"Then you believe me, sir?" Cramer was too stunned to remain safely silent.
"Of course I don't, Mister, but there's too much smoke for no fire."
"The silicon trace may not show up now—"
A smile flashed up Chisholm's face, then disappeared. "Those are the chances you take when you tell sensational stories."
Cramer's heart sank once more. "Yes, sir."
The specialist arrived with his test machine rolling behind him like an obedient, lumbering mastiff. When he reached the center of the room he turned a dial on his signet ring and the machine stopped.
"This young warrant officer has given me an interesting account of his recent experiences which, he would have us believe, included being drugged into sleep and semi-sleep," said Chisholm. "I want you to test blood samples for silicon traces, in fact the whole gamut of tests."
Dr. Jonas' pointed chin sank toward his chest, then rose. "Yes, General Chisholm." He pulled up Cramer's left sleeve and applied a blood-sucker tube which clicked off drops until it reached fifty and stopped. The doctor set the fractionating apparatus on automatic and approached his superior's chair to say, "I hardly think a person could be sedated with a silicon compound, sir."
Chisholm gestured for Cramer to remain silent. "All right, while we're waiting for your machine to complete its run, here's a purely hypothetical problem. Imagine a silicon-based bacteria—"
"What?" Dr. Jonas exclaimed.