He did not dare speak openly of that suspicion. The ship had eyes and ears everywhere. There were other fears, too. A Nerve Runner boil had to be met by fire. He envisioned the Redoubt a mass of cinders inside.

“You say the Redoubt’s all right?”

“Clean. Sterilized, and we have a bonus.” Lewis took another long swallow of wine and grinned at Oakes, savoring the suspense he read in the Ceepee’s face. The Ceepee was so easy to read.

“How?” Oakes did not try to hide his impatience.

“Chlorine and heavily chlorinated water.”

“Chlorine? You mean that kills Nerve Runners?”

“I saw it with my own eyes.”

“That simple? It’s that simple?” Oakes thought of all the years they had lived in terror of these tiniest demons. “Chlorinated water?”

“Heavily chlorinated, undrinkable. But it dissolves the Runners. As a liquid or a gas, it penetrates all the fine places to get every one. The Redoubt stinks, but it’s clean.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m here.” Lewis tapped his chest, took another swallow of wine. Oakes was reacting strangely. It was unsettling. Lewis put down the bottle of wine and thought about the report he had read on the shuttle coming shipside. Legate to the Scream Room! Were there no limits to what the old bastard might do? Lewis hoped not. That was how to control Oakes—through his excesses.

“You are, indeed, here,” Oakes agreed. “How did you get . . . I mean, how did you discover . . .”

“Those of us in the Facilities Room had all of the controls in front of us. We started dumping whatever we could find to . . .”

“But chlorine—how did you get chlorine?”

“We were trying salt brine. There was an electrical short, a wide-scale electrolytic reaction in the brine and we had chlorine. I was on the sensors at the time and saw the chlorine kill some Runners.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw it with my own eyes. They just shriveled up and died.”

Oakes began to see the picture. Colony had never put chlorine and Nerve Runners together. Most shipside caustics had little effect groundside anyway. Potable water was produced with filters and flash heat from laser ovens. That was the cheapest way. Fire worked on Nerve Runners. Colony had always used fire. Another thought occurred to him.

“The survivors . . . how . . .”

“Only those locked into a sealed area before the infection spread were saved. We flushed everything else with chlorine gas and heavily chlorinated water.”

Oakes imagined the gas killing people and Runners, the caustic water burning flesh . . . He shook his head to drive out such thoughts.

“You’re absolutely sure the Redoubt is safe?”

Lewis stared up at him. The precious Redoubt! Nothing was more important.

“I’m going back dayside.”

Belatedly, Oakes realized he should show more human concern. “But my dear fellow, you’re wounded!”

“Nothing serious. But one of us will have to be at the Redoubt all of the time from now on.”

“Why?”