### 265

You think back to the months that you spent studying the Discipline of Deliverance at the Kai Monastery, and you try to recall what you can about the illness known as Bita Fever.

It is a highly contagious airborne disease that originated in the Bita Swamp of Dessi. In humans it is usually only fatal in the very young or the old; healthy adults rarely die from it, although the symptoms in those affected are uncomfortable and unsightly. Victims suffer from a corpse-like pallor and can sometimes develop a vivid scarlet rash that particularly affects the face, feet, and hands. Gradually a normally healthy person who contracts the disease will develop an immunity to it after fifteen to twenty days, and outbreaks of Bita Fever in towns and cities have rarely been known to last longer than a month.

When you look at the faces of the mourners you notice that many of them exhibit the symptoms of Bita Fever. The marines have never before encountered this tropical disease, and when you inform them of what you know, they insist on leaving the town at once, before the quarantine is put into force.

Turn to 148.