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s had made one or two attempts to talk to him, but most of the time Ventress ignored him, keeping to himself whatever reasons he had for coming to Port Matarre. However, the doctor was well inured by now to being avoided by those around him. Shortly before they embarked, a slight contretemps, more embarrassing to his fellow passengers than to himself, had arisen over the choice of a cabinmate for Dr. Sanders. His fame having preceded him (what was fame to the world at large still remained notoriety on the personal level, Sanders reflected, and no doubt the reverse was true), no one could be found to share a cabin with the assistant director of the Fort Isabelle leper hospital.At this point Ventress had stepped forward. Knocking on Dr. Sanders's door, suitcase in hand, he had nodded at the doctor and asked simply:"Is it contagious?"After a pause to examine this white-suited figure with his bearded skull-like face-something about him reminded Sanders that the world was not without those who, for their own reasons, wished to _catch_ the disease-Dr. Sanders said: "The disease is contagious, as you ask, yes, but years of exposure and contact are necessary for its transmission. The period of incubation may be twenty or thirty years.""Like death. Good." With a gleam of a smile, Ventress stepped into the cabin. He extended a bony hand, and clasped Sanders's firmly, his strong fingers feeling for the doctor's grip. "What our timorous fellow passengers fail to realize, Doctor, is that outside your colony there is merely another larger one."Later, as he looked down at Ventress lounging in the speedboat on the afterdeck, Dr. Sanders pondered on this cryptic introduction. The faltering light still hung over the estuary, but Ventress'