"If I weren't a realist, I'd say that Larynx Incorporated has been bewitched," he began slowly. "We pay our men high wages and give them excellent living conditions with a vacation on Callisto every year. Up until a short time ago most of them were in excellent health and spirits. Then the Red Spot Fever got them."
"Red Spot Fever?" Grannie looked at him curiously.
Jimmy Baker nodded. "The first symptoms are a tendency to garrulousness on the part of the patient. Then they disappear."
He paused to make an adjustment of the windlass.
"They walk out into the Baldric," he continued, "and nothing can stop them. We tried following them, of course, but it was no go. As soon as they realize they're being followed, they stop. But the moment our eyes are turned, they give us the slip."
"But surely you must have some idea of where they go," Grannie said.
Baker lit a cigarette. "There's all kinds of rumors," he replied, "but none of them will hold water. By the way, there's a cockatoo eyrie ahead of us."
I followed his gaze and saw a curious structure suspended between a rude circle of flagpole trees. A strange web-like formation of translucent gauzy material, it was. Fully two hundred cockatoos were perched upon it. They watched us with their mild eyes as we passed, but they didn't move.
After that we were rolling up the driveway that led to the offices of Larynx Incorporated. As Jimmy Baker led the way up the inclined ramp, a door in the central building opened, and a man emerged. His face was drawn.
"Mr. Baker," he said breathlessly, "seventy-five workers at Shaft Four have headed out into the Baldric."