“They look like they believe in walking through fire,” he commented.

She shook her head. “They believe in living in peace with their neighbors. In this particular case, their neighbors were a very aggressive humanoid race, and it took them almost two years to reach an accommodation—but they finally did.” She paused. “Then the Democracy decided that Hyperion was strategically desirable as a military base. There were a couple of incidents involving the native population, and Hyperion was declared off limits to civilians. The colony, which had made its peace, refused to leave.”

“And the navy did this to them?”

“Indirectly,” she replied. “After the navy came to the conclusion that pacifying the native humanoids was more trouble than it was worth, they released a chemical agent in the atmosphere which killed off the entire race. It’s far from the first such instance out here.” She looked through the glass at the nine humans. “Unfortunately, it also caused a bacterial mutation that resulted in a virulent skin disease among the colonists. Since they had been warned to leave, the navy refuses to take responsibility for them.”

“How many colonists survived?” asked Cain.

“Of the original five thousand, a little less than half of them are still alive.”

“And how many of them are here?”

“Just those that you see. We haven’t the room or the money to treat them all, so we brought a representative sample here to see if we could effect a cure. If we can come up with a serum or a vaccine, we’ll ship it back to Hyperion with them.”

“And you do this for how many worlds?”

“As many as we can.”

“It must cost a small fortune to run this kind of operation,” he commented.

“A large fortune,” she corrected him. “We have four other facilities on the Inner Frontier.”

“All functioning covertly?”

She nodded. “If the Democracy knew about them, they’d be that much closer to finding Santiago.” She looked directly at him. “And if they find him, the people of Hyperion and a hundred other worlds of the Inner Frontier will have no place to turn.”

They walked out into a corridor leading to the next ward, and Cain immediately stepped back to allow an orderly to wheel an enormous, elephantine being into one of the surgery rooms.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

“A native of Castor Five,” she replied.

“You work on aliens, too?”

“Her race is sentient, and it has been oppressed by the Democracy. We have no third qualification.”

“You start treating all the aliens the Democracy has oppressed, and you won’t be able to build enough hospitals to hold them,” said Cain.

“I know,” she said. “But we do what we can. It’s just a gesture, but a very important one.” She eyed him carefully. “Or are you of the opinion that it is Man’s manifest destiny to rule the galaxy alone?”