Dr. Sam Bertolli was there when the "Pericles" returned to Earth. He was the first man to reach Commander Rand as--hideously disfigured and close to death--Rand staggered off the spaceship..From that moment, Bertolli became the only line of defense against a savage epidemic of slow and violent death. No form of life on Earth seemed safe from the raw, ugly boils that signaled the beginning of the "Plague From Space."