“Blalok said that there was a Santosian in your division.”
“Yeah—Joe Kryla—and come to think of it, he ran Bay Ten!”
“That’s a help—now let’s see what makes that bay different from the others.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you—but you may not understand,” Kennon said.
“I’ll take a chance.”
Kennon grinned. “All right, you asked for it. The parasite that’s doing the damage is a flatworm, a trematode called Hepatodirus hominis. As I’ve told Blalok, it’s a tricky thing. Like all trematodes it has a three-stage life cycle, but unlike every other fluke, its life cycle is not fixed to definite intermediate hosts. Depending upon where it is, the fluke adapts. It still must pass through its life cycle, but its intermediate host need not be one species of snail, fish, or copepod. Any cold-blooded host will do. What you have here is a Kardonian variant which has adapted to some particular intermediate host on this world. Until now, its final host was either man or Varl. Now we have a third, the Lani. And apparently they are the most susceptible of the three. It never kills Varl. And humans, while they’re more susceptible, only occasionally succumb, but the Lani appear to be the most susceptible of all. I’ve never seen an infestation like those Lani had. Their livers were literally crawling with flukes.” Kennon paused and looked at Jordan. “You following me?” he asked.
“Slowly and poorly,” Jordan said. “You’re assuming too much knowledge on my part.”
Kennon chuckled. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Well—I’m really interested in only one thing—how do you break the parasite up in business?”