"Nothing," Dal said. "Nothing at all. I did autopsies on the six that you brought up here and made slides of every different kind of tissue I could find. The anatomy is perfectly clear cut, no objections there. These people are very similar to Earth-type monkeys in structure, with heart and lungs and vocal cords and all. But I can't find any reason why they should be dying. Any luck with the cultures?"
Jack shook his head glumly. "No growth on any of the plates. At first I thought I had something going, but if I did, it died, and I can't find any sign of it in the filtrates."
"But we've got to have something to work on," Tiger said desperately. "Look, there are some things that always measure out the same in any intelligent creature no matter where he comes from. That's the whole basis of galactic medicine. Creatures may develop and adapt in different ways, but the basic biochemical reactions are the same."
"Not here, they aren't," Dal said. "Take a look at these tests!"
They carried the heap of notes they had collected out into the control room and began sifting and organizing the data, just as a survey team would do, trying to match it with the pattern of a thousand other living creatures that had previously been studied. Hours passed, and they were farther from an answer than when they began.
Because this data did not fit a pattern. It was different. No two individuals showed the same reactions. In every test the results were either flatly impossible or completely the opposite of what was expected.
Carefully they retraced their steps, trying to pinpoint what could be going wrong.
"There's got to be a laboratory error," Dal said wearily. "We must have slipped up somewhere."
"But I don't see where," Jack said. "Let's see those culture tubes again. And put on a pot of coffee. I can't even think straight any more."
Of the three of them, Jack was beginning to show the strain the most. This was his special field, the place where he was supposed to excel, and nothing was happening. Reports coming up from the planet were discouraging; the isolation techniques they had tried to institute did not seem to be working, and the spread of the plague was accelerating. The communiqués from the Bruckians were taking on a note of desperation.