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DEATH’
    RELATED DATA:
    # CLINICAL CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
    # DISEASES OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL/UNKNOWN ORIGIN
    # ELECTRON MICROSCOPE STUDIES OF CRIOS SEED-CRYSTAL SAMPLES
    # HAEMATOLOGY (cf: ECCENTRIC BLOOD PATHOLOGY)
    # INORGANIC CONTAMINANTS – TREATMENT REGIMENS
    # QUARANTINE PROCEDURES – INCURABLE/FATAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES
    # SUGGESTED METHODS FOR CONTROL OF ANY FUTURE CRIOS OUTBREAK
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    â€˜ And ?’ I still didn’t get it. I never did have his eye for detail. Not that kind of detail.
    â€˜ And they slapped a Level Five clearance on it. And not just a Level Five. See there . . . NTK.’ He tapped the screen. ‘ Need To Know . . . Not just a Level Five, but only those Level Fives who absolutely had to find out about it. How Hansen got hold of it I can only guess.’
    â€˜But that doesn’t alter the fact that it was written forty years ago, Galen.’ I was making a real effort to sound positive. It was a reflex. My way of trying to balance his natural pessimism. Galen always said it’s one of the reasons we made such a good team.
    â€˜Think about it,’ I went on. ‘In all this time there’s been no word of any epidemic of – what did they call it? – “Crystal Death”. So doesn’t that tell you something?’
    He knew what I was getting at, but I could tell that something wasn’t sitting right. He frowned and looked back at the screen, as if the cause of his unease might be flashing there in huge red letters.
    It wasn’t.
    I walked around and stood in front of his chair, before I went on.
    â€˜What it tells me is that it didn’t get loose. That whatever this CRIOS was, the containment measures must have worked. Otherwise there’s no way they could ever have kept it secret. It would have been all over the networks, and we’d have heard about it on the next warp-shuttle. Which, incidentally, would have arrived on Deucalion about twenty years before either of us was born.’
    It was a sensible argument. At least, it was the comforting one. I mean, they must have controlled it, or . . . Well, the possibilities didn’t bear thinking about.
    I changed tack. ‘Want some Ocra?’ After years of working with him, I knew his addictions as well as I knew my own. He nodded without removing his gaze from the screen.
    As I left the room to brew his tea, he leaned forward towards the console and began reading the report again.
    Two minutes later I was back.
    â€˜What’s “Vesta”?’ He asked the question before I was halfway through the door.
    I placed one mug on the tray-arm of his chair, took a quick sip from the other, and looked at the report. I’d skimmed it earlier, but with Galen skimming wasn’t nearly good enough. I’d learned not to answer any query off the cuff. He could be cutting – even with me – if he was in overdrive, like he was at the moment, and you tried to ad lib.
    I started at the top of the screen.
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    INCUBATION PERIOD: Undetermined. Victims demonstrate rapid and irreversible deterioration from the onset of major symptoms, but no data is currently available on the period between contact with CRIOS seed-crystal and initial pathological changes.
    â€˜Seed-crystal.’ What the hell did they mean by ‘seed-crystal’?
    ORIGIN OF INFECTION: First reported case: (Carlos Ruiz, 28 [Earth standard], Hispanic) Security operative, JMMC ore-processing facility, Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. Admitted, comatose, to JMMC plant med-centre, 23:09, 2/5/32, symptoms initially diagnosed as allergic/anaphylactic shock, erratic pulse, cyanosis, muscular rigidity. Zero response to adrenalin/antihistamine treatment. Unprecendented blood pathology – high-level, unexplained crystallisation of plasma, blood-calcium, red and white corpuscles. Zero response to anticoagulants. Progressive organ failure. Pronounced dead 01:04, 3/5/32.
    Twenty new cases reported by 5/5/32 – all in