre, Rex and Morino left with Borron to go to Borron’s house. Gator went back to the Tavona with the others in the crew to make the craft secure. This left the Professor, Vargo and Tiger to walk through the streets of the city, discussing the question of the crashed spaceship.

'It all depends on what sort of disease is involved,' averred Tiger. 'If it's something fairly nasty, then we shall have to be very careful in getting anywhere near the people who have been struck down.’

‘Yes.’ The Professor was thoughtful. ‘It may well be that the other ship’s crew were also affected by this illness, which was why it crashed. On a planet with no atmosphere, there would be no contamination, of course.’

‘Whereas here, everyone is concerned about the dangers of infection.’ Tiger smiled faintly. ‘Whether the illness is severe or mild isn't necessarily the most important thing, of course.'

The Professor looked puzzled. 'I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Group-Captain. If that isn't important, what is?'

'Simply this.' Tiger knocked out his pipe. 'The ship itself is the key, Professor. Why did it come here? It must have been heading in this direction before the captain became ill. We need to explore that ship to see if we can learn anything about its purpose. And don't forget, this is the second ship we have seen. Goodness knows why there were two of them here. We can’t necessarily rely on every one of these spacecraft crashing.'

The Professor nodded gravely. 'You are right as always. Are you going to wait until the Doctor has been to see the sick men?'

'Not necessarily.' It was Tiger’s turn to look pensive. 'There may be no infective agent left in the ship if it's empty. Also, I'm wondering if our Martian friends can improvise something for us. Something to sterilise the environment.'

'What do you need?' asked Vargo. 'I've no doubt that our workshops will do their best.'

'I was thinking of steam,' explained Tiger. 'You can sterilise surfaces with live steam. I can't help remembering those efficient little box devices you use for keeping your houses warm. If we could attach a water tank and a flexible hose - '

'Let us go and see,' suggested Vargo.

IN the middle of the afternoon, a meeting was held in the Council Chamber to discuss progress so far. Everyone fell silent when Thormin stood up to speak. 'Firstly,' he began, 'I would like to thank Professor Brane and his companions for helping us in this matter. Now, we must share the information we have learnt. Doctor?'

Toby stood up in turn. 'I've been talking to the doctors who are still well,' he explained, 'unfortunately not to those who are ill. However, I think I can say that this is some sort of general infection. I've got penicillin and so on, so I'm hoping to be able to treat the patients tomorrow. We've been working on masks and gowns, so there's no difficulty there.' He paused, presumably waiting to see if anyone had questions they wanted to ask.

Tiger intervened. 'Perhaps somebody should have asked before, but it never occurred to me. What was done with the space travellers who were already dead? Where are their bodies?'

'We buried them,' put in Thormin, looking somewhat guilty. 'Perhaps we should have kept the bodies to study, but preventing infection was our first priority.'

Tiger nodded. 'Fair enough. Presumably they have been buried somewhere remote? I was thinking about possible contamination.'

'Not only that,' volunteered Rolto, 'but they were sealed into metal containers. As you say, contamination was a worry.'

'That's it really,' finished up Toby. 'Tomorrow, we hope to treat everyone, and with luck, bring about an improvement in their condition.' He sat down.

Everyone looked relieved. 'Once again we seem to be in your debt,' Thormin ventured, with a sideways look at Rolto. 'Let us hope things go well.'

'I can't guarantee that I'm right,' reminded Toby, looking slightly concerned. 'I'm fairly sure that a good dose of penicillin will put things to rights, but I can't be absolutely certain - '

'I'm sure we all understand that, Doctor,' put in the Professor. 'Now, Group-Captain, what do you suggest we do about the spaceship itself?'

'Yes, a good question.' It was Tiger's turn to get to his feet. 'As you know, we saw another crashed ship of this type, quite close to our planet. And this ship was obviously coming to Mars for a reason; it may be that we are fortunate that the crew became ill. We've seen this sort of spacecraft before, on Krona. On that occasion the people flying it were looking for slaves. We drove them off, but those devils had weapons of their own: gas, for one.'

Silence greeted these remarks, then a growing noise as everyone began to talk at once. Tiger waved for silence. 'As I say, these people were dangerous, but we did make them leave.' He held up his rifle. 'To people who fly spaceships, this may seem a primitive weapon, which uses chemical explosives to project relatively small bullets. However in practice, the bullets from this rifle will penetrate almost any metal, and no spaceship can travel with holes in its outer skin. Also, to be frank, if these space pirates come out of their ships, they won't be too healthy if I make holes in them.'

The Professor looked disapproving. 'There's no need to talk like that,' he opined. 'I would hope that we could behave better than this other race.'

Tiger shrugged. 'We know that you disapprove of violence, Professor, and in an ideal world such a philosophy is laudable. However, if we are attacked, we need to be able to defend ourselves.'

'Have you seen anything of these people?' asked another Council member. 'Do you know what they look like?'

The Professor nodded. 'Indeed we do. They are fairly short by our standards, with long black hair. The ones we saw wore brown uniforms. To us, they looked rather like soldiers of the Chinese race we have on Earth.'

Thormin nodded thoughtfully. 'So they do not have any armour? They would not be able to defend themselves against your rifle?'

The Professor pursed his lips, then shook his head. 'You are correct. If we had to fight them, then the Group-Captain's weapon would be useful.' He looked over at Tiger. 'But I would far rather that we did not have to take that approach.'

'I agree,' returned Tiger promptly. 'We can be sure that they have other weapons. And to return to the main point I was going to make; I suggest that we explore that ship, to see if we can discover why it is here. Now, there is a chance that it may still be contaminated with bacteria: so I have asked your engineers to come up with a steam steriliser, which I hope will kill any remaining germs.'

Toby nodded. 'That sounds reasonable,' he agreed. 'How big is this steriliser? Will it be difficult to carry?'

Tiger shook his head. 'Not at all.' From beneath the table he produced a crude-looking device, a cube with each side about twelve inches. From the top a red hose protruded. 'This will do the trick, and I can hold it in one hand.' He looked round the room at everyone present. 'I intend to explore the spacecraft tomorrow morning. While Toby is doing his best for the people who are ill, I would like to investigate the ship that brought our unwelcome visitors.'

'Who would you like to go with you?' asked Rolto.

Tiger looked thoughtful. 'Ideally I would like both Vargo and the Professor to be with me, as they both have astronomical knowledge that may be very useful. Presumably Gator will fly us there?'

Gator nodded. 'Of course,' he answered. 'If you remember, on Krona I was able to land the Tavona on the top surface of the spaceship.'

Tiger nodded. 'I'd forgotten that. It could be useful. By the way, where is Rex?' He looked around.

Borron smiled. 'With his new young wife. I decided to give them some privacy.'

Tiger smiled faintly. 'Fine. Well, I would suggest that Rex go with you tomorrow, Toby. He has first aid training, which may come in handy. Would anybody else like to go?'

'I shall,' volunteered Rolto, surprising some of the people in the room. 'I have done some medical work in the past.'

'Capital,' said the Professor, smiling. 'We seem to have everything sorted out.'

'Not necessarily,' Tiger returned. 'Let's say we've made some plans; but it's too early to say whether they will be successful.'