"If we're both outworld, we should stick together. I'm the loneliest man on this planet, Pia."
"I know the feeling," she said, looking down.
He patted her curls. "Let's be friends then, and you help me. Where do these giant people come from?"
Her head jerked up angrily. "That has nothing to do with your work! I'm inworld too, Mr. Cole. My mother is of the old stock."
Cole let her go in silence.
He began working evenings in the lab, losing himself in work. Few of the blue-clad men and women he encountered would look at him, but he sensed their hostile glances on the back of his neck. He felt islanded in a sea of dull hatred. Only Dr. Rudall was vaguely friendly.
Cole found no parasites in hundreds of dissected piskies, but his cultures were frequently contaminated by a fungus that formed dark red, globular fruiting bodies. When he turned to cytology he found that what he had supposed to be an incredibly complex autonomic nervous system was instead a fungal mycelium, so fine as to be visible only in phase contrast. He experimented with staining techniques and verified it in a dozen specimens, then danced the surprised Dr. Rudall around the lab.
"I've done it! One man against a planet!" he chortled. "We'll culture it, then work up mutant strains of increasing virulence—oh for a Belconti geno-mycologist now!"
"It's not pathogenic, I'm afraid," Dr. Rudall said. "I ... ah ... read once, that idea was tried centuries ago ... all the native fauna have fungal symbiotes ... protect them against all known pathogenic microbiota ... should have mentioned it, I suppose...."
"Yes, you should have told me! My God, there go half the weapons of applied ecology over the moon ... my time wasted ... why didn't you tell me?" The ecologist's sharp face flushed red as his hair with frustrated anger.