Chief Larkin snorted softly. The snort said clearly enough that an efficient investigator didn't depend on hunches these days: he went after something doggedly on the computer, or by other approved techniques.
Pell pretended not to hear the snort. "First of all we discovered that nearly all Supremists received some kind of an inoculation before they became Supremists. Then we found a whole village, one of those moon resort towns, that had gone over. There was the record of inoculation there, too. I got hold of some of the vaccine and had the lab analyze it. It's mostly vaccine all right, but there is a foreign substance in it. Listen." He read from the report: "Isolated point oh six four seven grams unclassified crystal compound, apparently form of nucleotide enzyme. Further analysis necessary."
"You think this enzyme, or whatever it is, has something to do with it?"
"I don't know. All I have is a pretty wild theory. To begin, when our lab can't analyze something right away, it's pretty rare—possibly even unknown to chemistry in general. Now it's just possible that this substance does something to the brain that makes a man into a Supremist, and that somebody's behind the whole thing, deliberately planting the stuff so that people here and there become injected with it."
"Pell." Larkin made a pained face. "Really."
Pell shrugged. "Well, as I say, it's a hunch, that's all."
"It's a pipe dream," said Larkin. "I never heard of anything so fantastic."
"That's what folks said a couple of centuries ago when the Venusians were first trying to make contact and their ships were sighted all over the place. 'I never heard of anything so fantastic,' they all said."
Theodor Rysland still looked interested. "Granted there is some connection between the Supremist mental state and this, er, enzyme. What then, Mr. Pell?"
"Well," said Pell, stretching his legs out, "I had an idea maybe your friend Dr. Nebel could give us some help on that."