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"Filthy!" the sallow officer cried. "It's rotten, the whole business! You're nothing but a dirty bunch of communists. That's what you are, communists!" Saying this he banged out of the door and disappeared in the black night.

"Holy cow!" Fry cried. "Who in the world is that guy?"

"He's having wife trouble. Back home. Poor guy is almost going nuts."

"Why in the world didn't somebody tell me?" Tony asked.

"His performance tonight was merely routine. Last night he wanted to fight a man who said Los Angeles was bigger than Philadelphia."

"I sure pick the dillies to argue with," Fry laughed. "What happens to a guy like that?"

"We send them home, mostly. Sometimes they snap out of it when real trouble begins on a beachhead. A couple of them have shot themselves. It all works out all right. But if there was ever a wild boar staked out to a three-foot circle, that's the guy."

"I should follow the advice of my uncle," Fry mused. "He says a gentleman never argues except on one question: 'Who picks up the check?' Then it's perfectly legitimate for you to argue that it's the other fellow's turn. Sage advice, that."

On the following Thursday Billis appeared at Pallikulo landing with a crash boat. Naked to the waist, a frangipani in his hair, the doves flying in stately formation toward his heart, and his bracelets jangling, he was a proper figure of a tropical sailor. He was giving the coxswain orders at the rate of six a minute.

Fry and Benoway met him at the pier. "All aboard!" Billis cried. "Anybody else coming?"

"No," Fry replied. He had invited the sallow officer, but that sick man had replied, "No! You and your damned wild pigs."

"OK," Fry had said. He could never stay angry at anyone. "Would you like us to bring you back some pineapples?" The officer had looked up warmly, clutching at even the straws of friendship. "Would you?" he asked eagerly. "I don't want to take the ride. I get seasick."

"Boy," Tony laughed. "You should see me get seasick!"

Aboard the crash boat Tony and Benoway met the officers and crew and a ruddy little man who wore the cross of the Chaplains' Corps. "This is Chappy Jones," Billis said. "From our outfit. I was tellin' him about the new religion I found. Even promised him I'd get him tattooed if he wished!" Billis laughed and the little chaplain beamed.

"Ah, yes!" he said. "And I presume you are the doctor?"

"Yes," Benoway nodded.

"Do you think there might really be an epidemic?" the chaplain asked. "What?"

"That epidemic you have to go over to investigate," Billis interrupted. "Merely normal precautions," Fry interposed, glaring at Luther. "What's this..." Benoway began.

"It's a rare opportunity for me!" the chaplain said. "You know, I teach comparative religion at the seminary. Vanicoro is the tabu island in these parts. It's also the leper's island. Interesting, almost a parallel to our medieval belief that the very sick were special wards of God."

The crash boat was gathering speed through the blue waters of Pallikulo Bay. Overhead the early morning planes set out for Guadal and Noumea. Far up the bay the great floating dry-dock was being assembled, and to the west the daily halo of cloud was gathering upon the gaunt mountains of Espiritu Santo.

"Lovely day for a trip to a sacred island," Benoway said.

"Wonderful opportunity for all of us," the chaplain said. "I don't know of anything in the world quite like this pig worship. It gives us a unique opportunity to see the mind of primitive man at work calling forth his gods."

"What do you mean, chaplain?"

"Here we see a religion spring full blown from the mind of man. We see it flower in answer to man's expressed needs."

"Then Billis was telling the truth when he said the pigs were the religion?"

"Ab-so-lute-ly," the ruddy chaplain replied. "The religion is well known in sociological circles. Well known. Well documented. As I said, it's unique in this small circle of islands. From an airplane you can see with a glance the entire region in which