The guildsman lay retching on a makeshift bed, writhing in pain, his face contorted. Poisoned by spice.

Four Junction Specialists stood around the patient, consulting with each other, but none had any idea how to treat him. He thrashed and spat, his face greasy with perspiration.

They had placed the seriously ill Heighliner Coordinator in a sterile room that served more as a medical laboratory than a hospital. High-level Guild workers consumed so much melange that they rarely had any need for doctors, and thus their available hospital facilities were minimal. Even if the Spacing Guild had bothered to summon a Suk practitioner, though, the doctor would probably have been incapable of treating any human with a metabolism as distorted as this one’s.

“Questions but no data,” one of the four Specialists said. “Does anyone understand what happened here?”

“His body reacted to melange,” said another man who had patches of blue hair on his head and bushy eyebrows that nearly covered his eyes.

“Why would a Guildsman suddenly find his daily melange incompatible with his metabolism? That is absurd,” said a third. Though they all looked different, the Specialists sounded identical, as if a four-part entity were conversing with itself.

On the bed, the victim shuddered with a particularly violent convulsion. The Specialists paused, then looked at each other.

Lights flashed to indicate an incoming file, and a screen on the research room wall lit up with a new summary analysis. One Specialist scanned down the information. “Verified. The melange itself was tainted.” He scrolled down. “The spice he consumed is chemically incorrect, and his biochemistry rejected it.”

“How can melange become tainted? Was this an intentional poisoning?”

The Specialists consulted each other, studied more information. Around them, lights shone bright and harsh, reflecting off the sterile white walls and making them look like pale ghosts. The four stood at a distance, watching the Heighliner Coordinator struggle and writhe. He seemed unaware of the presence of anyone in the room with him.

“Will he live?” one asked.

“Who can say?”

“This may be the second incident,” the blue-haired Specialist said. “We know the Navigator aboard the recently lost Heighliner suffered from tainted spice gas, too.”

“Interrogation of the passengers is still proceeding. News of the problem is not yet general knowledge in the Imperium.”

“It is the third incident,” corrected another Specialist. “This also explains the crash on Wallach IX. There must be a serious deficiency with melange in the Imperium.”

“But we have found no common source of the problem. This man ate a significant amount of spice that was traced back to a merchant on Beakkal. The Prime Magistrate may have been disposing of his illegal hoard, because of the Emperor’s ultimatums. The two Navigators, however, got their spice from different sources, standard Guild stockpiles.”

“We have a mystery here.”

“The spice must flow.”

“All melange harvesting and processing is under the Emperor’s control. We need to enlist the aid of House Corrino.”

In grim unison, the Specialists turned to the broad, filtered window and stared out toward the bleak Navigator’s Field. There, a mechanical crane was erecting a commemorative plaque to honor the two dead Guild Navigators from the recent Heighliner accidents. Another Navigator in a sealed tank flew over the Field, heading for his departure on a long Heighliner run. The meditating Navigator hovered over the expanse of nameless plaques and communed with the ancient heart of the Spacing Guild, the Oracle of Infinity.

On the hospital bed, the poisoned Guildsman screamed so loudly that blood sprayed from his mouth. Convulsions stretched him like a torture victim on a medieval rack. Standing beside his bed, the four Specialists heard muscles break, vertebrae snap… and watched him die.

“We must call Shaddam IV,” the specialists said in unison. “We have no choice.”