Dereliction, neglect of duty is the least it will be. Can I plead temporary insanity?

He watched Heather settle Judy down into her sleeping

bag. When the older woman finally slept he said weary, "We ought to bury Marco. I hate to do it without an autopsy, but the only alternative is to carry him back to the ship."

MacLeod said, "We're going to look awfully damned foolish going back and claiming we all went mad at once." He did not look at Heather and Ewen as he added, rather sheepishly, "I feel lice a ghastly fool--group sex never has been my kick--"

Heather said firmly, "We'll all have to forgive each other, and forget about it. It just happened, that's all. And for all we know it happened to them too-" she stopped, struck with a horrifying thought. "Imagine that sort of thing happening to two hundred people…"

"It doesn't bear thinking about," MacLeod said with a shudder.

Ewen said that mass insanity was nothing new. "Whole villages. The dancing madness in the middle ages. And attacks of ergotism--from spoiled rye made into bread."

Heather said, "I don't think whatever it was got far enough down the mountain."

"Another of your hunches, I suppose," Ewen said, but not unkindly. "At this point I suspect we're all too close to it. Let's stop theorizing without facts and wait until we have some facts."

"Does this qualify as a fact?" Judy said, sitting up suddenly. They had all thought her asleep; she fumbled in the torn neck of her blouse and drew out something wrapped in leaves.

"This--or these." She handed Ewen a small blue stone, like a star sapphire.

"Beautiful," he said slowly, "but you found it in the woods--"

"Right," she said. "I found this, too."

She stretched it out to him, and for a moment the others, crowding close, literally could not believe their eyes.

It was less than six inches long. The handle was made of something lice shaped bone, delicate but quite without ornamentation. As for the rest, there was no question what it was.

It was a small flint knife.

Chapter

six

In the ten days the exploring party had been absent from the ship in the clearing, the clearing seemed to have grown. Two or three more small buildings had grown up around the ship; and at one edge of the clearing a fenced-off area had been plowed and a small sign proclaimed AGRICULTURAL TESTING AREA.

"That ought to do something for our food," MacLeod said, but Judith made no answer, and Ewen looked at her sharply. She had been curiously apathetic since That Day--that was how they all thought of it--and he was desperately worried about her. He wasn't a psychologist, but he knew that there was something gravely wrong. Damn it, I did everything wrong. I let Marco die, I haven't been able to bring Judy back to reality.

They came into the camp almost unnoticed, and for a moment MacAran felt a sharp stab of apprehension. Where was everybody? Had they all run amuck that day, had the madness overtaken all of them down here too? When he and Camilla had come down to the lower camp, to find Heather and Ewen and MacLeod still talking themselves hoarse in the attempt to find some explanation, it had been a bad moment. If madness lay on this planet, ready to claim them all, how could they survive? What worse things lay here waiting for them? Now, looking around the empty clearing, MacAran felt again the sharp stab of fear, then he saw a little group of people in Medic uniform coming out of the hospital tent, and further on, a crew going up into the ship. He relaxed; everything looked normal.

But then, so do we…

"What's the first thing to do?" he asked. "Do we report straight to the Captain?"

"I should, at least," Camilla said. She looked thinner, almost haggard. MacAran wanted to take her hand and comfort her, although he was not sure for what. Since they had lain in each other's arms on the mountainside, he had felt a deep gnawing hunger for her, an almost fierce protectiveness; yet she turned away from him at every point, withdrawing into her old sharp self-sufficiency. MacAran felt hurt and resentful, and somehow lost. He dared not touch her, and it made him irritable.

"I expect he'll want to see all of us," he said. "We have to report Marco's death, and where we buried him. And we have a lot of information for him. Not to mention the flint knife."

"Yes. If the planet's inhabited that creates another problem," MacLeod said, but he did not elaborate.

Captain Leicester was with a crew inside the ship but an officer outside told the party that he had given orders that he was to be called the moment they returned, and sent for him. They waited in the small dome, none of them knowing what they were going to say.

Captain Leicester came into the dome. He looked somehow older, his face drawn with new lines. Camilla rose as he came in, but he motioned her to a seat again.

"Forget the protocol, Lieutenant," he said kindly, "you all look tired; was it a hard trip? I see Dr. Zabal is not with you."

"He's dead, sir," Ewen said quietly, "he died from the bites of poisonous insects. I'll make a complete report later."

"Make it to the Medic Chief," the Captain said, "I'm not qualified to understand anyway. You others can bring up your reports at the next meeting--tonight, I suppose. Mr. MacAran, did you manage to get the calculations you were hoping for?"

MacAran nodded. "Yes; as near as we can figure, the planet is somewhat larger than Earth, which means, with the lighter gravity, that its mass must be somewhat less. Sir, I can discuss all that later; just now I must ask you one question. Did anything unusual happen here while we were gone?"

The Captain's lined face ridged, displeased. "How do you mean, unusual? This whole planet is unusual, and nothing that happens here can be called routine."

Ewen said, "I mean anything like illness or mass insanity, sir."

Leicester frowned. "I can't imagine what you could be talking about," he said. "No, no reports from Medic of any illness."

"What Dr. Ross means is that we all had an attack of something like delirium," MacAran told him. "It was the day after the second night without rain. It was wide spread enough to hit Camilla--Lieutenant Del Rey--and myself, on the peaks, and to hit the other group almost six thousand feet lower down. We all behaved well, irresponsibly, sir."

"Irresponsibly?" He scowled, his eyes fierce on them.

"Irresponsibly," Ewen met the Captain's eyes, his fists clenched. "Dr. Zabal was recovering; we ran off into the woods and left him alone so that he got up in delirium, ran off on his own and strained his heart--which is why he died. Judgment was impaired; we ate untested fruits and fungus. There were--various delusional processes."

Judith Lovat said firmly, "They were not all delusional."

Ewen looked at her and shook his head. "I don't think Dr. Lovat is in any state to judge, sir. We seem all to have had delusions about reading one another's thoughts, anyway."

The Captain drew a long, harried breath. "This will have to go to the Medics. No, we had nothing like that here. I suggest you all go and make your reports to the appropriate chiefs, or write them up to present at the meeting tonight. Lieutenant Del Rey, I want your report myself. I'll see the rest of you later."

"One more thing, sir," MacAran said. "This planet is inhabited." He drew out the flint knife from his pack, handed it over. But the Captain barely looked at it. He said, "Take it to Major Frazer; he's the staff anthropologist. Tell him I'll want a report tonight. Now if the rest of you will excuse us, please--"