"Well, we'll stick to the serum for the Dorn girl," said Helman. "But I wonder if you would be willing to participate in an experiment afterward?"

"What sort of experiment?"

"Visit all my terminal patients with me. I shall introduce you as a colleague. Then you speak with them briefly. About anything."

"All right. I'll be glad to."

"Do you know what will happen?"

"It will depend upon the conditions from which they are suffering. If it is a disease I've had, it may go away. If it is something involving major anatomical damage, the condition will probably remain unchanged."

"You have done this before?"

"Yes, many times."

"How many diseases have you been exposed to?"

"I don't know. I'm not always aware of taking one. I don't know what I'm carrying around inside me. --You being willing to try me on them this way," said Heidel, as the lift halted and the door opened, "that's interesting. Why not use my serum on everybody, now that you have me here?"

Helman shook his head.

"These reports only tell me what it has proven specific against in the past. So I'll trust it--well, try it, I should say-- on the Dorn girl. None of my other terminals fit your list, though. I would not risk it."

"Yet you would try the other?"

Helman shrugged.

"I am quite open-minded about these things," he said, "and there would be no risk. It certainly can't do them any harm, at this point. --The lab's at the end of this hall."

As he waited for his blood to be drawn, Heidel stared out the window. In the late morning light of that giant sun, he saw no fewer than four churches of as many different religions, as well as a flat-roofed wooden building, the face of which was covered with ribbons and tacked-on devotions, much on the order of one he had seen in the village beside the River Bart. Squinting, turning his head, leaning far forward, he could also make out tile aboveground structure which indicated a Pei'an shrine below, far up the road to his right. He grimaced and turned away from the window.