That corridor ended in a flight of stairs which I climbed to the second level. Through an archway I passed into the power room proper. Tilted back in a chair in front of the enormous switchboard, a weazened little man nodded to me, signifying that he had had his instructions. I went to work without hesitation, threw over the auxiliary switch, removed the coil of wire from under my tunic and spliced it directly into the main conduit.
Finished, I trailed the coil of wire across the room and tossed it out the open window into the darkness of an alley. I went outside to gather up the loose ends. A low shed there, housing emergency transformers, served my purpose admirably. I got the compact little transmitting set out of my haversack, bracketed it to the wall in a far corner and set the clockwork to functioning.
Exactly one hour later I was back in my tracto-car, driving across the flat.
If a month ago anyone had told me I would visit not only Profaldo but each of the seven plague-cities of the High Ganymedian Plateau, I would have told them they were crazy. That was before I met Hol-Dai.
Hol-Dai was not his real name, of course; that was what they called him at the mental hospital where I was serving my internship. A patriarch of a man, one of the early Earth colonists, he had broken down from excessive research in extraterrestrial medicine, and he was forever browsing through heavy medical tomes. One day he began talking to me as usual, and for want of something better to do, I listened.
"My son," he said, "you've heard of the seven plague-cities: Profaldo, Senar, Caldray, Voltar, Xynan, Malakan, and Klovada?"
I nodded. "Yes, Hol-Dai. Here, take your medicine."
He swallowed the two pills and pointed to a sheet of paper upon which he had been writing. "Did you know they were the richest cities in the System?"
"Rich? No, Hol-Dai, you must be wrong. They have nothing but pestilence."